It's been twelve days since I learned how to take on a humaniod form and Magic started teaching me how to hijack a summoning ritual and other magical-sabotage shenanigans. She has also been teaching me some actual beginner spells now that I have hands. Oh yes, I now have HANDS.

I can interact with the world again!

No itch shall go unscratched! No page shall require lengthy trips to find someone (Magic) willing to sit down and turn it for me as I read! No door shall bar my passage for lack of turned knobs! Nor shall any kitten go without a cuddle, any hug go unreciprocated, nor any meal go untasted! Though meals are tasted by mouths with I also have one of now!

Fear my fingery power!

...I'm probably a little too excited about this, but only a little.

I also have feet. Which is weird because I'm not used to using them anymore.

As a being of pure soul I would move just by thinking about it. Not so with feet. Magic said it's because a soul is a being of pure mana and mana is the fundamental energy that allows things to exist, world-mana responds to soul-mana through some kind of ressonance or something. That's about as far as I got before I started counting the individual hairs in her eyebrows.

To be fair, I have no background in magic, aside from being made out of the stuff, and she used a lot of big words using wizardly jargon. I can cast the spell for magical light, and can even tell you a bit about how it works, just don't ask me WHY it works. Not yet.

Still, I have a body now!

Also, I smell. My body that is. Not just when I don't bathe either, I smell all the time.

Everyone has their own unique scent. Magic smells like...books, leather, freshly cut wood, the blue flowers in her garden, and...coconut.

She's looking at me funny now...

Oh, yea, it's not normal behavior to just walk up and start sniffing at people is it?

I keep having to actually "think" about social norms since I stopped being Henry.

Still...Magic smells nice.

I just smell wierd.

It was confusing at first because at the beginning I smelled kind of like burnt toast, a campfire, and eggs. Magic said the campfire-and-egg smell was because some aspects of the first form I used carried over, though it'll fade. The burt toast smell was from...something about shaped mana stretching and contracting too fast...I really need to learn how to speek "Mage." Nowadays, I smell like books and wood, though thats probably because I spend a lot of time in the library.

Under all the day-to-day smells though, my scent changes and it's irritating. People don't smell themselves normally because the body recognizes it's own constant scent and starts filtering it out of your perception because it's always there. I can't do that. One day I'll smell like mountain air and pine nuts and the next it's old boots and marmalade. After that it could be clean ocean water, or wet dog. Who knows what I'll smell like next? I sure as hell don't because my nose just will not adjust.

I might not know why I'm like this, but Magic does. Even though she won't explain it. She looked confused when I first told her about the problem, but I could almost see the lightbulb go off when she figured it out. All she would tell me was that it will fade the longer I maintain my form.

I'm also getting used to tasting things again. And having skin that's not mana solidified into clear crystal. Also eyes. Definitely eyes.

I got used to having omnidirectional eyesight. As a soul I could see in every direction from myself, not so as a human. Not that I know for sure I turned into a human. I look human...mostly. Magic knows for sure, but once again, will not say a godsdamn word about it. Not. A. Word.

That Goddess knows how to keep a secret when she wants to.

The biggest problem I have is that I keep forgetting to maintain my new body. Food, baths, and excretion are all things I tend to forget until my body starts reminding me who's boss. I also forgot to wear clothes that first day, right up until I got an aweful sunburn on my everywhere, including some rather sensitive bits, after moving our lessons to the garden. I blame Magic. She controls the day/night cycle in her domain and wasn't making eye contact during the lesson.

Today was the first time I actually succeeded in our practice session. Our practice set up is for magic to stay in her study and summon a creature or plant from her garden using a spell that mimics the magical signature of the cultist's ritual. I have to fool the spell, or ritual, into thinking that "I" am the droid it is looking for.

This only works because the cultist's don't have anything that's actually connected to the demon they're planning to summon. Sure, they have a name, but not the "true" name, of the demon. "True" names don't exist. Or not in mortal language anyway.

To get a "true" name of a thing you'd have to actually experience the universe through that beings perspective then attach a "name" to that being within your own mind. So, yes, please Mr. Evil Cultist, find a way to share your existance with that demon without having it consume you utterly and somehow do this without ever meeting the demon in the first place. I'll wait.

Instead the summoning rituals and spells are designed to home in on creatures that match the expectations of whoever is doing the summoning filtered through whichever Concept most closely matches the components of the ritual.

Want a Succubus? What kind? What do you think a Succubus is? A sexy "Demon" or a "Sex Demon"? Lets go with "A Demon fueled by sex" becasue that's my personal idea. That's specific enough right? So lets make this quick and murder some cows or something, that's the easiest way to go about it isn't it? Sure, if you want to die.

