Mash waited for the dragon’s response unsure of what would come of the conversation. Luke hadn’t expected this to happen and had basically told Mash to expect some mindless monsters. This seemed far closer to what Luke had done for Red before.

“I am Toroken. You mean to say that you are here without knowing of me?”

The dragon’s voice sounded weirdly like churning rocks. Mash wondered if his translation item was helping him actually understand Toroken.

“I heard of an undead dragon, but I didn’t think you could talk. I was expecting mindless puppets.”

Mash made the comment without thinking much about it. Only after the words left his lips did he realize that they might be offensive. He belatedly tried to give them an abashed look, only to find it impossible in his new form. How did a dragon make an abashed expression? Mash continued to try and control his expression when he heard laughter. Toroken had no trouble with expression, and Mash could easily make out the mirth on the dragon’s face. The scales around the dragon’s eyes lifted slightly, as the corner of his mouth turned up.

“You must be younger than you seem. Tell me why a chimera so young would encroach upon my domain?”

The dragon sounded surprisingly friendly for the damage they had done to one another. Mash’s wing was slowly healing, and he could see the dragon doing the same. Toroken’s wing uncrumpled as the bones within seemed to right themselves. For Mash, the two halves of his wing slowly reconnected strands of wood linked them together like roots or vines. They were both hurt, but not badly enough to ruin a chance at negotiation. Diplomacy with an undead dragon hadn’t exactly been in the plan, but Mash felt like it could work.

“This might be hard to believe, but I didn’t actually come here for a fight. I just want to talk with the Necromancer, I mean Valeria.”

The name didn’t have the effect he wanted it to. Instead, both Toroken and the man on his shoulder glowered. Their eyes flared sharply with anger and hatred. Mash raised both hands in a warding gesture but turned into a far more dangerous motion with his body. The ground beneath him shook as he waved his arms back and forth, the air around them roared as if he were throwing trees around. Toroken snarled, his voice sounded more animalistic as it came out next.

“You will not speak to her. Leave this place, we will not ask twice.”

Mash didn’t respond immediately. With his domain, he noticed as two more people appeared beside the dragon. The air had torn open, and the two had stepped out of an otherworldly portal. It was vaguely similar to Mash’s own portal skill. One of the people was an elf with silver-white hair that seemed to glitter in the air. The other was a beastmen with black hair and fur, his ears were sharp and pointed, and they were flat against his head as he glared up at Mash. The elf oddly didn’t seem to care about Mash.

Mash looked over all of them. This was about how many people they had expected, and Priscilla told Jill and Luke that it was time for them to enter. He doubted he would be attracting any more attention than this. He opened his mouth to reply, but a hand of pure silvery light formed in an instant and pressed him into the ground. The hand was enormous, big enough to crush him completely. Mash spread his now-healed wings and they caught the incoming hand. His body withstood the force, but he felt it. The conversation was over.

He opened his mouth toward all of them. Magic mixed within his body. Fire, lightning, and water blended in a way that was unnatural and impossible. He released it an instant later. The fire was a deep shade of orange, and it flowed like water as it spread over the space like an enormous wave. It poured over the ground scorching it black. Sparks of odd blue light danced over the whole thing, crackling loudly in the air as it approached the four.

Toroken raised a hand and the ground rose up to stop the wave like a dam. Dirt and stone formed a crude wall. It failed. The moment his magic touched the half-formed wall, it didn’t slow or stop. The dirt wall melted. At the same time, the magic crawled over the ground like an army of ants. That caught everyone off guard, even Mash. The wave of electrified fire rolled over them. The silvery hand above him dissipated as the elf was consumed by the flames. None of the people screamed in pain or reacted much to the attack.

Mash himself just stared at his own magic for a second, before taking off into the skies. He had tested his combinations plenty and found that they could have a wide range of effects. Even mixing the same magic, in the same way, could result in something different. Both Priscilla and he believed it was an effect of his aspects. The less magic he combined, the lower the deviance. His lightning wood for example was fairly consistent, though he had experienced one odd deviation where he had made a tree that released sparks from its branches.

