I trudged through the forest, contemplating recent events. I had nearly died due to a lack of caution, blindly eating something far beyond my ability to handle. I was normally rather cautious when I hunted, but I’d never imagined that something I’d eat could harm me. No, that’s not really true. Even though I suspected that I could probably eat anything I wanted without a problem now, I still avoided plants and nonliving material. I still remembered my early days, stalking and watching my sibling that had degraded over time into little more than a gelatinous blob of gluttony, eventually becoming a pile of living compost.

I’d grown incautious of late, taking risks I never would have considered before. I’d suffered grievous harm several times since I’d eaten that first human, and somehow ended up caught in a strange deal with a very strange dryad. Life had been so much simpler when I was simpler.

I dismissed those thoughts for now, and recalled what the dryad had said to me when I woke up after eating the dragon skin. “You said earlier, I invented a magic? What is that?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. I was wondering when you’d ask me about that. You performed some kind of custom sealing spell to contain the dragon essence you consumed. I didn’t know you knew how to do that. I mean, I don’t think anyone’s ever heard of a chimera mage before.”

“Mage? Spell? What do those mean?”

“Oh, well, hmm, how to explain this… Ah, you know how everything has an aura to it, right? And living things have especially potent ones. Well, that aura is basically how much you weigh upon the normal rules of reality. Something like you or me will normally have more, because our very existence is not possible by those rules. But reality is quite flexible. Instead of breaking, it just sort of bends and warps around those that have stronger auras.

“Magic is what happens when a being uses their aura to twist reality. Most magic beings do this unintentionally. When it is done intentionally, we call that a spell. Mages are beings who have chosen to study the use of spells and accumulating their magic aura. Your own shape changing abilities were already pseudo-spells, as you were twisting a function of your own body to match your intent. However, that thing you did with the dragon essence was a genuine spell. A fairly complex one too.”

“You know how to use spells?” I asked. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to rely on the humans to learn after all. Though, maybe I should anyways, just in case they knew different spells.

“Nope,” she answered with a happy chirp. “The best I can do are pseudo-spells. I never bothered trying to learn anything beyond expanding my own natural abilities. Us dryads aren’t exactly known for doing much planning for our own futures, since we generally care much more about our forest.”

Well, that’s disappointing, but only to be expected.

“You know, I’ve been thinking, Shaper. You keep trying to use weapons, and keep losing them… Why not try making them from yourself? Like a sort of pseudo-form.”

It felt like the suns had risen inside my head, to shine upon an idea that had been languishing in the dark. That was it! That was the idea that had been nagging at me but not yet fully formed. If I could manifest creature traits in a way that was suitable for my own body, I should also be able to shape them fully, to create nearly anything I wanted. The possibilities were practically endless!

Without any further words, I dropped to the forest floor and took a seat, dropping into my meditative trance. As my awareness of the outside world faded, my focus turning inward, I was dimly aware of a thicket of brambles growing up around my body and Dendra muttering something to herself.

In the calm, quiet emptiness of my inner self, I was dimly aware of a glowing presence. I turned my attention to it and saw the sphere of turtle shell, leaking out just a hint of draconic power. The cords of aura that ran through and around it writhed and squeezed at it, like constrictor snakes. That made sense, since I had held the image of one in my mind as I was fashioning the binding.

I pushed the seal away from my focus, and began to build the concept and image in my mind. I wanted to start off with something straightforward. I remembered the spear, the first weapon I’d seen, the one that allowed the weak little human to mortally wound a dire bear, even though it cost him his life.

Dendra watched as he sank into a deep meditative trance. He had seemed uncharacteristically excited when she had brought up the idea of growing his own weapons. She’d have been mildly annoyed with his abrupt stop, were she not overwhelmed by how adorable he was when excited. She’d pinch his cheeks if they’d been soft enough to pinch. Instead, she extended the tiny roots once more to monitor the flows of his aura. If she couldn’t satisfy herself with cheek pinching, she’d have to make do with peeping.

For the first twenty minutes or so, nothing visible happened, so she passed her time marveling at the sealing spell that writhed within his chest. Eventually, Shaper’s aura began to condense and flowed in incomprehensible patterns that felt almost, but not quite natural. Shaper’s right hand moved, and his clawed fingers opened so that his palm was held upwards. As Dendra watched, the flesh of his palm split open, and veins surged forth. Then, with unnatural speed, flesh and bone began to form and grow.

Over the next few minutes, a spinal column made of light gray bone grew forth from his palm, extending to six feet in length. Red flesh was stretched across the vertebral columns, muscle tissue that kept the bones straight. Small organs pulsed along its length. Then a dark grayish green coating spread out to cover the entire thing, looking much like the shells of the fog turtles that Shaper had eaten.

Dendra watched with rapt attention as Shaper grew a spear of flesh and blood and bone in a matter of minutes. She felt the sap rushing through her body flush with pleasure. Oh, how adorable her little Shaper was. She would get him to plant her new tree, and then she would continue to accompany him, she decided once again. She would allow nothing prevent her from witnessing first-hand the waves that he would make as the world dashed itself against him.

When I felt the spear I had envisioned finish growing, I withdrew from my meditative state to inspect my handiwork, both visually and with my magic perception. I took the spear in my left hand as I inspected, releasing it from the grip of my right hand, ensuring that it was not still connected to my body by any lingering nerves or blood vessels. The shaft of the spear was covered with textured fog turtle shell, which encased its core of troll spinal column. Tiny vents in the shell allowed the uptake of air from outside into the bloodstream to keep the tissue within living, while miniature single chamber hearts distributed throughout kept the blood circulating. The tip of the spear was a gleaming white with four closely clustered points made of the same material as giant mole beaver teeth. The four points surrounded a fifth, slightly recessed point which was a thicker wyvern quill attached to muscles that could push the quill forward with considerable force, allowing it to drive deep into a target’s flesh.

I could feel the spear pulsating with life, sustained by the aura that I fed it. I was pleased with my work. Next, I tried to reabsorb the spear. This part went agonizingly slow. It wasn’t at all like when I was changing forms, it felt more like I was trying to eat it, but through my palm. The process sped up when I held the spear in both hands, but it still took nearly thirty minutes for me to fully reabsorb the spear.

That wouldn’t do. I regrew the spear, this time watching with my full awareness as it took shape. As with my form shifting, the subsequent attempt was faster than the original, so I reasoned I would be able to grow the spear acceptably fast with some practice.

This time, instead of trying to reabsorb the spear through my hands, I decided to eat it. I influenced the shell and bone to soften and simply devoured the thing in a few quick bites. I felt the disjointed aura of the spear smoothly rejoining my own as it vanished into my stomach.

I then began to practice growing the spear, testing my limits. As each one completed, I set it aside and began the next.

It felt fundamentally different than my form shifting. As I created each one, slightly faster than the previous one, I felt it wear on my mind. The process was mentally taxing, probably because this was pushing my own natural abilities far beyond what they would normally be capable of doing on their own. By the time I created the tenth spear, finished in just under a minute, I felt too exhausted to continue, so I set about reclaiming the pile of spears.

“You know Shaper, I could normally make so many silly jokes about this, but ultimately it’s so practical and utilitarian and you, that I really can’t. Although I doubt you’d understand the humor anyway. We’ll have to work on that,” Dendra said.