The "Best" RPG Ever-36

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When something came out of the portal, it came out fast. It was human-sized and purplish in shade, but little more could be determined from the blur of motion by any of the party before they went to attack it. Zack's blades went through the air, and he had to duck back right away as Nora's rock went over her target—it had ducked, and in the instant of not running that caused they could finally, briefly see what it looked like.

It looked like a man, maybe about average height. Purple skin, red hair, fit and muscular but not particularly bulky, not wearing much in the way of clothes. It, or he, had a thick tail ending in a sharp black spike, and black horns from the top of his head. Katherine threw a knife at him while he was busy standing up, but he caught it in his left hand by the blade, taking only a small cut as he transferred its hilt to his right hand and used it to swat aside her other shots and then toss backhanded at Mika. She was still exhausted from the ritual and slow to dodge, forcing Zack to go to her and block with his larger sword instead of pressing another attack.

The demon rushed toward Nora, completely ignoring a blast of fire from her hands and stopping just shy of her reach. She was about to duck back when his eyes caught hers, and..all of a sudden she couldn't move. Her face was hot, and she felt..strange. Time seemed to slow for a moment, and it felt like she was the only one there with him. He smiled—intensifying the strange and now pleasant feeling between her legs and the heat in her body, and he made a small noise, a kind of smug chuckling "Heh."

All of this took a couple of actual seconds at most before Katherine took another shot at him. This one he ducked under but—seemingly on purpose—allowed to graze his shoulder. Nora, a strange red glow over her eyes, looked at the catgirl with an enraged expression and rushed at her, tearing up the nearby ground to attack. She had to jump out of the way. Nora!?

Zack made it to the demon and rushed it with a series of strikes, but it felt like he was moving in slow motion as it danced easily around them. What's going on?

Her mind's—I can't reach her! The psion was forced to retreat more as Nora shot a few blasts of flame straight for her.

Charm spell! Mesmerise! Keep trying! Mika's voice. She had mounted her broom now, and tried a swooping slice with her scythe. The demon dodged this too, and when Zack tried to take advantage of that move to stab it with his shorter sword it grabbed that by the bladed and jerked it out of his hand—he was stronger than he looked, and the knight was misbalanced to keep a hold of the hilt.

Then the demon started stabbing and swiping at Zack with his own weapon. He took his larger blade in both hands, blocking and dodging every attack but not finding the space or time to counter. It stood up fully for an instant and looked him in the eye; Zack felt something strange between his legs, a heat in his cheeks, but took the instant to make a sharp sideways slice at the demon, expressing rage that it was trying to do that to him. It limboed under the attack and chained that into a backflip, jumping over another swooping attack from Mika.

Can you—stun it? Zack's mental voice sounded slightly shaken, less composed and confident than usual.

I've been trying, it has mental defenses! Katherine was having a hard enough time trying to dodge a whip of water and stay on her feet against a gale of wind simultaneously, and worse than that, the efl had chased her well away from the main fight by now. She couldn't even stun Nora as seemingly whatever effect the demon had on her had given her a share of those defenses.

Should I try a bomb? Mika suggested

It resists fire, what do you think it does with demon fire? Zack went on the offensive, swiping at the demon as quickly as he could. It seemed to dance around his strikes easily, passing up numerous opportunities to counter as if it was just playing with him.

I only have like two tricks! Pumpkins?

It'd be a distraction at least!

Mika put away her scythe, useless as she was with it, and started throwing ordinary pumpkins at the demon, raining them from above as fast as she could. It sliced a few of them apart in midair between blocking Zack's attacks, and then switched to catching and throwing them away like it was part of a juggling act. Every time its eyes met Zack's he felt more of that strange feeling and warmth, and...for as much as he consciously tried to ignore and deny it, he was starting to like it.

Forget it! This isn't—working. Even as effortless as thinking to the others normally was, it sounded like he was having trouble. Mika decided to try another tactic, landing behind the demon and coming at him again with her scythe, this time from the ground. Her attacks were clumsy flailing strikes but at least seemed to have more effect than the pumpkins had at forcing the demon to focus on dodging instead of whatever it was doing to the knight.

Zack! Are you okay over there? Katherine risked splitting her concentration to try and give him a hand, boosing his mental control with some of her own. At the same time she made the less pleasant decision of going for a more physical solution to her current problem, turning her knives hilt-first on Nora and aiming for the head.

I'm—not, I'll..I can't—I...

She had a brief private conference with Mika: Great, he's losing it.

I'm trying to help!

I know, I know.

Finally, a blow connected. Nora flinched back hard at a sharp blow to the side of her head; her attacks stopped at once, the glow disappearing from her eyes and her expression turning to one of stunned confusion. "W—what—?"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMmmmngh!" She was cut off by a loud yell of frustration and rage from Zack which terminated in an even more concerning way.

The witch saw Zack yell and make a hard downward strike, his sword landing entirely in the ground. The demon darted around him and suddenly grabbed him in its arms, cutting off the yell with an unsolicited kiss. For a second the wolf-girl's hands moved as if to push him off, but then they wrapped around the demon in a return of its embrace.

Mika! Kill it! Katherine's voice, in her head.

I—I can't. It'll just dodge and then I'll hit Zack!

WELL DO SOMETHING!

It felt...good, briefly. A physical and emotional release, all at once. All of the frustration and annoyance and confusion flew away, and the only thing he could feel was the demon's body against his own, its lips on his. He felt..intensely hot, but it was a good kind of heat somehow, coupled with an even better feeling between his legs. Of course...they had an audience just now, so this was all they could do. Somehow it was speaking to him without talking: All he had to do was get rid of them, and then they could be...

The demon flinched in pain suddenly, no more than a very slight jerking motion in the middle of the kiss. But it was enough. Zack remembered immediately who he was and realized what he'd been thinking of doing. His sword was still held weakly in his right hand, and now he grabbed it firmly, shoving the demon off of him with his left hand and in the same motion stabbing it straight through its unarmored chest.

Its grip on the knight's other sword weakened, and he took that too, driving the larger blade farther into its torso while hacking wildly at its head and arms and anything else he could reach. Zack knelt over onto the ground as it fell onto its back, burying his blade through the demon's body and into the ground until its crossguard touched its chest and refused to go deeper, and still pushing at the hilt after that, continuing to punch any uninjured part of it with the other blade as frequently and quickly as he could.

The wolf had run into the circle and bitten the demon's ankle. As soon as Zack snapped free the wolf drew back a few steps and spat blue demon blood on the ground, clearly disgusted by the taste. The others ran up to find the knight still striking, tears coming from his face, screaming continually despite having made himself hoarse, Mika looking too terrified to approach him.

"Zack!" Katherine came closer to him first, trying to exert some kind of calming influence on his mind. "You can stop, it's dead. Zack. It's dead."

He let go of the larger sword and dropped the smaller one on the ground, levering back to a sitting position, audibly heaving long, staggering breaths in and out. The catgirl knelt over, trying to get a good look at his face. He was still crying, approaching sobbing, between breaths. "It's..it's over, Zack. You killed it."
In between gasps for more air, he managed: "G...Good. T—...Tell Mika to, to eat the soul already and let's g...get out of here."

Mika didn't come any closer yet, although a part of her desperately wanted to run up and suck the delicious soul out of the corpse. Katherine sat down. "Are you...okay?"

"I'll..I'll be fine." His breathing was steadier now, but still sounded shaky; his face was bright red. "Just—do it already!" Some of the rage from before tinged his voice.

"Y-yessir!" Mika ran up to the badly mangled corpse and raised her hands over it. Something deep purple and fire-like rose from about the location of the sword through the demon's chest, and after matching the witch's chest in height it flew into her. She breathed a contented sigh in spite of her worry over Zack, unable to entirely contain how good the latest addition to her power felt. But there was something more to it, even...

The others watched as the witch began to be surrounded with a purple, fire-like aura, as if she was overflowing with power after the latest meal. "Oh..o-oh!" she said softly, closing her eyes as she felt the power of the souls she'd absorbed so far flowing outward, to the rest of her body.

She felt her ears stretching out first, lengthening out to the sides and gaining pointed tips. Then her whole body began to stretch, pushing itself upward and outward. She grew taller, her figure becoming more pronounced and her breasts in particular pushing themselves out bigger and bigger. Her clothes rearranged, her dress fading to a pattern of dark red and black, the color fading from her stockings to create pure black and white stripes. Her hair grew longer, her wings grew to match her increasing stature, gaining a couple of small spikes, and her tail lengthened slightly, both gaining a slight purple tint. Her voice, let out of her throat in a series of small, steady "Mmh"'s as the changes progressed, deepened. Her body grew not just in size, but also stronger and more agile. She even felt smarter and cleverer, more powerful with her magic and just more capable overall. Before long, a new woman stood before the others.

She opened her eyes again; they'd turned bright purple, like the demon she'd just eaten. "Ah..phew...wow. That was, kind of a rush," she said, trying to get used to having a deeper voice again. "I feel like..I should be a lot more useful to everyone now!" she said, smiling and nodding confidently.

