Night had fallen by the time Jason and the girls left the Lodge, and despite the light snack they’d had before heading to the meeting, Jason was famished. He’d missed lunch, after all. Since Kera also felt the need to eat after having expending nearly all her stamina, the three friends decided to make their way down to Arn’s inn for a meal rather than wait on Jason to whip something up himself.

They were greeted at the door by a surprised Leska.

“Oh! Jason!” she exclaimed as they entered. “Back again? I thought you—”

Then she paused. “Wait, who’s this? Where’s Kera?”

Leska paused again, doing a confused double take, as Kera’s face had remained relatively unchanged.

“Whaaaaaa….?”

While Jason watched with amusement, Leska stepped up close to Kera, and then leaned in to examine her face, tilting her head from side to side so she could view from different angles.

“Ok, that is so weird,” she said, stepping back. “How did you…?”

Jason wasn’t sure if he should say, but fortunately it appeared that Kera had already come up with an excuse, if a weak one.

Kera looked down at her feet, looking for all like she was trying to act shy, despite the fact Jason had never seen her do so.

“Oh! Um, did I not mention before?” she said quietly with feigned sheepishness in her voice. “I’m a changeling, not human.”

Kera looked back up at Leska.

“I get bored looking the same all the time,” she explained as if it was the most normal thing in the world, “and I wanted a new look, so I’m trying out some things.”

She bit her lip. “Do you like this one?”

Leska’s eyes were wide.

“A changeling? Really?” she asked incredulously. “Your kind are so rare! I’ve never met one before.”

Leska walked twice around Kera, looking her over. “You look just like a plains elf! I never would have guessed you weren’t. I mean, I didn’t before either, but…”

“Sorry,” Kera said sheepishly again. “I try to make sure to tell people usually. I don’t like the misunderstandings that can come from it.”

Leska waved one hand idly. “Its fine. I know you’re not some kinda shady criminal type, you’re too nice. Arnvale’s a pretty— what’s the word? I can’t remember…. But we have all sorts here, being out on the frontier and all.”

She shrugged. “It might bother people in the big, nearly all-human cities in places like Baradell, but out here people aren’t gonna fall for stupid myths about changelings being out to steal people’s identities and stuff, or that dwarves are out to swindle you out of all your gold, or elves are all a bunch of… well, I shouldn’t say words like that, but I’m sure you get the idea. When you live out on the frontier cities, you learn to live and let live, you know?.”

Kera gave a possibly sincere sigh of relief.

“Thanks, Leska.”

“So what are you guys back for, anyway?” Leska asked. “Don’t you have your own place now?”

“That’s right,” Jason cut in. “But we’ve had a busy day, and were hoping to get a hot meal without the need to make it ourselves. What’s on the menu this evening?”

“Oh! And here I am keeping you standing around,” Leska replied. “Please, come have a seat. You’re in for a treat, Dad made his specialty today.”

She lead them over to the table, where Jason and the others were served Arn’s own specialty dish, which turned out to be something similar to stromboli or calzone - A thick helping of sausage, potato, asparagus, onions, peppers, and cheese, wrapped in soft dough and then baked and sliced into thick segments.

Jason thought it was rather heavy as a meal, but it was delicious all the same.

While they ate, Jason asked Kera a bit about her changes. He kept his voice low, in an attempt to avoid being overheard. Fortunately, they’d been seated away from the other few patrons who were currently present, so that was unlikely to happen.

“So how does this whole shape-changing thing work, anyway?” He asked, once Kera had had a chance to get some food in her. “I mean like, how do you know what you can do with it?”

Kera snagged a piece of cheesy potato that had fallen out of one of her slices of stromboli and ate it before replying.

“It’s hard to explain, I guess,” she replied, considering for a moment. “It’s like… exercising a muscle, a sort of flexing, but there’s some thought involved as well. I can’t just change into anything I want. It needs to be a real species I’ve encountered before, apparently. Don’t ask me how I know that, but I do. Yet another example of the system just messing with our heads, I guess. And Leska’s right. I can’t just suddenly duplicate other people on purpose, it doesn’t work that way. I’m mean, I could copy how they look with a lot of effort, but that’s only because I’ve got Basic Mimicry, and I’d need to sit around and observe someone a whole lot, because it doesn’t teach me how to act like them. Maybe if I ranked it up a whole lot and spent days studying how someone talked and behaved and their mannerisms and all that, but even then I'm not sure I could do it properly without acting skills, you know?”

“Maybe just keep quiet about the potential to do it, just in case?” Lumi asked.

“No kidding,” Kera said with a sigh and a slight shake of her head.

