“The type of mutation that a goblin shaman has differs, and most of the time it is just a minor change like the color of the eyes or sharper teeth, but in some cases the mutation can bring about a bigger change in the goblin’s physiology, like the shaman’s skin getting covered in fireproof scales. For some reason, the more complex mutations are however only found in larger clans that have more than one shaman.”

- The Beginning of Goblins: Miracle or a joke, by Gm. A.R. Elfhart

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They both just laid there, staring into each other’s hazy eyes, trying to so come to terms with what they experienced, until they noticed a sizzling noise coming from right beside them and a stinging smell in the air.

Alex turned his gaze to his right, finding a deformed body on the ground, right next to them. The bones, some too big and some too small, were being slowly revealed as the flesh melted from them, dripping onto the floor into a smoking and sizzling puddle. Half-melted organs could be seen floating in the sludge, as they slowly mixed together with everything else.

Alex and Mira, who had followed Alex’s gaze to the source of the sound, looked at what had not long ago probably been the goblin that had gotten the glowing mark before them and who had also followed the shaman to this room and drunk the concoction.

Seeing that the puddle was slowly expanding towards them, they turned their attention back to each other and came into a silent consensus that it would probably be a good idea to get up from the floor.

Mira got off from Alex and tried to stand up, only to wobble onto her back, thankfully away from the melted goblin. Alex tried to catch her, but his hands got caught on something and he also fell back onto the ground. Feeling that something was off he looked down at his chest and his arms, only to doubt his eyes as in addition to the two arms he had before, he now also had another pair of arms growing from his sides just below the originals.

He closed his eyes thinking that he was seeing things, but when he opened them, the arms were still there.

Alex tried to get up again, this time slowly, and managed to stand up while using a wall for support without getting entangled with his new limbs. He turned his eyes towards Mira who tried to follow his lead, with just a slight difference. Instead of extra pair of arms, Mira now owned a tail that was little over half as long as she was tall. The tail was covered in dark green scales and had lighter green spikes on the whole length of its back, coming to and end with a leathery, leaf-shaped tip.

The addition of the tail however was not the only thing that had changed. She now had a small pair of horns on her forehead and the original dark brown color of Mira’s hair had been grown out by red color, making Mira’s hair, that now reached her ankles, to change color in the middle. She also grew much taller, having grown nearly half of her original height more, and her previously childish body now started showing womanly curves, especially in the hip area, possibly to better accommodate her new tail.

Seeing that Mira’s changes were much more than just the new tail, Alex started inspecting his own body more closely.

He felt around his head, trying to figure out if he also had horns somewhere, but found none. Then he pulled some of his hair to the front of his eyes to check its color, finding that just like Mira’s, his hair had grown a new color, with his new hair being pure white. Moving his focus downwards, he felt relieved to find that other than growing overall, and the extra pair of arms, he had mostly stayed the same. His waist had narrowed somewhat, making more room for the new pair of arms, and he felt that his hips might be a little wider, but wasn’t sure if that was true or just the narrower waist making it feel wider than it was.

Alex was woken up from his musings by a rustling sound coming from the back of the room, from where the moss growing on the wall had been parted, revealing a tunnel behind, as the shaman stepped into the room.

The shaman let out a string of alarmed screeches when it saw the sizzling puddle in the middle of the room, but stopped when it noticed Alex and Mira on the side while leaning on the wall. It moved its gaze back and fort between the puddle and them, before grinning and rushing towards them.

Alex and Mira had no time to react as the shaman took hold of their hands and started jumping from leg to leg, doing a happy dance, only to freeze when it heard a splat. It looked down on its feet and found that it had jumped into the puddle of melted goblin, making it hurriedly jump out and back onto the clean floor.

The shaman tried to clean its foot by rubbing it to the floor, with some success, before it sat down cross-legged, closed its eyes and pressed both of its hands onto the floor.

Alex and Mira wondered what it was trying to do, but opened their eyes wide when the puddle and the skeleton in it started to sink right into the stone floor.

