Life is precious, life is short,

To this, none here can retort.

- prophecy of the duskbringer

Present day, 4993 A.D. Seventh day of the first week of Fall....

Guppy held her breath and focused really hard on staying absolutely still.

"Who in Lupo's name are you!? And why are you bleeding on our bed!?” A high pitched voice demanded.

Guppy’s eyes refocused on the holder of the knife. She relaxed, mostly, there was some rather sharp cutlery very very close to her after all.

"Stalia? Why are you threatening me with our carving knife?" she asked.

Stalia's hand started shaking when she heard Guppy's voice.

"G-G-Guppy!?" she cried in astonishment.

Guppy carefully inched away from the now dangerously wavering knife.

"You're supposed to be dead! They said old Friedrich's workshop blew up taking half the street with it. I even went there and everything was gone. They said there weren't any bodies left, that both of you had been blown to smithereens..."

Stalia kept frantically talking so Guppy carefully disarmed her before sitting up and noticing the wretched state she was in. Her clothes were covered in dried blood.

'My blood' she thought abstractedly.

There was also a rather large ragged hole in the middle of her shirt.

'No wonder Stalia didn't recognize me, I must look like a serial killer dressed in these ripped clothes and covered in blood' Guppy amusedly thought.

Looking up once more she saw her younger brother Kyle standing awkwardly behind Stalia, silent, but Guppy read strength of his emotions within his eyes.

Sighing Guppy started to work on calming Stalia down and reassuring her that she was perfectly fine and uninjured.

In fact Guppy felt more than fine, she felt great. Whatever the dragon had done worked wonders. She felt... Strong. Healthy. Powerful.

As Guppy gazed around colors appeared more vibrant. Sounds were crisper and clearer. She could feel the rough fabric of the blanket down to the individual fibres.

She could even,

‘Urgggh’ Guppy felt a surge of nausea.

The air around here neither smelt, nor tasted great.

‘Need to be careful listening to those senses’ she determined warily.

But she felt so very Alive. Like she was high on the new drug joombla that the beggars were peddling these days, except it was an all natural effect...

Once she had mostly calmed Stalia down Guppy decided that the very next thing that was needed was a bath.

"Do you mind heating some water for me Kyle?"

Kyle nodded and brought over a basin and a cloth from the corner.

Concentrating he channeled his mana into a watercube, a common magitech device for providing water and one of the very few things they owned of any value, as the moisture was wrung from the air the wooden basin gradually started to fill up.

Once enough had been collected Kyle stopped the mana flow, cutting off the stream of water.

Then he stuck both hands in the basin and released fire mana, this was a simple heating, requiring no spell or array, only a simple injection of his fire attribute energy.

Soon a steaming basin of water sat in front of Guppy, it looked heavenly, she all but jumped into it as she rapidly stripped her ruined clothes and started to clean herself, her siblings leaving to the kitchen to give her some privacy as she washed.

Having declothed herself Guppy noticed some oddities about herself quite quickly.

The most obvious being a large silver tattoo of a dragon coiling itself around her body. It's tail starting from her right foot and coiled itself around her body with its head nestled over her left shoulder, clawed forelegs on her arms, and she could only assume by it’s positioning that the wings were on her back.

The tattoo... pulsed occasionally with mana from her heart, glowing a dim silver that shimmered in waves across each defined curve and scale.

'Well that's certainly different' she thought.

But the changes did not end there. Her skin, previously roughened by sun, hard labor, and rough clothes had gone from reddish brown to a creamy olive tone, and was... smooth, the many scars earned by years of tough living were gone, disappeared as if they had never been.

As she unbound her hair from the braid in which it was confined, she found that it had turned milky, silvery white.

Not the dry brittle white of the aged and infirm, but a curly, bouncy, fluffy white that flowed like silk between her fingers, it’s length fully reaching mid hip in length.

Fearing the worst she quickly finished cleaning herself and got dressed in her spare set of clothes.

Now both apprehensive and a little curious she approached the small mirror they possessed and peered in.

She slapped herself, the face in the mirror was slapped.

She did it again from the other side, the person in the mirror followed her action.

She opened her eyes wide, pinched her nose, pulled on her hair, she made sudden funny faces... and was finally forced to concede that the person in the mirror was actually her.

'Fudgeknucles, how did Stalia recognize me when I don't even recognize myself' Guppy wondered.

Her hair was long and pure white, at odds with her dark creamy skin. You could barely make out her previous facial features as her eyebrows, cheekbones, jaw and brow, had all shifted subtly.

Her ears were slightly pointed now, not as much as an elf but pointed they were, as were her canines, which appeared rather more prominent than before, and sharp.

Her eyes had also changed from their usual brown and were now heterochromatic, one a lively sapphire blue while the other was an emerald green. In short, she seemed to be a completely different person.

'Zarak's teeth, what did that damned dragon do to me' Guppy mentally complained.

Guppy got no response to her mental yelling and let out a sigh.

Guppy shifted uncomfortably, she felt like a stranger in her own skin, even her shift felt too tight across the chest.

She found her breath coming shorter and shorter as a panic attack set in the longer she gazed into the mirror.

Then for the briefest moment her eyes flashed gold, immediately after Guppy felt like someone took a chisel to her head, a splitting headache cutting through her.

Taking deep breaths Guppy splashed some water of her face and felt the headache receded as quickly as it came.

'I'm going to have some very strong words with Batty when he wakes up' Guppy decided.

She clenched her fists, then opened them hurriedly, an intense heat had emanated from them for a moment.

It had not hurt her but the air had rippled and she had definitely felt the wave of heat. Guppy felt her hands, they looked perfectly innocent, slender fingers twirling as she turned them to and fro in her examination.

"Fire" she muttered.

Nothing happened.

"Heat, ignite, flame." Almost mockingly, nothing happened.

Guppy gave up and exited the bedroom to join her siblings who were making dinner.

They both stopped, staring at her changes that were even more obvious now that she was clean.

"You really are Guppy... right?" Stalia asked.

Guppy walked over and embraced her, wrapping her up in a big hug.

After a second Kyle joined them in a group hug, he never was one to miss out on a good hug.

"I know I look a lot different, but I am Guppy. I don't know entirely what happened today either. There was... an accident at Friedrich's workshop. Something wonderful went terribly, terribly wrong... Friedrich's gone. Dead. I was saved by a... passerby. For some strange reason I wound up looking like this. I might not know much of the how, what, and why this happened. But I am here now. Alive and safe with the both of you"

Guppy’s poor explanation was met with a confused but accepting silence.

They stood there a moment, relishing the feeling of closeness between them, after a few minutes Stalia broke up the huddle.

"Alright, let's eat before the food gets cold. It's just some porridge I'm afraid. I wasn't thinking much about what to eat for dinner when I heard you were dead"

Stalia lifted a copper pot off their little stove while Kyle brought over their wooden plates and spoons.

Guppy sat down on a battered chair at their rickety table, eating a rather grainy mush, and after all she had gone through, it was blissful.