Moriko was amused at how long it had taken them to actually get to the clan. Between Kazue wanting to camp out every time she found a new type of spirit to try and commune with and Moriko’s own time spent looking for people who might need a guiding hand to figure out their heart’s desire or how to obtain it, what should have been a five-day journey had taken nearly a month.
On the plus side, Kazue had gotten down how to commune with spirits and how to cast more magic by temporarily binding with one, and had started making a list of what sort of magic each one had. It took an hour to bind with a spirit when she was well rested, so if she wanted to use particular spells she had to select what spirit to commune with and bind carefully.
It turns out there are a lot of different minor spirits. There were spirits of forges and fires, spirits of cultivated lands that were different from open plains which were different from forests, creeks held different spirits from lakes, and the rock and deep earth held spirits of its own that Kazue had recently learned to call upon.
Moriko was glad that they’d mostly gotten through all of that, it had left her with very little to do some days. She’d been able to help Kazue with some of her meditation techniques, but Kazue had been practicing those for a while so there had not been much for Moriko to add.
But now they were here, and the experience left Moriko a little bemused. She’d never had reason to visit before, and now she understood why kitsune just referred to the clan and never used ‘town’ or ‘city’, because those sorts of words didn’t really fit what she saw.
First, there was no clear border between where people lived and where they didn’t, homes were just denser near the center.
Second, homes and buildings could be difficult to identify, the kitsune druids had spent generations customizing homes to different people’s preferences. Some were nestled in the roots of giant trees, others were built along the branches, or grown directly into a trunk, or were little cottages that blended with hedges and small trees. And according to Kazue, there were even a few that had burrow-like entrances for fox-form kitsune to dive into, which then led into large, comfortable underground homes, though she hadn’t been able to visit those ones before.
The once-again three-tailed fox had been excited about the possibility of visiting some friends that way before she realized that Moriko wouldn’t be able to join her. “It’s okay for you to visit friends, my love. You don’t have to escort me the entire time, I can stay out of trouble well enough,” Moriko smirked, “Now that I have reason enough to want to stay out of trouble that is.”
“You’re incorrigible,” Kazue giggled, then snuggled close, “Come on, Mother said that she kept the house after she handed over the garden, let’s go check it out, I have a key.” If they had gotten here faster, they might have caught up with her parents, but this did have the advantage of giving them more privacy.
Kazue’s home turned out to be of the hidden ‘cottage’ design, with two floors above ground and a finished basement for drying herbs and cold storage below ground. And while the garden had been altered with new hedge growth, Akahana had kept a small bit of yard for herself where she’d left some cooking herbs that would grow ‘wild’ just fine on their own.
The cottage demonstrated an interesting dichotomy in the kitsune lifestyle. On the one hand, they were so into having their homes integrated into nature that the entire house was made of very tightly interwoven bushes, vines, and trees, all growing and living in harmony while still providing all the structural integrity of a normal wooden house, if not more.
On the other hand, their vulpine nature meant that they were generally as happy to be spoiled with luxury as any cat. Thanks to Akahana’s enchantments, running hot, cool, and cold water was available on demand, and the entire place was perfectly climate-controlled and had anti-pest wards, as it seems even druids prefer to have their grains be insect-free. The stove didn’t burn any fuel at all, it had heating runes on the cooking surface and the oven had temperature controls that could go low enough to barely keep something warm or hot enough that Moriko suspected that one could do white smithing with it.
Heck, the bed sheets were made of silk. “And here I thought Riverbridge was well off. Many people still use wood for fire and heat water with pipes running by the stove.” Moriko's family was a bit well-off and used a mix, though her parents had mentioned that they should be able to afford to finish the upgrades soon.
Kazue shook her head, “I never really thought about it. I didn’t even realize that my mother probably did most of the enchanting herself, cause the druids do that work for anyone who needs it. And all the work was done while I was still a baby.”
“Well, nothing for it now. But now that we are here? Do you want to show me all the sights? Or maybe we should find out how well your bed handles having two people?” Moriko waggled her eyebrows as Kazue laughed and swatted her butt with a tail.
“Bad wifey! We need to get cleaned up and head over to the Matriarch’s home. If we don’t, I am fairly certain that by sunset we’ll be informed of the feast being thrown in our honor. Might as well prep for it.”
Moriko did as her wife bade her to do, satisfied with having teased Kazue, though she did intend to make good on the idea later. And Kazue proved mildly prophetic here, as they were indeed expected at the pavilion that covered the small clearing in front of the Matriarch’s home. The ‘house’ itself was almost more like a small keep woven in and throughout a giant tree that towered above all the others nearby.
The party itself was unusual to Moriko’s experience. While the basics of the long tables covered in food and such were familiar, she found it a little strange that most of the guests came and went as suited them over the course of the evening, and a good quarter of them brought their own dishes to share and show off. Only a handful of people were obligated to stay for most of the feasting: Herself, Kazue, Aia, and a handful of other kitsune in leadership positions.
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While Moriko and Avatar Kazue were settling into a visit at the Azeria Clan, Mordecai was working with Kazue Core on the wetlands zone. They split it in half using a tangle of trees and swamp vines, including plenty of mildly toxic plants with a variety of fast-acting irritants. Then they crafted a floor-specific mantle for the faeries: Any fairy that traveled through this floor had a chance of glowing for a random time of up to three hours. Cheap will-o-the-wisps that wouldn’t be trying to lure adventurers to their doom.
