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9. Shape of the Wild
🕑 Added 2024-12-02 00:00:04 +0000 UTCI was at the village border. The world was of peace and silence beyond the unordered yet melodious orchestra of the wild. In front of me stood a massive, hollowed-out yet living tree.
It was bathed by the shy moonlight of Ursoc's Might, putting into evidence the two totems guarding its entrance, two bear sculptures covered in runes and flowering vegetation. And they were more than decorative; they exuded a relaxing presence.
Passing by them, I parted the vines and saw three shamans within. Two were sleeping, and my teacher sat in the middle, all on furs and magically fresh grass. His eyes slowly opened, and a smile spread across his muzzle.
"The spirits are lively tonight… A most fortius time." He said, tapping his paw before him for me to sit up at my usual spot, "Are you prepared to walk awake in the Land of Dreams tonight, young Ohto?"
"I'm ready, teacher," I said, taking a seat as I placed myself comfortably. The entire place was designed for comfort, making it laughably easy for me to drift into slumber. The ritual from last year only helped with that.
"Then let's go." He said, smiling as he clasped his paws together loudly. At that, I breathed out, closed my eyes, and let myself fall into the Emerald Dream with familiar ease.
My mana shifted inside, as did my environment, and in five short minutes, I passed from the world of the waking to the one of the dreaming. A process that only became faster over time.
When I reopened my eyes, I saw a colorful clearing, one only spoken of in fairy tales. A garden of wildflowers of all shapes and flowers shifted in a soft breeze. Fairy dragons, bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and many other flying critters animated the place—some of flesh and bone, others of translucent energy.
On the bigger side, a group of deer drank from the crystal clear ponds where lotus bloomed, dragonflies buzzed, and frogs croaked. Wisps of light, some mere mana, and some spirits floated in the air, lighting the dark place with the bioluminescent flora below the vibrant green crowns of the surrounding ancient forest.
This was the Emerald Dream, a place I was more than accustomed to. And what an exceptional place it was both aesthetically and from a more empirical point of view.
There were many hypotheses on this realm from my past life knowledge, such as its artificial nature and that it might be a fragment of the supposed Realm of Life shaped by the Titans or Keepers. I even had an idea of its tie to my rebirth in some forms. But at best, it was baseless conjecture. The same possibility was for the Shadowlands, but that was a pile of paradoxes better left aside.
Putting this aside, it was a place of magical wonder and mysteries in its omnipresent idealization of primordial wilderness.
An idealization indeed, it was a place of harmony and peace where predation and herbivory in all its forms, from primary consumer to secondary and tertiary, from what I saw, were absent as it was a realm of Life where Death seemed nonexistent, unlike Azeroth even if it served as a sort of pseudo afterlife for the wilds, furbolgs counted.
It was an amusing contradiction since it was supposed to be primordial nature. Not that it took away anything from its beauty and importance.
"What are you thinking, little one?" A feminine, ethereal voice cooed from behind my ears, fiddling with them with what appeared to be dainty fingers instead of claws. I stopped moving, my pupils contracted, and my fur stood on ends.
Instincts and ingrained training took over, and my current spiritual body acted faster than my mind. My translucent paw with open claws stopped an instant away from digging through the unprotected soft belly of a chimeric creature, drawing droplets of blood from the two or three centimeters of skin I perforated.
A pale purplish and greenish skin that belonged to a female, essentially a bare upper body similar to a night elf, but instead of two legs, was connected from the pelvis to a doe's body where the neck would be.
A dryad. One that was standing on roots to reach my height.
I retracted my claws and berated the daughter of Cenarius harshly, "Don't ever do that again. I nearly eviscerated you and won't hold back next time."
I didn't offer an apology. I was not sorry. Though I was more embarrassed and angry that I didn't feel the dryad before she did THAT to my ears, and it pissed me off. Only family members and mates could do so. She nearly made me have a heart attack. This realm was so filled with life that I couldn't distinguish which was which without focus. It was overwhelming in every way.
Still, I was going to heal the puncture wounds; however, the older furbolg stopped me.
"Ah… There is no need, young Otho. I have warned Shael'dryn of your training... other sides. Any injury she may have sustained from her unwitty prank would have been her own doing. If worse were to happen, you would be here." My teacher said coolly, walking from where he had appeared, his figure like me, vaguely translucent, unlike the dryad as she was here physically.
