by Logan Jacobs
The innkeeper’s eyes lit up with eagerness when he saw us, and he actually chortled and rubbed his hands together when he saw what an enthusiastic response we had elicited from his other customers. He promptly gave orders for the kitchen’s finest dishes to be prepared and had vast quantities of honey mead poured for us, which I knew must be infuriating for Willobee in his present form with his greatly reduced drinking capacity. I poured him a little saucer of mead, expecting him to lap it with his tongue, but instead he climbed in and submerged his whole fat warty little lavender body into it as if it were a bath. Florenia informed us that she had read in a scientific treatise that toads did not drink with their mouths, but absorbed liquid through their skin to stay hydrated.
By the time we had drunk and eaten our fill, I looked over at Lizzy questioningly, and she nodded and winked.
“Well then,” I said the rest of the group. “We’ll be back shortly. Stay out of trouble, make sure Marvincus doesn’t try to pull any funny shit while we’re gone, and, ah, don’t lose Willobee please.”
Florenia gingerly plucked the sopping wet and barely conscious looking toad out of the saucer of mead. “Hmm. I think he’s had enough now. I suspect he may have underestimated the rate of absorption.”
“Oh no!” Ilandere exclaimed. “Will he be all right?”
“Course he will,” Lizzy scoffed. “If Willobee could die of alcohol poisoning, then he woulda died hundreds of years ago. Just put him in your pocket or something. But don’t let him barf or it’ll eat a hole in the fabric, and he’ll fall out.”
“…On that note,” I said.
Lizzy linked arms with two of me, one on each side, and we slipped out of the dim and raucous inn. We brought Marvincus’ basket, which I had been keeping under the table, along with us.
Lizzy didn’t morph right away, since first of all a four-hundred-pound wolf was likely to attract some unwanted attention trotting through the middle of town, and second of all I thought it was best for us to both have a little time to digest dinner before we started what was bound to be a pretty fast-paced run. Even when I asked Lizzy to keep it to a slow jog, she loved the fact that she could outpace me in her wolf form and could never resist showing off a little, which resulted in us moving at a sprinting speed that very few humans would be able to attain, let alone maintain.
Instead we just strolled toward the edge of town arm-in-arm. Lizzy attracted some strange looks and lewd remarks for apparently being the shared paramour of two identical twins, although people probably would have stared even more if they understood the actual situation. If I had been with Ilandere or Florenia, I probably would have gotten more defensive about it, but Lizzy wasn’t fazed at all by the attention from strangers. She just shouted out even more vulgar retorts or blew the hecklers ironic kisses and seemed, all in all, to be kind of getting a kick out of it, so I just made sure they kept their physical distance and didn’t worry about it otherwise.
Then, when we reached the gates of the town, the gatekeeper also looked at us funny when we requested to leave, but he didn’t say anything more than, “Safer inside than out, this time of night.” before gesturing to his companion to raise the gates for us. I guessed that it didn’t really matter to Bjurna who left, it just mattered who entered.
Once we were out of sight of the guards posted at Bjurna’s towers, Lizzy stripped off her red dress, neatly folded it up, and put it behind a distinctively shaped rock, along with the daggers she always wore strapped to her thighs. The ruby necklace, she buried under the dirt.
Lizzy’s mostly human body had the most magnificently improbable proportions I’d ever seen. Breasts like ripe melons and as big, round, and firm an ass as you could ask for, but everything else was corded with lean muscle, especially her long, athletic legs. When Lizzy was fully clothed, you kind of expected her to be soft and plump, based on the way her curves bulged through. But when she wasn’t, you realized that you got the best of both worlds.
I couldn’t resist reaching out and pulling her into my nearest self for a squeeze. Her breasts pushed up against my chest, and she ground her hips against mine. “Morph, now,” I growled in her long, pointed ear. “I want to get this nerisbane thing done with, and this is too… distracting.”
Lizzy laughed and kissed my jaw as she demanded, “Sure that’s really what you want?”
