Staying human under pressure was an art I rarely botched. I'd known greater stakes, after all—I'd been tangled in the mane of a raging kelpy, poisoned by a manticore, speared by the claws of a mutated harpy—but tonight, I couldn't account for my utterly piss-poor job. Between indenting the dining table over Essen's name, licking blood off my hand, and drinking enough fire whiskey to kill another person my size, I'd been sloppy. Amateurish, even, like a shapeshifter still struggling to grow bigger teeth.

If I'd been smarter—or decidedly more observant—I'd have left The Cataclysm at the first sign of trouble, perhaps when the adventuring party had first stumbled into earshot. Instead, I could only punish myself by stalking up the stairs to my room after leaving them, every part of my lower chest aching, their questions filling every inch of empty spaces between my ribs.

It had taken an enormous amount of magic to appear human so long, under the amount of stress they'd put me under, and this was the consequence.

I was losing my grip on the stairwell railing by now, my stumbling feet just shy of the third-floor landing, a pounding beginning to echo behind my eyes. I pinched the bridge of my nose, struggling to separate the pulsing in my stomach from my racing thoughts about the group of strangers. If I shift now, could they stop me? Or will I kill everyone in this place?  I teetered on the top step, fighting back a wave of nausea, suddenly unsteady, almost weak.

A breathy sound escaped from the corners of my gritted teeth. I pressed my palm to the side of my head, the stinging sensation in my brain refusing to dissipate. I took a deep breath, begging myself to stay calm. I reached for control, then slowly exhaled.

I had a single moment of peace. A heartbeat's length of time, quicker than a flash of light.

Then the heat in the air caught against the roof of my mouth, making everything taste like sulfur. I breathed out a jet out racing, roaring fire, the wicked green and blue flames dancing over my tongue and swallowing the weathered oak and cracked varnish of the nearby railing like they were pieces of parchment. I bit back a startled shriek, then battered away the magic with my bare arms, watching as the fire singed the underside of my clothes.

I lost sight of myself for a moment, the heat too intense to see through; I couldn't burn in my human form, but the stinging had spread to the space around my mouth and behind my jaw. I could smother out the flames, but it wasn't enough to stop the spike of fear that shot through my blood.

I saw the inside of the inn for only a moment more, the memory of the nervous, expectant group of travellers in the common room downstairs burned into the back of my eyes. The faded, redwood panelling around me suddenly disappeared; then the threadbare carpet, and the lifeless paintings of the mountains and the horses on the wall. Then there was nothing; my eyes filled with blackness more complete than death.

The first sign of an uncontrolled shift was always my teeth. I could feel the jagged, growing edges of my canines starting to grow, and the fierceness of my hunger turning violent in my gut. I'd had too much fire whiskey, used too much magic. I wasn't drunk; I was losing my grip on my human form.

Gripping my stomach, I turned and fumbled blindly for the door to my room. I was feet from it—no more than six, maybe eight. I pushed inside, felt the furniture give away under my hands: the bed, my chest of drawers, a basin filled with water. Then I threw myself out the window, ignoring the splintering sound of the aging wooden shutters as I jumped through them.

I couldn't land. I couldn't sense which way was up. So I fell three stories and hit the ground shoulder first, the pain lancing out in a shout I couldn't stifle. My voice was cracked and raw and ragged, and I couldn't stop it.

But dirt was something I could deal with, at least. I dug my fingers into the soft earth, reaching for something older and deeper than the monster raging inside me. I tried to get angry, tried to wrest back control, but nothing helped; I could feel my scales pushing up against the underside of my hands, the toughness of them piercing the softness of my skin. I felt claws starting to rip through my fingernails, my wings curling upwards and outwards from my spine, the leathery membranes electric with unbelievable pain.

Then I was getting taller, the skin stretching in my arms and legs, the bones popping in my knees, the veins splitting and reforming themselves. I fought against myself, frantically ramming my body against the outer wall of the inn, praying I could jostle the dragon back into place, back into submission. I punched myself in the stomach until I spat up blood and alcohol.

