<~> Chapter 140

The whispering continued to follow us as we walked through the camp. The crowds of people blocking our path on our way back to Celeste's tent parted for her as we made our way through. Celeste was still seething. Her violent outburst hadn't done much to settle her anger and everyone had picked up on it. The headless corpse of the changeling she was dragging along didn't do her any favors either. She didn't drop it until we pushed our way back into her tent and reactivated the silencing magic.

"Fuck!" she yelled as she struggled to rein in her anger. The only reason I wasn't more scared of her was because she avoided looking at us, venting all of her anger in other directions.

"How bad is this?" I asked her once she had gotten her growling under control.

Celeste took long deep breaths as she finally started to cool down. When she unclenched her fists, I could see blood spots on her palm where her claws had dug into her skin. She placed them flat on her desk and leaned against it for a moment before motioning to the side. Emi, Celeste's drakken assistant, started mixing her a drink at the gesture. Celeste walked around her desk and sat heavily in her chair. I hadn't even noticed that Emi had been here. I haven't seen much of her since we arrived, despite the last few days of training I've done in this tent.

Emi finished mixing a cocktail and brought it over to her. The drink was a murky blue with mist flowing from the top like dry ice. Celeste whispered her thanks to her assistant before quickly downing the drink and letting her body settle there for a long moment with her eyes closed. I glanced over at the silver scaled drakken, who gave me a sad smile before she turned her focus back to Celeste.

Finally, Celeste let out one last deep breath before opening her eyes. "Before we start, you should eat that changeling, Helena. If nothing else, this ordeal should strengthen my daughter's protector."

While looking at the headless corpse lying in the sand, a small battle raged inside me. I had been so against eating sapient people only days ago, but my instincts urged me to devour it in a way that they hadn't with the humans and beastkin. My stomach turned, but my mouth salivated at the idea.

I jumped when I felt Luna's hand touch my arm. ("You should eat it. I know you're conflicted, but you should take its power. Make all of this worth it. If you don't do it now, you'll likely just do it in the dungeon later anyway.")

Grimacing, I shifted into my umber hound form and got to all fours in front of it. A fugue came over me as I began to tear off chunks and swallow them. It tasted so good. These creatures were richly dense in mana. Each bite felt reinvigorating. The crab meat had been pleasant for both my human and umber hound sensibilities, but this meat made my umber hound side tremble in delight, despite the misgivings of my human half.

Not long after I started eating, I finally reached the heart. I could feel the rush of mana as the power of this creature flooded into me. It was much richer and denser than many of the other monsters I had eaten. Not even the stronger monsters in the Fallow dungeon compared to this. This monster's heart held a purer form of magic inside. The other monsters used magic to improve their physical form to different extents, but this monster's physical form seemingly only existed to support this creature's magic.

I felt a slow tingle all across my body as a larger scale change was taking place this time. It felt like my fur was prickling and I began to feel feverish. This new denser mana spread through me as I finished eating the heart and my entire body began to shiver from the odd sensation. On impulse, I pulled away from the remains of the bloody corpse and shifted back to my human form before falling into the sand.

("Helena! Are you okay?!") Luna's voice rang through the rings.

I shivered and groaned as the mana pulsed through my human form. Whatever this was, it didn't seem like it was a change in my body that was going to be limited to my wolf form. Something inside me clicked, and I felt the large knot of mana that allows me to transform into monsters I've eaten expand and diffuse through my entire body until it was gone. Everything suddenly cramped and I groaned as the alteration painfully changed me on a fundamental level.

The... taste of the changeling's mana, for lack of a better explanation, felt similar to the monster I had eaten in the Lost Halls of the Fallow Dungeon. It was suddenly clear to me. The doppelganger that had taken the form of my father and the others' worst memories had been an outside influence on that dungeon. The revelation felt obvious in retrospect. The monster was a fey and had taken over that dungeon floor. Why it was trying to choke out that dungeon and hamper the city's exploitation of it was still a mystery, but it felt like another piece of the puzzle of the strange occurrences in the region.

