Felix was enjoying his breakfast the following day morning. Although there was not any window or a clock to show the time, his inner chronometer had woken him up. The previous day's servant came up to deliver his food. It was consisted of tea, which made him very glad their traditions overlapped with each other, along with sweets and a bowl of soup with some bread. It was not bad for morning meal, especially considering he was not really a breakfast person.
After the breakfast, Felix had half an hour before a knock sounded on the door. Moments later, Tsilonee entered with her usual gentle smile. It was a sign she was expecting something that could not be done by forcing him. It made his morning brighter.
"Good morning, Mr. Felix. How was your night here?" she greeted him.
"Good morning, Miss Tsilonee. Well, the night wasn't bad," Felix greeted back.
"I hope our service hasn't created any inconvenience to you," the woman asked as she was taking a seat at the table.
"Not at all."
"Please feel free to ask anything. We have rather excellent services that you might find very enjoyable," she suggested with a sweet tone that almost made him gulp.
"Ah, no, thank you, I'll pass." At least for now, he added inwardly.
"Our guests don't usually leave our brothel without savoring at least one of the flowers in our garden," she continued with a fake sad expression.
He could only smile wryly to her insistence. Spending a night with a woman was not actually an issue. The thing was what this woman might be planning by this suggestion. Was her intention to use him as a breeding subject? If it was, it could only mean shapeshifters were rare species in this world.
"All right, let's begin our lesson then. Honestly, I have never taught anyone before. So I can't promise you a perfect education,"Tsilonee forewarned him.
"Don't worry about it, Miss Tsilonee. It depends on the student as well."
The next two hours was spent for language learning. It was a refreshing experience for Felix. Once he had tried to learn Spanish so he could travel to South America and visit its various cities. However, in order to enter the university, he had delayed this education and concentrated on subjects that were more important at that time.
By the end of the lesson, he had learned quite a few words. The huge relief to him was the writing was consisted of letters that numbered of twenty-eight. If they were symbols or characters to memorize, he was sure to learn the local language by the verbal way only in a year or so if he was lucky. His memory was not something he was proud of.
Tsilonee had brought some paper and a quill with him. Although the ancient type of writing seemed a peculiar experience for Felix, by the look of the paper at the end, it was obvious he hadn't gotten used to it that easily.
"Now then Mr. Felix, I must excuse myself. I have some matters to attend," Tsilonee said, after checking his pronunciation for the last time.
"No worries, I'll be busy memorizing these words for now," He told her, glancing toward his ink-spread dictionary.
"Then see you in a few hours."
"See you," he replied in her own language.
Afternoon went by for Felix in memorizing the new words and a few practices of mana control. Extracting mana had become effortless now. Felix was currently eating his meal while making his legs sturdy. The time it took for it to fade was lengthened as well. It took at least four minutes for his limbs to feel normal again after empowering them. It was definitely important how to prolong its duration, and also how to apply it even without staying still. Therefore, he meanwhile focused on these two tasks.
After the dinner, he once more tested his shapeshifting. It wasn't that great in a room that blocked sounds. The only senses he was able to perceive were his watcher's distant heartbeats and his smell.
Felix wanted to try his increased senses' attributes deeper. It was not possible to see his observer, but performing some acrobatic movements, like jumping, rolling, bumping to the wall, even scratching it playfully, he exercised his senses. Changes of mood were clear on his observer's scent and heart rate; from bored to cautious, from cautious to confusion, and to bored again. It was fun to read people's emotions through smell.
He didn't change more than two times though, careful of exposing his mana reserves. After shifting back to human again, he sat still on his bed, cross-legged. Hard concentration was clear on his skin that started to become glimmering with sweat. Not long after, he collapsed on the bed, groaning from self-disappointment.
He had actually wanted to shift into an animal he knew really well; its fur, shape, color and so on. He even knew how it might feel to be that animal. But nothing worked. Is this so crucial to be in touch with the creature you want to transform into?
He gave up and went back to repeating his new vocabulary again. Learning the language was an essential if he wanted to escape this prison one day. Until that day, he could acquire information as much as possible.
After another hour of revising the new words, Tsilonee came back to teaching him again for the day. It must look really sexy to have a prostitute teacher, he envisioned before the start of the lesson.
The education process went on pretty much the same as it was in the morning. New words, pronounciation exercises, some speaking practices.
In the near end of the lesson, Felix decided to ask questions that had been bothering him since the previous day's explanations.
"I have some questions about my ability. Do you know how other shapeshifters transform to other forms, or appearances? Like, whether they have to touch them or think hard, or have to have some sort of kinship to change into them?"
She became silent to process how to answer his question, what to answer maybe, taking onto account that she said she didn't know how shapeshifters trained.
"Let me tell you what I know about shapeshifters. They are considered a country’s essential asset. Particularly those who could turn into animals and monsters. Some weaker ones can only take other people's faces or forms. The brothels in big cities have a few of those. I heard they study a person's appearance deep closely to change into them. I also heard long ago that many shapeshifters have to be in contact with what they want to become. However, there should be a few who don't have to do that."
