Humanity Displaced by iplank

Humanity Displaced

iplank, Anthro, Bird, Breast Growth, Cock Growth, Cow, Dog, Fantasy, Feral, Gorgon, Horse, Lactation, M/F, Magic, Masturbation, Multiple Breasts, Multiple penis, Muscle Growth, Oviposition, Pig, Rat, Sex, Sheep, Shrinking, Snake, Transformation, Wolf, basilisk, hemipene

A sorceress learns of a future where humans inherit the world and finds them unworthy. Casting a grant spell she causes everyone's humanity to scatter into the surrounding animals, regressing all humans into feral beasts in an attempt the end of the entire species. Luckily; some people don't know when to stop fighting.

(TF the entire world, wolf, horse, cow, bird, rat, snake, gorgon, etc.)

CTRL+F the chapter name to jump to it!

Part One : Like Riding A Horse (Wolf/Horse)

Part Two : Holy Cow (Cow)

Part Three : Street Rat's Revenge (Rat/Snake)

Part Four : Doom Song (Bird)

Part Five : Stone Cold (Gorgon)

Part Six : Operetta In E Flat

Part One : Like Riding A Horse

The kingdom of Etabed is a prosperous one, surrounded by vast grasslands painted across shallow hills. To the east a titanic lake, and to the north the rivers that feed it from the ice-tipped mountain range in the distance. Etabed is the furthest kingdom to the north- no one yet knows what lay beyond those mountains. It is ruled by the noble King Pathos Regail- a man known to weigh all his decisions carefully in favor of the many. Though getting on in age he still performs his weighty job with diligence.

One day Pathos was to hold an audience with the magnus of Etabed; Telal Ethos. Magnus is a title rarely given at all, it signifies a level of skill in the arts of magic that is unrivaled. Someone so proficient that no one else can come even close, and for Etabed that person is Telal.

She slowly wheeled herself up the red carpet past the marbled pillars and royal purple drapes hanging between them lining the path to Pathos' throne. As the Magnus- Pathos has held council with her on many occasions over the years so none of the knights even checked with her- she could wheel herself into the castle whenever she wanted. Telal is crippled- an unfortunate accident when she was little. Roughhousing with another kid when she was very young, she tumbled back and snapped her spine on a rock, and the apothecary was unable to restore mobility to her legs. Her wheelchair is her chariot- Arch Tree wood bordered in a gilded steel filigree frame. Her extremely long crimson hair trails on the red carpet behind her almost perfectly blended in. Telal is quite beautiful, and dressed in a black gown for her audience with the king. Usually, he is the one to summon her, not the other way around.

Telal took a deep breath and Pathos motioned to her to speak with a sympathetic look. "The kingdom is at your back as always, Telal. You have nothing to be stressed over here."

She shook her head, then brushed some of her extremely long hair from the edges of her face, pausing and then holding her hand out with a weak smirk- showing the king how her hands trembled with nervousness.

"I come bearing news of a cataclysmic scale." She breathed out heavily- you could hear a shudder in her throat as well. "Though extremely dangerous to myself- I managed to momentarily step outside of the flow of time using my magic. For a moment I gained a sixth sense- a sense of time. It was so... strange, and eerie. I was able to see how things were, are, and will be all at the same time. I could look at someone and all at once see everything they will ever be." She paused a moment, then slowly bowed her head. "I wanted to see if I could foresee any potential problems for the kingdom to see if I could cut them off before they happen but... what I saw was a much greater problem. To the whole world." She fell silent.

Pathos furrowed his brow. "But it has not yet come to pass, surely we can do what we can to suppress it?"

"King Regail..." It had been a long time since she addressed him as the commoners do. "I know what I must do to fix this problem, but... to do so, I must become your enemy."

"What..?"

"I am sorry. This kingdom... is part of the problem."

Logos Darkrain is a behemoth of a man and looks mighty intimidating even after his hair turns a deep grey with age. At 67 years old, he has retired from his lofty position in Etabed's regal justice. He had been the Justicarious; a rank that was essentially both judge and jury in one. He had the power to both convict and sentence. Logos is known to be fair to all he judged but also unrelentingly strict. He follows an unbending ruleset that he refuses to make exceptions in, for anyone- regardless of the situation. Because of this, he is often described as being cold and unfeeling- he does not regard his or anyone else's emotions when making a judgment call; the rules and cold logic are the only deciding factors.

His hair is to the base of his neck and combed back- formerly black but now a solid dark grey. Logos' beard is bushy and bristly; mid-length and connects up to his hair on either side. His eyes are a blue so pale they too almost look silver or grey. He has cream-colored skin and is still very muscular even now that he is three years retired and at 6'4" he is taller than the average person as well. He lives in a large log manor at the fringes of the hinterlands toward the southwest corner of the Etabed. It is peaceful here, far from the kingdom's heart and the many towns dotting the major trade routes into it. As lord of this quadrant of land, he is still far from the only person present. In addition to his manor house, there are several small homes encapsulated in sharpened log palisade walls that house his vassals- both servants and their families. Because it borders the untamed hinterlands- he keeps a pack of wolves as pets to help hunt more dangerous prey, as wolves are also the figurehead of his family's crest.

Logos makes his way from the great hall after an early dinner to his manor. He is made to pause several times as vassals stop to ask him questions or inform him of trouble or successful hunts. Unlike most lords; this only stops him momentarily. Because Logos only makes decisions based on rules and logic, he concludes makes his reply almost immediately and then moves on. There is no room for discussion with him. His wife Allya was hiding behind the door in the manor when he entered so he was unable to see her till the door closed and she jumped him from behind. Of course, he did not jump- it was impossible to startle the stern lord. She did get a smile out of him at least. She is wrapped in a very long, loose gown that almost looks like she has wrapped herself in a red velvet drape.

