“Why’s that?”

  “Well, this ability is extremely rare amongst dragonkin. If others found out that you were able to become a dragon, even if only for a short duration, they might seek to do you harm either out of jealousy or to torture the secret out of you.”

  Mira thought about that for a moment. “Thank you for thinking of my safety.”

  “Always, uxor.”

  His response had come so quickly that Mira realized he had spoken before even thinking about what he was going to say. It was reflexive almost. She really wanted to know what an uxor was, but even more than that she was curious about what had happened to him.

  “I still want to take the risk. Even being alive in Eloria is a risk.”

  “You speak like there is some other way of living.”

  Now it was her turn to keep a secret. “Maybe there is. But I think that is a secret I shall keep for now.”

  He tilted his head to the side as he examined her. Mira expected that Dragos thought she was messing with him, but he didn’t seem to get angry. When he didn’t say anything further, she said, “I do have one other question. Isn’t this just a shape-changing ability? Why should it matter that much? Surely such magic is common here.”

  “Less so than you might imagine. But now this is not a simple alteration of my shape. With this ability, I become a dragon complete with all of its power and mindset. It is not at all like changing my clothes or gear for example.”

  “Hmm… now I want to know even more.”

  Dragos grimaced with an expression she had seen upon her father’s face more than once when speaking to his mother. “Ugh, I just can’t seem to tell you no. Fine, but I still need to wait until a minute before the next wave begins. I can only hold this form for about twenty minutes.”

  She’d take it.

  Just a few minutes later he was transforming but intentionally slowed it down to allow her to study it. She triggered her Steal Spell ability but then caught it with Spell Weaving and twisted it. She was so focused that time almost slowed to a crawl.

  Mira watched as the weave of mana reshaped his body. It was as though a concept within him was made whole. She pondered it and then began forming a spell construct within her mind.

  Steal Spell: +2 - you have learned how to borrow from the concepts of a spell without taking the entire spell.

  Shape Spell: +1 - you have learned by watching as grandmaster mana manipulation is used.

  Spell Weaving: +1 - you have increased your understanding of spell construction.

  You have gained a new skill - Spell Forge: 1. Against this forge you can beat the fabric of the world to create new spells. No longer will you be dependent upon those who have gone before you. This skill may only be increased by use.

  The notifications flashed by before she had time to think any further about it. Everything inside of her was screaming about a threat that they were about to face. She spun and looked as a monstrous beast came charging across the ground. It was a huge spider beyond her ability to comprehend.

  Mira had been there when Seimion took on a giant spider form, but this dwarfed that. This spider could easily have walked over the top of a two-story house, and it never would have touched her abdomen. She must have been forty feet wide, and the top of her body was a good fifty feet in the air.

  Her fangs were dripping with a sickly green substance, and she shrieked out a challenge. There could be no doubt. This was a grave enemy set on destroying Dragos. For his part, the dragon roared back his own rage. He clearly hated the creature and wanted to see it die, but it had to be three times his mass. Still, he flew up and gained the high ground.

  If only having the high ground guaranteed a victory.

  Then he let loose a stream of dragon fire. The massive spider lowered her head covered with her many eyes. The flame struck its back and burnt away hair, causing a reeking odor to fill the air, but it didn’t seem to damage the chitinous carapace.

  That was a first for Mira. So far everything that dragon fire hit had been consumed. Then things got even worse as a web as thick as the width of a car shot out from her backside and snagged Dragos just as he was trying to pull up from his attack. The sticky white substance clung to his tail and then the spider moved with astounding speed.

  Her body twisted and yanked on the webbing. Dragos was pulled from the sky and slammed into the ground. Mira fired off a heal spell of her own, saving the last heal in her ring of spell storing. Then she cast her offensive magic in rapid succession.

  She became a veritable storm of destruction as she pulled the last of her offensive spells from her belt and staff and then cast some of her own. Spinning blades of translucent ice, magic missiles, fire bolts, arcs of electricity, and even a glob of sticky slime from her wand all shout out. They slammed into the spider monster, but all she did was look at Mira with disdain as if to say, “So what if I’m a spider.”

  From what she could tell, the creature’s damage resistance was so high that all of the spells combined only managed to do a few hundred points of damage, and that was a fraction of its health.

  Worry filled Mira, and she felt her stomach twisting into knots. She was scared for herself but more for Dragos. The spider seemed to be able to manipulate its webs and slam it back and forth.

  Mira wanted, no she needed to help him. Passing the dungeon and perhaps her very life depended on it. Yet he was her teammate, and right now she was thinking about his life more than her own. She didn’t have buffs to make him stronger. She couldn’t deal the raw damage that her dad could and didn’t dare get into melee range. If her spells had done so little, her whip wouldn’t fare any better, and that thing could kill her just by stepping on her.

  She reached out with her senses and looked for mana around the creature. She had mana within it, but it wasn’t using any. All of this was just her pure physical might. In other words, she was Mira’s greatest nightmare. She couldn’t reach out and twist any of its defenses because they were simply its impenetrable skin.