"Mm-mm!" The now named dryad Shael'dryn nodded excitedly, refocusing on me with a childish grin showing pearly white teeth, "Elder Shaman Oakpaw's words are truth, and so I propose a truce for my show of mistrust."
"Er… Okay, then… Shael'dryn? Don't do that again, and we're good." I answered with uncertainty at her sheer gleeful attitude. She only nodded further, bobbing up and down like an over-excited cub.
It was why I wasn't going to press down too much beyond that I doubted she would understand. It was a waste of breath. I could feel it. Ursol gives me the patience that I don't snap her denty neck like a twig.
"Ow… Aren't you just the most adorable not-so-not-so-little thing in existence? All cuddly, moody, wild, and fluffy murder ball of claws and fangs!" She continued, growing roots to climb up and catch my ears again, ignoring what I had just said. This time, I saw it but didn't dodge.
Instead, I willed these same roots to ensnare her front hooves, making her violently eat the grass at my feet with a high-pitched squeal, slamming her face on a root.
But to my displeasure, she was unfazed. She brought her torso up, spat the dirt, and snapped her broken nose into place, and of all things, she fucking giggled. After that, almost a minute passed, and we wrestled for control of the roots.
To my frustration, she ultimately won by diverting my focus by using other roots to tickle my ears again. Then, she took advantage of my lapse in attention and freed herself, jumping away elegantly on her hooves with an amused glint in her eyes.
'Calm down... she is one of those...' I mentally said to myself, cooling my desire for violence, verbal or physical. It would only do the opposite. And I was confident it would play to her amusement. I hope every dryad wasn't like her, though.
She ignored my expression as she exclaimed joyfully, giggling, "Marvelous! I had difficulty believing it, but it was true then! You're a very interesting little-not-so-little-one! Your future is bright, very bright indeed."
Then her focus went to my teacher as if I didn't exist, and her tone turned serious, "I see now how he is ready. If only others were here to witness this… Alas, they must fight this icky sticky thing, bah."
The Nightmare...? Hm, probably.
"Indeed, but it's not a matter for tonight." Oakpaw sighed, "I call for your assistance. It's unwise to partake alone in this ritual. He is skillful, as you have seen for his age, but he remains a cub, and if he loses himself, I fear I won't be able to bring him back. Unlikely as it may be, I don't want to let chance play a role in his fate."
While what was prophesied an unpleasant possibility of going feral, it confirmed that tonight was different from any other visit to the Emerald Dream. Well, it wasn't just sightseeing and exploration we did; it was an excellent place to train and study, and I loved every second of it, but that wasn't the subject here.
"Are you talking about shapeshifting? Is it the time? Truly? You think I'm ready, teacher?" I asked more excitedly than I would've liked to let on, but I could do little about it. I had been waiting for this day for a long time.
Around seven years of waiting, to be precise, since it was when I began to go there with my teacher actively and not randomly in a nightmare–most of the time–before snapping awake, thereby forgetting half of it.
"Yes, little-not-so-little-one, but there is no reason to be hasty. I have been informed of your plan. I want to hear from you. Why flying?" The dryad asked.
"When furbolgs envision taking the shifting in the skin of other creatures of the wild, it's usually a bear, another large breed of land-dwelling creature, or a nature spirit. Your choice is unique, but it seems hardly a novelty to you. Remarkable." She added good-heartedly, genuinely wanting to know.
I obliged; it wasn't a discussion I hadn't had before with Oakpaw for long days, though it was more about convincing him to let me try than anything else. Or more to go along as he knew I would have gone without his accord if he refused without a convincing argument.
The other shamans weren't particularly fans of my idea either, and some vehemently disapproved of it, no matter how logical my points were. Same for a portion of the ancestors. But they allowed it, not that they could forbid me; it wasn't a dictatorship, they weren't angry either. It wasn't quite as dramatic as it sounded.
They wanted a bear first purely for theological reasons, and I know I asked if there was rationality in their views, but there wasn't. And the form by itself for furbolgs wasn't all that useful. We were bears from the get-go with similar senses. It was true shifting would mean a high chance of a bigger, stronger body, but that was for a regular furbolg, not an in-training-growing ursa totemic.
It also meant no thumbs and less agility and range of motion in malus. The inability to use most of the magic that came with it was also a sizeable problem, even if it was universal to shapeshifting and something temporary if work was put into it. It was to re-trained oneself to use mana in a new form.
