>>5374438>>5373694>>5373704>>5373706>>5373725>>5374047You spend the next three days largely in seclusion with the Novice. Your objective: to strengthen your <Dragonshape>. It is frankly UNACCAPETABLE that a single veteran dwarf, with two rank amateurs for back-up, put up such a fight against you. A TRUE dragon would have swatted such vermin like flies!
The lessons are long, and often mentally and physically taxing, but you can’t say they are UNPLEASANT. Self-improvement is a matter of sacrifice—you have learned, in fact, that sacrifice must necessarily be a matter of most advancements in life. Perhaps that is the fundamental transformation in your attitude: you have come to understand that there is nothing in life which one can acquire by mere half-measures, without shedding blood, sweat, and tears for it. Sometimes this is literal, sometimes allegorical, but the pain is necessary.
(And anyway, it means a lot of long hours practicing form and motion—sometimes in quite close proximity—with the Novice Fleshweaver.)
As the process progresses, so does your dragon form. When you assume your enhanced form now, fins sprout up from your shoulder-blades—wide, webbed apparati of spines and splayed webbing. You flex them, finding they move in ways tantalizingly-similar to the wings of the Junior Novice. Is true FLIGHT almost within your grasp?!
On the subject of the Junior Novice, you spar with that sad, hybrid creature, who faces you in your <Dragonshape> under duress. At first, engorged with draconic transfusions as he is, the former ‘dogbold’ puts up quite an even fight. Bit by bit, though, your musculature, your armoured scales, your teeth and talons… They all improve. It gets to such a point that vestiges of your <Dragonshape> begin to linger beyond your transformation: your scaly skin darkens and turns more copper, your shin-spikes extend and horns lengthen.
>All checks of physical might and intimidation have their DC lessened by 1 while you still have mana>In <Dragonshape III>, their DC (and Firebreath DC, earth-aligned Elementalism DC, and Intimidation DC) is reduced by 3>The time-limit on your Dragonshape is reduced 