Allya whispers in his ear that the good lord still needs a worthy heir, and with a smirk he bows a moment, puts his arm between her legs, and picks her up with one arm, to carry to the bedroom! Allya is twelve years younger than Logos, so she is 55- and looks younger still. There are no grey hairs on her head yet. They had been trying for a child for many years- but only had time to earnestly do so since he retired. Allya was yet to deliver on this, however, making her rather nervous. She did not want to be the one to end his prestigious bloodline because her womb was not fertile enough.

He hears a bit of commotion from down in the stables, and a stable hand laughing and telling one of the horses to calm itself down- he just shrugged and closed the curtain on the window. The curtains are dark green with golden hem- casting the room in a dim green light once closed. The wood the manor is made from is a very dark brown, and the carpet and bedding in his room is a slate grey- fully adorning his space in earthen colors.

All Allya needs to do to fully undress is pull a single golden crest off from where her loose gown is synched and it completely falls off her on its own. Her hair is extremely wavy golden brown and hangs to her upper back- her lower back perhaps if you pulled it straight. She stands only as tall as Logos' lower ribs and walks up to him to undress him as he simply stands there and watches her naked body, working up to full erection as she disrobes him. When she wiggles his pants down his cock flicks up and loudly slaps the trail of pubes leading up his abs to his navel. His phallus is seven inches- impressive but not abnormally large. It is however impressively girthy for its length and riddled with fat veins, making it a challenge to take on regardless. Most of the nerves in a vagina concentrate around the opening and the rest are in the clitoris alone- so it is girth, not length that will make a woman squeal.

When he is undressed save for the old amulet he never removes; Allya gently puts her small warm hands on his hard abs shoves him onto the bed into a sitting position and then sits on his lap. She sat down teasingly so his hard cock popped up between her thighs and she rocks her hips so her plush, labia rub against the top of his phallus- they are already blushing in arousal. She gives him a teasingly gentle thigh-job but Logos furrows his brows a bit, noticing her rump takes up more space than it usually does. It is fairly slow so it takes him a few moments to realize it is expanding! It is actively growing as she works his dick! Her butt cheeks expand and become rounder and even her hips seem to be very gradually growing! Transformation magic, huh? A bit more exotic than he normally likes, but, he is not opposed.

Allya starts to moan and her breathing deepens as her arousal lifts into levels it has rarely ever attained. Her clit pulses powerfully and after a few moments, she notices it growing too! More of it becomes exposed outside of her clitoral hood; a swelling knot of tightened pleasure nerves. She becomes more frantically aroused herself, causing her to quickly abort her teasing of Logos and rock far enough forward to sit back down and spear herself on his shaft, unable to hold back. He quickly grabs her plump C-cup breasts and pulls her back against himself as he squirms up the bed with her on top of him. She holds her upper half up with her arms and bounces her expanding rump off his lap.

With every clench of her hungry pussy the labia seem to fatten- the skin getting thicker and darker but no less soft and rubbery. Her clit continues to swell fatter and larger itself- pulled as taut as it can go so that every new pulse stretches it a tiny bit larger! Her tailbone starts to squirm and muscles start to branch down into it, making it look like a plump little cone before sparse hairs start to grow on it! It is not simply a transformation to her figure- she is changing to be more animal! Every time she spears herself on his turgid cock, her vaginal muscles clench from the pleasure in an inward rippling that feels like her body is trying to draw him deeper... except on this particular occasion; it IS drawing him deeper! She must have cast a spell on HIM too- Logos can feel his cock growing! The portion beyond the foreskin seems to stretch a tiny bit more than the rest, causing his phallus to outgrow its foreskin unusually. Given her changes are animal- his likely are as well. He is outgrowing his foreskin because it is slowly becoming a sheath instead.

Allya was breathing heavily now and her bouncing on Logos' lap became stuttered as she became distracted with something on her own body- reaching down quickly to touch herself. Logos sits up partially and can see around her side; a whole new set of endowments! Two plump ebon-skinned cones grew from her crotch and rapidly fattened into small tits! They expanded into each other forming a small equine udder!! Logos grabbed her by the hip with one hand to hold her to him and then flipped both of them over with his other arm, reversing their positions to continue this doggy style- allowing him to once again reach around to fondle her endowments for her; but this time also putting her udder into his reach. Her labia continued to billow out fatter with each clench, turning darker and darker till they matched the coloration of her udder. Her clit now the size of a Ping-Pong ball was swallowed in the surrounding flesh, but yanked itself out to part the curtains when it clenches- often letting out a few drops of natural lube from her inner passage in doing so.

When Logos thrusts into her, her body rocks forward from the force and her developing tail becomes longer as the wave travels through it. The flesh and blood portion does not expand far, but the hair however does... a horse tail. The hair on it matches the hair on her head though- so it becomes wild-looking from all the powerful waves in it. She tickles his abs with it flicking around without Allya even being aware she is doing it. Logos feels rather pent up as his balls swell larger! His scrotum pulls smooth as the skin becomes denser and darkens to match Allya's engorged genitals. Her butt grows slowly but has refused to stop- now large enough to overflow Logos' much larger lap. It wobbles on impact from his thrusts but does not jiggle... it is expanded with muscle, not fat. Her thighs expand to try and keep up, but they both fail to notice that her middle toes are unusually large as well, and even the nail on said toe has expanded into a dark grey block... her feet slowly start to devolve into hooves.

Her ears start to become pointed and synch tighter with newborn muscles at their base to grant them mobility. Her hairline starts to progress down her neck in the back and her neck itself starts to bulk with muscle slightly! Allya's ass is now absolutely massive and extremely disproportionate to the rest of her body- a freakishly extreme pear-shaped figure. Her pussy must be expanding in overall size to keep pace- because Logos continues to grow yet she continues to be able to take his member.

His balls swing forward and clap over her enormous clit now with their increased weight, causing powerful surges of pleasure up through Allya's body, weakening her limbs and causing her to collapse forward. Her arms have not changed unlike her enlarging rump and legs, so her arms gave out, and put her face down on the bed while her legs keep her butt thrust up into Logos. He holds her plump little udder tightly from around her sides.

