Transformation Central

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

"Well then, let's get to work, shall we?" Maladim snapped his fingers, and the tube containing the Madison Freebird body detached from the racks on the ceiling and fell to the floor with a heavy thud. He pointed at me while the metallic clasps holding the body in its cage unsnapped themselves. "Do make yourself comfortable. This might take a few seconds."

I turned to see that the chairs that we sat on minutes before were unfolding themselves, forming a pair of leather-covered beds. I sat down on the edge of one tentatively, and then laid down on it. I turned my head to watch Maladim pry open the sealed door of the container which held my new body. The demon ripped his gloves off and stuffed them into the pockets of his midnight black jacket. His hands glowed with a blue electric energy, which manifested itself in a series of glowing runes on them. Gingerly, he caressed the body of the dead Madison while cryogenic smoke drifted out of the container.

"What are you doing?" I lazily asked.

"Just making sure nothing is broken before we shove you into your new body. No sense in giving you damaged merchandise, you know?"

Fair enough. Most other deal-making demons would give you less and force you to like it. But in his own words, fairness is a weakness of his.

"Besides," he continued, "if I'm going to have you in my employ as an Archivist, I'm going to need the new you in tip-top shape."

With a snap of his blue-tinted fingers, the pristine, robed corpse floated out of the tube and hovered over to the other bed. With tender motions, Maladim turned the body over on her--my--back and set her down.

I was looking at something that I was going to be in a few minutes. This felt incredibly weird. I was getting a new body. A fresh start. A big reset. I was all ready to do this when I woke up this morning, but now...? I wasn't too sure. Once I was... transferred, I guess you could say... Would I still be me? Would I still be myself? Or would I find myself consumed by the thoughts and actions of this other Madison?

Sensing my unease, Maladim walked over to where I laid and sat down near my chest. The glowing runes etched on him faded away as he placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry," the demon said in a comforting tone, "everything is going to be fine. I've wiped that body clean of anything that might fight back once you're inside. It's completely empty. It might take you a few days to get used to being human again, but..." He shrugged his shoulders, letting the line of thought dissipate.

I had no choice but to take him at his word. But that didn't mean that I wasn't going to worry.

I glanced at the corpse. It laid perfectly still, her skin pale, her shoulder-length black hair falling over her face. Her baby blue eyes stared up at the ceiling, and stared at nothing at all. "So, what's next?"

"I forcibly remove your consciousness and soul from your body and stuff it into that hunk of meat and bone over there."

"Oh."

"And yes, it's going to hurt."

"Great."

Maladim smiled, and his grip on my shoulder tightened. The runes on his skin reignited, crawling up his arms until they popped out of his collar and stretched up and down the length of his face. His eyes began to glow with electric energy, and I felt him reach into my body and latch onto my very soul. My back arched, and I grit my sharpened teeth. I clenched my eyes shut as pain, indescribable, intense pain burned through every possible inch of my body. I could feel him pulling at me, tugging at the essence that kept me tethered to the world of the living.

The demon's smile faded, and I heard him mutter "oh, that isn't good" in the moment before I passed out.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I'm not sure how long I was out. Seconds? Hours? Weeks?

But when I came to, the first thing I saw was Maladim, sitting on the reassembled leather chair, drink in hand, elbows resting on knees, concerned look on his face. Behind him, in a crumpled heap on the floor, laid a human-shaped tangle of thorny vines.

I remembered his comments before I went under. I shot upright on the padded bed. "What do you mean, 'oh, that isn't good'?"

He ignored my question. "Just what did you get yourself into?"

"You first."

Rising to his feet, Maladim took a step closer to me. "Your soul. What did you do to it?"

"What do you mean?"

He downed the rest of his drink. "It's tainted. A dark energy like I've rarely encountered when dealing with your world. Your's wasn't exactly the most pristine thing to begin with, but when I grabbed onto it to move it to your new body, it was utterly black."

"You should know what happened," I spat. "I wrote it all down."

The demon shot me a sour look, the disdain at my assumption etched clearly on his sharp features. "Just because I have the library, doesn't mean I know every single little nitty gritty detail of every little thing it holds."

A fair point, I suppose. I took a deep breath and emitted a long sigh. "It's probably that way because of my dealings with Pode. Back in the Red Forest, I had an encounter with her and allowed her to mark me as her successor. But then, things went sour between us, and I ended up... well, I tore out a shard of her soul and absorbed it into my own, I guess."

Maladim pointed an incriminating finger at me. "Well, if that's the case, it's stuck there forever, Freebird. The operation was more difficult than it needed to be, because that bitch's remnants fought against me every with every ounce of energy it could muster. She has such a grip on your soul that it would've destroyed you to try and remove it." The look on his face melted away into something more jovial, and he threw his hands out again. "But we can discuss that later. Stand up! Walk around! Let me know what you think of your new suit!"

