>>5900531Devi and Nym prove to be capable instructors, and eager students as well. It’s a little frustrating at times, the way they interrupt your train of thought with interrogations as to Earthly matters. Sometimes the questions are remarkably mundane, almost childlike (“How do people get food to eat in cities? What kinds of animals have you seen? Have you ever met a beastman or a half-orc? Were they nice?”) while others remind you just how alien they really are to you (“What do colours look like to humans? What does it feel like when you need to breathe but can’t? Does gravity on Earth hurt?”). Still others remind you of the full potential of this research subject, and THOSE are the ones that stick with you:
“Why do people wear shoes instead of just making the ground softer, or developing hooves?”
“If you like your bed here, why not just change your density and temperature tolerance and sleep on clouds on Earth?”
“You know, you wouldn’t need to eat at all if you took in more sunlight and processed it into chemical energy… Why don’t you do that?”
You go back and forth like this for a while, in between more complex explanations of the somatic, verbal, and mental aspects of controlling one’s form. This goes on for days, or weeks, or… Well, you’re not really sure. As it continued, though, your frustration at your own limitations and slow progress bubbles up into a realization of your own, which you find yourself blurting out one day as more of a demand:
“Look, if this… ‘Fairy Adaptation of yours can do all THAT, why is Priestess Clanirae still capable of being hurt? Why does she eat food, and drink water, and feel gravity? Why doesn’t SHE have hooves or feed on sunlight?!”
The attendants look at each other, but you narrow your eyes and interrupt their psychic aside: “Oh no, none of that! Out with it! Share with the whole class, why don’t you?”
“Well…” Devi winces
“It’s a trade-off,” Nym admits. “You have seen the way in which True fey exist—above and beyond your own physical limitations, or even ours, but it is ALSO difficult for them to interact directly with the material of your world for extended periods. The longer they remain fully ‘materialized’, the more it drains them.”
“And the <Rite of Attunement> was not meant to be practiced over and over,” Devi cautions you. “The fundamental changing of a soul affects the body, mind, and soul. It is easy to become unmoored… To lose your fundamental sense of self.”
“You could become disconnected, without ego,” says Nym. “Mindless, directionless…”
“Or absorbed entirely into the nature of that which you adapt to!” Devi whispers urgently. “Like the…”
Devi stops, and looks to Nym as if for permission to continue, but you’ve already figured it out.
“The Unseelie Court,” you conclude. “The Dark Fey.”
“Yes,” both your attendants answer at once, faces serious.
