“Cami, please step back from me. I’m going to try something new.”
While that was technically correct, to a dragon magic could never truly be called ‘new’. This was something that had been done many times in the dragon dream, even if I had only ever experienced it in my ancestor’s memories. Well, maybe not this exact thing. From what I could tell, what I was about to do was generally looked down upon by blue dragons—though other dragon species did it fairly often.
After my awakening, a number of abilities became available to me—and others were there for me to purchase with Dragon Kill Points—DKP for short. Shape changing was a natural extension of the way that magic flowed through my body, and yet it was also a frightening step backwards in evolution.
Every dragon knew that they were blessed by the gods to be born in the most perfect form ever created. Nothing that crawled upon the earth, flew in the air, or swam in the depths could rival the majesty of a dragon. But dragons were wise enough to admit that, sometimes, other shapes served a purpose. My kin had left most of Taleia behind, but if I wanted to mingle with the lesser races, I needed a form that wouldn’t scare them. And the curiosity which burned in my breast now was great enough to overcome any fears I had.
Turning my thoughts inward, I activated the ability. As I’d guessed, it was as easy as visualizing what I wanted to become, though there were some limitations which I learned about as a notification appeared:
You are activating the Shape Change ability for the first time. This ability is currently at level 1. At level 1, this will enable you to take the shape of any creature native to Taleia that you have personally encountered, from the size of a mouse to your natural size. You may activate this ability up to three times per day. Reverting to your natural form does not count as a use. The number of uses and available shapes and sizes available to you will increase as the ability is leveled up.
Note: Shape changing will not provide you with any equipment or clothing but will store what you are wearing in an extra-dimensional space for the duration of your change. Such items cannot be accessed while they are in that space.
Changing shape will also heal you for up to 50% of your total health. At your current level, the shaping process requires 30 seconds to complete.
Stat Allocation:
* Your Mind stat and immunities remain unchanged and with you, in any form you take.
* If the new form has superior physical stats to your native form, then your physical stats will assume the higher stats for as long as you remain in the new form.
* If the new form has an inferior physical stat to your natural form, then your natural stats and the weaker form’s stats will be averaged to produce temporary stats for the duration you hold the weaker form.
* If you take the form of a sapient race possessing levels, you will be assigned a class and level appropriate to your abilities. Your control over this will increase, as the skill is leveled up.
I smiled as I read the description until I lost myself in the wonder of feeling my body change. There were a number of questions raised by the skill description, but at least I’d be healed. The process happened so slowly that it was almost as though I could feel my body retracting in upon itself to a more compressed form, inch by inch. My tail was sucked back into my torso. My wings shriveled and then became shoulder blades. My long neck was squished together as my noble head was twisted into that of an ugly human.
The very first thing I noticed, was how cold the wind felt against my now uncomfortably squishy and very naked body. Gone were my beautiful scales; all I had now was a rather pinkish skin.
Cami gasped and said something, but her voice sounded so much softer. My hearing clearly wasn’t nearly as good as it had been before.
Then I noticed how I could hardly smell a thing. A wave of fear ran through me. It was practically like being blind! I struggled to regain control of myself and realized this was one of the things the dragon dream had warned me of. I couldn’t see or hear as well as I was used to, but my senses of touch and taste should be much more refined. I wasn’t sure that this was a fair trade. It certainly didn’t make up for the near total loss of my olfactory sense.
The very world looked different. I assumed it had something to do with how much closer together my eyes were. Even the ground under my feet felt different. I could discern so much more immediately around me… and yet, so much less than before.
These poor creatures, I thought, living a life with bodies this soft was shocking. I could only imagine how they must constantly be bruised and battered simply from the world about them. Before I thought about it, I tried to take a step forward, and nearly face planted.
“Gods above, how do you walk without a tail?” I asked of no one in particular.
It took me nearly half a minute just to figure out how to stand back up. Fortunately, my shapeshifting ability made it easy for me to adapt to this new form, else I would have been more than a little worried. It was bad enough that I felt like I could sense so little of the world around me.
Wait... I could smell the scent of blood, if only faintly, but it was like it was from a long time ago—perhaps it was half a mile away. This was all so very frustrating! As much as we dragons relied upon our sight and hearing, our keen sense of smell was the way we learned to experience the world around us. And so I had done, before I ever was able to open my eyes. Words could lie, and sight might be distracted, but my nose often revealed truths to me that my other senses missed.
I had to push down the urge to resume my normal form. This form and its limited senses felt almost claustrophobic. It was like I’d been crammed into a tiny box. The world around me felt massive. I had to admit, it was a sensation I did not like.