"Body, not suit," I muttered to myself. But I stood up anyway--shakily, at first. One of my knees buckled as I put pressure on it, but I corrected my balance quickly. The feel of the smooth ceramic tiles against the flesh of my feet chilled me to the bone. I looked downward, and instead of tangled threads of green I saw smooth, pale flesh. I am human again.

I raised my hands up. Real flesh, muscle, blood and bone. I gazed at the lines on my palms, the cracks and crevices of my fingerprints After years of being a plant monster thing, I was whole once more.

A noise that was half gasp, half laugh escaped my lips as my eyes soaked in every little detail. All the little scars left over from this Madison's previous life, the smattering of beauty marks that covered her arms and torso.

I touched my new face. My fingers traveled every inch and curve. I traced the scar underneath my left eye. I pinched my nose, feeling the exact spot where it broke, and the almost unnoticeable curve that it gave the bridge.

A thin smile crossed my face. Small at first, it grew and grew almost involuntarily. The muscles in my face stretched as I let this wave of pure, unbridled joy wash over me. I am human again.

A single tear formed in my eye and cascaded down the flesh of my cheek as I laughed. I laughed a horrible, cackling, unending laugh. Moments later, I collapsed back into the table, face buried in my hands, and let the stress and trouble of the past few years pour out of me.

I am whole once more.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Maladim left me alone for the next several minutes while I sorted myself out and composed myself. I had rubbed my red eyes dry by the time he returned. He threw a small stack of books onto the table in front of me and took a seat. Small clouds of dust kicked up between layers of cardboard and leather and settled onto the polished mahogany.

"What are these?" I asked.

"As of right now, you're a blank slate. A consciousness inside a machine, and nothing more. We're going to pick out your new set of abilities."

I eyeballed the books, turning the stack around in my hands. The spines had some sort of indecipherable text that I had never seen before etched on them. "Everyone in my employ is gifted a slate of fun and cool things to do in order to complete their tasks in a timely and efficient manner. What I like to do is grant them their choice of tools that they feel the most comfortable with, based on their own personal stations and the level of work I give them."

My hand moved to the first book in that stack. Gingerly, I opened the dusty old tome and brought it closer. Inside, on faded parchment, were endless paragraphs containing the same foreign script. They were accompanied by diagrams of armored warriors swinging around staves that crackled with pure energy in one hand while brandishing futuristic, unrealistic firearms of sorts in the other. The next page contained a sketch of a woman holding her hand up to her temple, a look of intense concentration on her face. Before her, charts and graphs and various texts had materialized in thin air, marked up to provide her with more information.

"What I like to do is grant abilities based on different genres of literature," The Keeper of Knowledge continued explaining. "If you like science fiction, you can have a bunch of stuff that work with energy and plasma and technology. If you're into horror, I can grant you some of the powers that live in the abyss. If you'd rather be boring and sling around a lot of fire and ice, we can look into some general non-fiction as well."

Something stirred inside me when he said the word horror. I opened my mouth to speak, but Maladim saw the glint in my eye and cut me off by tossing a different book into my waiting hands. "I think you'll like what you see in this tome," he said with a smirk.

I rotated the book around in my hands. The writing on this one was in plain tradespeak, a regal red font pressed into a cover of black leather. A Monster's Manual, it read. I flipped open the cover, and browsed the table of contents.

"Nightmares... Illusions... Wrath Magic... Mutations... Summons... Memory Magic..." I looked up at Maladim, arching an eyebrow. "Sounds like some pretty dangerous stuff here."

"I think that genre would be perfect for you," the demon said wistfully. "I mean, with the whole black soul bit, at the very least." He motioned with a gloved finger at the core of my being, where Pode's soul mixed with my own stubborn spirit in a maelstrom. "Besides, as it is, you're far better suited for some of the more dangerous tasks I need completed in your world. What better way to fight monsters than by throwing an even bigger monster at them?"

I glared at him for a split second, my eyes burning with a mix of fury at being called a monster and having been crying for the past several minutes.

Maladim waved his hand in front of him dismissively. "No offense, of course."

I returned my attention back to the book. I flipped to a random page, titled The Hand of Batibat. It detailed the rites to summoning a monstrous, hairy, warped limb out of the ground, which could then be commanded to do various things. I lingered for a few moments before flipping forward a few chapters, and eyeballing a section on memory magic. I read a paragraph on an incantation that would allow one to lay hands on a person and then read their memories like an open book. Additional sections detailed how one could "tear out pages" of their memory, exactly like you could do with a book. Also, you could apparently overwrite some memories and implant new ones.

"Oh gods," I found myself muttering, "this could be extremely useful."

The demon merely smiled. "It's perfect for you. Sometimes locks can't be picked; the safe needs to be blown apart instead. That memory magic could prove effective in your capable, if not blunt and vicious hands."

And then I flipped to the chapter titled Enforcing Your Obsidian Will. I quickly scanned the page up and down once, and then twice, and then a third time. My heart raced with the dark possibilities.

I looked up at him, barely able to control my excitement at the possibilities. "Let's go for it."

