Having four legs felt bizarre, but so cool!
The trees were whipping past me as I ran, a blur of green and brown with the occasional flash of blue sky leaking through from above. The grasses rushed around me, a whispering horde of trailing strands that caressed my flanks.
“Fuck! Now I know why dogs get zoomies!” I crowed happily as I tried to slide into a turn and raced back around the edge of the clearing to where the girls watched in amusement.
I’d been experimenting more with what sort of options that I could tap into aided by the vastly increased amount of mass I could shift now. This form was the absolute edge of what I could do. I could feel Shape-Shifting straining at the edge of my awareness as it fought to keep me balanced with my vastly changed center of gravity.
Earlier, I’d been using Shape-Shifting to help the girls pack up the tent and scour the campsite for any further evidence of our presence. I’d gotten to thinking about how, despite there being so many beast-folk– known simply as kin–I hadn’t seen anyone with paws or claws. The closest were the lamia so far, and Kassandra’s people were not actually members of the kin subtype. That, of course, had urged me to try assuming a mixed form of my own.
My paws dug furrows in the dirt as I slid to a stop and nearly ended up on my face when my balance shifted. I had to break into a skipping trot that carried me past the girls again to finish bleeding off my speed.
Kassandra giggled wildly into her folded hands while she watched me, amusement dancing in her eyes. Rieka, on the other hand, was staring with a more reserved expression of entertainment, though her tail wagged wildly behind her to betray just how funny she found my antics to be.
“You okay, Liam?” Rieka called as I trotted about to get back to the girls.
The mental adjustments needed to maneuver with four legs was still taking a bit. But, as long as I did not focus exclusively on how I moved, then I did a lot better.
“Yeah, this is awesome. I am going to have to remember this one if I need to move in a hurry. Still ungainly as hell, but time will hopefully fix that.” I couldn’t help the grin on my face.
“You look so strange like that, Liam! Your torso is way too big for that body. I don’t know how you are managing it.” Kassandra added in, biting her lips to keep from bursting into giggles. I gave her a mock-offended look before replying.
“Well, it works. That’s what matters. Shall we get going, girls?”
We’d slacked around for the rest of the previous day. I’d woken up from my adjustment nap in the middle of the afternoon to find that both of my girls had been napping alongside me. I’d also had a simple message from Cariad filling me in on the situation.
Cariad
Hey Liam. Wanted to update you on the situation. The investigation team has neutralized and removed the contaminant and is combing the facility for similar items. Whoever was experimenting here was meddling with unrestrained summoning in the worst kind of way. I don’t know how much you and your girls found, but it looks like they were basically using summoning rituals to either kidnap or trick occupants of other planes into stepping through to be experimented on. My guess is that they eventually hooked a fish that was WAY too big for them.
Mr. Cerebaton wanted me to let you know that the investigation team is erasing the dangerous parts of the summoning rituals for the safety of the locals. We aren’t going to take anything from the ruins that is not deemed a security risk, as that violates the DSR’s charter. But we are removing references to entropic beings and their summoning. Other protections in the caves are being left in place, as we do not want to leave signs of our presence, but the information will be gone shortly.
Whoever was doing these experiments should have known doing something like this would go badly. The nature of creatures from the dimensional membrane is such that their presence corrodes reality. Things like binding runes or circles of protection do not work for them. We were just lucky that the contaminant remained in the facility.
Either way, it’s going to be a week or two before the investigators finish removing the dangerous clues and information. Please make sure to ask your girls to erase or destroy any of the references to entropy or entropic summoning for their own safety. The DSR is calling on you in your official role as a Traveler to do so, as such information in the hands of a mortal race would be like leaving a baby to play with a live grenade.
I had told the girls about the message once they woke up from their nap and, while Kassandra was grumpy about having to tear pages out of her notes, she understood the reasoning behind it. She cheered up when I explained that it was only the information in reference to the entropy creatures that needed to be removed. I did caution her to make sure that she only shared the summoning circle information with those that she trusted and Kassandra agreed.
