Lily dropped herself and Erik down to the ground alongside where her bonded were having the last meal they would need to complete whatever changes these strange monsters had started in them. Her anxiety surged. She was almost completely certain that the changes were purely beneficial, but she couldn't be completely certain. The only reason she had gone through with this was because just as much danger lay in leaving the changes incomplete.

Now was the moment of truth, seeing whether her choice had been the right one. Snowball shoved half of a crushed Slate Dragon into his maw and chowed down as Sky picked at the exploded bits of her own victims scattered across the hill. Lily's aura was entirely focused on the new patterns of Ki finalizing their attachment to her bonded as they ate. Patterns that echoed ones in the monsters themselves.

It did not take long for her to see a response. The original, fledgling patterns had resembled a grafted branch. It had attached to the original pattern but remained separate. The last week had seen that grafted branch grow and further integrate into her bonded. Now, it was flowering. The joining between her pets' original patterns and the new additions became seamless. She could no longer tell the new from the old. Only her knowledge of where the join existed gave evidence to the difference.

Once those patterns settled into place and became part of the whole, physical changes swiftly followed. Her pets were monsters, after all. Their physical bodies were just reflections of Ki. Both of them changed in moments, gaining new features. It was a quick, painless process, as changes to the underlying Ki structure changed what her pets were on a fundamental level. They were different monsters now.

Snowball's changes were the less dramatic of the two. He grew slightly larger, gaining less than a foot in height. His teeth and claws shimmered before shifting to the same icy blue as the ice threading through his fur. The same color as his nose and eyes. Lily's aura sense showed that the change was hardly superficial. All of Snowball's bones had changed into this new magical form of ice. Deepforged Ice, it was called. Durable and capable of storing massive amounts of cold Ki.

Snowball's eyes shifted along with his transformation. They changed from the piercing blue that was now present across his body to a deep, fathomless black with only a small ring of brilliant blue remaining right around his pupils. Once the changes were complete, he huffed oddly before sneezing hard. Snowball patted his nose as if to make sure it was still on his face. Then the bear huffed again, seeming to relax. But this time, his exhalation brought blue-white flames from his throat to lick between his newly reformed teeth.

For all that Snowball's transformation was impressive, Sky's was a magnitude more so. Unlike Snowball, her size increased significantly, almost doubling. Her height was now close to the bear cub's when he rested on all fours. Lily felt confident she could ride on Sky's back with her new size. Her wingspan dwarfed Snowball's height in its width, easily spanning nearly thirty feet.

But the changes only started there. A second set of wings emerged, layered under the first and nestled closer to Sky's body. They had pure white plumage, completely defying Sky's previously dark coloring. That fact shifted as well. Sky's blue underside shifted to a uniform black, falling in line with the rest of her feathers. At the same time, darkness formed across her body in writhing, surging tendrils of impenetrable darkness.

The darkness covered the transforming Roc from beak to talon so much that Lily couldn't even see her anymore. Then, in the next moment, pinpricks of light formed throughout the absolute dark. A handful, then a dozen, then hundreds. Sky was aglow with newly-formed light. From within the darkness surrounding her face, twin lights blazed into existence.

The magic slowly faded, revealing that the lights had been new white feathers scattered across Sky's body. The blazing lights were her eyes, still glowing with power. Her beak opened, and wisps of blindly bright white flames leaked from the corners edged in abyssal black that seemed to eat at the brilliant light.

Both her bonded had gained immense amounts of power through their transformations. They had become new, unique monsters never seen before on the Starry Sea. Lily could feel it in her soul through the bonds they shared. Snowball was no longer an Icecrag Bear. Now, he was a Glacial King Kodiak. Sky's transformation had changed her from a Midnight Roc to a Stellar Roc.

It would take time for Lily to parse all the changes these transformations entailed, but she was distracted by a lurching sensation. Her bond to Sky was breaking down. It was immediately obvious to her why that was. Her bonds with Snowball and Sky were based on her domains. Snowball was connected to Ice, and Sky was connected to Cloud.

The problem was Sky's new species no longer had that same connection. A Stellar Roc wasn't connected to clouds in the same way a Midnight Roc was. If Sky had stayed as her previous species, her adult form would have been able to call up cloud cover over a wide area, bringing night-like darkness. But that wasn't true anymore. As far as Lily could tell, a Stellar Roc had no connection to weather of any kind. There wasn't even the most tenuous, flimsy basis for her bond to rely on anymore. So it was collapsing.

There was nothing she could do. Lily worked desperately, trying to cling to the bond as it disappeared, but there was no connection for her to hold on to. Sky's eventual weather control had formed the necessary grip for the bond, but that was gone now. She could only watch in horror as the bond continued to evaporate.

Just as it was about to vanish, the bond suddenly stabilized. It was being gripped by the other end. Sky was throwing her own will, her own effort, into keeping the connection going. Together, Lily and Sky threw everything they had at keeping the connection going. But it wasn't enough. They could prolong it, but with nothing for either side to hold, it was a losing battle. There was no basis for the bond anymore.

Raw frustration and fear bled through Lily's mind and flew into her shrouds, stirring them up. She wanted to lash out, to do something to solve this, but there was nothing she could do. She was powerless all over again right when it counted the most. Her shrouds whipped about inside her soul, responding to her wild emotions.

When she reached the edge of mental exhaustion, and her will started to falter, her Cloud domain shifted. Like clouds pulling back from the sky, they revealed a new source of light. With a desperate hope, Lily flung her bond into the light, and she felt it snap into place once again.

