[Mkguild] A Cursed Kit (Part 2)

[Kit]

Well here's the second part (don't worry, nothing after this). I don't know
why the text is all funky, so try to ignore that if it's bothering you.

I woke up with a big stretch and yawned widely. It was once again Monday as
I had slept through Sunday, and I knew that I wouldn't get farther with my
search than I had the rest of the week, and besides, I didn't have a plan E
anyway. So instead of figuring one out, I opted to just walk around the
place. It was a nice day after all, and if I wasn't going to get anything
done, I might as well enjoy myself.  With that in mind, I gathered my stuff
together and stood up, picking a random direction to start off in. Looking
around, I sighed in contentment. It wasn't often that I went wandering with
no idea where I was and just took the time to enjoy myself. 'I should do
this more often' I thought absently, watching the wind blow through the tops
of the trees. Stopping for a moment I followed the path of the wind and
grinned as a thought hit me. 'Why not?' I thought happily. 'It IS a nice day
after all and the conditions are perfect.' Shortly afterwards, I'd shoved
all my extra baggage back into my room and kicked off the ground, clearing
the top of the trees and letting the winds take me where they would.

I spent most of the day just floating and being blown around, looking at the
scenery, before I started to get tired and looked for a place to land and
rest for the night. I looked down, and surprisingly saw a castle in the
distance. Gliding closer to get a better look, I soon recognized it as the
place I had meant to get to on the previous Monday. "Well what do you know."
I muttered to myself softly. I had somehow managed to find my destination
after all, and on a Monday to boot! I raised both arms in the sky in triumph
with a big smile plastered on my face. "Ha! Take THAT Murphy!" I declared to
no one in particular as I began a rather silly impromptu jig in midair. I
would have to leave before the end of the week because of the curse, but I
was only planning to visit anyway. And to think, if I had just gone
wandering around the first day instead of wasting my time scrying I would
have found my way all the sooner. I had wasted seven days trying to figure
out where I was when I could have found my location just by going for a
walk. Seven days! Why that was an entire wee.... a wee.... a week.

"Oh, crap." I stated, staring blankly at the castle that held another curse
aimed at my head as realization struck me. So THAT was what my curse had
been trying to do all this time. I hadn't managed to get around the curse by
finding out where I was, I was just being taunted by it. But I hadn't been
struck yet, so there was still time if I hurried. I let himself fall from
the sky, catching myself just above the ground pulling my staff out of
storage and beginning the spell that would take me away from this place
where I would be safe from the impeding spell. I actually made it about
halfway through before I was inevitably hit. "Blast and infamy!" I swore
angrily, and just as abruptly my anger vanished. 'Well so much for that.' I
thought dejectedly as I canceled the spell, making sure this time not to
accidentally activate what was already constructed. I sighed and sat down
putting my staff on the ground next to me. Having failed to avoid the blow,
the next step was damage control. I needed to examine just what this new
curse did and see if I could counter any of it and to what extent.

I closed my eyes, tuned out everything else that didn't matter, and focused
my senses on the spell I had just been hit with. The world around me seemed
to change and I found himself in a bizarre triangular room. There didn't
seem to be a roof, but rather each of the three sides seemed to continue
into infinity upwards and away from me. I doubted I'd get anywhere trying to
follow that, so I looked at the rest of the room instead. At the center of
the room was a shining light that seemed like a spinning top, wandering back
and forth and around in circles on the floor. I examining it and quickly
figured out that this light was the deciding factor for what was about to
happen to me. Depending on which wall it hit, and possibly even where on
that wall, I could either become a girl, a child, or an animal. I could
probably try to keep the light from hitting any wall, but the light seemed
to be accelerating slightly as it wobbled back and forth on the ground.
Eventually it would probably become so chaotic that nothing I did would have
any effect on it and the backlash would be horrendous.

'Well that seems simple enough!' I thought. All I had to do was push it
towards the choice I wanted and there wouldn't be any problems. I just
needed to make up my mind first and pushed the marker and I could move on in
my life. I approached one wall and examined it. Judging from the various
images upon it of toddlers, children, and babies, this wall would make me a
child and while it I suppose it would be nice to be young again, I hadn't
had as much magic when I was younger, and that would be quite a setback to
me, so I moved on. The next wall, had many images of various beasts and
other creatures. It was rather obvious to me what this wall did, and I was
worried about some of the results that might happen from this choice. I
rather enjoyed having opposable thumbs, and too many possibilities would
leave me too far changed for that. Furthermore, there were several choices
in this choice that I did not like. If I were to choose this path, I could
become an insect, a reptile, or any number or creatures that I did not want
to even consider. I backed away and moved my attention to the third and
final wall. This then, must be the choice that would make me female, and
indeed, the middle of this wall was marked with a simple circle on top of a
plus sign, the universal symbol for female. This seemed to be the best
choice, as it would leave me both human and with intact magic power, but at
the same time I had several reservations to living the rest of his life as a
girl. I sighed once more looking down.