The demon's smile grew.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

"Well then," he said as he slowly removed his pristine gloves once again and cracked his knuckles. "You should sit back and relax as much as you can. I've got a whole lot of information to cram into that fragile little mind of yours."

Knowing what was coming next, I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes, collapsed into the plushy embrace of the chair, and exhaled. By the gods, I was not looking forward to this part. I remembered clearly the amount of sheer pain I went through the last time I made a deal with Maladim. I remember the electricity that coursed through my muscles while he stole old memories and habits and wrote in new ones.

I steeled myself for another round of it, but I knew that I would never be ready.

The demon took a couple steps towards me, circling around the table. His fingers twitched in anticipation of working his dark magic once more. "Now, before we begin, this is going to put you out for a long time, just like our last deal. You're going to wake up in Lyridia again, right in that old scholar's home. I have a few last things for you. Think of them as tools of the office.

"A notebook that is practically indestructible, and will survive whatever conditions you may find yourself in. You will discover that the ink is absorbed into the paper itself, and you are able to recall anything you've ever written down in it with a mere thought. Your writings will be shared with my library, just so you're aware. Also, you can contact me directly by writing in the notebook. You will also find a set of pens crafted from incredibly rare bones from a creature not of your dimension. I simply find that they are the most durable things and hold their ink well, and the metal set within them allow you to write in virtually any environment.

"Also, I'm gifting you four vials that will refill themselves automatically. They look small, but they're enchanted to hold an amount of ink that..." He placed a perfectly-manicured finger on his lips in deep thought. "In your words, it is a shit-load of ink."

I tried to imagine that much ink, but stopped somewhere around double digit gallons. That seemed reasonable for one unit in that particular measurement.

"Is there anything else I need to know?"

"Nope," Maladim said. "That about covers it."

"How will I know what my assignments are?"

"I'll be in touch through the notebook. Anything I communicate through it will be on the first page, and will only be visible by your eyes. Now, hold still..."

Maladim drew close, and places his hands on my face, his grip forming around the sharp bone structure of the body I took. His hands glowed with the light of dozens of blue-tinted runes, and my vision went white.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Another indeterminate amount of time passed before I came to.

By now, you would think that I've experienced enough blackouts that I would be able to subconsciously gauge how much time I spent passed out.

I groaned as I pushed myself up from where I had lain. My vision was still a bit blurry, but I could make out the gold and red embroidered patterns on the overstuffed couch cushions. Groaning loudly, I slowly nudged myself into a sitting position. My head ached, my thoughts were swimming around in a soupy miasma, and my movements were slow and clumsy. I could feel the residual electricity of Maladim Karunungan, The Keeper of Knowledge and my new employer for all eternity rippling through my limbs.

Why do I keep doing these things to myself?

Oh well, doesn't fucking matter anymore. I could now go free, doing whatever I want, unshackled to any other lords and masters.

No Pode.

No Lichensith.

No Briarheart.

I was free. Free to slip into the obscurity I craved. Free to retreat into the world and be my own woman. Free to spend my afternoons lazing around in some secluded lakeside camp, a book in one hand an a whisky in the other, without a care in the world. All I would need to do in return is torture some poor sap and steal their eldritch spellbooks once in a while.

I felt as if a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

This was going to be fun. Life was going to be fun again. Just like it had been when I first quit killing for a living and opened up the bookstore on Janus Street.

My thoughts wandered to Nell. My heart ached for her, and her fate at my hands. How I wished that she could've been alive to work with me in another bookstore...

I took a deep breath, and immediately choked on a horrid stench. Dudic Friedlander's rotting corpse laid in the center of his floor, his body decomposing, his blood solidified on the carpet. "Oh gods, that is rancid," I managed to sputter while covering my nose and fighting back the urge to vomit. I had to get out of here before someone else discovered what had happened to him. I hoped that the odors of decay hadn't seeped out into the streets of this hostile little slum.

I was out the back door in a flash. I released the breath I was holding, and sucked in the cool air of the port city. I stood there for several minutes, back to the wall, taking deep breaths every few moments.

This was it. My chance to be free--well, my chance to live my life on my own terms until called upon by Maladim to do his bidding, anyway.

That was about as close to freedom as I was going to get.

Considering the price I was willing to pay to achieve it, I would say it was worth it.

I felt a small tug at the back of my mind. Unconsciously, I flipped open the canvas flap of my satchel, and pulled out the notebook that I was given as an Archivist. It was an unassuming little thing, dark brown leather covered yellowed pieces of parchment. A thin strap tied around the open edge bound the book shut. I played around with the knots until they came undone, and I flipped open the front cover to find a message waiting for me.

Welcome aboard, Archivist Freebird. -M

[Philomel]

Name of Thread: Transformation Central
Judgement Type: Workshop

Rewards:
BlackAndBlueEyes receives:
4130 EXP*
220 GP*

*Both rewards are based on a 50% more points due to this thread taking place in Lornius. Descretion is also added for a very good thread.

[Rayleigh]

All EXP and GP have been added!