When the ship arrived, Kamille was already waiting, much to Lord Arghantal's surprise. There was an attempt at misleading her, or so she thought, but the noble lord was so in over his head he didn’t realise there was a Black Quill on board with him, shadowing his every step. It was no point trying to keep a secret from her. His presumptuous smirk quickly faded when he put his feet on solid land and one of the first images he got, as the workers and crowd started to walk away, was the Witch's feathery cloak.

"Don’t look so dissappointed, Lord Arghantal. I could swear you're not happy with our agreement."

"Good day to you too, Lady Kamille. You will forgive my manners, the journey was a long one."

There was a moment for them to exchange some pleasantries, a curteous bow on her side, a gentlemanly kiss on the back of her hand on his. The presence of a huge shadow lurking behind her made the Lord re-think his proposal, but apparently it was too late for it - he should have thought that the Black Quills would always be present around her before they made this deal.

"My dear wife is extremely excited for our little one to be learning from the Witch of the Moonglade herself, but I can’t help but wonder..."

"You worry about the little one's safety. As you should."

He doesn’t like me, she thought. But a deal is a deal. He wished for her to back away from their deal, but since she did not, he would fulfill his end of the bargain because he's an honorable man. She could respect that. With the snap of his fingers, a servant brought a small chest, and the Lord opened it for her to take a look at its contents, gently embraced by the red velvet lining of the chest.

"It sure is true what they say about ravens and crows and shinning things, huh."

"The Green Panther will make a lovely addition to my collection," she lied, making the lord raise an eyebrow.

His servant closed the chest, handing it over to the shadow looming behind her, the Black Quill named Edgar. The noble Lord's poor servant almost let the chest fall on his feet as the brute shadow snatched it from his hands, causing the Lord to squint his eyes at the Witch.

"Let me be clear, Lady Kamille... My wife considers it a great honor for our son to be under your tutelage once he is done with his studies for this year at the Arcane Academy. However."

You don’t, she thought to herself. He is a good father to be worried about the company his son was to keep - and maybe she was the one a bit over her head to strike such a serious compromise over such a little thing.

Little. She chuckled to herself. If only he knew...

"What would the noble Lord wish to be done to have his heart at peace?"

---

That was a mistake. A gesture of good will, thoroughly taken advantage of by the Noble Lord. The price the Green Panther was gonna cost her was far greater than the first anticipated, but the words were out of her mouth and she couldn’t go back. From the weird array of things Lord Arghantal asked her to do, this was probably one of the weirdest: what the fuck were mantas doing at the beach?!

The beach was possibly one of the docking points of the Lord's smaller smuggler boats, so his intentions on seeing it clear were understandable. And while he didn’t want to bring attention to the place, the local taverns had already a few whispers of a reward for people who would see the beach clear of the mantas. What didn’t seem to make sense to her was why he was so worried about being so careful with the creatures. Probably the lady wife, a druid, had something to do with it. Once again, Kamille found herself chuckling softly under her breath. For so much power the Lord held, his Lady wife surely folded and twisted him like a piece of paper.

Kamille approached one of the pools with the mantas, trying to think of a way to free them. Maybe she could summon the gargoyles to pick them up and carry them?

"What do you think, Mischief? Maybe I could turn into a dire wolf and dig a path for them back to the sea? Do you think that would work?"

Blue walked along the beach, their feet sinking into the sand and a little sand sinking into their feet. Just another day of them running across Charon, exploring and sightseeing. The only difference this time was that they'd chosen to forgo their usual full suit of armor in exchange for a pair of swim shorts. They were walking on the beach after all, and Cantio had told them that these were proper beach attire.

So, they walked along the beach, picking up and snacking on seashells and bits of driftwood they found as they went. As they picked up a beautiful pink-colored conch shell, they looked a head to see something odd in the distance. A couple of large pools of water, a bit of a ways in from the waves, and it looked like there was something in them. There was also someone standing near them. Curious, they immediately walked a bit faster to go see what was happening, casually shoving the conch shell into their stomach as they stepped across the sand.

They overheard a bit as they approached and, with no caution at all for the strange woman in a black feathered cloak gazing at a couple of manta gliders trapped in the pools, happily blurted out.

"You can turn into a dire wolf too!?"

Kamille was apparently distracted. Her eyes were on the pool where the mantas were swimming, aparently angry for their natural enclosure - but her mind was far from it. She was thinking of solutions to this, something that could be done quickly and with the least effort possible.

Someone interrupted her thoughts, as she was thinking outloud with Mischief - as if the raven could give her any answer besides the silliest possible. As she turned to face the stranger, she could swear the sun was in her eyes, and she blinked a few more times than needed. Maybe it was not the sun, but the reflection on such chiseled muscles certainly would blind anyone...

"What do you mean t-!?"

