Kliza turned and directed a sharp glare at her younger brother. "Don't mince words with me, Laermornan." Her voice dripped with scorn for her inferior. "You had a reason for asking what orders were given to Distanfae and it was more than mere curiousity. I sensed fear in you when you asked. You know as well as I that he's had that rune sword for two years, and that quicksilver golem for six months. There's been no secret made of Matron Vitrue's having ordered him to produce a new rune weapon for her. Why so curious, little brother?" There was no affection in the words of the dark-skinned beauty, only malice, suspicion, and scorn.

Laermornan's dark face flushed with fear and an anger he dared not express. He stared at the floor, his face partially concealed by his long white hair, unwilling to meet her eyes. "Because I know my brother, Kliza. To give him leeway with his orders is dangerous."

Kliza's eyes flashed. "So jealous of the second-boy's stature in our mother's eyes, are you? Do you truly think Distanfae would dare betray our mother?" Kliza's hand flashed out, grasping Laer's shirt and pulling him to stare into her beautiful, deadly face. "I don't want to hear of this again, Laermornan. Your jealousy has gone quite far enough."

Laermornan wanted to protest further but dared not. Inwardly he wondered. What would Matron Vitrue do to Distanfae if he was right? It was but the merest rumour he'd heard, but if in truth Distanfae had been ordered to make a rune weapon without their traditional limitations, they could all be in for terrible danger. After all, was not the ability to be controlled by another a limitation?

---

"Surely you see this is madness? Do not do this, Distanfae!" Laermornan Vitrue's dark face was flushed with fear and anger beneath his long white hair as he stared at his younger brother. "I warned you against pursuing these foolish studies of human magics! They've led to madness before, you know this! You must build in controls for the Matron!"

Laer paused in his pacing to direct a pleading gaze at his brother, who lounged in the comfortable chair placed near the easel on which the remnants of diagrams and scrawls could still be seen. The chair's purpose there had confused Laermornan when Distanfae first brought him to the room and began to explain his plan. It became clear though, when Distanfae retreated to it upon Laer's interruption. Distanfae seemed curiously unaffected by his sibling's discomfiture, merely watching him with a cool, calculating smile.

With a visible effort, Laermornan broke off his tirade, focusing his attention once more on his smirking brother. When he spoke again, it was in a calmer and quieter tone. "You must realize that you are not the first to attempt such a thing?"

"Of course, dear brother. I am not so foolish as you seem wont to think me." His voice held a silent warning that Laer interpreted easily enough. Distanfae was quietly warning Laer that his words of madness were coming dangerously close to insult.

Laermornan sighed then nodded slowly, resuming his seat even as Distanfae rose. He waved one hand wearily, gesturing for his brother to continue, though every word that came from his brother's mouth was confirming the fear he had been forbidden to speak further of.

"Thank you. Now, as I was saying, I have found the means to create a weapon that is indestructible..."

Laer groaned inwardly but couldn't help interrupting. "Surely you mean virtually indestructible, brother; nothing is completely indestructible. I may be a warrior and not a wizard but that does not make me a fool. Any sword can be broken, no matter how strong the spells that are on it. It is simply a matter of how much force is required."

His brother actually stopped and graced him with an appraising look followed by a wry smile. "Indeed, brother, you are correct. However, there is documentary evidence of weapons of this particular variety that the gods themselves have sought to destroy and yet failed. I suppose that as you say, they cannot be truly and completely indestructible. Let us say then that there exists no known force powerful enough to cause their destruction."

Laermornan's eyes widened. "If what you say is true, Dist, then how is it that these humans have not conquered all the world?"

Distanfae smiled humourlessly. "Indeed. That was one of my first avenues of research. First, let me state that my materials for this work come not from this world nor even this dimension." He smirked at his brother's clueless expression. "Let me put it this way. The humans who created these things are not from this plane of existence. Furthermore, while the magic that I have is human in basis, humans are not the true creators here. They have merely adapted the creation of vastly more powerful evil races in the plane from whence my information comes. More to the point, these evil races do, in fact, rule nearly all that is in that plane.

"However, my research has also indicated that the primary point of failure here is that while the weapon may be indestructible, the wielder is not. Furthermore, the creation of these weapons involves the capture and permanent imprisonment of a powerful soul, which hardly gives the weapon a strong reason to protect its creator.

"Indeed, it seems that these weapons often do not reach their full potential until they come across a wielder who fits with their personality... much like more ordinary intelligent magical weapons."

Laer idly fingered the tassels on the arms of his chair as he contemplated his brother's words. "Am I to understand then that you have thought of a solution to these complications?" Perhaps his brother was not so foolish as he had feared.

His brother's face seemed to be lit from within as his excitement broke through the emotionless shell he ordinarily displayed. "Precisely! Allow me to explain. You are aware of the existence of the quicksilver demon?"

"The ones that a recent exploring party was nearly destroyed by? Yes... although I thought there was some question as to whether they might not have been golems, left over guardians from some long ago wizard." Laer was careful not to reveal the extent of his knowledge about them, nor that he knew already that Distanfae had acquired one.

"Oh, yes, Laermornan, there was considerable question about those. It might surprise you to know that I managed to obtain one. They are neither demons, as has been the popular supposition, nor are they golems. They are a form of living metal, constrained in human form and infused with an elemental spirit."

Laer raised his eyebrows. "I thought you said they weren't golems? I thought that a golem was something inanimate with an elemental spirit bound to it?" He might not be capable of making one, but Laer was a trained warrior; he had fought golems before and had learned of them in the warrior's school.

Distanfae shrugged. "There are certain subtle distinctions between elementals and golems but they aren't really important. The point is that after I negated the spells that created it, I had a living metal. Not intelligent, mind, but aware. It is capable of behaving like a liquid, taking on the shape of its container. It is also capable of retaining solid form. Furthermore, it can mimic forms. I am sure that whoever discovered it found it perfect for creating cheap golems, since it can take a more precise form than the best carver or silversmith could give you.

"I've run a number of tests, including summoning elementals into the metal. Without a constraining spell, the metal can be shaped by the will of the spirit within, or even by the will of one merely touching it, if it has no spirit. It will also absorb other metals, as if consuming them. With proper coaxing, it will absorb other things as well.

"That has given me the answer, elder brother, for with what I have left of the living metal and a supply of mithril and adamantite, I will create an indestructible weapon that can change its form and can wield itself."

Laermornan shook his head doubtfully, not noticing that his reaction had caused his brother to palm a poisoned dart. "Wield itself? Surely the first Matron it attacks will simply banish it to another plane and then where will we be? Granted that a weapon that wields itself is less danger to you, for it is not obvious to whom its attack should be attributed, but the Matrons will doubtless have spells to handle tracking the controller of such items. I do not see how this can work. If your attempt displeases our Matron you will not long live."

"Too bad," his brother sighed, flicking his wrist. He watched his brother collapse. "But I can't take the chance that you'll speak of this. If you can't be convinced, then you'll simply have to forget."

With that he set to casting the spells that would ensure his slumbering brother would forget all about this little conversation.

---

Ranma rose from his steaming corpse where it lay against the cold wood of the dojo. Nabiki and Kasumi, to his surprise, had tried to convince his mother that he must have done all that could have been done, but she was adamant. No man amongst men would ever allow his fiancee, family, and friends to be slain, even if he did slay their killer.

He wanted to go to the grieving girls but knew there was nothing he could do for them now. He was a failure. He was no man. He deserved the curse that had been placed on him, for he had failed everyone.

He hung his head in shame and sadness, unable to bear to look any longer upon the anguished faces of those who would have been his sisters, had he not failed them, and waited for the end, for the gods to take his spirit.

He was not in the least expecting the frozen hook that pierced his chest with a frigid chill, sending a burning, freezing pain searing through him. The sudden shock of pain broke through the barrier of depression and loss and he reached out as the chain attached to the hook began to tug at him and grabbed at that which was closest to hand in a vain effort to secure himself.

His hand passed without obstruction through his dead body until to his surprise it snagged on something within. He grasped it tightly even as the hook pulled sharply. The object pulled free of his body as he passed through the dojo wall and his eyes widened with sudden horror as he stared at the glowing ball of white light. It could not be his soul, for surely that was what he now was. His body was dead and the only thing he could think of that this might be was the curse, and it terrified him.

In his desperation to escape whatever fate awaited him, for nothing good could be signified by being hooked like a fish, had he caused the curse to follow him into the afterlife? His horror was confirmed as the ball seemed to seep into his hand and as the white light passed down his arm, it became more slender and shapely. "Even in death," he murmured, finding it suddenly meet that he should become a woman in death. He had not been a man in life, why should he be allowed to be a man after life?

He felt his grasp on consciousness fading as the light spread and when the light finally reached his head, darkness consumed him. When he recovered awareness he was completely female in form. He had a sinking suspicion that the curse would no longer switch him. He wasn't sure why he thought that, yet it somehow seemed appropriate. His own mother had deemed him less than a man and if what he suspected were true, he... no, she, would probably never be a man again.

A soft laugh filled with delight and mirth echoed around her and she struggled to lift her head. After a moment her tired muscles responded. That doesn't make sense, she thought even as she raised her head, I'm dead, why do I have muscles still?

She was surrounded by a faint shimmer of white light that seemed to form a cylinder around her. Beyond it she saw the figure who was laughing, a man with sharp features, pointed ears, dark skin, and white hair that reflected the glow that surrounded her. Was this her judge?

He stepped forward and, having restrained his delight, sketched a deep bow in her direction. By ingrained response she bowed in return even as she wondered where she was. Was this the afterlife? Was that freezing hook really how souls were brought to the next plane? Or was she here to be reincarnated?

"Despair."

The word seemed to echo throughout the room and strangely seemed to have been said in a number of languages at once. The overlapping words did not interfere with the clarity of the speech and the meaning was not obscured.

"The pinnacle of skill you reached and it was not enough and so now you despair," the voice continued and Ranma saw that the handsome man was speaking. "You've nothing left to live for, have you?" He nodded when she gestured her assent.

Ranma wanted to protest, thinking that perhaps he was asking if she desired reincarnation, but what was the point? She couldn't beat Saffron, she couldn't save anyone, she failed her mother, and she was dead already anyway. She dropped her head, unable to hold on to even a spark of defiance. Let him do what he would. It could hardly be more than she deserved for her failure. At the least she could retain this measure of honor; that she would not protest the judgement given in the afterlife.

"You are a great warrior," he asked, though the tone of the question made it clear that he knew and expected but one response. She nodded once more. "What is your name?"

She struggled for a moment to decide how to respond. Ranma was her name and seppuku had restored her honor, leaving her within her rights to claim the name Saotome, but she felt a deep pain in her gut at the thought of being reminded, every time someone said her name, that she had been a man once, that she was a failure, that she had failed everyone she had ever known.

"Saotome Ranko," she replied finally. She was somewhat surprised to note that her voice sounded just as it always had in spite of her being a spirit now, or at least, as her female voice had always sounded.

"I can offer you a second chance," he said and she looked at him in puzzlement. "I can give you life again and a chance to change what happened." He held up a restraining hand at her eager expression. Reincarnation? She had feared that her earlier response and acquiescence had removed that opportunity; but a chance to change what happened? She could be reincarnated in the past? "You would not share in that change, however. That is to say, if you prevented the deaths that led to your despair, you would then never have despaired. A paradox, if you will. It would undo itself and your effort would be in vain."

Ranma slumped in disappointment. Even if she had to remain a girl forever, at least her mother would never have had to lose her family, her father would keep his life, her friends and her fiancees would live. Yet even this, it seemed, was still beyond her.

"There is a way," the man continued. "I can place your soul within a rune weapon, an indestructible weapon. The power of a rune weapon is such that even the gods themselves cannot destroy one. In such a form, even paradox could not destroy you and both your old self and your new weapon form would exist at the same time. But you yourself would be left alone, for those you failed would have you still, as you were then."

Not reincarnation then, she realized. She was no longer certain that this was the afterlife, but it mattered little. She stared at him, eyes wide and hopeful, hands clasped together. Did it really matter what this was, whether the afterlife, or who knew what else? She already feared that she had been cursed to be a woman forever, would it be so different to serve in a weapon? She imagined being a sword like her mother's. Swords had honor, they carried the honor of families, if in that way she could redeem her failure, could she refuse?

If even after death she could still triumph, how could her mother look at her with disappointment in her eyes? She nodded eagerly, not trusting her voice.

"You would live forever," he said in a warning tone.