At first, they thought that the sludge had eaten its way through the stone, but then noticed that on the places the sludge had disappeared from the stone floor looked just the same as it had before. Only after the last of the dead goblin had sunken into the stone did the shaman open its eyes and get up from the floor. All in all, it took no more than a minute for the shaman to make the remnants of the melted goblin disappear from the room.

Seeing that the floor was clean again, or as clean as a cave floor can be, the shaman screeched for them to follow as it marched towards the back of the room and slipped through the moss into the tunnel behind.

Alex and Mira looked at each other.

“Do you think it’s okay to follow it?”

Mira asked, much more apprehensive than before, giving Alex the feeling that whether Mira went through the same thing as him or something completely different, it probably wasn’t any easier.

“Well the other choice would probably be to try to find a tunnel leading to the surface, hoping that there aren’t some dragons ready to eat us just waiting outside. On the other hand, if we do follow him, there’ll probably be...”

“Magic.”

Alex could see Mira’s eyes light up with stars as she finished his sentence. She had always been a big fan of magic whether it was in books, movies or games, and Alex couldn’t say that he wasn’t also slightly expectant about the prospect of throwing balls of fire from his hands. It didn’t help that ever since he woke up, he’d been feeling something flowing all-around his changed body.

Seeing that what the both of them wanted to do wasn’t a question, they walked to the back of the room and followed the shaman through the moss and into the tunnel hidden behind.

At the end of the tunnel they came into another room, much smaller than the one before, looking like it could be the shaman’s sleeping quarters. One half of the room was covered in animal hides, forming a comfortable place to sleep, and on the other side was the shaman going furiously through the contents of a wooden chest that was really out of place in the otherwise tribal environment with its iron reinforcements.

Finally finding what it was searching for, the shaman pulled out two long but narrow pieces of cloth, before handing them to Alex and Mira, one for each.

They looked at the fabric in their hands, which probably had been white at some point but was now worn out and covered in dirt, wondering what they should do with them, until the shaman tapped at its groin and pulled the hides and bones hanging on its waist aside to reveal the loincloth underneath.

Finding out what the piece of cloth was, Alex wasn’t sure if he wanted to hold it in his hands anymore, but it did wake him up to the fact that they had gotten surprisingly used to not having anything on them, not paying any heed to walking around with everything hanging in plain view.

At the shaman’s insistence, they tried to put on the loincloth, but as Alex had no idea on how, he just tied it around his waist with the ends hanging on the front, the task made harder by the new pair of hands, as they were moving together with the other pair and getting in the way. Mira tried to make it go between her legs, but her new tail was having none of it, so she ended up with the cloth also just hanging from her waist.

Happy that it had gotten the purpose of the cloth across, the shaman made its way back into the tunnel, seemingly having fulfilled what it wanted to do in this room.

Alex and Mira hurried after it, but this time it hadn’t gone back to the original room but had stopped about halfway through to inspect the tunnels wall. It pressed its palm against the rock wall and closed its eyes. The carved lines on a skull hanging on the shaman’s hip started to glow with yellow light, and the wall next to its hand started to cave into itself, morphing a fork into the tunnel.

Moments later the glow subsided and they heard an audible crack as the skull broke down into small shards, which would’ve probably been bad if the shaman didn’t have five more of the same kind of skulls still hanging on its body.

The shaman opened its eyes and turned towards Alex and Mira.

First it pointed at itself and then at the room where they had just come from, then it pointed at Alex and Mira, before pointing towards the new tunnel.

It took them a while to understand the meaning, before realizing that it meant that down the new tunnel was the room they were meant to sleep in, and when they went to look, there indeed was another room, just like the one with the chest and the hides, minus the aforementioned chest and hides.

Alex’s mind was blown away by this.

Perhaps this wasn’t as cool as making a meteor fall from the sky, but to actually see the shaman form a new room just like that really made him wonder about everything else that was possible, and by looking at Mira’s shining eyes, he could tell he wasn’t the only one.

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Hi guys (and girls), I have brought to you: A Chapter! And not just A Chapter, but also: Character art, made by: Me! (I really tried, but the faces came out looking really scary, like if you'd seen them you'd have screamed and punched through your screen, so I left them out :P)