There were no directions for the fairies, of course, the flighty creatures didn’t need them to be effective in this role. Just them being their normal helpful selves should suffice. They were just encouraged to help any visitors they met.
Overall, the basic appearance and function of both sides were the same: Twisty paths, heavy fog and mist, slowly drifting patches of trees and shifting areas of solid to deceptive land, all the things needed to make navigating it difficult. And Mordecai showed Kazue a new trick as well. They’d already gotten lodestones as a sample, and Mordecai already knew how to manipulate their properties. The entire zone was covered in twisted magnetic fields, with each of the shifting ‘islands’ of trees carrying enough lodestone to bend the fields near it some more. Compasses would be of no use here.
Once they had done that, Mordecai could set about making his combat challenges. The feathered serpents migrated in quite easily of course, though they were larger now and tended to rest by twining themselves around the top of trees instead of making a nest near the ceiling. He made sure they were a little faster as well, and gave them the ability to spit their poison at range, plus he empowered their echolocation, giving them the ability to unleash a bone-rattling, nauseating sonic scream in a cone before them.
The river drakes needed more modification. For one thing, he needed to have channels of water available deep below the surface of the wetlands for them to travel through, as the above-ground waters were often too shallow, and then they needed the ability to cope with the increased levels of salt and mud as well as be able to sense their targets without a clear line of sight. He decided to give them the ability to sense electric fields as well as sharpen their sense of smell. Mm, they were almost the right amount of dangerous, but he felt he could push a little more. Let’s see, ah, yes, if he put it on a slow recharge, he could give them a powerful electric blast and in the process give them resistance to electricity. Perfect.
Now, for the new inhabitants. First up, the squirrels. He was amused when Moriko reported back Kazue’s comment about them being evil, as he’d already had this lot planned. It was a fairly straightforward modification; he made them charcoal gray, gave them the same shadow blending and shadow jumping abilities as Umbrowl, and then added the ability to fling bolts of void energy with a flick of their tails. As a backup, Mordecai also hardened their teeth and strengthened their bites, but it would never be their primary attack. The tiny little snipers didn’t really need more than that with their ability to scamper up trees and leap between branches. And naturally, they were called shade tails.
Kazue had to browse through their older books and cross reference an old language to get that one, and she promptly booed him.
Next up, Mordecai wanted to work on some crustaceans. The base design was not terribly different from Crios, but they were mud colored instead of being crystal-blue and they were only a little bigger than human-sized. He also had them grow another set of legs behind the others that had some increased articulation on a ‘forward’ orientation. These legs tucked up out of the way when the crab-like creatures were moving normally, but they could hit the ground quickly for a quick jump forward, or be used for the creature to rear back on and become bipedal. Naturally, these legs required proper feet to maintain balance, and some internal structural modification, including improved musculature and some limited internal skeletal support in addition to the exoskeleton.
The improved muscles and the overall shape of the rear legs gave him some more ideas, and he made sure to give them the ability to jump both high and far in this stance. The small legs simply folded across the torso to provide a little more protection, while the powerful arms were enhanced with some hydraulic segmentation, giving it further reach than its size would suggest. Combined with a bit of innate power, this gave their punches a shock wave as well, which both enhanced their normal attacks and enabled them to perform air punches.
With traces of more mammalian-like muscles where needed, a faster metabolism, and the ability to leap far and high, it was time to match form to function. He modified the exoskeleton on its head, making it grow out into the facsimile of a rabbit’s face, and took the opportunity to grow out the normal pair of antennae into several ‘whiskers’, and made the rabbit ears still act as sound funnels to sections of modified setae, effectively giving them mammal-like hearing as well.
Of course, the face was effectively a mask. The eye stalks simply retracted to nestle into the ‘eye sockets’, and when it opened its mouth to spew its sticky blue fluid, one could still see the moving crab mandibles inside. Mordecai’s avatar smirked wickedly as this inspired a final touch. There was enough space in the ‘skull’ to create several sets of small plates that could grind against each other, much like certain insects do, tuned to harmonize into a complex note of unearthly beauty. The contrast of the horrifying glimpse of mandibles inside of the open mouth with the nearly perfect sound was great for creating confused reactions, and for a final touch, he made sure that the grinding process released the sharp, tangy scent of lightning.
There was no actual electricity involved beyond the normal functions of life, it just amused him to create the jumbled set of sensory signals to leave adventures jumpy and distracted.
And with that, his crabbits were made. Mordecai’s smugness drew Kazue’s attention, and her fascinated horror was a sublime pleasure to enjoy.
He started teasing her about it when something caught his attention. One of the fairies had pried open a crabbits mouth to peer inside, and another fairy was poking fingers into her own mouth before opening wide to waggle her tongue about. They took turns, and he could feel the little pulses of shape-changing magic as the fey creatures worked on being able to transform the inside of their mouths into the same mashing mandibles. It was easy to predict what was going to happen when they mastered it, they were going to compete to see who could create the more horrifying mouth, like little kids making faces at each other.
Their nature would probably leave them mostly harmless, but their continued alterations of the initial shape-changing power that turned them into flowers for the first-floor challenge was becoming a touch worrying. The mushroom rings some of them could turn into didn’t actually do anything yet, as far as he could tell, but it was still concerning.