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Meanwhile, that same morning...
There were a pair of voices that that drifted in to Celestine's consciousness. A young one, and an old cantankerous one, and they were having a discussion that could politely be described as "heated." Both fell silent, though, as the change overtook Celestines body.
When Cel's eyes opened they fell upon a large bedroom, the wall festooned with porcelain nik-naks of all shape and size. Gil stood at the foot of the bed, his head barely visible over the front, facing down an old, bird faced woman. At least, they would be facing down if they weren't now staring at Cel. The sharp shifter, after gathering his thoughts, let out a light chuckle.
The old woman, for her part, sighed, muttered something about her one weakness being exploited, and stomped out of the room looking very cross.
Gilliam made his way around the side of the bed, tracing up the length of Celestine's new body. He opened a drawer on the bedside table, pulled out a pink hand mirror, and handing it dutifully to Cel. "It is not at all unusual, Master Nursemaid, to feel slightly peckish after such a profound transformation. At least, in my experience."
Celestine took a few seconds to register that she was being talked at, her mind racing to get her coordination back after such a radical change, still sore and drained from the change. "Peckish is underselling it, mr Gilliam." Celestine croaked in a tired voice. "My body shouldn't be able to do this... It's revolting to think... that in my search for power I end up resembling
you of all people." She eyed the stranger's face in the reflection, before warming up her facial muscles. Stopping for a second, she concentrated, as she twitched with her left eye, who now was becoming slightly green-tinted. "But on the other hand, as laborious as it might be for me, not being constrained to an underdeveloped manchild body any longer is good." She added, putting the mirror before stretching and trying to stay on her own feet
She was nearly a foot taller than her old self, and her knees became weak all of a sudden, falling to her knees. "This body will need adjusting." It was then when she realized. "...I switched genders too. It seems." She paused before letting a muffled laughter. "I guess... there's something worse than resembling you, it seems. Resembling the woman that is supposed to be my mother."
"I've found family to be the root cause of all life's difficulties." Gilliam replied, silently trying to figure out if anything Celestine had just said didn't contain some form of insult directed at him and whether they outweighed the flattery of imitation. He trotted along behind, reaching down to help lift the new Cel back up. It didn't help much, considering how monumental their differences in height were right now. "Be that as it may, you will find my Grandmother to be an excellent cook by any regular standard."
"If you will permit me, I'd like to ask how you are feeling." He continued. "Not the hunger, that is to be expected. Any aches or stabbing pains to indicate something out of place. Any intrusive thoughts or feelings that might indicate a fraying of identity? It is most important to catch such symptoms early so they might be corrected before they are given a chance to solidify."
"Unlike you, my core body structure is still a human base. I just rearranged some bones, muscles and a few organs." She paused, the eyes becoming blue again. "I just feel sore, but refreshed." Celestine finally stood up and began to walk. Step by step, with the grace and elegance of a catwalk. "Now that you mention it... I feel." Celestine seemed to shut down for a second, before tears began to bubble in her eyes as she tried to claw away the skin of her cheeks. "THIS IS NOT MY FACE OH MY GOD THIS IS HORRIBLE." She downright shrieked like a madwoman, seemingly falling into a fit.
Only to stop at the last minute. "Mr Dewitt. Who am I? My mind controls my body, and not in reverse." before sporting a grin, the playacting being over.
Gilliam had started forward as Cel began to claw at their cheeks, but had stopped as the screams began. As Cel turned and grinned at him he could only politely clap. "Bravo. It's good that you have such a well defined sense of identity."
There was a thunderous series of steps as the old woman burst into the room, brandishing what looked like a human finger bone in one hand while balancing a wooden platter laden down with re-heated biscuits from the nights dinner. She looked at Gil suspiciously. "Boy..."
He shook his head. "Just some theatrics. I'm a patient lad, I can wait for dinner."
She narrowed her eyes, slotted the bone back into her apron, and laid the biscuit on the bed. She left again, this time muttering darkly about leaving for months only to scare her half to death.
"You eat one cat and you're never allowed to forget it." Gilliam said after her footsteps had disappeared back down the hallway. He took a biscuit and threw it to Cel.
Celestine eyed the biscuit with some apprehension, before gulping it down greedily. "Cats are too stringy. Dogs are meatier. Can't beat pork, though." She said, licking the crumbs out of her finger. "You're not a ravenous beast anymore. You have purpose. If you wanted to eat me you'd done so already." She added, a hand in her hip, before realizing that her clothes wouldn't fit her anymore. "Nevertheless, it is only fair that I help you in kind after extracting me from that humiliation." She sighed. "Why did you do it?"
"Duty." He said, very quickly. "I also find it's easier for me to think rationally if I'm performing a task. I tend to get unhinged when I'm not wrapped in the form of a butler." This also didn't seem as though he were being entirely truthful.
"And, I..." He started slowly, in the easily recognizable tone of a. patient that needs to tell his doctor something but refuses to. "I need to ask your professional opinion on something."
"Ask away then." Celestine added, as she helped herself to more biscuits. They were reasonably filling.
Gil looked side to side, as though he'd been asks to strip. Then he slowly reached up and took off his eye patch. The first surprising thing was that it could be removed at all, which meant that it was a real item of clothing and not some part of his body. Underneath there was no hole, no eye, just a blank canvas of skin. Gil concentrated and the skin that had been hidden started to ripple and shutter, then went still again.
"I was attempting to create an eye there." He said solemnly.
"I didn't notice until I tried to regain a human form. It's not just that. Right now my brain is in a different part of my body because I just can't seem to form something that complex within my skull. Just bones and meat. I'd like to know if you could fix this."
