67th of Winter, 514 A.V.
It was time.
Tinnok felt like a child with magic, playing with things that she still did not understand, and her teachers, temporary and fleeting had not imparted so much knowledge upon that she felt fully confident moving forward. Reimancy she had stopped using altogether, its strange whispers that coiled through her mind, and the way the essence seemed to drain her so entirely alarming her beyond most things she had encountered in this world.
But Morphing was different. Even though its power scared her, part of the magic felt in tune with her nature and very being. Where summoning up Reimancy was like a struggle, Morphing was like slipping into a second skin, new and different, difficult and draining, but something she could feel resonate within her with every shift.
Even so, she had yet to try a full transformation, and she knew she could achieve this, knew she had attained the power and experience to try it, which is why she had traveled through the jungle, and found a pack of Akila hounds in which to study. She had been with them two days, hunting alongside them. She had not kept any of her kills thus far to bring back to Zinrah, preferring to present them as gifts and share them with her temporary packmates, but today was going to be different.
The pack, primarily nocturnal rested, having found a little sunken hollow in which to rest for the day, Tinnok assuring their alpha male that she would alert them to any potential danger. The pack comprised of 7 hounds, four females and three males. They breathed softly, a snore or a dreaming whimper bringing a smile to the half breed's features as she breathed in deep and crawled on all fours into the center of the pack. She sat on her knees, head hanging, fingers sinking through dead leaves into the damp earth as she focused on points unknown. She was not very good at clearing her mind in meditation, but she found if she concentrated on pulling one thing away at a time that this helped. First her eyes closed and she imagined utter blackness, emptiness in the absence of the jungle. She concentrated on the cool earth and imagined how it must look deep beneath the earth, where eyeless things crawled and burrowed. Next were the noises. She could not eliminate them, but she pushed them back, focusing on the earth until the bird calls, buzzes, and rippling foliage was like a hum in the back of her mind.
Then and only then, holding her mind there, teetering on the verge of focus and its lack, but held together with the importance of the task she was undertaking, did she summon up her Djed, from the core in which she had come to realize the heart of her magic resided. It felt like a warm fountain, a strange power and another sense that opened up within her, waiting to be directed.
Then her golden eyes opened and she focused on a large female Akila in front of her, legs curled up around her. Her body was shaped all wrong in comparison to this canine, and she was going to alter it one step at a time. First, the most obvious change she could think of lay in her legs, whose joints swung the wrong way. Tendrils of res raced down, almost as upon instinct and she had to halt them from traveling into her toes where she normally formed her claws. That would be later. She circled her joints moving to sit on her rump and move the joints, feeling both with her Djed and muscles how they hinged, how the bone itself and the muscle around it felt. Then, taking a breath she flipped the hinge of her bones. She realized as she began this transformation that it was more in the muscles than the bones themselves. Simply rotating the bones to meet the requirements she sought was not so much effort, but she had to guide the muscles into place so that they would aid the leg in moving in this new and alien direction to her. She thickened the chords around her legs, and traced the design she could feel and need with her fingers. As she did this she continued pushing res down to fill her legs. Akila were stocky entities of muscle and fur, and her limbs were much too gangly to compare to theirs. Her pupil's narrowed in concentration and a bit of alarm as she watched the changes that she was willing into being begin to affect her legs, the new muscle mass pulling from the length of her legs, bones shortening, weight transferring.
The bones she pulled in, especially upon her feet, shortening and becoming more club like, claws protruding though she did not try to change her skin just yet. She began to shift off of her backside onto all fours, testing out these knew changes. It was a bizarre feeling to say the least when she sat on her haunches like a canine, legs folding under themselves as they never had before.
A smile crept to her lips but she forced it back. She had much more work to do.
c
It was time.
Tinnok felt like a child with magic, playing with things that she still did not understand, and her teachers, temporary and fleeting had not imparted so much knowledge upon that she felt fully confident moving forward. Reimancy she had stopped using altogether, its strange whispers that coiled through her mind, and the way the essence seemed to drain her so entirely alarming her beyond most things she had encountered in this world.
But Morphing was different. Even though its power scared her, part of the magic felt in tune with her nature and very being. Where summoning up Reimancy was like a struggle, Morphing was like slipping into a second skin, new and different, difficult and draining, but something she could feel resonate within her with every shift.
Even so, she had yet to try a full transformation, and she knew she could achieve this, knew she had attained the power and experience to try it, which is why she had traveled through the jungle, and found a pack of Akila hounds in which to study. She had been with them two days, hunting alongside them. She had not kept any of her kills thus far to bring back to Zinrah, preferring to present them as gifts and share them with her temporary packmates, but today was going to be different.
The pack, primarily nocturnal rested, having found a little sunken hollow in which to rest for the day, Tinnok assuring their alpha male that she would alert them to any potential danger. The pack comprised of 7 hounds, four females and three males. They breathed softly, a snore or a dreaming whimper bringing a smile to the half breed's features as she breathed in deep and crawled on all fours into the center of the pack. She sat on her knees, head hanging, fingers sinking through dead leaves into the damp earth as she focused on points unknown. She was not very good at clearing her mind in meditation, but she found if she concentrated on pulling one thing away at a time that this helped. First her eyes closed and she imagined utter blackness, emptiness in the absence of the jungle. She concentrated on the cool earth and imagined how it must look deep beneath the earth, where eyeless things crawled and burrowed. Next were the noises. She could not eliminate them, but she pushed them back, focusing on the earth until the bird calls, buzzes, and rippling foliage was like a hum in the back of her mind.
Then and only then, holding her mind there, teetering on the verge of focus and its lack, but held together with the importance of the task she was undertaking, did she summon up her Djed, from the core in which she had come to realize the heart of her magic resided. It felt like a warm fountain, a strange power and another sense that opened up within her, waiting to be directed.
Then her golden eyes opened and she focused on a large female Akila in front of her, legs curled up around her. Her body was shaped all wrong in comparison to this canine, and she was going to alter it one step at a time. First, the most obvious change she could think of lay in her legs, whose joints swung the wrong way. Tendrils of res raced down, almost as upon instinct and she had to halt them from traveling into her toes where she normally formed her claws. That would be later. She circled her joints moving to sit on her rump and move the joints, feeling both with her Djed and muscles how they hinged, how the bone itself and the muscle around it felt. Then, taking a breath she flipped the hinge of her bones. She realized as she began this transformation that it was more in the muscles than the bones themselves. Simply rotating the bones to meet the requirements she sought was not so much effort, but she had to guide the muscles into place so that they would aid the leg in moving in this new and alien direction to her. She thickened the chords around her legs, and traced the design she could feel and need with her fingers. As she did this she continued pushing res down to fill her legs. Akila were stocky entities of muscle and fur, and her limbs were much too gangly to compare to theirs. Her pupil's narrowed in concentration and a bit of alarm as she watched the changes that she was willing into being begin to affect her legs, the new muscle mass pulling from the length of her legs, bones shortening, weight transferring.
The bones she pulled in, especially upon her feet, shortening and becoming more club like, claws protruding though she did not try to change her skin just yet. She began to shift off of her backside onto all fours, testing out these knew changes. It was a bizarre feeling to say the least when she sat on her haunches like a canine, legs folding under themselves as they never had before.
A smile crept to her lips but she forced it back. She had much more work to do.
c
