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Gron squinted into the darkness of the cave. He didn't have the keenest eyes in the tribe, but that was what he was supposed to learn on his Trial of Manhood: what could he do, and what were his limits. Clutching his spear, tip stabbing into the darkness, he went inside. If he were to die, he thought, at least he'd be remembered bravely.

Bravery was important to the tribe, especially now: hunting and foraging had become scarce, and there was only so much water could do to fill empty bellies. Gron hoped to discover some source of food, or some other tribe that - be they friend or foe - would allow him to get the resources his family and the rest needed for the next season. If he couldn't, well, at least there'd be one less mouth to feed. While Gron didn't exactly want to die, he didn't mind becoming part of the pantheon of ancestor spirits that protected the tribe.

The cave soon felt warm, the darkness giving way as dripping hot rock oozed down from cracks in the walls. Gron's head swam, but he pressed forward. Something was in there, he could feel it; something important.

"Closer," a deep voice beckoned as Gron entered into a round chamber, stepping across the ring of hot rock that pooled around. The cavern smelled of rotting eggs, and the smoke did not allow him to see what was speaking. Gron could sense, however, that the creature was powerful.

"What do you seek?" the voice asked.

"To save my people," Gron answered. Not in the rudimentary language of his people, but in images. The faces, young and old, male and female, family and wider kin, appeared before him. An invisible, but somehow crushing weight, began to squeeze him. He fell to his knees, the smoke rolling into his body.

The voice asked another question: "And what do you offer in return?"

Gron thought immediately, "Anything, except that which would hurt my people."

"Submit yourself to me," the voice requested, "and your people will be given my gift."

Images of fire passed through Gron's eyes: not the chaotic fire as it burned and destroyed, but somehow a mastered fire. Rocks striking one another, and suddenly everyone was warmed for the night. Hunting parties able to travel out at night, clusters of burning sticks in some hands, weapons in others. Dropping to his knees, he submitted, "I swear myself to you, for this gift for my people."

"Hold out your hands," the voice demanded, which Gron quickly did. Something hot - so hot that he felt it burn his hands immediately - as a bowl was placed in them. He wanted to cry out in pain, but only tears streaked down his cheeks as his teeth clenched together. "Take this to your people, and then return."

So ordered, Gron carefully raised himself up. The bowl was filled with an intense fire, but Gron also felt his mind filling with how to make that fire. Retreating through the cave, his progress illuminated by the fire in his hands, he continued to walk until he was outside. His hands continued to ache, the feeling spreading up his arms as the heat from the bowl seemed to have nowhere to go. Under the lights, his skin looked to have burned and blistered.

Once Gron was near the cave entrance, the wind sweeping by blew against the cracked, dead skin on his hands. It blew off, turning into ashen dust almost immediately. Underneath, the hands gripping the bowl seemed intact, although they were covered in jet black scales, the edges fire-tinged. Short claws curled out from his fingers, the sharp tips scraping against the bowl's sides. The scales travelled a short way up his arm, the dull pain following its progress.

Gron trekked home, following the landmarks he'd noted on the way out. While he progressed, the line between scales and skin travelled up his arm. His slender muscles seemed to bulk up, strength flowing out of the bowl, and into his arms. It seemed almost like the fire was flowing out of the bowl, absorbed through the scales on his arms, and flowing through his veins. There was pain, but it was nothing Gron couldn't handle: scaled arms were nothing compared to the power this gift would give his people.

The scales, however, did not stop spreading when they reached his elbows, as Gron had assumed. Instead, the burning line continued to travel up his body. Thick, hard scaled ridges ran up each side of his changed forearms, like sharp blades of flint. He couldn't understand the use of them, but he tried to forget about him for now: once he'd delivered the bowl, the strength it was adding to his arms would no doubt make him a more powerful hunter. He certainly felt stronger as the magical fire of change coursed through him.

The ridges stopped at his elbows, the scales on Gron's upper arms glinting with their fiery rims just enclosed his aching shoulders. He assumed the aching was from the change of the scales, and from the thickness. Like most of his people, he had kept lean: some of the older men had larger muscles, but these had started to wither as well. Gron's stomach churned nervously, hoping that this fire would help that strength return.

