“So!” She exclaims, turning to me. “Welcome to the Water Temple! If this was a zelda game there’d be that intro cutscene showing you the main room, the elevator room and then hint at the dormitories, but I assume you’d rather not have me levitate you around like that?”

Oh, so she actually noticed that. To hide my embarrassment I point at the intersection ahead of us. She starts walking, only to stop there. “Let’s see if you choose the correct path.”

“Uhh, is the wrong one dangerous?”

“Hmm,” she says, “not a lot more than the right one. You might lose time in trying to choose, though.”

Is it a labyrinth? Or a timed challenge? Or both? I look at her, then look away as not to stare at her face. She’ll probably stop me if I try to do something dangerous. Left? Right? Left… right! Right it is!

I carefully walk around the bend, looking back at her eerie smile every now and then. Crap, this is probably the wrong one. There’s another bend and… “Wait, isn’t this a circle?”

“Yup,” she says, the smile now seeming less eerie and more… mischievous. “I was super careful and used so long the first time I was here, so I wanted to inflict that on others.”

“You-”

“Shh!” she suddenly says, ears turning towards one of two exists from the room we just entered. Wait, that entire wall is a door, isn’t it? Also, she forgot to shapeshift me back! I turn to her to complain, keeping silent only because of her sudden wariness. It could be another prank, but this is the first time I’ve seen her so serious.

She somehow pulls a fairly long staff from a cloth-container which can’t be more than a third of the staff’s length, taking a stance as her form trades fur for dull steel-colored scales and then becomes blurry. A glowing spike the size of my forearm appear over each of the shoulders.

My breath almost stops as I hear what she reacted to. The soft ‘tap-tap tap-tap’ of something four-legged walking softly on stone. She slowly steps forward with no sound as the steps grow louder and louder. One part of my mind idly reflects that she holds the staff like the crystal at the end is a spearhead.

The the source of the sound enters the room. One of the spikes shoots forward, only to turn to the side and slow down before fizzling to nothing, having completely missed the target.

“Ah.”

Was the sound came from Lara before silence descends as all of us freeze.

The other creature is a wolf the size of a very large man, carrying something on its back which looks a suspiciously lot like one of Lara’s trademark bags. This one is a faintly red, dark gray.

“It’s you!” Lara yells with a surprised tone. The remaining magical spike fades to nothing and her form becomes clear as she regards the wolf.

“Err, sorry, I forgot your name. I’m Eikeli by the way. In this form I guess I’m ‘Lara’”

…

“Oh yeah.”

“Are you… talking to it?” I ask as she grabs another blanket from her bag. How many of those does she have?

She tosses it to the wolf, who grabs it with its mouth and returns to the corridor it came from. “No, just reading body language and his mana. That’s one of the guys from the shapeshifter group, they’ve been trying to locate and enter this place for a while.”

“Ookay?”

“You’ve clearly not watched my videos. I’ve hinted about this place for a while, starting with a cryptic riddle for some interview. The shapeshifter group, or Oslo Shapeshifter’s Society as they call themselves, are just a bunch of people who socialize over shapeshifting.”

“I, uhh, infiltrated them and have enjoyed seeing their oh so slow progress to finding this place. And when they finally found the general location they had no way to get in here. Hah!”

“I heard that.” says a gruff voice -the voice of the werewolf (Lara called it ‘wolfkin’?) covered in only fur and the blanket she gave to the wolf. “What did you call yourself while ‘infiltrating’?”

“Actually, I never gave my name. But that doesn’t matter. Congratulations on not only helping in figuring out the solution, but implementing it. You got down here by shapeshifting, didn’t you?”

“How could you tell?”

“Well, I gave hints about it, and honestly it’s the easiest solution with the right forms.”

“Wait, you were the lizard guy?”

“Pim, pom! And two others as well, actually. To create extra chaos, just in case.” She shakes her head as she puts the staff back into its… holster? “Again, let me congratulate you on reaching this place. You’ve probably noticed the mana density here is pretty decent. Which parts have you explored yet?”