The cramping in my body finally stopped and I relaxed into Luna's arms. She had lifted and cradled me against her body while I was changing. During the painful process, I hadn't even noticed her lifting me. I let out a sigh and rested my head against her the moment the pain subsided.

"I'm okay now," I said with another sigh.

Luna hesitantly moved away as I got back up and looked down at my hands. I felt the odd magic of the changeling and doppelganger mix throughout my entire body rather than the concentrated spot inside the core of my being. A shudder rolled through me and my body shifted. I heard audible gasps from the three of them as I looked down at unfamiliar hands. The light of my perpetually glowing eyes was absent for the first time since I woke up in this place. My new ears flicked, and I adjusted my stance due to the unfamiliar weight of my new proportions. Unbidden, a name and vague history of the form I was wearing came to mind. Her name was Merfellen. This was a feline beastkin woman who had been among the people I had torn open and eaten.

"Helena, is that still you?" Celeste asked. Her voice had a dangerous tone to it and coiled aggression hid within.

"Yes, it's still me," I replied in an unfamiliar voice. I jerked in surprise at my own reply. Speaking with a different voice sounded so odd that it shocked me.

I shook my head and shifted back to my normal beastkin form. Unlike transforming with the large knot of mana I had taken from the doppelganger, this felt effortless. It felt more like stretching a muscle I didn't know I had, rather than the intense effort and confusing blur of instincts the other transformation had been. I reached up and touched my partially incorporeal wolf ears, and with a small amount of effort, they became real. They suddenly felt more solid under my fingertips and actually connected to my head in a way they hadn't before. The ears twitched just like the cat ears of the beastkin's form I had stolen. Briefly transforming into her had allowed me to understand how the ears should feel. My new power, taken from the changeling and mixed with the doppelganger, allowed me to actually alter my base self. I jerked my hands away from my ears when I realized I had just permanently changed myself. I could perhaps change myself back, but this change wasn't temporary... and that scared me.

("Helena, are you okay? You look worried...") Luna asked while gently touching my arm.

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I cleared my throat. "The power I got from the changeling and the power I got from the monster I ate in the Lost Halls of the Fallow Dungeon combined somehow. I can transform into the people I've eaten now, almost like a changeling can. It all feels effortless... I can also alter my natural form too, I gave myself real ears. See, look," I said.

Kneeling down, I tilted my head toward Luna and she reached out to cautiously grab my ears. I tensed unconsciously when her fingers touched them. Her touch tickled and sent odd feelings down my spine.

Celeste cleared her throat and Luna stepped away with a blush on her face. She shyly glanced at me with a smile on her face before refocusing on Celeste. ("They're real, as she says.")

"That form you took. It was one of the assassins you killed, correct?" Celeste rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Emi, will you please pour me another drink?"

"Of course, my lady," the drakken replied.

Celeste tapped a finger on her chin. "That changeling we encountered earlier had been able to learn things about us, presumably by taking their forms. Is that something you're able to do now too?" she asked.

I frowned, and with barely any effort, I shifted back into the feline beastkin. Even my clothes changed, appearing as they had when the group ambushed us. But they weren't real. Strangely, the clothes felt like hair on my body. I couldn't feel the cloth as if it were my skin, but they were attached to me so I could feel them shifting. I knew that I would be able to remove the clothes if I wanted to, but I had the option of dressing myself in fake clothes in any way I wished now.

"Helena?" Celeste asked, bringing me back to her question.

Startled, I looked back up at her. "Sorry. I was distracted," I replied in the beastkin's voice. She spoke with a slight accent that I didn't recognize. It didn't sound quite like my friends, so I think it was foreign. "Let me think..."

I tried to parse her memories, but I don't think I had much to work with. While I now knew things about this woman I hadn't known before, everything was surface level. I shook my head. "I can tell you the names of everyone in my... er, this form's group, and maybe their general personalities, but I don't know more than that. I don't think the powers I've taken from the changeling are complete."

