Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3) (65 page)

“So much blood and so much death; so many people eaten
alive. You couldn’t forget that if you mutated a hundred times. It’s burned
into your memory just like it is in mine.”

She reached out with her other hand and stroked its neck.

“If you can remember that, then you can remember me. The
one that fought with you and demanded that you leave this scar so I could show it
off.”

Something clicked in the monster’s head and its horn
stopped sparking. Instead, it lowered its head to nuzzle her. Tiza threw both
arms around his neck.

“I knew you would.”

To prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the boy inside
the unicorn remembered her, she gestured for him to sit so she could mount him.
They walked in a circle around the gravity pit. The elves and humans gathered
all clapped, even Meza.

“OUTSTANDING!”

Nunnal jumped in with the helmet and the unicorn snarled
at her. Tiza patted his head and he calmed down enough for her to dismount and
accept the helmet. She put it on and spoke again, this time with the approach
of the others. The monster stood and listened. The helmet shimmered and a line
of light emerged from her eyes. It connected to those of the unicorn. At first,
this light was pure white, but then it took on a reddish hue, and settled on
pink. Eventually, the Heleti Unicorn shook its head, glanced down at its hooves,
and neighed in shock. It tripped over its own legs and fell over.

Tiza rushed to its side, caressed its flank, and spoke
soothingly to it. It neighed urgently as if trying to speak but unable to make
the correct sounds. Nunnal snapped her fingers and a virtual keyboard appeared
near its head.

“What is your name?” Tiza asked.

The unicorn poked keys one at a time with its horn until
it spelled out, “Nolien Heleti.”

Jubilation broke out among the humans. The elves simply high-fived
each other for another job well done. All the while, the unicorn continued to
spell out names.

 “Nolien Yani, Second Duke of Heleti, Big Brother, Lucky
First Born, Dragon’s Lair Healer, the Obvious Runaway, Ward of Wiol, and
Tenderfoot.”

The family of Nolien gathered around the unicorn answering
to that name and hugged him without fear. It took him a minute to recognize
them because his mind had to recover the lost information. Then he nuzzled them
in turn.

They asked him questions to assure themselves that his
sapience had truly returned and he typed them all on the virtual keyboard. He
didn’t miss a single one. After the first three, he typed something that was
not a response.

“One moment, please.”

He bowed his head and his body began to tremble. Then it
began to shift. First, his legs shrank and refitted, and his hooves separated
into toenails. Then his arms followed the same process, growing fingers. In the
process, his new/old limbs could no longer support his body and he fell on his
belly, which shifted into something hairless and much smaller. He pushed
himself back on his butt and his head shrank and morphed into something more
like a sphere than a cuboid. Only his horn remained from his previous shape.

He opened his mouth and spoke gibberish. His family was
seized by fear of a relapse, but as the seconds passed, his sounds became more
distinct until they became words. However, the words were garbled and thus he
still spoke nonsense. Little by little, the correct order emerged and
intelligible sentences formed.

“Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3. Good, it’s working now.”
Nolien shook himself. “That was a most intriguing sensation. I expected it to
be painful, but it was more like shaping putty.” He looked up to his teammate
and asked, “Eric, is this what you feel like?”

“It’s more like inflating and deflating.”

“How did you do that?” Nunnal asked in all seriousness.

It took until now for the elves to recover from the shock
of the sight. A non-elf shapeshifting was thought to be impossible. When the
Ataidar branch of the ICDMM reported that it happened with Kallen, they said it
was blasphemous. When they repeated their claim with Eric, they brushed it off
as a Trickster’s Choice rarity. Now, it had happened a third time. It had happened
right before their eyes and to someone not at all affiliated with The Trickster
or Lady Chaos. They had to accept it as truth. Now they had to find out why.

“Some time ago, I asked Eric to explain it, but I can’t
remember what it was. Something about unity with the universe and tacos. No,
not tacos. I have a craving for tacos.” His eyes drifted to one of Nunnal’s
aides. “You look like a taco.” His eyes became a blank red.
“May I please eat you?”

“Fascinating!” Nunnal exclaimed. “A
polite
monster.”

Someone tossed a lab coat into the pit and Nolien watched
it float to the ground. He charged his horn in case it attacked and watched for
sudden movements. Then Tiza picked it up and handed it to him. He continued
staring at it.

“Put it on.”

“Why do I….Oh, I remember this. It’s body shame, or is it
body
modesty?
The condition of nakedness in one person can cause
feelings of discomfort in others and is supposed to cause in oneself.
Presumably, it was my brief time as a monster, or more precisely the monsanity
that I was afflicted with, that has removed this in me because, as this room is
fairly warm, I see no reason to ‘put it on.’”