She shook her head and waved her hand, "Doesn't matter."

"It might take hundreds, even thousands of years." Again she indicated that she did not care.

"What could you give me for this boon?"

Ranma slumped. A being of the afterlife or no, he wasn't giving free gifts. A moment later she brightened. He wasn't hiding the strings, either. She wouldn't find out only too late that there really was a cost; he was showing it to her upfront. But what had she to offer? Her face sank again and she shrugged listlessly. "I have nothing."

"You think you have nothing to offer? You have your skill, do you not? Offer me your fealty, warrior, your sworn loyalty to obey me as your lord until my death, and I will grant you this boon." Ranma was startled but a moment's thought made her realize that what she was being asked for was much the same as any samurai had given his daimyo, and was not she of samurai stock? Besides, what could he ask of his sword? That it kill? If she had been more willing to kill when she fought Saffron, she might have saved everyone. She wouldn't make that mistake again.

"How long?" she asked warily. "You said I'd be immortal. If you are too, I'd be stuck forever. How would I save my family then?"

He nodded. "A wise caution. Until I die, then, or a thousand years hence."

She considered slowly then remembered other tales she'd heard. "Will I age?"

"You will grow older, but only in mind, not in body or form."

She tried to think of anymore loopholes then sighed. I ain't Nabiki, she thought despondently. If he's trying to cheat me, it ain't gonna be hard. But it is a chance, a chance to regain my honor and to save my... to save everyone. For just a moment she wondered if she ought not reveal that she was a man, that there be no dishonesty on her part in accepting this. A sudden fear struck her then. What if he demanded proof and she could not give it? What if he took back his offer? This might well be her one and only chance to undo what had been done, to correct her terrible mistake. Could she take any chance on losing it? Inwardly, silently, she swore an oath, that the oath she would next give might be an honest one; "I renounce my manhood and my given name. From this day forth, I am Saotome Ranko only."

"I swear on my honor," she said aloud, hoping against hope that he would accept her oath and give her this chance, even if it took a thousand times a thousand years, "that until you die or a thousand year's hence, whichever comes first," thanks Nabiki, I guess I did learn something after all, "I will obey you in all things, if you faithfully grant me the chance to prevent the deaths that led to my," ahh... what was the word he used, "to my despair."

---

Distanfae nodded in acceptance of the warrior's oath. "So be it." He had been surprised that the powerful warrior he had sought had been female and human. Females might be the stronger in his race, but he was fairly confident that it was the opposite amongst humans. Still, though she was a tiny one, the strength was obvious in the well-muscled curves of her naked form.

Distanfae watched with pleasure as the captive beauty was released into the boiling pool of magically endowed molten metals, a mix of adamantite, mithril, and the living quicksilver metal, which in spite of the name it had been given was unquestionably not mercury, though its appearance was quite similar. Strands of molten jade and onyx, liquified by magic, threaded through the dark and light tapestry of the metals. His attention was caught by the sight of a fresh strand of red curling through the mixture. "Now where did that come from?" he wondered, "It's not as if she were an item of magical power, to be drawn in by the spell as a new element, she should be no more than a bound soul."

He waited as the mixture cooled. It retained its liquified state due to the powerful enchantments laid upon the jade and onyx, designed to extend the attributes of the mystery metal to the other four components while preventing the metal from completely absorbing the other elements of the mixture. When he deemed it cool enough he left the room. In the next room, already prepared, a scrying pool awaited. He barred the door then activated the pool.

The destruction of magic objects often caused considerable damage and he wasn't entirely certain that what he was going to try to do would work, so he intended to accomplish it from a distance. Casting a spell that would allow him to move the objects in the room, he picked up the simplest of the prepared items, a ring of eldritch missiles.

It was a very minor item of power and its destruction would not be more powerful than the number of missiles it held, at least to his estimation. Lifting it, he cast it into the liquid pool, still swirling as the immense spell energies he had released continued their work.

The ring vanished into a stream of gold but there was no sign of the half-expected explosion. Distanfae barely resisted letting forth a cry of exultation. "This will secure my place among the names of the greats!"

The ring was quickly followed by a wand of lightning magic. Once it was completely dissolved, a wand of fire magic, then water, air, and earth in quick succession. Each wand was among the more powerful of the non-unique wands, bearing in addition to the basic powers of their element, the power to summon elementals from the realms they accessed.

They were among Distanfae's most prized possessions yet he had never had the opportunity to use them. After all, his first use would likely be his last, for if his Matron knew he had them, they would be taken in moments. By binding them to his servant, he gave up the ability to use them directly, but they would never be able to be taken from him. Of course, technically, he was tasked to make this weapon for the Matron, but if it served him and he served the Matron, then he fulfilled the letter of his duty.

The spell was beginning to wind down, so Distanfae wasted no time supplying the next items. The cloak of shadows would allow his creation to travel from shadow to shadow and to cloak herself in shadows that would hide her even from the heat-sensitive eyes of his kin. He knew all too well the dangers of possessing a flashy or obvious magical item, even if that would fit his Matron's desires better. It would also allow her to form a sphere of darkness, mimicking one of the innate abilities of drow, particularly drow nobles. The ring of flight would ensure that she could emulate their ability to levitate, as well as allow her, in sword form, to act as a dancing sword, a sword that wields itself.

Lastly, an amulet of faerie fire would duplicate the drow talent for the colorful, unburning magical fire that they used for decorative purposes. The amulet was in fact stronger than a drow's native abilities, being used to manipulate the permanent glows left, especially those created by drow that had since died. Any drow could readily control their own faerie fire, but manipulating that created by another was far more difficult.

That constituted the larger part of his collection of magical items, at least the ones with considerable power. Most of the remaining items were defensive in nature. He didn't really care to supply his creation with any defensive magic. Weapons of this sort were indestructible, according to all the texts he found. What would the point of further defensive magic be? Besides, while he might not be safely able to wield offensive magic, the defensive magic he owned could well save his life. If after it did it was taken as a prize by his mother, the Matron, well, it would have served its purpose by then at any rate.

The last item lay on the table where the other items had been set out. He gazed at it for a long time, uncertain whether to risk trying to add it. It was a straight blade, about five and a half-feet long, of green jade, with a simple hilt. It was also a weapon of exactly the sort he was making. It claimed to be the soul of an ancient celestial dragon and its knowledge had been the impetus for his effort. He had no doubts about the likelihood of his surviving while trying to wield that sword. He was no swordsman and its indestructibility would be little comfort as the poisons of his kin destroyed him.

Glancing at the pool, he hesitated for a long moment. He hoped, though without much assurance, that even after his creation had taken shape, after the formative magics cooled and died, it might still be capable of absorbing other magic items into itself. Indeed, he was somewhat afraid that it might need to, might hunger for more. Another rune weapon, though? That seemed a bit much to hope for. His hesitation was enough and the decision was taken from him, for even as he watched, the swirling stilled and the liquid in the pool pulled away from the edges, rising quickly and flowing into its base shape, a simple sphere.

Distanfae nodded slowly to himself as he reentered the chamber where his new weapon lay. He had gone too far, sacrificed too many of the house slaves to the spell to take a chance on causing it to fail now. Besides which, the danger of the spirit of the other rune weapon being still active in the combined weapon was too great.

Moving carefully through the room, he eased past the now quiescent sphere to where the second half of his creation rested on a shelf. It was a thin wire mesh of gold and mithril. He lifted it up and set it lightly upon his thick white hair, where it instantly vanished, passing through his hair to bind itself to his head.

Bound together in the creation process, the thin mesh and the vari-colored sphere were inextricably linked. Distanfae was too careful to trust to the traditional means of controlling such powerful magic, particularly not when he had made changes to its design that had never been attempted before.

His insurance in place, he reached out and splayed his hand across the sphere, not quite touching the surface. Breathing deeply and tensing his hand to pull away if aught went wrong, he lowered his hand until it came into contact with the sphere.

When nothing untoward occurred, he firmed his grip and turned his hand, lifting up the sphere. Even as his hand turned, the massive sphere shrank until it rested easily and lightly in his palm. He admired his new weapon for a long moment then wrapped it in cloth and concealed it within his robes.

He turned to the door then paused a moment, reconsidering. The priestesses of the house, his mother and sisters, often kept spells ready that would let them feel the direction of another's thoughts, or know if truth or lies were being offered them. He had to keep this new weapon a secret until he had it trained, lest its incompetence bring upon him his mother's wrath, and while he had timed events so that his path from these chambers to those he intended to use for training would be most probably empty, perhaps he did not need to take even that risk.

Slipping his hand within his robe, he insinuated it into the cloth covering until his fingers came once more into contact with the smooth orb, still slightly warm from its recent heat. Ignoring the aura of depression and despair that was the captive soul, he made the first true test of his creation. Under his breath he muttered the command words for the cloak of shadows. A feral grin lit his face as the shadows on the wall lengthened, embracing him. A moment later he stepped forth from the shadows of an alcove in the training hall he had chosen.

The walls were a matte black and the entire hall was wreathed in shadows, the only light coming from statues above the alcoves, limned in the soft ethereal glow of faerie fire.

Removing the cloth wrapped bundle from his robe, he strode to an alcove at the head of the room where awaited a pedastal. Upon the stone column he placed the cloth, unveiling the weapon, tucking the cloth in around its base that it might not move.

He stared at it for a long time, marveling at his success. He had gone beyond the humans whose spells he had worked from, beyond even the great evil intelligences that had crafted the first rune weapons. "You will be ranked with the great artifacts," he thought to himself as he looked on his creation, "the creations whose name every wizard knows, whose creator's name every wizard fears."

Reaching out once more, he lay his hand upon it. Instantly his awareness of the despairing soul within was renewed. Muttering under his breath he invoked one of the powers of the light mesh helm that lay hidden beneath his hair and this time when he withdrew his hand from the sphere, that awareness remained.

Stepping back into a neighboring alcove, Distanfae focused his attention on the soul in despair. "Awake," he commanded it. Receiving no response, he pressed upon it with his will, forcing it to return to awareness.

"Where am I? I can't see anything, I can't feel anything?" He heard the youthful female voice say, the same voice with which she had spoken to him before, though he heard it only in his mind. It was in a language unfamiliar to him but that mattered little, for the magic ensured that he understood and was understood in his turn.

"Form an eye and then you will see," he suggested.

"Form? How? What do you mean? Who are you? Where are you?" There was a hint of anger in the girl's tone. Distanfae was unsurprised. He knew that the spirit he had taken would have, at first, no idea what it could now do, nor how to do it. That she would be confused, perhaps even forgetful of the events that so recently took place, was also within the scope of his plans and expectations. Through the helm he brought his will to bear and forcibly altered the form of his weapon, forming on the surface facing into the room a lidded cat's eye.

He felt a shudder run through the spirit at the strange feeling but before he could speak again he felt through the helm the eye opening. "You learn quickly," he commented smugly. When a second eye formed beside the first and opened as well, a frisson of shock ran through him. Quickly indeed! He had not been expecting such prowess from one who had been but a warrior.

A moment passed before the voice cried out again. "Where are you? And where am I? There ain't nothing here but an empty room!"

The uncertainty and frustration in the girl's mental voice restored Distanfae's composure. There was no reason to be concerned when she learned more swiftly than expected, it could not but help him.

"You died and I brought you back," he said dryly. "Now you will never die. In return, you will serve me."

"What?!" There was a definite anger to the voice now, but it faded almost instantly into resignation. "It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now."

"Besides, how'm I supposed to serve you when all I got is eyeballs?"

"Indeed," he replied, wondering momentarily at the rough nature of the girl's speech. Could she be as young as she appeared? He knew humans had far shorter lives, so her appearance of being in her early fifties, to his eyes, was probably well in excess of her actual years, but he had assumed that a soul of sufficient power would have required time to reach that power and so had theorized that the soul's power had kept the body young, or that perhaps her mental image of herself was as she had been in youth and so her soul had kept that form. The tone of the words made him question that theory. "You will need a more useful form. I will impose it on you and you will remember it, to take it again when I require it of you."

Without waiting for a response, he bent his will against her form once more. The sphere rocked forward then rolled over the cloth and off the pedestal, striking sparks from the floor where it struck. It rolled for but a moment before it swelled suddenly, growing upward, a shimmering reflective column of black and silver that quickly took on a more solid form.

The shape she now took was that of one of his former slaves, a strong woman of his race, though a commoner. Her life had been taken in the crafting of the spell, as had that of a male slave, their lives supplying their form to his control. She was larger, in proportion, than the slave had been, topping six feet by several inches and towering over him.

