Frost 72nd, 120
Aeraku and Nuraku had been committed to graduating. They had only been at Nardothis for a few days, and yet they were already getting their bearings in this place. Easy classes had been chosen for the both of them to catch up on, and Aeraku had been helping Nuraku study. The both of them formed a trusting study group, and Nuraku had begun to feel warmer around her new friend, the kinship between them undeniable by now.
“Aeraku?” came Nuraku’s voice. She was a white stoat with a colorful array of pecock feathers for a tail, standing upon the study table where their books were scattered. “I’ve only known you for a short while, but I no longer suspect your motives. I thought you should know.”
“Ehm. Thank you, Nuraku,” said the dog, rubbing his head over a textbook. “I think we were moving too quickly with the Gentevarese. We should start with the alphabet, and the pronunciations first. Then work our way up quickly. We don’t want to sound fluent, but foreign, if that makes sense?”
Nuraku nodded. “Yes, it does. That matters a lot more in Daravin.”
The dog flipped back several pages to a table of letters upon the page, each with their equivalent pronunciation.
“A, Ah.” Aeraku began. “B, beh.” He continued down the list, and Nuraku began saying it with him, following along. "C, seh. D, deh. E, uh. F, eff. G, zheh. H, ahsh. I, ee. J, zhee. K, kah. L, ell. M, em. N, en. O, oh. P, peh. Q, koo. R, air. S, ess. T, teh. U, ooh. V, veh. W, dooblah-veh. X, eeks. Y, ee-grek. Z, zed."
Together, they both recited the Gentevarese alphabet over and over. Some of the letters sounded strange, but they knew roughly the proper equivalents. "'W' is double 'V' in Gentevarese? Double 'veh'." said Nuraku.
"It would seem that way," replied Aeraku, his finger tracng the 'Y'. "Ee-grek... I'll need to question the professor on this one."
"That one does seem strange," huffed Nuraku. "But we're learning really well. We should be fluent in not too long."
“The letters are also at least mostly similar to Common,” said Nuraku. “But there’s more, isn’t there? The accents?”
Aeraku nodded. “Yes, we’ll be getting to the accents soon enough. It also looks like there’s a chapter on the nasal bridge, and different ways to pronounce certain letters. It may seem like a lot, but there’s time to wrap up enough for our test in a few weeks.”
Nuraku stretched upon the table, yawning. “All this studying is making me tired.” She glanced up at the clockwork timekeeping piece high above them, its hands facing the correct time. It took only a moment for her to decipher that her Animus class was very soon already, and Aeraku his Etherforging lecture. “Well, I should be going. I’ll see you back in the dorms tonight,” said Nuraku.
“Likewise,” said Aeraku, waving her off. Nuraku hopped down and went straight to class, keeping to the walls as always to avoid the heavy shoes of wayward students who could not notice her.
---
Arriving at the Place of Gathering for the Animus upperclassmen, Nuraku was treated to the sight of several haughty-looking elves and a scant few humans. Animus was an art form with few merits, so few were willing to risk their lives over the art unless they had an affinity for the wildlife. Compared to the might of a mage, the power of simply turning into a tiger was a paltry reward. Being able to fly or breathe underwater? Perhaps better, but there were other ways of accomplishing such a feat that did not involve gambling a life.
Consulting a clipboard, the professor, a burly fellow with a beard who showed perhaps more skin than most, looked up and gazed upon his students. “Ah, there’s Nuraku... that leaves...”
“Present,” called a pimple-marked teenager with red hair as he turned the corner, huddling up close to the group. Nuraku climbed a nearby curtain, perching upon the alcove to view the group at eye height.
“Today is a splendid day. We have a new octopus specimen fished from the sea,” began the professor. “This animal is a very useful template to possess for any. Its physiology is indistinct from many land animals, and yet it can function on land. The ‘octo’ part of the name means ‘eight’ and refers to its eight arms. This is a very exciting purchase for the Animus department, to be sure.”
“Eight arms?” blurted out Nuraku. Strange.
“Yes, and gills,” said the professor, his hearing impeccable. The man favored integrations that were not visually noticeable, and constantly wore them. “Upon each arm are dozens upon dozens of suckers, and the creature is capable of regenerating its arms over time. We had one not too long ago, but it perished in an accident when the overflow tank for the eels shattered... a panicked student slew it when it crawled between her legs. Poor Edward, he was an intelligent fellow.” The professor spoke with great enthusiasm, but seemed to fall off into a wistful silence, a tear streaming down his cheek before he wiped it away.
“Ah, yes, well, we shall go see Edward’s replacement now. A Giant Octopus. Larger than your common one. Follow me down to the menagerie. Come now,” said the burly man. The students looked to one-another, whispering, but they too began to shuffle behind them. Nuraku dipped forward and dropped to the floor, following suit as if on auto-pilot; Nuraku hated these suffocating walls. A few days here hadn’t changed that.