In the time it had taken her to change, Zack had managed to stop the crying entirely and surruptitiously wipe his face dry. He still felt angry and beyond that, very strange, but forced himself even to smile. "Good. Great." The knight pushed himself up, ignoring a hand offered by Nora, and moved a little unsteadily to his weapons. Somewhere in the course of its soul being taken the demon's body had evaporated away like a puddle of water.

Zack drew the larger blade out of the ground, took the smaller one, and sheathed them both, moving carefully and slowly as if he was concerned he'd fall over if he didn't. Then he went over to the wolf, who was sitting watching him, its tail wagging in a way that seemed...concerned. He reached over and patted it on the head a couple of times, which it didn't move to prevent. "Thanks. You saved us." It barked in response. "No, I—I'll be fine. C'mon, let's..let's get back to town, okay?" He seemed to be mostly talking to the animal, but when he started in the direction the town was in the others guessed he meant them too and followed.

He seemed to stagger and wobble strangely, as if he couldn't quite get his footing, the entire way back. Nora trailed behind the others, dead silent, and if either of the girls in the middle looked at her she just looked away, pretending to have noticed something in whatever that other direction was.

After a while, Katherine couldn't take the total silence anymore. She didn't want to distract Zack or force Nora to talk or listen just now, so she went for a mental conversation with just Mika. So..what's the new part of your tree look like?

Tree? The witch's mental voice seemed to have somehow deepened to match her physical one. Oh, right—uh, it says 'Incubus'. Which is weird 'cause I'm still a girl. But uh, it has a bunch of passive physical enhancement abilities, like strength, speed, endurance and stuff. And there's some charisma enhancers, some, uh, charm type spells, and..oh!.some higher up spells joining this to the fire branch are actually transformation stuff. I wonder if I could...

Yeah, go for it maybe, but—Katherine waved slightly to Zack, especially to whatever his present condition was—Please don't mention it right now. Or, ever until you're really sure it'll work. We don't...I really don't want to give him hope and then it turns out to be false, you know?

I understand, yeah. Oh, hey, also: My base stats changed. It's like it took a bite out of the massive luck I had before and then spread three times that much across everything else. I might actually be halfway competent in a fight now. Maybe.

That's good. The scythe's a little more your size now, too.

Oh, yeah! Man, I nearly forgot what it was like to be tall. Well, not tall really but—

—Taller than me! interjected Kathrine, now the shortest of the four. The witch's eye level matched up with about the tips of the catgirl's ears standing straight up now.

Yeah, but I mean, like, kinda normal sized? I wasn't all that tall of a guy so this feels about like what used to be normal.

Oh, but... Mika nodded subtly in Zack's direction. He's, uh, definitely not okay. We should...do something about that, right?

Yes, absolutely. We do need to get to town first, and after that I can just tell he'll be too stubborn to go to anyone for help just then. So we'll sleep on it till morning, and if it's not fixed by then we are going to whatever this world's equivalent of a doctor is right away whether he wants to or not. Even if it is magical in nature, I'm sure they're trained to deal with that stuff too.

Mika frowned. I'm sorry I..couldn't do anything to stop that, whatever it was it did. Or even, interrupt it.

Your objection was totally correct. It...it had enough of a mind for mental defenses, it had enough to have planned the whole thing out. Plan A: It charms our strongest member with something more powerful than the weaker one it used on Nora and uses him as an ally to help kill us. Plan B: It dodges if you strike so that same strongest member gets hurt. But I don't even think it knew the wolf was around until he bit it.

So the little guy pretty much saved all of us. If that animal won't let me feed it a steak tomorrow I don't know what I'll do.

It let Zack pat it on the head tonight. Honestly, I'm starting to think it's kind of tsundere for us—in aaan, animal-human, non-romantic relationship sort of way.

Hahah, tsundere? Mika managed to keep her internal laughter from producing more than a slight upward curl of the right side of her lips outwardly.

Katherine imitated a deep, angry voice: 'Grr, I'm only following you around because your alpha beat me in a fight.' And then a high-pitched, squeaky one: 'Oh Mika help me, the alpha's been in the library for months and I'm sooo lonely~!'

Stop, stop! I'm gonna really laugh. As it was, the witch had to pretend to cough a couple of times. To the others, this was the only short break in the silence throughout the entire trip.

---

Everyone powered up, and then they played around with some of those powers in a training yard by the guardhouse for a bit; before they knew it it was already well past time for supper. The Broken Dragon was the only place they knew of open so late, so there they went. Aria was saying: "So, even with the uh.." (she paused on realizing they were in public, and decided against the word 'bloodlust') "..weird hunger of mine mitigated a little, I still think it'd probably be a good idea to get something for it tomorrow. Since we sorta had today off. And then we could take a real day off after that?" She waved vaguely toward Lynn. "Go on another date or whatever?"
The human girl just blushed and nodded, with a slightly annoyed "Yeah, yeah."

Clera tapped Rayna, next to her, on the shoulder and pointed at the window on her opposite side. "There is a dragon in the window."
"Yeah, I've seen it." She turned toward where the winged girl was pointing, thinking she meant a decoration drawn on the window. "It's very—oh." Rose was approaching the tavern on the street, looking in much better spirits than she'd left that morning. She had changed her clothes to a short dark blue pleated skirt and something resembling the top part of a girl's school uniform but with all the sleeves torn off. "Wonder why she's back so soon?"

"I thought you liked her," said Lynn teasingly, referring to their conversation on the way to the community center.

"I do, I'm just—didn't she need to be in her forest for a while to not have dragon instinct problems?"

"And wasn't it like a half a day away?" said Aria, equally as concerned by this development. "Did she stop by for like two seconds and decide everything would be fine?"

"Well, stop asking nobody and ask her, silly," said Lynn. Indeed, the dragon-girl walked into the building, looking around. Rayna waved to her and she came running over eagerly, stopping next to the booth and squtting over to bring her head level with them.

"Hiii! I'm so glad you're still awake!"

"Well, I take it your hoard was fine?" said Rayna, reaching over and patting her on the shoulder a couple of times. She seemed not to mind the gesture, just continuing to smile and talk.

"Yep! Just like I left it. Er, well I mean like, the plants grew some like they always do but—yep it was fine! Iiiiiii..." she paused, attempting to think of an excuse for her new skills. "Fffffound a plant. Uhm, an herb. I totally forgot about, that makes—y-you know, because I haven't been around people in a long time. The herb totally makes a dragon, like, less..hoard, care-y about-y. Uh."

"It's okay, we know what you mean," said Lynn. "How come you came back so fast though? I thought you'd at least want to tend to a few plants or something first."

"Well, I did tend to the plants. All of them. That's when I found the uh, herb. Yeah, I took care of some pruning and planting and harvesting and stuff, made another basketful to take to town, spread the grass out a tiiiiny bit farther," she said, her ability to speak coherently returning when she started telling the truth, "but then I, um. I remembered a way to get back to town faster!" 'Remembered' was much simpler than 'I found an herb' to describe a new skill she'd learned. "It's like a, cart thingy, made of plants. It doesn't work in a place without plants but there's grass and stuff all the way from there to here if you weave around some rocky parts."
"That's pretty cool," said Aria cheerfully. "How big is it? Can you take someone for a ride sometime?"

"I can make it bigger or smaller, it's harder to carry more weight but I'm sure I could get one or two people in it!" she said. "Oh, but.." She realized that it'd be more helpful if at least the four of them could come along some time. "I...have a fewwwww...like, ideas! For how I can make it better later, and then it'll be able to take lots of people!"

"Cool, cool," the shifter nodded, ignoring Clera glaring at her.

Rayna changed the subject. "So how long are you planning to stay in town this time?"
"Hmmnn..I dunno, a day or two maybe? I saw some neat places last time when we were going to eat and I wanted to look a little closer at them. And uh, hang out with you guys or the other nice people I met before if there's time, maybe," she added nervously, blushing slightly.

"Well, I think we have to work tomorrow," said Rayna, "but we're probably taking the day after off. So at least I can hang out with you then if you want."
"Okay!" The dragon-girl chirped happily and nodded, smiling brightly at the prospect. Maybe the other girls—well, three girls and the one that wasn't—would be around tomorrow, then. "Umm, I'm sorry for interrupting your supper. I think I'll go ask for a room, uhh, if they'll let me wait to pay for it after I trade some of my flowers I brought to someone tomorrow."
"You're not intruding on anything," said Clera, "perhaps we could ask the waiter for a chair."

"Aww, that's okay," Rose said, beaming at the invitation. "I really should get some sleep though, 'cause it's kinda late. I'll see you later though!" She popped upright again and went over to the bar to see about that room. She didn't want being tired to make her say anything weirder than she already had, and it was late after all.

---

Here we get to a part of Party 1's (Zack's party if it's not clear what I mean) story that I've had planned for a long while now, but which was and will be a little difficult to write out in exactly the right way. Hopefully I'm doing a decent job at it so far.