I heard Cami call out again, “Nico? Is that you?”
I tried to twist my neck around to look at her and felt a sharp pain. Okay, note to self, a human’s stubby little neck is not very flexible. Instead, I had to turn my entire body to face her.
She gasped when she saw my front side.
I didn’t understand what the problem was, nor why her face grew so red—something that meant she was incredibly embarrassed about something. Well—either she was embarrassed, or she had acute indigestion.
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Hmm… there was something I remembered from the dragon dream, something about humans and other races getting nervous around nudity. It made sense, in a way. They were rather ugly, after all, and every human I had encountered so far had covered up most of their body with what they called clothes. Maybe it was because they didn’t have beautiful scales, and so jealously tried to imitate dragons? If that were the case, they did a very poor job of it.
“It’s me. Do I look okay?” I asked. I noticed she was averting her eyes.
“Uh… Nico, you’re naked.”
“I was naked before, too.” Her logic was clearly flawed. She’d been staring at me naked for quite a while as we spoke.
“We need to get you some clothes,” she muttered, then spoke louder. “Can’t you use your magic to do that?”
I quickly scanned through the options I had available to me. I limited it to the abilities or spells I could buy for 2 DKP, or less, taking note of the fact that I needed to spend some time scrolling through the options that would open up to me in the future. I quickly got rid of the combat focused options, as well as any of the more esoteric abilities available, focusing on the ones which seemed most appropriate to my current need.
In the end, I boiled it down to two likely options, though neither of them solved my problem.
Create Food and Water (1 DKP)—Conjure food and water out of thin air. Create enough to satisfy your hunger and thirst in dragon form. The food will be of a type which is appealing to your current form but will only be basic. Cast Time: 1 minute. Mana Cost: 20. Note: When you are in a different form, the spell may be modified to create only enough food and water for your current size. In your current human form, the mana cost is reduced to 3.
Fabricate (2 DKP)—Take base materials and create a new product from them. May affect up to 2 cubic feet of material at current level. End product will be of standard quality. Quality may be improved by mastering the relevant mundane skills required to craft the desired item. Cast Time: 1 minute. Mana Cost: 15.
“What are you doing?” Cami asked. “It’s like you are all alone and staring off into the sky. We seriously need to get you some clothes.”
I looked around for a minute. Her attitude wasn’t pleasing. She needed to remember what I was, even if I wasn’t in my natural form. But then again, I was fairly sure she believed she was helping me. I decided I wouldn’t punish her for her outburst.
“I can’t magic up clothes as you asked, but I do have the option to gain an ability that might help.”
Looking around, I saw the bodies of the knights I had slain. Their clothing was pretty much all torn up, but if I gathered the raw materials together, I should be able to make something suitable from them. I explained what I had in mind to Cami, and she agreed.
It irked me not to be able to consider any of the other abilities like Enhanced Regeneration or Telepathy. I could even upgrade my breath weapon, and there was something called Shocking Heal which sounded cool, but all that would have to wait until I grew stronger. Hopefully, it would not be too difficult to gain more DKP.
We stripped the clothes and even some of the metal armor off the knights. I made sure it wasn’t more than two cubic feet, though I quickly realized that was a pretty sizable amount of material for a human. My perspective, I realized—used, as I was, to seeing things as a dragon—was simply skewed.
I tried to picture what I wanted in my head, though to be fair, my experience with human attire was fairly limited and mostly negative. If Cami hadn’t pointed out that I would need a pair of boots, I would have neglected that essential item. What weak creatures were these humans, that they couldn’t even walk around without something on their feet? What I ended up with was more flattering than anything I had seen a human wearing.
Cami didn’t agree, but she was a human child—what did she know?
Looking down at what I had made, I smiled. I had a cloth shirt, but instead of the boring cloth shirts the humans who were farmers had worn, my shirt had little bits of the metal fabricated into small imitation scales. I liked the way it shimmered, even if Cami thought it looked odd. The pants were just as boring as the other humans’ trousers, but I guess it couldn’t all be great. My boots were covered in metal along the top of the toes with a metal piece. I also had metal bands around my wrists as I thought that would be helpful if I had to fight.
Thinking about that made me realize I needed to check my status sheet. I had no idea what class or abilities the magic had assigned me, in terms of this human form.
Nicosandumas
Apparent Race: Human
Apparent Age: 17
Class: Monk/Sorcerer
Level: 6th/4th
DKP: 0
Height: 6’1” Weight: 186 lbs.
