Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lithian swallowed, standing perfectly still as the twin chants from the two teachers rose up over the soft wind already rolling over the surrounding grasses. It teased through his hair as they spoke and he swore he could feel the energy in their words, building like a gradual crackle in the atmosphere itself. A sense beyond sight, smell, sound, taste, or touch. Something that lived and breathed and sank through a body with latent power. When the ritual came to its natural peak, each of the swirling blue dragon souls glimmering with their internal life force, Lord Ysaride’s voice and instructions only barely reached him, Lithian’s innate magic already calling out to that still encased in the orb between his palms, and when the dovaa leader’s words did register, it was almost more like a confirmation of something he felt intrinsically that he already ought to do.

He pressed his palms in, and the dragon soul fractured as surely as the first that he had ever crushed. Swirling blue and aquamarine — the colors of the sky and sea and every lake, river, and raindrop — all undulated from staff to staff and then in, pouring into his body. For an instant, he could see nothing, and everything. White-blue and too bright, he felt the power of oceans, tides, and floodwaters rushing through and into his body, building up, up, up until he felt as though his natural form might burst, unable to contain all the energy. Every breath was charged, too hot and too large, and his heart felt as though it were straining beyond its bounds.

He cried out.

Or, he was fairly certain he did, except that he couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t hear anything over the rush and swell and surf, and then, just as he felt certain his mind would rip itself apart under the tide of magic—

Silence.

Blackness.

Lithian stirred groggily, his limbs feeling heavy and strange as he shook himself. When he did, though, he blinked, startled. He was laying on the grass. That much, he knew for sure. But what struck him as infinitely stranger still than that was that everything had shrunk. He attempted to push himself upwards — staggered, because—

Where were his hands?

—and then oh, yes, four legs, alright.

His ‘yip’ sounded more like a disgruntled and high pitched bark of a roar and when he tripped over his own legs and fell into the grass, he tore up a good portion of it. His huff was like a small wind, and he perked his head up, glancing back around himself and experimentally swishing his — large and finlike — tail as he looked for Casseth.

«Casseth?» He blinked. «Oh, right. I…suppose it makes at least some sense that the dragon tongue would be a natural default.»

Lithian ‘grinned’ at Casseth’s voice, though the gesture certainly felt stranger with a different face, and he made a low, rumbling sound as he turned clumsily towards his mate attempting — with partial success — to disrupt as little as possible in the process.

«You’re so small» he noted, amused as he hunkered his snout low and sniffed Casseth testingly. The result was rich with detail. Complex and intertwined with myriad intricacies. The rumbling sound from before grew slightly in volume such that Lithian wondered if it was a purr, though he wasn’t intentionally making it. «And, I could swear I can smell you in ways I couldn’t ever have imagined before. It’s like your scent has another dimension entirely to it…» He restrained — only barely, and only because they had company — the overpowering urge to lick and double-check the scent with his tongue. Instead, he gave Cas as ‘gentle’ of a nudge with his snout as he could manage. «Go on, then,» he rumbled. «Join me so you can totter around like an infant also.» He stretched back, settling on his haunches and lifting one foreleg to investigate his talons inquisitively before stretching his wings. They cast the entire ‘ring’ of staves in shadow, spreading far beyond the boundaries of it in either direction, and he hum-rumbled happily, an almost trill-like sound. «I’m so BIG.»

“Come,” Lord Ysaride’s voice cut in. “Step forward, hybrid. You will follow the same procedure as he.”

«Good luck,» Lithian said, the words a soft draconic rumble as he edged back to settle himself solidly outside of the four corners that the staves established. After a moment’s debate, he let his magic ripple, relinquishing his dragon shape for the time being and shrinking back down into his body as a man. There, standing with his eyes still rooted on Casseth, he smiled, mouthing the words, ‘I love you.’

Lithian laughed, his eyes dancing as they flit up over Casseth, taking him in. “We have,” Lithian murmured in response, reaching out as he spoke and brushing his fingers up the hard, gold-brown scales of Casseth’s snout. “We really have…”

Testing the effect, Lithian gave a push of will with his own magic, and found that now — having done it once — calling upon his dragon form was nearly effortless. Like blinking, or batting his wings: a physical instinct. And in moments, he was large again, snout to snout with his mate. He blinked at the first thing potently obvious to him:

«You’re bigger than me!»

A cough sounded from below him, and Lithian glanced around to find Lord Ysaride and the two teachers. “Congratulations to both of you,” he said. “This is no small feat. Quite the contrary, it is one many never achieve in their lifetime. As you are already noticing, however, it will take some adjusting to. I recommend spending time in your dragon body and accustoming yourselves to it before engaging in anything which might require fluid reaction times and defense of yourself.” After going on, briefly, to explain some additional details about the form and the powers it entailed, including the dragon body’s natural connection and ‘oneness’ with their Magescian selves — injuries translating directly over, as one might guess — he eventually left them, he and the two teachers returning in the direction of the Celestial Fortress.

Once they had the field to themselves, Lithian hummed — a deep, happy vibration of sound — and nosed his snout against his mate’s neck, giving in to the desire to lick affectionately. «We are dragons, love…what would you like to do first?»

Lithian laughed, a sound that he would have to get used to, coming from the belly and voicebox of a dragon, but a laugh just the same. «So be it,» he answered with a smile, and they did.

It took some time, of course, both of them fumbling a good deal at first and tottering about like new colts as they acclimated themselves to the foreign concept of four legs and bodies that weighed as much as their house. But, among its other virtues, the Celestial Plane was safe. A bubbled utopia free of fear for attacks from other dragons or dangerous beasts, and the fields of Aloradhan were wide and open, providing ample room for trial and error.

They took advantage of it. For hours, the two of them experimented, first rolling and hopping in the grasses, getting used to their legs and skin, then chasing each other over the lightly rolling hills as they learned to synch their front legs with their back. And, finally, by the time midday was rolling into evening, they were flying comfortably, stretching their great wings and turning loops around each other in the boundless hemisphere that was the Celestial Plane’s sky.

Tomorrow, they would be back in the lower world. For now, the possibilities were endless.