Once Takoda passed the treeline he quickly took the shape of a wolf and set off in a fairly rapid gait. If I'd not been able to fly I would likely have lost him almost immediately, thankfully I could, but it still proved difficult to keep him in sight, remain unnoticed, and keep from doing an impression of George of the Jungle. My head didn't need any more dents in it! Fortunately, Takoda didn't travel far from Utgard, stoping after ten minutes or so at a small, mostly empty, clearing that only had a couple of rocks laying about. And craters, lots and lots of craters. I had a feeling this might not be the first time Takoda had visited this particular clearing. This must be his super-secret training area... or just a convenient place to blast things.
I landed in the branches of a tree some ways off from the clearing, making sure I was downwind, just in case. Once there I crouched down and conjured a pair of binoculars and settled down to spy on the muscular Indian. The man in question had taken a seat on the ground near the center of the clearing and in front of a large flat rock that was now acting as a make-shift table where Takoda was currently placing a series of items that I recognized as the ones he'd harvested from the Beast. I felt a feeling of excitement starting to bubble inside of me, this might be a greater opportunity then I'd first thought. I giggled gleefully to myself.
Takoda, like he had done when he had first collected them, carefully examined his little trove of horns, teeth, and claws, focusing on each in turn, casting some sort of spell I was unable to determine at a distance. After that he started to carefully cut a hole in each of them, being careful to save the pieces that were left over. he then brought out a small ordinary leather pouch and opened it and then carefully extracted a piece of smoke. I blinked in surprise before looking again, not quite believing my eyes. But it was true! Pinched between Takoda's thumb and index finger was what looked like smoke. Smoke that was solid enough to actually touch and even hold. Not even China had smog that thick.
What the hell was that? I'd never seen, heard, or read about anything that even remotely resembled what I was seeing. It seems Takoda had more than one secret of his own. I watched with rapt interest as the big Indian carefully teased the whisp of smoky material into the hole he had made in the small piece of horn before pulling out a bottle filled with a white substance that resembled milk. The cork of the bottle contained one of those eye drippers, a thin glass tube with a rubber bulb at the end. Takoda used it to gather up some of the liquid and then measured out three drops which he let fall into the hole in the bone. He then carefully plugged the hole up with one of the discarded pieces of the bore. Then he cast of series of charms on it before stopping and observing the result. I watched it too and for a few moments the horn looked perfectly normal, but then suddenly it started to bulge oddly, in a way bone shouldn't be able to without fracturing. Takoda immediately flicked his wand and banished the small piece of horn towards the treeline.
Moments after it landed there was a puff of golden mist and the sound of splintering wood. Once the mist cleared it revealed a twisted mass of large spikes that had pierced through several of the surrounding trees. On closer inspection, I noticed that the new structure was made up of copies of the original piece of horn, replicated thousands of times and then fused. I found the whole thing oddly beautiful, in a weird 40k-ish kinda way.
Takoda didn't seem to share my wonderment at this new artistic expression, he merely grunted, got up and stalked over to his new creation and after examining the... bone sculpture? for a moment he used his wand to cut off the tips of several of the spikes before returning to his stone table and proceeded to hollow them out before setting them aside and turning his focus on his other treasures. And one by one he repeated the earlier procedure, and one by one they all ended up turning into bone sculptures. Takoda was undaunted however and just collected several samples of the structures before trying again.
I recognized that puff of glimmering golden mist that was produced whenever he made another of those sculptures, it was the same mist that appeared whenever he changed shape. I'd wondered if the hides he was wearing were in some way connected to his ability, like Loki from myth using hides from animals to transform into them. But now it seemed as if it was the collection of horns, claws, and teeth he had on his necklace that was the source. They must be some sort of... talismans? that allowed him to change.
Not entirely unheard of. There were mentions of various cursed items that could have a transformative effect on its victims. But nothing on this scale. Usually, one part of the body would be affected, and it would be gradual. Painful. And often lethal. I suppose the last part was still true, those spikes could pierce through wood like nothing. I bet the first time that happened had been a surprise. He was probably lucky to have survived.
The process seemed a bit... inexact.
And explosive.
So... perfectly in line with what I'm used to!
A triumphant cry brought my attention back to Takoda, he'd finished another, and this one didn't seem to be as eager to explode. And it only took an hour and three dozen bone explosions to do it. Pretty good all told.
I watched him fasten a bit of leather cord onto his new talisman, which was a tooth, before tying it to his necklace alongside all the other items on it. And then, in a burst of golden mist the form of the Beast stood where Takoda had once been. Amazing! Takoda raised a clawed hand and examined it curiously, slowly flexing it as if to test its dexterity, then he slowly flexed his enormous arms, then spreading his new equally enormous wings before throwing his head back.
"▅▅▅▅▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅▅▅▄▄▃▃▂▂!"
The air shook from the triumphant roar and I felt an almost visceral urge to join in and howl at the moon, so to speak. I resisted it and took the opportunity to exit the tree and float away. I momentarily entertained the thought of confronting the Indian but dismissed it. I needed to consider what I had seen before I did anything. It wasn't a pressing concern anyway, I'd seen enough to keep me occupied for a while. With a last look backward I set off back towards Utgard. It was still early, and there was still work to be done.