Mash hovered in the air; his left arm aimed down toward them. Pillars of scorching air shot upward at him. The heat diminished as it approached him, but he still felt the air cascade over his body. Mash opened his palm. Green light flashed brightly as branches of lightning struck the ground beneath him. Rather than the roar of thunder wood appeared replacing the lightning, cutting through anything that it could. They pierced the ground like a rain of a thousand spears. Toroken’s scales didn’t get pierced, but strands of wood ran all over his body like vines. The other people didn’t have the defenses of a dragon.

The man who used the hot air had been pierced in one place by a thin strand of wood. Though the wound had already been burned shut and smoke trailed from the wood around him. The elf with silver hair had taken the brunt of the attack. He had been distracted by the fire and was unprepared for the follow-up. A thick shaft of wood had torn the elf’s body apart, separating part of his shoulder and right arm from the rest of his body. The elf didn’t seem to care, he very casually walked over to his severed arm.

It took Mash a second to realize that the beastmen wasn’t there, and Mash couldn’t find him with his domain. How? Mash couldn’t worry about that. Much of the wood he made broke as Toroken leapt into the sky. The island seemed to give the dragon a push, and Toroken was fast. The air around the dragon. Mash started growing again, in an attempt to withstand the dragon. If nothing else, he would eventually overwhelm them with sheer size.

Toroken slammed into him with such force that Mash’s wings snapped as his body was pressed into them. They covered him like a loose cloak as Mash was pushed upward for a second. Some of the scales on Mash’s chest cracked, and his bones crunched within. For an instant Mash struggled to breathe. Only for a moment though. One of the things this form granted him was a treant’s ability to heal. His bones reconnected and his lungs mended almost immediately. His wings weren’t a priority.

Mash wasn’t expecting Toroken to do so much damage so quickly, and it took him a moment to recover. With his domain, he was able to observe everything around him, so he noticed when a beastmen appeared on his back. The beastman crawled out of the shadow that his wings had made as they pressed into his back. He plunged a tiny black metal dagger into Mash’s back.

Mash twirled in the air, flinging the beastman off his back and sending Toroken upward. The dagger remained in his back, and it began to burn. It felt like a fire was pouring out from the knife, and Mash tried to shape his body to remove it. His body didn’t morph as he expected it to. His growth stopped and the reverse started. Mash shrunk rapidly; the knife left a black marking on his body that was growing rapidly to cover his entire form. His bones crunched and organs squished as his body was forcibly changed. Mash had to bite his lower lip to avoid vomiting. He shrunk as the dark writing expanded. Mash lost his scales and the wooden texture of his skin, and within a few moments, he returned to his semi-human form.

[The dagger is doing something; I will try to remove its effect.]

Priscilla’s message was unneeded. He moved quickly gripping and pulling out the black dagger. The dagger fell, but the black lines remained on his body. The beastmen from earlier jumped from a shadow placed on him by Toroken above. The man seemed to be able to shift between shadows freely, and he was invisible to Mash when he did it. The beastmen dove downward, a black blur in the otherwise clear sky. Even in this state, Mash wasn’t weak. He spun in the air, swinging a fist around to smash into the beastman’s head. A black-furred palm caught his fist with a loud thud. The beastmen grunted as he struggled to absorb the impact.

“You’re a tough one, even without your transformation.”

Mash met the beastman’s eyes and tried to understand what had happened to his body. It didn’t feel normal. It didn’t feel the same as he normally kept it. What did he look like?

“What in the depths are you?”

The beastman’s eyes were wide with uncertainty as Mash met them with his own. Mash swung his hand down, throwing the beastmen toward the ground. His gaze drifted to his own arm which looked odd. His skin had a scale faint scale pattern to them, and a rainbow glow showed between them. Mash stared at his hand in stupefaction. The colors marking his skin reminded him of the past, back when he had first messed with his body. It was more subdued now, something that most people wouldn’t be able to notice. He could see it though. It was almost as if his entire body was tattooed with a faintly glowing ink to make it look like he had scales.

Mash licked at the inside of his mouth and felt like it was larger. His teeth were sharp, and he had two extra sets of smaller teeth behind the frontmost ones. It was an odd feeling. He blinked and felt two sets of eyelids close, one layer was weirdly transparent.

[Priscilla, what am I?]

Mash asked the question as he tried to understand his own body. He froze and realized that no new attack was coming. The four people he was fighting had paused as well. They stared at him, as he floundered to figure out what he was.