[Mkguild] "Expansion of Power" Revision 1

[Nathan Pfaunmiller]

This is the first revision of the story I posted to the list earlier.  I
took care of a good number of typos, and tried my best to get rid of a large
number of repetitive uses of "hyacinth" early on.  I'm sure there are still
a few problems like that, as well as perhaps just in the structure of my
sentences, so if anyone has any specific suggestions for changes, please
tell me.


Also, if you have read the first version, there is nothing really changed as
far as storyline is concerned, so you probably will be fine without
rereading it just for the sake of the edit.


-LurkingWolf


___________


Expansion of Power

By LurkingWolf

Jessica's hyacinth was now in full bloom in the Keep's gardens, and she
squawked with delight as she performed several experiments to confirm its
power.  Everything she tried worked flawlessly.  It allowed her to sustain
several incantations far longer than she could by her own power, and yet
continued to replenish its power as needed.  She found that she could use it
to hold almost any one of her spells steady for as long as she needed it to,
since her power was supplied by the magic reservoir she had created.

She had tested a good number of her most powerful spells, but each could
still be fueled by the hyacinth.  She would not be able to extend the effect
of those spells far from the flower’s power source, but it would at least
extend throughout the keep.

However, she had yet to try the one spell for which she had originally
planted it.  She had considered adding a Curse effect on herself, but she
was concerned that her power would be hampered by an unfamiliar body.  The
reservoir had proven itself powerful, and she was also worried that it would
be a while before it wore off.  Also, if the power continued to replenish
itself ad infinitum, she might have to relearn her body before being able to
disconnect the spell from that power.  She tried to imagine herself trying
to reverse the spell as a hatchling, or even more awkward, as a male hawk,
but she couldn’t see it turning out well regardless.

Jessica finally decided that the risk of trying the spell on herself was too
great, and so she set off through the halls of the inner keep in search of a
test subject.

She was eventually surprised by Kyia's choice of subjects, as she somehow
appeared inside Misha's office in the Long House.  Jessica knew that the
entire Long House was kept under extreme security, so it was amazing to her
that the Keep's spirit would circumvent those measures.

The fox himself sat at a large desk towards one side of the room, examining
an array of maps and documents that were spread out evenly across the top,
held down by items ranging from inkwells to daggers.  He apparently heard
Jessica's talons on the stone of the floor, because his ears turned in her
direction, followed closely by his eyes.

"Jessica!" he cried, somewhere between shock and delight.  "How did you get
in here, no one told me to expect you?"

Jessica looked meaningfully back down the passage she had entered, and Misha
followed her gaze.  "I figure that Kyia wanted me to come here.  You see, I
was looking for someone to help me test something I have been working on,
and Kyia brought me here for some reason."

Misha looked confused.  "Does it involve automatons?" he asked, brow
furrowed.

"No, nothing like that," Jessica replied.  She caught Misha's eyes slipping
past her and glanced back to see that the passage behind her had vanished.
 She turned back to look at the fox, who just shrugged towards her.

"Well, there's no pressing Long business right now," he said.

Jessica found that hard to believe, since she could pretty well scan the
notes on the desk with her hawk's eyes.  Still, Misha seemed honest, so she
could only assume that all of the papers on his desk were just part of the
regular monotony of a day’s work.

"How can I help?" the fox's voice brought her out of her reverie.  She
cracked her beak in a smile and motioned Misha away from the desk with her
wing.

"Just stand over there against the wall," she responded.  “I would prefer to
have a little wing room to work with,” she continued when the Long Scout
opened his mouth to ask a question.  Misha seemed uncomfortable about not
knowing what she was doing, but stood up against the wall as instructed.

"All right, now stand still..."  Jessica usually would not have proceeded
without more fully explaining what she was going to do, but she didn't think
it was very likely that Misha would let her go on if he knew, and Kyia had
led her here after all...

Jessica carefully constructed her spell, making sure each part of the weave
was exactly as needed.  She then fitted it into the complex web created by
the Curse, and she heard Misha give a sharp gasp.

She couldn't stop to check on the results yet as her construct immediately
began to tax her strength.  Quickly she tapped into the reservoir that the
hyacinth in the gardens provided, and tied the spell to that source of
power.  Tentatively she let it go, ready to control it again if necessary,
but the power from the magical flower was well more than enough to hold the
spell stable.

When Jessica finally felt comfortable with the stability of the spell, she
let her vision shift back to the material world and gasped at what she saw
before her.

