Everything started to click into place. Adrissu was silent for a long moment, considering. Kian’s eyes met his, as if challenging him to say anything otherwise.
“I see,” Adrissu finally said, nodding. “Of course you are. Your soul has always been male, regardless of the body it’s born into.”
Kian’s expression faltered, and for a moment, he stared at him blankly. It occurred to Adrissu that this was perhaps the first occasion the youth heard someone echo those sentiments about himself. But it only made sense—as he’d learned with Braern, there were clearly no limitations as to what kind of body his mate’s soul could inhabit when it was reborn into the world. If the soul remained the same, then he would remain male, even if the body happened to be female this time around. And magic could certainly be a boon in changing his body to reflect the mind within.
“I can help you with this, of course,” Adrissu started, but trailed off in surprise as Kian’s face twisted in anger again.
“Oh, fuckoff,” he snapped, and it took all of his self-restraint for Adrissu not to burst out laughing at the unexpected vitriol. “I don’t want your help. I came here to study transmutation so I could do this myself. I didn’t ask for this reincarnation shit. And I don’t owe you anything.”
“Of course not,” Adrissu agreed, unable to stifle an amused grin as he spoke. “I had not meant to suggest otherwise. If you have no desire for my help, then by all means, continue your studies of transmutation. The Academy is an excellent place to study such things.”
Kian tensed at his amicable response. Adrissu had the distinct sense that Kian almost wanted him to be angry, though it was only conjecture as to why that might be.
“I don’t want your help,” Kian repeated, sounding less sure of himself this time. “And—And stay away from me. I want nothing to do with you.”
“I agree. It would be inappropriate to give the appearance of favoritism,” Adrissu remarked dryly, and Kian sputtered.
“Favoritism—inappropriate?” he exclaimed, his face instantly flushing red. “I don’t—You—I don’t even know you!”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Adrissu countered. “We have known each other for a combined total of, oh, about two hundred years. We know each other very well. And you know me better than you’d think. Obviously, you have some memories; I am the same today as I was then. You are... mostly the same, but always different.” He grinned, all his teeth showing, and relished in the continued blush creeping up Kian’s nose and warming the tops of his ears. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you all over again.”
“No, thanks,” Kian muttered, standing up. “Just—stay away from me. Or I’ll report you to—to—I don’t know, to someone.”
“I won’t bother you,” Adrissu repeated, shrugging as Kian gathered his things to leave. “My door is always open to you, and all students, of course.”
“Whatever,” he scowled, then hurried out of Adrissu’s office. Adrissu watched him go and stared at the empty doorway for a long moment, processing.
This was unexpected. Challenging. But he did enjoy a challenge.
Adrissu stood to close the door, but leaned his head out first, catching Eris’ attention.
“Eris, will you put together the lesson plans submitted by the transmutation department this term?” he asked, forcing an amicable grin that she hesitantly returned. “I want to have a closer look at a few... topics of interest.”
Chapter Three
Truetohisword,Adrissu did not try to speak to Kian again. He was more surprised than irritated at his mate’s sound rejection of him; and while it did make some matters inconvenient, he found himself mostly amused at the human’s knee-jerk reaction. If Kian had something to prove, to himself or to Adrissu, let him prove it—Adrissu would still be there when he’d accomplished whatever it was he set out to do. This, more than anything else, reminded him of Ruan, so he couldn’t bring himself to be bothered by it now. What were a few more years in the scheme of things?
While he did not approach Kian directly, he did look over the human’s class schedule and monitored his grades. While he probably wouldn’t appreciate the scrutiny, Adrissu had made no promises regarding his schoolwork, and after all, he was the headmaster.
By all accounts, Kian seemed to be bright and studious with an average-at-best magical capability for humans—a step above his ability in his past lives. But between that and his apparent determination, Adrissu felt sure he could nudge Kian along the right path to excel in transmutation.
Shapechanging was tricky magic, and the more different one tried to make their form, the more difficult it became. Simply changing a female body to a male one, while certainly requiring some effort, was far less complicated than his own transformation from dragon to elf. Of course,thatwas innate—and he had already shared enough secrets of dragonkind in his lifetime, so he wouldn’t share that even if he could. No, even if he was somehow able to pass down the means of his own transformation, he doubted Kian would want to hear it. In the brief interaction they’d had, he was obviously fiercely independent.
In the meantime, Adrissu brushed up on everything he knew about transmutation and tracked down some new books and research to study. Just because Kian didn’t want to interact with him directly didn’t mean he couldn’t suggest to the instructors some new topics to cover in transmutation lessons. After all, as headmaster, it would only be appropriate for him to keep a solid grasp of the curriculum—expected, even.
But neither could he risk the appearance of favoritism toward the transmutation team, so he conducted most of his study in his own time. Luckily, there were rarely pressing matters that kept him at the academy longer than the standard hours he was expected to maintain, so in the evenings he could devour the last several decades’ worth of transmutation theory and innovation.
Was a physical transformation, the kind Kian seemed to want, possible? Theoretically, yes. Had it ever been accomplished before? Not that Adrissu could find. Like the soul transference he had discussed with Caemar Illuren in Aefraya, the concept had been floated among intellectuals in the field; but as far as he could tell, nothing beyond idle conjecture had been performed regarding changing one type of body to another, or simply shaping a body into a desired form. This struck Adrissu as odd. For all the wonders magic afforded the world, did mortals really have so little interest in such an ability? He did not quite believe it. Humans were not only visual creatures, but he had found most of them to be rather vain. Surely someone had attempted to alter the appearance of a body, their own or another.
Transmutation was not a subject he had studied extensively, so Adrissu suspected he was missing something. So he kept moving back, reading increasingly older research and reports in pursuit of anything that would point toward a reason for this lack of experimentation.
And, finally, he found it—one text mentioned in passing the “failed experiment of Starck’s”, and at last he had a name, a point of reference to follow in the right direction. A bit more searching told him that this “Starck” was likely a human by the name of Camden Starck, who had lived some five hundred years ago. That this research had been conducted before his birth, at least, was some comfort to Adrissu: neither carelessness nor ignorance on his part were to blame, only the obscurity of a failed mage buried beneath the relentless march of time.
Because this experiment was so long ago, especially by human standards, it took several inquiries with his connections to the various libraries of Autreth to finally track down the manuscript by Camden Starck that detailed his ill-fated experiment.
The details were unpleasant. Starck had begun his theory pondering the question of how to increase one’s lifespan, or even achieve immortality, which amused Adrissu at first. But the human conjectured that by becoming an elf, he might obtain their naturally longer lifespan. Was it possible for a human to become an elf? This was the crux of the man’s research, and ultimately he discovered the answer to be yes, but with some significant caveats.
After his transformation, Starck reported various physical ailments. His bones had become brittle, his skin thin and easily bruised or broken. He complained of near-constant pain throughout his body, struggled to tolerate most foods, and in the end did not achieve the lifespan of an elf despite his transmutation. He died only a few years later, and some speculated that he could not bear his failure on top of his physical pain and took his own life—though that was, of course, conjecture. But Starck’s first-hand account did not paint a pleasant picture, so it only made sense that it became a cautionary tale for many others in subsequent decades. It may have even been passed down through word-of-mouth to dissuade others, eventually morphing into a tacit understanding in the field that such things were not to be attempted, even if individual practitioners did not know the exact story.
