Elven Espionage

Story by Von Krieger on SoFurry

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#3 of Goo Symbiote Saga


Goo Symbiote Saga

Elven Espionage

By Von Krieger

"They refer to the project as "LS3," an abbreviation meaning Lolth Separation, and this being the third project that they have undertaken." Said the dark elf matriarch, she was tall for an elf; over six feet in height before you counted the heels, or her intricately style pale lavender hair.

She kept the toll of the centuries at bay quite well, as most elves did, only the look of knowledge and experience in her eyes hinted at her true age.

"They are a strange faction of Corellon worshippers that believe in the 'corruption' theory of Drow creation. That the great goddess Lolth, upon her parting ways with her former lover, gifted her most devout followers with a spark of divine creation, forever altering them from the common looking forest dwellers, to the gorgeous and uniquely colored Underdark inhabitants that we are today." She continued, pulling a folder out of her desk and handing it to her operative.

"As you may know Elves and Drow have almost identical genetics, save for an additional four chromosomes in the Drow side. This is what gives my races its stronger spirit and its inherent control of some magical elements."

"The LS projects have been attempts to somehow remove the two additional chromosome pairings in the DNA of a Drow in order to, supposedly, revert them back into a tree-hugging, singing, happy, smiley, nauseatingly obnoxious flower sniffing surface elf. I'm not sure what they're up to with this one, since they haven't been down here with dart guns firing at random citizens this time, I'm not quite sure what to expect."

"The building is shielded to divinations, and all I can find is that there is a third project, after I've seen fit to have the last two destroyed. But for this one I'm merely content to see what's going on. A copy of their research documents, computer files, scrolls, and so on would be quite nice; though my seers tell me that they have a rather interesting prototype of some sort. There will be a hefty bonus in addition to your usual fee if you manage to acquire this prototype for me."

The matriarch was silent, allowing her operative time to browse over the files while she sipped her tea.

The furred dragon poured over the material, most of it acquired through quasi-legal channels. Blueprints to the building, permits with the local government for various types of things, shipping invoices for what was sent to the building, bills from various waste collection companies for what was taken out.

D smirked and shrugged his shoulders, "It doesn't look like much of a problem. Not for me anyway."

The matriarch nodded, looking over the strange creature in front of her, "You come highly recommended by one of my daughters, having retrieved a pendant that she gave out of misplaced affection to a friend of House Malagant. You truly snuck into the Malagant Mansion without notice?"

The dark elf looked at D with accusing eyes. She did not believe that that the rotund, squat, strange creature before her was capable of the stealth and grace required.

"I did your grace. I can tell that you doubt my ability based upon my looks, which I admit can appear somewhat clumsy. So close your eyes for a moment, take a breath, and open them again." D said with a smile.

The matriarch did just that, drawing in an extremely short breath and letting it out again in a fraction of a second. She opened her eyes, finding the chair in front of her empty. She hadn't heard a sound.

"You may be quick, but diving for cover in front of my desk is not at all impressive." The matriarch said, standing and leaning over her desk to glare down at the crouching dragon.

Instead she found a complete and utter lack of dragon. She looked behind herself to make sure that she wasn't about to be stabbed in the back, but there was nothing behind her as well.

She leaned down to peer beneath her desk, and once more found nothing. The dark elf walked around her desk, peering around the room, into every shadow and crevice where someone could possibly hide, and once more found nothing.

She sighed, "Turning invisible won't help you." She said, suddenly pulling the guest chair back, hoping to dump the dragon onto the floor, but the chair moved as it was supposed to, not as if several hundred pounds of invisible dragon were sitting in it.

"Nor will going insubstantial. They have magical scanners, you know. And a magic bubble within an anti-magic bubble will still set off alarms." The matron said, chanting a spell that would allow her to see the flows of magic.

She slowly turned her gaze over every inch of her office, but found absolutely nothing out of place.

"Did you teleport yourself elsewhere?" she asked the seemingly empty room.

"No, I'm still here." Came D's voice from behind the matron.

Once more she turned, casting another spell, filling the room with flickering, violet lights, and again she found nothing.

She sighed, having exhausted her measures and methods of detection. "Okay, so where exactly are you?"

A large portion of the floor suddenly turned blue, and began to flow fluidly upwards, reforming into the translucent form of the furred dragon, a large grin on his face. His clothes reformed, and then he regained his coloration and texture a moment later.

