Lillene

Enjoy!

Multiform

You may assume the shape of any Form you know. All Forms reflect yourself and all Forms are reflected in some manner in your Chimera Form. Detailed control of Forms increases with familiarity. Any Forms above the minimum require a continual maintenance cost of both Mana and Essence. Minimum number of Forms: 1. Maximum number of Forms: 4. Forms may be repeated.

Forms passively return to their normal condition.

Current known forms: Chimera, Wyrmling Essence Dragon, Sovereign of Potential (Kernel), Human(?), Crystal Hilt, Armor, Sterath(?), Arcane Asura 

There were two obvious differences in Serenity’s shapeshifting Skill. First, the Greater Demon of Righteous Retribution was now Arcane Asura. That wasn’t what Serenity had expected, but he wasn’t about to complain. It definitely sounded better than Demonic Dungeon Lord. 

Second, his minimum number of Forms was one. His maximum hadn’t gone up, unfortunately, but he no longer had to always figure out what inanimate object he wanted his second Form to be. Serenity suspected he almost always would have at least one secondary Form anyway; they were useful.

:Serenity?: Rissa’s mindvoice was a welcome distraction. :Blaze says the mana storm has suddenly died down a lot. Should I assume that’s your doing?:

:Huh, I hadn’t realized.: Serenity looked around. The mana storm really wasn’t as bad as he’d have expected for only a few hours after the king of destruction he saw. He was standing in a bowl-shaped depression; about three times his height above him, he could see openings that looked like they were probably A’Atla’s corridors. They seemed oddly short, but that was probably the perspective.

Serenity hoped it was the perspective, at least. He remembered that Timothy, his great-grandfather, had seemed about eight feet tall. Of course, Serenity was a baby dragon at the time; who knew how large Timothy actually was. More than that, there was no real reason to assume that Timothy was tall for a Suras or that an Asura was identical to a Suras. Serenity still hoped it was just perspective; being a significantly different size from the people around you was awkward at best.

Above the openings, the damage seemed to start to narrow; it wasn’t a perfect sphere but that was still the closest description Serenity could come up with for what the mana crystal’s destruction followed by a mana storm had done to the area. It sliced through three more levels of tunnels, although the highest one was only sliced through near the top middle of the damaged area. A quick check of A’Atla’s display showed that it was still fuzzed out; it didn’t seem to tolerate the mana storm well at all, even though Order’s Voice could clearly manage it.

Serenity wasn’t certain how to reach the openings; telekinesis seemed like the best bet, but he might be able to jump that high, especially if he lowered the pull of gravity on himself. He didn’t have that particular spell prepared, but he didn’t have telekinesis, either. In fact, the only things he seemed to have were the runes he’d carved into his body with his Quickrune Skill.

It was good to know that his Quickrunes didn’t go away when he shifted shape as long as his new shape was analogous enough; it seemed to be like his magitech in that way. Perhaps that simply meant that things that were a part of his identity tended to cross between forms? It would explain why certain of his draconic features became part of his human shape.

Eh, he wanted to test out the body anyway; he needed to know what he could do. He also felt a little jittery and over-caffeinated; that was probably the mana storm. As far as he knew, demons didn’t eat mana which meant Suras or Asuras probably didn’t either. He had no idea what an Arcane Asura was, though.

Serenity jumped as high as he could manage from a standing start. He easily cleared half his height before he snapped his wings open and soared on the mana storm’s power to one of the corridors. Serenity had to pull his wings in as he landed and crouch to fit in the corridor; it was far too small for him to even stand upright.

Wait, he had wings? He’d just flown on them without thinking about it and he hadn’t even realized he had them? He was getting far too used to not being human. 

Somehow, the thought didn’t bother him as much as it had a couple of years earlier.  He wasn’t undead and he could now say with some confidence that he didn’t think he’d ever have to be undead again. That was a huge load off his mind and made any worries about becoming inhuman seem trivial.

Also, he could fly. That was amazing. Maybe he should go back into the open area and practice some more?

:Serenity?: Rissa sounded a little worried. Serenity vaguely realized she’d said his name several times while he was distracted.

:Sorry,: Serenity apologized. :I just realized I have wings and can actually fly, at least here. I think I’m actually flying on the mana, not the air; it’s easy, just like visualizing a spell’s Intent. It just works.:

It was really cramped in the tunnel; it was so nice in the open area in comparison. Plus, he could fly. He really, really wanted to be able to fly normally but his dragon shape simply wasn’t old enough yet. It might be a long time; dragons took a long time to mature. 

Serenity sighed internally. This wasn’t the time for that. Maybe he could come back this evening and fly, but right now he needed to make sure there weren’t any other problems. The demon had to have come from somewhere; while he’d closed off the rooms with the toxic atmosphere-

The rooms with the toxic atmosphere! They were probably breached by the explosion; he was more than close enough to them for that. :Rissa? Is there any sign of the stuff that was in the air in the blocked room?:

:No,: Rissa answered immediately. :Blaze has been checking. We’ve also pulled in everything Samantha thought would be useful; I think that includes some air quality sensors. Samantha says the readings inside the mana storm are “nonsense” but the ones outside are reasonable and don’t show any… no, she’s correcting me. She says there’s an above average level of ozone, silica, and some combustion byproducts but there’s no traces of any known explosives.:

Serenity looked at the tight space he had to work with. He either had to crawl out of here or he’d have to shift. With the mana storm still raging around him, Serenity decided that crawling was probably the better option; he knew this shape could handle the mana storm without any issues, while he’d found his Sovereign shape exceedingly unpleasant. The odds were good any of his more solid mobile forms would work, but there was no reason to change when he already knew this one did.

