Aetuornos Beta 2-2

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2-2: Rough Landing, Reaper

"Soo, uhh.." The party of two had picked a direction more or less at random and started walking, nearly side-by-side but with the more fragile catgirl slightly behind. "You're married to, what, a Neko?" Thora said.

"Ehh, not exactly," Noire said, tilting an open hand back and forth. "It's..complicated."
"That's not really, I mean—just..how'd you guys meet?"

"Oh, that? We went to the same college. So, one day after classes and most of the way through sunset, I was on my way to supper and went to pass between these two buildings. That's when I saw her being chased by this freaky-lookin' monkey thing. So, I did what anyone would do, and went full werewolf form to tackle it down and punch its face until it disappeared," she said, emphasizing this last point with a fist-to-palm gesture. "Turns out a lesser demon got loose somehow," she shrugged.

"You're, serious. Really..?" Thora felt strong enough to take on anything now, but she could hardly imagine doing something like that in the real world.

"Sure. I, uh, had a bit of a 'traditionalist' upbringing," Noire said—with some air quotes. "So I was taught to train my body regularly, hunt prey animals, and...fight and stuff. My fight-or-flight setting is pretty much permanently stuck on 'fight'.

Oh, but—don't get me wrong," the little rogue added after a moment, guessing at the original reason for the question. "If you're looking for love, that's definitely the wrong way to meet someone. There's this whole 'you saved my life' vibe for while, that makes it feel kinda uneven and...weird. We're both lucky she was level-headed enough to get past that before too long. And for the record I don't think I really did save her life—she would've definitely outrun that thing long enough for someone more competent than me to take it out."

"Y-yeah, that makes sense," the demon-girl said, feeling a bit relieved. Maybe this wasn't the best person for dating advice, then, if he just got lucky...

"Hey, Thora. D'you hear that?" Noire said, interrupting her thoughts.

"Hear wha-"
"HEEEELLLLP!"

"Oh."

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"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—"

Someone probably should've warned Chris about the falling.

"—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"

He screamed at the top of his lungs, flailing around in the air, until he ran entirely out of breath and, while huffing in more, finally looked around and realized that he still hadn't landed. This generated just enough confusion to snap him out of the blind panic and return control back to the thinking part of his mind. "G-game," he gasped out to himself after a moment. "J-just in game, not really falling, just in game, not really.."

Chris's voice trailed off, needing to resume the hard work of catching his poorly-spent breath. Accomplishing that took him long enough to realize that what he was experiencing was less like freefall and more like gently floating in a vaguely downward direction. This didn't particularly ease Chris's anxiety, and yet he found it much easier now to keep himself from going back to screaming and panicking. He also noticed the edges of bangs appearing near the top of his vision, and bright red locks crawling down the sides of his face which the "wind" blew back and forth, in and out of his view.

"Hhhhuh?" Given that his real hair was a deep brown, leaning toward pitch black, that could only mean one thing. "Oh, it already, hahah, s-started," he mumbled, reaching a hand up and batting it through the growing hair as it brightened further, the red continuing to fade toward an increasingly pink shade. At the same time he felt a gentle, almost soothing pressure running across his body and beginning to shrink it toward his chosen player character's shape. His frame melted downward and inward before his eyes, his arms and legs slimming and shoulders narrowing—all of which made his t-shirt and shorts billow out looser, caught up by the wind. That motion of air reminded him again that he was floating in midair, but something about these physical sensations seemed peculiarly calming, like someone had found a bunch of magic pressure points that drove his usual fear of heights almost entirely away.

"O-oh..!" Chris mumbled as he felt a sort of slight outward tug from his ears; he moved his still-raised hand over to feel them as this sensation quickly faded off, and found them a bit bigger and longer, with some fairly sharp points facing horizontally outward from his head. "Aa~ah!" His voice squeaked a bit, beginning to change, as a more pronounced sort of outward-pushing sensation came from a few inches above and slightly behind those ears; crawling his hand up through his soft, now very pink hair, he was able to touch and then wrap his fingers around a steadily-growing horn. The feeling on the opposite side of his head had to be much the same thing, he thought.