“I’ve looked at the murals, but can’t really find any real patterns in them. Other than that, I just explored that corridor.” He points at the one he came from.

“Oh, haven’t tried the elevator, then. There’s a hallway underwater from that room, as well as a sorta test thing at the above floor. Don’t step into the circle unless you’re okay with either getting a beating by water or do the dance. The orb might teach you a relevant ability.”

“Thanks for the tips.” The wolfkin says with a little nod. “If you know this place so well I’d rather stick with you, though. And who’re you?”

I blink, not expecting to be talked to. I grab the hand he reaches out with, and mana washes over me. “I’m jasper. What’d you do?”

“Huh, you’re not used to the magic handshake? Well, your mana felt weird.”

“I don’t have-” “He doesn’t-”

She motions for me to talk. “I don’t have mana. Can’t use it. Lara says it’s because I have ki.”

“Ah!” She exclaims, making a fist and hitting her other palm with the bottom. “Speaking of what is the essence and ki like here?”

I explain that the essence levels is as in the magical forest then note that there is ki in the air, and that there is something familiar about it that my own ki does not have. She makes her thinking face (it’s kinda cute…) for a moment, then asks for my hand.

I hold it out and she shapeshifts it to the water form. When done she asks me to try to ‘send my ki there’. I can’t directly control my ki yet, but after I started forming the essence channels it seems to follow my essence. When it enters the watery limb I gasp. “It’s the same feeling! How did you know?”

“Lucky guess. The water aspect is thick here. If it’s at all possible for you to learn to use elements, this is a good place to learn Water, I reckon. And on that note let’s teach you the basic motions of [Water Bending] and have you learn the ability. I wonder if it’s the same for ki…”

True to her word she teaches us the basic motions… by pointing us to the entrance to the corridor. She asks me to go first, telling me to stand at what (upon closer inspection) does look a lot like two footprints. After that she refuses to tell me what to do, so I look around for the solution which is apparently ‘impossible to unsee’.

It has something to do with the swishy patterns, doesn’t it? There’s one leading from the right for to there, and that goes… oh. After following the trail for a couple steps I find what must be markers for hands, and by going in reverse I find a stance to hold - one not so different from what I’m used to.

The first time I follow them slowly and clumsily, but the second time the first twelve or so motions flow a lot smoother, only for the patterns to seemingly stop. I repeat it two more times, finding a couple two steps at the first but none at the second try.

The wolfkin has a much easier time finding his stance, but even after several retries he can’t do more than half the steps I can. The motions aren’t that difficult, they’re kinda like the first forms of martial arts- oh. I wonder how it does the thing where you suddenly can’t see the next symbol, but other times you can?

Lara then stands in the spot and smoothly and flowingly does step after step, motion after motion. Less than ten steps after where I stopped she grabs water from small channels I didn’t even notice, and the dance becomes almost mesmerizing and she pushes and pulls on the water.

When she stops I find myself clapping, in response to which she blushes with a shy smile. Then she shows us a symbol which looks identical to the one we just started from hidden amongst the myriads of lines and other symbols. This one has no guidelines, and she speculates that you’re supposed to know the entire dance by heart, admitting that she does not know how many steps there are.

She then shows us another symbol and says it’s a lot harder despite having guidelines, but neither me or the wolfkin can find said guidelines, even when she points them out. “Well, whatever. Let’s just get you that ability. Err, Jasper, do you want me to revert your form?”

“Yes please.”

Having my normal body back feels… disappointing in a way. Suddenly it’s as if all smells are gone. It feels good to be my normal self, though. Maybe it’s possible to do shapeshifting with ki as well? Nevertheless I’m looking forward to this ‘skill orb’, so I gladly follow Lara until she stops next to a pool in a tall room.

Wait, is that the- huh, magic elevator. It moves pretty fast, or maybe all elevators go this fast and it just looks faster since there are no walls, so a moment later it stops at the second and only floor. There appear to be slimes or something along the hallway.

Lara, however bravely walks down it, stopping with one foot engulfed in one of them. The wolfkin mutters something about having seen enough hentai, causing her to laugh. “Nah, the little guys are harmless. They eat loose mana, I think. Clean your body of sweat, too.”