  Then she facepalmed as she said, “Hey, Megan.” She hated that this was the impression that came back to her after teasing her dad and brother for watching that stupid cartoon, but it was how she felt. She had overlooked the obvious.

  She had asked Dragos to show her his transformation. Why had she done that if she didn’t mean to use it? Fear threatened to creep into her, but she pushed it down. Fear was a survival instinct, but in this case, it made no sense. She would die or she wouldn’t, but she couldn’t let an emotion stop her from doing all she could.

  Dragos had finally freed himself from the web and was putting up a bit more of a fight, but he had been battered pretty badly, and the initiative lay with the spider. Mira was going to change that. Since arriving in Eloria it had been change or die, and this time the change was a literal one.

  She focused on the image of how the mana had woven around Dragos as it changed him. Then she began working it. In some ways, it was like an enchantment. She wished she hadn’t gambled her enchanting skill, but wishes wouldn’t save her now. Only willpower would.

  She formed points on her body. She might not be able to use enchanting, but she still understood the underlying principles. The canvas this time was her body. Mira pulled in the mana around her and wove the pattern she felt would change her. Pain coursed through her body, and a notification forcibly appeared before her eyes.

  Warning! You are attempting to alter not only your physical form but your very nature to that of a different type of being, specifically a dragon. Once this process is started, it cannot be stopped.

  Failure to complete it will result in death.

  Do you wish to proceed? Yes or No?

  That was a first when trying to form a new spell or magical effect. Yet she quickly realized it didn’t mean anything. She would be dead if she couldn’t contribute to this fight in a more meaningful way. So, she jumped in with both feet.

  The transformation began then, and she felt her mana stores being burnt through. Within seconds, it was clear she didn’t have enough mana within her body. She tapped into the mana in her staff and whip butt and bought herself a few more seconds.

  She heard the fight going on, punctuated by blasts of heat and the angry cries of both monsters, but she couldn’t let that enter her mind. All her focus was required for this. The extra mana gave her just enough time to start pulling in the ambient mana around her. As quickly as she could, she was still limited as her nature was changing.

  Mira kept pushing though. She would never fail because she hadn’t given it her all. She managed to pull out three mana potions from her pouch. They were the only ones she had left, but she downed the first one.

  With that, she gained enough mana, and her skin shifted from its dusky tone to that of silver scales. It itched and felt like her skin was being scalded off her body, but she kept pushing. Then she realized that she had already drained all the mana that her potion gave her.

  She downed another one and at the same time activated the temporary burst effect of her Mana Regeneration skill. The rate at which she recovered mana jumped up. That was when the true pain began. Her limbs felt like they were being broken a thousand times over, and the pieces pushed into some gruesome mosaic.

  She downed the third potion and barely managed not to lose consciousness. That would have been death, so she kept pushing. All the mana she could absorb, all the mana she could regenerate, and it still wasn’t enough.

  Then Mira remembered the new skills she had picked up. Fury Burn and Mage’s Rage. The latter wouldn’t help her, but Fury Burn could dramatically increase her current mana supply. So she pushed all fourteen points of Fury she had and bumped up her current max mana by 4200. In conjunction with the boosted regen from her skill and three potions, she was finally staying ahead of the transformation.

  The most painful part occurred at the end as the bones of her face underwent the repeated breaking and reforming process. She had a newfound respect for Dragos if he underwent this process every time he had to change. Then it happened.

  Congratulations! You have become a silver dragon. This is a breed now extinct upon Eloria, but you have reformed it. Instead of flame, your abilities lie in the area of cold. You possess cold so sharp that it can cut. This was the first spell that you repeatedly used, and it has left its mark on you, which, in turn, guided your transformation.

  You have gained the trait: Dragon Soul. You may only use this trait in 5-minute intervals, and each transformation will require a lengthy period of recovery.

  Represent dragonkind well.

  Something was different about her. She glanced inward at her sheet and saw that all her spells and magical skills were temporarily blocked off, but she had a new set of abilities to go with it.

  Natural Weapon Combat: 100- a skill that increases your fighting prowess with natural weapons including your bite, claws, wings, and tail. Accuracy is increased by 5% per level and damage by 1%.

  Natural Weapon Mastery: 50- a skill that increases the damage of your natural weapons. Damage is increased by 5% per level.

  Razor’s Edge: 50- a skill that increases the cutting power of any relevant attack. Your cutting attacks possess armor penetration equal to 4 x skill level and a critical chance equal to .25% x skill level.

  Blizzard Aura: 5- a passive skill that is active unless you will it to shut off. It creates the general effect of a blizzard around your body. Range is 1’ per level. Visibility around the aura is greatly reduced. You are unaffected by the visibility reduction. All creatures within the aura take 10-20+2 dmg/level every tick they spend inside the aura. This damage is cold-based.

