Shape-shifting animals (Valerius)

[Iskessah]

Iskessah's lips twitched as she attempted to hide a smirk. She did not have to wish; she was blessed by Siku to possess three different shapes. Though, at the moment, she wished it were not so dangerous to reveal her other forms. She appreciated the agility and range of movement that came with arms and legs, but the senses in her human form were so dull. She was curious to see the creature change, to see if it was anything like her own transformation. She recalled the man saying that someone had forced a change. She had never heard of being able to force a Dhani to change, which suggested that these "Kelvics" were truly inferior beings, but she could not help but be curious to see if such a claim were true. "How do you make them change? What elsse have you learned from them? Do you do anything here other than feed them?" Some of her questions were genuine interest; others were seeing how much information she could get out of the man before he became suspicious or annoyed.

[Valerius Nitrozian]

„Ah, I’m not sure about that“, Valerius admitted as Iskessah wanted to know how you made them change. The dog girl in the cage raised her head as she realized what they were talking about, but the Nitrozian paid no attention to her. He didn’t care if some kind of animal listened to his conversation. „I watched my aunt Amanda – she’s the head researcher – experiment on a Kelvic once. She put needles into him and used her gnosis mark. Some of the more obedient Kelvic can of course just be asked to change. Anyway, what else have I learned …“ He furrowed his brow and looked at her. For now at least he didn’t mind telling her more about the creatures. „They are able to form some kind of bond with their master through which thoughts and feelings are shared. And they can supposedly talk to animals. If you had a bird Kelvic, you would have access to all the other birds in the area and would be able to get information on them. Just imagine the potential!“ His eyes shimmered brightly, but as she asked him if he did anything other than feed them, he frowned. That was a sore point with him. He disliked the fact that his aunt still made him clean cages and feed the creatures. He was her nephew and his skills would be so much more useful elsewhere. There was no way he would tell this woman what he was doing though. It would be humiliating beyond measure. And thus he deceided to veil the truth slightly. „I assist my aunt as well. I conduct studies for her and take care of those creatures that cannot stay here. But I have to feed the next Kelvic now.“ He gestured for her to follow him, if she still wanted to and led her to a cage where a naked boy with golden hair was sitting. „He doesn’t look like much, but his other form is that of a large cat, and he can be quite wild if provoked. You should stay away while I feed him.“

[Iskessah]

Iskessah listened carefully to what the man was saying. These... Kelvics could speak to other animals, which sounded similar to her own understanding of the language of snakes. Though the idea of them forming a bond with a master sounded vaguely intriguing... such inferior beings would benefit from someone to obey. Of course, she felt that was about humans as well. At least the Kelvics realized their place, and Iskessah could almost respect them for that. After briefly describing his duties, it almost seemed to Iskessah that he rather quickly changed the subject, but since she couldn't fathom why he would do such a thing, she soon dismissed it from her mind. She followed him to the next cage without comment, wondering silently if she would be able to see a kelvic change this time. She still wasn't convinced they really had animal forms. It all seemed a bit far-fetched when she thought about it. It made much more sense for this to be a second slave market. When he claimed that the small boy was actually a dangerous wild cat, Iskessah had to clamp her hand over her mouth to stifle laughter. No, she must keep a straight face; this man could potentially cause problems for her (as could virtually any Ravokian); she could not afford to antagonize him (or anyone). She stood back, as requested, though she couldn't help but offer a rather predatory stare to the boy. She could easily imagine torturing him, mocking him, taunting him to turn into a cat and defend himself, knowing it was all a clever ruse... She was snapped out of her delightful daydreams by the sound of the boy viciously consuming the fodder provided to him. She sneered in distaste. "That... I can almost believe him being an animal..." Still, she could not take her eyes off the sight, much as it repulsed her.

