We sat around and got to know each other. Not only the Goldtail members, but the Blacktail and Trueleap members came for conversations. There was one Trueleap girl around my age that came up to talk to me. Her name was Theresa and the twins joined me. She was a Half Blood. I was flirting with her since there was not much else to do. I could see her blush at my cheesy pick up lines. When I started to smell a sweet smell, I looked around the grotto to find it. 'Mare in heat.' came a soft voice in my head. That was my animal soul. I looked ahead at Theresa. She was fidgeting and it was now clear from the sway of her rump that she was the one the animal in me was talking about. I must have triggered it by turning her on. Alex and Ash were looking at her wide eyed. I approached her to see if there was anything I could do to help her. She flinched and backed up. Other Trueleap females came to her side. The Half Bloods lead her away. The whole tribe was giving me dirty looks. On the other hand, it did seem to get the respect of the males from the other tribes. I decided to take it in stride.
At the climax of the summit, the Progenitor of each tribe gave a speech. It was pretty cool to get the lore of the world directly from the source. One of the rituals was for the members that had been to five shifter summits to go up to the crystals to use their power. The magic of the crystals, once submerged in the sea water, could induce an increase of blood potency. It went up one rank per ritual done at the summit. Changelings became Thin Bloods and Thin Bloods became Half Bloods. And so on and so forth until they made it to the rank of Progenitor. Several Half Bloods and Changelings went up. The candidates were all old. It made a lot of sense. The first summit happened after coming of age at 16. It then took 50 years to get to get to their fifth summit. The youngest would be 66 years old. The oldest would be around 76. Shifters had the same life expectancy as humans. There was first a brief bloodletting from the candidates. The magic sea water was then poured over the wound. They yelled and writhed in agony for 5 minutes as we watched. They rose fully healed and with more blood potency.
I was impressed and we were then treated to a light show that happened as the moonlight shine down the top of the grotto and shined in various hues of blue green and yellow. We all oohed and ahhed in the ways we could. It was great. We were then told to strip as we went outside, the change would immediately take place. We all followed the lead and all went outside naked. Ash and Alex came up on either side of me and smiled. I looked down and saw that they were both well hung. They had to be at least six inches soft. I was six and a half inches hard. "Looks like your thin blood did not reach there, huh?" Ash mocked. I just shrugged. There was literally no real reason to be jealous of an NPC. We went out and looked up at the full moon. It really was oppressive looking. We then started shifting on the spot. I became the centaur that I saw on the character creation screen. The twins silently became full horses. Only the Changelings experienced pain when they shifted. All the Progenitors stayed human. They believed that changing due to the full moon being out was somehow beneath them.
