With shapeshifting, the origin of control lies inside the creation. A shapeshifter uses his magic on himself. Once the transformation into another living being is complete, the body is his new physical form. But if he messes up when shifting, he dies. Yves’ illusions could appear stunningly beautiful from the outside and still look like shit from inside, but if a transformer’s body becomes un-liveable while he shapeshifts, there are no second chances. They just die. It happens. Yves had personally seen it happen at Emery Thurm.

In the end, Yves was a Lightshifter, and there was only so much that his Worldbender commilita had revealed to him about their craft. But he knew that even a successful beast transformation harboured great risks. It was said that it may impact your mind to the extent that you found yourself unable to shift back or even forgetting your original wizard existence. There are Worldbender transformers who consciously decide to live as beasts for a prolonged time, often taking the shape of their familiar. There are also those who feel a strong pull to try shifting into their familiar at least once, even when they are far from prepared, and then never make it back. Sometimes, you see them roam the Veridian Expanse in pairs.

His Worldbender commilita had been warned about this sensation. It can become an irrepressible compulsion, especially for those who had bonded with a strong-willed familiar — you should never forget that a familiar is not the same as a beast, and that their bond entails a shared path, not one that is determined by the wizard alone.

“Yves, please,” interrupted Twig. “This is not the time.”

“Right.”

As a Worldbender transformer, Urumir Vahl ventured closer to the impossible than should have been possible. Not only could he transform into creatures far exceeding his own body mass, but he could also appear as multiple beings simultaneously. As insane as it sounded, these entities were interconnected by nothing more than the subtlest threads of matter, a link that appeared as no more than the faintest of shadows. In motion, he could navigate obstacles by having these threads move over or under them, or by shaping them in a way that they opened and closed around any hindrances, never fully severed.

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