“What about your new class?” Jason asked with interest. “You said it was a specialization thing?”

“Uh, well I sort of misspoke, there,” Kera said. “I mean, it is from picking my specialization, but it’s actually an evolved form of [Druid].”

Kera gave them a sheepish look. “So I, uh, didn’t actually remove my classes right away. Instead… I may have spent like close to two hours in there just playing around with race and features options...”

Jason grinned at Kera. “Let me guess, you’re the type who basically treats character creation as a sort of glorified form of playing dress-up with dolls? Loads of people do that. I’ve definitely been known to take absolutely forever to get a character just right.”

“Definitely would be the pot calling the kettle black, with our group, I’d think,” Lumi joked.

“Absolutely,” Jason said with a nod.

“Ah, well,” Kera continued, still slightly embarrassed, “after awhile, I stumbled across changeling. And, well… I just didn’t want to pass that up, you know? I’ve had so much fun with that stuff already that I just couldn’t say no. And then I got to thinking about how druids in fantasy games usually can change into animals, so I stopped there and looked at my skill and specialization picks, and, well….”

“You found one that focused specifically on shapeshifting.” Jason finished.

“Not just that,” Kera replied. “My blue magic and mimic skills were involved too somehow. In fact, it was… an awful lot of skills all together that opened it up. Kinda like how Lumi’s stuff is all tied together. I’ve got a racial skill for changing how I look, a skill for mimicking the behavior and skills of others, a skill for mimicking physical traits of monster’s I've got experience with, a skill for learning their spells…”

Kera paused a moment to take another bite of her stromboli, then washed it down with some of the light mead they’d been served.

Then she continued.

“So… it just seems natural that the system would offer me a specialization along those lines,” Kera said. “Even though none of them actually come from my class, it’s still related, and probably has spells I can learn along the same lines.”

“So the specialization I got was simply called ‘Monster Mimic’, which evolved Druid into Scion of the Wild. I’m not actually sure what that word means, but I lost some skills and gained some new ones.”

“A scion is like… a descendant of a noble house,” Jason explained. “It’s kind of an incorrect usage, but in games and fiction it can be synonymous with ‘inheritor’, meaning you’ve inherited some kind of mystic link with something, whether related by blood or fate or whatever. In this case, no doubt because you ‘inherit’ the shapes and powers of various creatures you encounter.”

“Oh. I guess that makes sense,” Kera said. She had another bite to eat. “Anyway, so my new skills are now ‘Wild Empathy’, ‘Beastmorph’, ‘Sculpt Self’, and an unranked skill called ‘Nature’s Call’…. which despite the unfortunate phrasing, is potentially really useful - it lets me call up a swarm of whatever small critters might be in the area to harry someone for a few moments and then disperse. Good for distracting spellcasters and stuff, you know?”

“What, like you could conjure up a horde of weasels to bite someone’s ankles and then run off?” Lumi asked with a slight snicker.

“Hey, don’t knock it,” Jason replied. “I know you play mostly the same stuff as me. Never underestimate the power of a well-timed, half-second stun effect to drop a big ‘nope’ on top of some kind of channeled mega-spell.”

Kera grinned. “Exactly. And the fact that it could be something infuriatingly silly just makes it better, because then they’ll be all tilted and stuff.”

“Not that it would necessarily be squirrels,” she added. “It’s whatever is around and appropriate to the terrain.”

“Any other interesting new stuff?” Jason inquired.

Kera thought for a moment, taking another swig of her drink. “Mmm… not really. Oh! There is a limitation on Beastmorph though. I can’t just shape myself into any old thing, I have to actually learn new forms, just like with Monster Magic and Sculpt Self. Though it does come with two free picks, which I haven’t chosen yet. But they’re just basic animals and stuff.”

“So no suddenly getting to become a spellcasting Tyrannosaurus?” Lumi quipped.

“No, sadly,” Kera replied.

“But for the record,” she continued with an evil grin, “if we meet one, I am totally willing to risk getting eaten to learn that.”

Jason looked thoughtful. “Can you cast spells while you’re changed into something else? Or talk or use other skills?”

“I don’t see why you couldn’t,” Lumi replied. “I always thought it was weird that you couldn’t in some games. I mean sure, I can see the argument that you can’t ‘speak the mystic words’ or whatever, but that’s not an issue here if you change your skill triggers, and besides, how would you change back if you couldn’t?”

“Hmm, good question. Kera?”

Kera cocked her head and closed her eyes for a few moments. Jason could see her sort of tensing and relaxing her shoulders repeatedly, like she was flexing a new muscle she wasn’t quite familiar with.

