“Go ahead and lie down,” Blaze told Serenity. “I’ll need to reach you and that will be easier for both of us.”

Lying down was only slightly more difficult than normal; chest injuries weren’t as bad as back injuries, but they were never fun. At least Blaze’s pain “separation” continued to work.

Blaze pushed the block Serenity created to serve as a chair next to Serenity’s table and sat down with his hand on Serenity’s shoulder. Serenity could guess what was coming next; Blaze was going to look him over and see if he could figure out what was wrong with Serenity.

Serenity really didn’t have anything to do while Blaze was busy. He’d have liked to follow along and learn from what Blaze was doing, but he knew better than that. Blaze hadn’t scolded him for it, but all too many of the healers he’d worked with as Vengeance had. Blaze was far more understanding of Serenity’s interest in everything magic, but Serenity still wasn’t about to potentially disturb a healing by bothering the healer.

He couldn’t even re-infuse his used spells while he waited. He couldn’t actively use magic at all. It was frustrating and ought to be unnecessary but for all but the most delicate actions. Admittedly, Blaze might well be looking for something delicate.

Serenity was bored. The ceiling was just as uniform as everywhere else in A’Atla, though he did notice that there were a few spiderwebs near one of the doorways; perhaps the airflow was a little stronger there and the spider thought it might catch something?

It was interesting seeing small life start to populate A’Atla’s interior. It was moving in faster than Serenity would have expected; where was it coming from? Some of it was undoubtedly from the things the explorers brought; while no one was trying to bring in foreign life, Serenity hadn’t heard about any special isolation protocols, either. More was probably coming from the life A’Atla itself was adding on the surface; was it possible that A’Atla was also adding life inside?

Serenity couldn’t discount the thought.

He found the spider on its web; it seemed to be repairing it. It was really the only thing to watch.

The next thing Serenity knew, someone was shaking his shoulder. Blaze. Had he fallen asleep?

A glance at his arm told him that while he might have been dozing, he either hadn’t fallen asleep or at least hadn’t been asleep for long. He was still extremely pale; he had to be in his Mana Elemental Heritage disguise. Since he hadn’t used one of Honoria’s charms, he would lose the disguise overnight. He wasn’t certain how long it took; maybe he had to sleep deep enough to dream?

“Good, you’re awake.” Blaze stood next to Serenity; he had to have moved his chair. “There are several things going on, but first I need you to answer a question. How is this form different from your others? It is not like any of the others I have seen when I heal you.”

His form?

Serenity was surprised by the question; he’d always healed the same, regardless of his shape. The only thing different about this one was that it was based on one of his Heritages, rather than being one he had naturally; it otherwise acted almost the same. He hadn’t even considered that as a possible reason he wasn’t healing.

It was reached with Realize Potential rather than Multiform, so there was that difference. He also lost his horns; that was the reason he could use it as a disguise, after all. Was it possible he also lost his increased healing?

Surely he’d healed at some point while in a form created by Realize Potential. He cast his mind back, trying to remember when. It certainly wasn’t during the Tutorial; while that was most of the time he’d spent using the forms he could get from Realize Potential, he didn’t think he’d gotten injured during those particular visits to the Tutorial. He was trying to not be noticed as anything other than human, after all, so he tried not to stand out.

The next time was on Zon. The fight at Djen’s Hiring Hall stood out, but once again Serenity didn’t think he’d been particularly injured. He remembered momentary blindness from a bright light and maybe some sunburn but that was all. Had he even been in a Heritage form during the fight? He thought so, but wasn’t entirely certain.

There were a few times later on Zon where he’d used a Heritage form, but again they weren’t times when he got badly injured; the point was to avoid a fight, not bull his way through it.

“It is different,” Serenity admitted. “I guess healing when I shift like this hasn’t ever come up. I’ll shift back.”

He paused for a moment to give Blaze a chance to stop him if for some reason he shouldn’t shift back to one of his normal forms, but when Blaze didn’t say anything he started the shift. It was relatively easy to dismiss the Potential he’d called; once he did that, all he had to do was push his Multiform towards the shape he wanted. Right now, that was his “human” shape.

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It hurt. Serenity had never felt pain from a shift before, but all of the places he’d been splashed with dark fire fought the shift. He had to push in order to finish the shift; the dark fire seemed to want to do something else. It was completely blocking him.

Serenity pushed harder, frustrated and annoyed. This was his Skill! It was supposed to WORK! No attack was going to stop him!

He’d kill whoever did this to him!