Summon a Succubus using blood sacrifice and she'll probably pull your soul out through your naughty bits at the first opportunity, but summon one using energy generated by a ritual orgy and she'll probably keep you and your friends around for a while as personal toys. How you do the ritual can completely change which demon you get and they're all different. Demons have personalities too after all. They might be "Evil" but some aren't dicks about it.

What I have to do is detect the ritual's "magical signal." In my mind it works like radar except instead of just bouncing off the thing it's looking for, the signal marks the target more accurately with every ping. Then, when there's enough power you get the summoned creature. Magic says I'm not completely wrong, but also not even close to right even though I can probably still make it happen. Good enough for now.

Magic was targeting one of the fish living in the stream she has flowing through her garden. My goal is to make myself "look" more like the fish she's trying to summon than the fish does, at least as far as the spell is concerned, by reading exactly what the spell is looking for as it's "searching." The problem is, the spell locks on very quickly.

It was difficult, but I managed to fool the spell by directing some of my own mana towards the spell and having it reshape to match the criteria. For it to work I had to use just enough power to trick the spell, but not enough that the safeguards against tampering would trigger.

Getting summoned felt like I was being squeezed through a drinking straw but worked. She still got the fish too though, which I'm going to cook for dinner.

It's been a long day practicing the magical equivalent of riding a stolen lightning bolt from the clouds to the surface of the world while riding a unicycle and playing the saxophone. I'm tired.

Sleep is the one part of my new-and-improved-flesh thing I don't forget about. So far, it's my favorite part about being flesh and blood again. Even though I love sleep, I could do without half of the dreams, honestly. Though I'm fairly certain they're memories. Not complete ones, just minute-long flashes from about half a dozen new selves. Almost like...introductions conducted by photograph or POV video, no names or anything, just snapshots of who they are. Who I was. It's more than enough to get a good idea what that particualar life was like though. A few of them stand out more than others, lasting a little longer.

Tonight, as I sleep, I've got three.

I am an old woman, a grandmother, living in a large farmhouse with her children and grandchildren. I'm...happy.

Our primary crop is apples. What started as only a few trees when we bought the land has become a surprisingly large orchard. We also grew some wheat and barley, but that was for our own use, either to make bread or feed the animals. We have horses, cows, pigs, chickens, and ducks. Cats too, but not housecats. These are about the size of large dogs and serve the same purpose, protection and companionship. We have four. The biggest easily outweighed my husband, and he was a big man until the day he died.

We live just outside a large town near the southern border of our kingdom with the Seishin Wilderness. It's not a poor town but not overly prosperous either as the Seishin don't trade much with outsiders of any breed. It is peaceful though, unlike the western border with the Hakaan Empire. My husband and I were both born to families in that town.

My family, just myself and my parents, ran a small inn with rooms almost nobody rented because of the location. It was only a street over from the slums and the trip home could be dangerous after dark if you risk it alone. Thankfully, my father's cooking and brewing, and my mother's touch of musical talent was good enough to keep us afloat and in some comfort. Barely.

My husband's father was his only family growing up. The man was a bastard. He was supposedly one of the town guards, though the only thing he ever guarded was his mug of ale and the occasional whorehouse. Truthfully, the only good he ever did was bringing my husband, Enan, into the world.

I first met my Enan when we were children. His father had chosen our inn for his drinking that evening and was dissapointed that we didn't have any "serving girls." Once he was deep in his cups, he voiced his frustrations to my father by suggesting he would like to rent my mother for the evening. When my father refused and laughed it off, joking that a man needs to respect marriage vows, the disgusting guard then asked to rent ME for the night instead as I was unmarried. I was also a child of nine summers.

My father took this suggestion less than gracefully, and would likely have killed the bastard if our regulars hadn't dragged him out and beaten him. They could tolerate a drunken advance on my mother, Spirits know they did it enough themselves some nights, but a child was another matter entirely. Especially a child they all adored.

One of them eventually fetched Enan to drag his bloody father home. After he arrived and was told what his father had done, or tried to do, he walked into the inn and apoligized to my family. No one told him to, he decided on his own.

He was a thin, hungry looking boy in rags. He walked with a limp and one of his eyes was black and swollen. The bruises on his arms were yellowed with age, though a few were fresh. He was a broken little whisp of a person, but he looked my father and mother in the eye when he apologized. He also apologized to me. The one eye he could open was the clearest blue I'd ever seen. As pretty as the sones in the jeweler's window in the market square.