By now Chris's hair had already finished growing and recoloring, stopping just shy of his shoulders with longer bangs and locks that trailed their way down his cheeks. His ever curious hand moved to run its way down the back of his head and feel of it, finding the silky locks somehow refreshing to touch. "Mm~mh," he hummed in enjoyment, and heard something like a young boy's voice come out, cracking slightly again midway through. "W-wa~ah, my voice," he said in response to this as its pitch rose even higher, and looked down to find a body quite finished shrinking now, leaving behind a much shorter form which his clothes barely stayed on—those shorts probably would fall off if he were standing upright without all the wind below lifting them.

Seemingly in response to his attention, Chris's clothes then began to rapidly change. The shorts suddenly shrank much tighter around his hips and seemingly pushed the extra material down into their leggings, causing them to slink all the way down his legs. They pulled tight, softening and thinning as they squeezed tight onto his already-thin legs, seemingly pushing them into an even more slender, girlish shape, and went so far down as to wrap themselves around his feet like socks. "Aa~h, stockings~!" he said happily, feeling a bubbly grin come to his face as the very top of his underwear split off and started to pull especially sung between the legs. His shirt then began to pull tighter on his upper body and shortened a bit, the billowing hem gaining frills as everything recolored and split and rearranged into..!

"A dress!" Chris's small, delicate hands went to his cheeks in an expression of delight—and found them soft and smooth, like all the rest of his skin now was. His sleeves grew out as far as his wrists while the outfit pulled tight about his waist—a little strangely loose on the chest—and the lower bit formed itself into a proper thigh-length skirt. Then, finally, he felt a gentle tingly sensation down between his legs. "O-oh, o~oohh..!" An adorably high, squeaky voice came from his throat as he felt his manhood tugging inward, shrinking away, and at the same time his hips, butt and thighs all gently puffed out, his waist curving in slightly as if in response to the tightness of the top..and his cheeks grow warm with a blush.

"Waa~aah...!" As his manhood melted away, Chris's voice underwent a subtle but meaningful change, remaining quite high in pitch but gaining a bit of audible maturity—changing, perhaps, from a little girl's voice to a woman's. And, indeed, the panties which were now barely hidden by the dress's short skirt pulled nice and snug against an unfamiliar flatness between Chris's legs as some more strange, fuzzy feelings and movements down there completed her swift journey to womanhood. She let out a high "Eeee~ee!" and shuddered in response, thoroughly enjoying the new sensations.

No sooner did this part of Chris's transformation complete than she felt a sort of stretching, pulling sensation from a bit below her shoulder blades. "Ah—! Oo~oh~!" She twisted around briefly to look, and saw four tiny little wings, webbed with short, pitch-black fur, beginning to appear back there. Then she found herself raising her arms up and rotating them, stretching them out, as the wings grew swiftly to full size. It felt great, as if they'd been somehow bound before and now were being allowed to stretch and relax—so she let out a relieved "MmmMMmmm~mh!" This was followed immediately by a cute little "Wah!" as the new girl's chest finally began its change, puffing out instantly into two little sensitive bumps that went far from filling her dress and the newly-formed bra hiding beneath it.

"Oo~Oh, boobs!" she said excitedly, and then giggled cutely at her own sudden sense of brazenness to put it quite that way, even in what seemed to be private. This slight giggle bubbled into more as her small breasts became especially tingly and started to steadily push their way out. "H-heheheh—hAaa~haha..!" It was at the same time a pleasant sensation that reawakened her newfound sense of girlish pleasure, and also an extremely tickly one that provoked her continued giggles to burst into full-fledged laughter, her eyes closing with some happy tears streaming down out of them. "HA~ahaahaahah~!"

In no time at all, Chris's breasts expanded out enough to fill the cups of the bra, and then as she laughed they bubbled out just a bit more, pushing her clothes out to a bigger size to accommodate them. By the time it was over, she was left an adorably cute and giggly demon-girl, but still very much an adult with the curves and especially the bust size to prove it.

When the giggling finally died down, Chris was left panting for an entirely different reason from before, and also still blushing fairly brightly, judging by the warmth in her cheeks. But when she opened her eyes up again she let out a startled little "Eep!" as she realized two things: The ground was now visible down below her, and she was approaching it at a much greater, more normal speed than before. "Waah!" She spread out her four batlike wings and flailed her arms, all in an attempt to glide it out; this managed to slow her fall somewhat, directing it forward. None of this reassured her quite enough, and although the demon-girl's fear of heights had been substantially repressed somehow or other, it came back in fairly full force when facing the reality of crashing directly onto the ground with so much velocity.