Veins bulged around his neck as the scales continued to advance. The coarse patches of hair under his armpits slipped down Gron's sweaty sides. The fire's heat was intense: while the scaled parts of him felt comfortable, the rest of him was shimmering, his body hair matted down in lines. The pattern reminded Gron of beast's fur when an animal had been caught outside in the rain or had emerged from a pool. The thought of beasts reminded his stomach of how hungry it was. He couldn't remember the last time he had eaten, or drank; certainly before the cave.

Black scales now covered most of his upper body, a thick lining edging up towards his head. There were other changes happening as well: his arms felt strange, and while he dared not drop the valuable bowl of strange fire and the knowledge flowing from it, walking with it gripped in his hands felt unnatural. His arms ached to drop down, as though Gron had regressed to an infant who could only crawl.

Trying to dismiss this strangeness from his mind, Gron breathed in heavily. His body felt in desperate need of more air. His back ached as he shambled forward, hunched over as the twin edges of scales met in the centre. Like the meeting of two waves, a thick ridged line seemed to splash up his back. His legs spread apart, shambling forward faster, frantic to move as far homeward as he could before his changing body could no longer manage it.

As though it was mocking him, the enhanced strength of his body yearned to be let loose. Gron felt a trapped animal inside him scrabbling to be free, as though he had caught it in a pit trap that had been too shallow. Panting, he looked down: his torso barrelled out majestically, as though he hadn't been starving for the last few days. Oddly, his ravenous appetite had abated as the magic flame seeped deeper into his body.

Eventually, Gron fell, snarling from his aching, scale-encrusted jaws as he tumbled forward. Half of his body felt like it was melting, but he could not stop himself from sliding forward uncomfortably: his face began to distort, blackened teeth filling his forming snout as the line of fire that caused the scales now spread inside. The scales neared his genitals, causing a stir of feelings as his fiery blood started to pulse through his shaft. He was in too much pain to feel genuinely aroused, but the flow stirred up the feelings. A mound of scale-lined flesh began to creep down towards his erection, sweat dripping off the shrinking amount of skin visible over his body.

Unable to move, Gron grunted and groaned, his nose forcefully growing. The fire inside his body seemed almost real, as smoke streamed out of his nostrils. He could feel his hands changing as a second wave of pain surged down the length of his arms. A vision entered his head, of him on all fours, like a beast. Suddenly panicked - unable to shake the idea of failure if he didn't act quickly - Gron took the only step he could see that would allow him to continue his mission.

Shoving the bowl into his mouth, Gron felt tears run down his cheeks, scales creeping up around his eyes. The tears dissolved off of him as his claws sunk down. His muzzle, changes reinforced by being closer to the source of the power, swelled around it, a reptilian beak appearing on the end of his nose. The smoke trailing out of his nostrils turned into a torrent that surrounded him.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Gron opened them up again. Gone was the brown iris and round pupil; now he peered out, undeterred by the smoke billowing out of him, with fiery red orbs burning almost as fiercely as the fire in his mouth. His old hands thickened, claws and fingers merging into talons, as his new front feet sunk into the earth.

Ridges of flesh tore out of the scales that covered his face: his flesh looked completely different above the waist now, and his legs were quickly following. The mound of flesh surrounded his cock as he wobbled forward, both sets of legs unused to the new gait forced upon him. Gron groaned: his back still hunched over, hot fluid collecting in the two large lumps that swelled like blisters. Fire from the bowl poured down his throat, his neck lengthening as his body became even less human in appearance.

Change rippled down his shaft, as the mound surrounded it, squeezing it further out of his body as his manhood lengthened and thickened. His foreskin peeled away, hardening into fleshy ridges as the tip pushed further out. More ridges blossomed out of it like unfurling flowers, the flesh throbbing and slick as it expanded beyond its human limits beneath him.

Sweat dripped off of his sack as it was pulled into his mound. Scales consumed his buttocks, a thick tail stabbing into the air out of him. Gron slowly found his walking more comfortable as the musculature in his legs changed to match the beast he was becoming.

Pain of a different sort flashed through his mind: certainly he was strong, and his people would have the gift of fire he was bringing them even if the magic totally consumed him. But he feared they would not recognise him now: he looked almost nothing like his former self. How would he be able to give his gift? Then there was the strand of power he could feel now, almost like a physical rope looped around his neck. He knew where the end was, even if he didn't understand who - or what - held it. He felt it creep into his mind, naturally, that he would not be able to stay with the tribe, even though he had given everything he had for them.

