<div dir="ltr">It was pointed out to me that for some reason I never mentioned Trey's absence from the group. So I've amended part of the story to include him. For convenience, here is the full story part again.<div> </div><div>---- <div> </div><div>June 4 The two of them walked westward from the mountains. Aldwin peered upwards, shading his eyes with his wings to follow the sun, while Trey followed after, holding Yuejian with one hand and cradling Yueliang with the other. Aldwin wanted to hear about Trey's story first, so Trey quickly explained to him about Yuejian and Yueliang, why they attacked, and that they currently wanted to make amends. "But what happened to Kasaima?" Trey asked. "To think only a month ago, I was just a normal guard who hadn't been close to magic, curses, creatures, or talking swords," Aldwin shook his head. The corners of his mouth and eyes tightened, his best attempt at a smile through his stiff beak. "I wasn't there when the battle ended, but I can tell you what I heard from Rita..."</div><div> ---- June 3 Nestor and Kate's first priority was checking the remaining members of the camp. Remarkably, only the oni received serious injuries. Nestor only knew a smattering of battlefield healing, but it was enough to determine that Kasaima still lived, just barely. While Nestor directed a few patrolmen to apply some salves, Kate addressed the four other members. "Is everyone else alright?" "Trey, Aldwin not here," the dragon said. Kate did not recognize him. With his manner of speech and tucked-in wings, he might have been a juvenile dragon, if not for the mindful concern he showed Kasaima. Was this a Keeper? A friend of the oni's? Or a visitor from the Dragon Mountains? "I sent Aldwin to the Keep for help," the woman said. "And to keep him safe." Kate didn't recognize her either, but noted how awkwardly her clothes hugged around her chest and hips, telltale signs that she'd been recently changed. "I saw Trey disappear into that mage's robes," the bat morph said. "He's probably still got him, if Trey managed to avoid detection." She remembered seeing the bat morph at an inn before, but couldn't quite place him. She did recognize the fourth member, though, as they were only so many Keeper gryphons she'd known from patrol. "That's one of three possibilities," Rorlyn mused. "If Trey got caught but got lucky, he'll be out in the woods somewhere in hiding." None of them needed to say what the third possibility was. Nestor fluttered up to Kate. "We did what we could for the oni. But he'll need more proper medical attention at the Keep." Kate nodded. "We should head out. We're less than an hour behind an exhausted mage. You," she pointed to the dragon. "Talo," he replied. "Can you carry him on your back? I'll take him back to the Keep, and I suggest anyone without magic to come with. Nestor, take some men and follow the trail. Find him or Trey." "If you please, ma'am," the woman said, "I'm an experienced tracker. I know what Trey looks like. I'd like to join them." Kate looked at her dubiously, then shrugged. "Very well, it's your decision. But do see me at the Jolly Collie when you get back." The woman nodded, a bit puzzled but grateful. Nyein decided to follow Talo, Kasaima, and Kate's half of the patrol back to the Keep, while Rita, Rorlyn, and Nestor's half followed the tracks of the fleeing mage. There was no sign of lingering magic in the air; only Rita's skill at spotting overturned leaves and freshly snapped sticks helped them along. But even those signs disappeared. Nor was there no sign of Trey, neither as mouse nor morph. Rorlyn and Nestor took flight to scan the area for magic. They were somewhere north of the Keep, not quite past Tarrelton, within a few miles from the eastern mountains. Forests stretched away in all directions, with no sign of magic being cast. "We should return to the Keep," Rorlyn said as they landed. "We must tell the guards that an enemy mage is hiding in the woods." "One thing puzzles me," Nestor said. "You told us, Rita, that this mage took you all by surprise, and was far stronger than any of you, save Kasaima. Yet despite his powerful sword, he only attacked Kasaima, and even then left only non-fatal injuries. Why?" Rita frowned. "I remember they spoke to each other, talking about clans and an Emperor. I think the mage came from the same land as Kasaima. His business must have been with Kasaima alone." "In any case," Rorlyn said, "we should still put the guards on alert. Non-fatal or not, he still attacked Keepers. And who knows who else he may be travelling with." "Fly safely, then," Nestor said. "But don't start a panic over this. The rest of us will do a sweep from here to the mountains, and