But everything tasted like bile now, salty and heavy and choked with the coppery tang of blood. I snarled, more out of desperation than intent, and the sound that ripped out of me was a low, ferocious growl, deeper and louder than any other creature even bothering to masquerade as fully human.

I bent myself backwards, staggered by the pain in my skull; I could feel the pressure of my horns breaking through the bone. They were vicious, twisted things, gorging into my skin as they rolled through my hair.

With a cry, I fumbled for my last resort: the dagger I kept strapped to my hip, the pummel cold and dull in my increasingly large and scaly hand. My knuckles were twice their normal size and my fingers four times the width of the blade.

I grit my teeth and tried not to cry out, then stabbed myself all the way through the left leg.

The pain was explosive—but enough. As I bit back the chaotic keening sound of my agony, the dragon in my blood snarled and curled away. It retreated, cowering from the blade, the cravalian steel like the sting of sunlight on a beast of the underdark. I collapsed in a heap on the ground, on the utter verge of losing myself to unconsciousness. But at least my smothered screams were human now, my body small and normal, the rage draining from me like the river of blood from my leg.

I could feel myself stabilizing, my vision coming back in patches, the pain creating more clarity than it robbed. But this—no, I sensed the wrongness of it immediately. I should've been delirious with pain, all but blind in my attempt to collect myself and hurry away from prying, unkind eyes. I was more than used to running in my battered, weakened form, and had done it twice even here, in Janavar, leagues from the closest magistrate that hunted for me. 

But here, in the darkness of the alley behind The Cataclysm, I was calm, the faint rush of healing magic washing over me from above.

I looked behind me, tracking the movement of shadows from the corner of my eye, searching for the unseen hand. And there, beyond my shock and adrenaline, was a figure standing alone in the mouth of the street.

It was one of the party members that I'd met before. But which one? I blinked, and they seemed to shift from the wizard to one of the elves to the half-orc and back. Perhaps it was all of them, coming towards me one by one.

But as my vision steadied, I saw it was only the firbolg, his light grey skin and dark grey hair settled on a seven-foot frame. He was holding a lyre in both of his hands, the burnished gold strings glowing like the sun.

"Mara?" he said softly, when I noticed him. As he stopped singing, the pain in my leg flared up again, unbearably angry and sharp. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out. "You doing alright?"

"Do I look alright to you?" I hissed.

I could see the disquiet on his face as I said it, but I hadn't asked for his help and couldn't afford it besides. I couldn't let him see me like this.

"I don't need it," I said, trying to wave him away. But the firbolg didn't seem to be listening. He was considering me again, weighing me in his mind. He moved closer as I moved away, and I spat into the dirt. I must have looked rabid in the broken moonlight, my hair streaked with mud, my clothes torn, my body bloody. Had he seen the monster? Or just heard the roar?

I grabbed for my dagger regardless, shaking it with enough force to wrench it free from my leg, desperate to get away from him. Instead, the pain was so intense I lost my breath.

When I came back to consciousness, the firbolg was pulling his attention from someone standing just out of sight, his expression hard to read. Then he was stepping forward again, towards me, getting ever closer.

"Keep your eyes on me," he said. "Try to breathe."

He knelt down in the dirt and darkness beside me, my blood turning my trousers a shade of black so thick and horrid I could've mistaken it for sludge. I had nowhere left to go. "Did you have to do this?" he asked, pointing to the blade thrust almost to the hilt through my thigh.

"Don't berate me," I spat at him, but my voice was breathless and tight; I hardly got the words out. "Just kill me and be done with it."

As he hesitated, suddenly unsure, I struggled backwards and tried to get to my feet. His healing spell was only a distant memory now, and I could feel the edge of my consciousness rushing towards the corners of my eyes again.

I was running out of time. If I collapsed in town, I could wake up somewhere else, my beast form unchecked in the time between that I couldn't account for. At least the woods, I might only hunt a passing animal.