"AAAAAAH—mmpfh!" Her wide-eyed scream of panic, however, was interrupted when she instead crashed directly into a tree. Somehow or other the crash didn't hurt at all, but now the little demon-girl found her wings and limbs all tangled up in the branches.

"Mmnh? Wha?" Chris looked around, taking a moment to untangle and right herself, as well as process what had happened and where she was. After this, she quickly flew into a milder but still very unhelpful panic on realizing that she was still more than high enough off of the ground for a fall to hurt her. This involved clinging her arms around the branch she was on and yelling again, but a bit more coherently: "HEEEELLLLP!"

Shortly after she paused for a breath, a slightly lower voice than her own called from below. "Excuse me, miss!"
Chris gasped, leaning her head slightly to one side of the branc so she could look down below. Down there was a very tall girl with horns coming from her forehead, and a little catgirl down, both looking up at her. "Um. Hi!" she said, taking a hand off the branch to wave for a fraction of a second before feeling like she was going to fall and quickly latching it on tight again.

"It would appear you've gotten yourself into a predicament of some sort," the catgirl—the source of the earlier voice—observed. "Might I inquire as to its nature?"
"Oh. Um, sure you can!" she said brightly after a second.

There was an awkward moment of silence after this, during which Chris stared down at the two other girls smiling and they exchanged a brief glance. "Soo, uh..what's wrong?" the tall girl then asked, her head tilting slightly.
"Weeelll, I'm kinda afraid of heights," she said. "But I guess I tried to fly for some reason? Like, definitely part of it was 'cause I was falling already...but I don't think I'm really very good at flying! H-heheh," she giggled nervously.

"Well, I'm certain you don't wish to remain up there all day," the catgirl said. "Why don't you drop the rest of the way down?"
"'Cause I'm afraid of heights!" Chris said. "Weren't you listening?"
"That...really isn't a terribly great height," the catgirl argued. "I could leap down it uninjured quite easily, and I've no wings."

"Nnnngh.." This didn't reassure her much.

"Look," the taller one said, "How about I catch you? Will ya come down then?"
"Umm...you prooomise?" she said, leaning her head past the branch a tiny bit farther.
"Sure. I'm super strong and stuff," the tall girl said, flexing an arm. "Should be no problem."
"Uh, okaayy.."

Chris let go of one hand, then the other, and slowly tilted herself around off the branch. Despite all this windup, she found the timing of the fall to be completely unexpected and yelled—"AAAH~!"—for about half a second before realizing that the fall was already over and there were two solid-feeling arms under her—and her eyes were shut again. She opened them to find herself looking up in the face of the tall girl, her big, oni-ish horns not far from Chris's own face—and she was blushing just slightly for some reason. This, in turn, made Chris's cheeks burn a bit too—up close like this, the tall girl was pretty cute!

"Umm...hup!" Chris slid down onto her feet, standing upright for the first time in this virtual world and getting her bearings. Well—she'd gotten much shorter, but was still taller than the catgirl. And the tall one who'd caught her seemed super tall, maybe taller than she was as a guy in the real world. "Thank you~!"

"Uh, y-you're welcome," the tall woman said. "Soo, um.." she mumbled, rubbing a hand against the back of her neck.

"Might we ask who you are?" the catgirl interjected.
"Sure!"

"...Who, are you, then?" The catgirl caught on quicker this time, so the pause in between was much shorter.

"I am the great and powerful necromancer Fiori," she announced dramatically, summoning a long scythe into her hands in a burst of dark-purple flame. After this, a small, pale blue flame-looking thing with a face which wore a fairly irritated expression floated out from her torso to just next to her. "Aaand this is my familiar, Roth," she added a bit more casually.

"Wait, so—you're a mage?" the tall girl said.
"We~ell, sorta. This scythe isn't just for show, y'know!" she said, giving it a short mock-swing. Roth floated back into her, looking like someone who'd been forced out of bed and just wanted to go back to sleep.
"But—"

"Please, let's not be rude now," the catgirl said. "My name is Noire. I'm a—treasure seeker," she said, offering a hand up to shake. While Fiori did just that, she added: "My companion is Thora, a valiant warrior."