“Yeah,” I groaned even though my body clearly begged to differ.
Then my erection along with the rest of me got squashed beneath a mountain of musty smelling fur. Lizzy licked my whole face with a slobbery and decidedly unsexy tongue. Then she hopped off and stood there wagging her tail as I said, “Ow,” and picked myself up.
As soon as I was on my feet again Lizzy sprinted off in the direction of Kanminar. I both huffed and puffed after her and started to get a side ache in one of my stomachs, and a shin splint in one of my other self’s legs. Then as the giant she-wolf started to leave me behind, I started alternating between reassimilating each of my bodies and then sending it out again as far ahead as I could, which was only about the same distance as my six feet of height, but moving by jumps like that enabled me to keep up. The only issue with that was that whenever I reassimilated I lost all objects that I was carrying into the void, and the only ones that reappeared along with my replacement selves were my clothes, so I wasn’t going to have any weapons when we arrived at Kanminar. But I was sure I could improvise something.
Lizzy noticed what I was doing and barked with laughter.
“Shut up,” I yelled. “You have four legs, I only have two! Well, I mean I kind of have four right now too, but in a different way. You know what I mean.”
It grew darker and darker as we traveled, but we both knew the way from the map that Marvincus had shown us, and Lizzy’s navigational capabilities, especially when she was in her wolf form, were so keen that I eventually I stopped thinking about it at all and just followed the pale tawny blur of fur through the night.
When we reached Kanminar, it didn’t look quite like any forest that I had ever seen before. The trees were large with spreading branches, but their trunks were a ghostly white, and their large, raggedy-shaped leaves were a dark berry juice color, which created a somewhat unearthly effect. There wasn’t much birdsong, but I could hear a few harsh caws here and there.
As we entered into the shadow of the forest’s canopy and slowed to a walk, I asked Lizzy, “Think Marvincus really expects us to bring back nerisbane? Or was he just sending us here expecting us to get killed?”
Lizzy made a noncommittal grunt.
“Well, if there doesn’t turn out to be any nerisbane here,” I said, “or if we get ambushed by a bunch of fucking gnomes or something, then when we get back, we’ll just try out some nonlethal torture methods to make him turn Willobee back.”
Lizzy made an enthusiastic growl.
“What do you think Willobee did to that guy anyway to piss him off so badly?” I wondered aloud.
Lizzy grunted to indicate that she had no idea, but it could be anything.
“Yeah, that’s true,” I agreed. Despite spending nearly every hour of the day with him, both waking and sleeping, the gnome remained a mystery to us all. “Think they’re related somehow? Or that all gnomes just look that much alike? I didn’t get that good of a look at those bodyguards before Marvincus changed them, but they looked pretty similar too.”
Lizzy made a contemptuous noise that I couldn’t really decipher in any specific sense.
“And what do you think could possibly be so dangerous in these woods that all the Bjurnians who go here keep vanishing?” I asked.
Lizzy gave an unconcerned hum.
After a few more minutes of walking in silence, the she-wolf suddenly raised her snout as her ears pricked up, and she growled in warning.
Both of my selves prepared for an encounter. I picked up a heavy stick, and I picked up a rock about the size of my fist.
Then a large gray wolf came charging out of the trees.
It came straight up to us. It looked smaller and smaller in comparison as it approached Lizzy until it looked miniature by the time it craned its head to touch snouts with her so that they could sniff each other. They circled each other a few times. Then the gray wolf flopped down in front of my friend and rolled over with its belly up as it whined with excitement.
Lizzy made a deep chortling sound and nudged the other wolf gently until it stood back up and stared up at her adoringly with its tail wagging.
“Hmm, I wonder if it lost its pack?” I asked. The wolf glanced over at both of me for a second without any sign of interest and then immediately turned back to Lizzy.
