Her True Form

Yvette stared up at the sky above. New-Yvette and Old-Yvette. Mage-Yvette and Reborn-Yvette.

When she had been a child, she remembered some of the powerful artifacts her master had gathered during his years. Arcane tomes, wands, all kinds of things that, while often only having minor effects, did function as quite unique and helpful tools.

One he had been particularly fond of was a special jar and glass that were connected, so the jar would continue to fill the glass so long as it had contents within it. It had been one of her master’s favorites.

So, being a young child, clumsy as she was, she had broken it. She still remembered the anger on his face, the way he had started to yell, the words he had uttered.

Now she wished she could remember a lot of them.

Instead, she could only stare at the stars and utter the only one that came to mind.

“What the absolute hell is ANY of this?” Yvette said. Or, rather, she tried to. But it wasn’t nearly that easy. She felt as if she was comprised of so many parts now. As if her mind was fragmented into a dozen parts and a different ‘Yvette’ was controlling each part of it.

She didn’t know where Yvette ended and the next Yvette began.

So many parts felt the same, yet separate, almost as if she was trapped somewhere in the middle. She wasn’t surprised that many of the people who’d had themselves forcefully altered had lost their minds, even now she didn’t truly feel like herself. She felt fragmented and broken, as if her mind had been shattered into a dozen pieces, reshaped into something new and then all the leftover pieces had just been dumped on top of it to ‘fix’ it.

But the parts had been gathered were in something almost like harmony. She now felt more aware of everything than she had before. Gervas was laying down besides her, seemingly asleep. Nautia was as well. There was a guard watching over them, not far away. She had to leave Gervas behind, but she knew it would be fine. She’d done it before, flown off, albeit not far, only to return and for him to be completely okay.

It didn’t make her feel less agitated, though. She just couldn’t let them see this. If they realized what was happening to her, what she was, they’d likely begin to panic. Granted, if she couldn’t do this, then she’d likely panic herself.

It was an incredibly strange feeling, flying into the air. A part of her said that it was the easiest thing in the world and she had done it a hundred times, after all she was the storm. The other part of her mind told her that it wasn’t going to be easy at all and that she’d never really known how to do it before the incident with the phoenix so how could she now? Within moments, though, she was soaring through the air and leaving the ship behind.

If, by some miracle, she managed to avoid losing her mind entirely before she got an opportunity to escape she’d have to write a log of how this felt. Detailing how it felt to literally be of two minds.

Once she had flown far enough away from the ship that it was nothing more than a speck on the sea she dove down towards the water. She focused on the reagents she’d need to cast this spell, though she didn’t know if she even could cast it like this. Even if the reagents were inside her body now, a part of her, could she use them?

Giving a small prayer to the gods, she attempted to find out, flapping her wings once and trying to make a small platform of ice in the water.

She had been hoping for something that was just big enough for her to lightly land on. Instead ice formed on the surface of the water and quickly spread out, erupting into an iceberg many times her size that jutted out from the water so high it nearly hit her. She quickly flew back up, letting the ice roll around in the water for a few moments, eventually settling on its side. It bobbed a few times, but seemed relatively stable and more than large enough for her to land on.

Yvette landed as gently as she could on the ice, though she still had to scramble to keep her talons from falling out from under her. It seemed there were a few advantages to this new form, ice wasn’t even remotely her specialty and for her to be able to make it so easily spoke highly of the kind of power she had access to now. She couldn’t wait to tell Gervas about it. Assuming she would be able to talk to him ever again. She tried to shove that fear down again.

Once she righted herself on the ice she focused, shoving down the dread in her core, the worry that this wouldn’t work. Focusing on her human form, she cast her transformation spell.

At first, nothing seemed to happen. But then the ice seemed to rush up to meet Yvette, her body shrinking down quickly to a small fraction of the size it had been. She felt relief wash over her when she, finally, had hands again.

The relief quickly evaporated when she became aware of fresh, new torments. Primarily, she was naked and the ice under her feet was already starting to make her feet ache. “Okay, okay, this I don’t like!” she said quickly, hunching down and shaking. Where in the world were her clothes? She’d been wearing them when she transformed, hadn’t she? She glanced at her right arm and, sure enough, even the bracer was gone.

But that was only the second worst feeling and, within a few moments, it became the third worst.

