FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

What Draaknei Look Like

"You're sure you want it freed?" Gregory asks, rather skeptically.

"Yes, I was the one he had gone after. And I will hold responsibility for anything he does. If he is genuine about trying to make amends, he'll understand the full weight of what that means," I say, glancing over towards him for effect. "Besides, he mentioned having a book on him and I'd like to see how that works."

"Your funeral if this goes south. Just don't blame me if I don't decide to trust a parasite completely, especially after nearly killing someone," Gregory responds and with a wave of his hand I can feel the anti-magic field drain away.

Fiin sighs and rolls his shoulders, his entire form seeming to ripple and distort for a moment before settling back into the squirrel-like form.

"You have no idea how good that feels. I have no problems going days if not weeks without shifting, but being unable to shift. Oh man. It's like telling someone they're not allowed to scratch their nose. Anyway," he says before moving his tail in front of him and after a moment of digging through his tail pulls out a strand of fur and with a bit of noticeable effort the strand expands outward until it takes the form of a rather large tome, about the size of my head.

"You had a book in your tail?" Hashal exclaims.

"I told you I had it on me but couldn't get at it within that anti-magic field. I can take any inorganic object and transform it to be a part of me for as long as I want and have the internal magic to maintain. I actually have the entire library of the mage that I got this from. He wasn't going to need it anymore."

"Why is that, did you kill him?" Simon threatens, starting to draw his blade out. I'm meanwhile carefully opening his tome and flipping through the pages, more or less just looking at the pictures of all of the various races since I can't read the language printed on the pages.

"What? No!" Fiin quickly responds, backing up slightly. "He literally had no more use for the library and gave it to me. Let me explain. The wizard I got all these books from lured me out because his studies told him that my kind had some rather interesting properties that we can do. We literally exist by moving the magic of others around. So he let me feed on him for a while and taught me stuff while he worked on his research. His wife, it turned out was affected by a curse of sleep, making it so that she could never wake up. He was hoping to use me to break the curse."

"And did he?" Hashal asks, more than slightly interested in the result all things considered.

"In a way. He found that I have the ability to use someone's magical reserves to block a curse. The curse is still there, it's just the effects no longer apply. So he had me use this ability to bind his magic to block his wife's curse. His entire library was full of books of magic and tomes on how he could potentially cure his wife. But with him no longer having any magic power left and his wife's curse completely suppressed he didn't really need them anymore, so he gave me his library as a way of thanks and I moved on."

"So can you do this with any curse?" Hashal asks hopefully.

"More accurately you want to know if I can cure your own particular curse," Fiin responds, getting a bit of a glance from Simon and Gregory in Hashal's direction, letting me know that he apparently hasn't told anyone else about his particular issue and reason for staying close. Thinking back on it it's a good thing that he hadn't turned while I was incapacitated like I was since I couldn't get Anaelin out to really stop him. Small blessings I guess. "And the answer is technically yes. You see, from what the wizard had said there technically is no limit to the strength of a curse that can be suppressed. The only real issue is the amount of magic required to suppress that curse. And unfortunately, your particular curse is one of the more powerful curses and not meant to be so easily handled. I could do it, but it would mean permanently sacrificing someone with as much magic as," he tilts his head and gestures at me, not wanting to say what I am to the others.

I keep flipping through his little book though I don't exactly know what the point of me doing so really is. It's not like I can read this language at all. The answer I'm sure is a bit disheartening for Hashal, as he knows full-well how losing my magic affected me and there's no way I'd sacrifice all my magic for the rest of my life just to stop a curse that will only occasionally have an impact, especially since I can have it under enough control anyway just using Anaelin and a small binding spell, like I did last time. Rophan has apparently woken up as I can hear him shouting around.

"Guys! There's a problem!" he shouts, trying to figure out where everyone was in order to get whatever assistance he is looking for. "Mige has disa-" he finally notices me looking at the book with Fiin also standing next to me, looking at the pages I'm looking at out of passive curiosity.

"You!" he shouts in our general direction. "What are you doing out? Get away from him!"

