《The World of Araven》Chapter 7. Questions and cards
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When I woke up, I had grown again. By this point I was not surprised, just curious about the changes happening to my body. The guest room I had been provided had a small mirror hanging from the wall, so I was able to closely inspect my appearance.
I now had the body and appearance of a preteen only a few days away from being slammed in the face by the hammer of puberty. When most people see me, they would probably place me around eleven going on to twelve. I would place my hight at only slightly under five foot.
Thankfully no major changes had happened to my appearance, ya know, aside from what happened to me when I first got here. No appearance of antenna or horns or wings, so no complaints in that department.
My eyes had darkened ever so slightly, although still a silvery blue color. My ears seemed to grow at an even rate, staying only slightly larger than regular human ears, so at least I didn't have to wory about foot long ears.
I was curious as to what I should classify myself as, as I was clearly no longer human. When I had first started to get an understanding of the language, I had tryed to ask Audric about it, but soon deduced that he did not know either. Rather, he had said that the summoning circle used the corpses of monster to provide raw material, which I assumed was things like organic compounds and the like, and that it was left up to the consciousness brought over to create the body. The only problem was that I had no recollection of designing this body, and if it had been my subconscious that designed it, why did it not look like my old self? Was this how my subconscious wanted me to look?
Another question I wanted to know was if the changes to my body were only skin deep. Was I still human on the inside? I could think of a way to find out. I started by channeling ether throughout my body.
"[Radiation immunity.]"
Better safe than sorry. Next I channeled ether into my eyes.
"[X-ray vision.]"
My eyes grew itchy while my presentation of the world around me changed. The walls of my room began to grow slightly translucent and my reflection in the mirror began to grow transparent. The sensation in my eyes was quite uncomfortable, but I was getting the results I wanted.
I turned my attention to my reflection in the mirror. Now I was no expert in human anatomy, but that didn't look right. First off was my skeleton, I had never noticed before because thus far the only activities I had preformed had been of the mental nature ever since coming to this world, but from the looks of it I would guess that my range of motion had greatly increased.
To test it out I tryed turning my leg around. Once my leg reached the usual place where a human leg stopped turning, my leg felt no resistance and continued in a 180° turn until my foot was facing backwards. I kept my attention on my reflection to observe the process. With this manner of sight the muscles in my body were almost invisible, but from what I could see they shifted around as I turned my leg so as to continue to function without damaging anything.
I noticed that almost all my joints had changed from the usual human form, I was actually surprised that I had not noticed this before. After my initial fascination wore off, I began to realize just how weird this was and a shudder ran through my body. Let's never show this to anyone. I turned my leg back to normal position and moved it around to make sure that bending to so far didn't cause any damage, it hadn't so I moved on to my next stage of self examination.
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I began to alter the mana in my eyes, trying to create a vision that would allow me to see my organs. I had no real goal or knowledge of how to do so, so I spent nearly twenty minutes of trial and error before I finally managed to create a vision that allowed me to see inside myself at a set depth. By that time my eyes were thoroughly burning and feeling as if I had sand in them, but bared with it until I had a proper view.
I started a scan of my body starting with the front of my chest and moving farther back, the vision I had developed displayed everything in a cross section type view.
First difference I noticed was that I had two hearts. Yes, you heard right, two hearts, both in the center of my chest cavity like a regular heart with one place above the other, the lower one placed slightly to my left side and the upper slightly to my right.
That wasn't the only change either. My digestive system, while appearing mostly the same, was much more compact. Judging that I hadn't been having any problems while eating or shitting, I assumed that it had gotten a performance boost to allow for the smaller size.
The newly opened space left from the smaller digestive system was filled with an assortment of organs that I had no clue as to what they did. What I guessed to be my liver was on my left side. There was a small sac of liquid that had tubes running between several of the new organs and several of the ones I could recognize. There was a banana shaped organ which had a mostly uniform material throughout was on my right side. There was ever a round organ with a small shard of crystal in it.
Releasing the mana from my eyes brought some relief, but the uncomfortable sensation did not disappear for several minutes.
"[What the fuck have I become?]"
Porten, who had been told about my rapid growth by Audric, was still a bit surprised when I came into the dining room this morning. My self examination had taken longer than expected and both Porten and Audric were already eating breakfast in the dining room.
Breakfast had been left out for me, which was similar to the breakfast on the first day, but instead of the boiled eggs, there was something similar to sauteed potato chunks. Also the selection of breads were different from yesterday.
Both Audric and Porten seemed to sense that I wasn't in a mood to talk, so they only offered polite greetings before returning to their conversation, seemingly about politics, a subject I held no interest in.
I wonder if human anatomy was different in this world than from my own? If it was it may explain some of the strange organs I had seen in myself. I channeled ether into my eyes once more bringing back the itching and gave both Audric and Porten's internal organs a once over.
No such luck. Both of them were text book perfect humans. Although both had flinched and looked in my direction when I started scanning, but both had ignored it. Apparently they could since when they were being magically observed, a skill I would need to look into.
But being that humans were the same here only raised more questions about myself. Did this have something to do with the monster corpses that Audric had used? Knowing that it was unlikely that I would ever answer these questions was distressing. Even though this society had used magic to create technology beyond what I would have expected, I still doubted they had something along the lines of DNA analysis, and I was certain that I would never be able to recreate it, so comparing my DNA to the monsters used was out of the question.
