NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jkason" data-source="post: 4605423" data-attributes="member: 2710">Shaimon Hu'u, barbaric human druidShai looks nervously to his window, standing to make sure it's secured before drawing the curtains."I think I got plenty enough to have nightmares about now, thanks. I'll see you folk in the morning."Dyspeer, whether spurred by his companion's motion or his own exhaustion, begins nosing the rest of the party to herd them out of the room. Assuming no one objects, Shai secures his room door after they've gone, and  doesn't even bother removing his gear before falling into bed and into a deep sleep. And from sleep, he falls into the dream...[sblock=The Dream]Shai ran, chasing after Dyspeer in the depths of a thick forest. How could he touch the corners of the world if he couldn't even catch his own wolf? But even as he caught up to the wolf, he knew it was not Dyspeer. The hair was darker, the paws larger. Still he chased it, as if catching this creature was essential to his very survival. And somehow, though he knew he shouldn't be able to, he did, his hands sinking into the fur, his form falling into that of the wolf as if it were nothing more than a lake.Still he ran, twigs snapping under his paws, small branches catching on his snout. The forest called to him. He hunted, though he didn't know what. His run slowed to a gentle loping as he caught the scent of deer. His ears twitched, eyes searching even as he  hunkered down.There: its tuft of tail barely moving. Shai felt himself drooling, his muscles tensing to charge. The deer heard him or smelled him or felt him, its head coming up quickly, and it bolted. No, Shai bolted, his wiry legs sending him bounding away, fleeing on cloven hooves, his every nerve on fire in his fear, the all-consuming need to run or die. He could feel the wolf on his heels, hot breath on his flank as an eagle cried out far above him.He leapt over a fallen tree, pulled upward with the sound and onto powerful wings. Eagle now, navigating the wind currents with only the slightest effort, circling as he reached the river, diving for the serpent sliding through the water and instead diving into that snake, slipping from water to high grass with only the briefest whisper to mark his movement, tasting the scent of prey.And so it went. Form after form, through the forest, into the jungle, swamp, plains, deserts, oceans.  Each animal overtook him, overwhelmed him. He followed a school of fish toward a port. Scuttled through the night as a stray dog in the seaside town, pulled a cart into another, and before he knew it, dire rat Shaimon Hu'u was clambering up a drain pipe at an inn, viper Shai slithered thorugh poorly-joined boards, past the inattentive wolf on the floor, up the bedpost, wrapping himself around the man's throat, raising up to strike.He remembered. Looking at his own face, the animal he was remembered humanity. Remembered what he was, who he was. [/sblock]Shai opened his eyes, half-expecting to see the serpant still at his throat. It was gone, though, and he was once again a man. But he wasn't simply what he had been. He felt a bestiary of souls, roiling just at the back of his awareness. Boar, bear, cheetah, eagle, hyena, crocodile, squid, shark. All of these now lay within him.  Any of them could subsume his human flesh. But always, he reminded himself, always he was--he had to be--a man within. He had up until now been content to follow whatever whims came to him, but with these ... beasts within him, he could no longer afford to live solely on instinct. If he let such things take command of him ... Shai shook his head to clear it of the final image from his dream.</blockquote>

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