"Everywhere." The goo symbiote said with a chuckle, "I can spread myself exceptionally thin, change my coloration, my texture, and my density, essentially I can transmute myself into other substances, stone, metal, water. It's a natural extension of the fluid form I have with my goo symbiote."

The matriarch's eyes widened, "I had no idea that such abilities were possible. I thought them merely something to grant ooze-like properties, oversized genitals, and a propensity for leaking and leaving eggs all over."

D chuckled, "Most are, but then again most are bipolar, allowing either the host or the symbiote to be in control at the same time. With a strong will, a clear mind, and a great deal of practice, the host and the symbiote can unite into a single consciousness, thus allowing for the incredible ability and control I have. "

The dark elf nodded, somewhat impressed, "I consider your skills enough to get the job done. Do not disappoint me. I would hate for my daughter to lose one of her friends."

D chuckled and bowed, "You will have what you asked for within the week, your grace."

The matriarch nodded, closing her eyes for a brief moment, only to open them and find the professional thief gone.

She smiled, if the dragon was as good as he made himself out to be, there might be a bit more business headed his way. She had quite a large list of assets she would love to acquire, after all.

-o-

"Please... please..." came a panting moan from up ahead. D sighed softly to himself as he flowed along within one of the facilities air vents. Documents and computer files on the project had already been acquired, the data stored within a portion of his fluid flesh, another ability that his goo symbiote granted him.

The advantage of being a polymorphic organism was that potentially any piece of him could become essentially any other piece of him, allowing parts of the goo to perceive sight, sound, scent, or anything else.

And after having eaten a USB drive, the goo symbiote had been able to essentially mimic the data storage function, which D always thought tickled rather tremendously when he kept the data within him. At the moment the bits containing the computer files were the only truly solid portion of himself, manifesting as a crystalline sphere within the blue, flowing mass of his form.

Rather than take the documents, he'd simply allowed his liquid form to flow between the pages, scanning the data from each page and converting it into computer image files. If he felt like it, he'd shift them over from images to proper text and image documents.

The general project seemed to actually be an inverse of what the matriarch had told him to expect. The projects so far were working on transforming elves into Drow, with the intent being that if they could find a way to truly transform an elf into a dark elf, that by taking opposing steps, they could do the inverse.

"Oh please! Ooooh!" moaned the female voice from a room ahead. D sighed once more, he had hoped to avoid late night, amorous employees. At the moment he was having some difficulty in locating the prototype unit and the related files. They weren't on the network, and it didn't say which of the labs the project was being stored in.

"Please, please stop it!" the female said, and D suddenly took a more immediate interest. What he had presumed to be moans of pleasure seemed to be a mix of pleasure, pain, and fear.

D flowed towards the sound, now that he was closer, he could hear a second voice, that one of a man.

"Though you don't seem to be accepting sexual advances as freely as I'd like, you are showing a marked improvement in your physical response. I'd call this formulation a success, my dear. Mmm... we'll have to get you another boost of succubus essence. you're already fucking like a pro on an instinctive level." The voice said with a cruel laugh.

D poked a pseudopod out of the air vent, computers, books, an arcane circle, file cabinets, and a transparent room in the middle with a bed, a naked Drow female, a naked male elf, and the letters LS3 emblazoned upon it on one side.

Looking the scene over, D could tell that the dark elf was the LS3 prototype, her normally green hair had several inches of white at the roots, her eyes were swirls of blue and red, and her facial structure wasn't quite the norm for a dark elf. D had studied the anatomy of many common races, just in case he had to impersonate one.

The elven male, a scientist, cried out, his body stiffening, joined a few moments later in climax by the Drow, whose hands were restrained in some sort of metal bracers that stuck to the wall of her cell.

The scientist chuckled and withdraw, making a few notes on a clipboard as the dark elf stared murderously at him, "Excellent," he said with a smile, "Over-aggressiveness is setting in as you've definitely overcome your baseline passivity. Likely you're already plotting my demise. I think one more treatment and we'll have you on the outskirts of Drow mentality."

The scientist walked over to where he'd tossed his clothes. He dug in a pocket of his lab coat, removing a stoppered vial and a syringe. The vial held a glowing red substance which was drawn into the needle. The doctor grinned as the captive Drow struggled and tried to break free, but she had those same metal bracers on her legs, and a matching collar around her neck, and apparently they made her mostly immobile.

