The pulse of energy within Petal was strong, it wasn’t a problem to stand near her when it happened but it was incredibly noticeable. Adding the bright light made it impossible to look at her for a few seconds, like staring into the sun, just uncomfortable and impossible.

Though the few seconds later when it subsided something weird had changed, Petal still stood before her but she looked... different.
It was still clearly Petal, her face and general body was still there but there were still some drastic changes.

Her horns weren’t helical, they extended backwards in a slight wave, almost like the previous helical shape was folded and bent backwards in a wave rather than just an arc. Her ears had extended slightly and were somewhat as Gilliam would define as elf-ears from modern media. Her hooves had gotten slight clawed toes, though her feet were still short and wide like a hoof, rather than one big circular shape in the front it now had claw-like protrusions. The lowest ‘leg’ of her leg was also covered in hair-like fur. Her tail had also lengthened considerably and was now almost twice as long as Gilliam was, the end of the tail which before had a spear-head piece now had what looked like a three-finger hand with claws. Her hair lengthened and her face only changed a minuscule amount.

Since she ate the faceless demon’s heart some of these changes made sense. His horns were much straighter and pointing up, so hers might have uncurled, he had feet with toes so this might be a hybrid of that, he did have a long and strong tail but Petal also had one from before so... perhaps this turned into an additive change? The weird part was the changes to her hair and face, as the heart’s owner had no face or hair.

Her overall body didn’t change much, she still looked like she was the same height and physique as before.

“My... My Lord... I feel... different..” She was again looking at him but managed to take her eyes away from his to inspect her own. Stretching out her digitigrade legs to look at her new feet, feeling her arms, face, ears, horns and during movement, her tail came into view which had her react the most.
She reached out and grabbed her tail, almost as if she didn’t trust it to move like she wanted to, holding it just below the ‘hand’ at the end it seemed to open and close as a hand would. She seemed delighted at this movement.

“My Lord! I did it! I got a mutation!” She seemed ecstatic, her face lit up in joy and there was nothing but positivity about her.
She reached out for Gilliam as if she wanted to embrace him, but the flight spell was not controlled by her so she remained still.
Her smile and general joy lowered slightly as she didn’t get the same joy returned to her.

Both Gilliam and Angela were just hovering there, mouth agape and face full of disbelief. Gilliam knew the mutation was a thing, Petal had explained it and it was the main reason for the biodiversity of the Fracturians. But seeing this was shocking. It was still somewhat the same Petal but the changes, though relatively small compared to the difference between the lizard-like demons and for example Margol, but it was still large in Gilliam’s eyes.

Noticing that her glee was fading, Gilliam snapped back to reality, he was happy for her as this was her goal and something very positive, it seemed that his pause in reacting could be understood as negative.
“I-” He didn’t get to start his reply before Petal commented.

“Do you not like it?” Her tail coiled around her almost like she was trying to hide herself, she started to look slightly withdrawn and not meeting eye contact.

Gilliam didn’t see anything negative about the changes, but his initial reaction was misinterpreted.
“No, I mean, Yes. I do like it!” He tried to fake enthusiasm, but she seemed to realize it. “No. I mean... ok... hold on. Please let me explain.”
Gilliam let out a deep sigh, this was all so surprising and now his reaction was taken way out of context. “Us Humans can’t do this, my world doesn’t even have magic. I know you said that you could change and I sort of knew it from seeing the other demons, but seeing this was just so surprising. I don’t dislike it, no. Trust me there, I don’t dislike what you look like, I was just very surprised.”
He managed to regain his composure through the explanation, and not a word of it was a lie.

He thought she was still attractive, if anything the small changes to her face might actually be a bit cuter, and the changes only made her more neat. Though the latter part made it sound like he considered her something lesser than a person, it was still true. Like a friend got a... very dramatic haircut, it’s not bad even though it might be different.

She seemed to eye him a little through the explanation, and to Gilliam’s relief, by the end of it, she was again smiling and looking him in the eyes. He also realised that it seemed she wanted a hug before, it felt incredibly awkward leaving her hanging there and not wanting to be close could be misinterpreted as he found her changes disgusting.
Not wanting that he ignored the awkward scene and pulled the rope, though he could just have the spell float her over he thought this would feel better.