He released his grasp of her form finally. He had held on to it for several minutes after imposing his slave's form, while he shifted about the various materials that made her up. Imposing the form had worked well enough but had left her with curls of different colors running all over her body, even her hair. So he took extra time and submerged all but the adamantite over her skin surface, giving her the proper black sheen, then eliminated all but the mithril from her hair. It wasn't quite the snowy white of most of his kin, but it was far closer than that strange mix of silver, black, green, and red.

She remained as motionless as a statue until he moved forward behind her and spoke again. "You may move."

That final permission activated a secondary magic that tied her spirit's expectations and intentions to the body's simulated muscles and organs. A sudden shuddering breath heralded its success. She took a stumbling step forward then swayed before catching her balance.

"Too tall," she murmured then raised her hand to her lips as if surprised to hear her voice, deeper and rougher than the voice of her soul.

"You will grow used to it," he said and she spun to face him. She was still too new to the body to properly handle it, however, and the spin threw off her balance. She tumbled to the floor. She struggled to rise for a moment then pulled her legs beneath her, raising herself into a kneeling position and looked up at him.

"You! I know you," she said, her eyes widening. "I remember you..."

"Yes," he said, smiling softly. "And well you should, for I am your lord now."

"No," she hissed, shaking her head, her silver locks swaying with her motion. "I serve no-one!" She glared up at him in defiance and he chuckled softly. He had been expecting that, which was one reason he had created his helm. As well as giving him a conduit for control, it also served as a path for spells to affect her soul, for otherwise that which she now was would prevent any such attack.

"Do not move," he said softly and with those words the magical connection between her spirit's intentions and her body broke. She could still change form, if she knew how, but he did not expect that she would realize it.

While she knelt, motionless, he produced a powder and cast it in the air between them, muttering and gesticulating. She watched in wonder as the powder hung in the air, then began to glow softly. It swirled suddenly then coalesced into three symbols she did not recognize. A white light sprang from his hands, turning blue as it passed through the symbols, projecting light and shadow over her. He did not wait for any response, for he could feel the spell take affect and her resistance wane and then vanish entirely.

"Now rise, and learn once more to move." This time he mentally activated the spell, rather than verbally speaking its command words. Best not to make the connections too obvious.

Distanfae watched in silence as the woman struggled once more to her feet. At first she moved unsurely, wobbling occasionally as her balance escaped her. As with forming the eye, though, she displayed remarkable adaptiveness and was soon flowing through the moves of an intricate dance of leaps and strikes.

She showed no modesty or concern for her lack of clothing but Distanfae took no notice of this. He was used to females of his own race, who displayed little concern regarding such proprieties. Indeed, many of the rituals of their worship were performed in the nude.

---

A verbal command echoed about her but she ignored it. Moments later she felt a rising pressure as her return to consciousness was forced. "Where am I?" She asked. She realized that she couldn't hear her voice, then other lacks made themselves known. To herself she murmured, though once again she heard nothing, "I can't see anything, I can't feel anything?"

"Form an eye and then you will see." The words echoed around her, sounding strangely familiar.

She protested then fell silent as for the first time she could feel her skin. She concentrated all her attention on that sudden sensation, fighting off a sudden wave of nausea as she felt her skin changing, warping and rippling. In spite of the unsettling sensation, she forced herself to pay attention. When the changes ceased she wondered what had been done, for the only thing that had changed from her perspective was that she could still feel her skin.

He must have made me an eye, like he told me to. She struggled to open her eyes. It felt like she was half-asleep and trying to wake up. I'm sending all the right signals, she groused, why does nothing happen? An image formed in her mind, an image of an eye, and she tried to connect its appearance with the feelings that she had experienced during the change she had undergone.

Maybe, if I just... With a shuddery ripple, the eye reshaped into an open state and she could see once more. Delighted at her success she immediately went on, ignoring the words in the background, to form a second eye and open it as well. Even with two eyes, however, she could see nothing of particular interest and complained once more. She felt irritable, as if something was wrong, or wasn't working. It took her several moments to realize that she wasn't blinking, though her eyes weren't watering either.

She heard that voice once more and it took a moment for it to register. The last words she heard clearly, however. "You will serve me." Her anger flared for a moment as she objected but she couldn't sustain it, though after a brief return to her earlier despair the humor of her situation struck her. "Besides, how'm I supposed to serve you when all I got is eyeballs?"

She felt external pressure then a sudden sharp blow. Instantly she was growing, changing, a far more complex and wild series of changes than the formation of her eyes had been. In the blink of an eye she had gone from having nothing but eyes to having everything back, though she was not released for several long moments, while indecipherable changes continued.

She heard his voice again, but this time she actually heard it, heard it with her ears, not just her mind. The change was startling, perhaps more than the reshaping of her body had been, for in one moment she was motionless, capable of moving even her eyelids only by changing their shape, and in the next it was as if nothing had ever happened to her. She was breathing and moving perfectly normally, even if her breath had been a bit jerky there at the start.

Her balance was slightly off though and she took a step forward to correct it, only to completely misjudge the move. She swayed for a moment then murmured, "Too tall," in surprise. She had experienced the strangeness of suddenly being too short the first time the Jusenkyou curse had changed her from a well-built young man to a remarkably petite if well-endowed young woman, but she had never experienced being too tall before.

She heard a voice behind her again and spun to face it only to find herself in a heap on the floor. She sought to rise before giving up and settling back onto her legs to look up at the man who had spoken to her. Her recognition sparked a momentary conflict that was resolved when he revoked her ability to move, startling her and forcing her to realize that there was very little she could do to resist him.

The powder that he cast into the air between them she at first thought to be a sleeping powder or the like, such as Kodachi had once used against her. When it remained in the air, suspended by nothing at all, she felt a deep wariness. This was magic, unquestionably, and magic had never been a good thing for her.

Light washed over her and then she was taken back into the memories that had become hazy with her return to a corporeal form. She watched as he propounded his arguments again and she agreed to serve him. For a moment she felt that she should object but as the memory faded it fit in the holes within her own memory. It was real, she decided. She had sworn and she would honor her oath to the best of her ability, for the sake of her family and friends. She remembered more than merely what he showed her, as well. With the reminder, she remembered both the oath she'd sworn to him and the oath she'd sworn just before, when she had renounced her name and her manhood so that there would be no mistruth in the oath she gave him.

She fought against a sudden and stifling fear that rose in her. She had expected to become a sword, not to have a human form again, a female form. She had sworn to obey him in all things, what if... She forcefully thrust the thought from her mind. She was a Saotome, she would honor her oath, no matter the cost. It was her only chance to redeem her failure, to save her friends, her family, her father. Her fear was washed away by a sudden realization. She had a body, she was not just a sword! After she saved them, she would be able to see her mother again, to hold her, be with her! Surely, after what she had done for them, they would accept her, even if it had to be as a daughter? She would have her family again.

Taken from her reverie by her new lord's command, which once more gave her body to her control, she rose as he had ordered and began to learn her new body. Different as her new body was from what she'd known, it was far more familiar than what she'd experienced in those few moments of awareness as an undifferentiated sphere, and this was not the first time she'd had to get used to a change in form.

She quickly realized that the biggest difference between her current body and the one she'd had before is that only her hair responded to anything other than her direct intent. It swirled about her believably as she spun and struck, but her breasts did not so much as shift on her chest as she moved.

They were not all that was not reacting as expected. Even as she pushed herself to move faster, her breathing remained even and steady when she was paying attention to it and ceased completely when she was not. It was several minutes before she herself grew aware that her breathing was starting anew each time she turned her attention to it.

She stilled quite suddenly when she realized that and in the ensuing silence she realized that she could not feel her heart beating, then jerked when a hand fell on her shoulder.

Her senses warped then went dead as her body was once more twisted and altered. Finally a single eye was formed and returned to her control. Opening it, she found herself in the hand of the man who had made her, staring into a mirror at her own eye, set in the pommel of a long curved sword.

"Enough training for one day," he stated. "I've other things that must be done lest I raise suspicion." He looked her over. "Still too obvious," he muttered and she felt him reshaping her again. This time she was able to watch in the mirror as he reduced her length until she was little more than a dagger. He tucked her into his belt, eye facing outward. "Don't move your eye if anyone is looking at you," he ordered her.

This time she was awake and aware when he invoked the ability that took him through the shadows to his rooms. Even as her single eye watched the shadows stretch out to swallow him, she felt the response within her to his request, felt herself causing the shadows to move, even though she was neither deliberately nor consciously causing it.

"What was that?" Her query, though voiced from her perspective, was once again silent due to her lack of a voice, and his response was equally silent.

"That was one of the abilities of the magic items I fed you during your creation. You are to inform me if you grow hungry."

"Oh," she said. She wondered what the connection was that had made him comment on her hunger but refrained from asking. His words led her to examine herself for hunger, of which she found none.

He had not told her not to move and whatever magic it was that had allowed her to move almost normally still seemed to be in effect. When he had first given her an eye there had been no indication which it was, whether left or right, nor had she been able to blink or look about readily. Now though it was clear that the eye he had left her with was her right eye, and she could blink and look about just by trying to do so, just as she had been able to when she had her full body.

The implications of that were fairly clear, even to her. If she resisted, she'd be a statue. That certainly limited the usefulness of her martial arts ability. Not that she could reasonably resist, having given her oath. She realized then that this was just such a string as she had feared and made a mental note to bring it up with him. However he was accomplishing this, if he was still doing it a thousand years from now, her promise might prove irrelevant.

She briefly considered raising her ki, remembering that certain forms of pressure point induced paralysis could be overcome by redirecting her internal ki flows, but rejected the idea. He had warned against merely moving her eye if anyone could see, he would certainly have still greater objections to her glowing.

She held her silence therefore and in that silence she watched as he moved about his room. It was a strange sensation, much like when she had accidentally eaten the magic mushrooms and become five years old once again, to look upon everything from the height of her lord's belt. It seemed almost surprising to her that the level of her eye was stranger to her than the fact that she was seeing only with one. She knew from having to learn to fight with different handicaps that one needed two eyes for proper depth perception. While she knew that she could not possibly have accurate depth perception with her single eye, it seemed unimpaired. Of course, a simple referral to memory pointed out that it was no different than closing one eye and she had never noticed any particular lack when doing that, yet somehow she felt as if everything ought to look flat, even though it did not.

She continued to watch in silence for most of the remaining day, observing her lord's interactions with his other servants and slaves, and with his superiors. She was interested to note, in that vein, that he seemed to show deference exclusively to certain women, never to men. That observation sent a definite shudder of concern through her. She had had more than enough experience with Amazons for one lifetime but it was looking disturbingly like she was involved with another group of them.

She also noted that the majority of the people he encountered had dark skin, pointed ears, and white hair, yet facially they looked, if not Japanese, at least Asian. She also saw a few individuals that looked deformed. The first one she spied received her sympathy for his deformities, his rough green skin, small size, and ugly, exaggerated features. When she saw several more that looked similarly deformed, she began to question her conclusion. Perhaps these were victims of Jusenkyou? Or could they be actually something other than human, like kappa, or the houzanjin, the people of Pheonix Mountain?

As it turned out, she had little cause to concern herself about whether she was visible. It seemed the magic that let her move normally was more responsive than she had anticipated, for whenever she entered the range of another person's eye she found her link suddenly severed, her eye held motionless. She did push his rules enough to test and lower her eyelid during one such time, when the one causing the effect was one of the green-skinned people; she made sure that the misshapen creature was not actually looking in her direction and from his lack of reaction she was sure that her defiance had gone unnoticed. She had to reshape her eye to lower the lid, rather than being able to simply close her right eye, but it did work. It also sent a wave of uneasiness through her, knowing that she had deliberately disobeyed him, her lord. It felt almost relieving to know that she could do so, yet she found she had no wish to anger him. At least he had not placed a geas on her to enforce her oath. Not that such would ever have been needed with her, of course. She would not risk losing her chance at redemption, her chance to regain her honor and her family.

Besides which, he had already captured her soul even after her death at her own hands, then given her an amazing new body that he seemed to be able to reshape at his will. More importantly, while she had been able to duplicate the reshaping trick and felt confident that she could also accomplish the traveling through shadows that he had used her for, she was all too aware that she felt nothing that could be replicated when he activated or deactivated the connection that allowed her to move normally.

