What the party didn’t know was that by the time that Geoffrey had asked him to deal with the bandits, he’d already spent a few hours practicing.
When they’d first stopped for the night and everyone had gotten their campfires started, he’d wandered around looking for a few good targets. He greeted a few people, a lioness guard and the tubby beaver woodworking merchant she was talking to. Next to his cart was a woodpecker with furniture on two big wagons. A bunch of people were doing the same thing, and he saw more than a few restaurant wagons opened and selling food. It was like a small festival instead of a normal caravan.
There was even a tent with a fortune teller whose name was in a grand sign over the entrance: Madame Illusia. She was an older fox woman who used some kind of Tarot cards and a crystalline ball. Veles wasn’t sure if she was the real deal. Divination magic existed, so it was possible Madame Illusia did have some sort of power.
A young male fox stood next to her, acting as assistant and bodyguard. While Veles watched, he ushered a burly looking bear inside and then closed the tent flaps firmly. There was a brief glow, and then flap was magically sealed with an arcane lock.
Veles shivered.
He didn’t think those people would be coming out any time soon. And not as anthros. Veles continued around the big circle the caravan had made, trying to shake the sheer horror at what he’d seen just before the tent flaps to Madame Illusia’s had closed.
For a brief moment, she’d appeared demonic and hag-like.
Back to the matter at hand, he focused on finding a good target. Maybe he should start with something small. Basic. Like…Veles looked around. There! By the edge of the caravan was a traveling menagerie. In it, there were tons of animals in cages. Veles hurried over and took up a position in the shadows nearby.
Which of the myriad of animals should he choose?
Spying a parrot in a cage nearby, Veles decides it would be the perfect target. It couldn’t exactly fight back, and it was close enough to the shadows that any changes might not be noticed. The bird appeared to be resting, beak tucked under a wing.
“Trim,” Veles whispered, flicking his claws in an arcane gesture.
Immediately a glowing hologram appeared above the bird’s head. On it was the parrot’s stats and background. As it was a feral animal, the stats were appropriate for a parrot and the background equally short and sweet. Species, Sex, Weight, height, Ability scores, everything. As interesting as it was to look at, it was also glowing bright blue in an otherwise dark encampment.
Veles glanced around to make sure no one else saw it, and no one seemed to. It must be visible only to himself, the arctic fox deduced. Confident he could continue unnoticed, Veles started shifting some scores around.
Shifting Dexterity to Constitution made the bird fatter, less agile. If he swapped Wisdom with Intelligence, the bird would actually be quite smart, although not wise in the slightest. Try as he might, he couldn’t literally edit the numbers, he appeared to be stuck with what was on the sheet. No giving the bird 100 Strength.
Oh! Could he swap the parrot with a different animal? Kind of like how Glitz swapped people’s stats, could he do that with the parrot and…say…his eyes flicked over the menagerie…that chameleon?
But how would he do that? Veles would have to cast the spell on the Chameleon as well and swap the two…could he finesse that? Actually, it might be better to finish the parrot off, cast the spell on the chameleon, put the chameleon’s essence onto the parrot and then toss the parrot’s essence on the newly emptied chameleon. That should work.
Taking the parrots stats, Veles Trimmed them off completely.
The parrot instantly turned into a featureless white rubbery thing and fell to the floor of its cage with a thump. Its essence hovered in the air above the body, glimmering and shining. Veles held it mid-air with one outstretched paw, panting. He could feel it pushing against him. And the more he tried to grab onto it, the more slippery it felt. As it squirmed about in his hand. It was like trying to hold an angry cat, and he realized that whatever he was going to do, he needed to do it fast.
Turning to cast the spell on the Chameleon, Veles felt the parrot’s soul essence suddenly shoot into him.
The camp grew dark again.
Veles just sat there, staring at the featureless, rubbery thing that was sitting on the ground in front of him. He fully expected some sort of dramatic, painful explosion to rocket through his body when it absorbed the parrot’s soul, but everything felt… normal?
Maybe the soul had just passed through him?
