>>6051237You feel a pang of dread, but oblige, looking down at your digits… And find them pale. The work at old Maple Hill, and you stint in the Goblin Wastes beforehand, had left you rather tan for a gentleman of Sylvan and Northman heritage, if not exactly a rival to the Neme or Drow. Now, though, you are pale—moon-pale, so white as to rival the Lunar Eladrin with whom you had stayed. You think you feel yourself go paler still, as a chill crawls up your spine.
“What else?” you ask Izzy.
“Your eyes,” she supplies, understanding you. “The sclera is black. The, um… Your eyes are purple, too.”
“Purple?”
“Violet, I think,” she clarifies. “And… Glowing.”
…Oh.
“Do you feel alright?” Izirina asks.
“You mean, do I feel like cackling wickedly about my imminent world domination? Threatening to turn people into slaves or appetizers?”
Izirina frowns, and admonishes you: “Take this seriously.”
“I am,” you sigh. “And I do. Feel ‘alright’, that is. I… I feel the same.”
But you’re not, of course. Something has changed, but not with your morality, or your mindset. There is a continuity there. Whatever you have become, you are still YOU… Still Ezreal Mious Van Hotuzmann, still <span class="mu-r">Tips</span>.
Immediately, yous et about retrieving your staff, the <Archmage’s Gift> to you, before it drifts too far away and is lost evermore. With it, you quickly cast <Stabilize> upon the shivering shard of Izirina’s Shadow, bringing the both of you a great relief.
“We should make her a body,” you note, looking down upon her unconscious, ephemeral form.
“We should deal with the Unseelie Fey first,” Izirina says.
“She could help us,” you consider.
“Or complicate things,” Izirina counters.
“Izzy… Not to be, ah, indelicate, but it’s not as if you haven’t been ‘compciated’ at times, even without her influence.”
Izzy stiffens at this accusation, but she is too intelligent (and too aware of her failings, by now) to deny it.
“Just imagine what the embodiment of all those… Errors of judgement, and impulses… What SHE must be like?”
You frown, and she seems to pick up on your emotions, quickly amending:
“I-I’m not saying we abandon her, obviously. Just… Maybe we should be careful about the SORT of body we construct for her.”
“The soul affects the body, and the body affects the soul,” you recall, reflecting on what you have learned across these years of study and experimentation.
“Exactly,” Izzy agrees.