Serenity felt himself roar as the shift finally completed, leaving him in entirely the wrong form. This wasn’t the form he’d picked; instead, he sprawled only partly on the table because he was far too big for it in the form that matched his anger.

It felt good to be able to just let it out; the pinpricks where the damaged flesh separated from his body were nothing. At least, they’d be nothing once the being who made the black fire was dead. Serenity’s roar echoed through A’Atla’s halls to tell the fool that a true demon was coming for him. He’d make the being pay for forcing him to kill one of his young cousins!

“Can you please get off me?” Blaze’s voice came from under Serenity’s shoulder, where his sudden expansion had pinned his friend between one of his legs and the “chair.”

The calm, if slightly muffled, question struck Serenity as hilarious. He laughed as loud as he’d yelled moments before. He tried to roll off Blaze, but it was surprisingly difficult; his right foreleg was trapped against Blaze and it was also the side that was down. He ended up scrabbling against the ground with his rear right leg and using it and his left foreleg to lift himself up.

Naturally, the first time he did it, the angle tipped him onto Blaze; his rear left leg was still on the table. Blaze gave an “oof” but other than that didn’t complain.

Serenity tried again; he had to wiggle a bit to get his right leg braced under him, but the second time he was able to at least get his weight off Blaze. His leg wouldn’t move to the side like an arm, but he was able to pull it back farther than the edge of the block. He pushed on Blaze from the side; this time, his friend slid out from under him along with the block.

It wasn’t easy to get off the table without falling. He simply had very little purchase. It would probably be easier to fall off the table than climb off it.

Rather than continue to try to figure it out, that’s just what Serenity did. He pulled his right-side limbs in and relaxed them, which sent him sinking to the floor. He was far enough over that with a little effort, he started to slide off the table.

He managed to turn the flop into a roll; he went onto his right side, then his head ran into the corridor wall. He shifted to try to redirect his roll along the corridor instead of across it and only mostly succeeded. When he finally stopped, he was on his left side but half-sitting against the wall. It wasn’t a comfortable position.

At least it was easier to get out of than half falling off the table.

He probably should have just dismissed the block to get Blaze out then the table to free himself, shouldn’t he?

Serenity grumbled to himself. He was always forgetting the obvious solutions! Sure, he wasn’t particularly good at dismissing his summoned creations, but he’d more or less figured out how to do it. It would have worked and been less awkward.

“Can you shift into something a little less sharp?”

Blaze sounded a little off, so Serenity looked over at him. His face had a series of bleeding scrapes, while his clothing looked like someone had taken a knife to it while he was wearing it. No, on second thought, those weren’t bleeding scrapes; they’d finished bleeding and were now healing.

It was a good thing Blaze could heal himself. Serenity had completely forgotten about the wire-like nature of his fur.

Serenity concentrated on shifting back to human form. This time, nothing tried to stop him and the shift went quickly. He could probably have done that to get off Blaze, couldn’t he?

Before he could beat himself up too badly, Balze’s “Good, looks like it worked” pulled Serenity’s attention back to his injuries. They weren’t healed, or at least the one on his chest wasn’t, but they no longer felt like giant lumps of pain. Instead, he had a red, irritated patch on his chest that he could watch as it shrank.

“Yeah, it did.” Serenity looked up at Blaze. “But you said there were several things going on?” He paused. That wasn’t the right start. “Sorry for, uh, cutting up your clothes. And skin.”

Blaze waved a hand dismissively then chuckled. “It’s not the first time I’ve been hurt; it’s not even the worst time a patient has hurt me. More than that, it was interesting; I don’t think you’d mentioned that form.”

He hadn’t? Serenity supposed that was possible. He didn’t really like to think about it and Blaze wasn’t on Lyka when he gained it. He really should have. “Why aren’t you more upset?”

Blaze chuckled again and grinned. “I’m too excited to see it. I’m pretty sure you just managed to wrath your way out of something completely antithetical to your existence.” The grin on Blaze’s face widened. “That’s not how it works most of the time. How much mana did it cost you?”

Serenity glanced at his Status, then winced. “More than half. Shifting doesn’t usually cost enough to think about.”

Blaze nodded. He seemed satisfied with Serenity’s answer. “I thought so. Low control, high power; an appropriate use of wrath. Did you notice that the damaged bits dissolved but weren’t reused the way the rest of you was?”

The repeat of the word “wrath” told Serenity that Blaze probably had a fairly good idea that the form he hadn’t seen before was a Demon of Wrath. Serenity couldn’t be certain he knew exactly what it was, but at least he didn’t seem upset by it.

Serenity shook his head. He hadn’t noticed anything while he was changing other than his anger.