then to the river." He watched Rorlyn fly off, before leading the troops off, with that natural leadership given to mages who lead non-mages. ---- The sun was hovering over the western peaks by the time the patrol reached the river. Fortunately, the Hunt of Artela-kema was taking place farther up north along the Giant's Dike, and it was unlikely the mage was going to interrupt. The hoofprints of the royal Lothanasi knights were well-entrenched along the main road. They even met another scouting patrol, who promised to keep watch for the mage. The familiar babbling river helped calm the nerves of the patrol. After half a day's search, it looked like no further ambush was imminent. The air was faintly hazy as the afternoon sun sparkled off the ice-cold river. "What kind of bird is that?" one of the guards asked, pointing behind them where a large white bird was skimming above the water. "It looks like a seabird of some kind," Rita squinted, trying to see across the glistening water. "How many seabird morphs are at the Keep?" "I know a couple ducks, but not any that big," Nestor said. "It looks like an albatross." "I know those feathers," Rita murmured, and cupped her hands together. ---- After eating his fill of fish, the albatross floated a bit on the river, trying to get his bearings. The cold water felt good against his feathers, but the rest of the world felt strange to him. Being so low to the ground made him wary of predators, especially with the shoreline surrounding him. He yearned for the open water and a clear flat horizon. He stretched his wings, and found the wind quite agreeable beneath them. Soon he was hovering over the forest, a frozen sea of dark green that frightened him in its stillness. He found himself drawn to the mountains and the craggy cliffs, but they weren't as vertical as he liked. Something urged on him towards the next peak, searching for a safer place to rest. But as he flew upwards, he found he could cover a great deal of distance without flapping. If he could just rest here, he could let the winds carry him to an ocean he knew would welcome him. But then another uneasiness took him. Back in the forest was something he was supposed to find. He couldn't imagine what it was -- food? a mate? a sparkling trinket? -- but he couldn't leave without it. He turned his wings around, and found that he was floating above the twisting sea of rocks and snow. A few veins of green stood out in the rock, tiny pockets of trees, but no verdane path to lead him back. The albatross was reluctant to follow this nagging feeling. Would it not be easier to just let the past go, to follow the wind that plied along his feathers and urged him southward? Southward... the sun! He'd been flying into the sun. As long as he kept the sun on his back, he could find the valley again. The thoughts still confused him and gave him a faint dread of wrongness, but he had a direction now. The winds now blew against him, and he made much slower progress, but he kept gliding, hoping he could cure the itch in his heart. Hours of flying later, a different itch arose in his stomach. He drifted down towards the narrow mountain valleys, hoping for a river nestled inside with fish to eat. He soon spotted a small river, but it was too narrow and rocky to carry any fish in it. Undaunted, he followed it downstream. Once again, he felt nervous about flying too close to the pine trees. He kept to the middle of the river, keeping his eyes on the flickering river. There was a memory tickling at him beneath the surface. If only he could remember what it was he had to do, or even where he was or who he was. "ALDWIN!" The albatross's head jerked up. Was that the wind? No, the wind was urging him back, but this sound was urging him towards the shore, where a group of predators stood waiting for them. There was something oddly familiar about one of them, though. Her voice... "ALDWIN!" A name. He knew that name. It was his name. A shaft of light broke through his thoughts. Suddenly realizing only thin air kept him afloat, Aldwin nearly toppled into the water. He felt himself drifting back towards his bird self, enough to know which way to flap to stabilize himself. His mind almost kept falling back into his bird firm, but Aldwin's mind seized the light. Like a rope, he clung to it. He could feel it pulling him upwards, back to the camp, to Rita's last words, to his more distant memories of humanity. He steered himself over to the woman he remembered was Rita, and landed a few feet from the patrol. He didn't know how he was going to shift, but with only a tiny mental jerk, the rope of light in his mind lifted him upwards, and his body warped and pushed outwards. His