Alexis lay on the grass of the woods, looking like a puppet who's strings had been cut, while wild energies imperceptible to normal eyes seemed to rage around her. Naomi had already called for help, and was now just trying to keep herself from freaking out and winding up like her, holding her arms around her legs and curling into a ball.
Unexpectedly, Curt and Pearl were the first to find them. Pearl carrying a blanket she grabbed from the parlour after the call came through, and as she kneeled next to Alexis, she doused it with the magical looking goo that they'd excreted back at the parlour. She carefully wrapped the wet blanket around Alexis, and beckoned to Curt.
"Try to wrap your wings around her as much as possible, it should insulate her from outside magical influence while keeping her own inside her," she said.
Curt nodded, and picked Alexis up, doing as Pearl said, and taking Alexis with them towards a log cabin. As they burst in and placed Alexis into bed, Pearl had already started making calls to the others to get more supplies.
Curt turned to Naomi, keeping on wing draped over Alexis' body. "Do you have any idea what happened?"
Naomi shook her head. "I'm not sure... We were meditating, trying to make sure we didn't loose control of our magic... Then she started getting a headache, and then it was like she just blacked out... But her eyes were open, and this magic was overflowing from her."
Pearl finished one of her calls and looked over. "I'm not surprised one of you two had this happen first. You're already overworked mentally, given how much effort you must be using to... How do I put this... Return to a natural state."
Naomi blinked. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You were essentially told by Curt during his speech, in no uncertain terms, that its not enough to simply act like your old selves, you had to be more like them, as so that's what you tried to do on some level," Pearl said, "rewiring your entire brain by brute force like that is going to take a lot of energy, and even then its going to take a while, and a lot of that time is going to be spent subconsciously method acting."
Curt looked over at Pearl. "I screwed up didn't I?"
Pearl shook her head. "Honestly, it might have been worse if you didn't... The way they were wouldn't have been a good state for a magic user to be in... But then again, they might have become mythics in anticipation of you asking them to be more like their old selves," she said.
Curt sighed. "You make it sound inevitable."
Pearl didn't answer, and began shining a light over Alexis' eyes. "Low response, but better than none... I can only guess she's mentally shut down while she recovers. I don't know whether that means she's defaulted to a worn down blank maid state, or if she's simply unconscious."
Curt furrowed his brow, wondering for a moment if he should ask the unconscious young maid to answer. He shook his head, discarding the idea for now. "What's likely to happen here? Some bedrest and she'll be fine? Or is this a more serious issue?"
Pearl had a claw to her chin. "I'm a nurse, not a doctor. But given both long life and her animalistic form are tied to her magic, then so long as we keep her powers contained, the worst case is that her mythic attributes become more dominant than her human traits, regressing to a child like form in the process."
"... And if we can't contain them?" Curt asked.
Pearl shrugged. "No idea... Anything from everything nearby floating, to everything around her being doused with her magic... Which might not mix well with the current atmosphere."
Curt looked out at the town again, barely visible through the tree cover. Since becoming a dragon himself, he'd felt the steady thrum of magic around the town. He whipped out his phone and started sending a message to all the maids to make sure they had something to insulate themselves from magic. He paused as he tried to think of what could do that and turned to Pearl. "What exactly is that goo you're using to contain her magic?"
"It's... Basically just congealed magical discharge," Pearl said, "magic is the only thing that insulates against magic, we happened to have that on hand, so it would have to do. But there are some enchanted cloaks and blankets the clinic uses for similar reasons, though if I've been on your staff retroactively, there might also be some at the mansion."
Curt nodded and put the information into the message. With a flick, the message was sent. "I'm guessing you already sent for some to be sent around to here?"
Pearl nodded. "I sent Anna and Skyla for the cloaks, but I called in a favour for some additional insulation for the cabin. The magic out there could grow into a storm, and the last thing we want is to be caught in it unprotected."
As if to punctuate her point, a flash and the sound of lightning struck somewhere outside, and as the echoes died down, Curt heard the quiet beep of his ray gun gaining a new message. The thought of how the two connected sent a shiver down his spine, even down his new tail.
---
Skyla almost jumped as the lightning struck her. Her sensitive ears ringing with the noise for a minute afterwards. The strike didn't hurt much, but her eyesight blurred and returned. The worst that seemed to have happened to her was a deep need to throw up.
Anna helped the Kitsune back onto all fours, she was beginning to feel a bit silly carrying the cloaks over her back though. She really should have put one on herself. As the echoes died down, and the two were left in the middle of the woods, Skyla heard her phone ringing. With a quick motion, Anna had already brought it up next to Skyla's ear.
"Skyla, are you there?" a voice Skyla recognized as her mother said, "something weird is happening to your father and Vincent".
Skyla's eyes widened. "What's happening? Is dad okay?" she asked, not thinking to ask who Vincent was.
The voice whined a little. "I don't know if its good or bad but... He just... Suddenly started turning into one of us, and a young girl too... I don't know why this is happening."
Skyla struggled with the implication for a moment, only to shake it off. "Its probably this storm, its full of magic... Don't we have a room just for practicing magic or something? It has to be magically reinforced against magic, try going in there."
There was a silence on the other end. "I think the meditation room might work... Thanks sweetie, I don't know what else it could do to us, but I don't want to take any chances." There was a click on the other end, and Skyla was left staring at her phone mumbling. "Mom..."
With a sigh, she turned to Anna. "Could you... Check the photos on my phone... I want to double check something."