  Breath Weapon: 10- cutting cold. Your breath creates a cone of absolute zero and is filled with spinning blades of ice. Range 10’ per level with a 90-degree arc. Damage: 400-800+10/level.

  As with all silver dragons, you possess resistance to slashing attacks: 100- this will increase as your mastery improves, complete immunity to cold, and vulnerability to fire.

  There was so much to take in. It looked like her magical abilities weren’t cut off forever. If she could master this new form then she would learn to be able to access her magic, even while being a dragon. The coolness factor of this new shape couldn’t be underestimated, but Dragos was losing, and she needed to make the difference.

  She would only get one chance to make a sneak attack. So instead of admiring her new form anymore, she crouched low and snuck up towards the spider. Its front two legs along with its fangs were keeping Dragos busy. Anytime the dragon tried to flank the spider monster, it spun to keep him in front of it. Since his wings were gooped up with webbing, he wasn’t able to escape that way.

  He was still able to push the spider back with flames, but those were coming less and less often. He also seemed to be emitting a fiery aura like her cold aura. It injured the spider every time it attacked, but the powerful piercing blows from the spider were making a bloody mess of Dragos.

  No more. She leapt forward, driving with her legs and her wings. It felt weird, but she tried to empty her mind and just go with it. She was a dragon, not just someone imitating a dragon. She blasted out her breath weapon and aimed, not for the spider’s body but for the legs on its left side. She managed to damage three of them, but only the back two were completely frozen.

  The joints were coated in ice, and the carapace was cracked and torn up in numerous spots. The spider tried to spin to face this new threat, but Mira wouldn’t let her get away that quickly. Instead, she had already kept going forward with her breath attack. She spun her body and slammed her tail into those two frozen legs.

  They shattered into hundreds of pieces, and the spider fell over. It was far from dead as it pushed back up almost immediately, but this time it had two dragons attacking it.. Neither were as big as it was, but Mira’s breath kept one side of it frozen while Dragos burned and scorched away at the monster’s eyes.

  The battle still dragged on, but its outcome was now inevitable. Her claws ripped the spider’s carapace and cut deeply, its flesh releasing brackish-colored blood. She slammed her tail against it, battering it, even if she had trouble breaking the shell that way. She even combined her attacks by using her breath to soften a spot, her claws to break its structural integrity, and then her tail to smash it in.

  When it finally collapsed, Mira didn’t even hesitate but bit down hard on it. The taste of spider flooded her mouth, but the primal urge to destroy her enemy pushed her past the ick factor.

  Notifications about defeating the spider beast came as did rewards from finishing the dungeon. She was now going to hit Tier 5, but she pushed all those things aside. She had more rewards to contemplate than she knew what to do with, but her body wasn’t responding anymore.

  All the strength had left Mira, and she felt her body start to transition back. Within seconds, she was back on her ground but in half-elf form. The first thought she had was to panic about whether she was naked or not. She didn’t know if her clothes would automatically appear again. It was an irrational fear as Dragos had never had a problem with that, but somehow the thought that he might see her as anything less than perfect bothered her.

  He shrunk down to his regular dragonkin form and came to kneel next to her.

  “You were glorious. I knew there had to be a reason for the imprint.”

  Her mind was too foggy to understand what he was saying, but she appreciated his presence. It made her feel secure. Mira felt more drained than ever before and knew she needed to sort this out but couldn’t muster the mental energy.

  All she managed to say with a wavering voice was, “Take me home.”

  “As you wish, uxor.”

  Epilogue

  Draznei’kai stepped out of a shadow portal conjured with his increased magic. He looked around and extended his senses. Yes, this was the right place. He grinned in anticipation of the fun he was about to have.

  The death knight strode across the rocky terrain over a hill and then down another until he saw the makeshift city that had sprung up around the new khan of the orcs. There had to be more than a hundred thousand of them, but he didn’t care. They were ants.

  No, not ants. They were hounds, and he was going to use them to flush out his true targets. He strode across the open ground, and a cry went out from the wall. Soon crossbow bolts were being fired at him, but the air was distorted as shadowy tendrils reached out and grabbed each bolt before they could cause harm.

  He conjured his mage shield then and allowed the warriors to throw themselves at him. The difference in power between Tier 3 and Tier 6 was the same expanse as trying to cross the ocean. He was confident he had nothing to fear from them in a few moments. Maybe with time for preparation, they might put up a meaningful attack, but not a bunch of gate guards who were, at most, Tier 3.

  When there was a lull in the violence, Draznei’kai said, “I was told your khan might care about an orc woman named Chimeg. If you desire her death then keep attacking me.”

  That brought everything to a halt. Guards stood in a circle around his spell shield with weapons extended, but a messenger went running. Draznei’kai realized he had gauged the situation correctly when less than ten minutes later a group of orcs came running out of the city.

  Guards encircled those in the center, but it was clear this was a quickly thrown together party. He waited for them to arrive. When they finally did, a large specimen of an orc called out, “You wanted to speak to me about Chimeg?”