Base Speed: 4 mph
The size change was appalling. I mean, I had known it would be rather drastic, but seeing the numbers only drove home the fact that I was pathetically tiny. This was definitely going to take some time to get used to.
Seeing the two classes listed didn’t actually tell me much, though. I was going to have to ask Cami about it.
“Hmmm… I’m a monk now. What is a monk?”
The girl scratched her head and laughed. “How can you be something and not know what it is?”
“Hey, don’t laugh. I’ve never changed shape before now. The magic of my ability tried to assign me a human class—or classes, it seems—which were comparable to my natural aptitudes. But what is a monk? It says I’m a monk slash sorcerer. I basically know what a sorcerer is, but I do not know what a monk is.”
“Are you sure that monk wasn’t your class before?” Cami asked.
I snorted, displeased to see how pitiful the effect now was. “As if dragons would need a class. We just are.”
Cami shook her head but finally answered me, “I think monks are like fighters who fight with their hands and feet, though I’ve never met one. My papa said he once saw one go into a bar and get attacked by a bunch of men, but he was the only one who walked out.”
I nodded along. “Ah, so suitably deadly. That is appropriate. I don’t suppose you know anything about human levels, do you?”
Once again, she shook her head. This time it was to signal her ignorance. I was disappointed, but felt some pride that I was already learning how to discern human expressions. Maybe this wouldn’t be so complicated, after all.
When I looked at my stats, I was at first confused—until I opened a flashing mark next to each of my stats.
Note: Stats are race specific. Your dragon stats are based upon your natural dragon form and your human stats are based upon your human form. For humans, 10 is a baseline stat for an average adult member of that race. Every +1 equals approximately a 10% increase beyond average, up to 20; every +1 above twenty, equals a 20% increase beyond that. This progression (+10%) continues forward every twenty levels (20, 40, 60, etc.).
Hmm… I nodded to myself. That made sense. It explained why my stats now seemed so much higher. My strength stat, for example was a combination of my dragon form and my human form, divided by two—though it was scored on a human scale.
Since even a weak dragon would be much stronger than an average human, this showed me to be significantly stronger in my human form relative to what I expected other humans to be. Although to be fair, I really didn’t know how many of them had stats above their racial baseline.
Temporary stats:
STR: 34
AGI: 24 (adjustment debuff -15)
DUR: 23
MIND: 12
HP: 84/118
Regen Rate: 20 HP/day
Armor Rating: 10
Immunities: Electricity, Sleep, Paralysis
Resistances:
Magic - 30%
Physical Damage - 0
ATK: 18
DMG: 1-4 + 12 (punch), 1-6 + 12 (kick)
Critical Strike: 5%
My Agility was significantly debuffed, and everything felt off. I internally cursed this clumsy human body. That had to be the reason. Dragon agility had to be greater than human agility. I mean, I was having trouble walking straight on these two weird stick-like appendages they called legs. Nothing was the length or proportion it should be. This body was straight up a horror show.
Once I was as comfortable as I was going to get and had some idea about what I was doing, I turned to the fourteen-year-old for clarification. It really was humbling, but I didn’t have anyone else to ask. “Cami, where do I go now?”
Before she could say anything, I saw a man sneaking up behind her. He was in the same soft clothing that the farmers had worn. He might even have been one of the men who’d been here before and had run away. It was hard to say. All humans looked alike. Suddenly, he stood up and ran forward, looking all around frantically.
When Cami saw him, she called out, “Papa!”
He nodded but kept scouring the horizon as though he were expecting to see something. Finally, he turned to her. “Where’d the dragon go?”
“It’s gone. Aren’t you glad that I’m safe?”
“Gone? Gone where? How?” Then he looked at me before asking, “And who are you?”
Cami and I hadn’t had a chance to work out a cover story for that, so I wasn’t sure what to say. Luckily, Cami seemed to be able to think quickly on her feet. That, or she just had plenty of experience lying to her father.
“His name is Nico. He is a wandering mage. He tricked the dragon into leaving with an illusion.”
Her sire didn’t answer at first as he scratched at his beard. When he finally did speak he asked, “Why didn’t we see it fly off then?”
She shrugged her shoulders and made an odd expression on her face. “How should I know? I’m only a girl.”
Her sire pulled back his foreleg and suddenly had an air of violence about him. “Don’t give me any lip, girl.”
I didn’t know exactly what was going on, or why she would take part of her mouth off to give it to him, but I assumed it was some odd human way of doing things. I didn’t really want to see Cami be struck, though, so I moved to intercept his blow. That was when things got even more complicated.