I slowed down next to a river, and Korven hopped directly into the river.
He began to complain, doing his damndest to scrub off the gunk, [Ew, ew, double ew, get it off!]
[Ouch. Dramatic much? You might hurt my...] I sniffed myself.
"...eugh."
[Hurt your what?] Korven challenged.
[Nevermind. That is... horrible.]
I focused on water again, this time trying to NOT use too much, and soaked it into my fur before removing the water, taking the gunk with it.
Then I used indigo fire to incinerate the gunk.
[Oh there we go.]
Korven turned and looked back at me, only to freeze.
[...what? Is there still some on me?]
He shook his head. [Your appearance just massively changed... how much magic did you just fuse with to already have physical differences? I'm still actively fusing more light and dark magic and yet I still look almost entirely like a regular raccoon!]
Korven was a normal raccoon appearance, with just pure black colored fur instead of dark brown, and white instead of lighter brown. Actually kinda like a panda raccoon hybrid now that I think of it.
Wait I changed? I know I'm like an indigo furred dragon with ears and horn bumps as well as white bits for my forehead.
What do I look like now?
I summoned air and water to create a mirror while manipulating light to reflect off it without distortion.
'...oh. Well I'm more draconic now I guess.'
My snout was longer, coming to a sharp triangle end like a western dragon, with longer and sharper teeth grown in.
My fur was now a rich royal purple, but I had these... hairs? Quills?
They were small tufts of hair somehow stuck together to look like a quill or spine, and were twice as long as my normal fur, and were colored bright yellow, like a golden sunset sort of yellow.
My eyes were now one aquamarine/turquoise with flecks of amber, and the other amber with flecks of aquamarine, creating an odd shift where looking at my own face made me feel like everything was leaning one way, but I wasn't sure which way everything was tilted towards.
My white splotch on my face was gone, instead just purple fur with the golden tuft-spines, but the small nub of a horn had moved from in between my eyes to further down my head, halfway between my eyes and the end of my snout.
It now had grown out enough to be an actual nub that broke through the fur, meaning I had a bright gold rounded almost-spike on my face instead of a semi-sphere coming out of my face.
The horns on the back of my head had similarly grown I discovered once I moved the mirror around to look thanks to my eyes being more on the side of my head.
Yay wide view of vision!
I now had a few smaller bumps on the back of my neck, perhaps the beginning of classic dragon spines going down my back?
They were pretty small and got even smaller as they went, until the line disappeared about halfway down my neck.
'Oh wait! There's more?'
As I looked towards the tests of me further back, I noticed the bumps reappear about a quarter down my tail, and continuously grow bigger down the last 3 quarters until the end of my tail.
The last quarter of my tail still had the fur grow out like 3 times longer than the rest of me, like the fluff under my ears which were now decidedly coming out the sides of my head, not on top.
However by that point the bumps grew large enough to be almost spikes of an inch, but still rounded on the tip, not sharp.
My claws were sharper, thinner, as I had shed that outer layer.
[Wow.]
I looked at Korven as the mirror dissolved. [Whats up?]
[Well... dragon scales are said to be as beautiful as gemstones, so I always thought that while your fur is glossy and beautiful, it's still a bit disappointing to not get to see the legendary gem-like scales, but... well your fur is now straight up as beautiful as the cloth royalty uses I've no doubt.]
[You ever seen the kind of fabric royalty uses?]
[No.] He shook his head.
Wow. Was my fur really good enough to warrant that kind of hyperbole?
I looked around us.
[Ignoring my appearance, any important shit to let me know?]
He looked up as he was rinsing his paws still.
[Yeah we should get going soon... as soon as I get this damned gunk off me!]
I responded by scrubbing him clean, but leaving him soggy and wet.
[...really?] He asked with held-in ire.
In response I blew a massive gale in his face to blow dry him.
[Yes.]
And with that the sarcastic demon in me felt satisfied.
~ ~ ~
Kire stared in the mirror above the sink fueled by water magic in his room.
'Well that's new.'
His hair had a streak of color from the left upper corner of his forehead all the way back and across his head to the name of his neck, a stripe from front to back a centimeter thick at most.
'It looks like the aurora.'
It was mostly dark blue with shimmers of purple and indigo and bits of pale green mixed about, and random single silver hairs scattered within caught the light like stars in the night sky.
His eyes had changed as well, an aqua color of green and blue.
"Well they do say green is the color of air magic while water is blue so... huh."
The part that concerned him most was the change in his vision.
He could see... not quite color or anything actually seen, yet still sensed.
Heat. Cold.
He could feel the people outside standing guard, and himself, the heat of the bodies.
A sense that was definitely not one of the 5 senses humans have.
He could also feel that his own heat was less than that of the other people around...
And he was pretty sure he knew why he could suddenly sense all this.
He stared directly into his eyes in the mirror.
The eyes with draconian pupils, somewhere between a cat-like slit or a humans circle for a pupil.
'...oh boy. I have no idea how to explain this to them.'