Ren (A Midas Journal side-caption)

So this is something a little unusual. Basically I had an idea of something that happens in the same world as the Midas Journal story but there's absolutely no way to fit it into the narrative conceit of that story itself, and it's something that makes a very good caption. You don't really need to read the Midas Journal story to understand this caption or this caption to continue understanding that story, but they are both canon to each other. I'm not sure if this sort of thing will happen again, but feel free to let me know your opinions of the overall concept if you want.

The "Best" RPG Ever-35

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"Well, while we're just copying a bunch of information from our own heads down on paper...may as well talk a little," said Aria. "What'd you two do back on Earth?"

"We did a show on the intertubes," said Rayna. "Kind of a sliding scale between a let's play and a review show. We'd pass the controller back and forth and question everything in the game."

Lynn nodded. "Mechanics, story, characterization, motivation.."
"We've found ourselves doing a little of that with this world and 'game mechanics' here, too."

"Pardon my ignorance, but...how does that make money?" said Clera.

"Same way a TV show does—ads," said Lynn.

"Well, at first. After a while we decided ads were stupid and did kind of a voluntary subscription thing where whoever wanted to could pay us monthly for our work."

"That...was enough?"
"You must not have a lot of faith in the human race," said the archer.

Rayna said, "Yeah, we did pretty well for ourselves on that. I guess we were just popular enough for it to work out. I mean, we weren't medical-degree rich or anything, but after a while we were pulling in so much a month we decided to donate a portion of it to charity."

"That is admirable." She didn't seem to react to the 'medical degree' comment at all.

"What about you, huh?" said Lynn, turning back to the shapeshifter. "How'd you make a living?"
"Well, my job was as a systems analyst, but that's just how I made my money. My life was games. High scores, speedruns—if it had a leaderboard I'm probably on there somewhere near the top. I did streams every night, man, I really wonder how some of my audience folks are getting along without me."

"You have a bit of an ego, huh," said Rayna.

"It's not boasting if it's true. You ever min-maxed in Baldur's Gate so hard you beat the sequel without ever leveling up?"

"Uh, can't say I have," said Lynn.

"Well that's why I'm in charge here once we get all this down. I can read game mechanics like a pamphlet and find the good, cheap stuff right away. I mean—you know, I'm not saying you have to do what I say but I'm pretty sure you'll agree with me once I give it a good hard look."

Clera had been quiet for a bit. She seemed to be glaring intensely at the part of her tree she was writing down, as if it specifically displeased her. Aria decided to distract her: "So what about you? You're a doctor, I know."
"..Correct."
"Well, what do you do for fun? I mean, when you're not busy...doctor-ing."
"I mostly read when I have the time, which wasn't very often. As far as fiction goes: Mystery, drama, or suspense. Otherwise, I would read medical journals and textbooks, but I suppose that falls under 'doctor-ing' still."

"Hey, what d'you think a medical textbook's like in this world?" said Rayna. "I mean, just between the four of us there's radically different physiologies all around. Are there—or should there be—a different profession for every possible combination of races, you think?"

"Well, there is magic," said Clera. "Using that seems to allow one to at least heal injuries without nearly as much understanding of how the body works as normal medicine. If I had to guess, I would suspect medicine in this world is well behind ours out of a simple lack of necessity. But—yes, if someone tried to perform medicine in this world without using magic as a crutch it would likely take a different person to handle each kind. The overarching principles would be the same, and possibly many organs shared since everyone seems to be humanoid, but more detailed work would undoubtedly require years of specialized study."

---

"So, what do you all think? Are we on for tonight?" said Mika, on the way out of the guardhouse.

"I think we can do it, after a good early sleep," said Katherine. "Unless our tank is still hurt?" She looked to Zack and then Nora.

"I t-took care of the worse bruises earlier. After we sleep I th-think he'll be just fine," said the elf, nodding.

"Thanks, I guess," said the knight. "Actually, I wonder if..." He raised his left hand and got the shield to shimmer into view briefly; the cracks from its impact with the giant bony fist seemed to have mostly faded. "Hm. I guess it regenerates over time. Good, I don't really want to know what happens if it breaks."

"Shouldn't whatever skill governs shield usage say something about that?" said the catgirl. "Or like, the shield's description in inventory or something?"

"I don't think it really has a specific skill...I think it's actually part of the armor, so it's not a separate item either."

"We can worry about that later!" said the witch. "For now, we should eat good before going to bed. Tonight's fight is gonna be hard, probably."

"Yeah, I guess so," Zack agreed. "Maybe something different from the Broken Dragon, then..."

---

Finally, they had finished writing everything down. The skill trees were all expansive in scope, and even with Aria stretching herself as tall as her body would go to hang the corkboards and put the papers at the tops of those they still wound up having to cut each tree into two sections to keep them from being half on the floor. She looked over the whole expanse for a few minutes, letting the others talk among themselves some more, before reaching a few conclusions.

"Okay, let's start this thing for real now. Don't buy anything until we've gone over the whole party, though! The first thing jumping out at me is this," she said, pointing to a spot about halfway up Rayna's tree. "You see this skill? If I'm reading it right, it basically lets you add a modifier to all the illusion skills that makes them more real. You max this out and you can basically warp reality at will."

"Seriously?" The foxgirl genuinely hadn't gotten that from its description.

"I mean, there are limits of course, a lot of the effects seem to be temporary in nature, but yeah. The main problem is the prereq for this is literally every skill below it. All of those." She gestured to nearly the entire bottom half of the tree. "I think it's worth chasing after that skill, but it means having a large number of weak skills for a while, which isn't usually ideal."
"Well, I'll have lots of options at least," she said. "Seems like it's worth a try."
"As far as your role in a fight goes, it doesn't really change from any of these abilities. Distract enemies, draw their fire, feint so they block nothing, so on. I'd suggest starting with the skills that make your illusions register on all the different senses in case we have to fight something that doesn't rely mostly on sight. Maybe the ones that can make the illusions look like things other than you after that?"

"Yeah, that sounds fun."

She went over to Lynn's tree next. "Now, your skills are super straightforward. Big wheel of elements, and then some bow skills which you started out with but can still be improved on. I'd say get any elements you don't know first for good weakness coverage, and then improve the high-utility ones like rock, electricity, fire. Sprinkling some points into the shot range and accuracy skills wouldn't hurt either."

"I was probably just gonna do that anyway."
"I know, I know. Like I said, really straightforward."

She went to Clera's tree next, thinking Doctor Sweet might need more guidance than the others as a non-game-player in general. "Hokay. So, let's discuss this section first." She pointed to a branch of the tree taking up nearly a third of its horizontal space. This was what the winged girl had been glaring at before: Skills focused on transferring injuries and sickness to others, either from herself or from allies.

"Absolutely not," she said, shaking her head.

"You don't even know what I was gonna say about it."
"If you wish to discuss it then you expect me to take one or more of those abilities."

"Well—it would give you more reliable way to hurt bad guys than the sword."
"It is a perversion of what my powers are supposed to be for. I won't use something intended for healing to hurt people."
"You wouldn't be hurting people though, just monsters. Or—really bad people, maybe. It'd be a good emergency vent if you take too many hits or absorb too much from one of us, if nothing else."
Her eyes were fierce and her expression serious, bordering on enraged. "I won't do it."

"Well okay then. That's why I wanted to discuss that first, I thought you might react that way. So—there is an alternative build."

The central branch of Clera's tree was focused on healing herself; the branch opposite the "give wounds to others" one was focused on taking the wounds of others. These the shapeshifter turned to now. "If you pump a bunch of points into having loads of health and regenerating super fast, then you can be a perfectly self-sufficient damage sponge. Take about two-thirds these skills and one-third those—" (she indicated the "take wounds" branch) "—You can be a tank and healer all at once. The only thing you're missing is a way to actively draw fire from our enemies, but I bet we can find an enchanted item or something that'll do that for us."
"You're saying Clera here—whose bones I should mention are hollow to allow for flight—should be taking a bunch of hits for us?" said Rayna.
"Have you even seen these skills?" Aria waved at the middle portion of the tree again. "She probably has more HP than all of us combined right now—I mean if HP was a thing in this world—and it only skyrockets up from there. And if the ridiculous passive regeneration isn't enough there are active self-healing powers out the wazoo up here. The, uh.." She sighed. "The only real problem is that all these skills make it pretty clear in their description that taking damage still hurts and healing does too. This is why I thought the 'harm' branch might be a good investment, apparently it doesn't hurt to give your injuries away."

"I can deal with that," said Clera, nodding. "You don't know how many times I have looked on a patient and wished I could ease their pain, even if by taking on some of it myself."

"Yeah," Aria nodded seriously. "Just—you know—try not to overdo it? Obviously you should still dodge when you can, but having someone we can throw at enemies to keep them off our more fragile members' backs is always gonna help."

"Well, what are you gonna do with your skills then?" said Lynn, pointing to Aria's tree. It was a split between skills granting her more power while the sword was sheathed, skills to both weaken the constant blood hunger and give her more self-control when the sword was out, and skills which improved her abilities in the uncontrolled state.
"I noticed something very interesting about these passive buff skills," said the shifter, turning to the sheathed skills. "They all act as a percentage of my stats when the sword is out, which means if I take skills that improve those along with these then it creates a pretty great synergy. "But...realistically, when I'm in a battle I'm gonna have the sword out. I can't see any good reason to take a lot of the sheathed state skills on their own merits. Except, well..." She pointed to the skill at the very top of the tree, which had requirements high up on all three branches. "This thing."