Logos groans as his muscles start to twitch slightly and flex on their own, expanding a bit bitter now in tiny pulses. Veins were pinched between flexing muscle and tightening skin, becoming fat and projected around his crotch as they struggled to feed his growing beasthood. His foreskin fattens and starts to pull back a bit- eventually popping back out of Allya entirely; too loose and too thick to fit into her properly- it is now a sheath regardless, and not meant to penetrate anything. His shaft gets darker, longer, and thicker. Veins now as big around as his fingers! A medial ring forms just behind his glans and even more shaft starts to slide out and divide from the existing pillar as his phallus becomes telescopic! The corona becomes bumpy- dragging the sensitive nerves along the muscle ribs of Allya's inner pussy. Her vagina grips him as the corona grows in width, causing it to be bent forward and back with his thrusts against the tight space.

He hears dull, hollow pops from her spine and her entire torso gets slightly longer! Her entire lower body now growing. Every time his dick is sucked a bit longer by the vacuum seal of her hungry cunt; Logos feels he must bottom out soon from growing far too large, but every time he is proven wrong as Allya's hole becomes larger and hungrier! Allya's anus as well becomes dark and then the sphincter muscle flexes and grows in size, causing the whole opening to project outward a bit into a rubbery doughnut of flesh. This happens to Logos as well- but he takes longer. The darkness of flesh and expansion of size travels up from his balls through his taint, causing it to billow out before it reaches his anus. He then unintentionally thrusts into Allya hard enough to wind her a moment because of a sharp explosion of pleasure, followed by a gush of precum as his prostate balloons in size inside of him!

Logos's entire body started to get a little bit larger as his muscles increased in size but also started to deform slightly. Their structure seemed to be adopting the shape of a horse before the rest of his body was, causing them to not quite properly align. Allya's feet stretched and the bones grew into one another becoming a cannon bone, while her middle toe expanded to devour the surrounding ones, leaving her with a horse hoof in place of her former feet. This completed the look of a full-sized mare- but localized almost entirely into her bottom half, making it wildly disproportionate to her still almost entirely petite human upper half.

Finally, Logos let go of her teats and collapsed forward, catching himself on the bed before pinning Allya below him and erupting cum into her. His now ostrich-egg-sized testicles were not just for show- the jets of cum he fired were both more forceful and larger than he could have ever produced before and he filled the remaining space in her vagina with his cum in mere moments, overflowing her slightly despite of her vastly increased size. She collapsed completely flat, moaning as she gently ground her udder into the sheets below her. Logos sat up and then flopped back, drawing his softening cock from her. It was absolutely giant- and mostly equine looking, but the glans seem to have kept their human shape other than the increased size, and bumpy corona.

"Well, that was... something. You should warn me beforehand if you are going to use magic in the bedroom, heh."

"Hmmm, oka- wait, what?" She rolled over with her brows furrowed in confusion. "I would have told you."

"Except?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you didn't tell me this time, is what I meant. It isn't that big of a deal."

Now she started to look worried. "I... thought you were doing that."

"You didn't do this?" He sat upright. "You are not joking are you, because this is a serious offense of privacy invasion otherwise. Someone will have to be punished for this, well-intentioned or not."

Allya softly shook her head. She thought Logos was using transformation magic, and he thought Allya was using it. Neither of them knew this was going to happen! Allya's spine had partially shifted, so she could not even stand fully upright properly now! When she tries to get up, she is forced to bow forward a bit because her legs and spine do not bend properly to allow normal upright mobility. Logos is now so tall he has to duck to fit through doorways, and his body feels a bit stiff and awkward because his muscles are misshapen. He also cannot properly do up his pants because his genitals do not entirely fit inside of them. His cock has a sheath to retract into, but his balls alone are now large enough to fill his underpants, not even giving the sheath room to wedge in there with them.

As soon as he walked out into the court of his forest bastion he was met with utter chaos. The first thing his eyes fixated on was a stallion wearing the blown-out clothing of the stable hand Logos glanced out the window before having sex. The young man had been turned entirely into a horse, and one of the mares was presenting her rump to him, swatting him in the face with her tail trying to entice the boy to mount- but he was too confused and worried to be worked into an erection. In contrast to him was a naked woman with horse hooves for feet, a horsetail, and the genitals of a mare. She looks confused but not particularly worried, and keeps futzing with ill-fit reins tethering her to the stall... it isn't supposed to be a woman at all. It was a horse, turned into a human.

As soon as one of the elder men spotted Logos, he shoved the lord back into his manor and slammed the door behind him to mute the chaos outside. The horse turned woman and the man turned horse was only what Logos had examined in detail- he had seen several such things scattered about the court. An old hunter on his knees growling as he tenderly held his exposed member as it was forced beyond a full erection and the internal pressure deformed its shape- foreskin peeling off the shaft as it turned to a furry sheath and a canine member started to emerge. Wolves plodding around loose in the court looking more like werewolves- still beasts but with added human traits making their forms gangly and better suited for bipedal movement. A handmaiden who went to see what the commotion was, and now flushed with the sensation of going into heat as her genitals turned to those of a wolf, causing her to frantically drop her skirt and rub it against any surface she could find trying to cure the incessant itch as a fluffy tail started to grow out.

Even Samas- the elder that shooed Logos back into his manor was not all human anymore. His ears were those of a wolf, and his size and musculature greatly increased with equine traits. His middle fingers had enlarged ahead of the rest to devolve into hooves but his other fingers were developing paw pads on them and their nails turned to wolf claws!

"What in Dirocke is happening out there, Samas?? Who would dare assault my home? And why? I know I have not made many friends in my career, but I am retired... I am no longer a logical target."

"I haven't a clue my lord, but it seems to be swapping everyone, so staying inside is your best bet." Samas looked him over and then blushed slightly. "Though, it seems its effects can go through walls too, just not as fast."

"S-swapping?"