"Quiet, you're making my head hurt," I complain back at him, which is only a half truth. My head is still swimming a bit and his shouting does make it a bit harder to focus on keeping my head up but doesn't actually cause me any discomfort by itself.

Rophan quickly puts his hands up to his mouth apologetically but still closes the distance, and with everyone else over here Ceirla makes her way over as well, making everyone in our little group surrounding Fiin, which likely isn't making him all that comfortable.

"So what is that thing doing free?" Rophan asks Simon.

Simon shrugs and gestures at me, "they asked to free the parasite."

"He had a book about magical creatures in his tail. I wanted to take a look at it," I say as casually as I can manage.

"You should not be up. You're still unwell."

"Maybe I should just strap you to that thing for a day or two, see how you feel about wanting to stay still. Besides, that binding felt more like someone trying to put me in a cage than it did carrying me for my own good. Though I guess I do appreciate you all not just leaving me on the road."

"We could never do that to you," Ceirla responds. "Besides, what good of a model would I be making if I just let all my bodyguards die simply because it'd be a bother to take care of them. I would never be able to get anyone willing to protect me if I was so crass as to abandon anyone under my service simply because it was inconvenient to do so when they collapsed from a recoverable condition."

"Though I've been thinking," I say, trying to change the subject away from my disease. "I keep hearing about these Draaknei things," I notice how Hashal gives me a rather uncomfortable look while Rophan more expresses disgust at the term. "Would it be possible to know what one looks like?"

"Well that should be easy enough," Rophan says as he moves over and grabs the book from me. He glances at the title quickly to verify what it is then begins to flip through the pages and stops on a particular one and then frowns. "Or I guess not, there's no picture of them in here."

"You'll never find one," Fiin adds. "It's considered bad luck. However it might be a fun enough game to see what they look like based on what you all know of them. I can shapeshift into just about anything. So you tell me what features they have and I'll adopt them and we can at least create an approximation for what a Draaknei looks like, correct?"

"That seems simple enough," Gregory says. "But if I get any indication that you're trying to trick us in any way, I will be forced to take you out."

"I'm not going anywhere. I have to repay this fine individual for the kindness that was bestowed upon me by preserving my life."

At first the group seems somewhat reluctant about the concept of describing such an entity and I half fear that they'd end up just describing something close to me, but once Rophan gets into it they all start following suit and I find that it's not at all what I'd expect. I mean the long tail and quadrupedal stance are true, but everything else seems to be more and more of an exaggerated reality. Like someone saw one of the weapons my people created that modified a part of their body and so it came to the conclusion that all of us had that feature as an innate part of our biology. Hashal looked incredibly embarrassed by the entire interchange while Fiin was completely impartial. All the others were slowly getting into the game of describing all of the details about the race, including trying to think up the minutia that my kind obviously all had but the others had forgotten about.

And comparing this facsimile to what my kind truly does look like I can feel a bit more assured that odds are no one is going to casually mistake me for being one of my own kind, as odd as that may be. I wonder, then, what people tend to think about the rest of my kind. We do travel on our pilgrimages and so we should be common enough for some to see us. But we look nothing like this monstrosity. The Draaknei thing that Fiin has taken the form of is easily twice my size, with a long bladed tail, a half dozen razor sharp spikes coming out of its forehead, three sets of eyes, including a pair of eyes on the shoulders for some strange reason. Claws that are half a foot long and in such a way that would make moving in any regard an extremely uncomfortable affair. All in all something that would be incredibly intimidating to look at, probably a real issue to have to fight, but would have the hardest time ever trying to survive in a day to day fashion. It does definitely look like someone crafted this thing to create death. It does make me dwell on just what would happen with the rest of these people if they found out what the thing they are describing really looks like. But the matter seems mostly settled as they're struggling to really agree with some points on what it looks like and then everything is interrupted by my stomach deciding to growl at me. I suppose it has been a few days. But Rophan apparently hears it and decides that the matter is settled.

"That's it. No point in scaring Mige any more than necessary. It's time we get dinner cooked so that we can eat any help regain more energy to flourish," he says and Fiin shrinks back down to his more squirrel-like form. He also moves forward and takes the book back from me. I'd like to look at it more but I suppose food should be a bit of a higher priority to me at the moment.