From: justinf@cco.caltech.edu (Justin Fang) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [D/D/K/M/E] A coat and a horse... Date: 27 Jan 1993 23:02:58 GMT Message-ID: Meran watched as Dramic was led away by the sergeant. Well, Dramic was on his own, there was nothing he could do for him. Then Kevin, who had apparently been standing deep in thought, turned to him and said, >"Excuse me. By some chance do you or one of these fine gentlemen have a >coat I could borrow?" "Yes, I do," Meran replied. He held out his hands and concentrated momentarily. Mentally, he separated a small portion of his life energy and formed it into a coat, which he handed to Kevin. Kevin looked dubiously at the coat, which had just appeared out of thin air. He took it and put it on. Well, it felt real. Was warm too. "How did you do that?" "Umm, sort of difficult to explain," Meran said. Explaining precisely what he was would have taken a while, to say the least. He decided to just pass it off as as a form of magic. "It's, well, magic. Anyway, we're going to help someone in trouble," he added, thinking Kevin might want to know what was going on. He turned to the others. "I'll go get my horse. Back in a little while." He walked off towards the Inn's stables. Magic, Kevin thought. Well, if it was or not his hypothesis looked as if it was going to be extremely weird... Quicksilver considered. Maintaining the Meran form, the hawk form, and the coat he'd just given to Kevin was taking up almost all of its life energy. Fortunately the coat did not reqire much attention... Reabsorbing the hawk and dropping a few psionic powers should free up enough for a horse, though. No-one was in the stables right now. Good. The hawk flew down into the stable (it'd surveyed most of the city anyway), landed on Meran's shoulder, and vanished, reconverted into life energy. The ability to do certain of Meran's powers also vanished. Energy flowed outward from Meran's outstretched hands, coalesced into matter, and took the form of... a horse. Quicksilver took a few steps, trying out the horse form, with which it was not very familiar. She was less than impressive. Oh well, good enough. Meran hitched up the mare to Denner's cart (leaving off the bit and bridle, she could steer herself) and walked out of the stable. The horse and cart followed. [ADMIN: Some explanation here: Quicksilver is a single entity composed of both matter and energy. The exact proportions of the two, as well as the form of the matter and which part of the matter the energy is "attached" to, can be varied, but the total amount is fixed. "Meran" is what it is currently calling itself as a human.] Justin Fang (justinf@cco.caltech.edu) This space intentionally left blank.