"Animals to humans, and humans to animals. People who were closest to the horses are turning into horses, and the horses are slowly becoming more human. The same is true for the wolves. I noticed the connection when my...ah... my uh, wife grew an enormous bushy tail..."

"She was near the wolves?"

"N-no, she was in our bedroom- she grew a tail much, much larger than that. There was apparently a squirrel that was making a nest in our roof. And now the squirrel is the size of a small human child and stuck in the roof- no longer able to fit out the hole it made for itself, and my wife had to relocate to the basement to avoid becoming more of a rodent."

"Is... is it complete? What of their mental state?"

Samas nodded, but also groaned and stumbled back against the wall. His boots groaned even louder than he, and the seams started to burst revealing an expanding horse hoof inside. "The men and women slowly forget themselves, and the animals seem to gain a rudimentary intellect beyond their station."

Logos nodded. "Expanded intellectual capacity- but not transferred knowledge. So they are not body-swapping... it is giving the animals humanity and beasthood to the humans..?"

"Darrian rode out immediately to the capital to tell of what is happening... Gods only know if he got anywhere before turning into a steed himself, riding atop a new, naked man." Samas shook his head sadly, leaning even more heavily against the wall as he became taller from his legs devolving into those of a horse.

Logos also groaned, reaching around to rub his back before being startled by a dull pop in his back and a strange squelching feeling in his body as his entire torso stretched longer. A few minutes later Allya made her way awkwardly down the polished dark wood stairs from the bedroom, holding her gown to her front rather than putting it on as it would no longer fit her. Her middle fingers were now huge with blocky nails and her neck and torso were even longer still making it very difficult to remain upright! Her hair extended now into a full mane! Her nostrils flared and enlarged and the bridge of her nose popped with a hollow sound and expanded wider. Logos helped hold her upright but she leaned on him heavier and heavier.

Logos usually makes decisions on the fly with no effort at all, but for once he was puzzled. He made his choices on logic and rules but this has never happened before- there are no rules on this particular situation. There is not enough information for him to make a call as to what they can do. He, Allya, and Samas relocated to the wine cellar of the manor- the furthest place they could get from any animals to try and wait things out, to see if Darrian could return with help. There was no knowing how far-reaching the spell effects were. Even covering his entire forest bastion with an effect like this is beyond any normal sorcerer.

Even in the cellar however they still transformed very slowly- the stables were just outside the manor, between it and the great hall. The transformations on the outside seemed to progress at a mixed pace. It formed a siphon between man and beast- so if a human stands between another human and animal- they will turn but the person they got in front of will be shielded from any changes till they are fully animal. And someone who is turned animal cannot pass their beasthood to another human to turn partially back- only an actual beast can pass beasthood. So for that same reason- an animal turned human cannot turn back animal by exposing themselves to other feral beasts- they are stuck human.

Duncan, the bastion's smithy found his wife shrinking in size and growing a powdery soft fur, till he found her loose clothing on the floor with a ferret crawling around in it. Where his wife's pet ferret had been was now a gorgeous naked woman, utterly clueless as to what was going on.

Old man Hoss up in the rookery shrank into the body of a messenger pigeon, while several pigeons grew in size and suddenly became terrible at flying. There were more than enough birds to turn Hoss himself into one, but only one man in the rookery, spread between many birds, so none of the birds gained enough humanity to even vaguely resemble a human.

Several vassals of the bastion evacuated entirely- running into the surrounding woods. As dangerous and untamed as the forest is- they assumed if they got far enough they would exit the spell radius. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

Samas stood between Allya and the front of the wine cellar, deliberately taking the beasthood first to shield the lord and lady of the bastion- his final act of service to them. He swelled huge with muscle as his bones popped and clicked into new positions; shoulder blades rotating forward, rib cage changing dimension, and hips expanding. His clothes yanked tight and seams burst one by one as holes shred into weakened points across the fabric, trying to make room. As the stable hand Logos had seen earlier; Samas was eventually reduced to a stallion wearing the torn remnants of his former outfit.

Logos seen Allya was already extremely absentminded- she could not hold onto a thought for long and spoke in simplified, short sentences. Having nothing else to do, and since her intellect was dwindling regardless; they popped open some of the wine reserves and got drunk together as Logos watched her slowly devolve further into a mare. Her voice became deeper and even the words she still remembered slurred as her mouth shape changed. Her nose became too big for her face and then her teeth- forcing her entire skull to stretch out into a horse's. Unlike Samas who took on some wolf traits unintentionally- Allya never went out into the court to be close enough to anything other than a horse, so she turned fully into a mare with a beautiful golden brown wavy mane and tail.

As Logos started to ponder the doom of his humanity- a barely dressed young man burst into the cellar, looking around confused a moment before pointing at Logos across the way. "Are you the lord Logos?"

"Aye, and you?"

"Dust- the former mount of Darrian. He told me a bunch of stuff to relay to you- said it was really important."

Samas was right- they had switched places, sort of. Not all of Dust's humanity came from Darrian, and not all of Darrian's beasthood came from Dust. The news was not good- Dust did not return with help from the capital... in fact, nearly the opposite. The range of the spell is still unknown. Every stop they passed on the way there including the capital itself was succumbing to the same fate. The capital was in utter chaos, because they had more time for their fate to sink in, due to a big city not containing very many animals in the first place. Darrian was not able to gather much information unfortunately outside of that- he could not get to the palace to gain an audience with the king. He was riding atop Dust, so he was devolving into a horse quickly and his horse was turning human- making him unable to properly carry his friend on his back.

