Free Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3) by Brian Wilkerson

sighed and mopped up the rest of the mess. “No
matter how much you may dislike him, Talbot is not a monster.”
    “I’m not talking about him. Lunas proposed to Kasile.”
    Kallen stopped cleaning and gaped in alarm. “Are you
serious?!”
    “Yes. She’d be engaged right now if it weren’t for Siron.”
    Instead of disposing the towel into a waste bin or laundry
hamper, she just burned it with a fire spell. She was on her feet and at the
door before her next words left her mouth.
    “We gotta stop that right now!”
    “Exactly, which means I need to get out of here pronto.
Which means I need to convince Talbot to let me out. Which means I need to know
anything that could help me stay in control during a full transformation. Tasio
implied that you know what I need.”
    Suddenly, Kallen was bashful and hesitant.
    “Kallen!”
    Kallen turned away from him. “He... He wants me to show
you my chimera form, my true form, the one I pick up in the Siduban Chaos
Explosion. I don’t do that for just anyone.”
    “Why not?”
    Kallen hugged herself. “It’s a reminder of the worst time
of my life. You may think you have it bad, but it’s nothing compared to what I
went through.”
    The quiver of her voice stirred the grendel; not to eat or
to fight but to protect. Rationally, Eric knew that he couldn’t protect Kallen
from her memories, but he was itching to take some kind of action. Seeing
Kallen emotionally vulnerable was a baffling experience.
     “I was a damsel in distress, but there was no knight to
save me because I was treated like a dragon. There were no laws to protect me
so they did whatever they wanted to me. If I told you half of what they did, you’d try to kill all of them
for being threats.”
    Her body melded and shifted. It grew bigger and broader. Fur
and scales replaced bare flesh in but a few random spots. Fungus that he’d only
seen growing in a chaotic zone grew in her and on her. Patches of her form
gleamed as if with radiation. From this chaotic mass grew four heads: a goat
with green fur, a dragon with golden brown scales, a lion with silver grey fur,
and a black and white snake extending from her rear. The human head was gone.
    “This is
what happened to me,” the goat head said. “This is my true form. I am not human. I am a chimera.”
    “By the
blessing of Lady Chaos, I was empowered,” the dragon head said. “Now I can continue my parents’
work.”
    “By the
curse of Lady Chaos, I lost everything,” the lion head said. “I must find my little sister and
cure her.”
    “They can’t
make up their minds,” the snake head said. “ By the way, it’s been a while since hablo espanol contigo .
There are few forms that allow me to speak directly to mortals. Usually, I have
to use tricksters, Y that’s like playing telephone, except when they’re
doing it deliberately, wakari masen. Wakari mas ka?”
    “No, I don’t understand that. In fact, I don’t understand
any of this.”
    Despite its fearsome appearance, Eric didn’t consider the
chimera to be a threat. It was still Kallen and Kallen was not a threat.
    “My three
forward heads represent three facets of myself, ” the goat head explained. “The snake tail thinks it’s Lady
Chaos. I think it’s my religious nature or my imagination. It never makes sense,
so I ignore it.”
    “ Sumimasen, Kallen. For me, time and space are things that happen otra hambra ,
so I don’t have the same frame of reference that you do. Coko des ka? ”
    Kallen’s chimera body receded. Despite protests from the
snake, her human form returned. Her clothing returned as well. She too
possessed elven clothing to keep her expenses down. There was no indication
that she had been a four-headed chimera moments ago. To Eric, she hadn’t
changed at all. She was still Kallen.
    “I like your true form.”
    “Thanks...” She stroked her hair once. “The point is that
they are all me. Who I am does not change between forms because my soul