To be certain, she could reshape her body and could move in that fashion, as she had already demonstrated by opening and closing her eye, but the concentration that required was at odds with performing her martial arts. Her art was meant to be done without direct thought, her mind free to work on strategy while her body fought the direct action, moving at the speed of reflex. She could still accomplish that when he turned on her link, but without it?

When he returned to his chambers, he closed himself in, locking his doors, then placed her on a table. He pulled a chair close and sat beside her, looking into her eye. "Memorize the shape you are in, then reshape yourself into a sphere," he ordered her.

Ranko concentrated, knowing that even had he not made it an order she would have done as he asked. She needed to learn all she could about her form, its strengths and weaknesses, if she was to succeed in her quest. If he was willing to guide her, to teach her, then she would put all her effort into learning whatever she could from him.

Focusing her senses on her form, feeling the long sharp edge of her blade, the curve of her cross-guard, the softer wrappings of her hilt. Once she felt she understood the form she was in, she began drawing her blade in. Since the pommel was nearly spherical already, she sought to retain it, and her eye, pulling the blade into the pommel, followed by the cross-guard and then the hilt, as the spherical end-piece swelled in size.

Finally she was once again a simple sphere though she retained her eye, looking up at her lord. He shook his head. "All the way."

Sighing internally, she closed her eye and then unmade it, becoming a perfectly smooth, round sphere. "Now I want you to find each different component of your make-up and bring them to the surface." Feeling her confusion, he continued, "You are formed of several things. Primarily, you are composed of what I will term 'quicksilver,' which is a reflective silvery metal, mithril, which is also silvery, but without as much blue in it, and adamantite, which is black. There is also onyx, a black stone, and jade, a green stone. There is a red substance that I haven't identified, and there should be strands of gold, silver, and a number of other minor elements from the magic items I fed you. Since these things have different colors, it is important that you become aware of them, so that you can reshape yourself into a form retaining the proper coloration."

Ranma thought about the different colors she'd seen in the mirror when he first made her into a sword and nodded to herself. Her blade had been silver. She had had a black handle with silver accents, and her eye had been green instead of the deep blue she was used to.

She turned her attention inward, no longer having any external senses except those of her 'skin,' and focused on finding the different elements that made her up.

She found the quicksilver first, though she didn't know what color it was, nor that it was the quicksilver, as she had no way to see it. It felt different somehow from all the other elements that composed her; more alive, more responsive to her touch. She focused on it, moving it outward to cover her surface and was surprised to note an immediate increase in sensation. Her sense of touch and temperature granted by her skin and the connection that her lord had not yet revoked from her was significantly enhanced by passing through the enlivened element. She felt as if she could feel the very grain of the wood on which she rested. She could even trace the subtle changes in the direction of the weave of the cloth her lord had wrapped around her base to keep her still, the variations between the angle at which the different folds met her surface. After a moment she heard her lord's voice in her mind. "That is quicksilver, or so we shall call it."

Reminding herself that she had a task to perform, she decided to return to this substance later on. She wondered if it would improve her sight if she were to use it to form her eyes.

Moving on, she sought next for the most common element. Finding it and taking a hold of it, she found it seemed hard and unyielding, though it responded to her efforts and flowed to coat her exterior. It was as if she had suddenly been wrapped in cloth. Her senses were muffled and vague. She could barely differentiate the soft cloth from the hard wood beneath her, detecting only the deviation in pressure between the light touch of the cloth resting against her and the stronger pressure of the wood supporting her weight. Again he informed her. "This is adamantite."

Even as she reached for the next element, wrapping herself in what she soon learned to be mithril in place of her adamantine shell, she felt her lord's hand light upon her, not lifting nor moving, just resting upon her. She stilled for a moment, waiting for him to speak, but when he did nothing more, she returned to the task she'd been given.

This new substance felt lighter and more giving than the previous, though no less strong. It was more sensitive, particularly to the warmth of her lord's hand, though she could not resist letting the lively metal she'd first found flow to the surface beneath one of his fingers. That gave her a wonderful sensation of warmth and more, it gave her flavor. She could taste the salt on his skin, feel the ridges of his fingerprint, even follow the pulse of blood through the capillaries in his fingertip.

She reveled in the sensations for a minute then withdrew the quicksilver lest lingering overlong anger her lord. "Watch it," she warned herself. She had to remember that much as she was used to teachers like Cologne and her father, whom she was free to antagonize, if she angered this teacher, he could do worse than rap her head, or suck her ki like Hinako. He could strip her of her ability to move; worse, he might be able to remove her soul completely, send her on to the next world as nothing more than a failure.

Returning her attention to her current coat, she noted that it felt energetic, though not lively. Where the sensitive metal had felt alive, this merely felt charged, as if it were full of energy, waiting to be released.

The next material gave her some difficulty, for it did not want to take a perfectly smooth form. Instead it seemed to want to form sharp flat edges, always at precise angles. It was unresponsive to pressure and reacted hardly at all to the warmth of her lord's hand, yet somehow she was still certain where everything touching her surface was. It took her some time to realize that some of the responses it was returning were off compared to the other materials. A bit of experimentation, as she moved a bit of quicksilver about herself to compare the sensations, made her believe that this sharp edged substance was reacting more to the light falling on it than to the touch of her surroundings, for the 'off' regions all seemed to extend in the same direction, to a similar degree, compared to what she sensed with the quicksilver.

Her subsequent attempt found a substance remarkably similar to the first sharp-edge substance. It formed planes at a different angle but otherwise reacted very similarly. The biggest difference was that when she coated herself with it, she still felt sensation beneath it. Moving quicksilver directly beneath it confirmed this. Whatever it was, it was transparent to some degree.

It was becoming harder to focus on further substances, for the remaining materials were far smaller in overall quantity to what she had been working with. It took her some time to realize that one of the substances in particular, a very soft substance that was easily formed and quite sensitive to heat, was in fact a singular substance. The cause of the difficulty was that there were innumerable divisions within it, not of varying substance but of differing feel and behavior. Remembering her lord's comments, Ranma wondered if she were not feeling somehow the different powers of the items she'd been fed, as he put it.

Far more startling, however, when she came upon it, was a rough substance that when left to itself formed into twisted ropes that then intertwined into flat planes. She felt it for some time with the quicksilver, wondering at one point if it wasn't her braid, before realizing that it was the same as the fabric that was bunched around her. Feeling it more directly, actually experiencing it rather than using her other substances to feel it externally, she found it was the source of the response to the command he had given that had taken them through the shadows.

---

Distanfae sat back and waited, watching the variegated sphere intently, until its surface became quite suddenly a silver with a hint of blue. Concerned about the consequences of coming into contact with the quicksilver before his weapon had attained complete control of it, he waited until it turned black to reach out for it, though he told her what it was. It turned suddenly silver again as his hands came into contact with it and he stilled instantly. He very nearly pulled away before recognizing the whiter sheen of mithril.

While she was distracted by her ordered explorations, he slipped silently into her mind, delving into her memory and personality. He very quickly located several key problems. "How curious," he mused to himself, "a warrior who avoids killing."

He slipped into place a temporary shield that would ensure her attention remained on her task until he relieved her of it, then set to work. An unwillingness to kill would make her useless in his society. He was careful not to attempt to remove it. Leaving her with holes in her mind would be a good way of setting a trap for himself at a later date. Instead, he very carefully rerouted her impulses, working around her strange notions of honor, unaware that she had already done basically the same thing after having decided that her honor now dictated she not hold back from the killing blow lest she fail her family a second time.

Finding a barrier in her soul he searched her memories until he learned what it was. For a time he considered merely strengthening it, until a better idea occurred to him. Once more he changed the pathways of her mind, ensuring that the sensation of cats would no longer trigger her fear. Debilitating fears were hardly a useful thing in his consideration, but the final result of her fear had value of its own. Two triggers he placed, that would allow him to activate or deactivate her feral state at will.

He withdrew then, feeling his shield's strength waning under the power of her mind. For a time he rested his hand on her still, thinking over some of the things he'd seen in her mind. He had by no means explored all of her memories but he had seen enough to know that she had experienced magic before, and had been both male and female at different times. Perhaps once he'd gained her confidence, she would tell him her story and he would learn what magic was like where she was from. He could, of course, simply take all that he wanted to know from her mind but he thought she would be more inclined to work faithfully for him if she did not feel violated. There was no need to push too quickly, he had time and to spare.

"That is enough for now, Ranko. We will speak again in the morning."

---

Ranko waited impatiently, frustrated that she had no way of gauging the passage of time. Several times she sought to find sleep but always it eluded her. Finally she could wait no longer, feeling bored beyond belief, and mentally crossing her fingers in the hope that her lord would not object, she formed an eye and opened it. She was all too aware that where her father had beat her for disobedience, a samurai's lord had the right to claim her life if she disobeyed an order, or even for no reason at all. She trusted that her lord did not intend such, else why would he have saved her in the first place, but she was not foolish enough to push it, at least not until she had had time to learn how far it was safe to push him. Silently she thanked her luck that her lord had not removed the connection between her spirit and her body, allowing her to easily look about.

She had to shift her eye's position on her surface about herself but finally she found what she sought. There across the room a large bed held the sleeping form of her lord. For a time she was simply content to watch him, wondering what he was. At first she had thought him an agent of the after-life; now, she was not sure what he was, though he looked human enough, apart from the white sheen of his hair, which looked strange on someone who was lacking the other usual signs of age, his ears, which came to points at the top, and his skin, which was a deeper black than she'd seen before, with a hint of blue instead of the usual brown. It was, at least, more interesting than feeling nothing but a black emptiness, without even the comfort of dreams.

When he began tossing and turning and then crying out as if in pain she quickly roused from her reverie. "So, I'm not the only one who has nightmares," she mused. "Well, if I can't sleep, then I also can't dream. I guess that means no more nightmares." She watched him for a few minutes more, feeling a growing irritation as he tossed and moaned. "I wish he'd quit that." It occurred to her suddenly that his well-being was part of her duty as a samurai. That thought seemed to inevitably draw up another, and she shuddered as she unwillingly remembered that even male samurai had at times been used for a more... physical... form of comfort for their daimyo, but she pushed that thought aside. There was nothing she could do if it happened, so best not to think about it, and simply hope it never did. "I won't let fear keep me from my duty," she growled to her recalcitrant mind.

Mentally asking his forgiveness, though he had not exactly ordered her not to do anything in particular, she shifted her internals about, thrusting the heavier materials to one side, so that she rolled forward and fell from the table to land with a thump upon soft carpet. Surprise stilled her for a moment when she landed with her open eye pressed against the carpet fibers and yet felt no pain, but a whimper from the bed returned her to motion.

Trying hard to remember, she swelled into a womanly form, trying to take the form he had given her. Looking down at herself, she shook momentarily in disgust. She looked rough, like a child's clay figure. Colors were mixed and bunched across her skin in a manner painful to look upon. Her hair, far from the thin, silky, and vibrant strands of red that had once characterized her, hung in lumpy cords, like mottled threads of yarn. "Yet another reason to protect him. If I want to stay a martial artist, I need his magic."

She tried to utter a soft curse but it came out as a garbled moan and she shuddered once again. Turning to the bed she took a step towards it and immediately lost her balance, fetching up hard against the wood side. Moaning another curse she gave up on trying to move properly, and reshaped herself into a rough semblance of a woman lying already upon the bed.

Rolling onto her side she looked on the troubled face of her lord and felt a pain deep within. She knew what it was to struggle through nightmares with no-one to care. She had had horrific nightmares ever since her father trained her in the Neko-ken and not once had he ever sought to comfort her. The trouble was, she did not know what to do to ease his pain... and get him to stop groaning like that. "Should I wake him up? No, he might be angry if I do; then what?"

She tried to think of what one did in such a situation. Her memories of her father and mother were of little help but finally she remembered one particularly bad night, when she had awoken in Kasumi's arms being cradled and rocked, Kasumi's hands stroking her hair.

She shifted closer, feeling thankful that while lying down she did not have to worry about maintaining her balance. Trying not to think about what he might think of this, or how he might take it, she deliberately suppressed her inner disquiet. Reaching out with her lumpy, misshapen arms, she drew him to her, running thick fingers through his soft white hair, in attempted imitation of Kasumi's comforting behavior. "Damn, this sucks." He quieted instantly, pressing against her. She looked at herself again and groaned inwardly. He'd hardly get a good night's rest sleeping on the equivalent of hard rocks. She shifted the softest materials to that side of her, that she might not hurt him, and glancing down, she saw a fine black cloth with gold glinting beneath.