It was still a fox of the same coloration and similar height to the head of
the Longs, but besides this, the clothing the only identifying mark left
unaltered.  Jessica’s spell had succeeded!

A vixen now stood, examining her radically changed body with both eyes and
hands.  Her chest had expanded, but the jerkin that had covered his chest
while he was male now did a remarkable job of covering her breasts without
straining.  The jerkin was loose in other places, though, giving testament
to the fact that much of his muscle had been lost in the transition.

It was lower down that the changes were most noticeable, though.  Wider hips
made the leggings he had been wearing uncomfortably tight, a fact that she
tried nervously to alleviate.  Her legs also seemed longer than when she had
been a he, and the leggings, once cut just above his paws, now showed most
of the area below the knees.

The final change to the vixen's body was something Jessica had not expected..
 Misha's head had been bald apart from his natural pelt before the change,
but it was now adorned by a veritable cascade of raven black hair.  The
vixen had flicked locks of this hair out of her face several times during
her panicked inspection, but it wasn't until the extent of the other changes
was realized that she noticed that the hair had not been there before.  Once
she realized just how much she had changed, she looked in surprise, and
perhaps a little fear, at the hawk.

"What have you done to me?" she asked, cracking voice obviously not used to
its higher register.

Jessica, unable to stop herself, simply burst out into squawks of laughter.
 The renowned "mad axeman" of Metamor was now a beautiful vixen, unable to
control her voice, let alone wield Whisper.  In truth, she was quite a
stunning specimen, but it was the fox’s reputation that made it so
hilarious.

"Stop laughing!  Change me back!" the vixen demanded, but Jessica shook her
head, still laughing quietly in the back of her throat.

"The point of this test is to see how long I can sustain this," Jessica
explained.  "I can't just remove it now, and besides, being female won't
affect your duties as a scoutmaster, will it?"

"You don't work with the people I do.  Can you imagine what George would do
if he saw me like this?"  The tone of the last question was nearly enough to
set Jessica off laughing again, but a moment's thought on the question left
Jessica just enough time for one comment before she completely lost her
composure.

"I imagine he might try to—” Jessica fell into fits of laughter just before
she was able to say what both of them were thinking.  Jessica's reaction was
uproarious laughter; Misha's was more akin to mortification.  He obviously
had no intentions of getting used to his current body in the company of the
jackal…

It ended up taking Jessica the better part of the next hour to convince
Misha that she would be all right staying as she was for at least a few more
hours.  The vixen finally agreed after Jessica had found her a more
appropriate suit of clothes.  Finally, however, she managed to pry herself
loose from Misha’s constant outpour of question so she could to seek out
someone else on whom she could test the hyacinth’s power.

As she left the Long House, Jessica passed by a familiar otter, Caroline.
 They didn't stop to talk for long, as Jessica was clearly in some hurry,
but the hawk did gather that Caroline was bringing food to Misha for his
lunch.  Smiling her best as the two parted, Jessica quietly linked a scrying
spell to the otter so that she could watch what happened when she saw what
had happened to her fiancé.

She was laughing too hard to walk for the next fifteen minutes.

When she finally did recover, Jessica broke her scrying link to the couple
and hopped down the corridors of the Keep on her talons, searching for
someone else on whom she could test this newfound power.

What she ended up happening onto was quite a bit different than she had
anticipated.  She found herself in a small courtyard located somewhere in
the inner keep, watching as a small group of children played at tag while an
older woman stood by and watched.  The woman's mouth twitched every now and
then in a smile, but it was laced heavily with pain, no doubt part of her
old age.  A quick inspection with Jessica's magic sight revealed that the
Keeper was a gendermorph; her age, however, had not been altered by the
Curse, and it didn't take magic sight to know that she was suffering from
the effects.



Jessica quickly came up with an idea, an idea that would hopefully allow her
to do some good while at the same time continuing to test out her new
abilities.  Switching to her magic sight, Jessica built the intricate weave
that she would need to produce the desired effect, then carefully slipped it
into the weave of the Curse before hooking into the power supply that the
hyacinth now provided her.


The effect was instantaneous and noticeable enough that even the playing
children stopped to watch as the elderly woman suddenly shrank down in her
clothes with a muffled exclamation, until she finally stopped.  She now
appeared about ten years old, where before she had seemed about 50.  The
children gasped and began to speak excitedly among themselves, but the woman
just stood there, trying to wrap her head around what had just happened.



