Morphling

The changeling looked at the old man before it.

This wasn’t the first time they’ve met, but it did find this human quite peculiar. Before this man, the changeling was in the form of a large threatening beast at least to humans by its understanding, yet he showed no fear and is even trying to communicate with it.

The man spoke, but unfortunately the sounds held no meaning for it. Something within the changeling’s existence was denying it the ability to comprehend language, at least the kind used by the advanced races of this world.

After absorbing that black entity, outside of the biological changes, there were inexplicable alterations that came along with it like the bone mask, horns, and feelers. One of them wasn’t obvious being the inability to comprehend language.

Despite the memories it had inherited from that black entity from it having absorbed multiple advanced humanoid races, the reading of words was there, yet vocally nothing would come to its mind. All the spoken words formed a garbled mess that kept changing despite the changeling reviewing the same memory over and over.

Basically, no two sounds or intonations of something spoken sounded the same, even if the same words were spoken over and over.

This left it with a strange dilemma that made it more difficult for the changeling to communicate, at least vocally, with the learned races.

Also, for some reason or another, it could understand the written language from its inherited memories, yet at the same time it was incapable of writing it.

This was very odd but having no understanding of this phenomenon since it has no relation to its physical self, the changeling could only attribute it to something having damaged a section of its mental faculties.

The changeling could only stare at the old man as he spoke. It felt pity towards him as it could only tilt its head in trying to guess what he was trying to express.

Seeing the changeling’s reaction, Jortus quieted and started rubbing his beard in thought.

“Hmm, I had the impression you were quite intelligent but it seems you’re still far from understanding words. My foolish mistake. After all, I did communicate with you using soil images before and I’ve yet to know if you’ve ever interacted with people.”

While thinking on how he could express his desire for them to work together, Jortus eyes flared up with the blue glow of mana as he examined the beast in its entirety.

He was shocked by what he saw. He expected the amount of mana the beast possessed to be a tremendous amount, but what he saw of it was quite perplexing.

Normally, mana would appear within hidden pathways of a body, circulating as though it were flowing blood while being generated by a phantasmal pair of organs that is normally located just above the navel of humans and other similar races.

For magical beasts, the organ would usually take a physical form like that of a horn or even claws, with mana flowing through similar pathways.

For Tyrants, fae, and divine beasts, the mana would appear denser and more wholistic, appearing as a single glowing entity taking up the shape of its vessel making it seem that their bodies were comprised almost entirely of it.

And for the ones that stand above all – the Dragons, Titans, and Leviathans, the apex of beasts; the mana within their bodies shines bright like miniature suns with a brightness as though it would burn the eyes of all that would gaze upon them.

Jortus had believed the beast before it had at least the mana capacity of a Tyrant, yet what he found wasn’t quite what he expected.

The mana shone bright, which caused him at first to think that the mana he is seeing was like those of the lofty lords of the apex, but after having a closer look, the mana appeared more like a dense cluster of stars.

Small tiny blinking dots numbering countlessly while interconnected to each other; it was like looking at a massive constellation that formed an entire galaxy.

This was the first time he has seen such a unique mana structure. He wondered how it would function compared to the other systems but shook away this question when he dawned upon an even more important one.

Just what in the world was this creature?

Jortus was finally coming to suspect that this beast may not be a native of their world.

Despite that, he had already confirmed that the creature doesn’t possess or emit any [Nul] signatures, so this left him even more confused.

This was because anything that came from beyond their world would emit even the slightest energies of the void.

How was it that this strange inexplicable creature came to possess such an enigmatic body that seems out of place within the world, yet possesses no trace of Outrealm elements?

As the old mage pondered this, he continued to observe the mana fluctuations within the creature’s body.

He could see the mana moving along like flickering pulses along their paths stopping over “star” nodes before moving along again to the next node. The mana seemed to be the most active around its injured arm with the pulses actually extending from the nodes to form new paths eventually taking the shape of its arm.

He could see the regenerative process and how the mana passively circulated to make it happen, but he also felt that the mana didn’t seem to have any “will” or impetus to actively assist in the process. This caused the recovery to appear much slower than the potential it was capable of.

This could mean one likely thing, that being the creature is currently unable to directly manipulate its mana. Either that or the creature’s ability to do so has been impeded somehow.

This was incredibly unfortunate since despite possessing so much of it, the creature seems to be incapable of using magic. However, Jortus instead now had a means to possibly aid the creature.

“Looks like I’ve found how I can help you.”

Nodding to himself, Jortus then grabbed a handful of dirt as he made to show an animated image once again.

‘The soil here is too damp from all the blood and fighting, so the image won’t come out as detailed, but it should still be able to get through… hopefully,’ the old mage thought.

Manipulating the patch of dirt, Jortus successfully created what vaguely seemed to be a stump that suddenly grew into an arm through the motions of the soil within his palm.

Showing this image to the creature, it tilted its head as it stared at the repetitious display of the soil, but it seemed to have worked as the creature then looked towards its stump.

He was surprised seeing it was an immediate success as the creature slowly leaned down and lowered its stump to him. Was this creature truly incapable of understanding his words?

He put those thoughts aside as he now studied the creature’s wound.

For the changeling, seeing what the old human had shown it, it could somewhat understand that he wanted to do something to its missing arm. It didn’t think much of this and was simply interested in seeing what the human wants to do.

Its actions didn’t necessarily mean that it fully trusted the old man since they’ve only met twice after all. However, it didn’t believe the human intended it any harm considering the presence of a common enemy and the events of their previous encounter. Not to mention, with its comprehensions into that mysterious energy known as mana, it didn’t really think the human could do it any significant harm even with its presence.

Oblivious to the changeling’s thoughts, Jortus examined the pathways of mana that it possessed and found a way to guide it. The problem was that it appeared incredibly difficult to move.

A human such as himself underwent rigorous training in order to be able to move the mana within his body by guiding it through the pathways to be externalized through his extremities. The process wasn’t simple since in the beginning it felt like trying to directly move one’s own blood. The more pathways, the more mana they could exert, but also the more difficult to control.

Seeing the massive cluster of pathways, the old mage felt that even if every mage in existence were here, they still wouldn’t be enough to help move it all.

Hence, why he believes there may be an alternate method to it.

Observing how the mana flowed while studying the pulses, Jortus believed he might have grasped a method to do so.

Just as he was about to test his hypothesis, a sudden reverberating howl knocked him out of his thoughts.

As he looked towards the Niskari Lord, he found that the vortex was almost completely consumed.

He needed to hurry. He felt that heir hope laid in the beast before them so he had to act fast.

***

serapheid

Accidentally upgraded my OS to Windows 11 since I mistook it for an update notification, which caused some of my files to get mixed up. I was afraid I might've lost all my drafts, but thankfully I managed to find them tucked away in a OneDrive folder. I'm a boomer so it took a while for me to figure it out, otherwise I would have had to rewrite all the notes and memos I left