They called them goblins, but what we had called them were imps, and yet the two were synonymous enough to transcend any name misleading one about what they were to argue over. So they became goblins because my party didn't need to worry about arguements over their name.
It wasn't the only change.
They'd picked signs and stations, after their species, and every one of my party had revealed theirself to me as parts of a whole that was everything I wasn't. What they'd each picked in reality was a mutation, ones in which they respectively occupied the perfect synchronization towards, but each of their species had a cursed detriment.
Eleanor; she had become a 'Nymph', what was an Elf of the ygsdrasìlian tree to us, they'd call High or Bright Elf if not 'Nymph' as the name was given. Eleanor was centered to her crown chakra, a fast learner true, but slow to change her ideas locked in that state. Divine and Matter were hers, and Mana.
Eleanor was tall, medium weight with little muscle, and her stature and manner were both always present together in that way that someone incapable of even a white lie will be, oblivious to knowing whether people are lying or telling the truth and also incapable of knowing the difference. In other words, innocent, naive, a fool.
Paige; Sensible and sensitive but not in any kind of way to suggest vulnerable except to overload of her physical senses. Her mental functions were solid, one and all, because she was centered to the third-eye chakra. Lighting and light were hers, and chi, with her focus and development towards her philosophers stone she had high potential.
That meant she'd take the hardest work and the longest efforts to train. She was a 'Succubus', what was called locally a Violet-Djinni was not male or female however, just a demon in a state of overwhelming lust. Luckily, she was a human. That said she would struggle to focus her seer-stones in balance for clear perspective.
Kate; my wife became a 'Satyress' but it like Paige the changes were not inhuman. Paige had gargoylesque tail and wings, Kate had nub horns and a nub tail like a goats, both had fangs and clawed hands but Paiges feet were clawed as well. Her fingers and toes had been transfigured, slightly lenthened and strengthened bones and muscles in both besides claw. Kates claws were minimal, not sharp but more blunt.
They were white like bone but not thicker nor wider, just hardened and condensed at once, which I noted right away as her fingers becoming not just better clubbing or chopping instruments, but superior gripping ones with a simple change of bone and nails profile. 'If your feet look like a goats, I can't touch you in this world, it's already risky to kiss you now Kate.'
The throat chakra was her center, fire and alchemy were hers, and qi. Kate was inspiring, and while it took her longer to learn she always had taken knowledge deeper into herself, the logical and worldly things I'd not been able to take care of alone for her in the world we'd lived in had not left us the chance for her to concieve because the stress of school and work were not optimal for fertility.
She'd miscarried three times very early in the pregnancies before we agreed that until things changed she would be on birth control, but in our early thirties the time had still not come, this was the year she should have finished school but she had come to find me put that on hold. I loved her more than anyone else living, she was my wife for every reason still, and I her husband.
We'd figure things out, I knew, and after this all we'd focus on is her being relaxed long enough not just to concieve once but until she couldn't, I didn't imagine a years abscence for her brought her closer to me but in my time here I'd grown closer to her rather than more distant.
Skulde; the heart chakra, air and shadow and quantum, a fellow mastermind and unknown enigma. Not only was her heart unknowable if most familiar, the thoughts and feelings in her head were deeper to percieve and more volumous besides mixed and composed of energies of all of the others. She was a 'Valkyrie', a species whose sex was as mixed as her untapped quantum nature.
That is, I took her for face value though I knew nothing of her real self in depth, but Skulde could change to be whatever she wanted and so it only seemed fitting either way to say she must be a woman since she looked like one. If she had not been, she had become as she wished to, something she alone might be able to claim out of any of our worlds people here.
Marguete; I was in love with my wife. Skulde had part of me convinced she was made for me somehow, more than my own desire it was as if I were aware of the shared desire between us, yet it was more than lust I'd also felt for Marguete and all three things were an individual sign I couldn't deny. She was the naval chakra centered, water and illusion were hers and ki.
She was a 'Pixie', what we would call an 'Ocean Elf' that was also 'Water Nymph', but be called a 'Low or Dark Elf' alongside the 'Nymph' species as two races of one specie. Whatever weak call pointed me towards her, the need was easily changed to lust, but there was something I needed from her more than any other I'd met. With Kate, I was content and we'd made up to find our peace.
