The Lone Wanderer

“No matter how many times I see you assume that form, it’s always going to send a chill down my spine,” Nesha said, instinctively taking a step back before Micky was even done transforming.

The other people sitting in the living room fared even worse. The Blues of House Etna flinched back at the frightening sight of the towering Thess’kalan, visibly shuddering every time Micky’s forked tongue escaped his lips. His grey scales probably hadn’t helped either – Micky hadn’t bothered to alter the colour of his body, since he didn’t care about perfecting the illusion.

Even Galahad, who was probably strong enough to hold his own against the real Kassorith, and who had also seen Micky transform into Percy’s former host a couple of times before, couldn’t help but tense up.

The only one who remained entirely unbothered was Percy himself. It would have been strange for him to feel even a pang of fear after having lived in that person’s scaled skin for several months – especially when he was powerful enough to crush the bastard with ease.

Micky couldn’t help but roll his slit eyes. He’d found the reaction funny the first couple of times, but it was quickly starting to irritate him. “You don’t have to stare at me if it bothers you so much,” he said, an inadvertent hiss seeping into his tone. “Just go about your business and let me worry about mine.”

‘At least she’s not mad at me anymore,’ he thought to himself, recalling the jabs and snide comments that Percy’s girlfriend had directed at him over the past couple of weeks.

It wasn’t Micky’s fault that he and his fellow aspect received the same notifications!

The twelve mages had gathered inside Percy’s residence in the settlement for a very specific purpose. Archibald had tasked his son with escorting their guests to the Guild to receive their gifts, so that Percy wouldn’t have to go out of his way to meet every new batch. The acid mage arguably had better things to do than act as a glorified errand boy for his nephew, but there was sadly nobody better for the job.

The visiting mages were unlikely to stir trouble, but it didn’t hurt to have a powerful mage accompanying them – ready to rein them in if they tried anything funny before being bound by the terms of the spectral contract. Percy could obviously handle them just fine so long as they remained in his presence, but not during the first part of their trip. According to Nesha, Archibald, and Orin, it was also politically savvy to have a high-ranking member of the alliance tend to their guests’ needs, lest the pampered nobles took offense at House Avalon’s perceived negligence.

Percy was obviously needed to possess the Blues and grant them their new cores and mutations, as well as have them sign the contracts. Nesha, on the other hand, was here to catch any subtle falsehoods that the guests might foolishly try to speak, and double-check that the terms her boyfriend demanded of his hosts were airtight.

Micky was the only one whose presence had nothing to do with strengthening the alliance. He had taken a break from his practice with the Shapeshifting Sentries spell solely for his and Percy’s benefit.

His fellow aspect placed a clone inside the first mage, while also dumping a pile of green mushrooms onto the noble to awaken the new core, and a much shorter stack of red powder by the man’s feet, prompting him to start consuming it.

They had tried to simplify the process as much as possible, which was why the guests would have to clear out their new channels in their own time, and receive an appropriate combination of affinity-changing treasures from Galahad’s subordinates later.

Well… that last part might have to wait a few hours, since the clone wasn’t back from Gallimus yet. He’d already informed the main body that he wouldn’t stay too long, since the lesser spring didn’t have any new alchemic principles or other particularly useful tidbits of magical knowledge to share.

Obatala had apparently expressed his desire to have a meeting with Percy at some point, and Micky knew that his friend wouldn’t mind chatting with the titan about the ins and outs of his Decree, but this would have to wait until a future visit, since the god was currently busy with other matters. After leaving a mark on the planet, the clone had bid his host and travelling companions farewell and was already on the way back.

Either way, the activation of the Moirais’ Decree had to happen during the nobles’ possession, otherwise they would need mind as well as life mana. The consumption of the ruby dust, too, had to happen in the clone’s presence, since the Mimicry trait would be needed to suppress the side-effects of the mutation.

The acquisition of the mutation was precisely what Micky was here to observe.

Ignoring all the other steps, he willed his Sage’s Pond to shrink by thousands of times, enveloping the noble’s body and trying to pierce through the few centimetres of skin and flesh that concealed his skeleton. Focusing every sliver of attention onto the man’s bones, Micky observed the microscopic changes that began to take place inside their very structure.

This wasn’t the first time he was witnessing the transformation – not by a long shot. The versions of Micky that existed inside the clones had brought back countless bundles of memories of acquiring the mutation from within all sorts of human or non-human bodies. Micky and Percy hadn’t stopped at that, opting to observe the process from the outside too, finding the additional perspective valuable.

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That said, Micky had yet to consume the crimson powder with his main body. In fact, he was the only one among Percy’s closest allies who had deliberately avoided doing that.

There was no doubt that the substance would work on him just fine, as his magical flesh had already proven capable of replicating any biological function. If Micky were to consume the material, the most likely outcome would be his bones absorbing and adapting to it, allowing him to imitate its properties even when regenerating limbs or shapeshifting into different forms.

They’d only held off due to having more ambitious plans for the powder.

The decision had come at the cost of keeping Micky a little weaker than he could have been. Perhaps, his reinforced bones would have given him the slight edge that he and his fellow aspect had needed to take down Machaon a few weeks earlier. However, this was a unique opportunity to study the process of acquiring new mutations, so they had felt that it would be a huge waste to have him consume it immediately.

