Wind's Avatar

"Summon!? What did you summon!?" Nyana demanded an answer.

"I don't know!" Kies shouted back. Clueless about what this entity was, Kies held out his hand and summoned a gust of wind to scour the room to find it. The winds did laps around the room but came back empty-handed.

There was a short howl by the wind followed by a ghostly voice like the one he had heard when talking to the golem. Kies understood it. 'Free. We are free. Set us free.' It faded away along with its magic presence. Kies and Nyana kept their guards up for another minute in case it would come back.

When it was apparent that it wasn't going to come back, the two of them put away their weapons. "What was that?" Nyana mumbled. She looked over to Kies, her eyes demanding an explanation.

Traces of magic lingered near the ceiling of the room. Kies picked up the trace with his winds and carried it down to analyze. "I think that was a spirit..." Kies deduced from the magic in the air.

"How so?"

"It feels the same to the spirits I have encountered before," he recalled. The magic had a unique quality about it that made it stand out. A spirit's magic was much purer and stayed around longer as well.

"Hm... Well, I'm going to take my leave," Nyana sighed, rubbing her tired eyes. "Don't go around causing any more trouble for me. If you do, I'm not sure if I could convince the elders to have you come along on this mission."

"Rest assured. I'll keep out of trouble," Kies gave the elf his word.

"Please do." Nyana sluggishly left the room. Kies heard her calling out to him from outside, informing him, "You can stay in that room till tomorrow. No one will bother you in there." After telling him that, she left for real and Kies sat back down on the strangely soft and comfy mushroom chair.

What was that all about? He summoned a spirit, a wind spirit nonetheless. Didn't wind spirits avoid him? Why did that one appear in front of him? Just what was the language of the ancients? He was tempted to learn more about it but he promised Nyana that he would stay out of trouble and so he would have to test that out some other time.

Kies closed his eyes and entered a meditative state, restoring the magic he used today. While doing so, his body felt unusually light. This was different from normal but it was somewhat calming and so Kies continued, welcoming this new sensation.

The spirit's lingering magic that surrounded him curled onto his body like a magnet, refusing to let go. It was absorbed into his body like a sponge would water. His body became lighter and lighter as the process continued. After some time, it felt like he lost his physical body and was floating around spiritually.

Before he knew it, days have gone by and someone barged into the room. "Hey, are you okay-" The elf stopped and was instead replaced by the sound of a bowstring being pulled. "Who are you!?" the voice shouted out in alarm.

An invader? Was there an enemy in the room? Kies opened his eyes and ended his meditation. He jumped off his seat and prepared himself for a fight. But before he could call for the winds to come to him, the winds rushed to him on their own. He was taken aback by this and while attempting to figure out why this was the case, an arrow was launched and flew right at him.

In their own free will, the winds snapped at the arrow and snatched it midair and threw it back at where it came from. Kies saw a figure dash across the room and fire another volley of arrows at him. The winds reflected every single last one of them at the attacker and it was only then that Kies realized who was attacking him.

"Nyana?" he called out to the elf.

The elf paused dead in her tracks, remaining in her running posture, one hand on her dagger and another ready to cast magic. Her hands moved away from her weapon as she slowly stood upright. Her skin was very pale and she had these strange lines running all across her body. "Kies?" she asked in a hush.

"Yes, it's me. Why are you looking at me like I'm a stranger?" As he spoke those words, he felt that something was wrong. "What?" He sounded different. His voice was hollow and echoed throughout the room. It sounded almost the same as a ghost's. Something had happened to him. "Do you have a mirror?" Kies urgently asked Nyana.

Nyana unfastened the dagger on her belt and tossed it over to Kies. He pulled it out from its sheath. He looked into the cold silver steel and what looked back was a pair of gray eyes, swirling and spinning around like two miniature storms. And that was where the familiar features ended. Nothing else resembled that of his old face. Actually, did he even have a face anymore?

He had no mouth, nose, ears, or anything that a human should have. The only thing he shared with them was a pair of eyes that could hardly be considered human. His face was composed of a clear stringy thing that kept moving around, detaching and reattaching to his face like some sort of a parasite. It took him a minute to realize that it was magic.

The same thing happened to his hand that was holding the dagger. Kies looked down and saw that the rest of his body was in the same state. Winds wrapped around his body like bandages... No, his body was quite literally made of wind. He couldn't even feel the weight of the dagger in his hand. Kies put the dagger away and tossed it back to Nyana.

The elf caught it and set it down on the table. She was more concerned about Kies than having her dagger returned. "I want to ask you what happened to you, but I take it that you have no clue either?"

"No," Kies admitted. It was his body, and yet he knew as much about its state as she did. It was embarrassing, to say the least. However, if there was anything he knew, it was that it wasn't harming him. The winds were in fact protecting him, acting as a wall between the outside world and his core. If anything, having a body made entirely out of wind was safer than his previous human body.

"If it's not one thing, it's another with you, isn't it..." Nyana said, somewhat entertained by this new predicament that Kies somehow found himself in.

If his whole body disappearing was not enough, when Kies turned to face Nyana, he saw that his body was not the only thing that changed, but also his perception of her. He could no longer see Nyana's face or body clearly. All he could see were her ranger clothes and her weapons. Her body was transparent and he could see lines all over her body with a singular sphere at the left side of her chest, exactly where her heart was.

Kies was not going to bother asking Nyana about it because he knew that this more likely than not had something to do with the changing of his body and not the elf transforming into some kind of transparent creature with weird lines.

Putting aside the problem with his body for the time being, Kies asked Nyana her reason for seeing him. "I figure out this on my own. Anyway, did you manage to convince the elders?"

Kies saw Nyana shifting about uncomfortably, but since he couldn't see her facial expression, it was hard to actually tell how she was feeling if she was even uncomfortable at all. "Wow... This is going to take some getting used to..." she muttered to herself. Kies' voice resonated in the air, giving a feeling of power behind his words.

"But back to what you were saying. I managed to get permission for you to join us. We leave once the sun sets, which is soon. So if you have any preparing to do, it's in your best interest to start now," she briefed him.

"Is everyone else ready?" Kies asked.

"They're on standby."

"I see. Give me a minute to get my bearings. We can head out immediately."

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