When she felt him begin shifting as if to awaken, hours later, she reshaped herself into a sphere as quickly as she was able. Reaching out to the black cloth within her she fumbled for its trigger, trying to mimic her lord's use of it, and fell through the shadows onto the table. She waited uncertainly, once more reduced to merely feeling.

"Don't let him want that from me," she growled at the kami, unwilling to even voice what 'that' was. "I didn't let fear keep me from my duty, don't punish me for that." It was not a completely unfamiliar experience; she had spent most of her time in Nerima all too aware that honor left her little choice; but at least then her honor had led in multiple directions and she had had some excuse to resist honoring one commitment when to do so would break another. Now she had no such shield to hide behind.

Finally she felt the touch of her lord's hand upon her. "You were in my bed, last night," he said to her.

"You had a nightmare," she retorted defensively, torn between the familiar desire to offer insult to reduce her cursed attractiveness and the newer and still stronger desire not to hurt her chances of changing her past.

"I understand, Ranko. Thank you," he said calmly. Ranko would have gaped at him if she had had a mouth. He had actually listened to her? He had believed her?! "Wait here while I get ready, then we shall return to the training room."

Ranko did her best to wait patiently, playing around with her elements to occupy her mind. She was beginning to get painfully bored when an idea struck her. Once more she formed an eye, but this time she formed it at her center. She gathered the material she had determined last night to be at least partially transparent and formed a channel of the substance from her eye to the surface. As soon as it reached her surface she saw light and she cheered inwardly. The next thing she noticed was that everything seemed to be a shade of green or black. "Must be the jade," she decided of the transparent substance.

Unfortunately, the scene she was able to observe was as static and unchanging as her own senses, leaving her just as bored as she had been before. "Man, not being able to sleep sucks," she thought. If she had had a body she would have sat bolt upright when another thought struck her. "If I can't sleep... oh, man, what if I can't eat, either?"

Training

Once more she was placed upon a pedestal, resting against bunched up cloth that held her still. At her lord's request, she formed an eye and turned it upon him.

"You have learned to reshape yourself, to a degree. Indeed, you learned this faster than I expected," he told her and she felt a warmth grow within her at the praise, even as she tried to recover her startled wits. He actually complimented her? Her father had been quick with the insults, but he had never been free with support or congratulations. "Last night you learned to locate and manipulate the different elements that compose you. Today, we will take that further." Beside her on the pedestal he placed a ring, wrought of gold and silver braided, with a diamond set in a claw of gold. "Examine this however you wish. Take its form." He sat back on a chair in one of the alcoves to watch her.

She turned her eye upon it first and tried to match it, not changing her whole self, but merely extruding an extension of silver and gold and attempting to wind them about each other.

She winced as she compared the two. Her attempt looked scarcely like a ring at all. She absorbed it and tried again. Her second try was hardly better. She felt a shiver of irritation go through her as her mind played back insults as if Genma were there berating her inept efforts. She realized then that she had not heard anything from her lord. Why was he not saying anything? Had he just given up on her? She turned a worried eye in his direction but he was merely sitting and watching. Grumbling at Genma to get out of her mind, she redoubled her efforts. She would show him that she could do this. "After all," she smirked to herself, "I am the best."

"Sight is not enough," she mused, "or enough for me, anyhow. I ain't no artist." That thought gave her the key though. She was skilled with her body and hands, perhaps if she felt it, instead, she might do better. He had, after all, said to examine in it whatever way she wanted.

Flowing outward, she engulfed the ring in her most sensitive substance, which her eye could finally see and identify as what he had called quicksilver, highly reflective, like a funhouse mirror as its shifting form twisted and warped her reflection.

Her confidence grew as the quicksilver seemed to pour information into her about the ring and it was almost without effort that she grew fine strands of silver and gold, weaving them into a perfect ring, grasping a translucent jade stone. The last bit proved the hardest, for no matter how she tried, she could not convince the jade, which she had chosen as the closest she had to a clear stone, to take on the shape of the diamond. It simply did not want to form the same angles.

Finally she gave up on the jade, tried onyx briefly, then turned to mithril. The mithril formed the diamond's shape readily, for though it did not naturally form those flat planes and precise angles, neither did it resist being formed into them.

Pleased, she lifted the ring up to show her lord. He stood and strode to her. "Very good, Ranko. Now draw all of your substance within the ring, hidden within the gold and silver."

She blinked in acquiescence before unforming her eye. The strands of gold and silver grew in length and thickness as she poured herself within them, stretching them into a thin veneer over her twisted surface. Soon she had the appearance of the ring once more, but sized to fit a giant.

"Very good. Now, I am going to introduce you to another of your normal abilities. It is a very common attribute of powerful magical items, that they resize themselves to fit their bearers. It is a little more complex for you, in that the magic will consider both your form, your wielder, and your wielder's intent when sizing you. Since you bear the form of a ring at the moment, when I take you in my hand, you will resize so that you might fit upon my finger. I want you to concentrate on how this feels. It is possible that you might be able to control this yourself."

With that said, she felt the warmth of his hands upon her once more. Almost instantly vertigo swept her and she fought to focus as the touch of his fingers seemed to swell tremendously. Confusing as the sudden change was, her will forced the confusion away and even as the size change slowed, she caught the mechanism for the change and forcibly halted it. It felt like a pendulum, or a weight between springs, trying to get to rest. She pushed against it. She felt the touch of his fingers shrinking more than she sensed her own increase in size, but she also felt the increasing pressure of the springy resistance. The touch of his fingers left her and she felt the rap as she landed once more on the pedestal. The weight of the spring vanished. She was able to move it easily now, though she could not sense the change in size except in the changing texture of the pedestal as her surfaces moved across it.

"But," she protested uncertainly, "when I am a sphere I am much smaller than the human form you gave me. I don't remember feeling this change then."

"Ah," he said, "That is a matter of density. In that form--which is not human, incidentally, but drow, though you need not concern yourself with the distinction just yet--you have a great deal of empty space within you. For example, your bones are riddled with holes in the marrow, your lungs are empty space, your stomach and digestive system are empty. More to the point, your capillary system, the veins and arteries that run throughout your body to carry blood are filled with but empty space, for you are bloodless.

"You are mostly empty space in that form. Furthermore, you shrunk before you regained consciousness, when I lifted you as a sphere to bring you down here. I think in your natural state, given the volume of the materials that went into your creation, your drow form would be a bit of a giantess. Actually, you are even now larger in that form than a normal woman by three-quarters of a foot or so."

Ranko thought about that. She didn't understand much of his explanation, but thinking back to when she had tried to take on the form herself, she realized that without thinking about it, she had ended up as basically a single hollow shell. She had focused on the outward form and had ended up empty. That was probably why she had moved so strangely.

"Well," he said, "now that you know how to adjust your size appropriately, take on your drow form again."

"Uh, well, I tried that last night," Ranko admitted. "It didn't work well."

"Hmm. Granted, you weren't in the best shape to notice what I was doing last night, though you caught on with the eye quickly. I'll make the change for you this time, and I'll try to go slowly so that you can follow."

She felt his hands on her again, lifting her up and placing her on the floor. Even as he did so she shrank rapidly. Leaving her on the floor, he began her transformation once more. She concentrated on the sensations of the change. As she had, he began with the overall size and outward appearance. This time he was more aware of her appearance than he had been the first time he changed her and so her skin was the smooth black of adamantite from the beginning.

She was focused inward until he completed the process and when she redirected her attention outward she was startled to find that her eyes were level with his knee. She looked down at herself, half expecting to look as she had when she had eaten the mushroom that had reduced her age, that he had deliberately made her a child. Her body was not that of a child's, however. Her proportions, though small, were those of a mature woman.

She stared at up at him for a moment then reached for that spot in her mind that had moved when she changed sizes the first time, and lifted. She stopped instantly, fighting vertigo. Her eyes were expanding and it made the world seem to rush in toward her. Forcing down her unease, she lifted again, fighting the dizziness caused by her increasing size until she was looking at his shoulder. She raised her head slightly, a challenging glint in her eye.

"That better?" she asked. She knew that men tended to prefer to look down on women and she had no intention of revealing that she was actually a man. He had offered the body and the chance to save her family and friends to her, Saotome Ranko, and she wasn't going to take a chance on his mind changing if he learned that she was really Ranma.

He nodded then turned away and strode back to his seat in the alcove. "You need to learn to take this form on your own. I suggest you start piecemeal. Focus on one limb or organ and study it until you understand it, then try to recreate it."

Ranko nodded and dropped to the floor sitting cross-legged, unconcerned about her nudity. Focusing her attention on her hand, she soon had a second hand projecting from her wrist. When it looked and felt right, she absorbed both it and her original hand, then reformed and flexed it. Nodding in satisfaction, she moved on.

Her attention returned to her lord when he stood, after she had successfully formed an entire additional right arm. "Continue this," he told her. "I will return for you later."

She nodded and watched him leave then returned her attention to her task. Her focus and concentration were not entirely due to the fact that she'd been ordered to do this. She did not want to experience trying to walk around looking like a lumpy clay doll ever again.

He had still not returned when she had compressed herself back into a sphere and successfully regained her form, complete in almost every detail. Remembering a video game she had once seen, she stood and formed two additional arms, increasing the height of her torso to accomodate them and decreasing her overall height and size, and began trying to move them.

She found that she could switch the mental connection controlling each arm from one to another, but try as she might, she could still control only two arms at a time. Moving the upper arm on the right and the lower on the left, or vice versa, was also quite a challenge. She could manage it but it felt strange and it threw off her reflexes.

Finally she gave up on that, retracting the extra arms. Closing her eyes, she tried creating an eye in her palms, similar to a picture she had seen in a manga once. It worked, somewhat to her surprise, but she found that she could only reasonably look through one of her palms at a time. Looking through both gave her a terrible headache, though it faded quickly when she returned to looking through a single eye.

Removing the extra eyes, she glanced toward the door her lord had left through. "Still not back yet," she muttered. "What else can I do?" The question triggered a memory of the night before, when she had experienced how sensitive her quicksilver was. Feeling into her eyes, she realized that he had used jade to form the back of the eye and she had followed suit when creating her own.

Closing her eyes against the vertigo she had felt so often, she slipped quicksilver in place of the jade and opened her eyes. She staggered back in shock at the initial brightness but it quickly became tolerable. Though the room was basically poorly lit, with most of the illumination coming from the soft colored glows of the statues above the alcoves around the walls, it now seemed to be lit by bright sunlight.

"Definitely more sensitive," she murmured. A sudden noise caught her attention and she spun to see her lord striding into the room. He paused and stared for a moment at her eyes then closed the door behind himself and walked to her.

Taking her face in his hands, he tilted her head from side to side, staring into her eyes. She felt a momentary surge of anger as a blush warmed her cheeks. "I haven't got blood, why the hell am I blushing," she thought furiously.

"What is it like?" he asked, still looking into her eyes. His obliviousness to her discomfiture calmed her and she replied.

"It's brighter... and I can see a bunch of glows around you."

"Oh?"

She nodded and began pointing to different items he was wearing and telling him how they glowed. "You appear to be seeing magical auras, both of wizardly and priestly magic," he informed her.

"How are you coming with your shifting?"

"I went all the way to a ball and back," she told him. He held her back at arm's length and then turned her about, examining her both with his eyes and his mind. He stopped several times to point out an error she had made but throughout he was nodding and murmuring to himself and he seemed pleased with her work.

"All right, that is enough for today," he said and placed his hand on her shoulder.

She guessed his intention and put her hand on his. "Let me?" she asked.

"You know how now?"

She nodded. "You want to go back to your chamber, right? Through the shadows? I've done it once already, last night."

He nodded and she reached for the black fabric, grasping its power and wrapping them both in shadow. When the shadows receded, they were standing by his bed.

Turning to look at her, he inclined his head for a moment then seemed to come to a decision. "You look close enough and you've got the size right now. You can take the form yourself, and flee through the shadows if necessary. You have progressed sufficiently, I deem, that tonight you can sleep in the adjoining servant's quarters. I've had clothing prepared therein." He noted her grimace of distaste and guessed at its cause. "The clothing is appropriate for a warrior, I don't think you will find cause to object to it."

She relaxed, reminding herself that he had shown no surprise that she, a small female, was a warrior. She remembered his shows of deference the day before. If this was, as she had feared, some sort of Amazon society, then their clothing might be acceptable. On the other hand, if he offered her a Chinese cheongsam like Shampoo had worn, she would scream. Then again, maybe not. She was supposed to be a woman now, after all. She could not refuse female clothing if it might risk losing her chance. That was her reason to exist now and she dared not lose it.