What I felt with Skulde only wanted to seem more profound and deep at once as attraction with more magnetism, but inside of me it wasn't hard to reign control over desire, not even before she was here herself would I cheat on her. Not without closure could I have, though honestly, the pull to do so in this world had always been harder feeling isolated before. Admitting how I felt was fine, but I still had control, and how I used it meant everything.
Catherine; she was everything out of control. Marguete was the insane sister, Alyssa was a psychopath, but the sociopathic Catherine was the one who spelled trouble. The sacral chakra was her center, of ice and dark, those and chakra were hers. In a way she had the least surface potential, but she'd fill it fastest, and around this group all would find the same fuller potentials individually and as whole.
As a 'Banshee' she had plentiful utility as a primarily spiritual entity with limited physical quality, yet that was half of her, for her other half when she was in that form 'Slept' when she 'Rose' into her ghostly form. This was her 'Mummy', and yet, as long as her flesh lived her ghost could go free and her body would not rot. Her spirit was not able to be killed, but it could be held, and if she was out of her body too long it would die within a few days.
Alyssa; 'Vampiress', of the root chakra that was void and earth, and they were hers the same as miasma, vampires were to us here the demon which humanoids became at their worse. She did not become a mere human woman demon, but one made up of equal parts of every species and race of humanoid. Their mutation was more comprehensive, and they evolved theirself rather than breed.
One who became one did so only through the worst crimes done the worst ways, and they'd seek to not only consume fluids and hormones they could not produce themselves, but genetic material. Maybe she hadn't known, but there were over a hundred demispecies and thousands of races by their definition of each other.
Her skin changed to have the responsive quality of the majestic mule, although the look of it was like skin traditionally, there was fur, feather and scale like quality to her flesh that went unseen but could be felt if not at surface value. You could only tell by extrapolation of how her flesh reacted to stimuli, and all defensive qualities of each were present at once.
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Besides environmental elements Alyssa was more resistant to physical wear and tear, yet with no loss of sensitivity, and no altering of how she seemed to feel or felt the world. All of her senses wer shifty, in a way, not all at once present but like gears in that she could change her senses into more acute and less broad spectrums.
The week I'd spent with them getting their bodies into more neutral states for them to be more alligned had been made the most of, but for most of them, a week of being pestered about holding certain body postures and voice tones and in unison introspective mental images altogether was about all they would take with twelve hour efforts a day with no break.
It had created a harmony they could intuitively find on their own by the sixth day, I'd only slowed them down a little before I realized with a grin they were finding it only altogether, if apart they were benefitting, together the differences they had came together for them through their humming. By the weeks end they all had healthy hearts and bodies. They had their spirits.
Their spirits were in this world too, here where they could recieve spiritual changes, but I wasn't willing to do risk that until they had taken the change deep enough to go to their senses and perception of mind. Until they knew what was what, it all mattered little.
Kate and I'd had a long and flirty conversation into each night for the week, and psyhologist or not, the more I moved her heart with my words the more she'd quickly relented unto the idea that our hearts were in fact our minds as well. She'd followed the concept quickly, then she'd really taken it to heart after finding its sensation.
And much like Margete had already tapped into the qi esper on her own, Kate found quantum for herself by looking for it while she fell asleep every night until the end of the week when she'd woke me early with it. She had been awed how her exhaustion had quickly melted away, and at her new senses.
I'd been hurt worse to find out she had essentially been raped. She had kissed a man at an event out of town for school, and back at his home he hadn't let her back out when she wanted to, rather than let it be discovered by me if he beat her and raped her anyway like he swore to or shooting him and me finding out through police or media she had went along quietly hoping not to cause a scene.
In the end she had felt partly responsible, and ashamed besides powerless to stop him, she relented into what seemed like an easier path that had become her minds burden over her heart for the most recent four years of our relationship. She included the last year I was gone, it had been a weight off of me, but I wouldn't let hers weigh either of us down.
At first she thought I was being cute when I said that our throat was between our head and heart so we could let out the pressure and friction between them. When I pressed on with that as a biological process for the true mind of the heart to get the truths in and lies out of oneself, the pituitary as the hearts eye to attach mind to brain hemispheres and eyes, she'd only looked at me concerned.
Explaining that the mastermind or heart was central, the mastergland it's extension where our minds seemed to percieve from was higher, and though we seemed to percieve more directly and intensely from the eyes but that we percieved all that and far more low frequency information to the heart started making her consider.