The others came a little closer to read it. It was called "Fully Merge," a passive skill which when taken completely removed the separation between the demon in the sword and the weilder. It altered the "sheathed" skills to become constant percentage bonuses on top of the "unsheathed" boosts, which would now always be active, and granted total self-control, funneling anything spent on the self-control skills into weakening the bloodlust, which now became that of the merged being instead of the sword's.

"I want this, because if we're stuck here forever I don't want to be fighting against the instinct of something that's not me for the entire rest of my life. Plus I think this has the effect of making there be one less cursed demon-sword in the world. And—I mean, it's a pretty great bunch of advantages it gives anyway. It would...make me want to eat blood myself instead of feeding it to the sword, but it's not like it has to be person blood. I can just do, you know, 'friendly vampire' strats and get it from animals. So, in light of that I want to put just enough to cover its prereqs in this part of the tree," she said, pointing to the "sheathed" section, "take lots of this with a generous helping of 'not as hungry for blood all the time'," (the self-control portion), "and then some of this" (the "unsheathed" stat boosts) "in case my superbuffed self isn't enough at some point. I'm starting with self-control abilities for fairly obvious reasons, though, for now."

"Yeah, that...seems like a good idea to me," said Rayna, "long as you can put up with basically being part demon and whatever effect that has on your reputation."
"Pff," the shifter waved dismissively, "I'll be hero by then so nobody will care."

"No objections here," Lynn nodded. "Should we just start buying things now?"
"If everyone's okay with what all we've said, yes," Aria nodded. "When you do though, mark it on the sheets! We're keeping these handy to refer back to later. Feel free to make some pencil marks to remind yourself what you plan on getting with your next few points."

---

The construction didn't seem to have started yet; when Zack and the others arrived, the place was still deserted. Mika had in her inventory all the things for another summoning ritual, freshly bought that afternoon after supper, and just needed to make a few small adjustments to deal with the site having been disturbed. The others sat in the grass nearby while she finished setting things up.

"Well, what do you think this demon's gonna look like?" said Katherine. "We've had, what, a pumpkin and then the weird little fire thing? I guess that's plant and element..so, animal maybe?"

Zack looked to the elf. "Did you read anything about demons in your research?"
"Uh, a l-little. It seems they c-can take on all kinds of forms. Some of the st-stronger ones are humanoid, but supposedly still not p-people exactly. The only d-demons that are people are s-supposed to be archdemons."

The psion headtilted slightly. "What, so you mean even humanoid ones aren't sapient?"
"It's p-possible that's incorrect, and more of a j-justification for killing them on sight. B-but then, records of demon attacks show little to no st-strategy or organization u-unless a witch or warlock or ar-archdemon is leading them, so.."

"Well, we have to kill this one even if it begs us not to," said Zack.

"...By the way, why's the wolf here?" said Katherine, pointing to the animal sitting on the other side of the knight from her. "What's the point if he doesn't like being close to this 'unnatural' thing or whatever?"

"I dunno." Zack looked at the wolf. "Any particular reason?"
The catgirl closed her eyes and relayed: "...Pack's here, so he's here. But...you weren't with us when you went off to hunt. Oh, he asked permission for that. Do you want permission to leave now? ...No point, we're already here. If you say so, whatever."

Mika left the circle, coming over to where the others were sitting. "I'm about ready to start casting. So...battle formation or whatever?"

They looked at each other for a second. "Yeah," Zack said, "we should probably just plan on attacking whatever comes out of the portal as soon as it's in front of us instead of waiting around like last time."

"That wouldn't have worked on the fire demon, though," said Katherine, hopping up to her feet.

"Yeah, but it might be something that it will work with, right?" He said, standing up and offering Nora a hand to help her up.
She took the hand and stood up as well, nodding. "S-seems possible." The wolf stayed seated outside the circle.

Mika chanted just as before, and the circle slowly burned, followed by the fire moving into the altar. Each of the three readied an attack: Zack in Light form with both swords raised for a swift strike, Katherine holding some elemental knives chosen at random in preparation to throw, Nora holding a large rock she'd found nearby a few inches in the air, ready to throw. Mika, panting as much from the effort as before, got out her shiny new scythe weapon as soon as the chanting was over and the portal started opening, but also took a few steps back since the first demon had seemed interested in targeting just her.

The portal seemed to be a wider and taller tear in space than before. They waited a tense several seconds for something to come out of it.

---

 I didn't really intend for this one to be 90% "nerds talking about skill builds" but a scene like this was inevitable at some point I guess. At any rate, if this part of the story bores you I'm sorry, the next one should be fairly exciting.

Midas Journal 25

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

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Entry: May 18

I think I should start with: I'm back to being a guy again. The day before yesterday, Brian came by my house. I let him in, and in my living room he said, “Well, you said you wanted to give it about a week. I kinda forgot yesterday, but if I'm being honest I really do like being the girl..not that we can't go back and forth sometimes, of course.”

“Yeah,” I said. After changing back into my male (but still werewolf) self, I gently tapped him on his shoulder. He started shrinking right away, his jeans shifting into short shorts and quickly tightening between the legs as nearly the first thing to change was his sex. She wrapped her arms around me in a hug just as her hair was starting to grow out, and soon after I returned the hug she lost enough height that I was carrying her up in the air. I felt her chest push out against mine with just our shirts between, and 'remembered' her just casually tossing her bra on the couch a minute ago. Before she'd even finished changing she planted her face on mine, and before we were done I'd landed on the couch with her on top of me.

I gently lifted Brie up and around until she was sitting next to me, her tail audibly swishing across the couch cushion. “Thanks, I think I'd just fall over if I tried to get up just now~,” she said a little teasingly. Reaching over and rubbing a finger across the base of one of my ears, she said, “Of course you know, I'll feel like switching you back and forth every now and then.”

“Well, y-yeah, of course,” I said, shivering slightly from the ear-rubbing.

I don't feel like I need to say too much more about what happened that day. We spent most of the afternoon alternating between talking and more kissing and/or petting, and she went home for supper.

At lunch yesterday, Adena waved at me. “Hey Kael. Back to manhood, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Brie really likes being the girlfriend, so...” I could feel myself blushing slightly, and I changed the subject. “Uh—how's your, dates going?”

“Oh, we had another one Saturday. Nearly all day, even longer than the last one,” she added with a smug kind of grin. “I've got it pretty bad, Kael, I'm sure you know the feeling.”

“Well, yeah, but I..” I paused, thinking. “You know, I've thought about something. I'm a really bad liar, you know that? Like, I don't just randomly blurt things out at people but if someone asks me something directly, and it's a yes or no question, it doesn't matter what I try to answer, the truth is gonna be pretty obvious.”

She nodded. “So if for some reason Rhia asked you about me, or boy-me, you'd give her the truth without meaning to if you were trying to lie, and if it was obvious you were trying to lie for me it'd make her mad at both of us?”
“Well..yeah.” I nodded; I hadn't expected her to finish for me. “So...I'd rather just tell the truth if that happened.”
“That's fair. But if I'm doing a good job then she won't even have a reason to ask you anyway.”

“..How do you...do you have each other's numbers at this point?” I said.
“Uh-huh,” she nodded, “I'm using two different sim cards, with different numbers and contacts, and lots of people have phones like mine. Aden's phone is busted up with a cracked screen and takes texts way more easily than calls.” She pulled out her phone and with a brief wave of her hand a spiderweb of cracks appeared on it, and then disappeared again. With a toothy grin, she added, “He's been trying to get a new one for a while now, but his folks won't let him until this one gives out completely.”

“Uh-huh...what contacts do you have on the other card? A bunch of names with fake numbers?”

“Mostly. I convinced another kitsune I know to be Aden's friend and classmate at some other school, who bugs him for homework sometimes. If she starts acting suspicious—which she totally hasn't, by the way—I can make some new 'real' friends who aren't Kitsune. Not you or anyone I know like this, because the two of us being connected to too many of the same people is just asking for trouble.”

“This whole thing is asking for trouble,” I said, but shrugged. “At least you're thinking ahead a little, I guess.”

That afternoon Rio caught me on the way out of school. “Hey—you're a boy again!” she said.

“Uh—yeah. Brie likes being the girl.”
She nodded. “I'm still a little disappointed I can't pet you a little more though, that was fun.”

“I can go back and forth more or less at will,” I said, shrugging.

“Oh? Cool. I-I mean I wouldn't want to force you to, just so I could, but—um...anyway, I...I do want to hang out a little, but I actually went looking for you because my master wants to see you.”

“She does?” I said. “Anything wrong?”
“I don't think so. She said she had something she wanted to 'ask of you'—like, a favor or something, but the way she said it made it sound like it wasn't any of my business, and I know better than to ask her about something like that. But—she said if you're free, could you come tomorrow after school. I think she's away on business today.”