She followed him through his chambers into an adjoining set of chambers, rather smaller but still nicely appointed. She stared for a long moment at the bed, realizing that she had not mentioned her inability to sleep. He had moved past her and was opening a large closet.

"I found out last night... I can't sleep. I tried all night to fall asleep. It didn't work."

He turned to face her, a tunic in his hands. "What? I wasn't aware of that side-effect. Curious. Do you feel tired? Irritable? You've experienced long stretches without sleep before I'm sure; do you feel now like you did then? Like you need sleep?"

She thought for a moment then shook her head. "No, nothing like that. Just... kinda frustratin', I guess. I used to really like to sleep. It made me think, last night..." She paused, uncertain as to whether she truly wanted to know the answer to this question or not. "Can I still eat?" she asked in a rush.

He set the tunic down on a table and sat on the bed, his eyes steady on her. "I'm not sure, actually. I'm sure you can masticate, that is. Chew, I mean. You've a full digestive system, physically, but it hasn't any of the liquids that are normally involved in digestion. You should be able to taste, still, and foods should travel through normally, but I don't know if you'll actually take any of it in. More to the point, anything that you ingest that isn't properly absorbed would be in the way when you tried to shift."

He frowned thoughtfully. "Though, you wouldn't need to wait for it to pass all the way through to get rid of it, either. And I don't know how that would relate to your potential appetite for magic items, either. Are you feeling hungry?"

Ranko looked down and placed her hand on her tummy, stroking its surface as she considered how unusual it felt to have not eaten for several days and yet feel no hunger. She raised her quicksilver eyes to meet his, which for the first time she noticed were a startling crimson, and shook her head. "No, I don't feel any hunger."

"Good. Well, we'll see about letting you eat something tomorrow. For now, you can spend the night getting familiar with your chambers and your clothing. Whether you need sleep or no, I must have my rest. An exhausted wizard is not safe to be around. If anyone comes, make sure you aren't seen."

After waiting for her nod, he left her there. As he had suggested, she first explored her quarters. The bed was quite soft and made him feel almost sad that she could not sleep. It looked quite comfortable, a definite step up from her usual futon. There was a mirror above one of the dressers that rather forcibly reminded her of her nudity. She stared at herself for some time. She had been cute. Now she was beautiful, with a face that equalled any of her fiancees.

In the dresser she found women's undergarments. "At least I won't need these," she smirked to herself. It was not likely her breasts were liable to sag. The closet contained a variety of clothing and as her lord had implied, much of it was well-suited to fighting.

She pulled out a few pieces and went to sit on the bed. Her mind wandered to Shampoo and Ryouga. They had had to deal with suddenly getting engulfed in their clothes when cold water found them unexpectedly, or having to scramble to find clothing after obtaining hot water. Now it seemed she would have to do the same.

She stared at the clothing for a long while, feeling as if there were something she ought to be thinking of or realizing, tickling the back of her mind. Shaking her head when she could not think of it, she tried on the clothing. It fit well enough, she supposed, not that she was any expert.

She was back in the closet rummaging through other clothing when the idea that had been percolating in the back of her mind finally came to the fore and she remembered the fabric that was part of her substance. She hurried back to the bed and shrugged out of the clothes then stared at them for a long while. Finally she picked them up again. From her hands a flood of quicksilver poured forward as she took a sudden drop in height.

Nudging her internal weight upward, increasing her size to make up the mass of the quicksilver she had stolen from her current form, she duplicated the form of the clothes with the black fabric. Keeping it attached where it would normally rest on her skin, at the shoulders, around the hips, and so forth, she left the remainder free to move just as normal clothing did. Retracting the quicksilver she balanced the weight to keep her normal height, trying to move the weight as she reabsorbed the quicksilver. "I'm gonna be able to do that without changing size at all, one of these days," she promised herself.

Striding over to the mirror, she admired herself in it for a while. The only problem she could see, other than the basic fact that her clothing would not protect her from feeling the cold or someone's touch, was that it was so uniform in appearance. "I look like a ninja," she said, smirking at herself. The feel of the cloth sliding against her skin was not quite what she half-expected. More like rubbing her thumb against her fingers, she decided. It was strange, to sense both the cloth rubbing her skin and her skin rubbing the cloth.

Having nothing better to do with her night, she sat by the table and began working with her elements, weaving first one and then another into tiny fibres, thicker strands, and finally woven material. The jade and onyx stubbornly refused to behave, of course, and she could not form any significant amount of fabric from the gold or silver, though they worked well as highlights. She was able to get a number of shades between black and silver by using strands of both adamantite and mithril in varying quantities. There was a significant quantity of a metallic red substance but it behaved strangely and resisted her manipulations.

"He mentioned absorbing stuff, magic and things. I wonder if I can get some other colors later?" It occurred to her that if the chance arose, she should obtain something that would match the blue of her eyes. If she could get that red material to behave properly, it would work for her hair. Not that even those changes would really make her new form look much like her old one had.

Bored, Ranko poked about her room a bit more and then looked at the door to her lord's chambers. "I wonder if...," she thought about what she'd done the night before, trying to ease her lord's sleep. "Nah, that's probably why he gave me my own room so quick. Shoulda' known I wouldn't be any good at stuff like that."

"What else," she mused. "Oh, wait, he told me to memorize that knife from before. I should practice it."

She spent much of the night forming different weapons and practicing with them in the limited space she had available, doing her best to remain quiet. One of the first things that occurred to her, as she held the first dagger in her hand, was that this solved one of the problems her art had with weapons; their ability to be separated from their wielder.

Of course, it was a bit strange working with weapons that were a part of herself. It was actually faster, she found, to withdraw the sword and reform it in her other hand than to physically pass it. She couldn't simply toss it, of course.

Not to mention the slight additional attention required to handle reforming the hilt as it came into and out of contact with her hand was rather distracting. Working on the speed of the changeover led her to trying to improve the speed of her shifting in general.

She was still practicing absorbing and reforming her sword, dagger, an eye in her palm, and other weapons, while smoothly moving her mental pendulum about to retain her size, when her lord entered her chambers the next morning.

She stopped when he entered but returned to what she was doing when he asked her to. He watched her for several minutes before commenting.

"You are learning very quickly," he commented.

Ranko smirked. "I'm the best," she said, raising an eyebrow, her confidence beginning to return as the idea that she would be able to change what had happened slowly sank in, "I've always picked up techniques quick." She rotated in place. "Like the clothes?"

He nodded but stepped forward to look more closely. "Not familiar," he muttered then smiled. "Well done indeed. I suppose I needn't worry about maintaining a wardrobe for you then?"

She grumbled inwardly at his having realized what she had done so quickly but nodded happily nonetheless. It felt good to have someone willing to acknowledge her achievements, instead of constantly deriding them.

At his request, she took them both to the training hall. There, she demonstrated what she had learned the night before. He commented favorably on her speed, and the ingenuity she had shown in crafting metal fabrics to relieve the steadfastly black fabric that was the only one she naturally possessed. She demonstrated some weapons kata, with which he seemed suitably impressed.

Finished with the short review, he brought her a dagger. "This is a non-magical dagger." He handed it to her. "Try to absorb it, try to make it part of you."

Nodding, she concentrated on it as it lay on her palm. Nothing happened and nothing continued to happen until she finally tried enveloping it in quicksilver. It was then absorbed in only a few moments. He seemed pleased, but she could still feel it within her. Though it was responding to her will, reshaping and taking its place within her, it still felt separate, she could still tell exactly where it began and ended.

"I can still feel it," she said, frowning. "I can reshape it, but it doesn't really feel... I don't know how to say it." Her frown deepened, her mouth turning down in an unconscious pout as she sought for words.

He sighed. "I wondered if that might happen. Try to let go of it." He gestured at the pedestal on which she'd spent so much time. Stepping over to it, she formed the material into a sphere and pushed it along until it passed out of her hand. To her surprise, it readily dropped away, separating completely. It lay there as she stared at, a small ball of steel, gold, and leather.

"Take it back up and try to reform it into a dagger."

Nodding, she sucked in a breath and bit her lip as she put her hand on the sphere and drew it back in. Sorting out the materials, she straightened the steel back into a blade and gave it as sharp of an edge as she could manage, then turned her attention to the hilt. Finally a well-formed dagger, looking nearly, if not quite, identical to the one she had been given, dropped out of her palm and onto the pedestal, where she glared at it in frustration. Why had it not worked properly?

"Don't look so disappointed," he advised her, touching her shoulder. "You were able to reshape it even without being able to truly absorb it. More to the point, you were able to reshape it and then release it, which is a better thing than you might realize. You could make a fair living just using that ability to repair weapons or jewelry, or even make original works."

She shook her head in protest. She was a martial artist not a jeweler! It might have potential though. "Ah... well, I guess I could keep some metal around to make throwing knives with."

"Right." Beside the dagger he now placed a clear gemstone. "Now try to absorb this."

Ranko could see that he expected something different from this attempt, so she did not begin with the quicksilver. Instead she started with the adamantite, as she had the first time. She picked up the stone and immediately it vanished into a pool of adamantite on her palm, showing none of the resistance the dagger had. Feeling the substance and testing its properties, she looked up in surprise. "This is the same thing that was on that ring yesterday. The jade and onyx wouldn't match its angles, but this seems to prefer those angles."

"It's a diamond."

"Oh." Ranko pushed at it for a moment then glanced up, a startlement widening her eyes. "It's not staying separate," she said. "It feels like it's really part of me now!"

A slow smile swept across her lord's face. His eyes glittered and she noticed that he was rubbing his hands together. "I was right! The difference, Ranko, is that the diamond you just absorbed has a spell on it. You can absorb magical items completely, as I had hoped!"

She looked at her hand, allowing the diamond to float to the surface, the center of her palm taking on a clear, crystalline quality. "What kinda spell?"

"Oh, a very simple one. It is merely a light spell, that allows the gem to act as a light source. See if you can activate it. Ordinarily it would require a command word, but it is part of you now." She noticed that he seemed curiously intent and eager and wondered about it briefly. Feeling through the stone, she found the same tingle that she had felt in the gold and several of her other elements, including the black fabric. Trying the same technique she had used on the fabric had no effect.

Sighing, she felt it more gently, looking for anything that might affect it. Finally she found it, a tight little bundle of energy which, as she looked more closely at it, seemed to have a very definite pattern to it. Examining it she seemed to quite suddenly know how to trigger it and she did so.

Light spilled forth from her hand, a glow that lit the room as well as a torch might have, deepening the shadows. She closed her hand, bemused as she stared at the light escaping through her fingers.

She glanced at her lord. Her hand fell to her side and her jaw dropped. He was dancing, capering about like a madman, chortling! "Uhm... what are you doing?"

He finally stopped and staggered over to the chair in the alcove, collapsing into it, sucking in ragged gulps of air. "Sorry, sorry, just couldn't help it. You can't imagine what a marvelous feeling it gave me to watch you do that. You absorbed a magic item and without knowing anything more about than that it was magic and cast light, you successfully triggered its effect! You have no idea, I'm sure, what an achievement that is."

"Uhm... right... how do I turn it off?" Ranko was looking at her hand as she asked, wondering if she was going to have a permanent built-in flashlight. She pulled the diamond back and slid a thin sheen of jade over it, casting a green light into the room.

Her lord leapt to his feet, startled. "Green?! How did you do that?" He grabbed her hand in his excitement then stopped suddenly. "Oh, jade, of course." He sighed. "It has a second command word to shut off the light. Without that it will continue to glow until the crystal is completely used up, at which point it will crumble into carbon dust."

Ranko nodded absently and looked into the diamond again. After a short search she found it, a second tight pattern of energy. She looked at it until she realized how to trigger it. Everything seemed to go dark for a moment as the light vanished, before her eyes adjusted once more to the dim lighting.

Her lord seemed to have completely regained his composure and she was about to question him regarding parts of her turning into dust when she suddenly realized that she still did not know his name. She stopped and stared at her hand as she tried to remember. She went over each minute she had spent with him, but for the life of her, she could not remember him introducing himself.

Looking up at him with puzzled eyes, feeling embarrassed, for surely he had told her at some point, she tentatively questioned him. "Uhmm... I... What'm I s'pposed to call you, again?"