Still, she was learning, and that was all that mattered.
Arriving at the menagerie, they were brought another level down from the aviary Nuraku was familiar with, to a series of large aquariums, each filled with crystal-blue water and several natural kinds of plants and corals. There were fish of all kinds here, and, Nuraku presumed, eels. The octopus was however sitting in the holding tank, a spectacle for all standing around it.
Nuraku couldn’t get a good eye on the creature, so she waited for the students to have their fill before walking up to the professor. “Sir, may I perch upon your shoulder for this?” grumbled Nuraku. She had no form that could see the creature at eye height; the request embarrassed her to no end, and she could hear giggles from the other students already cascading through the group.
Leaning down without a word, the professor offered the back of his hand to her, and she jumped up upon it before being lifted skyward, brought face to face with a cephalopod, its eight curled arms pressed against the glass as that wide, unblinking eye stared out at all of them. Nuraku tilted her head as it breathed. “It’s... a strange creature. Like a spirit.”
“And yet, this creature lives,” said her professor. “Truly lives, as an animal. Even this thing reproduces beneath the waves.” He turned to the class. “Everyone, please Imprint upon this animal. We shall Mold before the diving stage to the most peace-able aquarium shortly to experience its strange body. This shall be a memorable experience for many of you.”
Nuraku nodded, staring at the creature and forming a connection. A line of informational feedback began to form invisibly between her and it, the feeling growing in awareness as she thought of the animal and its appendages. Before long, she had her Template, and shifted to gaze across the remaining pairs of staring orbs gazing into the tank, each student intently focused save for those few who had finished at roughly the same time as her.
A minute later, everyone had their template. Many of them did not say it, but she could feel an undertone of discomfort, a certain pandemonium between them. Perhaps they judged the ugliness of this creature. Nuraku, for one, thought it had its merits. It was certainly unique.
“Does everyone have their Template? Good. Good. Right this way.” The mages climbed an old set of metal stairs, their boots and shoes thudding hollowly against the rusted floor. One by one, they ascended to the diving area at the top of the tank, a vast expanse of water stretching out before them like a large swimming pool, only filled with all manner of life.
“Begin to transform, and then slide inside the water. For those of you whom have never experienced gills before: breathe normally. It will feel like drowning at first, but your gills will filter the air from the water.” Rubbing his palms together, he pulled his clothing off, tilted backwards, and with a schlpt his body stretched apart and reformed in an stant, eight spindly arms splashing into the water before the bewildered students.
The instructor immediately submerged himself, swimming freely with grace in a circle, showing the proper movement of his tentacles. Nuraku joined soon offer, hopping towards the water and beginning the transformation. Like the professor, she fed the transformation more Aether--risky, yet rewarding, as pain shot through her shortly before she broke the surface, her body stretching apart into a confusing mass of wriggly limbs.
Ack. She splayed out across the water, instantly breathing it in. Her strange anatomy nearly choked as she drew in the water, but before long she got the hang of it, feeling her many tentacle-limbs and swishing them around. Tilting forward into the water, she moved all of her limbs in unison to push herself deeper, but it was tricky. She had nowhere near the ridiculous speed the professor was showing as he zoomed around beneath the water.
Looking around with her wide octopus eyes, she saw the other students had since become octupi, but they were not doing so well themselves. Nuraku paddled with her tentacles awkwardly, turning back towards the edge and slapping them against the ledge, her suction cups puckering up against the surface. She pulled, but they wouldn’t come loose until she relaxed the muscles in that particular limb. It was a lot to keep track of, to be sure.
Minutes later, the professor returned to the surface and clambered out of the water onto the platform, slowly shifting back into himself. Keeping his back to the students, he pulled up his jimmies, though many of them got a look of his bare rear--the students seemed accustomed to it by now, judging by the lack of complaints.
Nuraku followed suit, using her suction cups to pull her blubbery, squishy and many-limbed mess of a body out of the water, pulling herself along. I can still breathe out of water in this form, she remarked. It wasn’t terribly hard to get around, though she had to drag herself uncomfortably, and the mouth was oriented in an awkward way.
Shifting back into her Ermine form, she panted with exhaustion, not even bothering with the Tailfeathers--she’d used too much Aether, and she could feel the cool draw encouraging her to expend more. She knew better, for the most part. “That was... something,” muttered Nuraku.
More of the students joined, with mixed reviews uttered from the lot of them. For the most part, the nobility did not have much love for the octupus as an animal. It was grotesque, to say the least--the more they hated it, the more Nuraku appreciated it.
“Please rest,” requested the instructor. “As always, shifting twice in a day can be draining. Have an extra meal today before bed. You are dismissed--write a review on the creature’s features and deliver it to me tomorrow. This is your assignment.”
Nuraku sighed. More work Aeraku would have to help her with--she just didn’t have any thumbs.