:It sounds like we got lucky. Either it’s been so diluted it’s not a problem, it broke down in the presence of oxygen or mana, or…: Serenity trailed off. The third “or” wasn’t as positive. The dangerous material could be trapped in the mana storm. :We need to keep monitoring, just in case.:

:Maybe A’Atla took care of it? Or will take care of it once the mana storm ends?: Rissa sounded hopeful.

Serenity didn’t want to disagree. As he thought about it, she might well be right to hope. :A’Atla did recognize it when it was sealed up, and it’ll heal this area once the storm subsides. We still need to keep watch, but I expect that A’Atla will seal up any issues it can’t handle and tell us about them. If we don’t detect anything by then, we’re probably fine. I don’t know how long that will be, though; there’s a lot of destruction:

:Destruction? How bad is it?:

Serenity described what he’d seen as he crawled out of the mana storm. The corridors brought home how tall he had to be, which made the scale of devastation from the mana crystal’s destruction more clear. He had to be easily ten feet tall and might be as tall as twelve, which meant the mana crystal’s destruction had disintegrated A’Atla’s sturdy stone in a radius of roughly thirty or forty feet. That meant it was both incredibly powerful and tightly delineated, since there was no clear sign of the destruction continuing far past that distance.

Serenity didn’t think there had been anything important to A’Atla’s overall capabilities in the area, but he wasn’t sure; what he was certain of was that if the same explosion had happened in A’Atla’s powerplant the island would have been crippled. It might not ever be able to recover since it might not be able to gather the necessary power. He hoped he was wrong there, since it had been able to recover from the damage inflicted on it during the war where A’Atla sank, but he couldn’t count on it.

Serenity wasn’t certain where A’Atla’s “brain” was, but a strike there would probably be at least as bad. Maybe it was distributed? That would explain why he didn’t know where it was. It would also remove the chance for a single hit to destroy A’Atla while leaving a shell behind.

When he finished, Rissa didn’t take long to digest his description. :It’s a good thing we don’t have to expect this again. That would be really hard to defend against.:

:What do you mean?: Serenity didn’t know how the demon had arrived. He had noticed that there was no noticeable continuing drain on A’Atla’s mana and that he could still feel Gaia, however; maybe the demon had been hibernating in there and cutting off its mana supply woke it up? That didn’t explain where all the mana went, since the demon was probably only a little higher Tier than Serenity, but maybe it needed it to live on the low-mana Earth. 

On the other hand, it might well explain where the mana crystal came from. The thing was, that was only a theory; it accounted for almost everything but didn’t guarantee there wasn’t another demon like it somewhere.

:The Quest is gone. The World Quest, that is, the one that wanted us to prevent A’Atla from being sunk again. It disappeared shortly after the explosion.: Rissa sounded a little sheepish when she explained how she knew. :Liam noticed. He was trying to figure out what happened. The best guess we have is that it was caused by whatever made the Quest get generated in the first place. No one’s sure why there weren’t rewards.:

Serenity laughed at that. He remembered just how annoyed he was the first time he ran into one of the Voice’s little Quests where the reward came from performing the Quest. :There are. It’s whatever we can recover from here, so - the Vault, Amani, anything they learn from A’Atla’s powerplant, and whatever else is on the island. The Voice doesn’t announce it when you complete that kind of Quest unless it’s part of a quest chain.:

:Great.: Rissa sounded annoyed but probably not as annoyed as Serenity remembered Vengeance being. Of course, Vengeance’s reactions to almost everything were either nothing or killing something. Serenity seemed to vaguely remember that the realization that he wasn’t going to get something came in a dungeon, so he was certain Vengeance took out his annoyance on some of the monsters.

Eventually, Serenity crawled out of the range of the mana storm. It had a defined edge; beyond that point, Serenity could see wisps of leaking mana but they were far weaker. They also didn’t interfere with his sight, which meant that he actually noticed that there wasn’t any light in the area. 

The corridor this far from the blast wasn’t damaged or even covered in the light rubble and dust the initial opening had been. That made it a good time to shift to his human form, which was easy. Serenity didn’t immediately notice any changes in his human form; on the other hand, he probably wouldn’t. The really nice thing about shifting back to his human form was that he was dressed again. The clothing wasn’t in great shape after the fight with the demon but at least it was there.

Serenity continued down the corridor until he came to the sealed door that blocked it off from the next corridor. There were some small instruments lying just on this side of the door, along with a few others taped on the wall and one at the ceiling. Serenity didn’t know what they were for, but it was obvious that they had to be sensors of some sort. 

Serenity quietly shook his head and opened the door. Blaze had to be on the other side, which meant it was time to face the music for getting himself blown up.

Maybe he could deflect it by asking how Blaze knew this was a mana storm. They weren’t common on the sort of low-Tier planet Blaze had implied he came from.

Lillene

We're not quite at the end of the arc, but we're really really close. There's just the epilogue left now. I think that will be only one chapter (but I'm famously bad at estimating these things).