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"You are actually about as paranoid, and as quick on the draw, as I thought you would be," a familiar, amused voice said from behind him.
Geralt spun around, his movements fluid and deadly, and saw the man called Harry standing back near the emptiest part of the cave, right where he had first seen those massive, terrifying dragon claw marks.
Geralt said nothing, his silver sword held steady, glinting in the torchlight, his witcher senses on full alert, screaming at him about the sheer, raw power emanating from the young man.
He didn't know what to expect from this enigmatic, infuriating man now, but he knew, with absolute certainty, that he was either incredibly, unnaturally fast, or he possessed magic of a level he had rarely, if ever, encountered before.
One meant he was most likely a higher vampire, or some other incredibly dangerous, powerful creature.
The other, magic on that scale, could potentially be just as troublesome, just as deadly, as he, more than anyone, knew from certain… previous, rather complicated, and often painful, relations he had had in the past.
"Do me a favor, Geralt," Harry said, his voice surprisingly calm, almost conversational, given the circumstances.
"Try not to kill me, or run away screaming like a little girl, when I change, alright? It's a bit… disconcerting, and frankly, a little insulting, when people do that."
Geralt still said nothing, his muscles tensed, coiled like a viper, preparing himself for what could possibly, very likely, be a fight for his very life.
He expected the man to either charge him with inhuman, blinding speed, or to start launching devastating, ranged magical attacks, as most powerful mages he'd encountered specialized in.
What he did not expect, not in a million years, not even in his wildest, most fevered dreams, was for the young man to suddenly drop onto all fours, his body beginning to rapidly, impossibly, terrifyingly, expand and darken.
He watched, stunned into a rare, almost complete immobility, as the man continued to grow, his human form shifting and contorting in a way that defied all known laws of biology and magic, until he was almost the full, dizzying height of the enormous cave, his scales as black as the deepest, starless night itself, his intelligent, slitted eyes burning with a familiar, piercing emerald light.
By now, Geralt knew exactly, precisely, without a shadow of a doubt, what he was looking at.
A dragon. A very, very big, very black, and very, very real dragon. The one from the contract. The one whose cave this apparently was.
"You're… a Dragon?" Geralt asked, his voice filled with a mixture of profound astonishment, utter disbelief, and a dawning, horrified, and deeply confused understanding.
"Did you hit your head or something in the middle of my rather impressive, and if I may say so myself, quite seamless transformation, witcher?" the colossal black dragon said, its voice a deep, resonant, echoing rumble that vibrated through the very stone beneath Geralt's feet, yet somehow, still undeniably, recognizably, Harry's familiar, slightly sarcastic voice.
"I'm clearly a Black Dragon, as you can plainly, and I hope, appreciatively, see."
"I… I don't understand," Geralt stammered, instinctively lowering his silver sword slightly, though he still kept it gripped tightly in his hand, just in case. Old habits died hard.
"How… how can you change shape like that, if you are a dragon?" Dragons were dragons. They didn't just… turn into young men with messy black hair and annoying grins.
"Ah, that's where you're a bit mistaken, Geralt, my friend," the dragon/man explained, its massive, obsidian head tilting slightly, its emerald eyes glinting with amusement.
"I am not a dragon that can somehow, magically, turn into a man. Rather, I am a man that can, among other rather interesting things, turn into a dragon. I am a mage, a wizard, from… well, from somewhere else. And this," it gestured with a colossal, clawed foreleg, "is just one of my many… abilities. It shouldn't surprise you too much, I wouldn't think. I have certainly heard of other mages, in this world and others, who can achieve something vaguely similar, some form of transfiguration or polymorphing, even if it's not usually to this particular… rather impressive, and admittedly somewhat dramatic, extent."
Geralt processed that rather mind-boggling, world-view-shattering piece of information for a long, silent second, his witcher brain struggling to catch up, to make sense of the impossible thing he was witnessing.
"So… so you're not a real dragon then?" he asked, still needing absolute clarification, his mind reeling. "This is just some kind of… fancy, incredibly oversized, and frankly, terrifying, transformation spell?"
"That's… a hard question to answer definitively," Harry explained, rubbing his chin thoughtfully while Geralt listened, his expression carefully neutral.
"When you take on another form in the way I have done, when you truly become the creature, you do, in a very real sense, become that creature. You even begin to gain some of the creature's innate tendencies, its instincts. And if you're not careful, if you're not strong-willed enough, you can fully lose yourself to that new form, to its primal nature. So, to answer your question, Geralt… yes, and no. It is a transformation, a magical one, but it doesn't make me any less of a dragon when I am in that form."
"I see," Geralt said, though his brow remained furrowed. "And what specific 'tendencies,' as you call them, have you gained due to this… transformation of yours?" he asked, clearly trying to gauge if this man-dragon ate like a dragon, hoarded gold like one, or perhaps had other, more problematic, dragon-like behaviors.
"Sharpened senses, for the most part," Harry said, ticking them off on his fingers. "My sight, hearing, smell… all of them are significantly enhanced, even in my human form, though not to the same degree as when I'm fully transformed. That, as well as the undeniable want, and the actual physical ability, to hibernate during the colder months… those are the main things, really."
Geralt scrunched his brow at that last part. "Dragons don't hibernate," he stated, his voice laced with a hint of suspicion. He knew his dragon lore.
"Aye, the ones here, in this world, certainly don't," Harry said with a nod. "They are also, as you may have noticed, not nearly as big, or as magically powerful, as I am either."
Geralt took that to mean that the specific type of dragon this man, Harry, transformed into was either not native to these lands at all, or perhaps it was a whole new, previously undocumented species altogether. Both options would make a certain amount of sense, which, frustratingly, made it harder to pick which theory to lean towards.
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