As she was in range he gave her a hug, tail coiled around her and all. It took a second but she ended up hugging him back and sounding happy again. Which also furthered Gilliam’s relief. This moment of weirdness could perhaps have mitigated a larger problem down the road.
Turning towards Angela he got a strangely satisfied thumbs up from her, since she was also surprised at Petal’s transformation this might have worked for them both.

A few moments later she let go, which let him let go as well. He realised first now that the transformation removed the gore on her from excavating the heart, as she was back to being clean and he wasn’t covered by being in contact with her.

“Are you hungry after that? You seem clean now so perhaps we should get some clothes on you.”
Gilliam mentally connected to the ring and was looking through what to bring out.

“I’m not hungry. And the clothes are mainly for your sake, no?” She seemed to have a cheeky smile at her statement.

Gilliam couldn’t argue, though he didn’t have anything against nudity, the problem was the distracting nature of it. Even though her body looked incredibly featureless as a part of the Fracturian biology; every orifice could be closed with a sphincter-like muscle, most likely an evolved trait against the constant sandstorm. This meant everything, even the ear canals. However, though this meant that there was not much to see when she was not ‘active’, even if she was naked, the fact that he had spent intimate time with her, even in this state was enough to work for him.
“Yes... it kind of is for my sake, I’ll admit you walking around like that might... affect my focus.”

Angela seemed unable to keep her laughter in anymore and let it out, laughing for several seconds before regaining her control.
“This scene is funny and nice and all, but we need to consider moving on. And... I mean... With your changes, we might need to know what you can do. Is your body very changed?”

Angela made it sound like a tactical question, something Gilliam appreciated, he also wondered how much she had changed but given the scene he accidentally caused he didn’t feel like the one who should be saying that.

Petal pushed herself slightly away from Gilliam. Gilliam interpreted this as she not wanting to be too close to him while moving about but since he was the one who controlled the flight spell he took this moment to recast it with her as the controller. She thanked him for this as he started handing her clothes which she put on as she replied to Angela.

“I don’t know. Not exactly. I don’t feel different but since I’m flying and not standing... I don’t properly know.” She was inspecting the different parts of her body as she said that, looking at her clawed hooves she looked absolutely delighted at the ability to wiggle her claws, hinting that there were some toes in there.

Moving her tail claw in front of her, without holding it with her hand this time, she opened and closed it, moving the clawed fingers around. It moved much like a hand, surprisingly flexible allowing the fingers to move somewhat to the same side almost like a normal hand, but its default state was that they were placed around like a claw-machine. The finger joints were also moveable individually. The claws looked incredibly sharp and the fingers beneath the claws looked surprisingly strong as well.

Angela held out her arm for Petal to reach to. “Don’t use the claws, just the hand, squeeze my arm.” She looked determined.

“But. what if I hurt y-” Petal instantly pulled her tail close to herself, as if she was afraid that it’d latch out and attack on its own.

“I can heal shattered bones in moments... as long as it’s my bones. I don’t say that you should break my arm but I think this might be the best way of trying.” Angela still looked determined and she did have a point, she was a Healing mage who had used considerable effort in mastering her healing, the drawback of it only working internally also meant that it was potentially easier for her to master it.

Petal looked to Gilliam with questioning eyes, almost as if asking permission or asking his opinion.

He simply shrugged. “I have seen the wounds she can almost instantly heal from when fighting Kintas, I think a broken arm won’t be a large problem. And if she says so herself.”
He didn’t exactly like the inter-party wounding, but he also couldn’t say he wasn’t curious.

Petal was uncertain as she looked back to Angela. “Let me know when it’s too much... I don’t want to actually hurt you...”

“Oh bring it, you have kicked me in the face with your hooves before, if I can mend my beautiful face from that, an arm is nothing!” She looked surprisingly pumped.

Petal hesitantly reached her long and slender tail out, the large claw-like hand on the end almost looking too heavy for the tail to properly support. She grabbed Angela’s lower arm carefully and took a small breath.
The very next moment Angela’s hand let out a sickening crack, the broken bones tore through the skin and severe bleeding happened at the same time. Petal instantly let go as Angela let out a surprisingly loud pain-filled scream.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-” Petal went into a repeating apologetic form, clearly not expecting this to happen either.