It was the first time my heart fluttered because of that boy, though it wouldn't be the last...

And the memory stopped. It's enough to give me an...impression of that life. Enough that I can find it again to relive it completely, or come back to it whenever I want to. I think it'll be one of my favorites no matter how many lives I remember. Partly because I saw the ending before I read the story, so to speak. I know that when I died in that life I was surrounded by my loving children and grandchildren, and I was happy. Sure, I was tired and ready to die, but that wasn't because of pain or sorrow. It was...just my time to go, and that matters. I feel the next ones calling to me.

I actually have names for these, though I don't know how I know them. Well, one actual name, "Athenasius Lucien Viscardi." The other one is a title, "Huuneshek Kekan," and my impression is that the Kekan don't have names.

The name though...it pulls at me and I lose myself in it.

Athenasius Lucien Viscardi. That was my name. I hate it, or at least part of it. Though the hateful bit spoils the whole thing. The Viscardi name is supposedly something noble, something grand and powerful. It's a weapon. Or it's used as one, which makes no difference.

House Viscardi rules the city-state of Struna Esharia by blood. Literal blood, magical blood. We are a line of Sorcerors, our ancestors were powerful beings that interbred with mortals and, like all sorcerors, we live and breathe magic. Our power is unique among the Esharian Houses however. We can gain talents, skilles, spells, knowledge, and strength by consuming the blood of others. We can also enchant the blood, our own or that of others, to grant the same skills upon injection. We charge heavily for such services.

The founding Ancestor of House Viscardi was an exceptionally powerful mage who was also a Dhamphir, a mortal descendant of an immortal blood-sucking vampire often produced by rape. Yes, rape. An honored Viscardi tradition if my "family" is any indication. Particularly my "father" the Patriarch of House Viscardi. Who would dare accuse a Viscardi after all? Especially the Patriarch? Any who do will die. Like my mother.

I remember the day it happened.

She was a common mage, not a Sorceror, but she was exceptionally powerful and quite skilled. But not skilled enough.

As a boy I never knew who my father was, unlike other children in the city, and before long pestered my mother constantly, always asking. So she told me about him. It was all lies of course. She wouldn't burden me with the truth and allow it to crush my young heart.

Instead she told me of the man she had loved. He was a kind and gentle soul and a bit of an adventurer. Not part of the Guild, not that kind of "Adventurer." He was no mercenary, though he had a habit of finding mischief. His hair was dark like mine.

They had just married and were traveling to meet with his family in the south to settle down near the Elven forests. She was a talented mage and he was both an alchemist and skilled archer with a little magical talent. They had met as students in an academy far to the east and planned to head south after stopping here, at Struna Esharia. Normally such a journey is undertaken by a large group, but between the two of them it was not quite dangerous. Not until they reached the city.

She told me he had died protecting her from beasts on the way to the city gates.

She told me they had made love in the forest the night before.

She told me she was already with child when she arrived.

She told me he loved her.

She lied.

Oh some of it was true. He was an alchemist and hunter. They met at the academy, she fell in love, they married, and he persuaded her to move south and stop off in Esharia along the way. The demon is always in the details.

They arrived in the city together and made their way to the largest estate in the city. His suggestion, obviously. He claimed an old friend lived there and would be more than happy to have them both as guests. They would be welcome, he said, and their host, Patriarch Viscardi, would throw a feast to celibrate the marriage of his good friend. It would be a pleasant stay before the long, dirty business of travelling started again. A wonderful experience as they started their new lives, together.

He sold her to the Patriarch.

She tried to escape of course, but all of her spells and knowledge were useless before the most powerful Sorceror of House Viscardi.

For weeks he used her.

He raped her until he was certain she was with child. After that he drew a sample of her blood and placed it within a phylactery before having her bathed by servants and relocated to one of the nicer homes in the city. Where he then explained to her the purpose of her continued existance.

She was to be a brood mare. Breeding stock to produce stronger Viscardi Sorcerors. She was cattle.

She would live in the house he provided and would be granted a stipend, disbursed every half year. She would be required to bear children as often as possible for the Viscardi, and should she be foolish enough to run...

They would use her blood as a focus in a ritual to kill everyone that shared her blood. Her parents, siblings, and all other relations would die, as would any other children she had with the sole exception of Viscardi children she birthed.

The Viscardi pay skilled individuals to procure women with certain...natural talents, magical talents, and bring them to Esharia. Using whatever means necessary. The alchemist that seduced my mother was one of their best suppliers.

