34th of Ymiden 722
Rakvald swept the ashen vegetation from a large flat stone bed. He was in the middle of one of the old baronies of Quacia, where the land had been reclaimed by vegetation, and then subsequently purged in a fit of fiery paranoia by the Dragoons and fire-bearers of Quacia. Anathema against the Creep was invoked, and when that happened, little in the way of green was left to the mercies of solitude even. The only thing, perhaps, forestalling Quacia’s sweeping the Southern Continent of greenery was the border where green ended, and the badlands began.
The Badlands that Rakvald had just traveled through.
At any rate, the heaps of soot-covered ash were no strange sight to Rakvald. The creature he was had called this his home once. Now, what was it, but a safe place to ply his profane trade. His shaping and molding of flesh to his will, and altering the fabric of life wherever he went. He was almost disappointed to hear that the Creep had been driven from these lands. Well disappointed in that his professional curiosity could not now be satisfied, in the way of investigating the source of the Creep. But also there was a sense of doubt, of not quite trusting the word of an Immortal, that they were entirely safe.
He almost suspected that Moseke kept the Creep in her back pocket, in order to keep the Quacians in line. Many thought that the sealing away of the Wounded God, which was by now well known to most Quacians, would be the fairy tale ending that it had promised to be. But Rakvald knew better. Where power lie, there it would remain until it was uncovered, mined out of those blackened depths.
Rakvald had designs on the wounded being beneath the city, but for now, he had preparations to make for his eventual apotheosis.
He cleared the flat bed of stone. Here he could have solitude, even as the ashes were blown by the hot winds. He sat cross-legged, in his gestalt form of mer and lotharro. His nasal-labial tendrils reached down near to his navel now, and twitched in anticipation of the magics to be done today.
With his will, he summoned forth from his own flesh the totem objects of Ash-Flaw’s shell, and that of the Ascended Mantis that he’d acquired in Etzos’ wilderness. He took these, and contemplated them. His tender and brotherly feeling toward Ash-Flaw were long since extinguished, purged in the night of rage against the Crocodile that had killed him. Now, it was just a bit of flesh left over, flesh, bone, and ichor.
As for the Ascended Mantis, this he regarded with some reverence. The secrets and potential of its flesh he’d only just begun to scratch the surface of, but already what he’d witnessed seemed promising. He felt the beast, the mantis rattle around in the shell of his soul, and he smiled beneath his tendrils. “Soon.” He promised the trapped essence of the beast. He would forge a form worthy of that creature’s amazing potential.
So having decided his course, he meditated upon the form that it would take. He saw it in his mind’s eye. A creature, ensconced on its external dermis the exoskeleton of the Mantis, hardened against impact, wrapping around the tendril-like flesh limbs of the other half of its gestalt, its external sinews lending force and strength and lightning quickness to its movements.
The exoskeleton covered this thin, gray-skinned, pallid form with a dark outer shell, that spread from shoulder to shoulder, from limb to limb, but with some weak points. There wasn’t enough exoskeleton to cover him entirely. His abdomen was exposed, writhing with scaled flesh. His fingers extended into sharpened claws, as did his nasal-labial tentacles, with sharpened ends on the points of their tendrils. These could be used to draw blood, and feed upon the helpless.
His maw was a circular row of teeth, withi enough of a voice box for mortal communication, slightly obstructed by the nasal-labial tendrils that flow from his cephalopod cranium.
His eyes were as blue orbs, pupiless but capable of seeing well. He possessed the temperature resistance of the native Paltharnum half of the gestalt, the suffusive nature of the exoskeleton against blunt and bladed impacts. Lightning bursts of speed were his as well, and he could close upon prey with deadly accuracy.
He of course ommitted the tail of the Paltharnum, seeing little use for that vestigial flesh.
This all visualized, and clearly seen through his mind’s eye, and through his mastery of the flesh-shaping arts of both becoming and graft, Rakvald began to merge the totems. At first, the process of forming a gestalt was a flirtation, an introduction of sorts to the beasts or creatures or individuals rattling around in those soul-shells. They would see each other clear, through the medium of the mage, and then with a little coaxing mingle with each other.
There was almost a conjugal joining of hands, of mingling more intimately. There was a moment of uncertainty, of conflux of emotion that anticipated either their incompatibility or otherwise. There would be pain or bliss, and most of the time both as either totem either accepted the other or rejected the power promised by the becomer’s vision for their conjoining.
Rakvald was prepared for them to fight, as he knew Ash-Flaw to be a willful personality in his freedom. But he was also obedient. The lesser known factor in this process was the mantis. That part took a bit more coaxing, but through Rakvald’s knowledge of animal behavior and general bestial magnetism, he was able to coax the creature to take a hold of Ash-Flaw’s totem, and thus began the merger.
There was a trill of doubt as the two totem objects began melding into one another. At first, Rakvald almost suspected that there would be horrible pain as the shell was warped and twisted to his designs, so alien to either form. But not so. It was a state of bliss, as he brought them together. And that bliss brought him to greater heights of understanding of the arts of becoming. He felt the two fleshes, of two very different families, melding into one profane amalgam. Together, they created a new being.
Over the next few breaks, he felt this bliss and almost was thrown by it, to the point where he nearly lost concentration several times. However, his discipline held in the face of that pleasurable mixing of the bloods, fleshes, and bones of the creatures involved.
In the end, he was left with an egg-shaped totem object, the sum of both. This he assimilated into his flesh now, and as he did so he could hardly wait to assume his new, horrible and beautiful form.
The egg felt comfortablewithin his flesh, seated where it was in his soul-shell. So, he began the process of transformation.
It was a radical alteration from his current physiology, perhaps more so than any he’d undertaken before. His skeleton, bones and cartilage would be inverted, turned into the exoskeletal armor and sleeves and pauldrons and cuirass of his new form. He felt them tear at his flesh even as he liquified himself. This was a far more violent and painful transformation than he was used to. His spark reveled in it, but he felt nothing but pain in himself, as the vestiges of his mortality slipped away, one drop of ichor at a time.
He curled up on the flat stone that he’d seated himself upon. And there his flesh bubbled and coiled and expanded where necessary, pushing out the hardened material of his sovereign substances and reordering them in such a way as to make his vision a reality.
Yet, within mere moments of enacting the change, he found himself settling into the new form. It took a few tentative and clumsy attempts, but he gathered himself to his feet. A spindly, tall, pallid creature with tentacles drooping long from his nasal-labial crease, and down to his unarmored navel. He donned the robes that he’d cast aside during the transformation. They were barely enough to make him modest, but then he wore his mutations and alterations with pride. Quacia had always celebrated the might of magery, and he was certain his appearance would not be mocked or shunned for its alien beauty.
He rather expected a royal welcome.
And so, as he acclimated to the way this new body moved, its exoskeleton and tendons beneath the shell of its external bones, manipulating its movements in a way that was totally unfamiliar with, he made his way west, toward the walls of Quacia in the far distance. Teh ashen fields of burned vegetation coughed up soot and burnt leaves in his wake, as eventually he had achieved a physical familiarity with his form, and finally, returned home.