Then a black wolf emerged from the trees to our left, and another gray one close behind it. About ten wolves slunk cautiously or trotted happily into view to introduce themselves to Lizzy, whom they all immediately acknowledged as the dominant individual, given that she was roughly three times the size of their largest pack member. Lizzy rumbled with contentment. I knew she loved being the alpha. As for the other, normal wolves, they just seemed pretty impressed with the fact of her existence. And they seemed to accept that she had only friendly intentions toward them and looked as relaxed as pet dogs in her presence. Some of them growled at the sight and smell of my human selves, but Lizzy communicated to them somehow not to worry about me, and they backed down.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. “Have these guys recently claimed this territory? Are they the ones who’ve been eating all the humans that show up here? Can you ask them that?”
Lizzy did. After an exchange of various wolf noises and some pacing and whining on the part of the local pack, she turned back to me and shook her enormous shaggy head.
“Well, what’s happening to the Bjurnians then?” I asked. “Do they know what’s going on?”
Lizzy nodded.
I was tempted to ask her to change back so that she would be able to explain to me what exactly the wolves had said, but I thought better of it. They might not like her so much or recognize her as the same person in her human form, and then we’d be in trouble.
“Er, is there a way they can show us?” I asked.
A large gray wolf, I think the one that had been the first to run up to Lizzy, came up to me and nudged my hand. Not in a friendly way nor an unfriendly way either, just in a matter-of-fact way. Then he trotted off. Lizzy slunk after him and took only one step for each of his three.
“Oh, okay,” I said and both of my selves followed after them.
I glanced back at the other wolves, who stayed put exactly where they were instead of coming with us. I didn’t know all that much about wolf body language, especially since Lizzy’s was human-inflected and therefore probably not an accurate reflection of the species as a whole, but they seemed a bit sorry to see her go, and also, unless I imagined it, somewhat concerned.
Chapter Four
Meanwhile, back at the inn, my other two selves were still at the same table with Florenia, Ilandere, Elodette, and Willobee, who was asleep by then and somehow managing to snore, even though as far as I knew, toads weren’t supposed to snore.
We were sipping on coffee and nibbling pastries, all of it graciously provided for free by the staff at the instructions of the innkeeper. I had been keeping my companions updated on everything that Lizzy and I were up to.
“I can’t imagine how terrible it would be to love a normal hero,” Ilandere remarked. “One that went off and left you to go on all kinds of dangerous adventures, and you’d never know if he were coming back or not. I’m so glad that you can stay right here with us at the same time like this.”
I laughed. “I’m glad I can be here too.”
“But you don’t always need to protect us,” Florenia said. “I know there will come times when you need all of your selves at once. Like to battle Thorvinius. And that quest is far more important than us, so you shouldn’t feel bad about leaving us then. Or bringing us with you to be useful in whatever way we can.”
“I hope I never have to choose between protecting all of you and following my quest,” I replied. “And as long as I continue gaining more bodies, I never will.”
“I protected Ilandere all her life before you ever came along,” Elodette scoffed. I wondered if she was exaggerating a bit, since Elodette didn’t look much more than a few years older than Ilandere. Then again, I could very much picture the fierce centaur proudly standing guard over an infant with some kind of weapon in hand while she herself was still just a toddler. “Don’t think we’ve suddenly become dependent on a human man for protection now, just because the Princess is… foolishly besotted with you.”
“I don’t think that,” I said. “But, I’ve also brought you all into the path of new dangers that you never would have been exposed to in your previous lives before I showed up. So I do have certain responsibilities to look out for you.”
“Like you looked out for Willobee, you mean?” Elodette asked with a smirk on her face as the lavender toad continued to emit shrill snores on the tabletop. Florenia and Ilandere both had to giggle a bit at the sight of him. Thankfully, he was unconscious and would never have to know about the latest insult to his dignity.
“Hey, I’m fixing that right now, as we speak,” I reminded her through gritted teeth.
Lizzy and I continued to follow the gray wolf through the woods of Kanminar. Luckily enough, he seemed to be heading in the same direction as the red X that Marvincus had drawn for us on the map to mark the spot where the nerisbane grew thickest.