---
I ended up staying in Utgard for another couple of days. Like I had planned I did make a quick trip to Glasgow to pick up some stuff for the village. It was an uneventful trip, nothing much to see. After that, I decided that it was time to get a move on and said my goodbyes to my new friends in the village, and Takoda. I'd decided to keep quiet about what I knew of his transformations for now. I reasoned that he would be unlikely to tell me anything more then what I'd seen anyway, and it risked alienating him to boot, and since he seemed competent, despite his odd personality, I decided it was a fair trade to keep me on his good side. Besides, I was fairly certain I would get more opportunities to figure things out in the future since I planned to visit anyway, and as we become better friend he might just up and tell me. Who knows. Time will tell.
Hymir gave me a letter to give to Hagrid, which gladdened me, the big lug could do with more friends and contacts that didn't spring from his association with Dumbledore.
And then I was off for California, which turned out to be kind of a bust. It wasn't even half as weird as I'd heard. San Francisco was fairly normal, Las Vegas was a weird combination loud and gaudy combined with desolate and dry and Los Angeles was like any other big city. I wasn't particularly impressed with any of it so I quickly moved on. I had only stayed Los Angels for a few days because it had some tenuous connection to a TV-show I enjoyed when I was young. This also led me further up the coast to Santa Barbara, and a bit beyond that too. It was a barren empty wasteland, but that fit with what the show had depicted at times. Not that I minded the lack of demons, of course. Rather glad they weren't a thing in this dimension. I ended up staying there for longer than the area really deserved, but it was nostalgic, which counted for a lot.
After that, I started to slowly drift eastwards again without much of a direction in mind. I visited more locations that had some connection to things I'd seen in movies, such as New Mexico and Kansas and Texas, of course. Made a stop in Arkansas to visit a Wal-Mart, which was a huge disappointment. Not much in the way of weird stuff there. I guess it was too early, they'd barely gotten out of the state yet, I was told. I made a stop in New Orleans and ate gumbo for the first time. Not bad. Floated around Alabama for a while for no other reason than it was Alabama, it rolls off the tongue. I'm in Alabama! Said in that particular accent they have down here. After which I headed down to Florida. Which was too hot and too humid for my taste. The Bahamas was even worse. I don't know how people stand it out there without magic to make it breathable.
I was thinking about going to Hawaii but found out that I'd misremembered which coast it was off and I was in the wrong part of the country. I had a bit of a chuckle about that little revelation.
By this point, it was already mid August so I decided that it might be time to return to the right side of the world. There were still a couple of places where I wanted to have a closer look at. So I set my course out over the Atlantic again. Made a quick stop at Bermuda, staying for a few days, it was a nice place, before continuing to Portugal and Spain and then headed North over France. Making sure to buzz Beauxbatons again before heading for Germany, they needed the wakeup call. I was practically doing them a favor. Public service! They should send me a gift basket!
Germany's magical center of magical government was not located in Berlin, as it turns out. It had been, but it had moved after the Allied sacked the city at the end of World War Two. The German Ministry of Magic had then relocated to Cologne, or Köln as the natives called it, and it had remained there to this day. The reason for them picking this location was because of the old Dwarven city that was located deep below the city street. Which was now occupied by the Goblins of course.
The magical district was located in a part of town that was called Nipples, which had sent me into a five-minute-long laughing fit when I'd found out. The entrance was even more outrageous, going trough a hotel called Magic Hall. The hotel had been built by a wealthy Squib and was now run by his descendants. The district itself was called Hexengasse and had a look that reminded me strongly of Diagon Alley. I did note that there were more pubs. A lot more. And cheese. Was cheese a thing for the Germans? It might be all the Frenchies around here. Which made no sense, why where there so many French magicals running around in here? Fuck it, I didn't have time to puzzle that out.
I was in the process of locating a place to stay when I saw a flash of a familiar face in the crowd. I did a spit-take, for a moment not believing my eyes. But I saw the familiar blond head disappearing down a side alley and out of sight. I wasted no more time at gawking and gave pursuits, pushing through the crowd roughly and as quickly as I could. I reached the side alley in moments but still found it empty. But I caught a flickering shadow the ground that shouldn't have been there and looked up just as a flying form disappeared around the bend of a house.
"Oh, you little minx!" I exclaimed with a mix of outrage and amusement.
I was in the air in a flash and quickly spotted my quarry accelerating away from me at high speed. I immediately shot off in pursuit. What followed was a high-speed pursuit in the skies of Germany and France as my quarry desperately tried to lose me. Unfortunately for my prey, I was both faster and more used to flying than she, so inch by inch I gained on her, and no sudden turns, attempted concealment in the clouds or other evasive tactics did more than prolong the inevitable.
She tried to do another sudden turn, diving straight down, but I'd anticipated her move and was already in her way. I saw her blue eyes widen almost comically before she slammed into me, an impact that was thankfully dampened by my cushioning charm. The end result though, was her sitting pretty in a bridal carry. I looked down into her eyes before letting them wander down over the rest of her body before returning to her face, I gave her a teasing smile to which she narrowed her eyes, looking faintly affronted.
"Miss Vablatsky," I began teasingly. "You have been a very naughty girl. Didn't your parents teach you that its rude to take things without asking?"