"Ooh~, pleased to meet you both!" she said happily.

"Now, if I'm not mistaken, you're a charismatic necro, aren't you?" Noire said once the handshake was over.

"Yep!"
"Um.." Thora looked back and forth between the two of them, looking lost. She probably hadn't read very much of the manual. Fiori was okay with this; it took all kinds, after all.

"Most mage classes can choose to take on a sub-class which casts from a different stat instead of intelligence," Noire said. Her diction and tone changed completely, making Fiori realize that she'd been speaking very much in-character until now and was dropping 'out' to talk game mechanics. That was impressive! "Like: Strong Summoner casts from strength, Agile Chronomancer casts from agility, and such. It lends some variety, since there are so many mage-type classes. Which ones are available depends on the class, and the few mage classes that naturally cast from something else also have a 'Clever' variant. Basically, you get a bonus to the stat you cast from, a penalty to int—or whatever you would've cast from instead—and there are some advantages and disadvantages for each."
"Yep!" the necromancer said. "So like, I get to be cute and friendly and stuff, but low smarts means I'm weaker to magic and easier to charm and hypnotize and such."

"Huh. Almost makes me wish I'd picked some sorta mage."
"Maybe for your second character then, eh?" Noire said. "Anyway, Necromancers specialize in dark magic and—obviously—summoning undead."

"Mostly ghosties for me," Fiori said. "But that's not nearly the coolest part. Roth can actually suck up the souls of monsters we kill, and then I can use them as one-time charges to do a special spell. I can only hold three at a time right now, but that'll go up pretty quickly. And, boss monster souls give me a permanent upgrade instead!"

"Makes up for how Necromancers can't actually upgrade their weapons. They're supposed to be an aspect of your magic or whatever," Noire said.

"M-hm! But also, it can't get lost or stolen~," Fiori said, letting go of her scythe to unsummon it; it changed back into some purple flames which dissipated into the air.

"Mmh, you might've wanted to keep that out," the catgirl said, turning off to one side slightly.
"Eh?" Thora looked as confused at the delcaration as the necromancer was. But Noire smoothly took out a dagger and tossed it where she was facing just as a big lion-looking thing came roaring out from behind a nearby tree. "Aah!"

Fiori hopped farther away from the monster's path as the weapon landed square in its forehead, Noire dodged smoothly aside of its tackle, and Thora pulled out a gigantic club, readying it like a baseball bat. Now that it was out in the open, the creature's features were a little easier to see: It had some huge feathery wings folded up behind its back, and its tail was unusually long and thick, sporting a gradient from the golden fur of its back to some green scales which ended with a snake's head that seemed to move of its own accord. No sooner had the monster landed than that head reared back to snap at Thora, who swung her club straight into it, making it flop back like a sock puppet and hiss in pain.

"Ro~oth," the necromancer sang, willing the wisp out of her again and having him fly up and over to the opposite side of the monster while she re-drew her scythe. Thora was between her and the monster, but she could see through her familiar's eyes, and—after a brief chant—shoot a small, dark-purple fireball out at the beast with him as the origin. It hit the creature in its left wing, and didn't act so much like fire as it did some dread, rapid-acting necrotic disease, rotting the flesh it hit for just a second before fizzling out.

The rogue darted back in to slash the monster's left side with her remaining dagger. Then she jumped over the beast well ahead of its retaliatory bite, snatching the other dagger out of its forehead on the way to leave behind a wide gash, and landed next to Thora.

"Rrrrah!" The tall girl seemed to be busy psyching herself up a bit, her body and eyes gaining a faint reddish, firelike glow about them. When the beast turned to roar at her, its tail swinging forward to go in for another bite, she swung her spiky club upward, catching its underside and sending it flying into the air. It spread its wings seemingly on instinct then, gliding around to dive toward Noire, claws bared. The catgirl tucked and rolled out of the way, giving Fiori ample room to send a stream of dark-purple flame out from a small crystal attached to the end of her scythe's handle, catching the monster full in the side.

