Yvette would have screamed, but that would have required her to be able to open her mouth and move. All she could do was lay there, the burning storm of magic tearing her apart from the inside out. It flowed into her, melting her very essence and making her feel as if she was being seared away, frozen into ice and electrocuted with lightning all at the same time. It had been so calm and relaxing a few moments ago, but now it was nothing but agony and suffering.

Yvette felt her body expand and was reminded of the stones impaling her to the chamber’s floor, fresh pain filling her when she was once more torn apart. Then, with what felt like a mighty explosion of magic and power, it all stopped.

Yvette was enveloped entirely in darkness. She wondered if this was what death was. She guessed Gervas was right, she had rushed head first to her death in the end. After everything she’d made him risk, perhaps it was what she deserved.

Still, she couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed. This all wouldn’t have happened to begin with if they’d just let her fix things to begin with. “I just wanted to be me,” Yvette said softly. “Is that really so wrong?”

Yvette didn’t receive an answer. She didn’t know what she expected. She wondered if she’d fade away entirely, nothing more than a memory for everyone around her. However instead she just seemed to hover there in the darkness. “Wait, this isn’t it, is it?” she asked. She’d heard stories of what happened after death, of great afterlives, of being reborn, of all manner of different things.

But to just hover in the darkness forever, alone? That was something she hadn’t expected. Or, to be honest, wanted. “This can’t be it. No. HELLO!” Yvette yelled. She tried to reach out a hand, only to realize she didn’t have one. She didn’t have an anything, actually. She was formless, shapeless. She couldn’t even feel her limbs that she thought she should have. The only thing she could feel was a soft, warm glow in what she would have thought was her chest.

Yvette blinked a few times before she realized she wasn’t even blinking. She had no eyes TO blink. What even was she now? A thing? A person? A ghost? Was she not dead? Was this her eternity?

Then all of a sudden there were winds and thunder all around her. Only to die down after a few more moments. She felt the air crackle with power and, to her alarm, she realized she knew that power. It was the power that had surged through her moments before she had died. She closed her eyes, awaiting the pain.

Instead, she was enveloped in a soft, gentle warmth. No longer was there darkness, there was warmth and safety, a new sensation. It cradled her, held her and, in its own silent manner, told her that everything was going to be okay. She wouldn’t have to suffer or fight anymore. Nothing would ever hurt her again. She didn’t have to fight anymore.

Yvette sighed and relaxed, letting the warmth envelop her, taking her formless body and creating something new. It was almost done before she realized something wasn’t right. If this was to be her new form, then she couldn’t just let it happen. “No,” Yvette said softly, reaching a non-existent hand towards this new form. “Not again. I’m a her, a girl! I’m a girl!” she screamed, trying desperately to make whatever was shaping her understand. If it did, she didn’t know.

But now there was something else there, a new presence. A presence more powerful than she’d ever imagined. Even more powerful than the leviathan she had met or the grandmaster.

Or perhaps she was just that weak? It was a storm, powerful, mighty. It took form and reshaped the world around itself.

It felt familiar though. As if it was a part of her, but not truly. An aspect of her that had been torn off and crafted anew by whatever this was.

The storm calmed and, once more, she felt warmth envelop her. Silently telling her to rest, to go to sleep and let herself fade. Everything was over, she didn’t have to fight anymore. Her journey was over. She would have smiled if she could.

It was over, wasn’t it? She didn’t have a form now. She didn’t have an anything. She wasn’t a girl, but not being a boy was close enough. Right? If this was what death was, it wasn’t so bad. Warm, comforting. Being nothing was better than being something she hated.

Yvette felt a vague, strange connection to the world once more, seeing them. All of the people. The prince. Nautia. Gervas. Soldiers of the Reborn Empire.

She’d broken the seal at least. She didn’t know if they could remake it. She hoped not. She really didn’t want to have to have died for nothing. Yvette once more began to sink into the darkness.

Wait, no. She wasn’t DEAD. This wasn’t DEATH. Yvette shook her mind and tried to focus. She’d heard of this, it was a threat. How long had it been? She just had to remember.

------

Yvette paced back and forth, her arms crossed. She had to do this, she had to tell him. She couldn’t keep going on like this. She glanced over at the tomes spread out over her bed, pointedly ignoring the ones on the ground. All of them had been useless. Every mention of such magic had been mentioned only as ‘notes’, as examples. But HOW the spell was done was left out entirely.