She opened her eyes, and then poked a bit at her interface.

“Hmm… I’m not sure,” Kera said finally. “I think I can use stuff just fine, but the system doesn’t really say. I can definitely tell that I can use the morphic modification stuff while I’m making use of Sculpt Self. Oh, and let’s not forget that I can still talk when using my belt. So… maybe?”

“Sounds like something worth exploring, then.” Lumi suggested.

“I know just how, too,” Kera replied with a grin. “Let’s finish up here, and then head home.”

After their late dinner, the three friends made their way back home, passing through Arnvale’s streets with Lumi’s mage-lights bobbing along behind them to light the way. They were greeted at the door by an enthusiastic Echo. Jason still couldn’t get over how domesticated-dog-like the rockhound had become. Even with Kera’s explanation of how her skill worked, he still felt the whole thing was a trifle surreal and vaguely concerning.

Lumi seemed to have no such reservations though, leaning over and giving the rockhound a vigorous back rub — carefully avoiding her spines and crystal shoulder-growths, of course.

Ceri meanwhile, appeared to have been curled up asleep on the ‘dining room table’, as Jason thought of it, but awoke and launched himself into the air, flying over to take up his usual perch on Kera’s shoulder.

Kera gave him a few head scratches before taking a seat and shifting the drake to her lap.

“Ok… so first off, need to select my first two ‘normal’ choices,” she said. “Any suggestions?”

Jason considered for a moment. “Well, wolf, panther, tiger, and bear are all pretty stock choices for druids, depending on what you want to do. Ditto for hawks or eagles.”

Lumi gave a short laugh. “Jason, this is Kera we’re talking about.” She gave Kera a wink. “What makes you think she wants to be shoehorned into ‘normal’ choices?”

Jason gave her a wry grin. “Hey, I don’t expect her to choose one of those, but they’re still solid picks usually.”

Her turned to Kera. “Anything in there you don’t recognize? Or something that might be considered a basic animal here, but not back home? Like what about Ceri? Are skydancers in there?”

“Oh, I’ve already learned his,” Kera said. “I’ve spent enough time with Ceri and Echo that I got both their species immediately. This is more like… pick whatever a really basic Druid might have a spell for. My class is only level 1 currently, after all. So simple stuff only.”

“Can I see the list?” Jason asked.

“Sure.”

Kera’s status sprang into view, and Jason scrolled down the list. To him it looked like more or less your standard list of starter animal companions or familiars - various birds, cats, canines, and the like. But there were more unusual options in there, too.

“Well…,” Jason said, “I see stuff in here like giant spiders or scorpions, if you don’t mind that sort of thing. The cooshee is one I’m surprised to see in here, though I guess it is a ‘basic’ animal.”

“Cooshee?” Lumi asked. “Isn’t that like… some kind of fantasy dog?”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “Think like a forest-version of Echo here. Green and brown fur, like camo, long, thin, elf-like dog ears for some reason. They’re basically domesticated dogs for elves. And…. hah, yeah, gobdogs are in here too. They’re the same, but for goblins.”

“I wonder….” Jason scrolled rapidly through the list, searching for a particular entry. “Hah! It is here. Now that’d be an unusual choice. How do you feel about a weird cross between a rhino, a lion, and a bison?”

“That sounds equal parts badass and horrifying, I think,” Lumi said.

“Well, that’s about accurate for a gorthek. They’re one of those ‘bad guy mounts’ you see a lot of, kind of like how Tolkien gave his Orcs the Wargs as mounts, which themselves were based on the wolf-god Fenrir and his sons. Gortheks are like huge, tanky, rhino-lions. Humans get gryphon-knights, elves get pegasi-archers, and orcs get, well, gorthek-riding barbarians capable of smashing down walls.

“Sounds fun to me!” Kera declared cheerfully. She poked once at her interface. “Done!”

“Don’t try it in the house,” Jason said hurriedly. “Gortheks are like the size of a small car.”

Kera blew a raspberry at him. “I know better than that.”

“I’ve got a question,” Lumi said. “Why would gorthek be in there and not like, some of those other things you mentioned? Pegasus, warg, gryphon, and so on?”

Jason thought for a moment. “Well…. I mean I can’t be sure, since there’s always the chance there’s differences, and we’ve definitely seen that be the case, but in fiction back home gortheks are.. basically dumb beasts, while those other ones very often aren’t. Sometimes, like in the case of a pegasus, they can understand speech but not speak themselves, while others, like Tolkien’s wargs, actually have language and culture of their own. Gryphons can fall into that group, but also like say, unicorns, are also often highly magical, while a gorthek is just a big, brutish animal.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Kera said. “Too bad. I would totally pick a gryphon. Then I would get to be the best house.”