“I don't have any plans,” I said, “I guess I'll see what it's about. She did sorta help me figure some things out.”

“Okay, I'll let her know.” She dug out a phone and sent a text before continuing to follow me home.

“So you do have time to hang out today?” I said, “Since she's away.”

“Sure!”

I shifted myself back to being Kaela in a matter of seconds, my clothes just shifting to girl versions of themselves. Rio watched, slightly wide-eyed, and when it was over she said, “Y-you really didn't have to...”

“It's seriously no problem,” I said, “easy as—well, maybe even easier than werewolf form. Hey, I've always been a little curious what your house looks like.”

“Oh? Well, I can show you around I guess, it's nothing too special.”

Her house looked normal on the outside, but was maybe two or three times that size on the inside. It looked like a normal home, sure, but there were some obviously magical things just decorating mantles and windowsills, and about a third of the books around the shelves looked like actual spellbooks. I guess she's probably from a family of witches and wizards (or whatever the male equivalent is, if that's not right). I headed home for supper, shifting myself back to male on the way.

That meeting with Threa is really the reason I'm writing this. I knew the way to the place, so I went alone this time, and stopped to ring the doorbell. Almost as soon as I did the door opened and Rio's master stood in front of me. “Good to see you again, Kael,” she said, “please, come in.” I followed her inside and she started leading me down a series of corridors and turns which I don't think I could've kept straight if I'd been writing them down, but all the same I'm nearly certain shouldn't have been physically possible: There must have been two or three times we went in what felt like a circle only to wind up somewhere completely different.

Of course, I wasn't writing it down or even trying to memorize the steps, and even if I had been she was distracting me with talking. “Rio has told me you seem to be more at peace with your unusual abilities,” she said. I guessed she had probably been interrogating her apprentice about me, not Rio randomly volunteering the information. If my guess was right, it was probably out of concern at least.

“Well..yeah, I guess you could say that,” I said. The thing about me not being a monster felt like something between me and Brie. “I have more control over it than the last time we met, too.”

“Good to hear,” she nodded. “Now..the reason I called you, is because there's someone I would like you to use that power on. But understand that I consider it entirely your decision whether to do so or not.”

“Okay...” I'd honestly suspected it was something like this from the moment Rio said she wanted to “ask something of me”.

“Allow me to explain the situation first. The man I am taking you to see has been a staunch ally of humans and other light-bound over many years in halting the ambitions of some very powerful demons, armies of them. He personally saved my life, in fact. But he is himself a demon—so that you are not too surprised at his appearance.”
“Right..”
“The most recent battle he participated in was half a century ago. He was injured by a power and king of magic which is eventually fatal to his kind, and nearly impossible to dispel. I put him in a kind of stasis at the time to delay its effect, and have only taken him out of it occasionally to make increasing efforts against that magic, to no avail. Your power is different from magic, however, and it changes things at a much deeper level. I'm aware you are not able to both heal him and leave him, himself. But in absence of any other options—and having made the greatest attempt I feel I will ever be capable of just a few days ago—I thought a kind of rebirth at your hands would be a more fitting reward than this slow, painful death.”

“Okay. Do you mind if...is it possible for me to speak to him?” I said. It already sounded like someone I would be more than happy to use my power on, but I need to follow my own rules or I might as well have not made them up.

“I believe so. I should be able to ease his pain enough to listen and speak for a few moments.”

Quietly, I asked my power to give me a retroactive “truth sensing” ability, to know if what someone was telling me was actually true or not, from the time I'd met her at the door until then. I didn't think there was any reason to suspect she was lying, but I still wasn't sure if “demon” meant someone capable of making her believe something that wasn't true or something else weird like that. I remembered that ability verifying everything she said since meeting me at the door, and then dismissed it again. It's the kind of power you'd really only want to use very selectively, like “listen to people's thoughts” powers, and anyway I hadn't put any thought into how it would react to things like opinions or ambiguous statements and didn't want to accidentally open some existential can of worms by still having it.

After leading me through a little more of the impossible maze, she finally stopped in front of a door which seemed to be made out of translucent green crystal. After she said what sounded like a spell and tapped the door with an index finger, it pulsed and started to slink into the room, which I now realized was entirely filled with that crystal. It retracted more while she led me inside, and eventually I saw the person she'd been talking about still encased in the stuff like a bug in amber.

The room itself was fairly small, but it had magic circles covering the walls and ceiling along with a huge one encompassing the whole width of the floor. The crystal shifted toward the center, where the man was floating a few inches off the ground in a standing position, and then started to remove itself from him and go down toward the center of the circle.

The guy was—well, the first thing I noticed was that he was huge, not just taller than Lue's werewolf form but very bulky and muscular too. The second thing, more obvious once enough of the crystal was off of him to show his skin, was that it was a kind of dark red shade that I would not expect to see on any normal human. He also had huge black bat-like wings and a tail coming from his back and horns extending out of the corners of his head. But he was hurt—really hurt. His clothes were old and tattered, and showed off a number of cuts and scars all over him; some cuts were very deep and still clearly bleeding. His horns were actually broken off maybe halfway up their original size, ending in abrupt jagged spots right where they were their thickest, and his wings were as tattered and torn-up as his clothes.

Eventually the crystal formed into a small circular tree-trunk-like shape just under his feet, and then he knelt down, groaning in pain. Threa was already at work casting something that made most of the circles in the room glow a bit more brightly, and then send a white light toward his body. He gasped a couple of times, opened his eyes (which were bright red), and looked at her, then at me. “..You..got me out again, I see. Is this—” his eyes turned toward me—“the 'other solution' you mentioned?”

“Correct. This is Kael.” She spoke slowly, still holding her arms up and probably concentrating on maintaining the spell. “His powers are unusual. Please speak with him.”

He nodded very slightly, and winced in pain from just that motion. “Kael. I am Giriah.”
“Uh..y-yeah, nice to meet you,” I stammered. Even as injured as he was, I could feel the pulse of some kind of intense power coming from him, and felt vaguely threatened by it. But I wanted this to go quickly as badly as either of them did, I started explaining right away.

“I'm able to change people by touching them. Not just their bodies—their history and everything. It has kind of a wish granting effect, and it can make it like you didn't, uh, get hurt. But it would make you a completely different person. And also female.”

“I see.” He closed his eyes and made a low, growling “Hmm” sound. “You...would be able to do this without undoing what I have done?”

“Yes, but I'm pretty sure it would happen by sort of making you not the you who did it. If that makes any sense.”
“That is...acceptable. I just want the world to still be safe.” He nodded, and my power suddenly gave me a huge spike in 'this person wants something badly enough to change just from touching them' feeling from him.

“Okay,” I nodded, stepping closer so I'd be in reach of him. “This..feels a little weird, but it shouldn't hurt.” I reached out a hand and touched him on the stomach.

The slight whitish glow around him from Threa's spell suddenly brightened and grew, and his wounds started sealing themselves up. The cuts became shallower and shallower until they disappeared, and then his scars faded away. His horns seemed to remold themselves using the same material, becoming shorter curved horns with spikes at the tips. His wings reformed in the same kind of way, becoming much shorter but whole again; the tail, which wasn't as badly injured, slimmed down all the same and grew a little longer. Giriah sighed, sounding very relieved, as the white glow faded and left him as if he'd never been injured in the first place.

He drew in a sharper breath right after, as he started to change. It happened in a way I haven't exactly seen before: His body shrank noticeably, both his height and the bulk all over him getting smaller all at once, and then...it unshrank. It sort of pulsed back out toward the way he'd started out, but didn't go all the way back to how he'd been before. Then it pulsed inward again, bringing him smaller than before this time, and back out again with the same timing, but only leaving him as big as he'd been after shrinking the first time. This began a steady rhythm of shrinking and growing, with whatever was making him grow back losing ground every time.

“Mnnh..” He made another low growling sound as this continued, slowly changing his position from kneeling toward sitting on the stump of crystal. His hair had been pitch black before, but now it was starting to grow out and turn paler; I noticed it wasn't cycling back and forth like the rest of his body. Another change seemingly not tied to the pulsing shift was a change in the color of his skin; it slowly brightened, but kept its red tint. His clothes were shifting and reshaping themselves, too, mostly turning into black cloth and pulling tighter where it landed.

Slowly I saw his body shape changing: His shoulders narrowing, his arms and legs slimming down, his frame shrinking in and down more and more with each inward pulse. He made another “mnnh”, this time in a much higher-pitched voice with almost none of the “growling” quality it had had before. He slowly crossed his legs over each other, sitting sort of Indian-style. I realized as I watched that the outward pulses were beginning to get...weaker, as if whatever was causing them was itself slowly disappearing. His body hair was all gone now, his clothes changed into a pair of thigh-length leggings, an increasingly tight pair of panties, gloves with some forearm-bracelet things, and a tiny sling-like top hanging awkwardly down from his neck down to his chest. Even as he shrank down to my eye level (which, given he was sitting on the stump thing, I guessed meant he really was about my height now), Giriah looked more than male enough for these clothes to be very awkward on him, and still sported muscular arms and legs and a six-pack.