The second was when she tried to use her magic and transform her body a little to warm herself up, intending to partially morph her feet and skin to keep warm on the ice. But her magic barely listened and, try as she might, she couldn’t alter her form. She quickly cast an incantation, trying to use a little bit of water magic to shift the ice around her, but it refused to move.

But she’d never been able to really use her magic when transformed to do things other than maintain her form. It wasn’t easy and she was nowhere near ready to do such spells now without a lot more practice. That, unfortunately, made the worst realization become all the harder to ignore.

The strange feeling of dysphoria when she took this form. It had been her body for so long, her entire life. While there had always been dysphoria from it, this was different. Now it felt the same as whenever she transformed. It didn’t feel like ‘her body’, it felt like ‘her current transformation’. Worse, it felt almost unnatural, as if she had pieces of her body now that she didn’t fully understand why they were there or what they did, they just were.

Yvette wasn’t human anymore. She wasn’t even humanoid. She was a phoenix in every meaning of the word, or at best some kind of hybrid thing. She gave another shudder and closed her eyes, the dread coursing through her now so powerful it felt like she was going to throw up.

She didn’t know what this would mean in the end. She’d never even heard of such a thing happening to someone. The closest she could think of was what happened to the zmaj, but at least they kept their humanoid shapes. She would have given anything to be able to ask her master about it, he almost always had the answers to anything she asked, so surely he would know what this meant. Maybe he’d even know how to undo it.

But this alteration hadn’t been natural in the slightest. She’d overloaded herself, erupting from the sheer might of a phoenix’s captured magic. Had the magic transformed her or had it been an instinctive reaction to the magic? Was it something else entirely? She lifted a hand to her chest, feeling her rapid heartbeat. Her true form had been broken, but not at all in the way she intended. Would she be trapped like this?

“Deep breaths, Yvette, deep breaths. Just focus. Remember what Master Betan said. Focus on your core. You’re a girl, a human, a mage. You’re all of these things. Focus on them and only them. You are not a phoenix. This is only temporary.”

Then the worst thought of all came to her mind, breaking through the meager mental defenses she’d managed to prepare. What if she had died when she’d been hit by that magic? What if dying was the only way to transform her into this and now there was no way for her to transform back? What did it even mean to be a phoenix? The legends she’d heard of them ranged from them being immortal creatures that were reborn upon their deaths, to merely powerful elementals who arose and laid destruction upon the world.

What if she couldn’t fix her form at all and she was trapped like this? She wasn’t really a phoenix, would she be reborn?

Yvette let out a scream, as loud as she could, throwing her head back and trying to let all of the confusion and fear out. She screamed and she screamed until her lungs were empty and she finally fell to her knees. Her legs and feet were quickly numbing from the ice, but she ignored it for the moment, letting her exhaustion wash over her. Her human form began to melt away and, before long she was herself again.

The fact ‘herself’ was now a giant, strange bird of magic and elemental magic did absolutely nothing to comfort her. She needed help, a lot of help. She needed a proper mage who could fix her before she melted away.

Still, now that she knew what was going on she could at least focus on the good from this. She could use her magic and reagents, despite all that had happened. It seemed they had innately become part of this form. On top of that, she could transform into her old body. She could likely transform into her female body as well, so if she did find a way to fix this she knew what form she would take.

Yvette slowly rose up into the air once more, soaring back towards the ship. Before anything else she had to find out how to rescue Gervas and Nautia. Even if she needed help, there was no way she could abandon them. But she didn’t know how she could let them know she was herself again without transforming. If their captors knew she was herself once more there was no way they would find an opportunity to escape.

The ‘New-Yvette’ part of her mind said that she should just destroy the ships and take the two away, but she doubted that would go nearly as well as she wanted. Even if she was ‘the storm’, she was only one bird and the small fleet could have any number of true naming mages on it. Not to mention the one who had killed her. Even if she did rescue them there was no telling if she could fly all of them to land from her.

No, if she wanted an opportunity to escape, she would need to be incredibly careful and wait for the right moment. Hopefully before they got to where ever the ships were headed.

------

The right moment, unfortunately, never came. Hours turned to days, but there didn’t appear to be any moment when they could escape the ship. Now that she was more aware of what was going on, she could see that Nautia was shackled to the vessel itself, a pair of thick, chained manacles giving her only a bit of room to move about on the deck, most of which she used to try and keep herself in the shade.