legs stretched and his chest expanded. It was like surfacing from a lake and finding a thick costume surrounding his body. There was only so far he could go before the suit grew tight on him, a film covering the water that he wasn't strong enough to break. Yet the moment he stopped pushing, the weight stopped squeezing. Aldwin got off his wobbly knees and stood on his anthro bird feet. "Aldwin? Is that you? Are you okay?" Rita was saying to him. Aldwin started to rub the water from his ears, only to realize he didn't have ears. All of his hearing was slightly muffled due to their lack. "Waawwk!" Aldwin clapped his rock-solid lips together and coughed. How was he to speak with this avian mouth? He rubbed his throat and tried to speak from his throat and with his tongue. "Ahhh'k... Ah okay... Got a dit lot on the kay to the Keek." It took all of his power to try to force b's and p's from his throat, a task made harder by his now-muffled hearing. Everyone was staring at him, too, and that made his speech impediment even more embarrassing. "You're fully changed now," Rita said, a bit cautiously. "How does it feel being a albatross?" Aldwin whispered some test consonants, trying to get a 'w' out. Getting his speech correct was his first priority. "W-weird," he said, resorting to squeezing his throat to get it to sound right. Hopefully he'd be able to speak soon without manual effort. "Dut wonderthul. I nethyer thought thly-yig would theel... thuh, fuh, fuh... feel so gyood." He suddenly blinked, vocal impediment briefly forgotten. "The thattle! What haddened to Kadaiffa? To the naykth? The naylg? The nmaytch... The wissard?" "We're still looking for the mage, but Kasaima's safe. Everyone is safe. I'm glad to see you're safe too." "Aldwin, lad," the owl morph finally spoke, "what happened to your wings?" "Winkgss?" Aldwin squawked and held out his wings. They were still as long as a human's... even longer, actually. Long white and gray primary feathers were stacked along his upper arm to his elbow, where they got shorter and shorter, up to his hands, where they stretched back out into five long gray-tipped fingers. "Can you bend them again?" Rita asked gently. "SPpll--- shpuh, splshure... I neen, yes," Aldwin said, grabbing his throat with one hand while he waved his fingers on the other hand. His fingers were so long, they went several inches past his wrist when he laid them flat against his palm. "Incredible," Nestor said. There was a certain hollowness to his voice, Aldwin realized. He was speaking directly from his throat, but using his tongue to refit the sounds into something more natural. How much practice would an avian like him need to form such words? "Aldwin, are you there?" Rita was saying to him. "Ah, s-s-sorwry," Aldwin twittered. "What is it?" "I was saying, how did you get fingers on your wings?" the owl asked. Aldwin looked down. "Wwhat do you mean? My fingersth?" "Yes, lad, fingers. On your wings." Aldwin rubbed his head. Even his hair was gone. He peered back into the water to get a good look at himself. The water was too dark and murky, but he could just make out the jet black eyes on his all-white face. "I don'tk... don't know. It wath... was like a light in n-n-my min-nd. Ifk I hadn't heard you sthay my name, Rita, I don't think... I would have found my way out. Thank you..." "No thanks needed," Rita said. "I think Nestor here is asking a different question, though. Why does your midform have fingers?" "Why?" Words were already starting to come easier to Aldwin, which greatly relieved him. He looked over to the boar morph who stood them, and compared his hoofed hands to his wings. "I mean, I guess the midform puts a human shape over the Curse. The majhes would know..." "Aldwin, lad, I am a mage. Look at my wings." Nestor held out his wing, showing primary feathers that lay neatly in a row from shoulder to wing-tip. Not fingers, but a single clawed wing-tip. "Feel the feathers." Aldwin reached over and touched them. There was indeed a great difference between Nestor's feathers and Aldwin's fingers. They were both broad, and quite similar to the ones on Aldwin's upper arm. But his feather-shaped fingers, though flattened, were still thick and doughy. His finger bones felt light and hollow, but strong and full of muscle, whereas Nestor's feathers felt like stiff fluff-covered hairs. Furthermore, while Aldwin's arms narrowed into a wrist from his fingers jutted, Nestor's were smooth and streamlined. There were other obvious differences, with Nestor being an owl and Aldwin a seagull -- an albatross, was it? "I, um..." Aldwin stammered, for once not from his speech impediment. "I never actually looked at a bird this close, before." "Then