It was likely why my teacher was the only one here to come and needed the dryad help. That only a portion of our shamans were skilled enough in shapeshifting to help was only the final nail in the coffin. It wasn't even like I wasn't planning on learning to turn into a bear later on. They can wait a bit.
"Huh, for the freedom of movement, it's also the logical choice considering my training as an ursa totemic. Taking a landform as of current me as little to no benefit; I will need to learn to fight with it, grasp potentially contradictory instincts, and more. But while a flying form suffers from the same shortcomings and more, it gives new possibilities the former can't. And being in the sky is something I always dreamed of!" I reverted to acting more my age at the end, but I was just too damn excited. Also, it gave me a dimension of freedom.
"Oh! If that isn't a studiously charged response with foresight and understanding, you are a smart little one, aren't you? Indeed, the power to traverse the sky untethered by the shackles of the earth, free to go where you wish, and explore the great outdoors must be incredible!" She sang, going for another hug, which I dodged to her immense sadness, and she pooted, but crocodile tears won't get her anywhere with me.
Not after the shit she pulled at first.
"Let's proceed." My teacher voiced sternly yet with clear amusement at the scene, and that's what we did. Our walk was short, shorter than I was used to. Shael'dryn was our guide, and she bent the Emerald Dream in strange ways, accelerating our speed by using hidden portals and passageways.
It was incredible but also frustrating. I couldn't pinpoint what Shael'dryn was doing to any significant degree. I knew there was a method, a system she was controlling, but how to detect and use it was a different story.
However, it all vanished when I faced our destination, an immense mountain breaking through the clouds. We were at its base, and I could see an ever more massive tree growing atop. Its roots reach us and spread through the nearby forest and mountains. However, it was dead, its bark an ashen grey and all its branches devoid of leaves, yet nature was present in all its form.
From the roots, trunk, and every branch, the flora took over, lording over the ancient tree, using its carcass as it was due—a place to grow and spread, bringing a mosaic of colors and shape.
Countless creatures were flying around or perched on it, from birds, and plant flying squirrels to wind serpents and even proto-dragons; some were biological, but most were spiritual.
"The Mother Tree…" I said in awe, mouth hanging open, and eyes widened as if trying to imprint the image forever in my memories and my ears twitching at the winds whispering with an ancient presence, Aviana by all accounts. Or what little of her remained–I wasn't sure–but the focus on me was evident. It was an invitation.
"Indeed… G'Hanir and Aviana, how tragic was their fate." Shael'dryn breathed out with melancholy and grief, tears rolling down her cheeks, a shocking difference from what I became used to.
"Hmmm, I sense a breeze. Our welcome is not eternal. Go young Ohto, and prove yourself worthy." Oakpaw said, taking a seat on the grass and closing his eyes.
I nodded, merely taking one step, and the focus on my person increased tenfold, rippling my mana as a call for attention only increased this as an array of flying creatures big and small came and went or simply observed from their perch—chirps, caws, hoots, buzzes, clicks, and more echoing from them.
They studied me, and I did the same. They knew what I wanted, and each of those spirits could impart their very existence to me, giving their essence in their bodies and instincts. Yet it wasn't as simple as that; understanding and compatibility were the most important.
Or having a willing Wild Gods on hand, but that wasn't an option here, aside from Aviana making the current event possible, if I understand right. She was Mistress of Birds and virtually everything that flew beside dragons.
Anyway, I was cutthroat on these matters. My choices were based on that, not beauty, innate strength, or capabilities; those were secondary.
This philosophy, in theory, should grant me more control over my form, letting me talk, partially shift, and freely use magic with my form far more easily than usual. It was a big if, but there were examples of druids so in tune with their wild shape they were effectively the same and capable of doing what I said.
It wasn't necessary to bet on compatibility to achieve this, but I didn't have centuries in advance to do the orthodox ways. Though taking that route also had a higher risk of losing sight of who I was, it was worth taking.
As such, I was unsurprised when, in short order, the 'arthropods' of all kinds fluttered away in swarms. The next was 'birds' who did the same after it was the 'reptiles,' and various chimeric hybrids quickly followed them. It left me with 'mammals,' or this world's equivalent.
Classification of life was strange here; the techniques of Earth were essentially unusable, but there still was a notion of who was closer to who, and it was in that order the creatures left, the farthest to closest to me, and so what I sought.