Gervas wasn’t chained, but he was unarmed. While originally she thought there was only a single person watching them at some times, she quickly realized that there always seemed to be at least three keeping a close eye on them. Their guard was the first and most obvious. Another was further back in the ship but able to keep a firm eye on them while navigating. The third had been trickier to notice, but they were on the other ships. There almost always seemed to be someone in the crow’s nests of the other vessels and, from there, they could likely keep an eye on her and Gervas.

Even if she did find a way out, she had no idea where land was. Whenever she left the ship she tried to find some sight of land, but there didn’t seem to be any on the course they took.

Worse, she couldn’t come up with a way to let Gervas know that she understood him now and that she was more aware than she had been. Almost every night he would talk to her, all but begging her to come back to him.

Yet she didn’t dare transform to let him know she was here. She tried to give him what signs she could that she was here, but she didn’t think he understood. She felt as if she was slowly going mad, trapped in her own body and unsure if pieces of her were slipping away without her noticing. Even now there were moments where she struggled to have any memories and thoughts of herself as a human and began to sink into the reality of being a phoenix again.

If not for the reagents grounding her, she was pretty sure she would have already fallen away entirely. She would have given almost anything for them to have her bag again, but unfortunately it was back with the merfolk’s main camp. If she could study the spell closer she was certain she could figure out which of the scale or tears were helping to keep her grounded and more of the ‘mage’. Or perhaps it wasn’t either and it was just the reagents themselves.

However, now she was beginning to doubt she would ever get the chance. Off in the distance she could see land and the deck was filled with activity. They were getting ever closer and, while it would likely still be a while yet before they docked, even now she could make out the buildings of the harbor they were heading towards. It wasn’t going to be just a small port, they would be arriving in a full city.

She glanced towards Gervas and felt unease rising in her ever higher. The two of them had to escape, but she had no idea how. She--

““Please do not worry, oh great being of the storm,”” a voice said, making her tense slightly. She could recognize that voice easily enough. The prince. She craned her neck once more to look at him.

As opposed to all the times where she had seen him before, his garments were anything but simple and plain. He was now dressed in a long, wide robe laced with red and gold threads. Were she human now, she likely would have laughed at the fact the soldiers who walked by him had to take extra care so as to not get bumped by the overly dramatic shoulders on it, or step on the ‘trail’ of the robe.

““Soon we will meet with my subjects and all will bask in your glory,”” the prince said before bowing his head and performing what Yvette could only guess was a curtsy of sorts. None of the ‘hers’ could really grasp what it was, other than quite awkward in that getup. She would have almost felt a little bad for him except for the fact he had killed her. It was amazing how quickly being murdered by someone made her lose any and all remorse for their discomfort.

Yvette considered for a few moments if she should try and talk back to him, but that was a little more nerve wracking. She knew how, but last time she had talked to him she had only been half of what she was now. A third? A fifth? That only made it more confusing. The human side of her wanted to speak with what it knew, gestures.

But the phoenix part of her wanted to speak as the ‘storm’, which she understood, but some parts of her didn’t. In the end it all mixed together into a flurry of confusion and insecurity. If she talked to him as the storm, would he sense the humanity in her? Could he identify it? His true naming magic was powerful, of that she knew. But she couldn’t tell how powerful it was. It allowed him to understand her, but could he tell the intent to her ‘words’? Could he see the part of her that was different? The balance she had now was stormy, for lack of a better word, at best. All it might take was one sharp prod and a part of her could fall away. Possibly forever.

Better to not even try to respond. So long as Gervas was okay, she would be fine.

It was possible this city might be the opportunity she needed, though. So long as they believed her a phoenix, no, so long as they believed she was JUST a phoenix, she had an opportunity to be and go where they couldn’t stop her. Perhaps, even, a way to escape.

Yvette spread out her wings, the wind beginning to gather around her. She couldn’t help but notice the way the soldiers on deck began to tense. “Calm down,” the prince yelled. “We have the phoenix’s subjects. So long as they are with us, it will always return.”

Yvette took to the air, trying to ignore the annoyance at the prince’s words. He was right, of course. She WOULD come back. But one of these days she wouldn’t. She’d get herself and Gervas out of this. Nautia as well.

Flying through the air once more, Yvette struggled to keep herself balanced and to remember who she was. The phoenix part of her was more in control now that she was in the air, but she had to remind herself that she was both. If she allowed part of her to fall away, there was no telling how long until it would be able to come back.

It wasn’t easy to control, though. When she soared towards the city, she couldn’t help but allow her power to flow out from her, flames erupting from her wings and streaking across the sky in a trail of elemental might. As far out as the ship had been, she crossed that distance in what felt like seconds, the winds themselves seeming to bow to her commands.