This would be a difficult decision and I'd have to live the rest of his life
with what I chose here. It was a somewhat morbid thought and I didn't want
to dwell on it long, but even if I did, I don't think I would have been able
to. For as I looked downward, I saw something bright meandering by the third
wall's base. It was the spinning light which would decide for me if I wasn't
careful. "Oh no you don't, I'm not through deciding yet!" I muttered under
my breath, giving the light a firm tug back towards the center. Perhaps my
tug was a little too firm as the light shot backwards at a surprising speed,
past the center of the room where it was supposed to stop and all the way
into the opposite corner where it wedged itself with a concise clicking
sound.

I was left standing over by the third wall, staring in shock and the
beginnings of dismay as the light dissolved into the corner between child
and creature and the rest of the room began to dissolve with it. The
decision made, the room disappeared leaving me floating in a black void as
the results were made clear. Like a memory called from nowhere, a child
appeared in front of me. He seemed to be playing tag and his laughter as he
ran sounded strangely distant though his image was no more than ten feet
from where I stood. Looking more closely, I recognized the child as my
younger self before the scene faded away into the nothingness it had come
from. A different picture took its place then, like a large tree held upside
down. A glowing ball appeared at the top where all of the branches met in
one spot and began to roll downward, at each junction pausing a moment
before choosing one path. It was soon clear that each fork was a decision of
some sort. I sighed in relief as the ball passed the first fork ignoring the
paths that lead to insects, plants, reptiles, and birds. It seemed I was to
be some sort of mammal and that was a decision I was perfectly fine with.

As more forks were passed and more paths chosen, it became apparent that the
final marker would fall on some sort of fox, and as the marker fell into
place, the final result came forth. The picture shown this time was in a
desert featuring a fox. The ears where somewhat wider than normal, and it
was rather small. I recognized it from my travels as a kit fox that lived in
the desert regions of the world. A sudden memory of my own stirred itself
then, and I remembered something my mother had told me long ago. "I was once
told that whatever I named you would come back and bite you someday because
of the curse that was placed on you before you were born." If what mother
had been told was correct, than this was one of the most important attacks
on me by my own personal curse.

'Well this is one battle I am NOT going to let Murphy win!' I thought
fiercely and positioned myself under where the marker had fallen and pushed
back against it. If I could just push it far enough, I'd be able to get it
into a different type of fox and I would win, but despite the ball's small
size, it seemed as heavy as a mountain and nearly impossible to move. So
gathering the energy I had been saving for years, I shoved it all at that
marker, giving it everything I had, forcing it to move up and away from this
choice I was not willing to accept. I managed to get it halfway out of the
groove when the curse started to fight back, trying to push the ball back
into position. I pushed harder and seemed to be advancing, but progress got
slower and slower as I got closer to the junction.

After what seemed an eternity, I managed to get the marker back to the
previous fork, the last one that it had passed through and the marker's
movement had slowed to a crawl. I had used up most of all my stored magic,
but the hard part was over, all that I needed to do now was let it fall once
more and make sure it didn't take the path to kit fox by pushing it
sideways. So I released the magic holding it up to see which direction it
would try to take and was caught quite off guard when the ball suddenly and
without warning exploded, the backlash knocking me out.

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I woke up on the ground lying on my back with a pounding headache, my staff
next to me on the ground. Everything around me looked strange and there was
this persistent blind spot in my lower vision which wouldn't go away no
matter where I looked or how much I blinked. This was a bit disturbing
because none of my magical burnouts had ever been remotely like this and I
was worried that the backlash of my attempt to go against the spell had done
permanent damage to my brain. That was one powerful curse and I resolved to
myself never to go head to head with it again, but the damage may have
already been done. I figured a self analysis was in order so, groaning from
my headache, I climbed to my feet using a nearby tree branch for support. I
managed to take two steps away from the tree before overbalancing and
falling backwards landing rather painfully on my butt. More painful than it
should have been really, I must have landed on a stick or something.