With the news that it would be a week or two before we could return to the ruins, the girls conferred and agreed that it was time to head back to Juneau. They could get a start on turning in their jobs from the board and liquidating our loot, and all of us could enjoy an actual bath since there were only three days left on the summon for me now. While Kassandra wanted to return for the copper map, she agreed that it could wait for another time.
Once we agreed on that course of action, the girls and I returned to the cave entrance and its secret door. Kassandra had, after having me confirm with Cariad that it was okay, undone the work she’d set in place to unseal the door. I’d then filled in the entrance to the burrow with tightly packed dirt. While it didn’t fill in the cave, it would hopefully block the exit of anything inside and also prevent anyone else from finding the ruins.
All that we left behind was a narrow oval of bare earth that I was sure the grass would happily grow over in short order. I’d tried to move some of the nearby soil with grass over top of it, but the root systems of the prairie grass were so dense that I was worried I’d kill it. I made sure to memorize the location so we could find it again, even though I was fairly confident I could find the hollow with my magic.
On our way back from concealing the cave, we stopped to check on the ancient statue still in its spring. The girls studied it for a bit but didn’t feel that there was much of anything else to be learned from it, so we left it for the time being.
I’d been surprised to find that it was Thursday night once the girls took time to figure out how long we’d been underground. I trusted the girl’s time sense though. Without a watch, I was useless in that regard and they’d grown up with keeping track of time and days passing in their heads.
So we’d made plans to pack up and head back the following morning. Which had led to my experimenting with Shape-Shifting, and that had led into my bout of the zoomies.
The body that I’d taken was of a large, white wolf from the waist down. I’d done it more as a proof of concept than anything else, to really stretch how far I could push Shape-Shifting. While it hadn’t worked quite as well as I had hoped, being top-heavy really messed with my balance, it had worked. The energy flowing from the new lower half was enough that I could ignore the fact I’d ruined another set of jeans when I’d forced the shift through while wearing my pants.
“Come on, Liam. Let’s head back down the mountain. As comfortable as sleeping in a pile with you and Rieka has been, I’m looking forward to my nice warm bed and getting to cuddle you in it,” Kassandra urged. I rolled my eyes before trotting over to the two of them.
I could see Rieka eying me like she desperately wanted to hop on my canine back and ride me around while I ran, but she seemed to know that wouldn’t end well. I’d need to improve the amount of mass I could control again before I’d be able to transport either of my girls. But when I did…
So, rather than tempting her more, I fell in beside Rieka with Kassandra on her other side and we started down the mountain. The girls were quiet for the first part of the walk. Because we had packed up early in the morning, Kassandra was still waking up. It took until we made it down to the road before my perky redhead broached a conversation subject.
“So, Liam, tell us about this new power you picked up?”
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The idea that the girls could simply reach out to me from their world fascinated them to no end, and we experimented while we walked. All it took for them was to focus on me mentally and push a thought out like they would push a bit of mana. This would cause my bond-tattoos to hum against my skin. As soon as I touched them, I could hear my girl’s voice in my mind speaking whatever the message had been, but with a faint echo.
“This is such an odd way to communicate, but it also means we can let you know of plans in advance,” Rieka’s voice whispered in my mind, sounding just a touch more sultry than I had expected. She blushed faintly when I looked at her questioningly.
“Sweet, now I don’t have to censor myself as much in public,” Kassandra sent to me a moment later, smirking when I looked at her.
“Like you censor yourself to begin with, Kass,” I said with a roll of my eyes.
“Liam! Don’t spill secrets given to you in confidence!” Kassandra chastised me with mock annoyance. Rieka couldn’t contain a derisive snort of her own at her friend’s statement.
Their banter continued, with the occasional salacious remark being slipped in by both of them to me in a direct sending. Rieka still blushed more than Kassandra did, but she gave as good as she got verbally and didn’t hesitate to remind me how much she enjoyed our liaison the other day. Her shyness seemed to be fading fast.