Finally, taking a deep breath, Yvette walked through the doorway. Her stomach did so many flips on the way to her master’s study, she thought she might actually throw up. Nervously, she knocked on the door.

“Come in, Tebaud,” her master, Betan’s, voice rang out.

Yvette sighed and pushed the door open. “Master, I--”

“Have been slacking on your chores,” Betan said in a harsh, stern voice.

Yvette lowered her gaze, her fingers nervously fiddling with the front of her brown apprentice robe. “I know. I’m sorry.”

There was a soft sigh from her master and, when she looked up, she saw an amused smile on his face. “Still, it is not often I see you so lost in your studies. I’m not sure where this new passion of yours comes from, but it is not something I can, so easily, dismiss. So, just this once, I’ll ignore this mishap. Has your research born any fruit?”

“No,” Yvette said with a heart broken sigh.

“No?” Tebaud asked while staring at her with a look of concern. “You’ve barely eaten anything, barely slept, almost turned my library upside down in your little frenzy. Yet you’ve come back with nothing?”

Yvette felt herself tensing up a little. He was her master, her teacher, certainly more a father than her actual father. He’d understand, she knew he would. Except he hadn’t. She knew he wouldn’t now. But then she had held such belief that he might. “May I sit?”

“Of course,” Betan said, motioning to the other seat in the study.

Yvette walked to it and, nervously, she sat. Her back straight, hands on her knees to keep them from fiddling and filled with an almost overwhelming urge to run off and ignore that she’d ever wanted to have this talk. “Master, you’re right. Transfiguration is definitely the field where my talent is strongest.”

Betan chuckled. “In many ways, yes. But that’s not the truth of it, is it? A talent is just that which we develop. Transfiguration is just what you find most interesting. A rarity, but not unheard of. I do hope you haven’t spent the last few days tearing apart my library just so you can learn what I already taught you, Tebaud.”

“No,” Yvette said, shaking her head. Trying to ignore the little knives that that name seemed to stab into her heart every time she heard it. “I’ve been looking into the next step.”

“Next step?” Betan asked. “Larger or smaller?”

“Permanent.”

That made her master’s eyes widen. “Excuse me?”

“Permanently altering one’s form,” Yvette said. “I know it’s possible, the books mention it. But there’s no mention of how it is done. Once it wasn’t even that uncommon, but now it’s--”

“Forbidden,” Betan said, shaking his head. “I must say, Tebaud, your desire to grow is commendable. But you have a long way to go before you can be of even a journeyman’s level, let alone able to perform such a spell. Perhaps you should focus on what you can learn, rather than aiming towards what is, frankly, disastrous?”

“But why?” Yvette asked. “It’s forbidden now, isn’t it? Because of people like Roule the Butcher. But it doesn’t go into detail as to why such magic is forbidden, just that it is dangerous.”

“Tebaud, why do you even desire to learn such things?” Betan asked.

Yvette opened her mouth to say why. That she was a girl. That she wasn’t Tebaud. That even then she didn’t know what her name would be, but she knew it would never be a boy’s. But she’d been too frightened then. Perhaps if she had been braver and faced it head on, her master would have been able to understand. But she doubted it. It had been many months before she had worked up the courage to tell him after this talk, but the years that followed never changed his mind despite her best efforts. “I just want to do what nobody else can.”

Betan sighed before he sat up and she could almost feel the lecture coming. “I see. However, there is a reason this is never done. Altering one’s true form is dangerous, especially if altering the species of a creature. The mind will, eventually, follow. It may never recover. Roule the Butcher was our worst example of this. Many of those he changed next recovered,” an old, stern voice lectured her.

“But what if someone didn’t alter themselves much?” Yvette asked. “Like, just made themselves a little taller or something like that?”

Betan shook his head. “It’s not that simple, Tebaud. When you transform into a different creature, you, yourself, are still yourself. You may gain some of the instincts of such creatures, you may become more alert, or more sluggish. Sometimes you may even be playful or have reactions you didn’t have before. But you are still yourself. It is why if you transformed into, say, a rat, you would not forget what the reason you turned into a rat was for. That is the nature of your true form.”