The elf didn't even bother to find a vein; he merely injected the red stuff into the test subject's arm. D oozed out of the air vent and moved himself beneath a desk. The doctor stepped out of the cell, his clothes in hand.

"Now, I just need to put in the new disk for surveillance so we can watch and see how you change overnight. And don't worry, if you need anything, if you start to beg and plead like you did on Thursday, I'll be right here to take care of your needs."

Shit. D had hoped he'd be able to do this without having to resort to the temptation of filling somebody with eggs, but video cameras and a possible witness, D would have to do something.

The goo symbiote dragon darted across the floor with incredible speed, he was on the elf in moments, flowing up his smooth, naked form, fully enveloping him before the doctor could full get out a confused "What?" he hadn't even gotten past all of the W before a thick stream of goo oozed down his throat.

D formed himself around the elf, who struggled within his fluid frame. It was rather delicate work, entering the blood stream, making his way to the brain, and giving the proper glands a bit of a squeeze.

When all was said and done the elf's body would be fooled into thinking it was time for a goodnight sleep. D would artificially send him along into the deepest sleep, making sure he'd sleep for quite some time after D left. He'd just carry the doc around inside of him while he went over computer files and paper documents.

From inside her cell the dark elf watched him with curiosity, her red and blue eyes following his every action. "D... did you eat him?" she asked quietly.

D shook his head, "No, I didn't eat him. He's just..." D's shoulders and backed rippled as the elf had a renewed burst of energy and struggled within him, "He's about to take a nice, long nap. It's unprofessional to leave bodies behind, and if I ate him, I'd essentially lock his mind and spirit in here with mine."

The fuzzy dragon grinned, "And considering what I've seen, he's enough of an asshole that I wouldn't want him in my living room, let alone in my head."

The Drow smiled, "So you're a thief?" she asked.

D shrugged, "I seldom actually steal anything. The items I physically acquire have usually already been stolen, are somewhat dangerous in certain hands, or are stolen for a good cause. Mostly I just copy data." He explained, his tail pressing against a computer, sliding inside, copying the data directly off the hard drive.

"So, what good cause are you working for here?"

"Drow matriarch, the last LS project resulted in seventeen deaths, many injuries, and just as many disfigurations. This isn't Old Aerth here, you'd not allow someone just to kill somebody because of an ancient hatred between your species, or because they show up the wrong way on a magic spell. Drow are citizens as much as humans, elves, furres, and scalekin are."

The captive elf sighed softly, "I wish that was true where I was from. I don't remember all that much. I'm from one of the hidden elven cities, the ones where they don't want to even think that the new world exists and they funnel magics into hiding themselves from the outside world."

She closed her eyes and lowered her head, "I committed a terrible crime in their eyes, so they ripped just about everything about the city, the elves that lived there, and all I know of elven history out of my mind. I can't even speak the language anymore. And then they sold me off to this place."

Done with the computers, D moved onto the books, "And what crime did you commit?"

"I 'made friends' with a dark elf during one of the rare excursions outside the city. And by make friends, they mean that I saw him several times, had pleasant conversation, and didn't kill him. By the time it got before the council, things were inflated to that I was a dark elf's secret lover and was feeding information to him so his house could raise an army and enslave the city." The captive elf said with a sad sigh.

"That's terrible." D said, finished with data collection, "While there's nasty stuff happening all over here, you typically don't get that sort of paranoid, small minded, conspiracy crap. Well, at least not this far north."

D walked over to the cell and looked at the elf's restraints, "So how do we turn those off?" he asked.

The elf shook her head, "No idea."

The furred dragon shrugged and stepped into the cell, he extended tendrils of goo from his body, which quickly devoured the strange metal bracers and collar. He scooped up the doctor's lab coat with his tail and placed it around the dark elf's shoulders.

"Now, let's get you out of here Miss...?"

She sighed softly, "I don't remember my name either. They even took that from me, the bastards. But some of the scientists have been calling me Galatea, since they seem to trying to sculpt me into what they think a Drow is."

"Well, Galatea, I'm D. Just D." he said with a roguish grin as an alarm began to go off.

"Shit," he muttered, "Must've been some sort of transmitter in the restraints. Follow me!"