Their other mutations weren’t suitable for their experiments.

Micky had already replicated Percy’s Sage’s Eye – which was one of the main reasons they felt so confident in the viability of the project. The problem with that one was that it was a sensory mutation, and that their Status did most of the heavy lifting. Micky had only needed to resolve a few redundancies and inefficiencies in his senses and figure out how to connect them to his mind and Status properly.

Percy’s Greater Thess’kalan Physique, on the other hand, was one that they couldn’t experiment with freely, because they only had a single set of ritual ingredients left.

The main advantages of the ruby powder were the relative simplicity of the mutation it granted and the abundance of the resource itself.

Watching someone’s bones change for the umpteenth time, Micky tried to manually apply the same process to his own skeleton – though his transformation lagged behind the noble’s by several seconds. Once they were both done, Micky took some time to stretch his limbs and assess the quality of his knockoff mutation as Percy finished activating the Blue’s Moirais’ Decree.

‘Hmmm… it feels a little better than my previous attempt, but it’s still not as good as the real thing,’ he concluded, having experienced the complete mutation countless times.

Micky reverted his bones back to their normal state, before waiting for Percy to retrieve the clone and pass him his own share of memories. It might have been faster to consume the red powder directly, but they weren’t sure that Micky would be able to revert the real thing.

A few minutes later, a rush of memories flooded his mind, allowing him to compare his efforts to the natural acquisition of the mutation. After identifying a couple of flaws and figuring out how to address them, he nodded at Percy to possess the second noble.

With every new Blue that received the mutation, Micky grew a little better, finding fewer and fewer imperfections in his version. This wasn’t their first day working on this project, but they hoped that it would be the last.

They had been too busy with their artificial advancements to worry about this in the years leading to the battle in the Whistling Woods, yet the few weeks following Micky and Percy’s reunion had provided them with plenty of opportunities to experiment on their allies.

After the sixth noble, Micky felt that his bones were about as strong as they were supposed to be, so he shifted his attention to his scales and fangs. Thankfully, the bonding process for various chitinous and keratinous body parts was more or less the same, meaning that he wouldn’t have to spend another month observing his friend.

“Well? Why aren’t we getting a notification? Do you need to watch me possess another group?” Percy asked after he was done with the final noble. The others had already left, returning to their other tasks.

“I’m not sure,” Micky admitted. “I’d say that it’s a perfect replica, but our Status clearly doesn’t agree.”

They shared the mutation section, and Percy already possessed Ruby Bones, so they didn’t expect to register it a second time. This was why Micky had chosen a Thess’kalan body for this job. He had hoped that transforming both his scales and bones would either result in a separate entry, or an upgrade of the existing one into something like Kassorith’s Ruby Panoply. The exact manner in which Phoebe’s Decree dealt with the artificial mutation didn’t really matter, but it would be nice to receive some confirmation that he had succeeded.

“Do you think that watching me grant the mutation to another dozen people will help?” Percy asked again.

“I doubt it,” Micky replied with a shake of his head. “I can’t even pinpoint what exactly is missing.”

Percy sighed, pulling another pile of ruby powder out of his seal and dropping it in front of Micky. “The whole point was to figure this out without eating the material directly, but I suppose that there is no sense in holding it off if you’re stuck. Just… make sure to note the differences.”

Due to the abundance of the substance, it didn’t really matter how Micky acquired this particular mutation. They only wanted to understand how to copy other mutations, that he and Percy wouldn’t have the means to obtain repeatedly – such as the Greater Thess’kalan Physique. To accomplish that, Micky would have to reach a point where he could replicate a mutation after only witnessing or experiencing its acquisition once. Unfortunately, that was still a distant goal.

Scooping a handful of red powder, he swallowed it, paying close attention to the changes in his body. Usually, one had to consume an amount approximately equal to their weight before reaching saturation, but Micky didn’t seem to need nearly that much.

His scales and bones were already almost perfect, so they only absorbed a pinch of powder, leaving the rest inside his stomach. A dozen spots across his body itched as tiny flaws corrected themselves with audible clicks, though the differences were so small that they didn’t even alter the colour of his scales.

Micky frowned. ‘The structure was correct, after all. I just happened to make a few mistakes here and there.’

The realization was both reassuring and disappointing. It meant that Micky was indeed capable of reverse engineering and replicating a mutation, yet doing it manually was clearly an inferior approach.

It was like the difference between pouring a bucket of paint on the floor, versus trying to colour every square centimetre with a fine brush. In the first case, the paint was guaranteed to spill over everything evenly, while in the latter, the painter might struggle to cover the floor uniformly.

Leaving behind even a single flaw in his skeleton would have made his bones prone to breaking, and Micky had no idea what issues might arise if he made a similar mistake while giving himself a different mutation.

‘Food for thought, I suppose. We’ll have to solve this issue before trying anything more ambitious.’

For the time being, he and Percy would have to be content with their new toy.

[Congratulations! You have acquired a new mutation: Grey Panoply!]