[Valerius Nitrozian]

As Iskessah clamped her hand over her mouth as if she wanted to stiffle a laughter, Valerius looked irritated. Did this retarted woman not believe him? If only he had his aunt’s knowledge! He might be able to force the creature to change! He needed to ask Amanda how she did it. He turned to face the cat boy, looking slightly annoyed. Why couldn’t he be in his other form? He briefly considered poking him with something – a stick for example – but that might just anger him. The promise of food however – better food than the one he was currently eating … „I’ll show you that he is an animal!“ he promised Iskessah and approached the cage to get the creature’s attention. The boy looked up for a moment, and Valerius smiled at him, a somewhat fake smile. „Do you want fresh meat?“ he asked him. „Meat that is still bloody?“ The boy’s eyes immediately lit up, and Valerius continued, „If you want bloody meat, all you have to do is show me your other form. Only real animals get bloody meat.“ The boy’s body shimmered for a moment, and then a black panther was suddenly standing in the cage, baring his teeth. Valerius looked at Iskessah triumphantly, momentarily ignoring the panther that was impatiently waiting for the food he had been promised.

[Iskessah]

Iskessah might have missed it if she'd blinked, the change happened so fast. The strange light which accompanied the transformation almost had her believing it was some trick or illusion, but... the eyes were the same, and there was still a bit of fodder caught in the cat's teeth. Besides, (flick of the tongue) the air tasted the same. This was the same creature. "Impressssive," she murmured nonchalantly, trying not to reveal how impressed she truly was. She could easily imagine how useful it would be to be able to change in an instant, though she would probably miss the joy of her body parts rearranging themselves into their glorious new shape. Still, despite his apparent advantage, the panther was still enslaved and imprisoned. Despite its apparent power, the "kelvic" was nothing more than a dumb beast, easily tamed with promises of food, and lacking the intelligence and ambition to be dissatisfied with captivity. "An animal that can pretend to be...human." Not that humans were much above animals themselves, but she had remembered at the last moment the sort of city she was in, and managed to color all of her Dhani sentiments with the word 'human'. Having seen, as far as she could tell, all that there was to know about kelvics and the research institute, Iskessah began to lose interest. As Valerius continued talking or feeding the kelvic or whatever he was doing, she found her eyes wandering. At a moment when his back was turned, her eyes were caught by some curious papers on a nearby table. She stepped toward them for a closer look, then picked them up to study them. The words (if they could be called words) were completely unintelligible. She at first thought they were simply in another language, since she did not recognize the characters, but something about the way they were displayed on the page was familiar. The rows seemed to come in pairs, and as she studied the page, she noticed a pattern. A character in the top row of a pair was always paired with a particular character on the bottom row. It appeared very much like a cipher puzzle, of the sort that Angela used to play with, though this was beyond Iskessah's ability to interpret.

[Valerius Nitrozian]

As he heard Iskessah say „impressive“ – with entirely too many ‚s‘ – Valerius cringed as if he were in a great amount of pain. He couldn’t stand it when people flaunted their disabilities like that, but after a moment he had himself under control again and even smiled a little. She was impressed by what had just happened – by what he had made the creature do. That counted for something. „Indeed. An animal that can pretend to be human. Most of those creatures lack intelligence, but there are some that are remarkably bright and can be taught to read and write and behave in a way that makes it impossible for you to tell that they aren’t real humans.“ After a while he noticed that she began to lose interest, and he made a face. How dare she lose interest before he was done? Didn’t she realize how lucky she was that she was allowed to accompagny him? And what was she doing now? He narrowed his eyes as he caught her looking at a stack of papers that were lying on a nearby table, and then, as he realized just what it was that she was looking at, he immediately grabbed the notes. „These are my notes“, he informed her. „And they are encrypted, so you can’t read them anyway. I doubt you could figure out the system I used.”

