ALL NOVEL 34: The Shapeshifter
Merle sat in his office.
The Pontifex had a blissful view over the city subsisting entirely off of the pilgrimage of others from the farthest flung continents and kingdoms. The tallest of five towers standing over the square that held them all together, he found himself staring past the ancient buildings, structures that stood while supposedly the goddesses themselves walked amongst them, and out towards the ocean.
Out towards Alzahett.
Fear had gripped his heart, robbing him of his sleep, and at some times, his sanity. Strangely, and perhaps a part of his losing grip on his sense of self, he found himself acquiescing to an unknown sense of relief.
Shifting his focus to his own reflection, he stared at the old man who glared back, marred by the golden rays of a new sun rising. Gone was his full head of hair he miraculously held onto at the dawn of his golden years, gone was the weight he had put on, despite eating the same meals, and gone was the smile he once held, ever present against the travesties of the world he had seen. He even lost the sense of surprise when the blood that had spotted his handkerchiefs recurred more frequently after a coughing fit overtook him, growing longer and longer each time.
But never had he felt more alive.
Opposition meant he was headed the right direction, the scriptures had taught him. With the arrival of the threat of a new devil bearing his necessary sacrifice’s name, the very hells themselves were beginning to move against him.
“The Sage’s Slabs look beautiful today, hmmm?”
A new morose sense gripped him, one that he still was not sure he was strong enough to continue grappling. “Quite.”
Turning around, he faced the small witch that had taken to appearing before him even more often as of late, “Have you found your ‘toy’, as you called it?”
“No.” While he thought of her optimism, and annoying demeanor, as perfectly unflappable before, had somehow yielded. It appeared this was no mere toy. “I can’t even find the guy who borrowed it. He somehow surpassed even onomancy.”
The Pontifex faced away from the young girl, returning to his musing over what creatures swore at his name.
“Have you done as I asked?” The Archivist asked, her dry tone almost making Merle miss her more lively delivery.
Possibly the best time to address this, he stood, “How can I?” He almost shouted, the confrontation he had rehearsed nearly a dozen times a day finally coming to light, “You keep preoccupying his time with that irritating girl of yours?”
The small witch shook her head, this time taking the opportunity to look out of his window instead of him. He could feel a sense of whirling emotion past her forced facade as she looked in the same direction he did prior to her arrival.
“Well? Mind clueing me into what you’re wasting his time with, then? She isn’t going to make him into what we need to save Altalour! That’s your job!” He could feel his blood pressure spike. While they worked towards the same goal, he felt she was almost taking her attempts in the wrong direction.
The Archivist continued to stare out past the Quintessentialist Temples, most likely towards something else that laid beyond the horizon he asked questions towards.
“Trust me, let me find my lost toy and I'll give you the salvation for all of Alzahett…”
- - - -
Since visiting the elf homeland, Sara had developed a sense of surprising diversity amongst the elves’ appearances.
Faruzad, for example, appeared far older than any elf she had really focused on. Still physically younger than Stella back in their old lives, but certainly more wizened than the average citizen of Merreign during her foray into the desert country, The Eternal’s personal attendant had to be more than half of a millennium old. Still with dark hair, a relatively rare trait amongst the already dark skinned people, slight lines danced beneath her eyes, cracks in the facade of her elven youth.
“Ready?” She asked in her elven accent. Thankfully, she preferred sitting on the patio outside, rather than tearing up the property. Few townsfolk saw the pillar of earth shoot into the sky from this supposedly abandoned property, something that was hard to shake from the eyes of the Thistlebrook authorities.
Sara held out her only hand, “Sure. And this is supposed to do what, again?”
“For now, to see if you can.” With a look of slight strain on her face, a rock began to form in the elf’s hand. “Just control mana, form it.”
The succubus had seen this trick once before. Closing her eyes, she could feel the particles within the air. With a bit of mental effort, she imagined focusing in on each one and pulling it closer to her if they matched what she perceived as earth mana. She was surprised with how easy the process had become, something she could never imagine herself doing before practicing with the few spells she knew, let alone her previous life.
Upon reopening, she saw that she had a pebble in her palm, much smaller than Faruzad’s.
“Not bad.” The housekeeper muttered, “Most likely focus on using mana internal, no?”
Sara stopped to think. “I guess so? I mostly just disguised myself until I got that shapechange spell recently…”
Her thoughts quickly flashed back to how she briefly turned back into her old self just the other day. Even though it was the form she spent more than sixty years as, she had no motivation to turn back. Just the thought of doing so felt… wrong, for some reason.
Faruzad looked down at the pebble, blatantly dissatisfied with the results. “It is fine for first attempt, but missing complexity.” Gesturing to Sara’s missing arm, she continued, “No point in continuing.”
Joining the elf’s gaze, Sara could see what she meant. The Eternal had expressed concerns with it before, but without a second hand, she lacked the means of the necessary somatic components of spells, particularly magic that took place outside of the body.
“Ugh… I guess that’s that, then.” Sitting back, she continued to look at the nub she was left after her run-in with the direwolves. Strange how she spent more time with only one arm instead of the two she had when leaving the cave.
Picking up the tea set she had set out for the two, Faruzad set the cups closer to the house next to the warming teapot, enjoying the patio finally free from the immense snow drifts that covered it only a half-day prior. She was skilled in many ways to maintain an estate, but coming from a land where there was next to no annual snow, let alone rain, she had only opted to clear the courtyard and left the back to it’s own devices.
“How’s Mujad?” Sara broke the silence.
Taking her spot back at the table, the elf’s intense eyes met hers, “Sufficient.” The young boy opted to clear the patio by hand, something that must have taken more out of him than anyone expected.