That started to change now; his hair had faded to pure, bright white and fallen down to just past chest-level, and his face began to get smaller and rounder, giving the long something feminine to frame. “Mnnh..” His voice was getting in the higher parts of male range now, and I knew it wouldn't be much longer until he sounded like a girl. His shoulders narrowed more, his arms and legs shrank further, and his stomach began to curve inward while its muscles softened a bit. The outward pulses were even weaker than before, and now I noticed the underwear pulling very tight between his legs, showing a very small bump there still keeping him male. With the next inward pulse that bump shrank in size, and it didn't grow back when he grew ever so slightly in the matching outward pulse.

He was a little shorter than me now. I noticed that his bare skin had turned a bright pink shade, and lacked any body or facial hair whatsoever. His face was small, round, and cute, very girly; his cheeks were starting to blush (which was a deeper red than the rest of his skin), and his lips curled upward, beginning a smile. “Mmh..” His voice had jumped entirely out of male range now, sounded like a deep-voiced girl. The outward pulses were all but gone, little more than short breaks in the continued shifting of his body's shape. His hips drew themselves outward while his stomach continued to pull in, and his thighs thickened even as the rest of his legs continued to slim. The underwear drew closer and closer, what made him male visibly vanishing away, until finally it pulled flat and the demon in front of me let out a much more excited “Mmh~!” in a high, girly voice and her small smile turned into a sharp-toothed grin.

At this point her body stopped resisting the changes entirely, her curves deepening while her chest sprang to life, the new bumps there somehow managing to stay inside the tiny top as they grew. She giggled, closing her eyes and blushing a little brighter now, as her breasts grew out to their full size and her body eagerly finished its change.

“Well, if this is what you call 'weird' I'd love to see your 'bizarre',” she said, reopening her bright red eyes. I could remember meeting her as Giri, a fellow guest of Threa who I was visiting for...some reason, and who Rio's master was showing a room where her...ancestor had been kept at some point. I looked over at Threa and saw a very interested expression which suggested to me she'd seen the change along with me and was remembering both versions of events. Giri sighed contentedly and stood up, hopping off the crystal and slightly into my personal space; the top of her head was about at my chest so she had to turn her head upward to look at my face. “I forgot what it felt like to not be in constant pain. And this is...a whole different world and everything! Even if I'd been healed normally there's no way I'd figure out how to cope with all that's happened in the past fifty years. I don't know how I can ever thank you, but I know how I could start~,” she said.

“U-uh,” I stepped back and realized a strong heat in my cheeks. “I—have a girlfriend,” I said after a few more seconds to process what she meant by that.
“You could have two!”

“No, really, I—no thanks.” I shook my head.

She just giggled and turned to Threa. “Well, he wasn't kidding about it being a big change. Going from rage demon to succubus is pretty crazy.”
“I..imagine so,” she said slowly. “How much of your old powers do you remember?”
“Uhhh...all of them?” Giri shrugged. “I shouldn't, I know; I'm only like twenty-two so there's no way I should know that many spells. We may have to pretend you've been lending me some books and I'm really talented or something like that.”

“We can..work that out later. I'm sure you'd like to see the outside of this room first.”
“I sort of already have, but at the same time, so much yes.”

I followed the two of them out into the hallway and Threa lead the way back through the maze again. Giri placed herself beside me as we walked. “Well, to resist my powers like you did, I'd say your relationship is pretty serious, yep.”

“You were...using succubus powers?” I said, feeling a little worried about that.
“I should say 'charms' I guess. There's a magic element to it, and I can't actually turn it off. I'd never seriously come between you of all people and someone you're into. But there is something about you I really like.”

“That's, uh, that happens with a lot of people, after I change them,” I said. “I'm, not really happy about it.”
“Ohh believe me, I'm in the perfect position to understand that feeling. I do want to repay you though, I don't have the influence or stuff I did in my old life but I know everything I knew, including loads of neat spells as long as we can keep it from coming out I was the one casting them.”

“Here's the library...a logical step for now,” said Threa, opening a door to a huge, multi-story library.
“Do magic people ever get tired of bending spatial physics over backwards?” I said quietly.
“Hm?”

“Uh—so how are you handling having two versions of your memories?” I said at more of a hearable volume.
Rio's master looked thoughtful. “It is an unusual feeling. I suppose you have a lot more experience with it than I do. I recall...a period of mourning, my greatest attempt at saving Giriah's life coming much earlier and then our mutual acceptance that he was better off ending it and going in peace. It's very strange, though, he didn't really have a family before.”

“Yeah, my power seems to be able to shuffle more than one person around,” I said. “I don't have that much control over that part of it as far as I can tell, I just sort of have to hope it doesn't wreck anything.”

“Understandable. Giri..you may as well pick out books to 'borrow' with any spells you wish to 'learn' soon. For that matter, Kael, if you notice any books around here you'd like to look through, feel free. You have my gratitude as well as his—hers, I mean.”
“Yeah, I know, it's weird.” I just followed the new demon-girl as she skipped off toward some shelves, seemingly knowing exactly what to look for.

“So there is one thing I think you could help with,” I said, “since you know so much.”
“Uh-huh? You want some forbidden knowledge, Kael?”
“Nothing like that, no,” I said. “I've been putting together a list of kinds of magic people—like, werewolves, kitsune...demons I guess? Long story short, my power kind of messes with reality and I want to be as sure as I can it's not 'making' new categories of people.”
“Mhm,” she nodded, “I'm sure I can add a lot to that list, especially if you've just got all kinds of demons filed under 'demon' right now. I'll send you a text? Or, an email if your girlfriend's the jealous type.”

“I don't think so, no.” I already have the number of lots of girls, even some that weren't boys at some point. So I gave her my number since it seemed like she didn't have her phone on her, but as soon as I did she just held up her hand and a phone appeared above it in a small burst of what I think I can best describe as dark fire..it was black, but it kind of moved like fire in the air for the second or two it was there?

She sent me a text saying 'this is Giri' so I could add her number and know who the list was coming from whenever she eventually sent it. And I said, “Uh, what exactly...where did that come from?”
“What, you've been around magic for longer than a day and haven't got some kind of inventory spell going?” she said.
“I guess not.” The idea had never really occurred to me. It seemed like Rio didn't have anything like that.
“You have got to get you one of those. Since I'm sure I would already know that you can just take that book. How good a magic learner are you exactly?”
“Um..I haven't learned a spell in my life,” I said. “But I can technically just sort of give myself powers if I want? Using my power. It's kind of cheating.”

“Well, then the book's still a good reference if you don't want to make up magic that didn't exist before,” she said, pulling out a book and half-shoving it in my hands. “The demonic flair I use is totally optional, by the way, there's like all kinds of decorations you can have or just have things appear with none at all. If you're around normal people it's helpful to keep something you can 'pull your stuff out of', like a purse or backpack or whatever.” Oh, of course. Rio went to “normal-people” school so if she knew a spell like this she'd make it just look like she was getting things out of her purse. I tried to remember if she'd ever pulled out something that didn't look like it would fit in there or seemed too convenient for her to have packed, but couldn't really think of anything. Maybe as an apprentice witch she still didn't know a spell like that, though?

Giri went on to hand me six other books she said had practical spells “anyone should know”, as more references for me to “learn by cheating”. One of them was defensive spells, and it occurred to me when I noticed that that it would be nice to not have to use my “main” power for self-defense when I need to defend myself. I stuffed the whole set of them in a spare backpack Threa had and carried them home wondering why it had never occurred to me, or Rio or Adena or anyone else who knew a lot about magic and enough about what my power was capable of, for me to just “learn” a bunch of useful spells since I could. It's like having tons of extra money and lots of ways a new computer could make your life better, and just refusing to buy one. I read through the “inventory spell” and some of the self-defense ones tonight to be sure I understood them before “teaching” them to myself, and I plan on reading the rest of the books over this week probably.

Somewhere in the middle of that, when we were deep inside the library and after a short conspiratorial look-around-and-behind-herself, Giri said, “I'm sure you noticed, but poor Threa was trying really hard not to mention or even think about my little outbursts near the end of the change. She's always been a little hung up on that sort of thing, you know. I think it's why I put something like this on to visit her.” She gestured to her clothes.
“Oh—uh, yeah. Sometimes my power puts people in clothes a lot more revealing than they'd usually wear, and...sometimes it doesn't. I don't really know why.”

“Probably the same reason it makes girls, and makes them attracted to you~,” she said teasingly. “Anyway, you don't have to worry. I have a cute little black dress I stuffed in my inventory just after I came inside. So all this skin's just for you~.”
“I wish you'd stop that. You know, I can actually turn myself into a girl if I want.”
“Really? That's great! Twice the fun...” She gave another toothy smile at me and I decided not to follow through with it since it didn't sound like it would discourage her at all.