Lily slumped in relief, her attention returning to the world around her. Only a moment had passed, although it felt like hours. Her mental battle inside her soul had warped her sense of time. Immediately, she ran over to the towering form of Sky, whose size now dwarfed hers. She buried her face in the soft feathers of Sky's plumage, hot tears rolling down her face.

"I almost lost you." She whispered. Sky responded by wrapping her immense wings around Lily's body and cooing softly as comforting warmth suffused their bond. That had been terrifying. Sky was a shroud-formed monster, and she relied on a constant stream of Ki from Lily to exist. If their bond had broken, Sky would have discorporated, vanishing where she stood. Lily would have had to watch her disappear in a stream of light, watching her die. She nuzzled deeper into the feathers around her. "No more eating weird stuff, that was way too much."

After a moment, she felt a hard lurch as something bumped into her back through Sky's wings. Surprised, it took Lily a moment to realize what was going on. Once she did, she couldn't help but let out a wet chuckle. Snowball was worried about her. He had shoved his massive nose into Sky's wing, trying to get at her. Patting Sky's feathers, she mentally let the newly minted Stellar Roc know that she could let her out now.

Once Sky's wings were removed, Lily was faced with her other pet as Snowball made the most worried expression a multiton bear could possibly make. She giggled, patting his nose gently. It was now bigger than her fist. "I'm ok, baby. No need to worry."

Snowball huffed and snuffled at her, not believing a word. She laughed as his surprisingly hot breath blew back her hair. You'd think that a monster called a Glacial King Kodiak would have colder breath. With a snort, Snowball left her gaping in surprised awe as he leaped into the air before rapidly shrinking. In an instant, he changed from a bear roughly the size and twice the weight of the skiff they rode on the last continent to as small as he was when Lily first bought him.

Catching him out of the air more out of instinct than anything, Lily stared at the five-pound bundle of fur currently in her arms. Out of all the abilities she expected him to gain from his new species, this was not one of them. The surprises didn't stop there, as the shadow of Sky's form vanished in the next instant, and a small weight settled on her shoulder. Looking, Lily found a small, sparrow-sized version of her Stellar Roc resting there.

"Well, that's surprising," Lily muttered. Then again, when she thought about it more, it made some sense. Snowball had shown a limited capacity to increase his size back on the last continent. It had only added a couple feet to his height, but it had existed. At the time, they had counted it as Lily's shrouds influencing his growth a bit. After all, both Ice and Cloud were related to water, which was famous for changing states easily. Her bonded adapting limited shape-shifting wasn't that odd, according to her teachers.

With that in mind, she also had to think about the source of her pets' most recent transformations. They had consumed pseudo-dragon monsters. And one of dragonkind's main magical abilities was shape-shifting. In fact, both of her pets had produced some kind of magical breath after they transformed. Maybe they had picked up breath attacks from the dragon-monsters as well. It made her wonder if they had also gained some variation of truth-speech. If they had, it would cover the dragon-magic trifecta.

But that was a question for later. Right now, Lily just cuddled Snowball as Sky nuzzled into her cheek.

"Uh,"

Lily looked up, seeing Erik stranding by the side, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot and staring at the ground. "Yeah, Erik?"

"O-oh. Um. Just wondering if everything is ok?" He glanced at her before looking away.

Lily rolled her eyes. It seemed her tears had made Erik embarrassed. Honestly, sometimes she couldn't believe that he and Caeden were the same age, considering the gap in emotional maturity between the two. Erik and Cat were two of a kind, really. Both liked to act mature, but neither knew how to deal with real emotions, theirs or others.

That thought made her flinch slightly. Lily had been handed an abject lesson in trusting her friends when Caeden deliberately took on all the elites from Solar Radiance, but she still was worried about her roommate and boyfriend. They were on a continent full of hostile, powerful people that were angry at shrouded. And neither Caeden nor Cat had any stealth abilities. Lily and Erik had made it this far by hiding high in the air. She had no idea how her separated friends were doing. But she did her best to set those concerns aside. They wouldn't help her friends, and they wouldn't help her. Cat and Caeden were both capable, powerful fighters. Their abilities complimented each other. She had nothing to worry about. They would be fine.

She hoped.

"I'm fine, Erik. Just had a bit of a touch and go moment when Sky transformed." Lily smiled wanly. She was somewhat suffering from emotional whiplash right now, going from awe to terror to awe again.

"Well, I'm glad you're alright. So, what next?" Erik asked.

"Don't you want to know what happened? Or about their new powers?" Lily asked incredulously.

"Ehh," He shrugged. "If you're fine, then I'm not worried about it. And I'm sure I'll get to see your pets in action eventually. Why ruin the surprise?"

"I have a new splinter." Lily shot back.

"What?! Oh shroud, what is it?" Erik sputtered.

"Hmm, I don't feel like telling you now." She huffed. "This is why you should take a greater interest."

"Oh, come on! You can tell me! Pleeeease?" Erik wheedled.

"Nope," Lily responded primly. She ignored Erik's further attempts to coax the information from her and instead focused on Snowball. He had started squirming in her arms during their conversation, and he was now sniffing at the air. "What is it, baby?" She asked, cooing slightly.

Snowball's response was to huff in Sky's direction, who took flight before flying over to a nearby bit of shrubbery that was common in these foothills. A burst of brilliant flame coming from her miniaturized beak burned away the plant in an instant.

Lily gaped in surprise for the…fifth…sixth? Time today. She wasn't sure anymore. Hiding in the bush was the unmistakable form of a little girl.