His eyes widened and he laughed suddenly. "Oh! I didn't even realize I hadn't told you. I am Distanfae Vitrue... or Vitrue Distanfae, I think, in the style of your speech."

"Okay... Uhm... Lord Vitrue, if I use this light, will it hurt when it crumbles? It won't make the rest of me turn to dust with it, will it?"

"No, no, no worries there. Remember, you are basically indestructible. It won't overload the diamond, that is no longer possible. You may use that spell freely."

"Oh... okay... Uhm... so... why did it make you so happy?"

He turned away to sit once more in his seat. Looking up at her, he said, "You want to be remembered, don't you?"

"Well, yeah, I guess."

"You want to be remembered as the best, right?"

"Of course. I am the best."

"So do I, Ranko, so do I. Not the best warrior, of course. I am no great fighter. The world of wizards has its names as well, though, names every wizard knows. Creating this form for you was a masterwork I may never succeed in surpassing, not that I won't try. A rune weapon that can act on its own, that can take any form appropriate to its situation, that by itself was an achievement! My name will go down in history for that alone!" He grinned at her. "I am young for such an achievement, though I've little doubt I'm much older than you, for drow have very long lives. Many centuries a drow can live, even a thousand years or more, though I'll not likely last another thousand. But I've done even more than that! I hoped it might be so, I tried to do all I could to let that possibility remain. You see, many weapons of great power have been created over the years. Very few of these ever change afterward though, much less increase in power as time passes.

"You, on the other hand, not only will you continue to grow in knowledge and skill as long as you live, you can also increase in power directly! You can take other magical items into yourself, gain their power for your own use, even if you have little or no idea what they do or how they work.

"I'm not sure about the quicksilver... it can absorb things itself, without respect to the spells I've placed, as you saw when it absorbed that non-magical dagger." He tossed another gem, a small yellow stone, onto the pedestal.

"That is another light stone. Try it with your quicksilver."

Ranko placed her left hand over it this time, not picking it up. Strands of quicksilver dripped from her palm to cover the gemstone. She felt a minute surge of energy from the stone, then it melted as the dagger had. It, like the dagger, refused to bond with her. Looking into it, she searched in vain for the trigger to the spell. "It is not mixing," she said, "and I can't access the spell."

He stepped up and held out his hand. The quicksilver retracted into her palm then released the stone, returned to its original form, and she handed it to him. He murmured something then said it again, louder, a word that did not translate to her understanding. "You could not access it because the spell is gone," he said raising his eyebrows.

"I wasn't certain it would work the same, but I wasn't expecting this, all the same. At a guess, I'd say the quicksilver absorbed the magical energy from it. If the spell was gone because of the crystal's deformation, it should have destroyed the crystal." He looked up at her. "Did you feel anything when you absorbed it?"

"Yeah, like a little jolt."

"Exactly," he muttered. "I think, from my understanding of the behavior of the quicksilver, that anything that you absorb and leave in contact with the quicksilver will be drained of magic first, beginning with the simplest magic, then more slowly it will itself be dissolved and absorbed, becoming more quicksilver. That, at least, is how it seems to behave in the wild."

The sound of a door opening caught their attention. Ranko turned to see a man much like her lord enter the room. His eyes lit up when he saw Distanfae. "So, brother dear, you've finally left your laboratories!"

In her mind Ranko heard Distanfae hiss, "Make a sword, quickly, but where he cannot see."

She turned slightly so that her right hand would be out of the new man's sight. Behind her interposed body, a hilt rippled into being and a katana like her mother's honor sword formed from it.

"Finally given up on that foolish human magic, I hope? Disappointed though our mother would surely be." He turned his attention to Ranko and his eyes widened slightly. "Or just here for a quick dalliance, perhaps?"

"Neither!" Distanfae snapped irritably. "For your information, Laermornan, Ranko here is helping me test an... unfinished.. hmm... prototype, of the final product. Perhaps you'd care to see it in action?"

Ranko's eyes narrowed at the implication that she was unfinished, though she was more disturbed by the thought that she was supposed in some way to fulfill Distanfae's mother's expectations. "He better not want to marry me," she growled mentally.

The man she now knew to be Laermornan, Distanfae's brother, turned towards her and raked her up and down with his eyes, eliciting an unconscious growl from her. "Certainly, I'd be delighted to help you test it."

He crossed the room quickly and from another alcove along the wall he retrieved a single curving sword. Unlike Ranko's katana, which at Distanfae's signal she held in front of her in guard position, it was not a consistent breadth along its length. Rather, it had a rearward swell about four-fifths of the blade to the end, where the taper reversed until it came to a point.

When her lord's brother stepped up to face her, he gave her sword a long look then glanced at Distanfae. "Why did you make the blade so unusual?"

Distanfae growled, throwing Ranko a glance she couldn't interpret. "It's human magic, Laer, it works best with human weapons. This is close enough to a scimitar."

Laer shook his head disbelievingly then moved fluidly into an attack. To an average fighter he gave no indication of his intent, but Ranko read him more easily than she could any book. She deftly turned aside his attack. He recovered readily, blocking her attempt to relieve him of his sword for a quick win, but she could not hold back her smirk. Though he moved with a speed that many of the races that held the enmity of the drow feared, it was nothing to her own speed, she who even before learning the chestnut fist had been able to move faster than a normal human's eye could follow.

She did not want to end her first chance at plying her art too quickly, but it was not long before she was receiving a dark glare from Laermornan. He leapt backward finally and did not move in again when she failed to follow. He turned his glare to Distanfae. "Where did you find her? She's toying with me! I, who can win one fall out of three with Vitrue's weaponmaster, and I can't even make her sweat!"

He glanced back at her then at Distanfae's smirk. "It's the blade, isn't it? The weapon you created, it is more than merely indestructible, it is increasing her skill." Ranko wanted to protest but she did not even have to look at Distanfae to know that she should keep silent. For whatever reason, her lord wanted his brother to believe the sword she held was what he was creating. True enough in its own light, but if she were to claim that her skill was her own and he demanded she prove it; well, it would prove no easy thing to cast her sword aside. Once more the memory of her past and her fear for her future proved able to hold the tongue that nothing else had ever stilled.

Laermornan did not wait to hear confirmation from Distanfae. Wiping his forehead with a cloth, he bowed quickly in her direction. "Good fight," he said, then strode towards the door, swearing softly.

"Say nothing of this, elder brother. It is not yet ready," warned Distanfae.

Laer glanced at him and nodded then exited the room, closing the door with a resounding crash behind him. Ranko turned to Distanfae to see what he thought of her performance.

"That was well-played, Ranko. Now he is convinced that I've created a perfectly normal rune weapon."

"What..." Ranko paused, uncertain whether she should bring it up, then went ahead regardless. "What did he mean about your mother?"

"She is the one who obtained the quicksilver golem for me. She is the one who charged me with making a rune weapon. She doesn't need to know all the details. If necessary, you can be just a sword long enough to demonstrate, but I think we'll be able to work in a challenge. You, wielding an ordinary weapon, demonstrate that you are a more capable fighter than this House possesses... and your performance against Laer makes me think that that will be no great challenge; and after a test of loyalty, I expect they'll make you weaponsmaster, and designated bearer of the rune weapon. We should be able to pull it off, if we play our cards right."

---

Ranko stood poised in the center of the room, the blade of her katana directed to the floor. At the end of the room within his accustomed alcove Distanfae was chanting softly. Ranko forced herself not to react as he completed his chant and a number of glowing arrows of light sprang from his fingertips. They flashed across the room and slammed into her.

To her surprise, though she felt the impact as they hit her, she felt no pain, nor had she been knocked off balance. She nodded to Distanfae's questioning glance and as he began chanting again, she readied quicksilver just beneath the surface of the blade.

Once more arrows of light streaked across the room. Her katana flashed out to intercept. She was too slow on the first two, and though her katana blocked the arrows, the quicksilver was not there to meet them and she suffered the full impact.

The third hit square on a patch of quicksilver newly risen to the sword's surface but again she was too slow and had not yet begun to focus on the quicksilver and she felt only the impact. The fourth seemed to flow into her without obstruction as she focused on the patch of quicksilver, sending a surge of pleasurable sensation like the taste of rich food singing through her.

Another volley followed close behind and Ranko caught them all. That first successful taste had given her a hunger for the sensation, though even with the number of bolts she was catching, it was as a faint appetizer, barely touching the edge of the hunger she had been previously unaware of.

"Very well done," Distanfae spoke into her mind. "It certainly appears that I was right about the quicksilver, and the fact that you can absorb spells rather than merely drawing magic from enchanted items makes it far more useful. Now let's try something a little stronger."

He picked up a bow that had been leaning against the wall behind him, beside a sword and a crossbow, and began chanting. He did not fit an arrow to the string, though he placed his fingers on it as if they were encompassing the butt of an arrow. When his chant ended he drew back the string and a glimmering line of red appeared between the bent string and the bow. The bow twanged and an arrow of fire leapt through the intervening space.

It was met by Ranko's katana, impacting on hungry quicksilver. Immediately she noticed two things. First, the flavor was different, spicy and hot, and second, it was more filling.

She said as much and Distanfae nodded thoughtfully. "Neither spell is particularly strong, but I think we have enough now to begin to test. I've not seen what the quicksilver can do in this respect, but it should be possible for you to tap into the energy it has obtained. I'm not certain what you'll be able to do with it..." He trailed off and looked at her expectantly.

Ranko nodded, thinking to herself that he might be surprised. He had not yet made mention of ki and she did not think that he was really aware of the full extent of her prior capabilities. She was not exactly inexperienced at wielding energy, even if this was a different sort than that to which she was accustomed. She slipped her sword into the sheath hanging from her belt. After the near discovery by his brother, Distanfae had ordered her to keep the katana present whenever she wore this form, so that he would not find himself unable to present it when it was requested.

Reaching inward she focused her mind upon the quicksilver. Her awareness of the rest of herself and her immediate surroundings faded and then she became quite suddenly and very strongly aware of the energy flowing through the quicksilver. Slowly her perceptions became more in tune with the flows of energy and she was able to detect a deeper mass beneath the swirling upper layers. As she watched she could see that the mass was slowly assimilating the freer upper flows, which she realized were somewhat distinct.

Concentrating on that difference her perspective seemed to warp and shift suddenly, so that instead of looking at the flows from without, she was feeling them from within, as if her very consciousness had moved into the quicksilver. From this vantage point, the inner pool seemed quiet and still, peaceful but with a quiescence like that of a sleeping cat, though the thought made her shiver, as if it held a power that could be terrible when roused.

About it flowed the myriad energies she had recently absorbed. There was little remaining of one stream, a soft glow that tasted and felt like cool water. Another felt solid and thick, moving with sluggish power, reminding him of Ryouga, slow-moving but forceful. The last was spicy and swirling rapidly, touching a deep pain within her as she compared it to Akane's fiery rages.

They were slowly being absorbed, feeding the deeper, still pool, and the comparison of two of the flows to the feelings of his long lost friends put Ranma suddenly in the mind of his erstwhile English teacher, Ninomiya Hinako. There were definite similarities to the absorption of these energies and her ki-draining ability, leading Ranko to wonder if she might not be able to find away to drain that energy away before a wizard had managed to shape it, the way that Hinako had drained their battle auras.

Reminding herself that Distanfae was waiting, she ignored the outer flows, expecting that like emotionally charged ki, they would be resistant to being shaped contrary to their nature, and drew instead from the quiet pool of neutralized power.

Her awareness expanded as she drew the power out, encompassing her whole self once more even as she became aware that she had drawn the conduit of power out of the quicksilver and into her adamantine element, though not yet outside of herself.

That she could cause that power to move at all was promising. Cupping her hand she guided the flows and smirked as Distanfae's eyes widened. Slowly and then with greater speed, streamers of purple flowed into the space between her hands, coalescing into an amethyst ball. It seemed to become easier as she collected it, responding ever more readily to her will, and she realized with a sudden start that it was more responsive than even her ki had been.

She cut off the flow when the ball was six inches across, focusing on maintaining the power and not allowing it to leak away into the air. Its responsiveness was giving her ideas. She had never really learned any really powerful ki moves. She knew from her experience with Prince Herb that the few she knew were barely the tip of the iceberg. However, she had had an idea for powering up her Moko Takabisha, though she had never accomplished it. She knew that there was ki all about her and she had occasionally wondered if she could gather that ki to fuel her attacks. She had never managed it, but this energy was responding far more easily to her demands, perhaps with it...