“But I--”

“Let me finish,” Betan said, cutting her off. “Our minds can be incredibly resilient, but even the strongest of us can falter or even be broken if altered too much. When ones true form is broken, not just their bodies are changed, that aspect of themselves is destroyed. They become, in many ways, not the same person. It was not unheard of for those who had changed themselves, even in small ways, to have their very memories changed over time. Even coming to believe they had always been that way.”

“But not everyone who was transformed like that was permanently changed,” Yvette said softly.

“But most were,” Betan said. “Only those of the strongest will managed to avoid having their minds permanently altered. Even then, most likely never recovered. Think of it like…” He looked around the room for a moment before plucking up an apple from what seemed like thin air, though she suspected it had been summoned from the kitchen. “Think of your true form as this apple.”

Yvette nodded. “Okay.”

Betan whispered a quick incantation. The apple was crushed into a small, sopping mess a moment later, contained in a small, flat barrier. “This is what happens. All of the apple is still here and, in many ways, by all appearances? Not much has changed.”

“It’s mush, master,” Yvette said, staring at the mush, thankful it was still in the barrier.

“Indeed it is, but what if I do this?” Betan asked, before the barrier began to reshape itself. It now looked like an orb of crushed mush.

“Ew,” Yvette said. “Now it’s apple-shaped mush.”

“Exactly. The mind had already been broken when it was forcefully shaped. Even if they were put back into their true forms, as near impossible as it would be to get right, it would still be so badly altered that there was no way to truly fix it. It would still be mush,” Betan said before the mush disappeared. “In very, very few cases people were able to return to themselves. But it took an incredible will and a purpose, something they could focus on. In other cases, only aspects of who and what they were remained, but in a new mind. A handful were even able to use outside means to protect their minds by managing to add different items to themselves before they transformed.”

“Items?” Yvette asked.

“Some forms require more powerful reagents than others and, sometimes, those reagents can serve as an anchor for the mind. It is why different reagents can be so incredibly useful for different forms,” Betan said.

“And if they didn’t have those, the ones who didn’t have those and just will? Focusing helped them?”

“Indeed. Something to remind them of who they were. Something that could ground them in that knowledge. Say, a loved one or a task that they refused to abandon. Something that they built themselves around, to hold those vestiges of who they were, rather than allowing themselves to be swept away by their new form. I’ve heard that transfiguration mages, such as you wish to be, were some of the ones who had the best chances of recovery. Even then, countless were lost. Many more only managed to keep that aspect of themselves and everything else was lost. Magic like that has been deemed far too dangerous to allow to spread ever again. Such magic doesn’t just destroy the body, it destroys the mind, even the soul of a person.”

------

Yvette finally understood. She hadn’t died. She’d just managed to, partially, succeed. Destroying her true form and becoming, well, whatever this was. Or had something else happened? Had the magic destroyed her true form, rather than killing her? Was that why she was so weak? Was that why that presence felt so strong? Why she was shrinking away?

It was the new her, this was who she had been? Was her mind going to eventually melt away, gone forever? Was she really okay with allowing that to happen?

Yvette tried to focus her mind on the reality of what was going on. This was who she was, where she was now. Her true form was shattered and if she didn’t stop it, she would melt away entirely. Even if she didn’t physically die, her mind dying could be the same thing. She had to focus on the most important things to her.

That was obvious, she was a woman. What else was there about her that she could build herself around? She focused on that thought, on who she was. She hadn’t fought as hard as she had just to allow herself to disappear because of this.

But was that enough? Yvette felt doubt beginning to creep into her mind. Aside from that, what was she? Who was she? She was a girl, but this new form wasn’t really opposed to that, was it?

Yvette could feel that presence and, despite herself, it seemed to agree. She was a girl. There wasn’t any push back, any objection. She was a girl, so that was that. Yvette was a girl.

Panic began to creep in when she felt herself slowly fading. There WAS more to her than that, wasn’t there? More goals, more dreams? More desires? GERVAS!

Yvette focused on him. Gervas. Yes. She felt herself stabilizing more when she thought about him. He was important, special to her. When everyone else had ignored her or pushed her aside, told her she had to be Tebaud, he’d been the first one to really accept that she could be Yvette. He’d protected her, guided her, even encouraged her. He’d stood up when others argued with her. Even put himself in danger for her sake.

That was something she could build herself around. She felt a small rush of relief. Gervas. He was the person she loved, the man she loved and who was right now--

No. That wasn’t right either. That wasn’t who she was.