But the firbolg reached out to stop me. He eased me back to the ground, then held my arms and shoulders gingerly as he worked, turning me this way and that in his hands. I could've resisted; could've hit him, strangled him. Instead, I just looked away.

"Keep your eyes on me," he said again, more insistent this time. I looked up to meet his gaze, the hazel colour of his irises bordering on green. I bit my tongue and took stock of him, staring at his short beard and his short, wavy hair. Both were almost dark blue in this fractured light.

He blinked suddenly, and I shuddered at his closeness.

Then he touched the hilt of my sword with the tip of his finger, just to gauge the depth.

I threw my head back in response and tried not to curse him—curse myself, and the gods, and the son of the seven gods besides. "Fuck," I whispered, my eyes watering.

He smiled at me by way of reply, the expression strangely warm, then took my bloody right hand in his. It was cold. "Hold on to me," he said, and he counted down from five with agonizing slowness, then started slowly dragging the dagger out of the bloody, bleeding gash I'd made in my leg.

I screamed the entire time, in bursts of sound that I tried and failed to strangle with my teeth and my tongue. All the while the firbolg held my feral, frenzied gaze, his eyes only dropping once or twice to his hand once he'd nearly freed the blade.

Then he started singing again, the words in a language I didn't know and couldn't understand. It wasn't as powerful without the rhythm and harmony of his lyre, but it still eased the stabbing, blinding pain radiating out of my leg. I could feel my skin starting to stitch itself back together, the sinew and muscles reaching across the two-inch gash. My breathing was shallower but less frantic, all while the firbolg gently squeezed my hand.

There was a warm, yellow light flickering in the wound. I saw it flash and twist around the tip of the sword as my body merged back together in the space the steel left behind. I whimpered with the finishing of it, with the final pull of the blade from my body. And when the firbolg stopped singing, I sagged backwards against the wall of the inn.

"Your name," I asked, when I could muster the strength to speak. He handed me my weapon, and I gripped it between my bloody, battered fingers. They were bruised but human-sized again, as if nothing remained of what I'd almost become.

"It's Cadamis," he said. "Cadamis Lavenger." He turned to his right, towards the figure he'd glanced at before. I could see it was the half-orc now, his light green skin doused in the orange light cast by the open front door of the inn. He didn't look happy, but then, did I? "And that's Willjax."

I watched the half-orc deliberately, taking in the obvious distaste on his face, then raised my empty hand in a kind of half-hearted wave. He crossed his arms in response.

"Can you stand?" Cadamis asked, quietly calling my attention back to him. I smiled down at the tip of his nose.

"Leave me here for a bit," I said. I was careful to keep the bite from my voice; he deserved that much, I supposed. "I can't be seen like this."

The firbolg nodded, no hesitation in his decision. "We'll be just inside," he said. "Take your time." Then he smiled and added, sounding all-to-smug as he did, "Try not to die between here and your room."

I levelled my gaze at him, lingering, then actually laughed. My entire body shook and ached with the sound.

I pulled back on my hands then, shifting as much as I could to get a little bit of weight on my leg. But Cadamis hadn't moved away; he was still kneeling so close to me that I could've unbuckled his right shoulder guard with my mouth if I'd wanted to. "Tell me what I owe you," I said softly, so the half-orc couldn't hear. I was looking away from him, down towards the closed-off end of the alley. "Ease my shame a little. Mend my pride."

The firbolg smiled again, more genuinely than before. I could see it from the corner of my eye, like movement under the shallow water of a shaded pool. "Just a minute of your time," he said, "in the morning, over breakfast." His voice was a deep timber, almost a bass. "That's all I ask."

I raised my eyebrow, a question hidden there, but I too weak and too tired to argue. "You're an odd one," I said huskily, closing my eyes. "You could've asked for a lot more."

I wondered if he shrugged. "You wouldn't have agreed to more," he said softly.

I hummed in response, almost amused by his brashness. I hadn't said yes, but I would. I did. "Then you have my word, Cadamis Lavenger," I whispered. One minute."