Misha was bored. For the first time in many weeks he had nothing to do. All of his paperwork had been finished. He wasn't scheduled to go on patrol for another week and the other Long Scouts were all busy with their own business. Caroline was out with Kimberly, Madog was out with Hough and Matthias was busy writing. Even Rickkter was occupied with something in his workshop. This left Misha with nothing to do.
The fox morph stood in the doorway of his workshop, but didn't enter. "I don't feel like working on my models," he said to himself. For lack of anything else to do, he drifted over to his bed and lay down on it. Misha glanced at a paper hanging on the wall over the bed. On it was drawn the image of a fox-like centaur; a foxtaur. The creature depicted was Misha.
When he had been attacked by Varnal the spell had gone awry and Misha had wound up being changed into a strange fox centaur. Wessex had managed to restore him to his regular form, and even to give Misha his shape changing abilities back. After six years it was fantastic being able to change into a real fox. He had spent the days since then constantly changing back and forth from fox morph to fox. It still gave him a thrill just to do it. A sudden thought occurred to him. In all those changes not once had he tried for the foxtaur shape. In the exhilaration of being able to change he simply hadn't thought of it. Still Wessex hadn't ruled out the possibility of him being able to do it.
"The magic involved in the curse is still mainly unknown. So it is possible that you might be able to change back into a taur," the mage had explained.
It had been frightening at first being a centaur, but he had grown used to it after a while. "Certainly being able to change into one would be a great advantage," he said to himself. "I can change into a fox and a fox morph, so why not a foxtaur. After all it's sort of a mix of the two. Maybe I can change back into that shape if I try hard enough."
Misha got off of the bed, removed his clothes and dropped them onto the bed. He cleared a space in the center of floor by moving all the furniture out of the way.
Closing his eyes Misha thought back to how it had felt to be a foxtaur. He remembered the feeling of having four legs and two arms. In his mind he struggled to form an image of himself as a foxtaur, but he couldn't get the image to form. It always seemed to melt into a fox or a fox morph.
"You're trying to hard Misha," he told himself. "Relax and just let the image flow together naturally, don't force it." He followed his own advice and relaxed. Suddenly the image formed in his mind. Misha could feel a sudden warmth flow over his whole body and he knew he had changed.
Opening his eyes Misha looked his body over. His thin, torso flowed down into a large, four-legged body. Misha jumped up and down and yowled with delight. "YES! I did it!"
He slowly walked around the room to get reacquainted with his new body shape. He felt stronger and faster than in his morph or animal forms. He was also bigger, almost five hundred pounds and stood five and a half feet tall. He flexed all six of limbs one by one, testing the muscles. "Hmmm, with a body this big, I wonder how well I could use a lance? I should be able to do some real damage. And wielding Whisper with this much muscle should be fun. I think I'll go try them out."
Misha headed for the door but stopped. "I'm naked. I can't go around the keep naked." He opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a blue vest. Putting it on he examined his image in the mirror for a moment. "That's better."
As he headed for the door, Misha planned his day. "First I'll do some lance training, then I'll work with Whisper. After that I'll head for the Mule. Yeah! It'll be fun to see the look on every ones faces when a five hundred pound fox-centaur walks in carrying a five-foot battleaxe and a ten-foot lance."
Laughing, Misha headed out of his apartment. He wasn't bored anymore.