Both of my girls had made it obvious that, despite the fact we were heading back to town a few days early, they were expecting me to hang around and spend time with them. We’d just have to be more subtle about it, as I was going to be in their dorm rooms at Rue House until the pre-charged summon faded on Sunday night.
I was looking forward to getting to stay with them, since I rarely got to spend time with my girls for more than a few hours on the campus. And even then, we were usually running about doing something.
The discussions of what we were looking forward to on campus distracted all of us enough so that the first arrow that came flying from the bushes would have hit me right in the chest, if the aim had been better.
My gait was odd and bobbing, because of the quadrupedal lower half that I retained. Instead of driving into my chest, the arrow went zipping over my shoulder.
I felt a sting along the spine of my canine half where it nicked me instead, but I had more important things on my mind than a graze.
Kobolds came boiling out of the bushes in a swarm of mottled brown and red scales wielding stone-tipped spears. I couldn’t tell how many of them there were, but there had to be nearly forty of the little monsters.
The throng of kobolds barked at us in their squeaky-growl language, but my girls were already acting even as I lunged forward to intercept the first wave of enemies.
This wasn’t the first time we’d encountered kobolds. The squat, lizard-men were actually the first enemies my girls and I had dealt with. This had been back when the mystery of traveling to another world at the behest of beautiful monster girls gripped me and firmly locked in the mindset that everything would be okay.
I’d gotten grievously injured, but managed to protect the girls at the time and nearly had a breakdown when I realized that I’d killed intelligent creatures.
I had no such hesitations now. These creatures I knew would consume anything they managed to kill, had threatened my girls.
Even as spells flashed past me from both Kassandra and Rieka, I began to shift as the front line of kobolds with spears approached.
My lower half melted and flowed in between steps, the canine lower-body returning to my human legs as my arms shifted as well. With a ripple, my left arm flattened and spread into a thick, chitinous claw that was a deep brown and ended in a massive claw. My shoulders thickened to support the extra weight even as my right arm elongated and I developed another four joints to the arm before heavy scales sheathed it. My hand, which was held into a fist, flowed into a bony club that sprouted spines just before it slammed into the first of the squealing monsters.
The bone-club that my right hand had turned into launched the squealing kobold back into its fellows even as I shifted my oversized crusher-claw up to block a trio of thrown spears from more of the kobolds. The stone tips shattered against the heavily reinforced chitin before I snapped it forward and caught one of the little monsters about the waist with the claw.
A crunch and squish, followed by a scream, were the result before I tossed the mostly squashed kobold off to one side.
A rain of sharp ice perforated half a dozen of the kobolds on my left. On the right, a rippling chain of lightning snaked between four of the monsters, making them dance and shriek before they collapsed in smoking heaps.
I noted that both groups being struck down by my girls had been attempting to flank around me while I was dealing with the one I’d crushed.
Darting forward, I swept my bone-club arm to the right and smashed three of the kobolds in the chest. The blow sent them sprawling backwards while I used my claw to fend off another two. Another twist brought the ankylosaurus tail/arm around to crush another flat to the ground.
After spending the entire morning with my lower body shifted and pushing the limits of the amount of mass I could alter, I could feel that I was not utilizing the entire amount.
I had left my tattered leather armor off this time, since I’d resolved to rely more on my shifting to give me armor than anything that would prevent me from utilizing my abilities to their fullest. That decision was paying off now.
With a mental shove, my shoulders thickened even further and another pair of flexible limbs sprouted from the middle of my back, arching up and over me on flexible tails not unlike the segmented tails of a scorpion and each ending in a dripping spike.
The kobolds in front of me quailed at the sight and began to back away, but I wasn’t about to let them escape after threatening my girls. And neither of my lovers were feeling merciful.