"hmm... it's a bit hard to tell. It could be oxidative damage from repeated regeneration, but that problem should be in the entire body, not there. What hit you there?" Celestine said.
"Were you watching when that William boy nearly chopped me in twain?" He replied. "I don't even know where he got that sword."
"hmm, it's that so. Astral damage is a pain. It's your spiritual self that is damage, no matter the biology." Celestine said frowning. "We would need a magician to undo that damage. Because it seems you don't have enough sense of self to perceive where the damage is..."
"Spiritual self?" He said, completely confused. Gilliam, for as long as he could remember, had only dealt with things in a biological sense. For one reason or another he had never considered the idea of what shape his soul might take or what sort of damage it could receive. "There's nothing wrong with my biology, I'm simply at the mercy of some immaterial thing I can't even perceive?" It was like home all over again, but somehow even more offensive.
"Hmm." Celestine pondered. "If only I could show you. Actually, come to think of it... there might be a way, but it's a bit risky for us both."
"What are you thinking?" Gil replied.
"Parallel brain processing. I have more than enough capacity to at least show you where the damage is, should our minds be connected. But it is risky."
"You mean connecting our nervous systems together?" Gil said. At first he looked incredulous, but then he lowered his head to consider. "It is theoretically possible. I've considered I might be able to supplement someone else, but..."
He grumbled and cupped his hand over his eyes in frustration. "I might eat your body, you might eat my mind. But if you're willing to take that risk I'm willing to take it in turn."
"Well... you're already paying my fees... so let's do science."
"For science." Gil said. He raised up his arm, wiggling nerves pushing themselves up out from under his fingernails. "Turn around."
He gently put his fingers to the base of Cells neck and, as though administering a shot, pushed the nerve inside. They ate their way inside in pinprick streams, searching out their counterparts and wrapping them like intertwining pieces of tinsel.
Celestine seemed to faint ever so slightly after the connection was stablished, struggling with nausea. The foreign body was clearly not his own, but he persevered. The mind of hers shuddered and came back strong, as if it was an awoken beast. Thoughts gave rise to mental images, as Celestine turned to her inner self. There was the black void again, the personification of her power sporting an office look and giving a stern glare to the new, foreign presence. Gilliam's ego.
"Well, it seems it worked... so far. No excessive signs of shock." Celestine said to the black void, before bringing a gigantic mockery of his body... with yet another attacked displayed as if it was an hologram, the chaotic mass that Gilliam was being a stark contrast with the order of Celestine bodily functions.
The weird thing is Gilliam looked human in this light at a passing glance. But then you looked closer, and realized that his body was composed entirely of what looked like strands of spaghetti made of cancer, tightly packed and bound by some force into the vague shape of a human being.
"Fascinating. And gross. I suppose I should apologize. You're actually close to sponges than to amoebas. Diffuse cell networks in a vaguely defined shape. " Celestine muttered, as he exerted his willpower. "Now, I can check the status of the cells of my body. At first I could... not define what soul, or spirit damage was. I still cannot comprehend. But it just shows as another statistic... it seems, as I've increased my awareness of the supernatural." Celestine did a few gestures as the wretch that Gilliam's body was, before flicking some ethereal button. A ghostly pale image of both Celestine and Gilliam's lifeforce was displayed, showing the dark area near what it seemed to be the arm and the body of the critter. "See this area? Somehow, your power is being spent due to some... well, let's say magic? You'd need to cut all this area, and hope the remaining bits of the body pick up the slack, but you need to concentrate to sort out which parts of your... uhg, body,will be viable."
"That was the first thing I tried to do." The shambling mound gurgled. "Remove the damaged sections, or transfer them to a less problematic area."
"But could you account of the damage and the quality on a cell by-cell basis? That's where things get difficult. The way I see it, there's two ways to solve it... The long and fairly safe, and the short and reckless one."
"I would rather take the option with the least risk." It said. "I believe I can still perform my duties in this state. There's no urgent need to proceed quickly."
"Aw, you're no fun." Celestine deadpanned, before focusing, fetching images on his memories. A couple of ethereal personifications appeared before Gilliam, one of them a well-known silver-haired short girl, in a tasteful dancing dress. The witch, Diana. The other a voluptuous yet gory visage, a caricature of Meredith. "These two can fix you up with healing magic. I would rather seek the Witch of Bones. She is more trustworthy."
"A witch...?" Gilliam said. He thought he had heard something about witches before, some murmured talk in the distinct past that made his skin crawl. Literally, the strands began to intensify their wriggling and some from the bottom of his mass began to spread out defensively across the floor as he considered it. There was a shutter that ran through him. Something from home?
"Is she anything like a necromancer? Grandmother is very strict about no necromancers in the house." he asked, his tone distorted as though many mouths were all attempting to say the same thing at once. "I would have to meet her elsewhere."
"A skillful one. And she changes fair rates for her services." Celestine droned on, with a bored expression. "Now, I believe we're done... unless you want me to force install knowledge on you or something." She tilted her head, expecting Gilliam to make a move.
"Planning to sneakily swallow me up?" it gurgled, it's form coming even more unbound. No, no! Wait, no. Maintain, maintain. "No, I believe our time to be short. Let us discuss the rest of the details outside." There was a light static sound as Gilliam willed his nerves to unwrap from the doctors and the bridge connecting their minds was severed.
"Hmm, that was weird. And exhilarating. Let's not do it again." Celestine said, nursing her neck, as she looked at the young boy. "Alright, I think it's high time i find some... decent clothes and food. I could eat a whole horse." She added, as she began to walk with the swagger her old short legs never allowed her to.
"Do not tempt the old woman. She will hold you to comments like that." Gilliam replied, shaking his head until he was sure he was still him.
