Determined to fix his last mistake, the arctic fox continued to look for a new victim.
Veles looked around and found another merchant, a bear wearing lederhosen with an assortment of puppets spread out on a table in front of his wagon. And not just ordinary puppets - magic ones that worked as butlers and maids. Since they were already enchanted, maybe they would work as an intermediary shell for a soul essence?
Veles decided he might as well give it a shot.
Taking refuge in the shadows next to the merchant’s cart, he focused on the bear. The bear was older, fur turning white around the muzzle and was rather rotund. In his hand was a puppet that looked almost identical to him, and he was entertaining the few passersby that stopped by his cart.
“Trim,” Veles whispered, twitching his fingers.
The holographic display of the bear’s stats shone bright above him. Klaus Schonndefruede, brown bear, 54. Alchemist level 6. Then an array of stats and abilities and a full background of this rather minor NPC, likely randomly generated.
Alright, now he had to take the essence shove it into the puppet. The puppet was in the bear’s hand, so it wouldn’t be too hard to dump the soul into it. Taking a breath, Veles ripped the bear’s stats from him.
The bear’s features erased, becoming a bear-shaped featureless white rubber doll. It slumped to the ground, the puppet crumpling next to it. His soul essence swirled in the air above him.
Veles grit his teeth, struggling to maintain his grip on the strangely slippery soul. With effort so great he was sweating, the fox jerked the soul towards the puppet and shoved it in. The puppet immediately began to expand, wooden body becoming organic, until the bear was lying crumpled on the ground next to the featureless rubber blank.
The arctic fox panted, wiping sweat from his brow. That was exhausting! Veles barely had time to catch his breath before he realized the obvious problem – the puppet hadn’t stored the bear’s soul, it had absorbed it, turning it into the bear.
Still, Veles figured, unlike with the parrot, there wasn’t another soul to come pouring out of the former puppet, now bear’s body. Right?
The newly made bear belched and whirling soul essence spouted from his jaws, , making a beeline towards Veles.
Veles yelped as what he assumed was the puppet’s essence collided with him.
The world took on fishbowl appearance as Veles’ eyes turned to glass. Lucious, soft red fox fur fell out, as the warm flesh beneath it began to convert into cold wood.
Veles could feel his body reforming. He grew weaker as muscles turned to cellulose and lignin. He looked down at right elbow, just in time to see the two pieces of wood that now made up his arms be joined by a small metal rod, fastened in place by two screws that sat flush against his new, puppet appendence.
As the transformation continued to spread throughout his body, Veles realized he was becoming a copy of the bear’s puppet! But how? The puppet wasn’t a living thing-
He tried to think back to spell he had cast, to figure out how it had gone wrong. But his mind just skipped over a memory that was no longer there. Instead, it found the next closest thing.
“Please, I didn’t realize who I was stealing from!” he had said.
Skilkz realized how tall the bear looked compared to just a few minutes earlier. Had Skilkz always been this small? And his body felt so strange. His tail was so thick, and as he ran one of his hands across his other arm, he felt it rubbing against scales, not fur.
Skilkz briefly wondered what he had been, but the thought was interrupted as he remembered the bear pressing a warm hand against his chest and then…
Veles snapped back to the present, realizing his mistake.
That hadn’t always been a puppet – at one point it had been a person named Skilkz. A person who had stolen from the bear and been fashioned into a sick facsimile of it as punishment. That was why the bear had been so intent on displaying and playing with it-humiliation.
Veles struggled to open his jaw. It creaked, then swung free on metal joints. He felt his tongue harden into place in his mouth, but his throat was still made of flesh, as were his lungs. But he could already feel the wood growing into those, and he knew that flesh wouldn’t last long. If he didn’t reverse this right now, it was all over. He wouldn’t be able to talk or cast spells as a puppet.
“Trim!” Veles wheezed as he felt his limp body begin collapse towards the ground.
Just like before, Veles felt himself wake up inside of his own body. And using every last bit of strength, he shoved the costume of a puppet off of him and not the rubber bear that laid motionlessly on the ground in front of him.
The effect on both was immediate. Veles’ wooden skin tore away, revealing a a perfectly healthy, anthropomorphic fox underneath. The drone’s body, meanwhile, hardened from soft rubber to dense wood, changing from a pale white to a rich mahogany as it did so. Within seconds, Veles the fox was standing in front of a magical bear puppet that sat motionlessly as it waited for a command fro its owner.
People were staring at him, but the fox couldn’t do anything but pant on the ground next to the cart as a shadow began to loom over him.
“Hello, little fox,” The bear, Klaus, said in a deep, gruff voice, “Are you okay?”
“No,” Veles wheezed. “I’m no good at this magic.”
“Ah. Did you swap my essence and the puppets?” Klaus asked.
Veles nodded, too exhausted to lie.
“Silly fox!” Klaus let out a belly laugh, “You cannot do that without a soul focus!”
“Soul focus?”
“A container enchanted to keep a soul for storage. And you attempted it all at once, yeah?”
Veles nodded tiredly.
“Tsk tsk, the bear wagged a fat digit, “You cannot transfer all at once. Gradual. With finesse.”
