Hunting for Answers (Thoth)

Bowen · Nov 4, 2015

@"Thoth"

Unlikely. So she could spend the rest of his life driving people away. Couldn't go home because she was a dragon, couldn't be around magical people because he'd mess them up just by existing near them.

Wasn't that just delightful. Charlie wasn't spectacularly social, but this was a bit much. Wait - he thought that she could turn human again? Really? The young dragon perked up at that, even if it felt really really weird to have.... things... at the edges of his head and jaw sort of. What were they doing anyway? Charlie squinted at his reflection in her own hands. Super distorted but -

weird fin things. Okay. He could live with that. Shapeshifting. How was she supposed to go about doing that? Sure, he'd seen shifters shift by now - super weird and kind of nauseating to watch in some cases - but it wasn't as if he got a narrated explanation of their process. It was like looking at a tv and being expected to understand how it worked from the outside.

Wow he was really flustered. Okay. Okay. She had to calm down a bit. He could do that. Chill. Chill. Breathe. There. That was a bit better.

He still had no idea how to go about shifting into a human. He hadn't really noticed the shift to dragon. There had just been normal and then. Weird. So weird.

This whole thing was so weird. It was probably a dream but if he was making this up somehow he was either a whole lot more creative than he'd thought or completely insane, and even if she was somehow more creative than he'd thought this was still insane and probably needed medication-

How to tell when you're royally fucked: when the weird shit is better off as reality than a dream.

Charlie was definitely royally fucked.

"I have no idea how to shift," he finally admitted. Was that how he was going to get stuck like this? Not because he was incapable of turning human again but because she didn't know how?

Romi · Nov 5, 2015

Shapeshifting was a thing that happened in the world of the diamond. No one was born a shapeshifter. There were no werewolves, or anything like that. but people could choose to shift, could study it as part of their magic. Some people chose a single form, or a single type of form, and some put all their magical focus into shapeshifting, whether it be into animals or other people.

That said, Enelen was not one of those people. He'd never shapeshifted in his life, and knew of the general idea strictly through friends or books on the subject. Staves had never been very big on shapeshifting, what with them actually needing staves. Carrying around a giant staff in an animal form was a pain in the ass at best and impossible at worst. Shapeshifting was more of a words thing.

"I obviously can't speak from experience with your particular kind, but I imagine it mostly has to do with willpower. Picture yourself as you were - and then try and mentally force yourself over to that. If it doesn't work, I suppose you'll have to find someone who shapeshifts normally and ask them."

Or he supposed he would have to, because the dragon was a bit big to go into the buildings to find some kind of shapeshifting teacher.

Bowen · Nov 12, 2015

@"Thoth"

Willpower.

Willpower was something Charlie could handle. She had pulled himself through everything up to this point on willpower. Manually learning what was and was not appropriate as a child. What she could and could not do without physical or social repercussions. What soothed internal turmoil and let him exist in peace.

It had all been willpower. Willpower was his armour as much as his skeleton.

Charlie nodded faintly before slowly inhaling.

Willpower. Being human was what was appropriate now. Time to take all of this, these scales and wings and limbs and mysterious auras, and gather it up. Wind it tighter, keep it neat and collected so it didn't spill out and take up so much space.

Gradually, the negating aura that stretched out from Charlie's body faded, drawing closer to his flesh, and then something sort of clicked.

Masculine dragon flesh vanished before feminine human flesh, and abruptly Charlie was stretched out in the grass as if he'd taken a nap rather than had the truth of most of his life crushed into tiny little pieces. Some of the aura lingered, but it was smaller. For now, at least.

Romi · Nov 13, 2015

Enelen could feel it when it started to work. Even on the edge of it, he could still feel it, even if it wasn't affecting him much at all. Like standing at the edge of the sea and being able to smell the salt, even if you were in no danger of drowning. He could feel it receding, pulling away until he could no longer feel it. He wasn't clear on if it was gone, or if it was just pulled back so far he couldn't feel it anymore. He took a few steps forward as the dragon start to shrink down to a normal human size.

Well, at least his theory had been correct - she really could turn back into a human on demand. In theory, she'd be able to return to dragon form on demand too, although that was the sort of thing better done under the watchful eye of a powers coach.

"See? Easy enough. And with the binding removed, you'll likely experience other changes - mostly positive. With such a frayed spell dragging you down, I imagine it was impairing you in unexpected ways." Of course, he was thinking of how it would impair her magic - but he didn't even know if she would really have any. She probably didn't. Most people didn't on this world after all.

"I would recommend seeking out an experienced power coach who has experience in shapeshifting to help you gain experience over the change."Not that he had any experience in such matters, but he certainly knew they existed on the island, and there was no shame in referring someone to a more experienced member of the faculty.

Bowen · Jan 2, 2016

@Thoth

Pushing himself to his knees, moving slowly and forced to consider the placement of each joint and muscle she was using in order to coordinate properly, Charlie drew in a human-sized breath. He suppressed the raggedness automatically, and then opened her eyes to look at his own hands.

Human hands. No scales, no claws, no reflection of sky and fins and eyes that really weren't the colour he normally saw in a mirror. Nothing about that glimpse of dragon was familiar, not really. It didn't feel completely wrong but it definitely wasn't familiar.

She breathed again, but didn't try to rise to his feet. Her self-awareness was too practiced to make that mistake, and instead he looked at the professor with a gaze that was briefly and unintentionally more intense than was normal for a human. Much of that intensity was a brush of anti-magic.

It vanished the moment Charlie realized he could feel that, almost like moving a limb through utter darkness while blindfolded and blackout drunk, being spun around by a bunch of equally drunk party-goers all clamouring for her to do something. Except there was no sound to it, no noise at all, nothing blocking the world around her right now.

He shakily rose to her feet, clearly less familiar with his body than she had been only minutes before, though not as disoriented as he had been by the draconic form. When she stood, though, his balance was sound. "Power classes I can do," she said, but abruptly stopped. His voice sounded... wrong, to him. Truth be told, it was the same as it had been before, but Charlie's relationship with it seemed to have changed somehow.

A matter for later, like so much of this. A matter for later.

"Thank you very much," he said, subdued rather than ecstatic at the assistance.

Romi · Jan 4, 2016

The gaze was unsettling, and the feeling of it - of being squished down. No, it was an unhappy feeling, and he frowned slightly before it receded. Well, undoing the spell was already having positive effects, because she was clearly in at least some kind of control of her powers. He supposed it was reasonable that she be so out of it, so thrown off. She'd just found out she was something else, and experienced it for the first time. A true dragon, rather than a human who can turn into a dragon.

"It was only fitting that I do my best to assist. I'd be a poor teacher if I left students to struggle out their own problems, especially in a case such as this where there was very little that could be done without outside help." There wasn't anything they could have done except waiting for the spell to snap. It was going to have to be someone else who would undo the magic that held her together.

"I must admit I'm curious as to why you were bound in such a spell. It was a very advanced working." Enelen reached up, scratching his chin in apparent curiosity. "You have no idea why, I presume?"

@Bowen

Search

Hunting for Answers (Thoth)

Bowen

Well-Known Member

Romi

Secretly a Bird

Bowen

Well-Known Member

Romi

Secretly a Bird

Bowen

Well-Known Member

Romi

Secretly a Bird