Grabbing her bicep Angela gritted her teeth hard as she seemed to try to limit the bleeding by putting pressure on the important arteries, and seemingly focusing on her self-healing abilities seemed to stop the bleeding in seconds. An amazing feat even with magical healing in mind.
Gilliam wanted to help but he quickly realised that she’d probably do better on her own. The following minute was filled with worried sounds and apologies from Petal, as the bones seemed to pull themselves back into the arm, cracking into place as the skin mended itself without scarring. Though it only took a minute it felt like it was much longer.

“Ohfuck, that surprised me.” Angela finally broke the awkward atmosphere, she didn’t sound mad or annoyed, but more relieved. “I expected a buildup of force, not just instantly full force.”

Petal seemed extremely relieved, more so than Angela now that it seemed to be over. “Are... are you ok?” Almost looking like she was about to cry it seemed that this affected Petal more than Gilliam expected.

“I’m fine, see, not even a scar. It just surprised me, is all.” She smiled and wiped away the blood on her arm to show that she was indeed not lying.

Petal let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good... I know you can heal but.. For a moment I thought it was worse.”

“Oh, I don’t think you know how bad it was-” Angela replied which seemed to almost break Petal for a moment. “-I’m entirely fine now but you didn’t just break my arm, you splintered the bones inside my arm.” She sounded amazed and made it sound like it was a very good thing.
“Had it just been a broken arm I wouldn’t use that long to heal it, your tail... Arm... hand... Clawthing is really strong!” Ending with a huge compliment Angela’s enthusiasm seemed to bring Petal back out of her apologetic stage.

Petal pulled her tail claw towards herself and started wiping the blood off it as she muttered a response. “I... Well... That wasn’t my full strength...”

Gilliam reacted to that, it was a good thing to hear but Angela reacted more. “Ohoo?” She seemed impressed. “I don’t think you get how amazing that is. My bones are much tougher than on normal humans, your people are probably stronger but your clawhandthing is powerful.” Pumping her fist in the air she looked properly impressed.

“Note to self, don’t shake hand with the tail claw until she’s mastered it, got it.” Gilliam joked to break the tension, but instead, it seemed to just put Petal into super worry mode.
“Oh, no, don’t worry. It was a joke.” Gilliam broke out trying to defend himself as he noticed her expression. “You grabbed her arm without hurting her, it was only when you tried to that you actually broke it. I’m sure it’ll be fine in no time.” He forced an awkward smile.

Gilliam remembered the empty-milk-carton comparison often used back in the modern world. If you assume a milk carton was full and went to pick it up, but if it was empty you’d do this jerking motion where you too quickly would lift it almost as if throwing it. He expected Petal’s newfound strength to be somewhat similar. She just needed to test and find out where the limits were. The human body is amazingly adaptive, and given the Fracturian biology, he assumed they would at least be on par.

Gilliam’s dumb humour and explanation seemed to work and put Petal at ease a little.
“But I’m looking forward to seeing you fight now.” Gilliam stated, moving the topic back and away from Angela’s bloody but healed arm. “You were strong before but you seem stronger now!”

The complimenting tone towards Petal seemed to sound Angela’s smile a bit. “Yes... And such an improvement from just eating a heart... And she’ll probably get slightly stronger each night you’re alone as normal...” She had a very judgy tone.

At first, Gilliam thought it was a comment on their intimate life and how that could perhaps change slightly given the changes, but he quickly realised that it was more likely related to the fact that Petal seemed to passively increase in power, whereas Angela had to train her ass off. Though Angela was without a doubt the more skilled of the two in raw technique and talent, and she was beyond the human limit in strength, agility and endurance. Petal’s passive growth was catching up and surpassing that at a terrifying rate.
He could understand Angela’s annoyance, based on her explanation he assumed she had been through some horrible training, just based on how eager she was to have her arm mangled as a test, she was no stranger to absurd pain. He also didn’t feel it was his place to say anything, he woke up in this world not long ago and was super powerful from day one...

“I... don’t know what to say...” Gilliam ended up breaking the silence.”I want to be encouraging but I’m not just in the same boat, but I’m also directly the cause of one of the problems...” Like before Gilliam decided that honesty was better than trying something else.