From here, the more meticulous phase began. And it was only between different species of bats, nothing out of my expectation. There wasn't an infinite variety of animals capable of self-powered flight, similar to furbolgs, biological and spiritual.
Then, it came down to me as an individual.
'Found it…' I thought, a grin on my muzzle as I focused on one bat. It was neither the largest nor the prettiest, fastest, or most magical if it was on the higher end for the size, but I knew it was. The right one, it was hard to describe, like taste, it just was.
As if sensing my interest, all others but my target flew back into the trees, leaving me alone with a massive winged predator landing before me, clawed wing fingers digging deep in the soil. Its pointed ears twitched as it cocked its head, a maw of longs protruding fang half-open and predatory eyes on me.
Its body puffed up, a mane of fur doing the same like an umbrella while its wings propped up, and a low rumbling rattle of hiss echoed from its throat.
I only responded in kind, matching its energy. I didn't know what its species was, and I cared little for that at this instant as I stood my ground. I bared my teeth, huffed loudly, snapped my teeth loudly as my fur bristled, and I changed my posture with my arms spread and paws ready to strike as I clawed at the ground, never breaking eye contact.
Yet it wasn't going to come down to a fight. It wasn't the point of this face-off. It was to judge, observe, test, know, and understand. Or that's how I hoped to see it: you don't anthropomorphize things randomly, even here, and grasping what a creature was and felt was the point right now.
After an undetermined amount of time, the bat was seemingly satisfied. It stood on its hind legs, its massive wings opened wide, and it screeched to the sky before exploding into a stream of green mote that slammed into my chest.
Faster than I could process, I felt a shift, mental and physical, and my spiritual body changed. The transition was smooth and natural, arms and fingers thinning and elongation, spine changing shape, muzzle shortening, and canines growing as the remaining of my everything took on another form.
Head turned, ears spun to sound.
Heartbeats.
Eyes landed on sources. Unmoving. Fear, yet not. Confusing. Preys. Regardless.
Food. One two bodies. Strange. Other old. No matter. Food.
Me. Hungry. Me. Eat. Rip and tear flesh.
Jaws clicked, and I sniffed the air. I froze.
All thoughts went away for a long second.
Memories came back. No food. They weren't food. They weren't prey.
I recoiled, hissing out, saliva that had been pouring out of my fanged maw thrown around as I shook my head. The dark primal fog of predatory violence and hunger that had settled without my notice dissipated, yet the vestiges of it forever anchored to the core of my being. There was so much, and it felt strange but not wrong. It felt correct, but this wasn't like when I was reborn. I was still a furbolg.
'I want to test flying! But first…' I thought excitedly
'L-' I tried to talk, and it came out as a tiny squeak that turned a few pitches higher as I fell forward, trying to stand up with a morphology not designed for bipedal motion.
Then a feminine chuckle exploded, far louder than they should have the right to be. My wings were used as makeshift hands flying to my larger yet still bear-like ears to muffle cacophony in vain. It wasn't painful, just a lot.
Alas, I forgot I wasn't humanoid again and fell snoot first in the flowers, causing the loud noises to go on and on with what felt like the entirety of the forest ten kilometers around. But I wasn't overwhelmed per se and glared at the dryad, my eyesight not worse by any degree but not particularly any better either.
"Oh, silly you! You came back to us seconds before you ate us. I'm proud of you. The old bear is, too! But it seems there is some work to do. Step by step, it is!" Shael'dryn let out with a grin.
Right, there was that… Shapeshifting mixed the best traits, so I got my eyes from my furbolg self and the ear from the bat, even if the shape was more from the former if my sense of touch wasn't too skewered. My fur was of the same charcoal black, too.
How it worked, I didn't know; shapeshifting was impossibly complex, yet I just did it. Somehow… It was like moving a limb, the thousands of incredibly complex biological processes happening for that, but instead of that, it was magic and astronomically above in scale and depth.
And I wanted to understand it all.
"Daydreaming in the Dream? Or nightdreaming in this case? Hihihi! But quite the bold choice to turn into a bloodwing bat." Her girlish voice snapped me back to the present, with my glare gaining extensive attention at her, but it all disappeared when the Elder Shaman spoke.
"You did well, young Ohto." My teacher exclaimed in awe at my form, making me puff up in pride as he approached me, making it apparent I was significantly smaller than the original, disappointing but logical with my age. Even with the Totemic Ritual two years ago, it will change with time. I just have to grow more.
I chirped happily at the praise; they were rare coming from him.