Jessica saw a few of the non-Cursed children turn to each other, asking
fearfully if something was going wrong with Kyia, while the age-regressed
Keepers did their best to keep level heads and point out that none of the
rest of them had been effected.



Meanwhile, the surprised girl had recovered somewhat from the original
shock, and was quickly fashioning a makeshift robe out of what had once been
her shirt.  She tied it around her middle with her old cloth belt, although
she now had to wrap it double around her waist to keep it from dragging on
the floor.  This makeshift clothing actually did its job quite well, as the
shirt was now several inches below the girl’s knees.



One of the age-regressed Keepers from the group of playing children walked
over to her.  He seemed to be a little uncomfortable with how she had
suddenly changed, but he had also made up his mind not to let it show.  After
all, this was Metamor, so odd things happened every day.  Everyone just had
to fit them into their everyday lives.



“Hi,” the child said to the newly-regressed Keeper.  “My name’s Ryan, what’s
yours?”



The girl blinked, surprised at his words.  He sounded more like he was
greeting a new arrival, even though she had been watching them for a good
while before being regressed.  It took her a few minutes to realize that she
hadn’t responded to his question, and she immediately tried to remedy the
situation.  “I… I’m Alice,” she stammered.



“Hello, Alice,” Ryan said.  “Would you like to join our game?”



The girl was still obviously recovering from her change; the confusion on
her face gave evidence to that fact, but it quickly gave way to a dimpled
smile as she realized what she had been asked.  It had to have been such a
long time since she had been asked any similar question…



“Would I?!” she exclaimed.  Rather than give an answer straight out,
however, she just jumped up and hugged him tightly around his neck.  He
coughed a little bit in surprise when she suddenly restricted his breathing,
but he handled it remarkably well otherwise.  The girl didn’t seem to notice
that she had done anything strange and simply stood there once she had
released him, bouncing on her bare toes in excitement as she waited for Ryan
to explain the game to her.



Jessica observed in silence for quite some time, feeling a sort of warmth
that she had never before felt.  She had given a gift to the woman, one that
no other person on earth could have given without claiming some price from
her.  It was something truly special, yet something Jessica felt should be
truly secret, and so she moved away, traversing the twisting halls of
Metamor once more, leaving the sounds of playing children behind.



She still had one Curse effect that she needed to test using the hyacinth’s
power, and so she once again allowed Kyia to guide her steps for her as she
thought of nothing in particular.  It took a while for the Keep to guide her
to a final destination, but presently she could hear sounds in the distance..
She could hear sounds of laughter, barking, and… metal on stone?



Jessica’s question was answered before it could be vocalized as she stepped
around a corner to see a boy, around ten years of age, running down the
halls in front of her.  He was followed closely by a metal fox, which yipped
playfully as he gave chase in some impromptu game of tag.  Jessica
recognized Madog immediately, but recognized Father Hough more by reputation
than by personal acquaintance.  He had doffed his priestly robes in favor of
more appropriate play clothes, but was still having trouble keeping up with
the automaton.  Madog was doing his best to even the playing field by
running stop-and-go, but Hough still had trouble catching the fox once he
had been tagged.



Jessica stood there for a moment, unnoticed by either boy or fox, thinking.
The idea wasn’t long in the coming, but she remembered her first test on
Maud.  She had been able to hold a change into a specific form, but only
because she knew the nuances in the spell, and it had still been difficult…
Jessica had no examples right now to work from, so she stood for a while,
thinking through the little modifications she would have to make to produce
the specific, desired effect.  She thought through all the people she knew
that were changed in that way, and slowly came up with a spell that she was
reasonably certain would have the desired effect.



Both priest and automaton had noticed her by now, but neither paid much
mind.  They were too busy trying to run each other down to care who watched,
although Jessica couldn’t imagine that they would mind if someone joined
them.  At that moment, however, she had other things in mind.



Jessica formed the threads of the lattice carefully in her wingclaws, now
looking more the professional weaver than the uncertain apprentice as she
had when she first attempted such a casting.  She set up the basics of the
spell, then slowly added to them the little nuances she had decided would be
essential for the desired effect.  The synthesis of spells made her head
swim a little as she tried to sustain the weave, but, grinding her beak
together in determination, she kept adding to the weave until it was
finished.  She would be able to tie it to the power of the hyacinth
momentarily…



Finally it was ready, and she laced it into the weaves that already
surrounded the boy priest.  With her own magical reserves weakened so, it
seemed to have just a little bit of trouble getting settled into the Curse.
Finally, however, it latched onto the primary spell, and Jessica hurried to
link it into the hyacinth’s power before almost swooning from stress.