I got Giri's text later tonight, after getting home. It is a long list—the part that's not just all the subcategories of “demon” is still twice as long as the list I had before from everyone else. I'm curious if I've got a full list now or if there are some kinds of people secretive enough that Giri's previous “ancient demon” self never heard of them. Anyway, in terms of the list as it was before I know “demon” was on there and it's reasonable that the people I was getting it from at the time wouldn't know about the specific kinds of them.

The text ended with “Call me some time <3”, which is really not a good sign. I thought I had it bad with Carla teasing me before she got a boyfriend of her own, but this is on an entirely different level, especially since she really is very cute and I guess has some kind of magic advantage in being attractive to guys. Hopefully she was serious about not coming between me and Brie and really is just teasing me—I do not want to mess this up, and someone “helping” me mess it up because I helped them is just terrible.

I'm having thoughts of trying to play matchmaker and get her a date of her own so I won't have to worry about it but then I realize I'm thinking like Lue, which is even worse. Should I just try to avoid her? Forever? She's Threa's friend, Rio is my friend and Threa's apprentice, Threa's grateful to me and also knows I'm willing to use my power to help people this way now, so there's no avoiding her and there's no way to know I wouldn't bump into Giri when I go to see either one of them, or just at random, and I really don't know how to deal with the situation I'd be in if I ignored her completely and then ran into her.

I think the first thing I should do is tell Brie about the entire situation. If she knows what's going on and Giri tries to imply something she'll know not to trust it. I really hope I'm just worried over nothing again though.

Incense

The "Best" RPG Ever-34

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---

We need that thing targeting me for now. Go around, try to flank it. Zack ran toward the giant bone-creature, shifting to Dark form on the way. The shield might not do much good against attacks from something that big, but having more ability to survive taking hits in general sounded like a great idea just now. Behind him, Mika got on her broom and flew up and back a bit while Katherine and and Nora split off, the catgirl heading left with a pumpkin bomb in tow while the elf went right with the wolf behind her.

The giant's steps shook the ground near it. Coming closer, Zack had to time short hops off the ground to its steps to keep his balance and momentum. Soon he was in range of it, and it bent over in a surprising burst of speed, sweeping a fist at him and forcing him to jump back out of its way. The breadth of its hand reached from the ground to above his head.

You gonna climb the colossus? Katherine's voice in his head.

There's not really any handholds.

Well I'll make you a foothold! With that, Mika's bomb came flying in from the left and becoming a blast of dark fire on the bone-thing's ankle, carving a big hole in the side of it. The rest of its leg above that collapsed down into the hole and it fell forward, kneeling on its other knee and roaring again for good measure.

Not having to jump with its footsteps gave the knight an opportunity to try and attack. He ran up and gave a sideways slash at the knee; the white fire from his sword carved a hole as deep as the sword's length. It pounded a fist down at him and he had to roll aside, only to be catapulted into the air by the force of the blow on the ground nearby. Its other hand came at him for a punch while he was still in the air, and there wasn't much he could do but raise his shield in that general direction. The impact made the entire thing brightly glow and sent him flying backwards a long way, skipping over the ground like a lake's surface twice before righting himself and plunging his sword into the ground to take most of the force of the landing, his body falling in a bit of a heap afterward. The shield had a visible network of glowing cracks sprawled out from its center, and flickered faintly, neither of which seemed like good signs.

Zack returned to his feet in time to see the giant beginning to do the same, the foot that had been exploded and collapsed a moment earlier now all but whole again. Before it could stand entirely, a streak of white flew at it from the right, the wolf carrying the fire-dagger in its mouth long enough to stick it in about halfway up the monster's left leg. Nora followed up, pulling the fire out into a fireball while the animal ran back the way it had come from, and the giant's momentum from trying to stand sent it backward instead of forward, shaking the ground once more as it landed lying on its back.

He stood up, drawing the sword from the ground in the same motion, and ran at it, jumping up onto a leg and running up an increasingly steep slope as the bone giant pushed itself up off the ground. He made it as far as the stomach before having to bury his sword in its body as a handhold to keep from falling off, and then swung back and forth in place with the giant's motion, desperately holding its hilt with both hands in an effort not to slip off.

Mika flew over to Katherine's position as soon as the first bomb went off, and dropped another one with her. She flew around behind the giant then, while it was busy trying to get up, and swooped down to retrieve the dagger and ferry it back to Nora. Her flight cartwheeled back to the giant as it stood vertical again, and seeing the knight's state there and a giant hand drawing back to swat him off she produced and threw a bomb in the same motion, landing another explosion squarely in the monster's wrist, before zooming over to him as he got his bearing and planted his feet. There was a lot of wind in her ears, so she used the psion's mental link to say Need a lift?

His head turned to see her floating just to the right and under him, and unsheathed his sword from the giant's torso with the aid of a small burst of white fire turning the bone holding it in place to dust. Thanks. He half-dove, half-fell toward the broom and had to let go of his sword to catch the front end of it with both hands, followed by a swift motion to catch its hilt in its mouth.

Mika hadn't expected Zack to be quite so heavy or land quite so roughly, and she had to pull back hard to keep the broom from flipping forward and dumping her upside-down. Another giant-fisted punch sailed through the air just where they'd been before that forced maneuver, a gust of wind from it blowing the broom back a bit farther and whipping their hair around. Where are we going? I dunno if I can carry you like this for long!

Up! To its shoulders! Nodding, she flew up, trying to keep the broom steady to decrease his chances of slipping off it.

Katherine let loose her new bomb, up toward the side of the giant's stomach, to take its attention off of the precariously flying pair. It turned its head in the general direction the attack had come from but didn't see her—she was behind it by now. For another distraction, Nora pulled the ground just under its left foot up as hard as she could, throwing it off-balance just enough that it had to hold out its arms to keep from tumbling over again.

Katherine watched the giant's hand reform, its stomach fill back in with more bones. Are we even hurting this thing? It keeps regenerating!

Well, it has to have a weak point somewhere! Finally in position, Zack dropped straight down onto the bone giant's shoulder, released the sword from his mouth and caught it in his hand, and made a hard swing at its neck. Nearly half of it came apart in the white fire, and he rushed forward, shoving at it with both hands and sending it toppling over like a tree.

Dagger in hand, Nora ran around to the giant's front with the wolf still behind her. She paused, looking up to see the head sink into the shoulder opposite the one the knight stood on and then a new head pushing its way up from the empty neck. Its right hand, unhindered by the loss of the head, came to swat him off of it, but he jumped down out of the way just before it could hit him and landed on Mika's broom below him again, no less roughly but at least straddling it with his legs instead of clinging for dear life with his hands. The artifact—that glowing thing in its chest—is the source of the undead, right? She thought to the rest of the party.

The psion reponded: Yeah, obviously. So what?

So what happens if you pull it out? She handed the dagger to the wolf, it darted forward and stuck it in the front of the bone-creature's ankle, and Nora tore another hole in it with a fireball, collapsing the foot and forcing the giant to focus on kneeling and not toppling entirely over again instead of on continuing to swat at the witch's broom like a gnat. Hopefully that would be enough.

Mika and Zack did the mental-communication equivalent of looking briefly at each other and wordlessly confirming that they had both formed the same plan at the same time (it would have been a bit hard to do it physically with him in front of her on the broom), and flew down to the point where the handle was stuck in its chest. The knight swung his sword four times, forming a small square of cuts around the handle, and then stabbed his blade just above those cuts to grab the artifact in both hands and pull. It came slightly loose, but its deep purple glow brightened suddenly, and Zack yelled in pain, forced to let go at a sensation not unlike molten lava pouring over his hands.

The witch frowned, turning the broom to one side, swinging her opposite arm over the knight, and giving pulling the thing out a try of her own. She wasn't as strong as him, of course, but that aura only felt like a faint warmth to her, and as it began to pull free she had the broom help her by flying away from the giant. Zack retrieved his weapon and sliced off more of the bone around it, helping her get the weapon out the rest of the way.

And it was a weapon—a long scythe with a large blade made seemingly out of a single piece of pitch-black metal, glowing brilliantly purple with whatever magic had been responsible for all of the undead. As soon as it was out of the giant, the monster began to fall apart, roaring futilely as it lost form and quickly collapsed into a tall hill made entirely of bones and rotting flesh.

Mika flew clear of the avalanche of bones before touching down, letting Zack step off before hopping off her broom herself, taking it in her left hand with the scythe still in her right. Its glow steadily faded as if it was being calmed by her grip on it until it seemed to be just a faint tinge to the light reflecting off of it.

Zack dropped his blade and doubled over, panting heavily from his recent efforts. The others walked up while Mika set the scythe up so it was still vertical but the ground was handling most of its weight.

"Well, that went surprisingly well," said Katherine. And to Nora: "I can't believe you came up with that before I did." The elf understood the compliment hiding in that complaint and blushed faintly in response before turning to Zack.

"A-are you hurt?"

"'M fine...sword hilt...tastes like garbage.." he said between huffs of air. The wolf barked in what sounded like agreement, walking over to him and rubbing its side against his leg (or at least, the armor on it) in a way that seemed intended to look accidental.

"What was that about not being able to carry him?" said the catgirl, smirking at Mika. "You carried me just fine. Are you calling Zack here fat?"