With an anguished cry the scaled blisters on Gron's back burst open, as two large, leathery limbs slipped like birthed lambs from his sides. The fleshy sac that had contained each limb hardened quickly into strengthening muscle to help him fly. Testing his new wings, Gron could tell that he was certainly not ready for flight just yet.

Keeping to the earth, Gron grunted. The bowl in his mouth continued to spill overwhelming heat into him, but his new body managed with it almost instinctively. Only his human legs felt uncomfortable now, and they were quickly strengthening and being consumed by the scales. His tail thickened from a tiny finger of flesh to a long, lizardine length that lazily waved behind him. He could feel the changes reaching his feet: calves raising, talons growing. Although he was unsure of what would happen once the changes were done, he was happy that he could, soon, be free of the pain of his transformation and be comfortable in his - admittedly new - body.

With his new heart pumping his fire-blood around him, Gron closed his eyes, bracing himself. His physical changes were mostly complete, but his mind yearned to take to the air, to really test out his body. Flapping his new wings, his legs ate up the land, building up speed before he launched himself into the air.

Catching his breath, Gron let out a triumphant roar, flames shooting out of his mouth. Flying was amazing! He'd been unable to even imagine soaring like a bird or a bat before, yet here he was, doing exactly that.

With horror, he realised: in his excitement, he had swallowed the bowl. His talons curled around air, grasping as he chided himself. He had failed his people, on what he felt was his final task for them!

"Return to them," a voice told him. It was not his own, nor was there any speaker visible in the sky: his massive, unusual body had scared every other animal in his progression. The voice was familiar, soothing: it was the spirit he had pledged himself to, he realised, in order to bring this gift back.

Flying allowed Gron to eat up days of travelling in hours, but it still took him until nightfall to return to where he had left his people. Fearing that his new shape would scare them, he landed a ways away. As silently as he could, he lumbered across the empty field towards the trees near the river they used for fishing and drinking.

Gron could see them approaching: his blood- and tribe-brothers coming forward, spears in their hands and fear in their eyes. He knew perfectly well they had never seen a creature like he had become before, but understood to not make any threatening moves. He lowered his head gently, hoping they might think he didn't mean them any harm.

With painful sadness, he caught the eyes of his father. He felt a power surge out of him, crossing the gap between them. Gron watched his father lower his weapon, looking up curiously at the creature in recognition. He heard him speak - Gron noticed he could no longer understand him, cementing that he was only here to give them the gift, and leave his family forever - and they began to lower their weapons as well.

Gron felt a trembling in his groin. He hadn't realised that his cock had retracted into the slit under his belly, but the spiky, inhuman tip jutted out, glowing, lava-like fluids dripping from him. Claws dug rents into the ground. He was familiar with this feeling before: he had been no wisp of a boy when he left, after all. A beast's lust, however, was far more potent, and a magical beast's was even more so.

Along the strand binding him to his master, Gron felt a pulse, and a sensation entered his head. The being that had given him the gift had, he felt, grown curious, and wanted to share Gron's body to partake in this sensation.

Gron lifted his neck up into the sky: he could feel the fire just waiting to burst out of him, and knew how damaging it would be to his tribe. Burning the heavens, he felt thick rings of muscle running along the length of his shaft tighten and squeeze. Gron had pleasured himself many times before. He had slept with a woman before. This felt different to both. He wanted to watch his cock as it throbbed and pulse, swollen with energy and leaking fluids, but could not breath without flames shooting out of him, so he decided now was not the time.

"We shall do this again," his master told him, his thoughts almost blinding Gron with how amazed it was in their combined pleasure, "when we are alone and cannot hurt anyone. I would like to explore these feelings."

Gron agreed.

As his cock throbbed and twitched, a fiery hot fluid spilled out. The grass below him burst into flames, the people around him jumping back in fear. Suddenly, Gron realised: the bowl was not the vessel he was to use to bring this knowledge back. He was, through his new body.

Continuing to pump out his fluids, he felt the smoke raise of the ground, rolling over his tribesmen who fell to the ground a dazed expression on their faces.

"It is done," Gron's master stated. Suddenly, Gron's arousal abated, and his cock retracted. Now he had done his sworn duty, it was now time to leave. Spreading out his wings, Gron tensed the muscles in his legs. He launched into the air as his heart bid a final farewell to his people.

Through the night air he flew, the edges of his shimmering scales the only thing separating him from the black sky as he returned to his new home.