She glanced at Distanfae but though he had a look of curious attention, he made no sign so she decided that she was free to experiment as she would. "Control first," she whispered to herself. She concentrated on the sphere, slowly moving her hands apart. A broad grin grew on her face as the sphere swelled, lengthening into a sausage like shape. The center thinned, pinching inward, then the energy split into two balls, one following each hand.

A double Moko Takabisha was something she had accomplished before but she was still startled at how easy it had been to divide the ball. Holding her hands still she pulled the two spheres apart again, dividing them into four. Laughing softly at how remarkably easy it was to control she started them moving in a circle, orbiting about an invisible central point, then brought the four back into a single sphere.

How much further could she go? She knew that under the influence of the Neko-ken she formed claws of ki, though she had not succeeded in duplicating that feat while conscious. The sphere between her hands wavered for a moment then thinned, flattened, and extended. Smirking with delight, she delicately reached out and touched the blade, then absorbed it back into her arm. Concentrating, she drew up a bit more power, channeling it into her arm to join the first, then held up her hand.

Five elegantly curved and paper-thin blades of deep purple flashed into existence just beyond the tips of her digits. She waggled her fingers and the blades moved in precise correspondence.

She was absorbed in her own achievement now and did not notice the look of blank astonishment on Distanfae's face. She had only just accessed that energy for the first time and already she could control it with a precision that astounded him.

Banishing the blades she summoned a ball of purple fire into her open hand and then gave it a sharp push. It streaked towards the wall in front of her. A smirk appeared on her face at how easy that equivalent to the Moko Takabisha had been. The smirk widened when a questing thought stopped the sphere cold just before it impacted the wall and then brought it arrowing back. She noticed as she absorbed it that it had lost some of its substance, though hardly a worrisome amount. Of course, the fact that she had fired it off with such a light thought that she had not even begun to say the words did little to subdue her pleasure. While she had no real desire to learn to be ninja, in spite of the shadow powers she had been given by Distanfae, there was no harm in having an attack that could be initiated silently.

She felt a sudden pressure on her mind as the sphere vanished and realized that Distanfae had just exerted his control. "A scrying spell just activated. We're being watched. Draw the sword and prepare to defend. Don't absorb, just deflect."

She drew the sword in a single fluid motion and immediately entered the first steps of a basic kendo form. With her senses still attuned to the strange energy she could actually feel him casting the spell and it was a simple matter to interpose the blade between herself and the arrow of fire, dispersing it in a flash of sundered magic, the move made so smoothly and precisely that it seemed but an ordinary part of the kendo form.

It continued thus as he sent a wide variety of distance attacks at her, her blade intercepting them without seeming to disrupt the pattern of her motion in the slightest. Through the quicksilver, she felt the build up of each attack as he began it, then the coursing path of the attack as it crossed the room. Adjusting the kata so that her sword would intercept it was child's play.

Without the aid of the quicksilver, the attacks pounded into her, sending shockwaves through her, though none were strong enough to move her, nor did she feel any pain from them.

"Deflect, he said," she mentally muttered to herself. Carefully she drew up the quicksilver power again, holding it ready. She was taking a risk, she knew. If she guessed wrong about how to manipulate the quicksilver, she would end up absorbing the attack, which she had been ordered not to do. But she needed to try, because allowing the spells to impact against her, while resulting in flashy detonations that made it obvious she was not absorbing the spells, was not 'deflecting' them.

Again she formed a blade of amethyst, within the katana, concentrating on it in her mind, picturing a mirror sheen on a hard edge. As the next attack came, she allowed the amethyst energy to surface on the katana's edge.

An explosion flared against the wall to her left, courtesy of the bolt she had deflected into it. She felt like crowing in triumph but held it in, knowing that her lord would be displeased if she did anything that revealed too much to whoever was watching them.

The idea came to her suddenly that she ought to be able to sense whoever was watching. Distanfae had said it was a spell, well, she was able to detect his spells through the quicksilver, and even absorb them. Should she not be able to detect and neutralize this other spell?

"No!" Distanfae caught the current of her thought and quickly interposed his objection. "If the scrying spell ends prematurely, they will know we discovered them."

They continued their farce until Distanfae signaled that the scrying had ended. "Laermornan," he growled. "I told him to say nothing! Well, there's no help for it."

Ranko looked at him expectantly but he shook his head. "I've used too much magic as it is, putting on that show for them. I had to use several of my items to supplement my spells. I'll be able to do no more until tomorrow." He looked down in seeming thought for a minute then raised his head again. "Stay, if you like, and practice. I do not think they will bother to scry again. Return to my quarters when you finish, through the shadows."

He strode from the room and she watched him leave, thinking to herself that he was exhausted but hiding it, as she had done so often. She shook her head, dismissing him from her mind. He knew better than she how to take care of himself and he had shown no inclination to having her serve him in any more personal matter, for which she was profoundly thankful. He would doubtless be better after getting rest.

She immersed herself once more in the pool of energy then drew some out and into her adamantite again. Trading quicksilver for jade in her eyes once more, she looked at her hands and saw the glows. She had a sort of glow, all over, doubtless because she was magical, through and through. The presence of the extra energy from the quicksilver was noticeable as a deeper, richer color above the submerged substance. The energy she had freed from the quiescent pool was even more noticeable, the glow being brighter and richer. As well, it led her to notice that there were variations in the base glow as well, veins and flows that moved and shifted slowly, while in the brighter glow of active power, they flashed and crackled like lightning, the flows warping and twisting energetically.

Forcing a portion of the energy out of her body and into the open air, she returned her attention to her environment. Immediately she noticed that the area around her was heavily laden with energy, the residue of the innumerable spells, slowly fading. A slow grin quirked the edges of her lips as she contemplated the ambient glow that surrounded her.

She began breathing deeply and very slowly. Her breath grew ragged though, as frantic concern flared in her mind. Why was her ki not building below her stomach, in her hara? She felt nothing from the breaths. A slow feeling of despair swept over her as she realized that she had lost her ki. All the feeling of achievement and confidence seemed to drain from her. The purple energy that had at first so excited her now seemed little more than a fool's prize.

Her ki was a part of her, built up through pain and suffering of years, most of her life, in fact. This was not the first time she had suffered its loss. When under the effects of the Weakness Moxibustion, her ki had been useless to her, and the despair of those first few hours after Happosai had crippled him returned to her now with overwhelming force.

Through great strength of will Ranko eventually roused herself from despair to learn once more to control the quicksilver energies, but her heart was no longer in it. Dully, mechanically, she shifted quicksilver around in her body as she breathed, seeking some way of positioning and using it that would let her take advantage of the skill she had in manipulating her ki. If those skills could not be applied then all of that ambient energy might as well be so much hot air for all she could get from it.

Eventually she gave up. Her breathing continued to have no discernable effect on the energies. She sighed, dropping her hand and reabsorbing the quicksilver energy. A moment later she slapped herself on the forehead with a disturbingly metallic thunk. She had never succeeded in the drawing in of environmental ki because she had never really been able to feel it. Feeling someone's battle aura was easy as it made a sharp contrast to normal experience. But nature's ki she was ever bathed in and it always eluded her.

But why was she even trying? After all, she had felt the surrounding magical energies as soon as she immersed herself in the quicksilver energy? Purple energy flared about her hand and a dry sob cracked her throat as with startling ease, streamers of energy became visible as they coalesced from the surrounding air, swirling and settling into the amethyst ball.

Maybe she had lost her ki and maybe not... but she had a thousand years to master this new form of energy. "I'll be ready for you, Saffron," she hissed. Using the amethyst sphere as a conduit, she began siphoning off the external energies she was collecting, drawing them back within the quicksilver where they could be absorbed.

It required little concentration, though the mental image of Kasumi wandering around with a vacuum cleaner wafted through her mind. She walked about the room, absorbing the ambient spell remnants and thinking about what she had seen and heard that day. She had been created under orders by Distanfae's mother. He had spoken of her as a weapon, and had her pretend to be holding a sword for his brother.

"...after a test of loyalty..."

How did daimyo test their samurai's loyalty? How would this dark-skinned family's matriarch test her loyalty? What would Cologne have done?

She felt a sudden stab of painful realization and was almost surprised that it was not accompanied by clenching stomach pains. She would be asked to kill someone, she felt suddenly certain. It would probably have been someone close to her, had there been any such person.

"I can't sleep," she said softly, "but that doesn't mean I can't meditate."

Wrapping herself in shadows, she reappeared in her quarters. Her clothes shifted, largely vanishing, until she was garbed in what seemed to be a singlet and boxers. She sat on the bed and drew herself up onto it, settling into a lotus.

She focused on the Soul of Ice, having little general experience with meditation, and knowing, in spite of the loss of her ki, that she needed that emotional distance.

In The Service of the Drow

Ranko looked up as Distanfae entered her room. She noticed that he seemed unusually agitated. "Laermornan can't keep his mouth shut," he growled. "And now that they've seen the blade in action, I can't stave them off with talk of tests and finishing it. My mother has demanded that you be presented to her."

Less than a quarter of an hour later, Distanfae made his way through the halls, Ranko with him.

"Remember what we have spoken of," Distanfae warned Ranko mentally. Not waiting for a reponse, he strode through the doors of the chapel as they opened before him. As with most events of importance in their dark society, the presentation of a newly crafted weapon, representing as it did the culmination of a task given him by his Matron, would be performed under the auspices of the Spider Queen, the dark goddess whose worship perpetuated the evil for which their race had become known.

Ranko rested in his hands for he would not trust her to a servant. She wore the appearance of the katana she had fashioned to fight Laermornan, though Distanfae had guided her through the process of decorating its surface. Her hilt was plainly wrapped, while her blade, though otherwise that of an ordinary katana, bore blood-grooves in a concession to the weapon design expectations of the society it was to be used in.

The plain wrap was deceptive, for Distanfae had provided her with a silken wrap made from the webbing of a phase spider. It would be recognizable to any drow familiar with the weapons of the nobility, for it was oft-used in the better swords. A sword with such a grip could not be knocked from its owner's hand, and so would help explain Ranko's hold on herself, when and if she ended up as the weapon's apparent wielder. That its effects were due to its inherently magical properties had allowed her to make the silk part of herself.

She rested in a sheath, but unlike the silken wrap, it was not part of her. He had provided the materials and she had shaped them under the guidance of his mind, but she had done so with her quicksilver, for the materials were non-magical and could not be made part of her.

Of course, that was quite deliberate. She knew, though it made her nervous, that she would be placed in the hands of another, and possibly tested, used to kill. If she could not be drawn from her scabbard she would hardly seem a useful weapon.

He had informed her of the general patterns of behavior weapons such as her displayed. He had also told her what would happen when another's hand touched her, for which she still felt unprepared, though he had not explained why it did not occur when he touched her. He had made it clear that she should not allow Kliza to wield her. If the matron demanded that she be wielded by a House noble, Laermornan would be a better choice. Less strong-willed, he was male and younger, and could be influenced by Distanfae far more easily than the higher-ranking female priestess.

Without an eye, nor room in the hilt to form one, she was sightless. She was not blind, however. Her consciousness was submerged in the quicksilver pool and the chapel of this house was so wound about with magic that she could see nearly every detail. Most of it was a light magic that seemed without purpose, yet covered every surface, but there were also magic weaves of great power on the door and the altar and about several of the persons within.

Distanfae walked proudly forward, Ranko resting on his lifted palms. He inclined his head as he stood at the foot of the dais where his mother stood in front of the altar. Kliza, his sister, stood at her right hand. The snake-headed whip of a high priestess hissed at him from her belt. Laermornan stood to his mother's left, in front of, not on, the dais.

Kliza stepped forward after a nod from their mother, and grasped the hilt firmly in her hands. Taking the sword from his hand, she looked at it, examining the hilt, then drew it forth a few inches, examining the blade.

"Why so strange a blade?" his mother asked, fixing him with a baleful glare.

"It is the most elegant of the human blade styles capable of being turned to the purpose, Matron," Distanfae said, inclining his head in humility, but keeping his eyes on her.

---

Ranko wanted to shudder in disgust and revulsion when Kliza's hand touched her. As Distanfae had warned her, the touch of his sibling opened a conduit between them. Kliza's upper mind was opened to Ranko and she was dismayed at the nature of it. "She's worse than Kodachi," Ranko thought in disgusted wonder. Indeed, the eldest child of Matron Vitrue was a sadist, taking pleasure in inflicting pain and in her mind now was pleasure at the thought of dominating the sword. Ranko