“So what do I do?” She was unsure how proficient the housekeeper of a Sage was in the art of magic, but she must have been adept enough to substitute for the day. “I can’t learn that rejuvenation spell and I’m not sure there is a substitute for it…”
“Clerics?”
Sara shook her head, “Not possible. I’m fairly sure there’s something different about my anatomy that would raise their suspicion of me.”
“Well,” Faruzad shrugged, “practice what you know.”
The first thing that came to her mind was her shape change spell again. “Might as well” She resigned.
With a simple motion that was now one of the easiest things she could do, she shifted into her disguise: her normal appearance sans any monstrous features and missing limbs.
“Impressive.” The old elf looked up and down the thorough disguise, “Mixture of earth and… water mana?”
Sitting down opposite, Sara returned the shrug, “I never thought about it like that, I kind of just… picked up the spell.”
“Yes.” Faruzad nodded, assuring herself in her assumptions, “Water to change, earth for structure.”
“Is that how it works?”
Nodding again, she wrote in the air, her markings hovering where she left them in a spectral light, “Look at coast. Earth is basis, holds all elements. Sea is utop, but…” She snapped her fingers a few times, trying to think of the proper word, “permeable. Sea is permeable through example.”
“But what about the air?” Sara asked, “It’s fluid with the water. Or the fire element? It’s freely existing anywhere in the coastal model.”
Faruzad held up a hand, something she did when anyone else spoke a language but her own too quickly. After a second, she gathered herself, “Air is temporary. Transient. Same with fire.”
“I guess that makes sense…” Sara attempted to cross her arms. The best her imagination that filled in the blanks told her that since she was changing her physical anatomy, specifically the bones in her body, the earth element would be required in the stability in the spell, which made sense considering how long she held it with Gildroy.
The water element, however, seemed to affect everything else she changed, able to make her manipulate her entire body with near limitless control over muscles, endocrine system and even nervous systems.
All of which she stumbled into knowing just by devouring the former elven senator’s mana.
“Since spell is internal, affecting self, little somatic.”
More questions emerged to taunt Sara: when she removed her tail, where did it go? It is her main body housing her brain and other essential organs, so where did they move to? Bila was able to manipulate her genitals, making them authentically the real thing, is that how the spell works? If she was to drain The Eternal, would she-?
“Try different form.”
Faruzad set down a fresh cup of tea before Sara, “Try becoming lizard.” The elf held a rare smile, something that accented the lines in her face, giving her a surprisingly warm atmosphere despite her typically cold demeanor.
The idea never crossed her mind. If the old caster was able to turn from female to male, with Sara having done the same, what was stopping her from departing the human form entirely?
“Sure, but I’m turning into a wolf instead.”
Dropping her form before making the motion again, as maintaining a spell while keeping up the shapechange had proved impossible the few times she tried, she visualized the very creatures that took her arm from her.
Living in Alzahett meant every man, woman and child were intimately familiar with the monstrous lupines and their various details. Everyone had experienced an encounter with the beasts, whether in their hunting form or not, meaning she felt more comfortable thinking about the details on those rather than some nebulous lizard she had never seen.
Concentrating on the shape, she felt her bones begin to shift. Dropping down onto the floor, she felt her back bend and move, a strange shifting and occasional movement of her ribs led to a stinging snap across her back.
The shifting of her skeleton was so audible, even with the quick glance she threw at Faruzad showed the normally stoic elf woman grimacing in sympathy.
Every instinct yelled at her to cease, something she felt inclined to listen to, dropping the spell altogether. She continued to hold herself up by her arms, her pendulous breasts swinging below, heaving with every breath she laboriously took.
“That… Was a bad idea…” Sara heaved, her tail’s stomach realigning itself with where it belonged.
While the pain still lingered, the more overpowering of sensations that filled her was confusion. While she was unsure when her breathing became uneven, an overwhelming sense of bewilderment and dread filled her. She only had the vaguest sense of what she was doing and what thoughts sped into her consciousness while shifting.
“Quite…” Faruzad still held her concern, but seemed relieved that Sara returned to her seat and continued to sit upright. “Strange spell.”
Sara could only nod as she began to piece herself back together. She had blacked out before, but usually one did not remember being there for the process of, surreal as it sounded. As her heart calmed, she sipped the now cold tea, already chilled from the winter air, “Well… I only have more questions now…”
World notes: Changelings
Debating on whether or not they are truly monsters, scholars the world over who specialize in the study of either transmutation magic or monster biology each have an opinion on the topic of changelings.
While emerging in various myths and nursery rhymes, the first recorded changeling emerged in halfling society around 2,000 years ago. A man recorded as Philmorf, a cultural ambassador to his caravan, show great promise in his own transmutations, a necessary tool for his line of work. While most of the records are either exaggerated or lost to water damage (most likely wine) and what appears to be fire, one thing the records make clear is his ability to change his shape to great aplomb. However, this proves to be his downfall after having transmuted himself for months at a time, eventually forgetting his original form, leaving him to become a grey being of a vaguely human shape. He appeared to lose his cogency, but this may be due to the vivid torture techniques described to have been enacted on him after the phenomenon.
Clinically known as Philmorf's Disease, the process of shifting into a changeling has been well documented and appears to be entirely synthetic, never once appearing in nature. The creature afflicted loses all sense of self, higher order thinking and near eradication of spoken language. Strangely enough, across all documented cases, no matter the race of human it originated from, the changling gains the ability to detect true north with shocking accuracy.
As it stands, there is no known remedy for Philmorf's Disease, thus it is standard practice within transmutation classes to describe and show case studies of subjects inflicted with the condition as a preventative measure. Regardless, a few cases arise each year, in particular within those that practice dwarven law, potentially due to rampant misuse of transmutation spells within social circles developed in such a field.