She still managed to shift her sight back to the real world in time to see
the effects of her casting.  Hough was now leaning down with his hands on
his knees, trying to catch his breath as Madog waited, tail wagging happily
as he waited for the age-regressed priest to catch his breath.



As they both waited, however, Hough suddenly gave a short cry and held his
hand out in front of him, watching as fur swiftly covered it, creating a
black glove.  Claws came out from his fingertips, while the same fur that
had grown on his hands began to cover everything under his play clothes.  He
gasped and turned around as a long, vulpine tail came out under his shirt, a
brownish orange with a black-ringed white tip.  The fur took his face, and
it pushed out into a fox’s muzzle, while his ears trekked up his head and
came to points, colored black against the deep red fur that surrounded them..



Madog had run over as soon as he had seen that something was happening to
Hough, and he whined in concern as the boy changed into a fox.



“You all right?” he asked between whines of concern.



The boy priest didn’t answer the fox immediately.  Instead, he watched the
changes finish with eyes wide and mouth agape.  As his feet became paws, he
looked around in shock, finally settling his eyes on the only other person
in the room.



“Did you do this?” he asked Jessica.



Jessica nodded.  “I thought you might like to be able to keep up with your
friend a little better,” she responded, motioning to Madog.  The automaton
still seemed concerned, but much less so now that he knew that it had been a
friend that had caused Hough to change.



Hough could have reacted in any one of a number of ways.  He remembered how
he had once feared the Curse in all its forms, only coming to terms with how
it had affected him after the evil Loriod had been destroyed from Eli’s
green earth.  He still wasn’t sure about the Curse, regardless of the number
of effected people he spoke to on a daily basis in his Fold.  As he looked
himself over, however, he couldn’t help but feel an immense gratitude, but
several questions still hung heavily in his mind.



“Can you change me back?” he asked in a whisper.



“Whenever you want me to,” Jessica responded.  Hough nodded, but still had
one more question that he was almost afraid to ask.



“Do you think…?  Is it possible…?”  He sighed, settling himself before
finally finishing his question.  “Could you make it so that I am entirely a
fox, so that I can run on all fours like Madog?”



Jessica couldn’t hear the priest at all in the question.  Replacing him was
just a boy, a boy who wanted very much to have one chance to run wild with
the metal fox that sat loyally by his side.  Jessica was sure she could not
have survived having to say no to such an earnest request, but she was
certain that his request was quite possible given the nature of the Curse
and the power of the hyacinth.



“Have you ever used the Curse to change your age?” she asked.  Hough looked
sheepishly at the floor and nodded once.  Apparently he was not too proud of
experimenting with the Curse, even though he had done nothing wrong.  “Then
you should be able to change into a full fox just the same way.”



She wasn’t entirely certain how her spell would behave when modified in this
manner, but, as she remembered, Lindsey had been in the form of a full
kangaroo for a moment while under the Marquis’ spell, so Jessica had a good
bit of hope that it would work for her own incantation.



Hough nodded and looked at Madog, placing one hand on the magically animated
metal fox as he prepared himself to try to realize his desire.  He licked
his muzzle with a much longer tongue, trying to work away his nerves before
slowly trying to settle his mind on the desired change.



Jessica didn’t watch how it happened in the physical realm, as she had moved
her eyes to observe how the threads of magic allowed the change to take
place.  When it had just been the Curse acting, the weave showed no
intelligible signs of how it altered.  As the threads of her lattice slowly
reformed around the shifting form of the boy-priest, however, she could tell
them apart from the rest of the Curse, and cawed in delight as she watched
them smoothly slide into another form.  Jessica’s heart raced at the sight.
She could think of so many things for which she could use this.  If she
could see how someone shifted between all of the Curse-granted forms,
perhaps she would be able to unlock doors to new forms, and even turn the
Curse to the Keep’s favor.



Or even, perhaps, someday turn the Curse entirely back on itself.



Hough, however, had much more present thoughts in mind.  As he settled his
mind on shifting between his morphic and feral forms, he felt his body begin
to rearrange.  For a moment, he was frightened nearly out of his mind, but
the changes continued smoothly, and he didn’t even feel any pain.  He
relaxed at this realization, and simply let the Curse alter around him.