“Is that why it’s climbing up your leg?”

She looks down. “Could be my mana, yes. Don’t feel that sweaty, so unless they go for other liquid it won’t find any.” She takes a step to the side, shaking the slime off of her foot. “I’ll admit I’ve never tested them with a female form, but they seem to do mostly the same. Which is very little.”

Despite her assurances we pointedly avoid the slimes until we reach a room with an orb on some pedestal, which is on the other side of a ring not unlike a sumo ring. She asks the wolfkin to walk to the middle of the ring, which he does only after repeated assurances that it probably won’t do anything, and that if it did he could just step out.

Nothing happens, so Lara orders him to follow the moves from the spot he stands in. He does so, just a tad clumsier than his last attempt at the spot in front of the corridor to the dormitories. I notice that the moves are different, if similar, and then it’s my turn.

Afterwards we get to choose who wants to touch the magical ball first, and I win by simply reaching my hand out and touching it. The beefy, almost two meter tall wolfkin almost makes me regret it, but then I get a feeling not unlike when I learn a new ability or I get an enlightenment, but much, much stronger.

I learn the basic usage and moves of [Tidal Dance], a ki-based water element technique and its sub-ability [Tidal Dance: Tidal pull] which can supposedly be used to move water, and its related class [Tidal Dancer]. In addition I learn [Water Mirror], which can supposedly make any body of water calm and clear as a mirror.

“Woah,” is all I can say, staggering backwards as my brain handles the sudden information overload. Those motions make so much more sense now!

The wolfkin also touches the orb, but nothing happens. Lara points to the murals and suggests that I might need to fight the elementals as a ‘trial’ before it resets. “Or maybe it ran out of juice.”

I decide to take on the elemental challenge, eager to test my new ability. Lara quickly warns me not to break anything and that it will be tiring before the test starts. About fifteen tiring minutes later I open my eyes with a girly scream as something chilly hits my stomach.

It’s a slime and given that Lara is standing over me with that grin I can guess how it got there. But at this point I don’t care; the cold slime feels really good to the touch, and I can see why you’d want these things to eat your sweat or whatever.

Lara’s assumption was right, and while I rest the other guy learns his abilities and promptly gets drenched after a pretty short while. Lara explains the ability and class she gained from the orb the first time, and he seems to have gotten the same result. Then it’s my turn to explain, and I do so.

With two of us feeling the effects of the elemental trial -I should be rested by now, but I seem to have used quite a bit of ki- Lara touches the orb, takes on a form where her skin turns almost translucent and blue, then enters the ring.

Her form is stunning as she flows between moves the first five minutes, and then ten minutes, fifteen, and twenty. By the time half an hour has passed her stance is faltering and her movements becoming sluggish, with water being spilled on almost every catch of the now water splashes that now often come in pairs and even sometimes three at a time.

Already at the twenty minute mark the wolfkin man, who never introduced himself instead being dragged along with Lara’s flow, mentioned that she started to conserve her mana. Around the thirty-five minute mark he is surprised that she’s still holding on and note that she has spread out a flimsy ‘net’ which pulls in mana.

Ten minutes later she barely holds her stance, looking like a puppet dragged around by its strings. At this point she’d be drenched if her body weren’t already watery. We excitedly follow the clock as it ticks upwards.

Fifty-two minutes, still going.

Fifty-four minutes, a bit shaky, but she seems to be able to do it.

Fifty-five minutes, she slips up and fall behind on move, suddenly juggling an extra splash of water.

Fifty-six minutes, she manages to catch up, eyes bloodshot.

Fifty-seven minutes, she falls over.

“Lara?!?” I shout as the globs of water splash to the ground and the trial end. I rush over to her and grab her should to shake her, only to find my hand slipping into her body. I quickly retract it and notice her entire body seems to lose its shape somewhat, though thankfully the handprint on her shoulder fills in.

“What’s going on?” I ask the wolfkin, who kneels next to me.

He waves a hand over her. “She did a permanent partial elemental shapeshift…”