[Iskessah]

The word "encrypted" caught Iskessah's interest. She had dabbled in cryptography, mostly for the purpose of a little side-project. And encrypted letter left behind by a woman who had disappeared years ago. She and the woman's son had taken a few stabs at decoding it, but they hadn't cracked it at all so far. So the fact that this human had knowledge on the subject meant that she might be able to find some new clues. She raised an eyebrow at his assumption that his codes were above her. While that may happen to be true, there was no reason to assume so at this point. "I have dabbled in code-breaking, jussst a hobby. But it would be intriguing to compare notesss." Her demeanor had changed entirely, though she hadn't noticed. Before she had been trying at least to maintain a facade of servility, or at least a sense that he was of superior status. But now, she leaned forward eagerly, trying to peer at the notes he had grabbed, completely disregarding his personal space.

[Valerius Nitrozian]

The retarded woman claimed that she had dablled in code-breaking and wanted to compare notes? Valerius looked at her incredulously. Was she saying the truth? Valerius, being the narrow-minded man that he was, couldn’t believe that a woman who couldn’t speak properly and displayed such strange behaviour occupied herself with something that complicated! He looked at her for a moment, considering her, and then he looked back at the papers in his hand. Should he let her give her a try? She probably wouldn’t be able to figure out what he had written anyway – and if she did, against all odds, well, the papers didn’t contain any information that couldn’t threaten his life or his social statues. It would just be a little annoying. He smiled very lightly and handed the papers to her. „Feel free to try and read this. I’m very interested in finding out how much you know about this. I will compare notes with you if you absolutely insist.“

[Iskessah]

Having been given permission, Iskessah took the papers and stared hard at them. The outside world disappeared for many chimes as she tried to makes sense of the foreign scribbles. At first, the task seemed so daunting and impossible that she despaired of making any progress. But then she calmed herself down, and realized that she did not have to break the code all at once, she just had to learn something about it. So she began with what little she knew about codes. The most fundamental step of the art, as she'd learn through Joshry who'd learned it from his mother, was to find patterns. Find the patterns, learn the symbols, learn to recognize a word even if you don't understand its meaning yet. And so she looked for patterns in Valerius's notes. She had already noticed the cipher comparison. Perhaps the symbols translated directly to letters of the common alphabet? She started with the smaller words, trying to see if it was plausible that they could be some of the more frequently used Common words. It seemed possible at first, but then it was almost impossible to tell which of the possible small words a collection of symbols could be. And then, some of the sets of symbols were similar but for one or two characters, and she couldn't think of any words in Common that worked like that. She was starting to get a headache, so she let her eyes drift lazily over the page for a bit, randomly studied different words, with no particular structure or pattern. She was starting to recognize some of the symbols as this squiggle or that, giving wildly inaccurate mneumonic names to the characters, for her own private use. That was how she began to recognize certain similarities between some of the longer words. As many as four or five characters would be repeated in a row, and as the chimes wore on, she began to see what looked like the same word with just small variations. So, even if she still had know idea what the thing said, she could still tell the words were related in some way. Her brain was starting to feel fuzzy, and she figured she probably wouldn't be able to get any farther without either help or rest. As her awareness returned to the world outside the paper, she remembered Valerius standing there. Oh, right, he was probably waiting for her impressions. She was too caught up in the puzzle still to notice or worry about his condescending sneer. She merely pointed at the similarities she had found, saying, "I can tell that word and that one are sssimilar. I do not know their meaning. I tried decoding the little wordsss, but I can't find anything in Common that worksss..."

[Valerius Nitrozian]

Valerius took a step back after she accepted the paper and simply watched her, arms crossed over his chest. He was considerate enough to keep his mouth shut so that she could concentrate. And so the chimes passed. After a while he didn’t simply stand there anymore, looking slightly impatient, but studied the woman’s face instead. Now that she was quietly working on his notes, she didn’t appear as retarded anymore. In fact she looked like a normal, maybe even an intelligent woman! But of course she hadn’t been able to decipher his notes, at least not completely. It was surprising enough that she had noticed certain patterns and similarities between certain words. „That’s because I didn’t use Common“, he replied as she informed him that she couldn’t find anything in Common that worked. „Almost everybody speaks Common. If I had written my notes completely in Common, it would have been too easy. I mixed Common with a little Arumenic here and there and a few words in the Ancient Tongue.“ „Are you familiar with those two languages?“