“Do it, Tenderfoot!”

He shrugged. “If you insist….How do I do that? Never mind.
I can figure it out.” He slid his arms into the holes and asked, “What’s that
thing over there?”

He walked to the edge of the pit and attempted to climb
out, only to slide down. He tried again to the same result. He lay on his
stomach and pondered. While he pondered, he narrated the direction of his train
of thought.

“I was a human; no, I’m a monster. No, that is still
incorrect. I’m a human becoming a monster becoming a
demon
. I could have
used my new abilities to climb or otherwise bypass the rim, but I was mutated
because of a political thing. The political thing is…more complicated than
finding food and reproducing and is not so straightforward. Let’s see what I
remember.”

He closed his eyes and remained still for minutes on end.
No one wanted to interrupt him for fearing of breaking his memory or causing a
relapse or some other problem. Not even the elves knew what to expect from a
human recovering from mana mutation because each case was different. An hour
and more passed. Nolien’s stomach growled and he opened his eyes. He pointed at
Hailey and said, “You owe me a piece of cake.”

“What?”

“On Dosh’s fifth birthday party, you stole my piece of
cake. When I told you to give it back, you threw it in my face. Humans are
supposed to reconcile disputes peacefully, perhaps with blood money, instead of
spilling each other’s blood. You never made it up to me, ergo, you owe me a
piece of cake. I’m hungry. Give me cake
now
.”

“He’ll be like this for a while,” Kallen said. “I was like
this and so was Eric. Once his mind has time to reboot and re-configure, he’ll
be back to more or less normal.”

“I wonder if my sense of modesty will return,” Nolien
thought out loud. “I remember telling Hailey on a number of occasions to cover
up, but those were odd occasions because she normally has a great deal of
respect for herself.”

“Those were hunts!” Hailey insisted, red-cheeked. “A
monster ripped my clothes because I was careless or outnumbered.”

“You still owe me a piece of cake.”

“
How long
will this take?” Hailey asked.

“Mine, I’m told, took days, but Eric was more or less fine
within hours.”

The group spent that time performing tests on Nolien and they
were in greater number and in more detail than Eric’s were at the ICDMM. This
was not because the elves knew what they were looking for but because they had
more time on their hands with which to devise tests and the technology to
measure more factors. However, none of them were physical. Nunnal had already
gathered enough data of that variety. These tests were all mental and they
split between memory and personality; what he remembered about his former life
and how he reacted with that knowledge and how much the former influenced the
latter.

“It’s an intriguing way to view the world,” Nolien
explained to Nunnal. “There’s a voice at the back of my mind talking about
threats and food and reproduction. It’s like a broken record and what’s that
you’re eating?”

“Me?” Bealir asked.

“Yeah, it smells good and I am hungry. I haven’t eaten in
days and, if you don’t mind my saying so, you look tasty. Do you mind if I bite
your arm off?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

“Oh shame.” His eyes became a blank red slate. “
I wanted to do this peacefully.”

“Tenderfoot, no!”

At once, his eyes returned to human. “Why not?”

“Because he helped you.”

“‘Help’? Hmm…That’s…oh yes, that’s reciprocity. Humans do
it as a survival mechanism, but I recall myself doing it out of ‘duty’ and
‘chivalry’ and ‘to prove myself.’”

“How do you feel about those things now?”

“Detached. Overall, I feel drowsy and far away. It’s like
that one time my siblings and I…No. I’m not supposed to say that. I promised
Hailey I wouldn’t. It’s my duty as a Heleti to keep my promises. Hey, that was
familiar!”

Tiza smiled fondly and leaned into his side.

“This is not familiar, but welcome.”

After the memory and personality tests, his parents
engaged him in a wide-ranging pop test about healing arts. It took the form of
a duel between the three of them. Nolien’s horn reacted automatically to
threats by canceling spells in midair and instantly dispelling them on himself.
He himself didn't have to do anything. Nunnal determined this to be his
personal knowledge mixing with his monster reflexes and instinct. With
practice, she said he could learn to switch its function on and off, and use it
as a replacement for his staff.

At the word “replacement,” Nolien flew into a rage. He
returned to full unicorn form and attacked Nunnal, demanding that she return
his original staff. She shut him down with a localized gravity spell. All she
had to do was snap her fingers and his body weighed one ton. He ignored the
pressure and fired every manner of status element spell at her from his horn.

Tiza rushed to him to rub his flank and whisper his
nickname in his ear. He instantly calmed down. Then Eric and Kallen did their
part by showing him how to retrieve his staff. Just like them, it was now part
of his soul. By clapping his hands together, he could pull it out as easily as
he could mana bolts. Returning to human form (and receiving a new lab coat), he
set about performing the feat himself. His staff emerged from his palm and he
wept at the sight of it.