“House?” Jason asked.

Kera grinned at him. “Because then I’d be a spellcaster, and a gryphon, so my room would be the one with the gryphon-door.”

Jason just hung his head and sighed.

“I totally walked into that one, didn’t I?” he asked.

“You really did,” Lumi said, covering her mouth with a hand and smothering her laughter.

Jason shook his head ruefully, but couldn't manage to suppress his smile.

“Well then, Miss Wizard, what other animal would you be interested in?” he asked. “You do have one pick left.”

“Actually, I’m gonna take crocodile, I think.” Kera replied. “I’ve got a tank form with.. Gorthek? And with skydancer I could fly, and with rockhound I can be relatively fast. But we’re going into the water dungeon, so I might need someone who can swim or fight underwater for a long time, yeah?

“Sounds solid to me,” Lumi said.

“It’s not like we probably couldn’t get you more forms if we tried, anyway,” Jason said. “Just need to find a —”

He cut off suddenly as he realized what he was suggesting. They didn’t need to find a summoner, Kera was one.

“A what?” Kera asked.

“I’m just being stupid, it seems,” Jason replied. “Why don’t you try summoning your mistwolf?”

Kera grinned at him. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

She stood up, and held both her hands outwards as she cast her spell. Jason, out of curiosity, activated his [Arcane Sight] as he did so. He didn’t learn anything new - not that he was surprised, since he’d analyzed the spell the past, but he found it fascinating to watch how Kera’s mana flowed out from her hands, twisting into some kind of invisible rune circle. The center of circle then transformed into some kind of gateway, through which aspected mana poured, forming itself into Kera’s mistwolf.

Echo had yet to meet one of Kera’s summon spells, and immediately growled at the interloper and raised her spines threateningly, but Kera hushed her with a word in a language Jason didn’t know.

Her [Wild Empathy] skill at work, perhaps?

She bid the mistwolf approach her in her chair, running her hands over him. She made a few gestures in the air with one hand as well, and Jason realized she’s activated her own form of Analyze.

The Kera checked her status screen, and broke out into a huge grin. She shared her latest notification.

Skill Failure: Cannot learn new form 'Mistwolf'. Reason: Skill Rank too low.

Jason caught on immediately. “So you can learn from your own summons! You just need to rank up some. That’s pretty great.”

“Hell yes it’s great!” Kera exclaimed. “I’m gonna go pay Jerrik a visit tomorrow, see if he can’t order me a spell-book of summon spells or rituals from somewhere. Don’t care what it costs; if I can learn new forms and spells from creatures I summon, it’ll be worth it. Here, let me drop some points into it right now.”

She poked at her UI briefly, then nodded with satisfaction. "There, learned."

“Told you blue magic pays off in the long run,” Lumi replied, still grinning.

“So, uh, awkward question,” Jason interjected, “but an important one… does it merge your clothes, or is this gonna be one of those things where…?”

Kera laughed. “Thankfully, it does,” she replied.

Then she paused, considering. “Well, Beastmorph does. My changeling power doesn't. Gonna need to talk to Nissette about that tomorrow too, I guess; if I want clothes that can fit tails or wings or me being taller or shorter or whatever, I’ll need some variety.”

“Or lots of buttoned flaps,” Lumi commented.

“Might not need that, actually,” Jason said. “Remember how that loot we got from the dungeon resized itself to fit you, Lumi? I asked Jerrik about it, because he had a skill that did the same thing for people’s clothes. He told me that was a pretty rare skill, but that that happening was pretty normal for loot drops. I bet you it’s normal for magical gear in general. If she doesn't need to worry about clothes when taking non-human shapes, maybe just a magic wizard robe or something would do the job?”

Kera nodded. “Gotcha. I’ll ask about enchanted clothes, too, then.”

She placed Ceri onto Echo’s back and dismissed her mist-wolf before jumping to her feet.

“Enough talking, time to try these forms out,” she declared. “I wonder if… yes, I’ll try that. Hang on…”

Kera opened up her UI, and navigated to her command set-up screen. Jason tried to follow what she did, and he could tell she somehow linked the use of some of her other skills to her beastmorph triggers, but for some reason he couldn’t actually see what. It was like his mind just couldn’t parse the entry, and it gave him a headache trying to look at it.

Lumi seemed to experience the same. She squeezed her eyes closed.