It is very easy to spot Darrian now, even among the mixed creatures of the bastion. A stallion with a shimmering black pelt but also gigantic black wings thanks to all the crows and ravens roosting in the trees along the way, and the feathers had a pearlescent shine inherited unintentionally from June bugs hiding among the foliage at the trailside. His equine muzzle had a large crow beak on it that still conformed to the dimensions of a horse's mouth and his front legs had banded black scales on it instead of horse pelt. This stalled Dust's evolution into a man because Darrian ran out of humanity to give him, but to get back to the bastion Dust had to once again pass by other devolving humans and take their humanity without meaning to complete his evolution. The partial outfit he is currently dressed in belonged to Darrian before he turned. The most valuable piece of information Dust could relay to Logos is that Darrian heard from the few people in the capital they listened to; that it all originated from the castle, or somewhere near it. Before the chaos, the spell slingers of the kingdom felt a tremendous wave of mana ripple across the entire kingdom and even beyond- and the wave originated from Castle Etabed.

Logos' logic-based mind immediately put together that the event must have for some reason or another originated from Magnus Telal Ethos. Ethos is the only spell caster in the entire kingdom who is skilled enough to even hope to create a spell of this magnitude. But then why did it happen in the first place? She is close to the king, why on earth would she attack her own kingdom? If it originated from the castle, there is no way King Pathos would not have known about this immediately, yet it remains unresolved. In any case- it seems Logos must come out of retirement. The kingdom needs help.

"I cannot yet move from the cellar... Dust, I need one last favor from you. From the kennel- bring me the wolf named Harbinger."

Most of the wolves kept in the bastion are half-bloods; cross-bred with Dire Wolves. Harbinger, on the other hand, is one of the pureblood dire wolves that sired them. The dire versions of animals live longer and are larger than their standard counterparts. More striking however is the fact that their bones are sturdier and much bulkier than the standard animal... so much larger in fact that they don't fit inside of their own body. The back of its spinal cord is visible outside of its body as well as the very top of the ribs where they link to the spine- sitting half outside of the flesh. Even the skull is thicker than normal- a plate of dense bone across its forehead is outside of its body, shielding its brain from any outside trauma. An arrow cannot pierce its skull from the front. Dire beasts are much rarer than the standard ones, however- they are fiercely territorial and the expansion of humans has dwindled their available territories. They also require much more food than the standard beast, so when resources dwindle, the dire beasts are the first to starve.

Harbinger plodded into the cellar a few minutes later and sat down, tilting his head to the side; not understanding why he was brought here or what was happening to his masters. His stare is extremely piercing; one eye is gold, and the other is blue. His fur is midnight black.

Logos approached him, stumbling a bit as he felt his body start to deform again. He managed to ease himself onto his hands and knees before the wolf. Harbinger let out a confused grunt himself and started to squirm from the odd sensation as Logos' humanity started to absorb into him. Closer to both the horses and the wolf Logos started to devolve quickly. His ears took the triangular shape of a wolf, and his skull enlarged; wolves have large heads in proportion to their body. His tailbone grew out longer than a horse's, but when the fur grew in it was both a mix of wolf and horse! It was softer than horse hair but much longer and heavier than wolf fur, causing it to drape off the tail some distance.

Logos groaned as his muscles tightened and then suddenly in rapid-fire his ribs cracked and his rib cage expanded forward, becoming barrel-shaped! His shoulders cracked and slid further down around the sides shifting the sockets low. The bone processions of the upper vertebrae extended up to brace his enlarged upper back muscles like a horse, but his midriff remained sunken in and the processions on the lower vertebrae angled forward... like a wolf. His largest and smallest toe started to regress while the two remaining ones enlarged and stole the mass from the middle toe; the nails evolving into huge triangular hoof segments. Nothing has a two-segment hoof with no dewclaws- it was taking both horse and wolf traits again, mixed. When in resting the two segments join together into one larger hoof. On the back of the knuckle joints a fat paw pad cushions it against the ground, so more of his foot touches the ground than an ungulate should have.

On his hands more paw traits seemed to manifest, resulting in his hands turning into a three-segment hoof. When spread out the individual segments have rather sharp tips- sharp enough to cut. His tail turned deep grey like his hair, but the mat of hair on his crotch and chest turned to snow-white fur which spread to consume the rest of him. His neck thickened with muscle and stretched longer. The neck was consumed in white fur but his hair color spread down a strip of longer fur in the middle back- like a horse mane. All the fur on his neck and chest was very bushy and pretty long, but the maned portion was so long that it draped off the side. His facial muscles twitched and tightened as his skull started to expand. His back teeth become giant and blocky like a horse's. Logos' lips turned glossy black like a wolf.

Logos' clothes stretched and burst off him one by one. The only man present used to be a horse, so there was no reason to be modest, but forever adhering to etiquette and rules, Logos refused to actively disrobe in the presence of a guest and just put up with the discomfort as it tore itself off. Once his expanding hips burst his underpants off and let his changed genitals out canine traits found their way in there too. The shaft turned red- a dark grey-red on the first half and a base red beyond the medial ring. The shaft also fattened up down its entire length, becoming a bit wider toward the very end, making it sort of baseball bat-shaped! This erased the ridge between the corona and the shaft; now only marked with the ring of bumps that adorned it. The glans were stretched flatter but retained a vaguely rounded head with a gentle cleft down the middle. His urethra grew longer than the rest- projecting up and off the glans in a rounded cone of flesh like the point of a canine's phallus. The fur that grows in the cleft of his balls exceeds the length of the rest, giving him a shaggy strip to insulate his massive balls.

As his face stretched his nose darkened and pushed forward to meet his upper lip. There was a gap where no teeth occupied his jaw like in an equine mouth, but then his front teeth knit themselves together as they became taller and turned to fangs, like a canine. His nose became textured and black turning to a canine's in appearance, but then his nostrils flared huge like a horse, stretching it out! Because the nostrils are so large, the bare skin portion of his nose is shaped like a rounded, stretched-out letter M.

Across from him, Harbinger changed shape. His limbs became a bit longer- his ribs compressed in the front making them wider than round. The head of his phallus swelled fatter, taking on the shape of a mushroom cap, though retained the projected urethra of a canine and the knot at its base. His hips shifted allowing him to walk on two legs comfortably and he let out several agitated yips as his muzzle shortened. Rather than look like a sitting wolf, he looked like a squatting werewolf at this point. He was still adorned with the exposed bone of a dire animal. Logos had given half his humanity to one or more horses down in the stables already, so this was as far as his lost humanity could influence Harbinger.