Calling the building's plans into mind, D partially liquefied his tail and legs, seeping under one of the lab tables and lifting it up. The goo quickly ate into the floor, creating a square outline. D pulled up the tile and motioned for Galatea to drop down, "Two more floors down and we'll be in the large equipment storage area. Only has one entrance, doesn't go anywhere, and is never visited, plus it requires actual keys to get into, which no one here this later at night has."

The dark elf nodded and jumped down, D slowly oozed down the hole like a droplet of thick syrup, lowering the tile back into place and sealing it after the lab table above was positioned exactly where it had been before.

The two now stood in an employee lounge, the lights turned off, only the faint blue glow of the numbers on a microwave providing illumination. D moved to the corner, sending tendrils of goo into the corner, pulling up the carpet, "I can't perfectly put the flooring back, there's always marks. So the trick is to put it where no one will ever look." He said with a grin, his tendrils tugging up the carpet pad, and then began eating into the floor.

A few moments later they were in the absolute darkness of the equipment storage facility, but neither one was blinded, Galatea's eyes were transformed to the point where she could see in the darkness, and D merely altered his eyes to adapt.

"It'll be awhile before its safe to move out of here. It was nearly midnight when I came in, it's about 3 AM now, and I think two hours ought to be a good span to let security pick over the building before we walk right out the front door."

Galatea blinked, "And how am I going to walk out the front door, as black and naked as I am?"

D grinned, "Simple, all you have to do is remember to hold my hand."

The furred dragon placed his hand on Galatea's shoulder, a thin coat of goo flowing over her, matching the tone of elven skin perfectly, forming into a shirt, pants, and shoes.

"I can't actually part with any of my mass, otherwise it just becomes inert goo." D explained.

Galatea nodded and leaned against her rescuer, cuddling up against him.

"You want me to leave the clothes?" D asked.

The Drow shook her head, "Get rid of them. They did something to me, clothes feel wrong. Even the labcoat." She said, tossing the garment aside, her naked, black body pressing against D.

"They've made me into a slut. I can't stand being clothed, I can't help but think about sex all the time, I can't help but think what anyone I see would be like in bed, man, woman, even some animals." She said softly.

"I don't think it was a part of me before, but I think it is part programming from the company and part mental coercion from the process that stripped away my memories. They wanted me to be a Drow's whore, they sold me knowing what the scientists here were going to make me, and they're turning me into exactly what they accused me of being."

Galatea sniffled softly, "And I love it. Fates help me, I love it. I can't help it, I just keep getting more and more lustful with each new injection they give me. Each time they inject me, I start to get horny. I could ignore it at first, but then it got so bad. I had to touch myself. I just had to."

She began to cry, D feeling warm wet droplets falling onto his shoulder. "And then last night my touch wasn't enough anymore. I begged anyone, everyone that I saw to fuck me. I couldn't help it. I masturbated until my fingers cramped, and still I wasn't satisfied. I passed out from exhaustion, and when I woke up, I wasn't so needful anymore."

The dark elf shuddered, her hand gripping her upper arms, as if trying to work warmth into them, "I feel weird. My legs feel... cold, stiff. Except for my sex, so does everything else below my waist." She said.

"Here, let go and I'll take a look." D offered.

The furred dragon placed a hand on Galatea's leg, instead of the soft, supple flesh he expected, what he encountered there was solid, hard, unmoving. He looked down to find the dark elf's legs to be covered in something shiny. The drow moaned softly at his touches.

"Oh fates, I feel warm now, so very warm..." she moaned.

There was a loud cracking sound and her legs divided, each splitting into quarters. Her feet vanished in the act, leaving eight thin, pointed, chitinous appendages behind. The elf gripped D's head and neck, clinging to him tightly.

"What's happening? What's happening to me? Everything feels... mmm... it feels so good."

D couldn't see, but he could feel Galatea's eight new legs growing, "Well, I think they went a bit too far, activated too many genes, or whatever. You're going beyond drow, and well on your way to Drider."

Galatea said nothing, she merely moaned and with a soft growl she shoved D onto his back and pressed herself against him, her groin rubbing against his.

"Umm... that's probably not a good idea, you see I have these..." D's protests were quickly silenced by Galatea's lips, and D's ovipositor began to slip from within him and swell with excitement.