Kamille barely had finished her sentence, and a moment of distraction later her food slided on the side of the pool, prompting her to plumet into it, gracefully like a sack of potatoes. Luckly, she got her bearings quick enough as to pull herself back to the sand before the mantas' shock wore off and they decided to attack her.

But now Kamille was imensely more frustrated than before. She just embarrassed herself, in front of a stranger - a stranger bearing the most amazing sculptured abdominals! - and was now drenched and breaded in a good layer of sand. She looked miserable, coughing up both water and sand.

But then the sight before her made her feel a little bit better, eh...

"What... What do you mean? Do you turn into a dire wolf?"

Blue was surprised when the woman suddenly took a dip in the pool, but it was pretty hot out. It did look a lot like she fell by accident though. Maybe they should have offered a hand to help her climb back up onto the sand, but she had scrambled back up so quickly they hadn't even had time to snap out of their shock from her suddenly falling. She looked a bit embarrassed though, so they had better not mention it. One thing they'd learned was that they shouldn't mention things that someone was embarrassed about. At least not unless they didn't like that person, then it was okay and pretty funny. Astrid was a great teacher. They'd just pretend that fall never happened!

Blue put their hands on their hips and stood proudly with a toothy smile, incidentally showing off their muscular chest and abs even more. "Yup, I can! Dire wolf, big wolf, regular wolf, all sorts of wolves! I can turn into other things though, but I like wolves. My name is Wolfe!" Blue replied enthusiastically listing off all the types of wolves they knew, which was pretty much just big wolves and regular wolves. They didn't know what a dire wolf was, but if it was a wolf, they could turn into it probably.

Then Blue noticed the lady's coughing and spitting out sand and salt water. They held a hand behind their back and pulled a bottle of blue liquid seemingly out of nowhere before offering it to her. "Are you alright? You seem kind of thirsty. You can have this if you want."

---

Ever Flowing Chalice
Space Pocket

Kamille was still coughing up the salt water when Blue offered her the bottle. After the dip, she wasn't actually thirsty, but she thought it would buy her enough time to rearrange her thoughts and get her grip.

Wrong.

She brought the bottle to her lips, and as she turned it over, her eyes once again caught sight of the magnificent chiseled abdomin-

Instead of drinking the liquid, she ended up pouring it all over her face, not entirely certain of what her hands were doing while her eyes wandered around.

"...GLUB! COUGH COUGH I'M OKAY! I'M - COUGH - F-FINE!"

She handed him the bottle back, still coughing and still as thirsty as she had first been. Impatiently brushing her hair out of her face, she had a faint idea he had told her his name, but unfortunately her two braincells were too occupied at the moment to register it.

"Really!?! COUGH Why COUGH Why don't you... show me? You must COUGH You must be really good at it!"

Still in between coughing and deep embarrassement, Kamille avoided looking directly at him, as she tried to look taken by the task of taking her feathery cloak off and getting as much sand out of it as she could.

Wow, this lady had a weird way of drinking. It was more like she just poured it all over herself than drank it, but whatever. She said she was fine, right?

"Uh, okay..." Blue sounded unconvinced, but didn't argue.

Blue just took the bottle back from her without pointing out that her face was now all covered in the drink they'd given her, leaving it slightly sticky and smelling like raspberries. They held it behind their back to store it away again.

"Oh, yeah! I'm super good at it! Just watch!" Blue replied, holding their fists in front of them in excitement. Now that was something they could do! They were happy to show off their shapeshifting abilities, especially when asked to do so.

Blue took a few steps back and then started to transform, the blue fur sprouting all over their body and engulfing their swim shorts as they grew larger. Their arms and legs morphed into the legs of a wolf and they fell forward onto all fours, their hands changing into huge paws with sharp claws that sank into the sand. Their face elongated into the canine muzzle and their ears moved up and changed into the pointed ears of a wolf. Finally, a tail sprouted from their rear and started to wag, their tongue flopping out of the side of their mouth as they took the form of a dire wolf, but had the attitude of an excited golden retriever.

And now she was also sticky and slimy... What the hell was in his bottle? She thought it was plain water, but apparently not... If the situation was in the slightest different, she would be very unhappy. At least she had a good sight before her, right...?

And then even that went away as he transformed into a blue dire wolf. That... sounded eerily familiar, but she couldn't say exactly where she heard of it... She never saw that kind of magic, so once the abs were gone from her sight and she was once again able to focus without making a fool of herself, she grew curious and intrigued.

"That is amazing! I'm afraid I'm not familiar with this kind of magic you use... But it is very impressive! You're very good at it!"

Before she knew it, she was already smiling at the golden retriever disposition of the giant dire wolf. Maybe...

Maybe she could have some help in this manta's problem she came to solve?

Kamille looked around, as an idea popped in her head.