My birth was not easy on my mother, physically or emotionally. Physically she was left barren and unable to bear any other children, a blessing given the circumstances, and emotionally...she was revived. While pregnant she was certain I would be born a monster like the Patriarch, but when the midwife placed me in her arms she saw my green eyes, a mirror of own, and she loved me.

Despite how I was concieved, she loved me.

The Viscardi rarely take newborns from their birth mothers, or "brood mares" as they're called within the family. Instead, they allow the child to grow for a year or two until the unfortunate woman is capable of concieving another. Because my mother was left barren by my birth and magical talent doesn't surface until the cusp of puberty, they left me with her.

And she loved me.

Truly, wholly, and with all the fierceness a mother can possess. She taught me everything she could from letters and mathematics, to languages. But above all she was determined that I learn to love. That I become a good man, a better man than the Patriarch.

Looking back, she succeeded halfway.

As a boy I never knew the truth of my birth, not until the day she was murdered before my eyes.

That day my magic awakened.

That day she told me the truth.

That day, the Patriarch of House Viscardi himself came to our home.

It was the thirteenth anniversary of my birth. He wished for me to leave with him and become one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world, I only had to leave my mother behind. She wouldn't say a word, she couldn't. She was too fearful. He asked me to choose.

He phrased it as a choice, an option, even though it was a command.

I didn't understand the difference.

When I refused him, he butchered her. He made me watch.

That day, I learned to hate.

When I was brought to house Viscardi they gave me a new name.

He dismisses my anger despite my talent. Despite the suspicions of the other Viscardi. He mocks my hate. He thinks me cowed, fearful of his power. He thinks me Viscardi.

He teaches me the secrets of our blood, of magic and power, and someday I will use it to destroy House Viscardi and it's Patriarch.

For though House Viscardi knows me as Athenasius Lucien Viscardi, my mother named me Simon. They will learn it.

The ice cold hatred associated with SImon's life nearly wakes me. The barest echo of his incandescent rage causes me to shudder in my sleep. Only the call of another life kept me sleeping, though it left me with a single thought in my half-concious mind.

What did I do in that life? Those emotions...I would have acted on them, I wouldn't have been able to do anything else.

I drift back into the sea of memories, pulled by a haunting sound. It's almost the sound of wolves howling, but it drifts to deeper sounds as it follows a pattern. A low growling thing, a primal song whose words are not meant for humans to hear or understand. Rumbling, inhuman words drift into my mind, naming the song. I understand it as, "The Call of Kekan."

As soon as I understand the words I find myself standing on a wooden platform above a massive jungle. The platform is supported by a single limb of a gargantuan tree. It stands tall, proud above the canopy it's shape oaklike with dark purple leaves. I notice it's not alone in the odd coloration, the canopy below is speckled with a thousand shades of green, red, and purple. I even spot an oddly familiar blue vine growing in a large pot at the center of the platform.

The platform itself is supported by one of the smallest limbs of the tree and looks to contain a garden of sorts. Odd plants, some seemingly predatory, are set into short wooden rows that wind across the platform in patterns of color. I feel certain it looks like a painting of sorts from above, looking down from the higher limbs of the tree.

As I start looking around, a being appears directly in front of me, causing me to flinch and leaving me concerned that I might have to clean my bedding in the morning. The being is tall, at least seven feet probably closer to eight, and lithely muscular. He's naked, I notice, though that's less concerning than the retractable claws I see on his massive pawlike hands. Or the large, sharp, white, predatory teeth he's using to smile at me...or snarl.

As a whole he seems to be catlike, similar to a panther, though with broader features and bipedal. His fur is iridescent and covers every inch of his body, including the tip of his nose. His eyes have three vertical slit pupils and are a striking violet color. His hands and feet have six digits with long retractable claws, and seem almost disporportionally large. He doesn't have a tail, or whiskers though, and that leaves me feeling oddly disappointed.

We stare at each other for a while, far past the point of awkard eye contact and beyond. It's been at least a couple hours and I feel like this staring competition is important somehow.

Eventually, he speaks. In a low growling voice he says in perfect english, "Turtle soup."

My response to his grave pronouncement is likewise eloquent, "Uh...huh? What?"

"Turtle soup. Huuneshek Kekan. What I am, what we were, not Who. No time to talk. Wake for morning. Eat. We are hungry. Next time I teach and we will remember what you have forgotten, together."

Wait...am I talking to myself? Is that what's happening here? I have lost my godsdamn mind, haven't I? Wha-

I wake from sleep as my stomach finishes the first of many loud groans.

My bedding was clean, though I nearly ruined my pants when I walked into Andy's dining room to find myself some breakfast.

It was turtle soup.