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Once brackfast was over, Audric noticed my gloomy expression and decided to give me something else to think about.
"You know, if you want to join Othrode, you will need a city issued identification card. How about I take you to get yours? It should only take a few hours."
Welcoming the chance to distract myself from my thoughts on unanswered questions, I nodded in agreement. Both Audric and I were already dressed, me in my black clothing and white cloak and Audric in his typical dark blue mage robes, so it only took a few minutes for us to be ready to go.
"The chamber of law is a good distance from here, so should I carry you while I fly there?"
"No need, I figured out how to fly yesterday."
Audric smiled. "You have only been practicing magic for a few days now, but considering what you were capable of on the first day you started practicing, and that appraisal magic at breakfast, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Let me see it."
I set up my magic just like yesterday with the tiny cloud and all before drifting a few feet into the air. Audric let out a chuckled deep in his chest.
"Hahahaha, Using mana shields as a platform to ride on! Who would of thought I would see the day. And the cloud is a nice touch to keep mages guessing. Even I would have thought it was some form of wind or water magic if I hadn't been actively sensing the ether."
It seems my guess about nobody else using this method was accurate. Audric prepared his own flight magic and was flung into the sky by a powerful gust of wind. Apparently that was a popular choice for mages. I quickly zipped into the sky after him.
After flying for about a minute, we landed near the border between the merchant district and the mansion district that Audric lived in, unofficially called the 'wealthy district'. The building we landed Infront of was of a style similar ancient Greek architecture. It was constructed of a highly polished light tan stone, and had twenty pillars in front.
Before we entered the chamber of law, I decided to ask Audric about what would be expected of me.
"What will I have to do to get this identification card?"
"Nothing to difficult, answer a few questions, like name, age, gender, and race. You still look like a kid, they should believe anything you say. Plus I am here to vouch for you so you got nothing to worry about."
"But how do I answer some of those, age? Eighteen going on three weeks. Race? I was a human but now I am not. I don't think they will accept that."
"Hmm, just let me answer the questions, it will easier to explain you as my half-breed son."
"I was under the impression that you didn't like it when I said you were my dad?"
"Well, if you had asked me three weeks ago if I had been ready to be a father... The answer would have been no. Even now I still am not ready. But I do see how a lot of problems can be avoided if people just think you are my son."
"Well that is convenient, because just yesterday I told Allen that my last name was Aldrich."
"I'm not surprised. Well let's get going."
The inside of the chamber of law was quite impressive, with high vaulted ceilings supported by marble pillars. We approached the reception desk located near the back of the main room, which was mostly empty this early in the morning. There was a middle aged blonde woman in an outfit similar to a business suit. Audric simply stated that he wanted to get an identification card for his son, and without so much as looking she wrote a note on a scrap of paper and handed it to Audric while telling him room eight.
Audric then led me down a hallway to the side of the desk untill he reached a wooden door on his right labeled number eight. He gave two light knocks and immediately a male voice said "come in."
We entered and found ourselves in a small office. Behind a small wooden desk was a balding man with a slightly bulging belly. The top of the desk held several stacks of paper, each about two inches thick.
"Hello, I am here to get an identification card for my son." He passed him the note from the receptionist. After reading it, the man gave a slight nod.
"Very well, and is this," he looked in my direction, " your son?" His face held a quizzical look.
"Yes it is," he extended his hand to the man, "I am Audric Aldrich."
The man shook his hand. Audric had mentioned before that a handshake was an acceptable form of greeting, which came as a relief to me.
"Please, call me Blane... Wait, did you say Aldrich, as in Archmage Aldrich?"
"The one and the same."
The man smiled politely, but anyone could see that it was like a wave had washed over him. When he spoke next his voice had grown even more polite and friendly then before.
"Please, sit down, sit down! All I need is to ask you a few questions and your son will have his card in no time at all."
"Of course, ask away."
Blane pulled out a form out from a drawer in has desk and prepared a pen.
"First off I will need his name."
"Ambrjrn Aldrich."
"Ambr...Jrn?"
"His mother named him."
"Of course. I will also need to know his mother's race."
Apparently Audric had already put some thought into this because he replied immediately.
"I met his mother in a forest tribe I encountered on my travels. The inhabitants were a race of elves I had never seen before, and that had no name for themselves."
"I see... I suppose I can get by with just elf under his mother's race... OK next question, how old is he?"
"He is ten this year, but just recently began an advanced form of mage's growth. Probably brought about by me being an Archmage and his mother having a large mana pool."
"Thank you, that would have been the next question I asked you. How long do you estimate until he reaches adulthood?"
"It couldn't be more than a few weeks from now."
"I see, I see, a few weeks... Wait! A few weeks?! Ah, but you are a Archmage so I suppose it is not impossible for your child."
"Anything else?"
"Hrm, no, I can probably get by with this information. I can have the card done in three hours."
"Very well, we will see you in three hours."
With that, we now had three hours to burn. After we left the chamber of law, Audric asked me what I wanted to do for the next three hours.
"Well, I know that the entrance exams for Othrode will be in several days, but I don't know the exact date and time. Perhaps we should go find out? Maybe take a look at the on site facilities?"
"Sounds like a sound suggestion. I will lead you there."
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