"Wolfe, do you like games? How about we play a game here? How about... We see who can dig cannals for these mantas to go back to the sea? They are angry and afraid, so they won't allow us to carry them... All I can think of is that we could open a way for them to go back to the sea. How about that?"

With their face being that of a big, blue wolf, it wasn't easy to make out expressions, but it was still easy to see just how happy Blue looked thanks to Kamille's compliments. They stood tall and proud of their shapeshifting abilities. Kamille didn't know what kind of magic they were using, because they honestly didn't know if this even counted as magic. There was definitely some magical element to it, but their shapeshifting came from their natural abilities as an ooze and their (relatively) enhanced intelligence giving them the capabilities to shape their extremely malleable body however they pleased rather than any studied spells. They weren't going to explain any of that to her though. They probably couldn't even if they tried.

"It's uhh..." The wolf's head tilted slightly as they tried to come up with a plausible explanation. "Shapeshifting magic!" They finished simply, their voice a bit deeper and just slightly slurred in their wolf form.

Yup, that was all they had. They'd never thought of an explanation with any more depth than that.

"I like games! I never heard of that game before, but I like digging! Are you gonna dig too? Are you gonna turn into a big wolf?" Blue replied, their excitement obvious from their tail going crazy behind them and eager nodding. They'd never seen someone else shapeshift into a full wolf before and were excited to see it. They'd seen a Werewolf, which was cool, but not exactly the same.

Great! At least...... at least there were no distracting muscles anymore! Wonderful! She could think clearly again.

Wolfe's magic was certainly...... weird. She didn’t know what to make of it. Didn’t look like a were-person's shapeshifting abilities, nor a druids one. And those one she would definitely recognize. She would want to watch it closely once again.... maybe she could invite them for a drink afterwards? See what she could pick on? That was an interesting kind of magic.....

 

Then he asked if she would join in the game. Well, she started it, right? Might as well go with it!

The black feathers ruffled up, and her cloak enveloped her figure dramatically as if strong winds were taking a hold of it. The shape that resulted of that was not feathery anymore, but fluffy and fuzzy. Her fur was as dark as her hair, contrasting to her blue eyes. In a heartbeat, she had gone from a half elf woman to a medium sized wolf, completely black and seemingly ordinary, if not for the eyes [1].

"Let's play then! The one that helps more mantas to the sea by digging a way for them wins, how about that? Ready.... set... Go!"

Kamille, now a black wolf, happily ran to start digging a passageway for the closest pool of mantas. Hopefully it would work....

[1]Shapeshifters plate

Blue watched in amazement as Kamille transformed right in front of them into a black wolf. She wasn't as large as the giant blue wolf, but she did seem a lot more genuine in her transformation. A wolf all the way through rather than just a skin deep façade around a form made of ooze. It was fascinating to watch, but the intrigue of watching someone use actual magic was quickly lost as the ooze was swept up in the sheer excitement of digging in sand.

Kamille went to work digging, and Blue didn't wait to give her a head start. The blue wolf went straight to work as well, digging rapidly to make a channel from the pool to the sea. They wanted to win! Knights were supposed to win things, according to what they learned during a race they went to with Astrid and Gwen. The idea of chivalry and going easy on a lady was something they had not been taught. They were going to go all out to dig this sand, or at least as all out as they could get without being way too obvious about being an ooze.

They could still use some of their oozey abilities though, just subtly. As they sent sand flying with their digging, some of the sand also disappeared into their paws, absorbed by the ooze, and increasing their digging speed just a little more. With the advantage of their larger size as well, they were digging their trench much faster than wolf Kamille.

Even if it worked on her behalf, it was clear that wolf-Kamille would tire much, much faster than wolf-Blue. And she wasn't bothered by it, trying her best as Blue clearly had much more stamina for that.

Well, maybe she hadn't calculated that properly.... The initial excitement was soon fading as she found herself covered in sand, with her tongue out and breathing sharply, while Blue...... Didn't falter for a moment! Wait- There was something odd going on there..........

As she squinted her eyes at him, sand flying all around them, she noticed that the plan might, in fact, work. As she finished digging her own trench to the sea and the water from the ocean filled it, it made for a passageway for the mantas to swim back to the sea, except......

Except they didn't know that. They wouldn't leave their pool if they didn't know the cannal they were digging would lead back to the sea.

"Blue, what can we do to make them go back to the sea? Maybe we can bury the pool with sand? So they will need to follow to the sea?"

For a moment she stopped digging, as she ran around the pool, trying to think of a way to have the mantas follow the path they created.

"Huh?" Blue looked at Kamille in surprise. Did she just call them Blue? How did she know their real name!? They were sure they'd introduced themself as Wolfe, hadn't they? Oh no, now they weren't sure. Did Kamille know who they were already and didn't tell them? The electric ooze felt as if they were short circuiting trying to figure out what to do next without panicking. The idea that Kamille might have simply called them "Blue" because they were, in fact, a giant, extremely blue wolf never occurred to them. They just stared at Kamille blankly for a moment as thoughts raced in their mind before they finally settled on their next move.