Felix sank into thought after hearing what Tsilonee said. If what she said was true, he could have been captured anyway if he wasn't brought here. A person who can become anyone is a potential troublemaker to any country, to its economics, politics, in one word, to its peace. If a government doesn’t have control of these 'changeables', why have them at all?
The curious thing was, in case he was caught by this town’s guards, what could've happened to him? Tortured till he spilled for whatever he knew? Sent to the capital or a military base for making him obedient?
He glanced at Tsilonee who was observing him for his reaction. Maybe she was lying to him. But what she told him made perfect sense. Therefore, he decided to go with the flow.
"What if the town guards find out about me?" He asked as he looked at her in the eye.
"Don't worry. No one will know it. Why do you think those hunters died?"
Before answering her rhetorical sounded question, he pretended to be in some serious thought.
"Thank you for saving me, Miss Tsilonee," he eventually said.
"There is no need for thanking. After all, we can help each other," she said, slightly leaning onto the table they were sitting at.
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She stood up and headed for the door. Before she opened the door, Felix stopped her with another question.
"Miss Tsilonee. Do you have cats in your brothel, by any chance?"
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Two men in their late thirties stood still in the center of a room full of reflections. The shape of their robust body and small scars around their necks and hands were telling about their battle experience. In front of them sat the woman who appointed them to their assignment.
"What do you think he tried to do through meditating?" Tsilonee asked, turning her head sideways.
"Maybe he was trying to change into a smaller animal. It could be a bird or a rat to try to escape from here," her guard, Seron, gave her a reply.
"Perhaps. Or he could be trying to master how to channel his mana to strengthen his body," she concluded.
"I didn't see any signs of body strengthening," one of the men standing responded.
Tsilonee lifted her hand to her chin and kept a brief silence before coming to her conclusion.
"Good. Keep watching him. Report every small action he takes. You may go."
Seron put his hands on her shoulder after the guards left the room, leaving the two alone. She stood up from her seat and led him to bed, holding his hand from behind.
"Isn't this perfect? A shapeshifter in our hands, and the fortress is about to be under our watch?" she asked him, unsuppressed delight was within her voice as she began disentangling the binds around his robe.
"I don't care about him, but we must be extremely careful about the manor."
"Don't be like that. Being jealous of our shapeshifter does not suit you, my young protector," she scolded him in a teasing tone, looking into his eyes playfully.
The sword was hurled away to a random direction that was hung to Solan's hip a moment ago. Tsilonee's body slammed onto the bed by the man's gentle and simultaneously forceful motion, followed by the young man's body itself. Solan closed the distance between their faces while his hands masterfully unwrapped her clothes.
"No matter what fucking gift he was given, he won't take away anything from me," Solan said, his whisper sounding as a hiss.
"How possessive. A tiger's food can't be taken from his mouth easily, after all," she teased him more with seductive wispers to his neck, which made him even more irritated.
"A tiger's food won't be taken at all," he said resolutely, looking straight in her eyes. And began his night guardianship.
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Morning's arrival was apparent as Felix got bored of sleep and unfurled his small body. The usual dim light of the strange crystals still illuminated the room, despite the monster cores that were powering them up hadn't yet depleted. They couldn't replace the electric lights of his former modern world. He had asked about them three weeks ago on his third day. Tsilonee had said these lights could last months with just one monster core, which was extracted, as its name suggested, from monsters. Very few of these powerful magical beasts could produce such cores, as he had heard. Their prices could go from hundreds of silver coins which were one of the main currency called 'ming'.
Felix's value as a guest became clear how much effort his host putting on him; delicious dishes, eye-catching samples of art on the walls, a broad bed.
A broad bed that currently looked like an entire room's floor as he stretched his black and yellow feline body. He had been in this form quite often lately. Not just because it was easy for him to fall asleep in a cat's body, but he could make an excuse of them being his most favorite pet. As a cat, his senses weren't much decreased from that of a barghest. Although, the delusion of felines's vision were being better than humans was pretty much shattered when he first transformed, he didn't complain of his smell and hearing senses. He could still detect when his watchmen's shift came, when Tsilonee's and Solan's scents somehow came from both persons, and, especially, when the woman was blending truth with a few fakes.
Felix had managed to ask a few questions while appearing to be absentminded before turning into his feline form. Tsilonee had narrated further what she knew and recently found out about shapeshifters. He listened her words along with her heart rhythm as he was being petted on her lap. She was a cat person too, and seeing he practiced his shapeshifting by transforming into her cat only made her more cheerful and talkative.
The closeness between the student and the teacher became narrower as the days passed. She sometimes changed the maid's clothes that attended him, and sometimes changed the maid herself to the brothel's hotter members. He didn't understand the woman's intentions, because she had said a shapeshifter's child rarely inherited their parent's ability, which he checked was true. Maybe she was trying anyway.
Another piece of information he had extracted from her was, while transforming, it was feasible to keep one's clothes. She actually covered the truth with inner-outer mana user system that this magical world adopted, saying inner mana users like him could not expand their magical energy beyond their bodies. If he could not encompass what he was wearing with mana, it could not be transformed together with him.