But that feeling, that bond between them? She felt it latching onto the other presence. Connecting the two of them, in a way. Gervas was important to her and so it was important to it. To them.

Yvette felt herself become less shaky, still melting away slightly, but she pushed past it.

She loved and cared about him, but what else was there about her? He wasn’t who she was. The more she thought about it, the more she doubted he’d want to be. What was the saying he’d told her? ‘Lighting yourself on fire to keep others warm’? She doubted he’d want her to make him the core of who she was, either. He didn’t care about her because she cared about him. He cared about her because of who she was.

But who was she?

------

Yvette felt herself sinking more and more into the darkness, fading away in the storm. The presence seemed to grow stronger with every second. Or maybe minute? Day? Did time really matter here? She occasionally saw glimmers of the world around her, but she couldn’t interact with it. She wasn’t strong enough.

At times she could even scream and yell at that side of her, at the other presence. Once it had hurt Gervas, but she couldn’t control it or truly communicate with it. It was aware of her, but she couldn’t fully follow it.

No matter how many lessons she went over in her mind with her master, the result seemed to keep being the same. Was this what her master had feared? She could almost understand why the Mage’s Association was so scared of it. So much of who she was was melting away, adrift without her true form to stabilize it. There was a lot of danger to breaking one’s true form it seemed.

But that was the most frustrating part about it. As dangerous as this was, it just meant they were wrong. They shouldn’t have been trying to stop her, they should have been trying to help her. She hadn’t wanted to do anything like this, in fact she never would have if they had just helped her. A grandmaster mage with the right tutelage could have likely done this kind of spell with ease. While the components weren’t easy, it didn’t mean they could just use that as an excuse. If they had offered her the help she needed, instead she would have been aiding them with her own power, instead of them having to focus their own resources on trying to stop her. This was something she needed, that didn’t hurt anybody, yet they couldn’t even have the decency to stand aside, instead branding her as a criminal for the simple desire of wanting to be like every other girl. How could they not see how wrong that was?

But that was one of the worst parts. Yvette had been fighting for so long, planning and plotting how she would get herself fixed, how she would become the woman she’d always wanted to be. But she didn’t know what she wanted to do past that. Once she was fully herself, once she mastered the spell, what then? What roads lay ahead of her? What did her future hold?

Once more she found her mind drifting to Gervas. If she had cheeks like this, she would have blushed. As it was, she tried to push that thought aside. He wasn’t her future, he was a part of her future. But she couldn’t just live for him. He wouldn’t want that, nor would it be fair to just make him her world like that.

What was she aside from him and being a woman? Was there anything else for her to cling to?

More glimmers of Gervas flashed through her mind. On a ship? Oh gosh she felt another shudder at the idea of being sea sick again, but fortunately she didn’t feel it now. It wasn’t a ship she recognized. Before she could truly understand what she was seeing, it faded away.

Then Gervas’ words seemed to echo through her head. “Her name is Yvette. She’s a beautiful, kind hearted young woman. A delight to be around. Sometimes sarcastic, sometimes a brat, sometimes an obnoxious pain in my ass. But she tried her hardest to leave places better than she left them. She is one of the most stubborn mages I’ve ever met. She’s hardworking and reckless. Her face lights up whenever she finds even the hint of success. She’ll run headfirst into certain death if it means she can help someone else. She gets seasick on boats and makes the cutest little squeaks when she gets startled. She--”

Her heart beat faster, or at least she imagined it did. She didn’t truly have one now.

But the way he spoke about her made her soar. The determination and strength in his voice was awe inspiring. He believed in her, trusted her, cared about her. He still saw her even when she was shattered like this.

He believed she’d come back to him. But she couldn’t, could she? No matter how hard she tried, there was nothing for her to latch onto. She was a woman, but the other presence agreed with her. She cared for Gervas and so the other presence did as well. There wasn’t anything to truly separate them, for her to grow and develop from.

Yvette shook her head and sighed. Maybe it was for the best if she truly did just fade away entirely. Her form had been shattered and she wasn’t miserable, wasn’t that enough? Most who went through this kind of thing were changed and, even if she wasn’t really herself anymore, maybe it was for the best.

Yvette frowned and let out a scream of frustration. “I DON’T KNOW!” she yelled with all of her anger, fury and annoyance. “I DON’T KNOW WHO ELSE I AM SUPPOSED TO BE! I DON’T KNOW WHAT SEPARATES ME!”

