The group finally spent a peaceful night in a part of Szelevu where they were safe from all harmful creatures. And everyone slept so well that they woke up a little groggy in the morning. That's why it was no wonder, that almost everyone was sitting by the fire in the morning yawning. Everyone was lost in their own thoughts, not paying attention to the others.
"I think I know what happened to me..." Achilleus suddenly spoke, which resulted in several of the group almost jumping in surprise.
"Dirt brain by the ghosts, I'm still half asleep." Benkó ran his hand in front of his face. "You brought the heart attack on me." He grumbled under his breath.
"Sorry, it wasn't intentional." Achilleus rolled his eyes.
"Ah, I should have known that you just talk and don't use your mind for it." Benkó countered triumphantly, but all he achieved was that the Motumisz boy sitting next to him jumped at his throat with both hands to try to strangle his friend.
"Will you stop? It's too early for me to tolerate you two fighting each other." Rahul grimaced, not even looking up from the campfire, which made it seem like he wasn't really paying attention to what was going on around him.
"He started it!" The Bokló boy defended himself as he tried to push his friend away from him so he could get some air.
"You were the one who insulted me peeing boy!" Achilles growled at the boy in the light blue clothes and continued to strangle him, when a burning piece of wood flew towards them, which could have injured both of them if they hadn't reacted quickly and jumped apart, so that the burning wood would hit the stone wall behind them.
The two hegins blinked at the slowly dying flames on the piece of wood, then turned their gaze to the other side of the fire pit from where the piece of wood had come. On the other side of the fire sat Rahul with a satisfied grin on his face, his hand still outstretched, as if he had just released the weapon that had separated the two quarreling boys.
"I warned you." The grin froze on the hegin's face, who had grown up in the West, then he put his hand in front of his mouth and yawned a lot. "So what did you figure out, Achilleus?" He finally looked at the Motumisz boy.
"Yes! So..." Achilleus began. "The matter didn't let me rest in the evening, so I started thinking and then I remembered the legend of the Skin Changer." The boy explained, but with his words he only achieved to make everyone blink at him in confusion.
"The what?" The honest question came out of Suk.
"The legend of the Skin Changer, you know the bedtime story." Achilleus tried to lead his friends into the story, but it seemed that he was unsuccessful, since his companions only understood less of what he was talking about than before.
"It reassures me that I am not the only one who has no idea what it is about." Rahul noted, as he looked around the group, who showed varying degrees of grimace and incomprehension on their faces, even the danovuses and the ghosts.
"Now stop playing, you know the bedtime story about the Skin Changer and the Táltos Lady." Achilleus continued to explain and even spread his hands, as if that would make anyone understand what he wanted to say better.
"You, Achilleus, I don't want to be the one to spoil your mood, but I think you just dreamed this story, because I have never heard of it in my life." Citar points to his friend, with a grimace on his face as if someone had shoved a lemon under his nose.
"You really don't know?" The Motumisz boy blinked and looked at his companions, who all shook their heads. "I didn't know that this was a tribal tale, I thought everyone knew it." He put his right index finger to his chin and started tapping it a few times. "Every little child hears the story a thousand times." He shrugged his shoulders and closed his eyes, then smiled and stared into the fire.
"So, Motumisz, are you going to tell that tale, or should we beg for it?" Suk asked with his arms folded in front of him.
"Should I really tell the whole thing now, or is it enough if I tell the gist?" Achilleus asked. "I mean, the parts that might have something to do with my situation." He added.
"I think the gist will be enough for now. If the story is really a bedtime story, I'd wait until evening. At least I'll have an excuse for falling asleep while you're talking." Benkó spoke, and the boy sitting next to him looked at him with glowing eyes, but instead of risking Rahul cutting another branch at them, he just took a deep breath and started explaining.
"The story itself is a love story, the Táltos Lady was kidnapped by enchanted bears to become queen in a foreign land. The hegins sent the Skin Changer to rescue her. The story tells how the Skin Changer finds the Táltos Lady across seven countries." Achilleus summarized the story quickly and briefly. "What made me think of it is that in the story, the Skin Changer has a special ability. Wherever he goes, he goes unnoticed. If he went to the realm of snakes, he became a snake, if he went to the land of turul birds, he became a turul bird, in the land of giants, he became a giant, and so on." The Motumisz boy explained.
"Do you mean to say that you are also such a skin changer?" Teveli asked with a grimace, blinking in front of him, as if he was trying very hard to remember something and didn't want to succeed.
"No way!" Achilleus immediately snapped at him with a wave. "The Skin Changer doesn't exist, it's just a fairy tale." He shrugged. "I was simply thinking about what if there really was a similar ability in the world that someone could blend in anywhere." He brought it up.
"What are the chances that you will get this ability, dirt brain?" Benkó looked at his friend with doubt.
"Not much." The Motumisz boy said immediately.
"But it's not impossible." Kamu added, who now, together with Ajtony, who was sitting next to him, looked at Achilleus as if he had suddenly become the most interesting being in the world.
"Fairy tales usually magnify things to make them easier to understand. There are also many tales about the Mist in the areas where we were more active in the beginning, but I can say from experience that only a quarter of what they say about us is true." The poison-mixing ghost noted, shrugging his shoulders.
"Every tribe has its own abilities and tales. It could easily be that this is some ability that only appears in the Motumisz tribe. Or it appeared, since those who are capable of it are not common today, there may have been some hegin who could do such a thing. If I hadn't taught the Teles how to use Teike abilities, that ability would have become just a fairy tale, because no one knows how to use it." Kamu explained thoughtfully. But before anyone could say anything, an unknown ghost appeared in their small camp and knelt before Etele.