Anna scrolled through to a family photo from a year ago at a family reunion, though this one was just of her parents kissing for the camera. The difference in reality was quickly apparent, in place of her mother, was a seven tailed Kitsune, while her father remained human.
Skyla struggled to believe it, and yet not only did she have proof, she knew it was because of the fallout of the ray gun... Just not why it happened from her being struck by lightning rather than them. A thought occurred to her that it might be due to her using the splash function on Curt.
She shrugged and ushered for her and Anna to continue to the Cabin.
---
Curt read through the message feeling somewhat uneasy, skipping the bit that addressed him.
"... Whether fortunate or unfortunate, several people who would normally be protected from the ray gun's effects have been changed by the storm's effect's by brute force. The safeties that prevent the erasure of someone from existence are absolute however, resulting in several people becoming your maids without a history of having been born that way. This is currently beyond the ray gun's abilities in part due to the fact its abilities are made possible by changing the past, which in turn is partly for the purpose of protecting the owner from certain consequences; as such we can only conclude that this effect is a result of its abilities intermingling with mythics as well as E and D rank deities.
The effected members have been added to your tally as usual.
… In addition, we have been found to be in error with regards to a notification that was not sent to you; as we were not aware at the time you had created a D class deity 'Simone'. It is currently uncertain if this is due to your timeline not properly separating from a branch where the default is no deific status for an unauthorized god until a large reality altering event forcibly separated the timelines, or if their deific status was simply unable to be confirmed until after the event, which might make their disputed god status the cause of the split. In either event, the message that should have been sent has been replicated bellow:
You have created your first class D divine entity. Also known as a 'Demi-God.' 'Simone [REDACTED]'. Warning: while the ascension of Class D and below divine entities without existing divine consent is possible within our product's ability, misuse or abuse of this will result in termination of your ownership. And if one is seeking to create a new pantheon of gods, one should think of this CAREFULLY, and remember to respect other divine entity's authority and the existing faiths of mortals."
Curt found himself unsure what to make of the message. People who shouldn't have changed were changed, without erasing anyone from existence. Also he found himself wondering why the rest of Simone's name was obscured. Was it something to do with a dragon's name having power? Or was it a god thing?
He couldn't figure out what the "D" on the end of his new universe designation was for either, was it in order of when they split off? Or was it a reference to the fact he was a dragon now?
He slapped himself for over thinking it, just in time to hear a knock on the door, he opened the door to see Skyla and Anna, followed shortly by a number of human medical interns pulling a cart.
"Good to see we arrived at the same time as them," Anna said.
Skyla passed some of the cloaks she had draped across her back to Curt with a paw. She noticed he was holding the ray gun, and the ract he checked the messages. "I'm guessing you know what happened to my parents... And the rest of my family".
Curt's eyes widened, and with a sigh he nodded. "More or less... I'm guessing that was you the lightning struck," he said, placing one of the cloaks around his shoulders.
Skyla nodded. "Yeah... My mother rang and said my father was becoming like her... And it seems she's supposedly always been that way now," she said. With a look to the side, she made a sigh. "I'm not sure if... You wouldn't happen to know how many were affected would you?"
Curt looked down at the ray gun's display, and paid attention to the bar, reading it as an even 260/500. "Its... eleven I think, assuming nobody changed between the last time it notified me and when you were struck."
Skyla gave a sigh of relief. "Okay, grandma was probably just disguising herself in those photos... She'll be fine."
She looked over the inside of the cabin as the interns set to work putting black blind like sheets across the inner walls of the cabins, the sheets looking not unlike the blinds that separate hospital beds. Naomi lying curled up in one bed as if she was going to panic any minute, while Alexis was still limp, though her eyes were closed now after Pearl shut them for her to keep them from drying out. Pearl was taking some bedding from one of the black looking bedding from the interns, and was coaxing Naomi to let her change the sheets so she'd be covered in them. Something also made her do a double take of Curt.
"... Are you getting younger?" Skyla said, an eyebrow raised.
Curt waved it off. "Not by much I hope, these two have already gotten years younger." he said, pointing to Alexis and Naomi.
Everyone glanced at them. The pair looked like they were reaching for their eighth birthday.
"... How old were they before?" Skyla asked.
"Early teens... Probably thirteen," Curt said, "its... Not been a good night."
Curt and Skyla pressed their foreheads against each other. And after a moment to rub their hair together, they locked their mouths together in a kiss.
---
Elsewhere, Simone was shivering as she cowered under sheets she'd dragged out into her living room from the bedroom being too close to the lightning happening outside. She tried to watch the TV to distract herself, she tried to tell herself that she was too old to be scared of lightning. But her child-like emotions overpowered every bit of her more mature mind. She lay quietly, ashamed that a noble dragon such as herself would be afraid of the elements she commanded. She found herself in the quiet moments wondering whether a princess would be expected to shout the lightning into silence or cower in hope a knight will save her from the storm.
She shook herself free off her sheets, resolving that she would rather be the braver princess. Only to flinch at the next flash, and before the thunder even followed, a cracking sound could be heard nearby on the walls, drawing her attention to the crystals growing on them that she seemed to be generating.
She shook her head, and stood up, grabbing the tool she had been using to strip the crystals. She wasn't afraid of the storm's magic effecting her, only its lightning, and yet she remained oblivious to the fact the crystals weren't there to keep the storm's magic out, but to keep her much stronger and untapped magic from feeding the storm.
The work did keep her from panicking when the next bolt struck. Relaxing her through the sense of order the task brought.