Chương 25: The Horn That Sang

His three-thousandth point arrived on a morning so ordinary that Andy chastised the System for daring to allow the day of such a huge milestone to be so boring. The sky was clear, and the temperature was mild. Auri napped on a rock nearby as Gustave ran Andy through his speed course for the fifteenth time that day. Andy had pushed through to ninety-nine percent efficiency on this last run and stood at the end, his sides heaving with effort." Acceptable," unusual praise from Gustave.

[XP: +20 (SPEED TRIAL BONUS)] [GALLOP EFFICIENCY: 100%] [XP: 3000/3000] [TIER 6 EVOLUTION AVAILABLE!] [CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE REACHED THE THRESHOLD FOR TIER 6 EVOLUTION.] Andy's horn screeched in delight. It was time to get bigger. Auri woke from her stone. [HORN SONG] still really only had one volume and it could wake up the entire neighborhood. Their bond only amplified the effects (which Auri complained about on the regular.) Gustave descended and landed on a nearby branch."

What is the cause for such celebration, Andrew?"

"It's time. Tier 6." They both nodded and helped him to find shelter. He couldn't use the lean-to. (The clearing was where the Ranger came and Andy insisted that he didn't want to be mid-evolution when she arrived.) He found a dense thicket near the base of the ridge. It was a natural enclosure that the deer-like creatures had used during mating season to protect their young. He settled in with his party around him.

Auri stood watch at his side, Gustave settled onto the lowest branch he could tolerate and Barnacle filtered somewhere down river. Andy pulled up his options. [TIER 6 EVOLUTION: MEGAFAUNA] [YOU WILL TRANSITION FROM A COMPLEX ORGANISM TO A MEGAFAUNA-CLASS CREATURE. SIGNIFICANT SIZE INCREASE. FULL MAGICAL INTEGRATION. ENHANCED PHYSICAL AND MAGICAL CAPABILITIES.] [CHOOSE YOUR MEGAFAUNA PATH:] [1. STANDARD MEGAFAUNA (EQUINE)] - Full horse size. Enhanced strength and speed. Standard magical capability.

Leads to: War horses, Draft breeds, Cavalry mounts. Physical XP bonuses. [2. MAGICAL MEGAFAUNA (EQUINE)] - Full horse size. Enhanced magical capability. Magical body integration deepens. Leads to: Magical horses, Legendary steeds, Mythic creature precursors. Magical XP bonuses. NOTE: THIS PATH IS REQUIRED FOR TIER 6 MYTHIC CREATURE EVOLUTION. HORN MORPHOLOGY TRAIT CHAIN: COMPATIBLE.] His mouth ticked down in disappointment.

He knew what he would be choosing going into this choice but he'd hoped for some more options. A surprise anything that he could pretend to consider. [MAGICAL MEGAFAUNA (EQUINE): SELECTED] [INITIATING TIER 6 EVOLUTION…] [WARNING: SIGNIFICANT SIZE INCREASE. ESTIMATED GROWTH: 200-300%. FULL MAGICAL BODY INTEGRATION. HORN METAMORPHOSIS IN PROGRESS. THIS PROCESS WILL BE INTENSE.] Two hundred to three hundred percent. He was going to triple in size. Actual horse size. The structuring began, and it was not gentle.

If tier 5's evolution had been disorienting, tier 4's had been violent. This was both. Both squared and multiplied by a factor that the System who was famous for under-exaggerating described this as 'intense.' Halfway through Andy would have described as "Being taken apart and rebuilt by someone who was very good at their job, but gave zero fucks about his comfort." His bones grew in an explosive expansion that made the gradual growth of the last couple of months look like a joke.

Femurs and vertebrae lengthened and thickened simultaneously. His nerve endings screamed as muscles followed, wrapping around the bones and settling into place. His hooves changed, his three toes contracted to one, the outer two shrinking while the central toe expanded and hardened into an actual hoof. It was a single solid structure of keratin and bone that clacked against the ground inside the thicket. Even in the midst of the pain the sound made something in his chest feel like it was coming home.