The dark elf didn't even wait for it to fully extend, merely cramming the length into her needful sex, crying out with pleasure as her legs continued to grow.

But it was not merely her legs that grew now, but her rump and hips. The chitin had spread upward and was now in the process of crafting Galatea's rear into a spider's cephalothorax. She pressed hard against D's squishy body with a force that would be painful if he had been a flesh and blood creature, but he was not, so the furred dragon simply enjoyed the act.

It had been awhile since he'd allowed himself to transform another, to allow his goo symbiote to breed and reproduce. His fluid body shivered, yearning to feel the passage of an egg through his ovi, to feel it slip into the body of another creature, to feel the delicious sensation as flesh became goo.

With those thoughts D's libido suddenly skyrocketed and he began to return Galatea's lustful kisses. His ovipositor writhed inside of her, making the dark elf quiver with delight as it wormed its way deeper and deeper into her. But rather than going straight up, the path to the dark elf's womb seemed to be ninety degrees away from where it ought to be.

Instead of going up into her belly, her sex lead back into her arachnid extension, which was still growing. From experience D knew that it was going to be huge, enough to contain several people curled up, rather like the elven scientist that occupied his large, rounded belly.

The furred dragon felt a pang of jealousy at that, envious of the fun Galatea could have, and the number of eggs she could carry. But in order to carry so many goo symbiote eggs, she would first have to receive an egg of her own.

D usually expelled his eggs twice a week, taking a walk on nature trails, or in back alleys, leaving them for some unsuspecting individual to stumble across and have fun. Out in the open air his gelatinous eggs tended to dry up within a few days, going dormant until they received adequate water.

If he didn't get rid of them, they'd build up inside of him until he was deliciously round and heavy, his belly incredibly sensitive to the touch. It felt wonderful, but it got in the way of serious work.

He only had the one contained within him right now, and had been preventing his body from instinctually stuffing it into the captive elf within him. By giving the gift of goo to Galatea, he would be free of that temptation, plus with her in the newly bonded state were eggs developed rapidly, regardless of the host's desire, she could be put to good use.

D grinned; it would be rather fitting to allow her some measure of revenge on her captors. He cried out as his egg began to make its way into his ovi. It was about the size of a beachball, but its soft, squishy, flexible nature allowed it to fit into whatever D could cram his ovipositor into.

He felt his body begin to blossom with the all-over climax that accompanied the laying of an egg into another being, the pleasure would last quite some time. Oh he had missed this feeling so badly. The egg slipped into the hollow shaft, beginning its journey into Galatea.

The thick egg stretched both of them wide, wider than D had expected. With the shifting of her womb, her birth canal no longer ran through the center of her pelvis, requiring the egg to tightly constrict itself.

"Oh yes... oh yes..." Galatea panted, "More, give me more, give me all of that beautiful goo-cock that you can!" she cried, unaware of the egg's presence.

D felt two of Galatea's legs slip underneath him, pulling him up against her, allowing the Drider to stand, no longer forcing her to crouch with her rapidly expanding body. Her legs were now longer than she had been tall, fully extended, anyway. As they were, Galatea stood at about half again her former height, her bulbous cephalothorax smooth and shiny behind her.

As the egg pressed fully up into Galatea D could feel the Drider tense, her body preparing for climax. But then the egg was not merely inside her, but entering her womb as well. As needy as D himself had been, the new goo symbiote surged free from its soft shell, pouring into the depths of Galatea's spider-self.

D clung to her tightly, his body partially losing cohesion, allowing portions of him to flow over her, to embrace her tightly, to wrap her in a hug far greater than what a simple flesh and blood creature could manage.

She cried out in immense pleasure as the goo swept through her, filling her cephalothorax, converting her flesh into more of itself, and then consuming the carapace as well, replacing it in moments with the superior crystalline construction of hardened goo.

The goo surged back, oozing around D's shaft, joining Galatea's elven torso to the rest of the goo-spider. Unsure of herself, awash with the pleasure of climax and change, the Drider found herself liquefying, her fluid form flowing around D's own, returning the embrace.

The two remained entwined, slowly parting themselves as they returned to a solid state. Galatea smiled and held up a hand, admiring its translucent nature.

"You know, you can change that." D explained, "You can look as solid as you want. You find the proper color additives and you can even tint yourself in any color or pattern imaginable."