Then, after another half a mile or so, I spotted the first patch of nerisbane. The flowers looked like daisies at first, pale against the dark forest floor in the moonlight, but then as we got closer I realized that their centers were red, and their petals were sharply pointed, just like the illustration in the gnome magician’s book.
“Lizzy, look,” I said and patted her flank to get her attention as I pointed at the flowers underfoot.
Lizzy twitched her pointed ears and nodded her large head, but she didn’t pause in following our guide. She was right. We needed to see whatever it was the wolf had to show us first, then we could return to fill Marvincus’ basket for him.
We continued to tread through more patches of nerisbane. I was relieved that at least Marvincus hadn’t been lying about the herb growing here. Soon we’d be able to give him what he wanted and force him to change poor Willobee back into his rightful form.
Then, the wolf stopped in his tracks and nudged Lizzy. Lizzy nudged him back. Then she beckoned to me to follow with her snout and continued on, while the wolf sank onto his haunches and watched us pass him by.
That didn’t really seem like a good sign to me, but if Lizzy trusted the wolf, I trusted her judgment as far as wild animals were concerned. With humans, it got a bit more questionable sometimes.
After another few hundred yards, I realized why the wolf hadn’t wanted to continue on with us.
Rising into the night silhouetted against the moon on top of a small hill was the stark outline of a watchtower constructed from wood. It stood over a small camp that was encircled by sharpened wooden stakes. Unlike the stake fence at the drummer camp, this one had been well built, and the stakes were densely packed together.
We were only a few hundred feet away from this little fortified camp. I both dropped down on my bellies and tugged on Lizzy’s tail to get her to do the same, although even in a prone position she didn’t exactly blend into the line of the ground.
“Who do you think that is?” I asked. “Think they can see us from here?”
Lizzy sniffed the air and growled as if she didn’t like what she smelled. Then she sniffed again as if she were trying to find out more, or were smelling something unfamiliar that she couldn’t easily identify.
Then, the first arrow plunged into one of my shoulders. I reassimilated that self and sent out another intact one as the gate of the fence opened and eight creatures sprinted in our direction.
They looked just like Marvincus’ body
guards, post-transformation, or transfiguration as he called it. Not that there was really one specific look to them, but they were a motley crew of part-beast, part-man, superpowered fighting machines.
That reminded me of something else, too.
The army that had attacked the temple of Qaar’endoth one night about a month ago in the middle of the night, stormed our walls, and slaughtered every single person I had grown up with, my teachers, my mentors, my friends.
The army of Thorvinius the Devourer.
Among its ranks, I remembered the half-bull commander, I remembered a gray-skinned troll-looking type, I remembered a red-skinned one, I remembered others that had been quadrupeds, that had had horns, claws, tails. And I remembered how all of my fellow novices who had been trained daily to use both of their bodies in tandem to their fullest effect in combat, and all the priests and the vestals who had taught us everything we knew, besides what we’d figured out ourselves by circumventing their rules, of course, had been overpowered by the Thorvinians as if they were just a bunch of helpless kids. The Thorvinians were not only bloodthirsty as hell and seemingly without fear, they displayed incredible speed, strength, and stamina. I had been the only one out of our entire order both skilled and lucky enough to survive their onslaught.
I’d known that these qualities in Thorvinius’ troops had something to do with his powers as a god, but in that moment as I watched these eight individuals charge toward Lizzy and me, I wondered if there was another factor involved as well. I remembered what I had read in that page of Marvincus’ book about nerisbane:
“Contains the compound kirinyet, which, when distilled, can be used to create performance-enhancing drugs that increase speed, strength, stamina, and aggression and enable short-term transfiguration of both the cross-species and mass alteration categories.”
All of these thoughts flashed through my mind in an instant. Then I yelled to Lizzy, “You take left! I’ll take right and center!” and I was both up and sprinting to meet our attackers. She was faster than me in her wolf form, so I gave her the longest route to run.