"Oof!" The necromancer couldn't quite move quickly enough to get out of the beast's way when it turned to tackle her, but Thora managed to shove her over and take the hit instead, the beast failing to knock her down but raking its claws across her arms all the same. Its lion-face roared, snapping at her as the snake came forward to do the same; she roared back angrily, pushing the monster off then hitting it with her club hard enough to send it flying until it hit a tree—and that with enough impact to badly crack the trunk.

The monster growled and hissed weakly as it slid to the ground and the tree began to fall, and it made a weak aggressive motion toward the party—Thora still standing with her club in hand, Fiori in the process of pushing herself up off the ground, and Noire trying to offer the necromancer a hand to aid in this endeavor. Then it collapsed, falling silent and very clearly dead.

"Phhoooff." Fiori sat up to a cross-legged position, unsummoning the scythe which had landed unceremoniously to the ground next to her and sending her wisp over to collect the monster's soul.

"Sheesh," the berserker said, her rage-aura dying down again now that the fight was over.

"Thora, are you okay? Those scratches look kinda bad," the smaller demon-girl observed.

"Ehh..I'll be fine," she said, rubbing her arms a bit. "They don't even 'hurt' that much, if that makes sense. I'm sure we can find a healer or inn or whatever before too long."

"It would be wise not to make too loud a ruckus until then," Noire said, running a hand across her hair and an ear in a way that struck Fiori as 'preening'. "Surely even more ferocious beasts than that walk this forest."

"Eheh, sorry for all the yelling," the necromancer said.
"Yeah, what was that thing?" Thora said, accidentally cutting her off. "Some kinda..gryphon-manticore-chimera..?"

"I'm calling it a winged lion-snake," the catgirl replied. "And—it's quite alright. I know entry into this world can be rather..jarring." She offered Fiori a hand again, which she took this time.

"Heheh, you could say that."

"Now, the spoils." Noire marched over to where the monster's body had been a moment ago—Roth passing her by going the opposite direction—and knelt down, swiftly and neatly dividing the little pile of droppoed items into three equal-looking ones. "Even split, all good?" she asked, turning her head back toward the pair.
"Uh..looks fine to me," Thora said.

"Yep!"

"Right then." The catgirl scooped up one pile into her own inventory, took another to offer up to the berserker as she walked close, and then stood up with the third pile to go present it to Fiori.

"I believe it would be advantageous for the three of us to stick together, at least until we can vacate this forest. Would you two agree?"
"Uh—yeah, sure," Thora said.
"I'd love to work with you two, even after," Fiori said brightly, putting her arms behind her and rocking back and forth cutely. "All the way through this adventure, even!"

"Heheh, all right then. That settled..I believe we were headed in this direction," the rogue said, pointing. "If we keep moving in the same direction, we must surely reach the edge of these woods eventually. Unless you noticed a quicker way while you were above?" she added, turning toward the shorter demon-girl.

"Uh—nope, sorry. I was kinda too busy panicking," she said. "Couldn't you, like, climb a tree if you wanted to double-check though?"
"Hmm. A capital idea," Noire nodded.

The catgirl looked around briefly, evidently picking the easiest tree, and then nimbly leapt and swung up its branches to the top. After surveying their surroundings for only a moment, she made good on her earlier claim and leapt the entire distance down, landing on her feet without so much as a roll and incurred no injury from the fall. "We're within sight of the edge," she said and then pointed, "This way!"

Thora took point, Noire falling in next to but slightly behind her. Fiori shrugged and followed behind the two of them, trying not to be mesmerized too much by the catgirl's tail flicking back and forth.

"Um, you know what—I'm usually nowhere near this loud," she said after a bit. "Or, happy to talk at all. Liiike...acting like this is pretty new to me."
"Well—a high charisma score grants you a 'mental boost' of sorts," the rogue said, turning her head partway back, "to help you act however you want to act. That's why I put some extra points in it, for a roleplaying aid."

"Hmm. I wonder if there's any real-world magic that could give me that kinda 'boost'," Fiori said. "Although I guess that might be a bit of a risky thing to ask someone for..."

"Real problem would be finding someone even willing to try it," Thora said. "Mental magic is super heavily regulated."

It seemed to Chris that she'd lucked out quite a bit, to run into a party she slotted well into. They seemed to be complete save for a healer, so—about as well-balanced a party as possible until they found a "worship site" to pick up one of those from. Plus, these two seemed cool, fun to hang out with..and Thora was pretty cute, too.