Logos shook his mane to re-settle the fluff of his neck and then grunt. He is completely animal now... the last of his humanity passed on to Harbinger. "Can you understand me, Harbinger?" His voice rang through the room yet his mouth did not move to produce it- a psychic projection.

"Alpha. This one knows." Harbinger spoke in a gravelly voice- unable to use magic of any sort to project his thoughts.

Dust furrowed his brows in confusion. "Wait, you can still think like a human?"

Logos lifted his front paw-hoof to his chest, where the ancient, tarnished heirloom pendant still sat. "The Justicar is warded from all outside influence to their mental state. They can turn me physically into whatever they want- I will still serve them justice." He turned back to Harbinger and motioned to the door with a nod. "We are needed in the capital. Someone needs to pay for this carnage. Today, we hunt a human."

Harbinger's fangs exposed themselves in a wide grin. "Fresh blood."

Part Two : Holy Cow

The town of Lopinside has a very low population... at least, of humans. The town is known for being very scenic and covers quite a bit of land along the trade route to the capital of Mountholme where King Regail sits. The town square is a large circular ring of shops and uneven shale stone pathways around a blue flowering wisteria tree of monumental size- its roots partially exposed on the surface and entwining the entire heart of the town. Outside of that however the homes are quite far apart and each stands watch over a large farm plot or ranch- or both in some cases. Because there were so many farm animals the entire town turned to chaos quickly, and there was no shelter to take from the changes. Trying to distance yourself from one animal only brought you closer to another.

Emily is a strong-willed and pretty woman- though her face is becoming a bit creased and she has a few grey hairs here and there despite only being 41 years young. She used to be a member of town watch when the area was more hazardous- Cockatrice often invaded the farmsteads trying to blend in with the livestock, breathing petrifying gas at anyone who tried to remove them. Mountholme eventually sent out paladins to slay the monsters plaguing the town- as their holy affinity allowed them to cleanse the effects of Cockatrice's breath off of themselves before it was able to incapacitate them. This eliminated her old job- but it is also how she met her husband Sir Naris Richwood; a paladin who remained in Lopinside to marry. Now she is a dairy farmer, tending cattle.

Being a small town further out from Mountholme- by the time news of what was happening got to Lopinside all the humans were already gone. Emily first found out one morning when she woke up and rubbed her breasts- her nipples so erect they itched with pressure. Naris already woke and was out trying to protect the town from any monsters so he was not around when the effects hit her. She gasped and sat up right away, gawking at her nipples which were now engorged so large they were almost as long as her pink finger and as thick as her thumb! Her areola was wider than before too and the edge now had a softer fade! She had no idea what to think of it, so she tried to ignore it and do her chores as usual- starting with milking the cows.

As soon as she approached the barn she became absentminded, and started to breathe heavily as her breasts firmed up and started to look swollen! Her areola started to spread even wider but the edge became even more tapered and the coloration started to fade away overall becoming more like her normal skin tone the further it spread across her breasts till her nipples were the same color as the rest of her skin! Her breathing became constricted as her breasts shoved out against her top, but when Emily tried to undo the buttons on her shirt she could not! Her breasts shoved the fabric tightly enough that she could not get her fingers around the button- it was too tight! Both Emily and the fabric of her shirt started to groan! Wet spots formed on the front and milk started to drip- filtered through the fabric of her shirt and her eyes went wide with confusion and worry.

Emily stood upright and squirmed a bit from an unknown pleasure from below her breasts- then her breathing became rapid with panic when she realized what was happening the moment she felt flesh on flesh; rubbing the underside of her breasts. She started to grow a second pair of boobs below the first ones! They were very quickly catching up to her first pair which was also still growing. The middle button on her shirt tore free, causing all four of her breasts to wobble violently from the motion- the button fired off like a bullet. Then another button, then another. More and more of the cross-shaped cleavage became visible as the four breasts swelled huge, with enormous floppy teats on their fronts! She did not notice their favorite cow Grace was inheriting her humanity- as Grace was in the stall closest to the barn door.

Emily turned from the barn to look around- trying to see who would be casting this spell on her, but saw no one. She decided to head toward the town to get help, if not from anyone else; then from her husband's holy cleansing. The effects seemed to slow as she distanced herself from the barn, heading to the smaller corral by the house where their two horses were kept. One was missing- ridden by Naris into town already. Emily approached her mount to ride him into town but stumbled forward and had to catch herself on the wall as changes rippled through her body again! Proximity to the equine caused her clit to swell larger, which caused bursts of unintentional pleasure, making her horny despite her worry! Then her labia thickened and darkened, but became leaf-shaped like a bovine's bits. In her crotch, a pair of dark circles formed and fat immediately started to swell them forward! Little dark cones then ebon teats as two udder segments ballooned under them, forming into a petite equine udder!

She got onto the horse the best she could, still not realizing quite what was happening, and rode the short way into town, but before getting into the town proper she stopped the horse and turned. What she saw made her immediately second guess going into the town. The woman who owns the potion shop was whining like a dog, straining to still speak English as she complained to her golden lab as it thrusts into her, right there in the street in front of her own shop! Her clothes were draped off her, no longer fitting properly, and while she complained verbally she physically did not attempt to get away. Her golden lab was now a striking young man with violently wavy golden hair- though still had a full canine tail and genitals as he knotted his former mistress.

Two women lay on their backs in the shade of the wisteria tree with a book between them, and a red-breasted robin beside them standing on a pile of discarded clothing... a former human. Both of the other women were tiny- one the size of a small child and the other the size of a doll! They both had colorful wings instead of arms and the feet of a bird, as well as the tail of a bird. One had a beak and feathers across her face and the top of her head, very slowly spreading from there. The other still had a human head but her hair was starting to fall out forced out by feathers slowly growing in! The songbirds in the tree branches were turning them! Emily could not see the actual birds hidden in the flower-draped branches, but they likely looked the same as the turning women, depending on how many were in the tree to split the humanity among them.