Veles brought a claw up to his chin as he pondered what had just transpired, but when he felt his claw clank against the bottom of his beak, he immediately realized what was about to happen.
“Oh shit!” Veles yelped, noticing his voice had a strangely reedy, gravelly tone that sounded a bit like a parrot’s squawk. “T-trim-” Veles stammered, feeling an odd vibration in his throat. “Twah-Awk!”
Nothing came out of his throat except a loud, throaty squawk. His tongue suddenly felt weird, round and stiff and his lips felt far too hard to bend and shape into words. The only noises Veles could make came from vibrations in his throat.
The fox’s eyes grew beady as his muzzle finished hardening and fusing into a wickedly curved beak. He turned to a puddle on the ground to see his reflection. There, he saw his white fur brighten into bright green and blue feathers across the top of his head, prickling as they dug into his pelt. The skin of his cheeks sagged and then grew tight as it was tugged around the base of his bright yellow beak.
A shiver passed down Veles spine, giving him goosebumps and making all of his fur stand on end. He was suddenly overcome by a feeling of insulation all around his body, like he was submerged in water but without actually being wet. Then the hairs began to stiffen and transform into feathers. Soft downy feathers spread across his belly as his stomach began to bulge and push outwards, bright feathers covering the down.
Looking down, he watched his shoes flex and then split, revealing scaly, taloned toes. Veles lifted and flexed them curiously, noting his shoes hadn’t been destroyed but transformed to better fit him. The strange birdification spread up his legs and made them wide and soft, full of muscle and fat. He felt the changes reach his hips and his birdlike thighs spread apart, making his pants fall into a pile around his scaly feet.
The pants disappeared as his belly and hips grew big and round. His bum stuck out behind him, growing wide and rotund before it grew feathery. Longer feathers sprouted from his backside in a huge, vibrant plume. Veles squawked as his genitals were pulled abruptly into a strangely sensitive slit on his backside, fluids dripping onto the ground below him.
Veles held up his hands in time to watch his fingers bend and fuse, longer feather sprouting and unfurling all across his forearms. He tried to flex his fingers, but they’ve become little more than useless stubs. His wing feathers are beautiful, a vibrant green across the top and a brilliant gold underneath.
While he was preoccupied with his hands, the transformation finished with Veles’ head. A crest of golden feathers appeared on the top of his head while a ring of green and blue ruffed his neck and prickled across his face. The fox blinked as his orange eyes turned black and gold of a macaw.
The transformation finished, and Veles the Parrotfox found himself clad in white feathers that radiated breathtaking colors of blue, gold and green. He was only five feet tall, but incredibly handsome. He preened himself with his curved beak and ran his wings across his ample rump, going it a shake, fanning the feathers out seductively.
He was one hot bird.
Veles took a moment, wondering why he’d come to the menagerie. There was something off about his thinking. What had he come here for….? His keen eyes spotted the rubber bundle at the bottom of the cage. Slowly, his memories returned.
He remembered living in Bridge’Ithe, remembered Fergus. He remembered being Veles the fox wizard – of going on adventures and laboring away in his workshop to invest new magical wonders for this world.
“T-rAWK!” Veles tried to say.
Words were much harder now. The parrot swallowed and began experimenting with throat vibrations. He tried to remember his tone, the inflections in his voice when he cast the spell. It was difficult, his past was starting to blend with the parrot’s.
He tried to think about his house in Bridge’Ithe, but when he tried to picture it, all he saw was a giant cage sitting in the middle of the city. Then the city itself evaporated in his mind.
What did it look like? His house? The city? All he could remember was the inside of the cage. The more he tried to remember, the less he could remember what exactly it was that he was trying to remember in the first place.
Why was trying to remember the outside of the cage? Had he lived there?
“Hey Polly!” A rough voice said.
Trembling, Veles turned his head.
Standing right next to him was the menagerie keeper, a big piebald anthro stallion brimming with muscles. The stallion brought up a hoof and gently stroked Veles’ crest. The bird found himself slowly relaxing, his crest lowering to lay flat on his head.
“Ah, there we go. Who’s a pretty bird?” The stallion’s voice was soft and gruff.