The next minute was a maelstrom of flashing limbs and magic as we drove the squealing party of kobolds back into the trees. By the time the much-smaller monsters were gone, we’d left almost three dozen of the creatures dead or dying behind and less than ten of them made it back to the bushes.
Only three of those ten actually escaped.
“Fucking little monsters,” I spat, coming to a stop only feet from the road before shaking the blood off of my assorted limbs.
“Come back, Liam. No reason to pursue them into the trees. I doubt those three will survive in the wild by themselves. The local predators will probably wipe them out,” Rieka called after me.
Tilting my head, I considered her words before nodding. The last time we’d run into kobolds on the road, we’d been on a mission to hunt down a nest of them. Thus, we’d wanted to ensure we killed them all back then. Now though? This was more of a public service, and we’d already done our part.
“As long as we report it to the Hunt and Trade Hall when we get back. They’ll probably want to post a mission to have someone come track them down to confirm. Or even update a current posting if they have it out. There’s no way three or four dozen of these little bastards have gotten together and not been causing trouble on the road,” I replied while wading out of the low bushes that girdled the coastal road.
Using my armored limbs to push branches out of the way came naturally, as long as I didn’t think consciously about it. The extra weight in my upper body was stretching out my spine again and making it pop with the release. I reminded myself that I was going to have to practice more like this, in order to move fluidly when I needed to. The scorpion-tails from my shoulders had already proved their worth in that brief scuffle.
“Liam, you okay?” Kassandra asked plaintively from her spot on the road. My dwarf lamia clutched her spell rod in both hands, nibbling on her bottom lip as she watched me emerge from the bushes.
“Yeah, I’m fine. No injuries this time, thank you Kass,” I reassured her with a smile and she slumped slightly in relief.
“Thank the spirits. When you ran off half dressed like that, I was worried you’d get seriously hurt!” Rieka cut in before Kassandra could speak, her eyes scanning over me to check for injuries.
“Naw, I armored myself. Their spears scraped up my left arm a bit, but didn’t even penetrate. I bet part of that was a scare factor too. I think the worst I got was a scratch on my back from that first arrow. Surprised they didn’t have more archers,” I chuckled, shaking my set of four limbs before I began to shift them back to normal.
“Not what I was worried about, Liam,” Kassandra said with a raised eyebrow and a smirk on her lips.
I considered her words for a moment before sighing.
“Fuck, I ruined the shirt I was wearing, didn’t I? I didn’t even think about it when I sprouted the two extra arms,” I grumbled to myself. Kassandra sniggered, and Rieka blinked and coughed.
“Not that, Liam,” Rieka choked out a moment later.
I was about to ask what she was talking about when I realized Rieka’s gaze remained trained downward, rather than up at my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kassandra’s eyes stayed locked on my lower half too.
Following my girl’s gazes, I groaned when I realized why they were staring.
In the heat of the fight, I’d forgotten that I had destroyed my pants earlier by accident, when I had shifted into the half-canine form. Rather than worry about it that morning, I’d just kept the shift to practice in and trotted along.
Over the course of the morning, I’d gotten used to the feeling of the breeze and the general stirring sensation of the wind in my fur.
But I no longer had fur.
“I can’t tell if they were more intimidated by our magic, the man slaughtering them with monstrous limbs, or the fact he was doing it while his… thing was flapping in the wind,” Rieka said a moment later before dissolving into giggles. Kassandra joined her a moment later, clutching her friend as the laughter made her slump over partially.
“Oh, come on, girls. It’s not that funny!” I growled, propping my hands on my hips to glare down at them.
This only caused the laughter to grow at just how ridiculous I looked wearing only a tattered shirt and my weapon belt with the long-forgotten mace hanging from it.
I didn’t mind. Laughter and lewd comments were far better than the freak out that had followed my last encounter with kobolds. The laughter continued for a breathless minute before the girls began to get hold of themselves once more.
“Are you going to give me a set of pants or not?” I demanded, which set off another bout of giggles.