There was a perfectly normal naked man leaning up against the wall of the forgery by his hands while a male donkey wearing stretched and torn clothes fucks him! The donkey used to pull the supply cart must have fully swapped with its master- and is not possessed of enough human knowledge to realize anything is amiss about having sex in public. It had its hooves over the man's shoulders and crossed over his chest as it brayed and fucked without a care in the world for the chaos around him.

Emily spotted Naris as he approached her quickly on foot, motioning for her to get off the horse and turn around till he got close enough for her to hear him. "Get away from Jack- a spell is causing everyone to swap humanity with animals, we cannot be near any beasts."

"Surrounded by farmsteads? I don't know a single place anywhere near Lopinside that is not occupied by at least one animal!"

She paused and blushed as Naris got closer and she realized he had an enormous bulge in the front of his pants- the codpiece of his armor removed so his now equine genitals did not get crushed under steel and leather. He is also at least a foot taller and looks more muscular. Naris shooed the stallion away and told it to stay put. By now it already has a depressed midriff and its chest had started to change proportion from contamination from Emily's humanity. Naris walked with her away from the town center but he did not know where to go either. There was nowhere to run. His holy powers did not work against this magic- it is not a malicious spell in nature, it was cast with good intentions.

Emily gasped. "Oh gods- Naris, the cows!"

"Aye, they will claim our humanity if we go back. Heck- eventually even if we stay here they may still take it."

"No, I mean they are all penned up!"

"Hm?"

"If we turn into animals we cannot let them out! The cows cannot get out on their own- they would be trapped and eventually starve to death, trapped in the barn!"

Emily went to run back to their barn and Naris grabbed her shoulder to stop her. "W-wait, if you go near them you will turn even faster and doom yourself."

"Naris... look at me." He blushed as his eyes immediately fixated on her four enormous breasts hanging out of her blown-open shirt and they both heard a seam pop on his pants from his giant erection fighting the fabric. "We can't fix this right now, but we can save them. They depend on us, it is our duty to protect them."

He smirked and gave a bit of a huff, nodding to her. "Aye. A paladin lives to serve the greater cause, it is not man alone who shares the blessed light of the Gods. Let's go then. If we join them in beasthood- let us do it together."

They kissed quickly and dashed back to their ranch, already starting to feel the changes press into their bodies with increasing vigor as they approached the barn. The sensation is both impossibly soft but also very apparent- like the touch of the wind. It flows softly around all objects but also has the potential strength to tear a house from its foundation and throw it like a toy.

The changes assaulted Naris slower because up till now he had only inherited some horse traits- no bovine traits. He did his best to help steady Emily as she frantically dashed around the barn letting the cows out to roam while changing at the same time. Two cows started to grow long human hair out from the tufts of fur on their heads. One cow suddenly stopped what it was doing and started to look around, like it had suddenly become much more aware of its surroundings. Emily's feet started to change causing her to stumble forward and Naris caught her to keep her off the ground, but then she looked down to see her hands changing as well. Thumb regressed to nothing as her outer two fingers turned to dew claws and drew back and inward as her hands fused into cannon bones and her remaining two fingers formed the front segments of a bovine's cloven hooves.

"Ooh... it's s-soOOUUU... s-stroOong. MmmMM-MUH-Mmm... MOO!" She startled herself at her inability to keep in the lowing sounds!

Short, stumpy horns broke the skin over her temples and her ears started to become pointed. Her diffused red lips turned pink and the color started to fade up her face to take over the end of her nose as well and her nostrils started to flare larger! A thin tail wiggled its way over the back of her pants, causing the waist to push down so the moment her thighs started to reshape her pants immediately fell off!

Naris went to help her pull them back up but realized the effort was futile. He instead went to finish what she started and left her there to open more stalls and get the rest of the cows out into the sunny field. He underestimated his changes however and only got one stall open before he hunched over and let out a deep groan that was almost a bull's lowing! The leather straps on his armor snapped and the plates popped off him as his upper body muscles exploded in size! His point of view started to rise as his entire body grew larger and larger! His giant dong ruptured the front of his pants and underpants finally on its own, causing enough damage that the rest of his pants fell away. He staggered to the next stall and opened it; the cow paused to look at him in confusion before seeing the other cows heading outside and simply followed them. Naris failed to notice in the commotion that Grace remained in the barn with them, watching with curiosity instead of following the other cows outside.

Naris stumbled forward as his legs changed, causing him to slam his head into the door of the next stall. Horns started to grow out of his head much larger than Emily's and left a few dots of blood on the wooden door. He opened the latch and released another cow- not many left now. His ropy tail grew out and started to lash around erratically. His thoughts started to slow down, like walking into a deep mire- making it harder to move. His attention span was shortened, making it easier to derail his train of thought before his mind fully connected the dots. His upper body is so enormously muscular and his torso starts to lengthen, that it becomes impossible for him to stand up on two legs without leaning against the stalls, shimmying sideways to get to the next latch.

Emily crouched down, hugging her tits as they grow still larger! She frantically lows like a cow when she means to moan like a woman. Emily is kneading as much of her breasts as she can as quickly as possible to relieve the feeling- she is far too full of milk, and it dribbles out constantly from her fat, floppy teats even without touching them at all! When she squeezes her blushing breasts the milk sprays out in a solid stream and tickles the insides of her plump teats! With a loud bellow from Emily, her rib cage suddenly expands shoving her arms to the side, and then her shoulder blades crack and shift forward- locking her arms in a forward position, no longer properly able to grab at her boobs! This tore away the rest of her shirt, leaving only a bit of shredded cloth around her shoulders. The skin starts to turn pink and they grow wider- suddenly starting to fuse! Her four giant breasts are becoming one giant bovine udder!! Emily hunches forward so far that her front hooves lightly touch the floor and her spine starts to crack and pop as it gets longer! Her torso grows, but almost all of the new cells are created on the top half downward- causing the old flesh to shuffle down her expanding torso, which then causes her udder to position itself lower and lower till it bops up against her existing horse udder!