Reaching my hand back to rub the offending spot, I encountered a... tail?
That couldn't be right, yet... somehow it was. Then the implications of my
battle with the curse finally caught up to me and I figured things out
quickly enough from there. I felt a little stupid for having not noticed
earlier, but the curse I'd fallen under had apparently worked quickly while
I'd been out. It certainly explained a few things such as the strange
balance and the weird vision. If that was the case, then the blind spot was
really... I reached my hands up to touch my face... a muzzle. However, with
my hands now in view, I could tell they were different too. Even if I
ignored all the fur, I had pads on my palm and fingers and my fingertips had
claws on them which I could almost retract.

I suppose that meant my desperate actions was successful then, because only
grey foxes could retract their claws like that, but the fur coloring was off
and seemed too long to be a typical grey fox. I frowned, or tried to anyway,
the expression felt kind of different on this altered face of mine. But that
not withstanding, something seemed off. I reached over to pick up my staff
to use as a support and noticed that it had gotten longer. No, that wasn't
right, I had gotten shorter, and in fact the clothes that I had been wearing
did feel looser as well as ill fitting, especially where my tail was. I
suppose I should have expected that if I'd been thinking, but then again, it
had taken me almost a minute to notice I was a fox. Shaking my head, I
dispelled the random thoughts that were distracting me. Right now what I
really wanted was a good look at myself and since I had no mirror in my room
I'd have to use a pool of water. I remembered seeing one nearby as I had
descended earlier and I made my way over to it, using my staff as a third
leg of sorts to catch my balance when I was in danger of falling over.

Despite all my efforts, I still managed to fall a total of three times
before making it to the pool and nearly falling into it as well. Leaning
heavily on the staff, I looked into the water and discovered a few things.
The first is that I WAS shorter by at least a foot. Judging from the way I
looked in comparison to my staff I was probably around four and a half feet
tall now. The next thing that I noticed was that my earlier suspicion had
been right. Something was definitely odd about the way I looked. My claws
and paws seemed a match well enough with the grey fox, but my face was more
the shape of a kit fox. My fur was long enough to be from the arctic fox of
the north, and my tail was more similar to that of a steppe fox. I also
recognized various features from cape, red, fennec, sand, and tibetan foxes,
but this left me only more baffled than I was before. All these various
mismatched pieces of different foxes shouldn't be together in one shape like
this, and I knew for a fact that whatever I was shouldn't exist. I
remembered with a slight grimace the explosion that had knocked me out. Had
pieces of that marker ended up in all of the different paths at once leaving
me as a mix between them all? Such an idea didn't sound possible, and yet it
was the only explanation that I could think of, possible or otherwise.

Of course that still left me with the general question of what I was. I
looked back into the reflective water and gave a start of surprise. The
coloring of my fur had changed! Before the pattern had looked sort of like
what one would typically see on a red fox, but right now my fur was a
mismatched pattern of white, red, and black that I had only before seen on
cats, although with them it was yellow and not red. I sat there in shock for
a moment at the revelation that occurred to me shortly afterwards.
Considering the facts, it did make sense. After all, my shape was as
mismatched as the color patterning that currently adorned my fur.

"I'm a calico." I said flatly, glancing once more into the water. It wasn't
a perfect match since no such thing existed, but if there were calico foxes,
they would probably look a lot like what I was now. So that left me as a
calico fox, something that shouldn't even exist or... no wait, that wasn't
quite right since I was also a child. So that would actually make me a
calico... kit. Somewhere in the very back of my mind it occurred to me that
Murphy had really nailed me this time, but the rest of me was too busy
fuming to care.
I let myself calm down after a minute or two since there really wasn't
anything I could do about it by now. I had had my chance and completely
blown it so I really couldn't blame it on anything but myself and the curse
for arranging the worst of circumstances. Shaking my head, I set off to the
distant castle on a hill, my original goal from the previous week. Oh well,
at least there was one upside to all of this. I wouldn't have to fear the
curse anymore for it could do no more to me than it already had and nothing
was really damaged except my pride... my very, very damaged pride. Aside
from that however, I was able to balance a bit more steadily on my feet (or
would that be paws?) by now and didn't need to support myself with my staff
anymore, so I'd make it to the castle by the end of the day. After that...
well tomorrow would be tomorrow and I'd just have to take things as they
come. I chuckled to myself as a last thought occurred to me. Bora was going
to absolutely freak out that he had missed this when he finally got back.
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