He shifted to his human appearance and welcomed in another hot servant holding his breakfast on a tray. Although he heard they were prostitutes, they didn't act like one that often. The garment they wore made their look enticing, but not overly so. It seemed their customs were demanding, despite them allowing women and men becoming both prostitutes.
As usual, after around half an hour he had finished his morning tea, Tsilonee came knocking the door and entered without permission as always. He now could communicate with her using simple conversation sentences, could understand when she turned off the soul tongue if she didn't speak with complexity. It was the fruit of his hard work and the knowledge he had befriended in this cell.
They spent almost the whole day practicing Felix's language exercises. Sometimes, she had a business to attend to, some other important people to welcome and so on. Besides that, she didn't leave him that much, chatting in dinner times, mostly about the differences of their realms. If she was shoving some lies between facts, why would he disappoint her by not doing the same? He told her about the level of violence in his world being too low, and the people from his world were pretty strict at instituting and obeying to laws, at least compared to this world's, he assured himself. A medeival age was supposed to be less law enforced, in his opinion.
The night came and the lesson neared to its end when Tsilonee suddenly asked a question he did not expect to hear.
"You have been changing between human and animal a lot lately, Mr. Felix. But don't you wish to try changing into human appearances as well?"
He processed the question with a tilted head before answering.
"As in... Into Another People?" he said in the language of this land.
She nodded affirmatively.
"Of Course, willingly," he said with an eager smile.
"We cannot risk revealing your ability to other people. For this reason, I'll be your practice subject," she informed him matter-of-factly. "Try to transform into my appearance. Inspect my face, my body, every detail of it," she instructed him in a slightly seductive way, taking off of her outer robe, revealing her slim and alluring frame.
Certainly, he could not reject an offer when an opportunity to learn arose. He started examining her body closely. A key to change shape was not just knowing the appearance of the intended subject, but to feel how they would feel. Monsters like barghests were wild and bloodthirsty, ready to shred their enemies into pieces. Cats were mild and harmless. Not unless aggravated, they kept their calm behavior.
Tsilonee had normal sized upturned eyes, black purples, cheeks that not round nor thin, an aquiline nose, and thin lips. She had a head that was not that small, had a biteable neck, her body height was shorter than Felix’s and she kept her figure straight all the time.
The way she acted?
He tried as much as he could to visualize himself being Tsilonee. Finally, the changing process began.
His bones were replaced by thinner and more fragile ones. His skin felt even more sensitive, and he felt his height shrinking while his chest area started collecting weight. Long hair made his head heavier; it fell over his neck until his waist. But it didn’t make skin itchy, rather it was like a very soft and long brush was run along his back. And most importantly... he felt his little companion diminish and disappear. It had left in place an emptiness that he wasn't able to stir no matter how much effort he put into. He barely held his hand back from rushing it downward to his groin.
However, he was not able to restrain himself from swinging slowly and taking subtle glimpses at his now heavier chest. He felt as though two meaty bags were tightly strapped to his breast part. It didn’t feel uncomfortable, but strangely complete. To hide his peeks, he began examining his smooth skin.
Felix first touched his face, and then his hand. It didn't feel that unfamiliar. He used to sense this smoothness on the girls' skins he had dated. Now he was somehow experiencing the receiving end. Only the softness could convince his skin was now not his own. When he gently squeezed his flesh, he felt mild and softness, which was felt like fat but in a pleasant way. He then ran his hand through his forearm, with a purpose of scientific inspection, he tried to ensure himself.
"Now, now, you seem to have quite a liking to my body, Mr. Felix," Tsilonee asked him, caressing his arm together with his hand. He hadn't noticed her approach, and now she stood within a foot’s length.
"Ah, It's… beautiful." It sounded funny and confusing to hear his own voice in a higher pitch, in another tone.
"It is. And it feels even more 'Beautiful' when touched by others," she came closer and held his arms. Her arms.
Her hands slithered down to his hands and went onto his new body’s abdomen up his neck, passing by and stroking over his breasts. They felt so delicate and mild, it was as though they were craving for touch. Tsilonee gently grasped his collar with both hands and got her face closer to his neck. Her lovely lower lip glided upward while she breathed in his scent. Then she lifted away her head, examining her state.
"Still needs some preparations before presenting," she told him, holding his chin. "But it'll do for now… actually it looks somehow arousing, especially in a male outfit."
The moment she said that, she immediately attacked on his lips, pressing him tight to her own body. Felix was dumbfounded for a second, but quickly regained himself and started responding with his own vigorous kisses.
Now was the time for avenging for so many days he had spent without release. As a man or a woman, he did not want to spend this night in his bed that appeared spacious to him alone.
Felix accepted every advantage he was given; he stroked her back with one hand, moved down to fondle the woman's every inch that wasn’t heated by the high temperature between them, while his other hand held her head glued to his.
When they finally felt satisfied of kissing and rubbing, they slowly dragged each other toward the bed to continue the 'shapeshifting practice' on the surface of smooth silk.