Erica returned to the group, stopping to watch the three training. She barely recognised two of them, Sadie’s random transformations making them look far different than they had.
The larger figure of Sorhafe watched as the other two battled. The fight was evenly matched. While the warrior with shield and sword should have been incapacitated from the numerous transformations she had undergone: extra fingers that should have made it impossible to continue to hold her sword, hair with a mind of its own that tried to strangle her as she struggled. Despite this, she seemed to fight harder.
Eventually, Sorhafe called an end to the bout.
“How did we do, mother?” Sadie asked, shifting her robes to be more comfortable with the extra arm and leg. But the robes worn by the practitioners of the Way of Change were designed to be flexible enough for many transformations. Erica saw the earnestness in Sadie’s eyes, the yearning to please her mother… or mothers, she supposed.
“You did well,” Sorhafe asked “How much control do you have over the transformations caused by your fighting style?”
“Little without expending more energy,” Sadie said, her eager expression fading “I’m not very good yet. I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t apologise. You’re a strong warrior. Both of you are. I’m just trying to understand your abilities,” Sorhafe said. Sadie blushed, but Erica could see she was pleased with the compliments “If you can develop that ability, you could give Steph beneficial transformations that also increase her combat prowess. You could be a strong buffer as much as a debuffer.”
Sadie adopted a thoughtful expression. “I suppose I could.” Her eyes brightened again as she saw Erica “Mommy Erica!” She ran over and gave Erica a hug with her three arms.
“We’ve discovered that the transformations caused by Sadie are temporary,” Sorhafe explained “Only last about an hour, but in battle, this could be very disruptive to the enemy. Steph gains in power based on the number of transformation effects on her, and has the ability to parry transformation effects back to the originator.”
Sorhafe gestured to her chest where a third breast had grown, though smaller than her other two, as if it had been slowly shrinking away.
“Sometimes even parrying them onto other targets, though she cannot yet do that accurately. I offered myself as a practice target, but she’d like to practice with just redirecting it back to the person who cast the effect for now, which she can do with much more accuracy.”
“Nevermind that right now,” Steph said “What potions did you get, Mommy Erica?”
Erica pulled out the size changing potions that would shrink them all to humanoid size first.
“I think Sadie and I won’t need those,” said Steph “We’d just need to disguise ourselves to look older. We’re already the size of adult humanoids. If we shrink, we’ll be teenager size which probably wouldn’t help as much.”
Sorhafe nodded “That would save us some potions.”
Erica handed the twins a few humanoid transformation potions that would hide their cat ears and grow them humanoid ears instead.
“You can probably hide your ears under your hair, but you should keep these as a precaution,” Erica explained “We have a few more of these for your mother and me, which we think will do the same job as the size changing potions for us.”
Erica pulled out a silvery blue potion crackling with electricity.
“I had to haggle pretty hard to get this. It’s called a Ride the Lightning potion. It will turn those who drink it into lightning for a short time. This is our escape route if things go wrong. We should only need a sip each to get out of the citadel.”
Erica pulled out and explained several general purpose shapechange potions, as well as the ones for revealing a shapechangers true form, which they would use to find the changelings in the Citadel.
Then, she handed Sadie a bag of unlabelled potions.
“These are experimental potions the alchemist doesn’t know what they do. You can choose who to affect with any changes when they begin affecting you, so it means no matter what they are, we can benefit from them.”
Sadie nodded. “If me and Steph work together, she can parry enemy change magic away, and I can introduce more unknown changes to them.”