Vylt: The New Dawn

Chapter 4: The Wings of Change

My plan was to lay down and have a short nap after enduring the increasing pain from walking. My condition, however, made it so I wouldn't wake up for the rest of the day.

The next morning, I found myself staring at the mirror. My hair had surprisingly grown around one centimetre overnight, and my eyebrows and eyelashes were back too. Now matter how short, I was glad to have hair again. That said, the colour intrigued me. It was dark blue, like the night sky.

It seems I'm becoming a dark elf after all.

Still looking at my reflection, I noticed my originally brown eyes had also changed to amber. My face seemed different as well, although I couldn't tell why. Eventually, I heard the door open, and stepped out of the bathroom to receive my visitor.

"Good morning, Anna," I said as I saw her getting behind the trolley to push it into my room.

"Morning." She walked in and left all of her equipment next to my bed before she turned and looked at me intently. "Hm, it seems like Dad was right, the variant won the fight."

Huh?

"You mean I won't turn into a dark elf? I thought some of them were blue."

"Only their skin," she replied, leading me to the centre of the room. I stood still to let her measure me. "There are no records of blue-haired draell so far. Those who were bitten by bats, however, do display a wide range of unnatural hair colours. Some patients manage to keep their original tone, but you clearly weren't one of them. Speaking of bats, now we know it doesn't carry rabies. Not that you were at risk to begin with."

I was somewhat relieved. It was great to finally have my safety confirmed, even though she told me the MAV eliminated other viruses while active. I stepped onto the scale before saying, "One less worry then. I'm just glad I have hair again, and I dig the colour. My eyes changed too, by the way. They're no longer brown."

Anna took note of my weight and led me to the stadiometer. She measured my height and looked into my eyes briefly as she did.

"You're right, I hadn't noticed. Thanks for telling me."

She wrote down some more on her tablet and placed a hand on my back. She seemed to be searching for something under the gown as she led me to the bed.

"Can you sit down and hold out your legs?" Anna asked. "There is something I want to confirm."

I did as asked, and she rubbed the sides of my ankles carefully.

"What are you looking for?"

Anna grabbed my hand and led it down until I had two of my fingers on my ankle. I felt a hard lump there.

"Can you feel that? That is a new bone. You should have a bigger pair on your back, too." She opened my gown from behind and used the measuring tape once more. "You do. Believe it or not, these are already five centimetres long. Congratulations! You're growing wings, Nora."

My eyes went wide open in surprise. "Will I be able to fly then?" I gasped. "What's going to happen to my legs!?"

Anna went silent and grabbed a syringe. She calmly replied as she took another painless blood sample. "Regarding your legs, all we know, for now, is that your ankles will develop some sort of extra finger. Unfortunately, we don't understand what its purpose might be, yet. Bat carriers are fairly new to us, so we'll have to wait for any of the other patients' transformation to finish, or at least get close enough for us to speculate. As for flight, I'd say it's impossible with the changes we've seen so far. Then again, we thought the same thing about magic until recently."