"Blue? You mean me?" Blue asked innocently in their garbled wolf voice, lifting a front paw to point at themself. Yup, perfect, Kamille would never suspect a thing! Nailed it.

"Sure! I can do tha-" Blue started, turning around to face the pile of sand they'd dug out to form their trench and seeing... nothing. It was gone. All that sand had just vanished. Of course, a lot of it they'd inconspicuously eaten, but where was the rest of it? They then realized they might have overdone it. The sand had been flung farther than they'd realized, soaring all the way out into the sea waters to be washed away by the waves.

"Uh..." Blue looked back to Kamille with a face that clearly said "Woops, did I do that?"

"That's okay, I have another idea! You want those flappy things to go back to the sea? That's easy!" Blue said before their body began to morph, the big blue wolf transforming back into the muscular, blue-haired man shooting her a couple of finger guns with a toothy grin. "I'll just put them back!"

With that, Blue jumped down into the hole with one of the mantas, sliding down the sandy wall of the tide pool to land in the shallow water with a splash.

That... surely was a weird person. For a second or so, Kamille was puzzled by the fact she didn’t seem to find where all the sand Wolfe had dug went to. I mean, there should be a sizeable mound of sand somewhere.... right? She sat down and looked around with what looked like a frown on her wolf face.

But then Wolfe turned back into a strong, blue haired man, and both her remaining braincells stopped running in circles to watch.

...

WAIT A MINUTE!

"WHAT! Wolfe, w-wait! That!..... don't!... You can.... Don’t get hurt them!"

There were two thoughts in her head struggling to get out, and in the presence of Wolfe's abs, they got a bit scrambled. First, she feared Wolfe getting hurt because the mantas might lash out. And then, she also didn’t want the mantas to get hurt. Wolf-Kamille ran back to the side of the pool Wolfe had just slided down, worried.

"Be careful! They might hurt you!"
 
Despite being far easier to hide her indecency in the form of a wolf, Kamille turned back to her usual self, ready to help Wolfe should he need it. Of course she wouldn’t stop him, though. It was always nice to see muscular men at work....

Blue landed in the water at the edge of the tidepool and looked back up at Kamille with a slightly confused, but reassuring smile. Did she say "Don't get hurt them?" Well, whatever that means, they'd be fine. 

"Don't worry, I can handle this! I'm really strong, see?" Blue called up to her and, mimicking a weird thing they'd seen some humans do when they wanted to show others how strong they were, flexed their arms. They didn't really understand what bending their elbow had to do with strength, but it had looked like it worked when they'd seen it. At least when the person that did it had a similar build to Blue Raspberry's human form, at least. Maybe it was because it sort of made their arm look bigger? Blue did at least know that bigger things were usually stronger. They themself made themself bigger whenever they needed to be stronger. Well, whatever the reason, it should work, right?

Hoping Kamille was convinced they'd be fine, Blue turned back toward the flopping manta gliders and stepped forward. As soon as they were close enough, one of the mantas noticed Blue approaching and lashed out with its barbed tail. Blue wasn't worried at all though, catching the tail between their palms with little effort.

The manta tried to pull its tail back, but found the ooze's sticky grip was too strong. It flailed harder as Blue turned, holding the manta's tail over their shoulder, and started to drag it down the channel that they'd dug out of the sand, toward the ocean.

Blue looked up at Kamille again with a smile as they walked through the sand and seawater.

"See? No problem!"

---

Steel Catch
Bull's Strength

Kamille stopped to watch Blue show off, and it was clear her two remaining braincells also stopped running in circles to watch. As she did so, she once again almost fell down the canal they dug as she tripped. At least this time she recovered in time to not fall down, and even got to pretend that was exactly what she wanted to do, as she slided a bit down the canal and waved her hand for Wolfe to go that way.

"Uhm.... Y-yes... Be careful not to harm it... Slowly..."

Wolfe looked like it wasn’t even enough to make him break a sweat. Clearly he wasn’t lying about being strong. She'd have to reward him in any way after they were done there - Wolfe didn’t ask for anything in return, but it was only fair she offered something.

"Do you like to eat or drink, Wolfe? After we're done here, I can take you to a tavern around here that I know to serve good food, if you'd like. It would be my way of thanking you for helping me, you know? Ah.... for... winning the game, I mean!"

Yes, they were playing a game right? She almost forgot. Something about the way the sun hit defined core muscles made all thoughts abandon her brain.

No matter how much the manta would try to fight, it wasn’t strong enough to avoid being dragged. Of course, it only made it more and more angry. Kamille was ready to raise a Sand shield if the manta decided to slash back at him once he put it back to the sea. 

"Well, uh... Three more to go!"