You kick off your remaining boot, unclasp your cloak and drop it to the floor. The tough leather cuirass that all wizards are expected wear beneath it takes considerably more time to remove. Unbuckling your sword and sheathed wand, you lay them on your cloak and kick off your trousers. Down to your underclothes, you unsheath the wand, holding it awkwardly with the toes of one foot.
"You may want to look away, my lady," you say to Ilia.
She seems unperturbed by the sight of you standing there, near naked and shivering, and folds her arms with a stubborn look. "I've delivered babies before, you know. Baby boys. It's nothing I haven't seen before."
"If you say so, my lady," you smile, willing the spell into life.
For the briefest moment, you hang in the air, caught halfway between human and animal, joints twisted into hideous conformations, every inch of skin blistering with erupting feathers, fingers shrunken to nubs, lips swollen into a soft, fleshy beak. It is a brief moment, but enough to make her lose her dinner.
"Told you to look away," you laugh, but all that comes out is "Squaawk!"
You wobble unsteadily on your new legs, adjusting quickly to the form's centre of balance as you were trained. Happy that the wand is clutched securely in your talons, you flap your broad wings and rise (a little awkwardly) into the air. You've never really loved bird forms, disliking their weak, fragile bodies and alien, malicious minds, but the feeling of flight is an undeniable pleasure. Rising higher, you barely even feel the flies, now the size of tennis balls, that batter against your wings and head. Ilia is soon a small speck on the land.
From the air, it's easy to confirm your suspicions; the blight spreads out below you in a perfect circle, which means at its centre should be....
Folding your wings back, you swoop low, braking to hover a few metres above the Mark of Corruption that has been burnt into the soil, a circular inscription standing out black among the yellow-green muck. Carefully you fly lower, finding it harder to maintain stability amongst the warm, moist, sour air being belched up by the ground, but you're soon close enough to make out the language in which the Mark has been inscribed. It is...
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