Oh, neat! I guess it makes sense that you can't shuffle out pages since you have no pages. It would be weird and sort of disturbing if you could shuffle out your skin, it would be like me shuffling out my covers! (I can't do that and it's weird to think about. Those should stay on the outside of me!)

Yeah, I'm happy with the amount and location of skin I have! 

Speaking of Dragon Fairy Elf Witch--I didn't realize until I actually started seeing people of different species that I would feel so awkward about it. It feels weird to copy a species without getting permission from someone of that species, which is kind of ridiculous since I can't possibly get permission from *every* member of a species, and then I'm worried about--political stuff? Like, some of the species here are racist against some other ones; if I copy the people other folks are racist against will they feel like I'm making fun of them somehow? If I copy some of the kinds of demon, will people be scared of me? If I copy the angel, will they trust me for bad reasons? I recognize that you don't know the answers to those questions; I just--I don't know, wanted to complain pointlessly I guess.

Oh, I think I can see how that would be complicated, now that you point it out. But remember, your powers are metanarratively protected from unwanted side effects. Some of the things you're worrying about are harder to avoid that way—if someone's the type to be upset about you copying their heritage, and you copy their heritage, well, there you are. But the social stigma of a demonic appearance is the sort of drawback that Dragon Fairy Elf Witch can usually avoid, at least partially!

And as for people trusting you for bad reasons... it sounded like that angel was the kind of person you could aspire to be. I'm not an expert in this sort of thing, but I think, personally, that if you take on the heritage of a really good person because you want to be like them and do good things, and then you try to use it to do good things, and people look at you and see someone with the power of a really good type of being who is trying to do good things with it, well, that doesn't sound like a bad reason to trust someone at all.

It's still a really complicated situation, though, and it makes sense if you want to put more thought into it than that! That's just what I think.

Yeah, that all makes sense. Probably if I copy e.g. the four-armed energy-draining demon I'll end up with four normal human-looking arms and not with horrible teeth or anything. Also there are already part-dragons and part-angels running around and Areelu Vorlesh (the mad scientist wizard) was part succubus, which might make things more complicated but also means I should maybe just ask some people what the political implications would be and they'd actually know.

Do you know if Dragon Fairy Elf Witch works on animals? It wouldn't 100% avoid the social awkwardness problem because some people look like some animals but it'd be somewhat less fraught and I bet this universe has some really epic animals.

It absolutely does! You can acquire heritage from any animal you encounter, just as easily as any person. (And your heritage doesn't necessarily need to work the way normal heritage does; it can, but you can also achieve impossible results that no one who was really part human and part dragon or angel or succubus could ordinarily have!)

That's really cool!

And then a moment later:

Now I have red-tailed hawk eyes and a dog's sense of smell and cat ears in addition to my human ears and four arms! I regret none of this but I do hope the magic has a convenient way of handling it when I run out of cosmetically modifiable body parts. 

I think the traditional thing you get when you have enough heritage that it's hard to find more places to put it is shapeshifting.

That's fantastic; I was hoping you'd say that!

I am very tempted to break off this conversation and go read all my magic books but once I start I won't stop until I'm done and then I'll be unconscious for a day so I probably shouldn't. But also I'm inevitably going to do it at some point and I feel like if I don't do it tonight who even knows when I'll next get the chance.

That's very understandable.

Is now a time when it would be especially bad to be unconscious for a day? Do you think it would be better or worse to be unconscious for a day a few days from now, or is it hard to be sure? Are there people who would worry if you were unconscious for a day now who you could warn if you waited?

I should at a minimum warn Seelah--we were planning to go up out of the caves together tomorrow--and at a maximum wait until we've gotten out and helped put the city back together post-demons. I think I can wait at least one more day, go topside tomorrow with Seelah, and at least see what needs doing. Then if it's nothing urgent or nothing I'm particularly good at I can camp out somewhere and read. I was going to say something about how wizardry will let me solve a wider range of problems but really I'm just insanely curious.

That makes perfect sense and I'm pretty curious too! I wonder if you could copy the books to me while you read them?

Yeah, I totally could! One hand scanning the book, one hand relaying to you. That sounds awesome!

Also it will prevent her from starting the reading binge tonight because now she can't do it without telling Alpina.

I look forward to it! ♡

Brenda says goodnight and goes to bed feeling a lot less off-balance. In the morning she packs up her tent and goes looking for Seelah, still four-armed and with large grey cat ears poking up through her hair.

Seelah double-takes when she sees Brenda's extra arms, but then she sees the ears and has to stifle a laugh.

"Morning, Brenda! Do you really have 4 ears? Somehow that's even sillier than I imagined, but it's not a bad look."

"I do have four ears and I can hear with all of them! Turns out I can copy abilities from every kind of animal I've seen as well as people, so I grabbed some of those and also copied the arms off the vrolikai from yesterday."

Seelah sounds a bit nervous when she responds.

"That's from the demon? You might want to not spread that bit around, people might take it the wrong way. It's bad enough at times with tieflings, and they hardly had a choice about it. Uh, not that I think you got yourself corrupted or anything!"

"I was admittedly wondering whether you'd say that. It definitely didn't do anything other than the extra arms but I appreciate the warning. And I won't be annoyed if you want to check me for corruption somehow or just be suspicious of me for a while. Though, uh, I hope you're still alright with going up to the surface together today."

"Well, you don't detect as evil and you're definitely strong enough you would, so I'm not too worried about anything blatant, but let me know if you start having, uh, intrusive thoughts about it or anything? And yeah, I've got my healing and smite back so I'd like to go help out where I can."

"I will, yeah. Anything you want to do before we head out? Is anyone else interested in coming along?"

"Wenduag was asking me about what it's like up there, so I think she and Lann are at least considering it, but I doubt they both want to go. There's also someone else from the surface that wandered in to Neatholm last night and would probably be interested, but I don't know much about them or recognize the name."

"I'm not likely to recognize them either--I talked to all of three people before the fight started--but I look forward to meeting them."

The other person of the surface is not very difficult to locate; in addition to having a very unusual appearance for Neatholm, he's also wearing noticeably different (and higher quality) clothes from the locals and is making no efforts to hide his location. When he sees Brenda's arms, he clearly has to fight the urge to stare for a moment, but successfully masters himself and rallies.

"Ah, greetings. Are you the hero of the hour from that business with the local children, the adventurer with the magic sword?"

"Hello! My name's Brenda. Seelah and I both helped rescue the children; I have the magic sword and I should figure out whose it actually is and give it back. What's your name?"

He puffs up his chest.

"I am Horgus Gwerm - gentleman and nobleman of our fair city of Kenabres. I was hoping to prevail on you for some more adventuring, this time escorting me safely to the surface. Horgus Gwerm will pay handsomely for your help, of course."