Just like when she became the dragon turtle. That thought helped her ground herself, quickly reminding her that she WAS still human, that this form, even if it was a ‘new’ form, wasn’t truly her form. No matter how much the new shape tried to make her see it as her, it was just another form that wasn’t right for her.

The city itself was nowhere near as impressive as she had expected. Taller buildings were near the harbor, blocking off view of the majority of the city itself. In fact, in many ways she imagined the buildings could act as walls into the city proper. Most only had a single doorway or gate facing out from the city, towards the water.

Past the outer layer of the city, the internal buildings were more widely dispersed, groups of them built closer together and forming strange, confusing pathways that, were she on foot, she suspected would have left her disoriented in seconds. Even looking at them from up above she struggled to figure out how one would navigate such a maze.

However, there were a few much larger, grander buildings in the city as well. One quickly caught her eye, directly in the center of the city and towering many stories up. She would have almost confused it for a mage’s tower, except it was even wider than it was tall. Many of the buildings were painted bright colors, yellow, green and a few even a light gray. However, that building was a painted in waves of black and red, at first making her think that it was on fire.

The building itself was almost entirely flattened, with a single square hatch on the roof. However, near the very front of the building rested what she could only imagine was supposed to be a perch. Thick, polished wood forming an almost perfect T. She slowly descended, landing on it and digging her talons into the wood. It felt perfect. More importantly, while resting on this perch she could see almost the entire city, as if it had been created just for her.

Down below she could see people running through the streets, pointing up at her. Yvette ignored them for now. Instead she focused on looking around the city itself. As confusing and disorienting as it was, it didn’t look particularly well caged in. The further out they got from the harbor and the building she was on, the more spread out the buildings got and the easier the roads would be to travel.

Her thoughts were broken by the sound of clattering wood behind her. She turned and saw that the hatch had been pushed open and from within small, robed figures were walking out. She quickly reminded herself that they weren’t small, she was just much bigger now.

“Can it be? Is it truly a phoenix?” one of them asked, staring up at her with awe.

“Prince Curcel vowed to return with its blessing, did he not?” another asked, slowly coming ever closer. “But it’s not truly possible that he has managed to tame it, has he?”

Yvette didn’t move, focusing instead on them as they approached. Was prince Curcel the one who had brought her here? At least now she knew the name of the person who killed her.

“It has to be a trick,” another one of the robed figures said. “It’s far smaller than a phoenix is supposed to be, isn’t it?”

Yvette felt more annoyance rumble through her and electricity began to crackle across her body, arcing off her and striking the roof. The figures quickly backed away, all except for one.

“It’s a phoenix! A true phoenix!” the remaining man yelled. Judging by the long, gray beard on his face he was older than the others and his robes were laced with dazzling gold and red. While the others fled from her, he instead ran towards her.

Only to throw himself onto his knees before her and bow. ““Oh great phoenix of the sky, please, forgive my ignorance. Had we known that such a creature as you were to arrive here, we would have prepared a proper celebration.””

Yvette couldn’t help but feel more and more uncomfortable by the second. A part of her, the phoenix part, felt this was only natural. After all, she was the storm, reverence was only fitting for one such as her. The other part of her couldn’t help feeling ashamed that he reacted in such a way to her. Even if she was a phoenix, she wasn’t a true phoenix. She was something that the phoenix had made. Just like the zmaj, but by phoenix rather than dragon turtle magic.

She wanted to roll her eyes, because the dysphoria she’d felt from having the wrong body before wasn’t quite enough, it seemed. Now she got to experience it amplified. She had to figure out if she could communicate eventually and now was as good a time as any she supposed. At least the prince wasn’t here to hear it.

Yvette slowly turned on her perch and eyed him. Then she unleashed the storm through her words, letting out her cry of the phoenix, confirming that she would forgive him, this time. The most concerning part of it, at least to the human side of her, was that she just knew how to speak in this form. She knew, logically, that it was not something she could have ever known, she’d never studied phoenix language. She didn’t even know if phoenixes HAD a language, it should have just been bird shrieks. Yet she could do it instinctively, sending another wave of strangeness washing over her.

““Please, oh great phoenix, allow us to properly celebrate your arrival.””

Yvette stared for a few moments later before letting out another cry to confirm his request. Well, at least this might hopefully buy them more time.