“I’m Sorry,” Veles said.
“Pfft, you not be sorry!” Klaus chuckled, “You would be a puppet. You would not be anything. Do not fool with magic you do not understand, boy.”
The last had a growl of warning in it.
“I only let you go because I know what I used to be. I may not remember being that puppet, but I know that I could still be him were it not for your foolishness, so I will grant you a small mercy.”
Veles looked up and saw a glint in the bear’s eye he didn’t like. He got up and stumbled away from the puppeteer's cart. The fox wobbled his way to his party’s campfire just in time for the guards-who-were-definitely-bandits to make their patrol, not paying attention to the exchange.
What he needed was a magical focus.
Even just transferring souls, holding a soul outside of a body was simply too difficult for him right now. He couldn’t juggle the soul and the casting of another spell. What he needed was an intermediary focus, like a figurine or a jar, enchanted with enough magic to contain said soul. More importantly, it needed to be close to the victim. Glitz’ figurine had been set directly next to the person being Trimmed and the Hag had apparently set the jars below her victims to catch the soul stuff.
Plus, she’d milked the soul out too. It was a much slower process than what Glitz had been doing. Actually, Glitz had done something similar, working his way down his customer’s body, slowly drawing and altering the essence. Maybe he needed to slow down, take soul essence piece by piece.
The storage he chose likely had to make sense to him personally. He saw souls as character sheets, so some kind of enchanted parchment might be his soul container. But what parchments could he find that would work? Maybe one of the other merchants sold spell scrolls. Those should work.
Then Geoffrey turned and asked him to give him Nicolas’ power.
That was going to be a problem, as he’d explained to the polar bear. Nicolas had been quite evil and was responsible for just as many disappearances as the Hag. Though, he was much more discerning in his choices of whom to disappeared. Mostly nasty people who deserved it. Still, turning someone into an asshole was considered evil.
How was he supposed to do anything to those guys if he didn’t have that intermediary protection?
He certainly couldn’t touch them without a magical focus. Veles would end up a stupid bandit. So, while the others were talking and chatting and considering walking around to the other merchants to see what they were selling, Veles slipped off to a magic vendor to see if he could find an appropriate focus.
A thought passed through his head as he was leaving, however. Palseks.
She had those papers that announced that she was a person and not an object. That might be the kind of thing Veles was looking for. He could steal them from her - there was a lot of paperwork, so he doubted she would notice a few missing pages. And Gregory was unlikely to sign them anyways. But it felt like a betrayal - no, it definitely would be a betrayal. He wasn’t prepared to be an asshole like that to a party member.
Party members were absolutely off-limits. Part of his ‘no shitting where you eat’ policy. Helping out Geoffrey would raise his standing amongst the rest of the party, which was why he was willing to help. That way, when he did some really abominable shit, they’d give him the benefit of the doubt.
He hurried off into the night.
-=-=-==-=-==-=-=-=
An hour later of having no luck finding anything at the magic merchants, Veles found himself talking to the last person he wanted to speak to in the caravan: Madame Illusia.
“And why do you need an intermediary focus for soul essence?” The middle aged and rather voluptuous fox woman asked.
“Bandits,” Veles replied promptly, “I found the secrets of Trimming and Tailoring and I’ve been running into all kinds of problems.”
“Can’t control the soul essence, eh?” Illusia’s lips curled.
“It’s slippery and strong, like wrestling with a pig coated in grease,” Veles snarled, stamping his paw in frustration. “Everything I’ve read says that I need a figurine or a jar enchanted specifically to hold soul essences but NOT the enchantment that would do it.”
“My fellow fox, that’s the test.” The vulpine woman took a puff from a long cigarette and blew a ring of smoke into the air, “If you wish to master soul shaping, you must figure some things out for yourself.”
“So there’s nothing I can buy that would help?”
“Buy?” The woman batted her eyelashes. “You said you already have jars and figurines, right? Why don’t you study them?”
“Oh,” Veles blinked, “I’m an idiot.”
“No, you’re rushing the process,” Illusia warned. “Do that and you’ll end up a parrot again.”
“You... heard about that?”
“I heard of the incident and then you came to me for help and I took a guess,” she tittered, “Oh how funny would that have been?”
“Not very,” Veles growled.
“Well, I have another customer in a few minutes,” Illusia winked, “You can stay and watch...”
“How are you getting away with it?”
“The soul harvesting?” Illusia asked, cocking a brow, “You do realize that many of the people roaming the area tonight are country bumpkins from the surrounding farmsteads, right?”
“What?”
Illusia sighed, “Dear, this is a DESIGNATED caravan rest area. In other words, people have been waiting to visit us when we park at night.”
“Oh.” Veles nodded, understanding now, “So they’re very eager then, because of the week long wait.”
“Yes, usually I only get a load or half a load of souls. Double load…how lucky am I?”
“What are you?” Veles asked.
“What are you?” Illusia grinned, showing her fangs, “someone just as bad as I. Come, watch my show, learn how to actually use your power.”
“No thanks,” Veles hurried off, the fox’s cackles chasing him as he fled.