"No, it's—he's a little heavier, maybe. It's just 'cause muscle weighs more, and he's bigger than you and also there's the armor. It's probably mostly the armor, now that I think about it."

"A-are you okay with that?" asked the elf, pointing to the scythe. "It's as t-tall as I am."

"I know right?" She picked it up and gave a slow, experimental one-handed swing with it. "It's super light though, for some reason. Anyway it has kind of a strong dark aura to it, so I'm not sure it's even safe for anyone else to handle right now. It kinda burned Zack a minute ago."

The elf glared at Zack as he stood upright again. "You s-said you were fine!" On closer inspection, she could see some elemental imbalances that clearly read to her as several bruises from when he'd bounced off the ground, and small but very real burns on the palms of his hands.

"Well, I'm not hurting. It can wait."
She walked up to him, still frowning. "You're just d-deferring the pain, you'll st-start feeling it before we get to town. A-a-anyway, it's n-not healthy to just ignore your injuries, you c-could have a cracked rib or something!" Nora knelt partway down and started healing the worse-looking wounds while she scolded him, and he just sighed quietly and let her do it.

Katherine, meanwhile, walked over toward the pile of bones. With a small upward movement from her hand, the fire dagger unburied itself and floated up over the pile, and then with a flick of the wrist it flew back to her to be stowed away.

"How did you...know where that was?" said Mika, who'd followed her out of curiosity.
"Psionic tagging skill," she said with a grin. "I can mark a small number of things as 'mine', and then I always know where they are as long as they don't go too far off. Great anti-theft measure if we didn't already have inventories only we can get to."

"..You could also use that to track someone through town if you wanted," said the witch, headtilting slightly. She put away the scythe in her inventory on the way back to the others.

---

A human man with neon green hair was sitting behind the community center's front desk. Looking up from whatever he was working on as they came close, he said, "Hello..can I help you?"
"Yeah, we're trying to find some office space—maybe with some corkboard—to rent for a few hours or so today?" said Rayna. "Someone said you might have something like that here, or..maybe you know where we can find one if not?"

He scratched his head. "Yeah, we have some office space. It's not really for rent, you just sign for it and put down a deposit in case anything gets broken. There's a room open..uh.." He paused, tilting his head slightly, seeming to really look at the two girls for the first time. "Hm.."
"What?" said Lynn.

"It's just that you look a lot like some performers I remember coming to my town when I was younger. I came out this way a few years back, used to live inland, in northern Valitha. You...ever been that way?"
They looked at each other briefly and then back at him, and the foxgirl answered, "That's..probably. We've sorta been all over."
"You're the illusionist, and you're the archer, right?" he said, looking a little excited. "It was a great show! I'm surprised you decided to come out to the frontier though, when there's lots of money to be made in less monster-infested lands."

Rayna wasn't sure what to say. "Err.."

"We decided to put our talents to use out here, fighting monsters," her best friend cut in. "It's as good or better money, and we might save some lives this way."
"Oh, I see, I see," he nodded. "I was gonna ask you if you wanted this place for a venue sometime. Gods know folks around here could use a break. I've got some friends in the guard I think could convince the Captain to pay on behalf of the town, you know, less stress keeps the streets more peaceful and all?"

"We'll..think about it," said Rayna. "We've been focusing pretty hard on using our abilities to fight lately, so it might take a bit to get some kind of show together."

"I understand," he nodded, kneeling over and reaching for something inside the back of the counter. "Let me know if you decide to do it, I work here every other day. For now, I can get you settled with that office." He placed a book down with a pen stuck in the middle facing them. "2B is free right now, it's pretty big, has some corkboard you can hang up on the desk."

The man insisted on covering the deposit after that, apprently hoping to encourage them to really put on that show. After he showed them the office briefly and handed them the keys they started off to the tavern, where they'd agreed to regroup. "..This just gets weirder," said Rayna. "He remembers us? But we've never been there. We've only been on Earth, or—here."
"I think we have to think of this as a game to make sense of it," said Lynn, thinking. "We're supposed to be people in this world. Our bodies were changed to look like we're from here in every way. We have magic—you have a tail. So it seems like we also get backstories.."

The foxgirl's ears were folded nearly against her head. "How does that work, though? Really, how does it work? Are a bunch of people's memories and records being altered to look like we were here all along? Did we actually replace people who were already here, doing this? Are there time-travelling imposters pretending to be us?"

"I'm as worried as you are. Why does it match so exactly something I just made up when I was put on the spot?" said Lynn. "I—did I—is this my fault? Did what I made up start becoming true?"

"...If someone can mess with people's heads enough for them to remember us then they can give you that idea in the first place, though," said Rayna, making an effort to calm down. "So it's not necessarily your fault. Even if it is..it sounds strangely apropros, doesn't it? Performers..is the closest thing I can think of to what we really are..or were, in the other world. Educators, too, I'd hope, but.."

"Mostly entertainers, yeah," Lynn nodded. "I'm jealous of Aria if it is whatever we say to other people about our pasts that's true. She just claims to have amnesia and doesn't have to worry about anything."

"I wouldn't be jealous of that," said the foxgirl. "Amnesiac storylines always come with baggage you can't remember. How long do you think we have before a guy shows up in town looking for her and claims to be her estranged husband, or her brother's murderer, or..."

"Stop giving the universe ideas!" said Lynn. "Or—whoever, or whatever's doing this. From now on we insist that Aria was a wealthy businesswoman with no attachments whatsoever."

"What about a butler—"
"No. Attachments."

Rayna smirked, sighed, and then moved the conversation on. "...So what do you think, should we do it?"
"Hm?"
"Put on a show for the town, like lime hair said? Sounds like we can make some relatively safe money that way."

"If we don't get booed off the stage. I have no idea what our show's supposed to look like, or how we go about it.."
"We've had dreams exactly to that effect, though. Maybe if we think hard enough about it today we'll dream up a regular show tonight and not even have to come up with an original script."
"Entertainers never do the same show twice, though," said Lynn. "Not if they want to be any good. I was entirely an archer before and now I do magic stuff, and we're both about to learn a bunch of new skills no matter how this build planning session goes. We'll have to find a way to work that in somehow—and still not get anyone hurt."

"...You're already thinking about how to do it," said Rayna quietly, "like it's not even a question that we will sometime. I'll admit I am too. It's like we're not just being remembered as those performers we dreamed about being, we're actually drawn to be them."

Lynn stopped walking and shivered. "Errngh, stop it, you're freaking me out."

Rayna paused with her. "It'd be more disturbing if we didn't even notice it happening, or were too in denial to point it out. But it's not like it hurts or anything. We're still us, we just have a really strong roleplaying aid."

"I'm still...terrified, we're on our way to not being ourselves anymore," said Lynn. "It makes me not want to think about it, and like you said—that's even worse."

"It doesn't have to be what we're thinking about all the time, as long as it's still there. Hey.." She slid up next to her friend and wrapped her arms around her, rubbing Lynn's far shoulder a bit. "We'll get through this, alright? Together."

"Alright..alright, yeah." Lynn calmed and returned the hug gently. "Let's go, the others're probably waiting for us by now."

---

They didn't encounter any undead on the way back to town. No monsters were around either, possibly they caught a convenient vacuum created by the undead being gone and any monsters eager to take their place unaware they were gone. Whatever the case, they made it back to town easily, and were in the Captain's office by late afternoon. Mika produced the scythe they'd found and started to offer it to her, but the Captain gestured for her to keep holding it.

"I already know exactly what that is," she said. "It generates dark magic of its own, feeds it to its wielder. If the wielder isn't compatible with dark magic then it uses it to hurt them instead. It should be fine for you to keep it—in fact, it's much safer than trying to lock it up somewhere. You don't have to worry about maintaining it or anything, the materials it's made out of are extremely difficult to even scratch, much less break."
Mika headtilted. "..How do you know so much about this thing from just a glance?"

"I recognize it," she said. "I was there to see it made. How it got out where you found it is a mystery to me, though. The last time I saw it was far away from here."

"Um..w-was it, made for someone you knew?" said Nora.

She nodded. "It shouldn't surprise you by now, I used to know a warlock. It was his."

"Oh..so you think he'd be okay with me having it?" said the witch.

"I don't care what he would want," she snapped, showing a small twitch of anger. After a deep breath to calm herself she explained: "We killed him when we found out what kind of person he really was. He should have suffered more, if anything."

"...We?" said Zack after a second.

"I used to be in a party like yours. He killed some of us in that fight, and then the survivors went our separate ways." Her voice was completely dispassionate, with no trace of the sadness one might expect. "There was something we couldn't ever agree on."

"Can I ask what that was?" said Katherine.
The Captain shrugged. "Whether he had been that disgusting person we slew all along, and merely hiding his true nature until he thought he was powerful enough that it didn't matter, or whether gaining the powers of demons had corrupted his mind somehow. I believed he had been deceiving us from the start." She looked to the witch again. "If you ever met a member of my party who was on the other side of that argument, I would advise you to flee them as quickly as you can."

"Uh, g-got it," said Mika a little nervously.