Silence followed the one word that Cellestra had spoken. Her eyes were still darting up and down. It took her a minute to speak, but she fumbled trying to form a coherent sentence.

“How… wha… Kealyna?” Was all she managed to produce.

I nodded, wanting to speak. There was so much I had to talk about with the elf, but now that I’d finally gotten the ability to do so, I didn’t seem to be able to find the words. When I finally wanted to say a word as simple as “hi,” I, too, managed to screw it up. I couldn’t produce the sounds I wanted. My mouth still felt partly alien to me.

I coughed a couple of times and had to scrape my throat as I focused on remembering how to speak. It hadn’t been too long since I was able to, but my body had gone through so many changes that it took me a moment to figure out.

“Hi,” I finally said, noticing that I still possessed the soft, melodic voice that I always thought of as unfitting for a knight. I’d never managed to quite put the oomph into my voice in battle as some others.

I guessed if I wanted to scare others now, I’d merely have to click my fangs together… or something like that.

After she’d stared at my elven torso for several more seconds I saw her eyes trail off to the rest of my body. I swore I could read what she was thinking. I believe it was something along the lines of ‘the rest of you hasn’t changed.’

It was true. The rest of my body was still exactly the same as before my evolution. I imagined that was part of the reason why I wasn’t as ravenous as when I last woke up. I hadn’t increased in weight by anywhere near as much as last time.

“Elysa?” She asked with a single word.

I nodded again. “Final evolution,” I explained with the bare minimum of words.

“I see,” She replied.

Things went quiet again as we both seemed to struggle to find the words needed to truly break the ice that had appeared between us. I never imagined it would be this hard to talk to someone. I’d never had this issue with Cellestra when I was still using the letters on the paper. Why was I having such a hard time with this?

The guards that had reacted to my presence had slowly backed off in the meantime. They didn’t appear to want to get involved in all this, something for which I was thankful. I was having a hard enough time as it was.

Cellestra stepped out of the wagon and jumped onto the grass below. She then steadily moved closer to where I stood. As she approached, I lowered my spider head to the grass. Hopefully, talking would be a bit easier if I wasn’t towering over the elf.

How things had reversed…

Only with the fangs under my head touching the ground did I stand at the same height as Cellestra. She seemed to be the first one that managed to form a sentence that was more than two words, albeit barely.

“Your… body, is it…”

I nodded for a third time. “It’s exactly the same as it was when I died. Well, except the eyes, I guess.”

With that, the ice seemed to be broken at last.

“I can’t believe it,” She replied.

“Neither could I. I probably stared for longer than you did.”

“I can imagine.”

“Are you okay?” Cellestra asked. “It looks like you’ve been crying.”

“I’m fine,” I shrugged it off. “How have you been?”

“Truly? I’ve been worried. When you last ran off to chase Ingo and some of his misfits, we waited for an hour or two for you to come back. Eventually, the caravan leader decided to move onward. It took me quite a bit of persuading to have the wagons halt here. About an hour ago, they took the slaves to the village. I hoped that you’d manage to catch up…”

“Well, I did… fortunately,” I let out with a sigh.

“I’m sorry, Kealyna. I wanted to look for you, but it was just too dangerous.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said with a slight smile. I was delighted that I was finally able to, although I could see through my spider eyes that my smile was quite crude. I definitely needed to work on that.

“I imagined that was the case, and I don’t blame you for it. Though, I do wonder, how did you plan on going back home, say, if I didn’t find you?”

“I…” She paused for a few seconds. “I was offered an escort of elite soldiers from the city to get me back home. They said it was the least they could do to make sure their valuables weren’t stolen.”

She looked at the items that were strapped to my back. “Speaking of valuables…”

“Stuff I found on Ingo’s corpse. Wasn’t as tough as he looked, after all. I thought they might be worth something. Since they likely weren’t his to begin with, I decided to take them with me.”

I removed the threads with my legs and laid the items in the grass before me. I noticed that one of the guards turned his head and couldn’t help but stare at the bloodied chest plate.

“You think I can buy some food with these? I’m starving,” I said half-jokingly.

“Heh,” Cellestra chuckled. “You haven’t exactly gotten smaller.”

It was good to see she still had her old sense of humor. I reflexively smiled at her comment.

“However, I am afraid there’s not much here that will sate you.”

“I imagined that would be the case. I’ll just hunt something in the forest later. I think I’ll manage until then.”

I looked at the objects before me. “What should we do with these, though?”

“Truly?” Cellestra asked. “I have no idea. Unless you want to head into the village, they don’t hold much value here.”

I had no intention of setting foot in the village, yet. I had no idea how I would be looked at. I could imagine it not being too friendly. I had never heard of anything like me existing, after all. I was fortunate that these guards had already met something that was equally unbelievable. It had also been made clear to them that I was friendly, but despite that, one of them had still swung his sword at me.

With my power suddenly dropping, it was probably better for me to avoid a village, for now. I still had to get accustomed to my new body as well. I imagined I would be better off secluded for a while.

I wanted to be alone with Cellestra, at least for a bit.

“Guess I’ll take them with me. Maybe I’ll have a use for them later on. I don’t feel like going to the village.”

“Understandable,” Cellestra reassured me.

And so, I bent forward to pick up the items again, once again strapping them onto my back, preparing them for transport.

“What happened to Tavion and the others, by the way?” I asked, now that I was feeling much more comfortable with talking and had cleared some other questions.

“The soldiers cut off their collars, and they came with the caravan. Berel took them with him to the village. However, freeing them as you suggested isn’t as easy as it seems. As they had no money, the best he could do was direct them to the city militia where they’ll receive training, lodging, food, and a salary, in return for their service.”

“So, basically the same as me…” I let out. “I guess that’s better than being a slave.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Cellestra said softly.

“And I assume Berel is the caravan leader?”

The elf nodded.

“Did you ask him to put in a good word for me?” I asked with a sly smile.

“I did, in fact,” Cellestra replied. “I know how you eventually need to set out for your own quest. I imagined it’d be nice if at least some folks knew your existence to not be a threat, but a blessing to them. You may not want to go to the village right now, but once you are… ready, this would be a good place to start.”

“Do you know if there’s a temple to Elysa in this village?”

“Afraid not,” Cellestra replied. “This is the beastkin village that I talked about. The closest elven settlement is the other way. The caravan left that village yesterday. From there, it’s half a day to an elven city. That city has a temple dedicated to Elysa. Why are you asking, though?”

She looked at me with curiosity in her eyes.

“I got a message from her when I reached this evolution. It said she’d like to talk to me.”

“Talk to you? You’d be one of the very few that she’ll speak to, then. Many people try to communicate with her, but only a few are accepted. I guess it makes sense… in a way, seeing as she is… responsible for your situation.”

“Well,” I started. “Only partially. You know how she suspected Hograd to have interfered? Or at least she mentioned his name when she talked about a few individuals who she knew were able to use shadow magic of that sort. She left me this message that included something about investigating what exactly happened. She’d like to tell me what she found out, I think. Maybe she could help me with my quest as well?”

“Sounds like it may be worthwhile visiting Edhil then.” She looked at my new face after saying that and must have caught the confusion on it.

“The city.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

After that, a long moment of silence followed where I simply stared at the grass in front of my… head, not knowing what to say, or do next.

With my spider eyes, I saw Cellestra turn around to look at the guards once more before turning back to me.

“What do you say we just head home for now?” She asked softly.

I nodded before speaking with an equally soft voice. Many thoughts were dancing around in my mind and I didn’t know what to make of them. Cellestra’s words brought back some structure to them.

“Yeah. Let’s do that.”