Veles found himself nervously pacing back and forth on the ground, unsure of how to respond to the big anthro. Around him, the world began to grow and Veles realized he was shrinking, slowly becoming a normal parrot. He panicked.
“I’m a pretty bird!” The parrot squawked.
He was a pretty bird! More fluids dribbled onto the ground.
The stallion reached beneath the shrinking parrot, hooflets inserting themselves into his-or her? Wet slit, rubbing it. Veles clenched around the hooflets, jolts of pleasure from each movement as the stallion probed him.
Veles rocked on the stallion’s fingers, edging himself to orgasm.
“So needy. I’ll need to find you a mate.” The stallion smiled.
“P-pretty bird,” Veles squawked, spreading his wings and flapping awkwardly, more rivulets of juice running down the stallions hand.
“You’re a very pretty bird. Your eggs are going to make me so much money,” the stallion agreed, and spread his fingers wide.
“Awk!” Veles squawked, orgasm making the bird shiver.
He was dizzy now, the orgasm sapping something from her. Him. It was so hard to tell anymore! His clothes were unraveling, fabric disintegrating into the aether. Still, the stallions fingers wriggled inside of her relentlessly.
She needed to do something, say something. If her spellbook disappeared, she was a goner! She needed to get him to say the word for her, something she could repeat.
With a talon, she lashed at the stallion, making him withdraw his hooflets with a hiss.
“Fuck! I gotta trim those talons!” The stallion gasped, licking the blood welling from the slash her talon had made in his hand.
That was it!
“Trim!” said the parrot squawked, the word correct but the sound hollow and oddly emotionless, like something speaking a word it didn’t understand.
Veles felt himself wake up inside of a strange body. But it wasn’t his body, it was like a strange costume that was wrapped around him. And while it was pressed up against his body, it was definitely distinct from it.
With great effort, he pulled the parrot off of him, his fox form reasserting itself, and threw the essence back into the very surprised stallion standing in front of him
“Wait…what the fuck!?” The stallion shouted, stumbling back from the fox. “Who the *squark* are you?”
“Sorry!” Veles cried, then whirled and ran off on wobbly legs, still weak from the feminine orgasm.
“*Squark* back here you sunovabitch!” the stallion screamed behind him, unaware of the green feathers growing out of skin, or the beak slowly taking shape on the front of his face
The fox darted into the shadows. “Invisibility!”
The stallion continued to stomp around, unaware as his new plumage grew in. Unable to find Veles, the soon to be parrot let out a frustrated squawk as his, now her, body began to shrink into a more avian form.
Even though his pursuer couldn’t see him, Veles made an effort to get as far away from him as possible.
The absolute last thing Veles wanted right now was to be close to that parrot when its new body ejected the stallion’s soul. Veles hoped it would go into the blank body the original parrot had left behind, which would probably solve whatever problem he had just created, but he didn’t want to stick around to find out.
Ducking through a bush and past a few wagons, Veles paused to catch his breath. That had been close! For a minute there, he’d thought he was destined to become a very horny female parrot. No, he realized, for a minute there had had become that parrot. It was only a freak bit of luck that managed to save him.
Veles thought back to the parrot’s soul. He’d started on an animal because he expected it to be easy to control, only to find out that it was anything but. The power that parrot’s soul had held was phenomenal – he was lucky he’d been able to control it for the few seconds that he did. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to try to hold the soul of a more intelligent creature, especially if that creature tried to fight back.
He clearly needed somewhere, or something, to hold the soul-essence after he trimmed it. Glitz must have done it with those figurines. That was it, Veles realized. Using figurines to store soul essences.
It made sense, now that he thought about it. After all, it wasn’t just Glitz who was storing souls. The hag had, apparently, used the enchanted jars to store the soul essences. Although the magic had seemed different at first, Veles now realized that both Glitz and the hag were just using minor variations on what was essentially the same type of polymorph magic. If Veles wanted to use that magic too, then he needed some way to store the souls.
But what would work for him? Could he use anything to store a soul, or did it have to be special? Would it need to be enchanted?