Warden of Love and Beauty

5/24 evening

I can’t describe to you the process of being reformed into a warden. Primarily because I can’t remember it well, but also because what I do remember is a lot like my time in the endless sky. Things were happening that I didn’t really know or care about, and I just accepted it. When I reformed, it felt almost exactly the same as it did when I first arrived as Erich, like waking up.

I stowed my moonblade as I examined my body, and found that I was in dark colored armor, which was extremely form fitting under my cloak. I could tell that I was a lot slimmer than I had been, though a glance around and comparison to what I remembered told me I was probably much taller, so I might only be proportionally slim. I was a night elf, I assumed. It may sound obvious, but I hadn’t done this before. In retrospect I was very lucky that it went as well as it did.

I looked around for my necklace and old armor, and then realized they were in my inventory. Not the suspended animation closet, either. I had 6 inventory slots. Importantly, I could access the amulet while it was in my inventory, without taking it out. I accessed my other inventory and pulled out the reversing mirror, which was still a functioning mirror even if the magic was gone. I pulled off my helmet, and got another surprise.

https://imgur.com/a/kpCLyCn

I wasn’t just any night elf. I was a female night elf. That came with a whole slew of concerns, but dysphoria wasn’t actually one of them. Maybe it was the process of being transformed into a warden, maybe it was stress resistance, maybe it was latent gender fluidity, or maybe it was the fact that I haven’t been in the body I lived a whole life in for a while now, but I wasn’t really very bothered by my new extra X chromosome. I was still probably going to go back to my Erich persona, but should I find myself trying to seduce another lesbian, I might be able to work with this.

That thought put me at ease, actually. I definitely still liked women and didn’t have any interest in men, which was strangely far more core to my identity than whether or not I was one. When I changed into a male dragon I still had my inventory, and my profile in the app was still inviting me to spend a skill point. My sexual preferences hadn’t changed, and I wasn’t locked into the form of a female night elf to use my new powers. Alright, never mind; I’m good. Elyssa, welcome to the team, let’s see if you get more time in the sun than Otto.

Dragon-Erich was drawing some looks, probably because I didn’t know how to assume a visage anymore. It hit me at that point exactly how much shit I was going to need to relearn. That said, I had made the trade with eyes wide open. I was getting quite a few advantages out of it. One of which made itself clear when I turned into my Human-Erich form. I had armor on; it seemed to be a variant on the black and bronze armor I’d gotten from Anduin’s part of the closet; the one I had in my second inventory slot. Neat, no momentary nudity.

https://imgur.com/a/k72zs3Q.

My moonblade, a large circular blade that I knew intimately how to use, appeared in my hand or vanished at my discretion. I could also change into my warden armor, which shaped itself to fit me much like the gear in my closet. Overall, I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing, and I hadn’t even properly chosen my first skill.

I chose blink. It wasn’t even a question, I didn’t feel the need to look at the rest of the options; instant spammable teleportation was way too good to pass up, and from the tooltip it would become dramatically easier to use as I invested into it. The other two abilities available to me, Fan of Knives and Shadow Strike, were certainly going to get attention after I leveled up; for now, I wanted to start fucking around with my new toy. I started running around and using blink, to get a feel for it.

The best part was that I didn’t find it disorienting. I really should, but somehow baked into the shift was me instantly getting my bearings. I could run at a dead sprint, glance to the side, teleport the length of a football field, and keep running in a different direction without breaking stride.

The option of teleporting directly behind someone and slashing them in the back immediately sprang to mind, though I’d be committed at that point. Blink was draining, and I needed to wait at least ten seconds between uses; it seemed like a better tool for escape than attack unless someone was particularly vulnerable and isolated, at least for now. Also, I could not get the words “nothing personal, kid” out of my mind as I contemplated this plan.

Hoping to test something out, I placed Archaeus into my third inventory slot. The holy blade had been pretty scary in the hands of Morgan Ladimore, and I’d never found someone to use it. Greatswords just weren’t as common a weapon of choice as Final Fantasy had led me to believe. Then I teleported to Tirisfal Glades and smacked a perfectly innocent tree with my moonblade.

A burst of arcane force blasted out of my blade, just like the one from Archaeus. It was weak, basically just making the cut a bit deeper, but I could feel it progressively building up again. When I gave it almost a full minute, it was faintly humming with power. I tried tapping it against the tree, which didn’t do anything. The energy wasn’t released that way. When I earnestly struck the tree with a chopping motion, it exploded with enough force to topple the oak.

I haven’t laughed like a psychopath since I learned how to cast smite, and this felt quite a lot like that. The delay to build up a charge was such a perfect pairing with my plans to remain primarily a ranged combatant. If someone closed into melee with me, my first strike would be truly brutal. Similarly; if I have a situation where I need to conserve mana, I could weave in full powered strikes routinely. Once I got blink’s cooldown down to a few seconds, I could teleport across the battlefield whenever the charge was full.

I attracted the attention of a few blighthounds with my manic laughter, but I could run as fast as they could. I could maintain it too; I was running as fast as I could, and wasn’t getting tired. I’m sure I’d get to that point eventually, but athletic talent estimated I could go five or six hours at a sprint before it became a problem.

Yeah, this felt worth it. I absolutely wanted all of my more elaborate toys back, but being a hero was pretty great. It wasn’t the most relevant yet, but if the RTS was anything to go by I also had blanket resistance to quite a few things. When it came to poisons and diseases that didn’t mean much, but if anyone ever turned me into a sheep or cursed me I’d be pretty happy with the effects of that being cut down to only 10% of its normal duration. Polymorph defense was expensive and niche, okay?

I needed to figure out what to practice with now. Sadie was back at the chapel, so I’d have at least a few days where I could get my lunchtime training from her. I needed to fill the rest of my days, though. Ursula could teach me what I needed to know about demonology and I could relearn some basic curses; that way, Sadie wouldn’t need to teach me from scratch. Rebinding all of my demons would make their corresponding spells a bit easier to use, as well.

I could probably bind a voidwalker for more shadow affinity; they were beings of the void after all. Or succubi; charming people is their signature “thing.” I remembered that binding willing demons was easier, but enough knowledge of the procedure had been scrubbed from my mind that you, dear reader, know as much as I did.

I weighed my options on how to spend the evening. According to Xylinnia, they were starting to move out and she was in the army headed for the front. The dragons were lying in wait in the mountains bordering Desolace. It would be a bit risky to go to the battle, but I was at least on par with any of the rank and file soldiers in the Sentinel army. Alternatively, I could trust my field team to handle it and start training in one of the several fields I needed a primer in, so this would be less of a dilemma in the future. Decisions, decisions.