His coat shifted from a light brown to a luminous, fresh snow in the sunlight white. His mane lengthened and began flowing. The bristly mohawk softened and fell in silver waves looking entirely like it was liquid metal. His eyes changed last. The honey brown irises deepened into a bright, clear gold. When he opened them the world resolved at a higher resolution than it had ever been. It was sharp and bright and painfully beautiful. And the horn. His horn. THE horn. The glowing, singing, ever erect.

It not only grew but went through an entire metamorphosis. On a proto-horse his horn was a bony finger-length protrusion. Now it extended upward, a calcium crystal spiraling as it lengthened. The spiral tightened with each revolution in a pattern that was mathematical, beautiful and ancient. The spiral of a nautilus shell applied to bone, crystal and stored magic.

Everything changed with the spiral, transforming the horn from a functional protrusion into something else, something that had a name and a history and a place in mythology. Ridges and channels developed along the surface, life magic flowing through them like water through an aqueduct. After five tiers of being stumpy and slowing it was now impressively long. He'd certainly been made to wait for it. It hummed. A low, resonant vibration in his skull, his teeth, his bones. It was singing.

A beautiful serenade-like melody. The horn was celebrating its growth in the most ridiculous way, because of course it was. [TIER 6 EVOLUTION: COMPLETE] This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. [NEW SPECIES: EQUINE (MAGICAL MEGAFAUNA)] [HORN MORPHOLOGY: ACTIVE. TIER 6 OF 6. TRAIT CHAIN: UNPRECEDENTED. ACCUMULATING] The System was still assigning his horn as unprecedented.

Maybe now that it had maxed out it would tell him what horn morphology was, what this chain was leading to.

"System?" He asked. What has my horn been working towards? [UNKNOWN]"How can you not know?" [UNPRECEDENTED: (ADJ) NEVER HAVING HAPPENED, DONE, OR EXISTED IN THE PAST.]"Did you just quote a dictionary to me?" The System, this time, for better or worse, did not respond. Taking this as his cue Andy stood up. The thicket was now much too small. He pushed through branches with a new strength that made even Gustave look slightly impressed.

He stood in the forest in the morning light, (his evolution having taken all evening) and his coat caught the sun. It glowed from within but in the sunlight it shimmered. His silver mane caught the wind and blew elegantly to the side, it matched his long flowing tail that moved like water and caught the sunlight like spun glass. He stamped his hooves, proper hooves, and his golden eyes smiled. And let's not forget the horn. The horn was half a meter or eighteen inches at best guess of spiraling crystal.

It radiated a brilliant emerald glow that felt like pure life magic. It was humming its happy song. It was unprecedented. He'd picked the pointy option, because he'd been a gamer. His pointy option turned into the unicorn option and nothing had ever felt so true to his being than where he was right now. Auri looked up at him. She had to look up now, quite significantly.

The adjustment was visible in her eyes and it was accompanied by the impression that arrived through their bond: breathless, unguarded and genuine awe.

"You're beautiful." Gustave descended from the canopy and landed on Andy's back. On his back. This massive bird landed on his back with relative ease and was not bothering Andy in the slightest. He sent, " Acceptable." This to Andy was like getting a standing ovation. Andy took his first elegant step as a unicorn, and promptly tripped over his new feet. All three friends erupted into psychic laughter. At least one thing about Andy hadn't changed. He watched the reflection's horn catch the light.

Well, two if you included how peak horny his new form was. Her scent reached him three minutes before she arrived. He spent all three of those minutes trying to find the perfect pose, the perfect place to pose, and the perfect way to look like he was not posing at all. All the while, Auri was sending impressions of him through an entirely filtered lens. To her, in this moment, he looked ridiculous. Ranger entered the clearing just as Andy attempted a pose with a front hoof up as if he were an equestrian statue.

She entered the clearing, her eyes trained down to catch sight of knee-high Andy, when she realized something was very wrong. Where knee-high Andy's horn would be, stood well… knees. Four of them, and one seemed to be held up at an uncomfortable angle. Her gaze paused as her brain worked through the knees and then it raised. Up. Up. Up. He was not the creature she had left yesterday. Yesterday he'd been dog-sized.

Today he was standing in a sun beam, beside a boulder, at his front shoulder he was almost as tall as she was. She stopped at the edge of the clearing and dropped her satchel. Apples hit the ground with a muffled thud and Andy rushed over to eat them up. (His apple obsession had survived evolution. And why waste perfectly good apples) Ranger sat down on a log at the clearing's edge. And put her head in her hands as her shoulder shook.