Galatea shook her head, "No, I don't want to hide this. This is wonderful, beautiful."

The Drider stood fully, looking over herself. Galatea smiled as she admired her gelatinous, arachnoid body. "Oh, I love this. I feel incredible. Everything feels so much better, smoother, more fluid. It's so easy to move, even with so many legs." She said with a chuckle, the crystalline points of her legs making loud clacks on the solid floor beneath them.

She gasped softly, feeling something slither out from beneath crystalline plates, a soft, wet sound accompanying its movement. "Mmm... I ache, I long to fill someone, something with eggs, anything. Anything to share this gift." Galatea panted, overcome with the breeding lust of a new goo symbiote host.

D grinned and withdrew the pseudopods from within the captive elven scientist, no longer keeping him asleep. The elf landed on the floor with a thud, the furred dragon not being at all gentle in his expulsion.

"Wh... where am I?" the elf said, panicked, standing, unable to see in the complete darkness.

Galatea raised a hand, flickering motes of green light appearing in the air, showing Galatea in all her glory. She towered over the elven scientist, a sinister smile on her face.

"Oh doctor, I think I have a little problem for you to help me with."

She turned, allowing her ovipositor to be seen, the several foot long tendril emerging from the point of her cephalothorax, where the spinnerets would be on a true spider.

"No!" The elf whispered, backing away, "No!"

"What's wrong, you had so much fun fucking me before. I think you are just having a little performance anxiety. You won't have to worry about it ever again quite soon."

The elf screamed as he was taken, repaid in full for every act he had performed on Galatea. But once the egg was inside him, once his pale skin darkened, flesh becoming wondrous goo, his masculine form expertly sculpted into that of a busty, sensuous dark elf, his screams became cries of pleasure.

The goo-drow clung to her mistress, her ovipositor slithering from her new sex, her newly transformed body eager to spread its gift.

D grinned, "We have a few hours before the next shift arrives. I think we have enough time to have a little fun before we need to leave."

Galatea closed her eyes, extending thick tentacles from her elven back, "Or a lot of fun if I can manage to corner several of them." She said with a grin.

"Well then," said the furred dragon, "Let's get to work.

-o-

The Drow Matron scowled over the printed page she was reading, her gaze drifting over the two dozen individuals before her, she shook her head and went back to reading, only making it a few more sentences before having to look up and sigh again.

"What am I going to do with twenty some transformed and contagious elves?" she finally said.

D shrugged, "They were there, they were available, and your contract specifically stipulated to bring you the prototype. She wanted a little revenge and the opportunity to collect a few slaves, servants, sex toys, and assorted playthings. They're completely loyal to her, and several are key members of the LS3 project."

"She insisted I sabotage the data, so they will not be creating an LS4 project anytime soon, especially not with their project lead missing. Their research efforts are crippled, you have the only copies of their data, you have their alpha prototype, who is easily able to transform elves into Drow, and make them perfectly loyal to herself."

Galatea nodded and smiled, "And therefore to you, Matron. I owe you my thanks for not only freeing me from that facility, but ensuring this beautiful form."

The dark elf frowned, "Driders are a sign of Lolth's displeasure with an individual they..."

The Drider laughed, "Matron, do you not understand? This is the form the elves chose for me, and one I am exceptionally fond of. If it is the displeasure of a Drider in your ranks..."

Galatea's translucent black body flowed over itself, crystal carapace melting back into true goo, which seemed to compress and fold in upon itself, darkening Galatea's coloration, making her appear almost solid.

She flicked her hair, allowing it to become a shimmering shade of silver. She affixed her red eyes upon the Matron and spun in place, showing off the fact that her body was now that of any other Drow female.

"Then I am perfectly willing to alter my shape while I am on duty."

The matron smiled, looking down once more at the summation of the research, "Excellent. This is far more acceptable. D, you will have your payment paid to..."

She looked up, only to find the furred dragon gone.

"Your listed account?" the dark elf blinked a few times then shrugged.

"I will most definitely be employing him again in the future." She said with a chuckle then stood from her desk.

"Now if you'd just follow me ladies, I'll show you to your quarters." The matron placed an arm around Galatea's shoulder.

"Just how well can you shapeshift, my dear? There is this rival of mine who has this fantasy about a particular type of demon..."