  “This technically means I’m dual-wielding. I wonder if
Raki has any tips for me.”

When he grew hungry, he refrained from eating others in
the room. Although he asked, he never acted on it if the person refused and so
Nunnal judged the first two occasions to be a fluke born of close proximity to
his rebirth. When lunchtime finally came, he ate his appetizer with atrocious
table manners (which Tiza noted were common in the Dragon’s Lair) but by the
time dessert came, he ate neatly with knife and fork (which Kurami noted was
enforced at home).

By evening, he appeared to be himself again. He spoke in a
measured tone instead of spacy non-sequiturs. He opened doors for the ladies in
the group. He requested pants and a shirt to wear under the lab coat, and
specifically the Heleti livery he had left near the pit. Once clothed like a
noble, he examined his horn with an academic’s curiosity instead of a child’s.
It was at the point where Nunnal was considering Nolien’s discharge that a wind
gusted through the facility.

It blew open every door and every window. It covered every
surface from floor to ceiling. Then it gathered into a funnel and took a
humanoid shape. Ultimately, it became a woman with brown hair and griffin
wings. She was dressed like a soldier in a lab, or a scientist in a battlefield.
In either case, her clothes rustled as if in a constant breeze.  

“Greetings, Grandchildren of Chaos! I have heard the
prayer of one among you and…” She spotted Nolien, fully dressed and sapient,
and slouched. “I can see the future and I’m still not on time. Nolien Heleti, I
came to assist with your rebirth but, apparently, I’m too late.”

“No need to apologize, Wiol,” he said with a bow of his
head. “I’m honored that you came in person to aid a mere mortal like myself.”

“Don’t be so modest. I’m fond of your family.” She jerked
her head towards Tiza, who hadn’t left his side since his rebirth. “Is she part
of it yet?”

Tiza blushed and shook her head, but still didn’t leave
his side.

“No. We are not engaged, but she is my
jukispiawe
.”

“Wonderful!”

“Hey, what does jukipatoto whatever mean?”

“It’s an orc word that translates to ‘the one who watches
my back,’” Wiol explained. “Depending on the context, it can mean
‘second-in-command,’ ‘partner,’ ‘best friend,’ and/or ‘spouse.’ Is it true?”

Tiza blushed deeper. “The first three are…”

Wiol leaned next to Eric and covered her mouth with her
hand. “The last one will be true in about five years,” she whispered. “If you
bring a hang-glider, forty hardback books, and a great deal of salt, then the
ceremony will go smoother.”

What does any of that have to do with a wedding?

“Nunnal, darling, please send your flunkies to floor 15,
room 5 within three minutes or the mutant killer wombats will get out.”

“
Trickster!
T-Z guys! Jump to it!”

The seven elves grabbed their weapons and rushed to the
elevator. As soon as the door closed, Wiol scratched her head.

“Or was it three years?” She shrugged.

“S-guy, don’t just stand there! If Wiol is here, then Hacen
is just outside. You should go out and welcome him.”

He sighed. “Yes, Director.”

The other aides approached Wiol, recited a standard prayer,
and asked if Nunnal would ever remember their names. She sidestepped the
question by saying she had chaotic business to discuss with Eric, Kallen, and
Annala, so all prayers had to wait until later. Then she blew out with them in
tow.

The wind carried them through Dnnac Ledo and to the
Courtyard of Elemental Worship. It deposited them at the Shrine to Wiol. Her main
aspect was a griffin statue painted sky blue and cloud white. A windmill arose
from its back. Beneath it and around it in a circle were flowers commonly found
on Griffin Mountain in Anich.

“
Will
my mom ever remember their names?”

“No. Now on to more important things! Tasio tells me you
want to kill an ordercrafter and you need my power to help you do it. So I’m
here to test if you’re worthy of such power.”

Eric simpered. “If you can see the future, then don’t you
know if I'll pass it?”

A gusty hand smacked him from behind.

“Our world is based on Chaos and so there are countless
ways that the future could unfold. Some things are more certain than others,
but it’s basically wide open. For instance, Tiza and Nolien
will
marry
in this lifetime, but there are variables. These include when, how long, and
whether or not it will be public license or courtly secret. There is at least
one future where they stay platonic teammates but
pretend
to be married
for a mission, and another where they mentor a kid who
considers
them to
be his parents. I can see a Heleti boy in the far future composing a family
tree and
claiming
they were married based on historical documents such
as the one stating that she’s an ‘honorary member of the household’ and the
fact that her spider fang sword is enshrined in the Heleti Hall of Honor.”