Angela sighed. “Now, I know it’s not one of your faults, it’s amazing for everyone. I’m just a bit envious. My father explained that I needed to find something that would take me to the next level. I’m just struggling to find this ‘something’ when you’re close to a magical demigod and she’s getting passively empowered...” She took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’m not complaining, but I do have some annoyance I’m going to take out on the next fuck we fight.”
She brought back her smile and seemed to be slightly less, and more, annoyed at the same time.

Gilliam assumed it was just redirecting her irritation at something they needed to do regardless. Which wasn’t a bad way of doing things, but it did mean that this sounded like a good place to get moving.
“I suppose we’ll get moving, then.” He replied as he started slowly flying in the direction he assumed was correct, the rope pulling the others to go with him.

Savia was still in his hair so she just came along for the ride, Petal was being slightly clingy and staying very close to Gilliam, not something he minded but it was a little different. Angela started being pulled along with the rope but ended up flying on her own accord a moment later. They didn’t exactly know where to go, but now that they were back to normal again Gilliam could finally ask Petal.

“Petal, the city below us, it seems like it has water and might be more organised than what we’ve seen before. Do you know anything about that?” Not knowing what to ask specifically he just started with the general.

Petal looked down properly for the first time since she woke. Using a good several seconds to inspect the landscape she seemed a bit confused. “I... I didn’t know there was water here. I hadn’t seen water before I was pulled into your world.” She replied honestly, having an odd nonchalant tone to things.

“Not... heard of water? How did you survive?” Angela broke in, sounding somewhat in disbelief.

“Hmm...” Petal was thinking about it for a moment. “I think we got what we needed from the food we ate, and the mana in the air.”

“Did you have much to eat at all?” Gilliam joined with a question, she was of the bottom caste, after all.

“We stole food as we were moving it, or just when others slept, or we hunted the creatures that lived there.” She still didn’t sound like she was describing a horrible way to live, more in the casual tone of what random things she did yesterday.

Gilliam remembered when he was first transported to the Fractured lands, he stole some meat as well but at the time somewhat thought it was demon meat. But it didn’t look the sort, though through his hunger he didn’t care at the time. He was somewhat glad to hear that now, that he didn’t eat demons.

They silently decided that this would be a discussion for later, if their mission succeeds as planned then they would end up taking over as the Lord of the Fractured Lands, that should be enough to ask all the questions they could ever want.

Continuing along from what they thought was where they came into this land, the exit should be somewhat the opposite of that, right? At least that was the best guess they had as none of them had any real information of where they were or were going. The distance from the landmass let them move undetected, if they couldn’t see anything moving down there then anything down there shouldn’t be able to make them out up here.

The flight was uneventful, they looked down to both keep track of where they were going but also in hopes of finding the cubical buildings. Gilliam had requested to see and inspect Petal’s tail claw, something she was more than happy to allow him.
He bent the fingers back and forth, taking care to not bend too hard. Although it was probably stronger than he was, there was no need to try to hurt her. It was interesting how it moved and how it could get that much strength. Petal’s tail was somewhat slim and this hand looked somewhat out of place in its size, but she could move the entire tail with it easily, in fact, the little tests they could do while flying made the tail seem like it was just as strong as she was, even though it looked too slender.

Though he wanted to inspect the other changes as well, this was the most dramatic and weird change, it was also the easiest to just handle and check out as they were flying.

Gilliam found it very fascinating, opening and closing it by hand, moving the fingers around to move it between a three-pronged claw shape and a three-fingered hand shape. Petal looked very happy that he had taken an interest in it, letting him do as he wished, doing her best to move it according to his questions as he kept inspecting it.

“Ah... fuck...” Angela’s voice broke the silence, as soon as the others looked at her she pointed down. “Seems like this is the end of the landmass.”

Looking down they were over the rough end of the landmass. They had seen a lot of buildings, cityscape-like areas and what looked like more oasis-like areas, but nothing that felt like the Static Portal areas, they seemed to be very temple and fancy-like compared to the rest.

“Well, I suppose we need to go down there, find someone and ask them, then.” He let out a deep sigh, he didn’t want them to show themselves before it was needed, but rather than scouting up and down the entire place, they would need to find someone.

“I agree-” Angela commented. “-We’ll go down and see if we can find someone that’s somewhat alone. Form your explanation before I’m sure Savia can help.” Angela had a slight smirk at the mention of teleport-kidnapping.