Getting her to believe it sending more energy and oxygenated blood, but getting less feedback energy from the brain and pituitary meant something different than what it obviously seemed to suggest was difficult at first. The relationships between chakral elements and ethers helped for a moment, they paralleled together in the body and out.
If I'd doubted this was a true universal system, I didn' after she managed to attune to it, and she did so merely entertaining it as a thougt excercise for my sake. She couldn't for her own sake, but it was easier for others when they were being led, people were made to help each other where they could. More than the gains I'd promised she had sought, in the early quantum state, Kate had been ecstatic.
She did not need four different stages, she was led to the fourth directly by the three at once unfolding into it. Her seer-stones, or eyes and hemispheres were focused first. Second her philosophers-stone or pituitary and mental mind came into focus. Third her heart became mastermind, she was concentricated and at once quantum. Kate was prepared to recieve the holy spirit, but that understates what happened after she was.
She'd never been religious, I hadn't mentioned God or Jesus to her, yet she could not be more aware of both and their absence from us even as the few remaining touches of demons left her. To call it a touching experience won't do it justice, nirvana is what it is, but knowing you are only getting a test run and unable to seal the deal further is an ultimate torture in a way.
If not that it seemed prepatory for later, and that it wasn't a total rebirth you could pull yourself back together from easier if you fell apart, and mostly if not for the awareness of a bond we were not disconnected from so much as not connected to while here I wouldn't have shown her true terror. The absence of Jesus, heart of hearts, and king of kings to connect you to the spirit of God.
She couldn't be upset, nobody can be if they start to feel their source, the true father of us all wasn't Adams flesh after all. We had been fallen, now, she too had taken the first step up into her flesh with spirit since early childhood like everyone else and risen if only within herself. It was a start, a start that had a finish, one that would guide you as long as you followed.
"Your storm is gentler and broader. I guess we can get others to skip the bulk of trauma doing things this way."
"The..bulk? Do you know what I just went through, the things I sensed?"
"Yeah. That was why I figured this for a demons mind, or one of their fading dreams we erred to enter, since we can sense towards but not reach them here. It's nothing from any scripture or anything I'm aware of, but, I can't claim to be an expert on that. My bones say no, but that makes my soul scared, and that chill doesn't shake.
"We're protected, that's not all that matters but it is enough to know, I expect we'll only leave here with what we find valuable and all I care to leave with most is us and the connection we can find after. You and me with them, we will be able to turn our life straight the moment we get back, and none of the magic stuff matters."
"Agreed. Baby one, priority zero over all others, and all the rest until I can't anymore."
"That's what I was thinking. We're just going to move someplace civil, super rural but not isolated."
Goblins had not been a challenge. They also didn't have much for value as anything other than glue and candle material. Nobody wanted to eat hominids, although, not many would seek to make candles or glue while Valkyria was still loaded with resources.
The pigs had long left their sties, not a few coming towards the great capital. Dogs and an insane volume of cats had appeared, whilst many farms had smaller animals that were long dead far more had naturally escaped their pens and stalls. Fowl and mammals of a size like rabbits, I just assumed many had perished.
When there was little death or injury, no valuables, and no rewards when the bulk of it was over and things quieted, only a few were desperate for all the right and wrong reasons. More of these were right, but desperation had a habit of getting into others heads and turning wrong when considered too much or too little.
When there was not enough meal for the more carnivorous of players appetites, yet there was no real reward for their efforts after the last goblin died on the capitals outskirts, they started turning towards each other and duelling to first bloods and deaths for the challenge they hadn't gotten out of the day.
By noon, only a few were still out practicing when the second wave came, and there almost seemed to be as many dead people as goblins. This made the second larger group bolder, and they'd picked up the best of their fallens arms as well as many of the unclaimed spoils left on the dead.
Everyone had agreed to leave here not long after noon, and contrary to what I had thought those who'd seem more predisposed to the new atmosphere were the ones most eager to leave it, because someone as truly insane as me would not be a commonly insane person. A sociopath wasn't eager to have their minute emotions irritated. Psychopaths didn't mind violence, but they sought trouble on their terms.
Even Kate was simply moved to leave and avoid it getting worse more, after killing with impunity the percieved power many had were leading them to form new groups outside what we'd been given and many groups were short at least one person who was usually a male but not always, and Skulde gave no voice but she wasn't enjoying the tension worsening that had little chance of loosening soon. So we left.
And when we got where we were going Marguete started her tale not long after middle noon had the sun high over us.