She didn’t even truly know what this new presence WAS, so how could she even know if it was better or worse? It was a part of her, wasn’t it? It was a girl, it cared about Gervas. What if she was what was wrong? Some vestige that didn’t need to be there? What else was she if not that? Was she just the human part of Yvette?

Wait, that was EXACTLY what she was.

“Oh my gosh I am an idiot,” Yvette said.

That was what it was. That was why she could still function like this. It wasn’t that she was ‘Yvette’. It wasn’t that the other presence wasn’t ‘Yvette’. The core of her was still there, that was why it didn’t cement who she was. She’d been focused on the wrong thing.

She was a woman, of course she was a woman. She could be a human, a dog, a troll, a bird, anything, and she’d be a woman. She cared about Gervas, because how could she not? But what she was, who she was? Was a human as well. No, perhaps not just that. She was a mage. She was someone who studied and ran headfirst into danger in the pursuit of knowledge. She tried to go anywhere and everywhere and help the people around her. She developed her magic and found new forms and tools to open up more and more of the world to her touch.

Yvette felt herself beginning to, once more, become stable. She was a mage. She was Yvette but she was also a mage. This? All that she was going through? This was just more magic. Like the magic that made the Chiogn perhaps, but still magic. It wasn’t Yvette that she had to focus on. It was her humanity.

Yvette was a mage and, new form or not, she wouldn’t allow herself to melt away. She wouldn’t become a new Yvette. She liked who she had been just fine. Gervas liked her, as well. So what if she didn’t know what that necessarily meant in the end? So what if she didn’t really know what she was going to do in the future? She’d figure it out as she went, just like she did everything else! She was going to be a mercenary with Gervas.

She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. No, Gervas wasn’t the entirety of her future, the center of who she was. But he was a huge part of her future. Not because she had to have him as it. But because she chose to have him as it. She had so much to learn, both as a mage and a human. She wasn’t going to let it end like this. Yvette closed her eyes and reached out into the winds and rain of her mind.

The storm was powerful and in control, but in the end it was just magic. New form, new mind, new everything, it didn’t matter. It just meant there would be more for her to learn and, when all this was done? Maybe she’d have a brand new spell she could tell Gervas about.

------

Yvette was a mage, that was the core of who she was. Not the only core, she was discovering. But a piece of it. It connected her to so many other things. To Gervas, to people she helped, to her mentor, to Nautia, even to the Mage’s Association. While all the connections weren’t necessarily good, they were undoubtedly there. In some ways it was a job and duty. But in other ways it was who she wanted to be.

That was why she could survive and come back. Because at her very core she had something that so many poor souls who had lost themselves to their broken forms had lacked. Perhaps, if not for what she had, she would have faded away entirely.

She had her reagents. The troll’s blood, the scale of the dragon turtle, the tears of a siren, everything she had gathered, everything that the bracer had stored with her. Something that wasn’t hers, but was a part of a ‘mage’. Now that she finally understood what was happening, it felt almost like she was cheating.

Every moment she grew a little stronger. She was winning.

No, winning wasn’t the right word. It wasn’t a game, there wasn’t a loser. She would have almost called it a war within herself, but there was no fight. No contest of wills. She was Yvette and that was Yvette. She supposed she was Mage-Yvette and that was Reborn-Yvette. For now it was stronger, but it wasn’t a fight. It was just as much a part of her as she was it.

Once more she saw the world outside. It became more clear with every moment. The stronger she became, the more she could see.

Gervas.

“We’ll get out of this, somehow. I promise. I won’t let you disappear. I promise I’ll protect you.”

His words tore into her and, despite herself, she could tell that the other presence, Reborn-Yvette, was hurting just as much. He needed them, he needed her. Just as he was a part of her future, she was a part of his.

Yet they closed off from him. She tried to reach out to him, to make Reborn-Yvette understand that she couldn’t pull away. Even if the instinct was to hide, she couldn’t. That wasn’t what they had to do.

But it refused, despite her objections, it closed off and withdrew away from him.

But he needed her. She couldn’t give up. He was out there. Right now. Waiting for her. Waiting for them.

Despite everything he felt for mages, he was out there waiting for his mage.

The winds began to howl and the rains poured higher, but she lifted her hand and let her power flow out, using the dragon turtle’s scale as her focus.

It wasn’t time. But soon.

She would return to him.

MelodyAvant

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