----
Legends tell that Emes, the God of the Hearth, and his wife Zymasis, Goddess of Fire, once looked upon the ostracized and lonely of humanity with pity.
"Look how they suffer," Emes lamented, "with no hearth, no home, to warm them."
Zymasis could not help but agree, adding, "Left to the cold, no fire to warm them, they may grow to scorn both their fellow man and the gods they worship."
And the two beings that commanded the warm flames of the home began to plan a fitting flame to welcome all who had no other home, commissioning their compatriot, the forge god Thamos, to craft it a fitting vessel.
But two other gods had their own plans for this grand pyre; the goddess of shadow Droaris, and her trickster husband Dhidite - the latter of whom was also revered under the epithet of Rebris, the God of Magic.
Rebris, for all his power in the land of gods, could not bestow even a fragment of his power to mortals with his tenuous position within the pantheonic council, a fact which sickened him to his core whenever his priests were decried as charlatans of hand-sleight.
However, when Droaris informed him of this great Pyre, he knew that such a bright flame could easily carry his blessing to all mortals, as not even Anas, god of order and head of the council, would dare evoke the wrath of not only the god who unified the pantheon as a family under their temple's hearth, but the goddess born of primordial sunfire who only Emes could tame.
And so, Droaris snuck a fragment of Dhidite's arcane power into the brazier Thamos created to house the Pyre, and when the forlorn came to light the brazier, it was not just the warmth of a home that filled them.
The world around them was filled with equal parts wonder and peril as Rebris' fragment within the Pyre permeated all life within the world, and creatures of myth and mystery began to emerge from the Aether as Magic became an undeniable part of the world in which the Pyre burned.
Nowhere did this power blaze so powerfully, however, as in those ten first people who gave it its first fuel to ignite, who became known as the Pyre Keepers and devoted themselves to tending the Pyre so long as it burned.
And so long as a single Pyre Keeper lives who has offered a single flammable scrap to bind themselves to it, burn the Pyre always will, despite zealots and oppressors who would see its magic extinguished, as the hearth Emes gave to those who could call no other place home shall always find haven with the Pyre.
----
In my day and age, when magic was nothing but myth and imagination, the story of the Pyre Keepers was dismissed as just a story... but as my lighter clattered to the ground at how quickly the flame sprang up in the old brazier from just a few scraps of newspaper, I realized I would have to re-evaluate what constituted "myth" as blazing warmth suffused me.
"At long last," a loud voice proclaimed, "a new Pyre Keeper has come forth!"
Knowing what I did about the myths surrounding the Pyre, I realized I couldn't just pretend I hadn't ignited a new age of magic on accident, not after flames began to lick harmlessly over my arms.
The legends told of tyrant kings fearing reprisal, churches decrying magic as demonic, even nobles who sought to return their lost servants to powerlessness, all trying to extinguish the Pyre - but divine flame, especially that of Zymasis, never goes out so easily as buckets of water.
As long as a Pyre Keeper lived - and they lived long and healthily, as was the blessing of Emes to let them seek and create families - the Pyre would burn.
And just try killing those who are tied directly to the fount of all magic.
Shrugging my shoulders, even as I heard the world start to rend to admit creatures of the arcane back into the world, I smiled.
"Welcome home, Blaire."
----
As I come out of the fugue, the injector falling to the ground, I can't feel my legs... because, glancing down, I have no legs.
Instead, behind me, there is a long, sinuous mass of muscle and bone that tenses and shifts as I focus on it.
With a little effort, I manage to get the hang of moving it, enough that I can coil up as I stand in front of a mirror.
And I am immense. Easily the size of Aster Allay from Hadal: Abandoned, and far more suited to above the waves. Exactly how I envisioned the character when I modeled them for Descent.
Raising the second pair of arms as I notice them, I flex them with a certain reverence, running a sharpened nail - a veritable claw - on my original arms across the thick, scaled hide covering my body.
Every muscle, lean or thick, tenses with undeniable strength as I clutch a thick bar next to me, my grip leaving undeniable marks as another arm leaves deep gouges in an easily concealable place.
In a sense, what I feel looking at myself is almost love... with a definite undertone of esteem and accomplishment.
I look inhuman. I look unnatural.
And I love it. Every. Single. Glimpse.
Taking a picture of myself for posterity, I smirk to myself.
"The doctor is in."
Doctor Cambio. Brilliant cytogeneticist. Monster of his own making.
Here, in this sinuous form, he... was me.
All too soon, however, this first taste of my desired, desirous form began to flag as the muscles of my tail went limp, second pair of arms withering away cleanly as my body slumped to the ground to let its legs grow back.
And as I picked myself back up, Reilly Valere once more, I was determined not to let it be the last.