"Can you tell me anything? Like who told them where we were?" Celeste asked calmly.

I frowned. "Let me try someone else..."

From the group of assassins, I knew Merfellen rarely cared about her targets and just followed the orders of whoever her team lead was on any given mission. One of the human men I had eaten would have a better idea. Following that train of thought, I shifted into one of the men who might know more.

A sudden revulsion filled me as I took the form of one of the men. My body felt wrong. It took effort to hold myself in this form and stop myself from hurling. I closed my eyes and steadied myself on the table. This wasn't just vertigo from changing, nor was it something this person had dealt with himself. My mind was just rejecting this male form. I didn't like it, everything felt wrong. I shook my head and took a slow steadying breath.

("Are you okay?") Luna asked apprehensively.

"I don't think I can handle shifting into men. Everything feels wrong, my skin feels like it's crawling, and I have this general... disgust at my body when I'm like this. I can tolerate it, but I feel like I'm going to be sick... Give me a moment while I try to search through some of this form's memories so I can change back as quickly as possible," I said with his voice.

This man hadn't been in control of the mission, but he paid more attention to the situation than Merfellen had. They had been in Ironcastle for a while, looking for any leads on Celeste or her unnamed daughter. They only vaguely knew what Luna looked like, but they hadn't known her name or where she was, just that she existed. If Luna's father had been involved, they hadn't gained much information from his failed attempt to kill her. I wasn't sure if that was good or bad news. After a frustratingly long time of being stuck hiding out in Ironcastle, they finally found a lead. One of the dragon princes, Saiph, was trying to find any information on a woman that matched the description of Celeste's daughter and hadn't bothered to hide his inquiries. From there, it was easy to contact one of their spies in the castle and find out where Luna was going. From this, I could gather that Saiph hadn't actually been working with them. He had just been careless because he hadn't actually known the significance of who Luna was. This man's memories weren't complete either though, I couldn't recall anything beyond them being in Ironcastle, which couldn't have been more than a few weeks prior to his death at most.

As soon as I gathered the relevant information, I shifted back to my normal beastkin form. My body relaxed as if a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Now that it was gone, I was able to recognize all of the anxiety that holding that form was putting on me. I never wanted to shift into a male again if I could help it.

I reached up and touched the real wolf ears sitting atop my head that shifted without any additional effort. They were just part of me now. I don't know if I could say that I was truly a beastkin, but it would be a lot easier to blend in with them, especially now that I have access to beastkin instincts and mannerisms. I couldn't help but grin a little at that. I also chose to make my incorporeal tail real. I wanted my tail to actually be part of me, like my ears were.

Once I felt steadied, I relayed what I learned to everyone from that man's form.

"That careless ass..." Celeste's face twisted in annoyance, but I could also see some relief in her expression. "At least he wasn't trying to get Luna killed... he just didn't know any better..." Celeste sighed and finished off the drink Emi had made for her. "It's concerning to hear of spies in the castle though. It's not really unexpected, but the confirmation means that we'll have to expend some additional effort to root them out. I'll warn Callisto and see what he can do. In the meantime, you two will need to continue focusing on the dungeon with the others. Now that we've found the changeling in our camp, I can properly begin preparations for dealing with that problem once we've settled the issue with the snake monster. For now, go get some rest. I'll talk with Tor'jek and warn him that you're likely to exhibit signs of the changeling's magic now. I have a good excuse in mind, so don't worry about it. Just don't transform in camp yet, Tor'jek isn't the only one capable of noticing the signs of changeling magic."

The two of us nodded and left Celeste's tent. It would soon be time to refocus on the dungeon. The snake monster should respawn soon. Now that the changeling that had snuck into our camp had been dealt with, we could work on delving the dungeon again without worry that the camp will fall apart while we're inside.

I was also excited to explore the limits of my improved shapeshifting powers. Things were going to get a bit more interesting.

End of Book 2

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