Somewhere during the change, his hand slipped off of Madog’s back and landed
on the floor, but he hardly noticed it, as the soft pads on his new paws
cushioned his landing.  When he was done, he realized that he had closed his
eyes during the change.  As he opened them, he found himself looking from a
new perspective, up into the automatons eyes.  He felt a bubbling joy well
up in his heart at this sight, and he gave a happy bark and jumped up to
lick Madog’s nose.



Madog gave a startled step backwards, but then happily licked the fox kit
back, and the two were soon back at their games, leaving the priest’s play
clothes in a heap behind them.  Hough was now well fast enough to keep up
with the automaton, and Madog soon found himself trying harder than he ever
had before to keep up with his friend.  Both of them loved the freedom of
it, and Jessica watched, her own laughter joining theirs, for many hours.



Something finally took her attention from the pair as a pair of female
voices came down the hall behind her.  Jessica glanced backwards and cracked
a smile at what she saw.



Caroline was coming up the hall, walking arm in arm with a slightly
reluctant looking vixen.  Misha was the first to catch sight of the hawk,
and she shyly turned her head to try to avoid eye contact.  Jessica could
see that her ears had gone read inside, and that almost made her crack up
entirely before the pair of women reached Jessica’s position.



“Hello, Jessica,” Caroline’s voice said in a friendly tone.  Jessica smiled
her best, noting how much better Misha looked in clothes more fit for her
body.  “I was trying to find you so that I could thank you,” the otter
continued.



“Thank me?” Jessica asked with some surprise.  “I thought you would be after
me to bludgeon me with a blunt instrument for doing this to your man.”



Caroline laughed.  “Really?  Misha told me you can turn her back, and
besides, do you know how long it has been since I have been able to talk him
into taking a trip to a tailor?”



The two women shared a laugh, while the vixen gave a very quiet chuckle,
although her attention was drawn to the pair of foxes, one real, one
automated, that raced through the halls after each other.



“Is that—” she began.



“Father Hough,” Jessica answered.  “I’d say he liked it pretty well,
wouldn’t you?”



Now all three women laughed as the two foxes played their game.  Jessica’s
laughter was interrupted, however, when she heard someone call her name.



“Hello?” she answered.  Caroline and Misha didn’t react though, either to
the call or Jessica’s answer.  They also seemed to be fading, which made
Jessica even more nervous.  Was someone using some sort of magical power to
draw her to them?  After the long trip to Marzac, an even more horrifying
question came to her.  Two of her friends had been taken by a power from
Marzac; was it now coming for her?



And if she was taken, what could Marzac do with this power she had?



The voice called her again, and now all was blackness.  The women she had
been talking to were now gone, as were Madog and Hough, and she found
herself scared and alone.



“Who are you?!” she demanded.



Suddenly, light returned to her eyes, but this time it was different.



“Jessica, wake up!”  Her hawk’s voice finally pulled her from her slumber,
and her eyes fell on him first.  “Jessica, are you okay?  You were sleeping
peacefully, but when I tried to wake you, you started tossing like you were
having a nightmare!”



Jessica gave a dry caw before she could bring her tongue to pronounce
anything intelligible.  “I’ll be all right,” she said, trying to still her
beating heart.  “It’s just… that place.  It may be gone, but it still
follows those of us who went there…”



Weyden hushed her fearful stuttering and draped his wings around her.  “There,
there,” he said.  “I’m sorry for scaring you.  There, you’re safe, my love,
I will protect you.”



In truth, Jessica could do far more to save Weyden than he could do to save
her, but her thoughts didn’t even travel in that direction.  Her hawk was
here, watching her.  There was no doubt in her mind that he could face the
entire host of Nasoj by himself if that was what it took to keep her from
danger, and she rested soundly in that confidence.



Now calm in her lover’s arms, Jessica thought back through the dream.  It
was surprisingly vivid to her, unlike so many other dreams that stayed out
of mind as soon as she had awoken from them.  She could still see the
intricate weaves that she had places around Hough at the end of her dream,
down to the last thread of magic.  Flexing her talons, she imagined
performing such a casting on her hawk, but she couldn’t for a moment think
of anything that could possibly be an improvement.  He was hers, and he was
perfect for her in every way.


!DSPAM:4c4b6835122021804284693!
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