Andy's enhanced visual acuity could see the details his previous eyes may have missed. Her fingers were trembling, moisture on her cheeks, the catching quality of her breathing that meant she was crying. She had thought she was prepared for when this happened, and as it turns out she was not prepared at all. She had seen his horn every day since she'd met him. (Except those terrible 'Mondays' I mean who likes Mondays anyway.) She'd touched his horn, watched it glow, measured it and even listened to it sing.

She recognized what it was in her books and built a shelter to protect the creature that bore it. Now that horn was spiraling and singing and doing the things she'd only read about in stories from the oldest texts. This experience was not only supposedly impossible but also involved a creature whose ears she had scratched, the creature who had healed her hand and destroyed an abomination and looked at her with the sad and pleading eyes of something far more intelligent that its body would suggest.

Andy put his posed foot down.

"See I told you the pose was a bad idea." Came Auri's laughing jab before she slipped off of her rock and into the forest to hunt. He took slow careful steps toward her. He knew at this moment she was overwhelmed and if he was calm, it would help to calm her down as well. This moment, the anticipation of a unicorn meeting a freckle-faced woman was all he'd been thinking about for weeks. He stopped in front of her and brought his head down to meet her.

His crystal and spiraling horn descended until it was level with her face. The emerald glow cast illumination on her dark hair and wet cheeks and the freckles that he'd counted every day they'd met. She looked up and her eyes met his. Her hands left her face and reached for the horn. There was a difference in it. At first she'd had the careful approach of a beast tamer, then the trembling and scientific touch of a researcher, now it seemed unhesitant and almost greedy.

Her fingers wrapped around the horn and the life magic sang. Deeeew, da-da-da-deeeeew, da-da-da-doo-doo. A woman's hands wrapped around his horn and it was making sounds it had never made before. Andy was glad at that moment that Ranger did not know of the music in his world because he was almost certain that his horn was broadcasting Careless Whisper. She whispered something.

Her lips moved against the horn's surface (her lips on his horn and Andy's entire consciousness short-circuited for a full second before the emotional content of the moment overrode the innuendo), her words directed into the crystal, into the spiral, the structure that carried his identity. Andy couldn't be sure, but he was guessing that she was making a promise. She didn't finish. The horn finished for her, cutting off mid da da doo. Life magic flew out of Andy's horn without his say so and flew into Ranger.

They were interconnected, hearts beating as one. Tears streamed down her face and his held confusion. What was happening? Andy stood in a clearing with a woman's hands on his horn, the horn was expelling magic prematurely of a command. She said the word again, the one he was certain meant unicorn. But he wasn't a unicorn, not yet. He was a horned magical horse, that was true. But the mythic beast was one tier away and whatever the difference between those was certainly seemed important.

The Ranger broke away, she was glowing. Not with his emerald life magic, but with something radiant and prismatic. She looked at him, at her hands, and without another word– turned on her heel and ran.

[SPECIES: HORSE (MAGICAL BEAST)] [PURITY AFFINITY: ACTIVE] [VIRGINAL STATUS: MAINTAINED] [CONTRIBUTING FACTOR WEIGHT: 23%] [PARTY MEMBERS: 4] [HERD BOND: COMPANION (VULPINE ADEPT)] [HERD BOND: COMPANION (RAPTOR ADEPT)] [HERD BOND: COMPANION (SESSILE)] [SOCIAL BOND: BONDED (HUMANOID, RANGER-TYPE)] [GALLOP EFFICIENCY: 41%] [NEXT MILESTONE: TIER 7 EVOLUTION] [HORN (MEGAFAUNA): TIER 6 OF 6. TRAIT CHAIN: UNPRECEDENTED. SPIRALING. LIFE LUMINESCENCE. SINGING. GROWING.] [MYTHIC CREATURE PREREQUISITES: HORN MORPHOLOGY (MET), LIFE MAGIC AFFINITY (MET), EQUINE BASE FORM (MET), MEGAFAUNA CLASS (MET). REMAINING: CATALYST EVENT (SEE TIER 7 REQUIREMENTS).] There were too many questions in Andy's brain for him to pick any one.