you should realize this. There's not a single bird morph at the Keep with those... fingers of yours. Feather fingers. How did you do that?" "I, I don't know," Aldwin grabbed at his wrists, feeling along his fingers, starting to get frightened. "Did I do something wrong? Is this bad?" "No, lad, it means every bird morph you meet from now on is going to be VERY jealous of you." "But... what did I do? Did I mess with the Curse somehow?" "You must have..." Nestor studied. "You say this is your first time being in midform? You just changed?" "At the battle," Rita broke in, "he was about half-changed. His arms had only just started changing. He was changing all of yesterday too." "Then he must have changed all at once in a matter of minutes. That would explain why he nearly got lost in his animal form. The shock would have dragged him under. But that still doesn't explain his hands." "What happened, Aldwin, after I told you to run? What do you remember?" Rita asked. Aldwin shivered. The terror was still fresh in his mind, ready to pull him down. His feather-hands tightened at the memory. "I remember the vines. They were everywhere. I had to get away, but the forest was so dark, and I could barely walk. So I grabbed a tree and started climbing. I remember seeing the battle get stronger, someone else swooped in..." "You climbed a tree?" Nestor said. "Yes, that's when it started. I got dizzy, and almost felt like falling. But then the vines reached up for me... I must've almost become a bird right then. But I kept climbing. I wasn't even thinking, I just needed to get higher..." "You needed to get higher, and your first thought, as a bird, was to climb a tree?" "Well, I don't know what happened, my wings... I mean, my hands... I didn't want to fall, so I kept grabbing the branches. I didn't want to fall. I wasn't even thinking..." "That's okay, lad, I think I see it now. These sorts of things depend on you not thinking about them." He clicked his beak as he gathered his thoughts. "Do you know Misha Brightleaf? You might not know this, but he has a special form that lets him have a large fox body, with his upper morph torso attached to it. Oh, you've seen it? Well, that's an example of the animal curse's instability. "You see, the Curse is not, strictly speaking, one curse, but three similar curses. The Keep's counter-curse modifies each one to give the power to shift between a midform and a full form. But unlike the child or gender curses, an animal midform does not exist in reality. It is a completely mental construction of what an animal would look like in humanoid form. It's not a conscious process, mind you. Most people get overwhelmed by the change, and surrender themselves to the animal. But a strong mind, or a stubborn mind, can distort certain aspects of the animal curse, and end up with a different form from the norm. "It's the reason why some plantigrade animal morphs end up with bipedal feet, or why nocturnal morphs end up being diurnal as well. What, you don't know what those mean? Never mind. It's the same with those wings. You were becoming a bird, yet you were so focused on climbing, you pushed your own midform towards a shape that could keep climbing, despite how much the curse was nudging your hands towards flapping. And you held onto that, even after you pushed yourself towards becoming a full bird. I suppose if you were to mentally push yourself, you could destablize your midform and take on a new midform, just like Misha has. You could end up with fully avian wings in midform..." "No," Aldwin shuddered. "I never want to go through that again." "Of course," Nestor said. "This is mostly just conjecture, based on observations of the curse. But it looks like that's where your midform has settled, its most relaxed state when not shifted into an albatross." Aldwin tried putting his arms around his back. His shoulders had lost a bit of flexibility, as it pained him to bring his hands against his back and feel his pointed tail feathers. Which suddenly brought another startling thought to his mind. "Crap!" He covered his groin with his hands. "Do you have anything I can wear?" "Aldwin, you're covered in feathers. No one will notice," Rita said. "Besides, your genitals are internal now. No one can tell without touching you down there." Rita and Aldwin stared at Nestor as the other guards snickered and looked away. "What? When you're an animal morph, you take these things for granted. Anyways, none of us has anything that will fit you. If you really want it, we can find you something to wear at the Keep. We'd better head back to see how Kasaima is doing. Hopefully he's recovered enough to tell us who that mage was." </div></div></div>