“Ack, close that off, would you Kera?” she requested. “You’re linking some changeling thing to it, right? It’s looks all weird to me and hurts my brain.”

“Oh, sorry,” Kera said. She hid her screen with a flick of her fingers. “Didn’t know it would do that. It just occurred to me, if I’m gonna change around a bunch, I should use stuff I can do in any form with changeling or with using wild empathy… which also happens to provide some sort of weird, supernatural animal language.”

“Why is it called empathy then?” Lumi asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Kera shrugged. “Hey, I don’t make the rules. But here, watch.”

Kera’s eyes turned a piercing gold, reflecting the light of Lumi’s mage-lights like a cat’s did in the dark, and she gave a sudden, growling snarl, and jumped forwards about three feet, swinging her hands up in front of her as she did so. Her shape blurred burst into a cloud of pale mist as she leaped forwards, which then coalesced into the shape of a wolf before landing on all fours. Small wisps of fog drifted off her body.

“Whaaaa… that’s trippy.” Kera said. Much like as when she used her belt to shift into snake form, her voice came out distorted and deep, though it was still recognizably hers.

“I can see like… air currents or something?” she said. She padded up to the front door, and inhaled deeply.

“Gack.” Kera sat down on her hind legs abruptly and pawed at her nose.

Lumi laughed at her. “Sensory overload, right? Like the snake?”

“Just like the snake,” Kera confirmed.

Jason chuckled. “Yeah, we humans are pretty garbage when it comes to our senses compared to a lot of animals, huh? Most animals hear and smell more acutely, and while we see better than most, the best predators are still better than we are at it, and plenty of species see stuff we can’t, like infrared or ultraviolet spectrum.”

“Definitely gonna take getting used to.” Kera said. “But hey, at least I can do this!”

Her form faded into a dispersed cloud, which then pressed up against the door, squeezing through the smallest of gaps until Kera had passed through.

Jason heard a Kera try giving a light bark from the other side. Lumi rolled her eyes with an exasperated sigh and opened the door for her.

“Really?” she asked Kera dryly, looking down at her as the other girl padded back in.

“Had to do it at least once,” Kera replied, completely unashamed.

Jason eyed Ceri and Echo. Oddly enough, they’d more or less ignored the whole exchange, other than some faint curiosity on Echo’s part, who was now lying on the floor with one eye closed, but her ears were perked up and swiveled in Kera’s direction. Jason supposed that after all, Ceri had seen this sort of thing before, and maybe their bond was involved somehow, too.

He turned back to Kera, who was in the process of reforming herself.

“Hey, now that you’ve done it yourself, can you do some kind of mistform spell now?” he asked her.

“Hmm, good question,” Kera replied. She took a moment to straighten her dress out; thanks to her change in height as a plains elf, it was a little loose on her frame as she shifted back into a humanoid shape.

She checked her status. “Yep! Looks like I can. I’ll mess about with that later. It’s late, and I want some sleep now that my immediate curiosity has been satisfied.”

She scrunched her face up, and she reverted to her un-altered changeling form.

“That really is a seriously creepy look,” Lumi commented. “It’s the eyes, I think. It makes you look like you’re some kind of dead zombie-thing. If they were just normal eyes, you’d just look like some kind of sun-bleached, grey-skinned elf, and probably not an unattractive one at that.”

Kera shrugged. “Eh, I don’t really disagree. But I just picked plains elf since Therissa was right there and the Kitsune tails thing was super uncomfortable in this dress. I’ll probably bounce around the next few days. Maybe spend some time at the market or the lodge and see what I can pick up? In the meantime, I should probably get used to the new me.”

She held up on hand, turning it this way and that, and examining her skin closely. She pinched the back of her palm once.

“We do have homework, of sorts,” Jason reminded her. “And we still need to go over me analyzing your new spells to see if I can’t get any new runes.”

“Oh, right,” Lumi said. “I totally forgot about that. Hey, why don’t we ask our …tutors? …squad-mates? to come with us just outside the gates for that? Maybe they’ll have stuff they'd be willing to show off too? It would be a good idea to get to know each other’s skill sets for a dungeon raid anyway, right?”

Jason nodded. “Good idea. Sound good to you, Kera? You could show off your gorthek form too.”

“Ok, works for me,” Kera said. “Maybe we can do it all at once. We can just stop by Nissette’s shop on the way so I can at least get the ball rolling. Getting some lunch at the lodge might be a good way to pick up some new forms, and the we’ll be there to meet our new squad-mates?”

“Sounds like a plan, then,” Lumi said. “In that case, I’m off to bed. I suggest you all do likewise. Sounds like we may have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”