Mingus
Not ranked. The unit. The heart.
The dog is forever.
Mingus is a golden retriever. He has no line in the Ledger, so nothing in the world holds him to one rank, and nothing holds him to one shape. Every heartbeat in the realms is measured in his.
Mingus was the author's own golden retriever. In the saga he is forever.
The golden forms
When someone he loves is in danger, Mingus can wear the shape of any creature that ever guarded something, and he stays gold in every one of them.
| Form | Look | When it wakes |
|---|---|---|
| The Retriever | The true form. Soft gold coat, kind brown eyes. | Always |
| The Sabre Lion | A golden sabre-toothed lion the size of a cart horse, fangs like ivory scimitars. | Someone tries to take Kompis away |
| The Manticore | A lion's body, wide gold-feathered wings, a scorpion tail of amber glass. | Home is attacked |
| The Griffin | A golden eagle-lion with wings wide enough to carry the whole crew. | The crew is falling and there is no ground |
| The Cave-Bear | A golden cave-bear the size of a hill. | Something too heavy is falling on his people |
| The Sun-Wolf | A colossal golden wolf from the oldest northern tales: the wolf who refused to swallow the sun. | Only when the whole crew has fallen |
The laws of the forms
- Always gold. Whatever the shape, the coat stays retriever gold and the eyes stay kind and brown.
- He always comes home to the retriever. Every transformation ends with him padding back, tail going, as if nothing happened.
- The forms come from love, never orders. Nobody commands them.
- He guards; the heroes win. A form can catch a fall or stand between his people and a blade, but the heroes win their own fights.
- Never killed, never the price, never captured for good.
- One form per arc at most, so each one is an event.