Noble's feathers shimmered. Without warning, the gold from the crown of feathers on her head spread to her body in regal stripes. Black covered the empty space in between until a familiar pattern emerged on her body.
Child of Promise furrowed her brow, or at least tried to. In this form, there wasn't much of a brow to speak of.
"I'm still a bird, but I have the colors of a bee…I'm a quetzal Bee?"
How was that even a thing?
There was more to it than that. When Noble watched the change happen, the shimmer looked strangely familiar. She marveled at the change. Having been able to manipulate Helios's color before, now it seemed she could alter her own while in Transcendent form.
Noble cycled through a few other patterns off the top of her head. The feathers quickly became plaid, herringbone, and harlequin in quick succession. Her plumage cycled through every color in her mind's eye before she finished off with a black and white checkered pattern.
'Fascinating!'
"That's amazing! You really are a prism of color!" Fort clapped his hands.
It was a phenomenal discovery, though purely a cosmetic one, unless…
Noble focused on the sky above her, picturing it and holding it in her mind. Her Transcedant form obliged, turning a mix of blue and white just like the cloudy array above her head.
Noble stopped flapping her wings, relying on her usual float to keep her airborne.
Fort reached out, patting her wing gently. "I can hardly tell it apart from the sky, even when I am touching it. From the ground, you must be entirely invisible!"
"Until I move." The picture on her feathers was only as good as Noble made it. And she couldn't constantly be looking above and below to match the landscape while she traveled.
Releasing her control, Noble allowed the quetzal to return to its natural state, only it didn't. It became deep blue.
Fort laughed once again. "Ah, so that's how it is!"
Noble squinted at her husband. "What do you mean?"
"I know this color almost as well as I know my own name. Your eyes turn this shade when you are deep in thought. You are not only a prism; you are a mood ring bird!"
The Saint frowned. "I am glad you are enjoying this so much."
"How can I not be? This is the best thing to happen in a long time. I don't need to look at your eyes when flying with you. I can gauge your mood by your feathers instead!" Fort was so delighted by the prospect that he almost fell from his perch and had to steady himself.
Noble chirped quietly. "Serves you right."
She relaxed, and her form returned to the original shades of green, crimson, and gold. Once again, the shimmers precipitating the change gave her pause.
They weren't like the sparks that summoned and dismissed Memories. They looked somewhat like the light she had seen when they found the Source at Northgate, but not quite.
Then it hit her.
'These are the same shimmers that had almost erased me from existence!'
In the void between the Nightmare and reality, they had absorbed into her skin with a flourish.
Perhaps they had gone even deeper than that.
Noble dipped into her Soul Sea. As expected, the iridescent waters were lapping up on the shore. Her core had grown, both in power and in size, and there in the absence of the [Happy Together] tether, there was something new.
But Noble would examine that shortly. Just now, something else was pulling at her attention…
Mixed in with the usual swirling colors, intermittent shimmers graced the surface of her core. They were so hidden that they would have been imperceptible to anyone except Noble. She had spent years studying her strange core, and the anomaly was as visible to her as the chasm in Crestfall.
Her core was infected with a strange luminescence, yet Noble didn't feel any hostility. It had been assimilated and become a part of her, going so far as to manifest in her transformation.
'That can't be a coincidence, can it? What if…'
"Hold on. I have a feeling things are about to get weird." Noble warned her husband.
"How weird?" Fort grabbed two fistfuls of feathers.
"I'm not sure. On second thought—" Using her levitation, Noble lifted Fort from his perch and held him away from her body.
"Wh-whoa!" No longer cradled by his wife, Fort's dislike for heights returned.
"I've got you," Noble promised. "One thing I forgot to mention in my retelling of my adventure is that when Omer touched my arm, it almost caused me to cease existing."
"What?!" Fort took his eyes off the ground to glare at his wife. "That's a rather important detail!"
"You would think so, but with everything else that happened, it completely slipped my mind until I found remnants of what happened in my soul core just now." Noble held up her wings. "Don't worry! I don't think it's harmful, but I do want to see what it does, so if you'll just give me a moment…"
"You want to mess with something in your soul that almost removed you from existence before? What if…" Fort gasped.
The beautiful quetzal in front of him vanished from view. It wasn't like before, where she had been mimicking the clouds. He could clearly see through where the Saint had just been.
"Bee? Bee!" Fort had been worried when his wife said things would get weird. Had she finished the process that had begun in the Nightmare?!
He leaned forward, reaching out to the spot where she had just been. His hand found something soft and feathery.
"I…I'm here…I think." Noble seemed unsure of her own presence.
She flapped her wings, dislodging Fort's hand and sending a gust of air into his face.
The man squinted. "You are invisible!"
"No…"Noble studied her body. "It's close to invisible, but I'm not gone. The light is bending around me like a bunch of mirrors. See? You can still see my movement if you focus."
Another flap demonstrated her point. She was there, masked by a covering of the strange shimmers from her soul.
Unlike the Others, Noble was not made from Nothing, so the enchantment—or whatever it was—had done the next best thing.
Instead of being Nothing, she looked like "nothing" was there, except for a faint outline left when she moved.
That was very interesting indeed. There was only one catch. Except for the natural state and the colors representing her mood, the conscious changes drained more of her essence than her transformation alone. And her use of the shimmers in her soul drained her essence at terrifying speed.
Noble was a Saint now, so she could hold her form for a reasonable amount of time, but being virtually invisible would cut that length by half. That was an important detail to note.
With Fort as her wingman–literally– Noble flew a few circles to see how her new body worked. It had a bit of a learning curve, but was not nearly as bad as she had expected for such a drastically foreign form.
Child of Promise seemed to be made for being in the air, and her intuition guided most of her movement. After a couple of minutes, Noble had almost forgotten what it felt like to be human.
'That's enough. I've spent enough essence. I need to save some for my other experiment or in case we are attacked.'
Turning back into a human, Noble set her husband on the ground as she floated down beside him.
He kissed her deeply. "That was the most spectacular thing I've ever 'not' seen."
Noble smiled at him. "That was something, for sure. I am not sure if I am going to be able to top it."
Fort furrowed his brow. "Are you planning to try?"
His wife nodded. "I have a second reason for bringing you out here. To claim my Aspect Legacy..."