Emily's hips pop loudly and lock her legs in a quadruped position, causing her to fall onto her side from her leaned-forward squat- her udder flopping heavily on the floor and blasting four streams of milk across the floor from the impact. Her pants and panties tore straight through the body and covered less and less as her thighs grew, stretching what remained into tight bands around her thighs. Her face crunches and clicks and she grunts several times in a deepening voice as her nose expands and meets her upper lip and then her entire face starts to extend out, expanding her skull! Her tail lashes around wildly behind her. With a gurgling sound, her horse udder suddenly starts to bloat well beyond equine proportions! The skin started to fuse with the underside of the bovine udder which was still trying to shove itself lower- both udders trying to occupy the same space! The ebon coloration of the horse udder spread onto the cow udder, becoming blotchy in the middle as the equine mammaries ballooned to the same size as the cow ones! She now had a SIX segment udder- one pink colored, one dappled, and one black! A fine pelt of orange-brown fur faded in across her entire body.

"M-m-m-mmmmhrmmmmmmm-!" Her brow furrowed, trying to fight the urge to low like a cow.

Her hair started to fall out as the last traces of human features stretched into the shape of a cow head.

"Mmuuuuhmm-muh-moomm moooo, m-MOO MROOOUUUU!!" She looked surprised at her own outburst, but then her iris expanded and darkened to hide the whites of her eyes and suddenly her expression softened to a very tranquil look as her human thoughts faded away, and she forgot who she was supposed to be.

One of the nearby cows now had a half-sized ribcage and sunken midriff. A smaller udder, but her chest was now also adorned with human breasts- bestowed unintentionally by the remnants of Emily.

Naris fell forward after opening another latch- suddenly distracted by Emily's eruption of increasingly loud bellows. Seeing her fully bovine probably should have bothered him, but he had regressed far enough himself that it simply drove his enormously heavy flopping dick to full erection. He went to rush over and mount her but then remembered there was something else he was trying to do. He did not want to do anything else, he wanted to wrap her wet pussy around his throbbing monster of a cock. But as a paladin, he had been trained in discipline. To fight urges and only stand for what is morally correct. It was mental agony, but he turned himself away from Emily for the moment and as soon as he saw the last two stall doors latched closed- he remembered what he was supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, the moment he collapsed to the floor to turn the first time- his hands quickly started to devolve. By the time he remembered his purpose he no longer had hands, but cloven hooves. His feet turned to the single-segment hoof of a horse, but his hands turned bovine.

He tried to stand enough to put his hooves onto the stall wall to support him but could not even get that far off the floor- he just did a little hop and made the floor shake when his hooves came back down almost hard enough to splinter the wood. The almost grotesquely huge muscles of his upper back started to seethe into his neck, bloating it massively thick, then the veins fattened, and then the neck started to grow longer. His voice distorted and lowered even further than Emily's, making his voice thunderously low. His lips and nose started to turn black rather than pink like Emily's. Black fur started to gather on his shins, forearms, and chest and quickly spread to encompass his entire body. His ostrich egg-sized testicles sank lower as his scrotum grew longer. His sheath lengthens and fuses further up his underside, but this causes his already very long horse dick to stretch still longer so that the same amount of flesh is still projected outside of the sheath!

Naris grunted in frustration at his inability to reach the latch and in the devolving mind of a bull that quickly turned to aggression. He backed up a pace and then immediately charged forward, leaping as far off the floor as he could and turned at the last moment- his large left horn sheered the latch off both remaining stall doors, breaking them completely off the door and left a shallow trench in the wood where his horn raked across!

Naris grunted several times as his nostrils flared big, and then he started to snort and bellow as his face expanded, robbing him of his remaining humanity- but thankfully not before he finished his task of setting the real bovine free. Discarding his humanity to save them in his place. As his neck lengthened his hairline extended down it- apparently still some equine traits blending with him, resulting in a mane. His face however fully devolved into that of a black bull.

His snorting and grunting did not slow down when the changes stopped- he immediately turned and rushed at Emily who was only just now rolling back onto her hooves to stand up and immediately thrust into her before she even saw him coming! His scrotum is so long that on his initial powerful thrust, his balls swung so far forward he managed to slap the middle two teats on her udder, under her! He has a horse phallus so it is much thicker than bovine, but Emily's vulva is not proper bovine either. The labia are shaped like a bovine's but her clit is massive and darts in and out like an equine- and her vaginal passage manages to stretch around his girth.

Lopinside was lost quite quickly due to the animal population already exceeding the human population by quite a bit. This also meant that most altered animals only vaguely resembled humans at most- because humanity was spread so thin among them. A day and a half later, three nobles wandered into town- their carriage guided by two horses still wearing a few scraps of human clothing, indicating they were not meant to be animals. The three nobles however were perfectly calm and did not seem at all affected by the magic. Each one wears a silver bangle etched in magic runes.

"Well, how's it looks boys?"

The second noble scoffed at him. "You can look yourself, you know?"

The woman among them had wandered ahead and now saunters back toward them. "Gone- everyone. Too many animals in this area; no one stood a chance. They had probably fully devolved within an hour or two of the spell first going off."

The first noble nervously adjusts his bangle. "I know some nowhere location like this wouldn't have access to anything of this sort but, I have been nervous... wondering if anyone else has access to this sort of magic?"

The second noble shook his head. "No! Of course not. These bangles were specially designed by the Magnus to preserve our humanity against her own spell when she set it off in Mountholme."

"Yeah but... Ethos had to learn it from somewhere, right? Which means the information is out there and could potentially be learned by someone else."

The woman shrugged. "Maybe one or two relics exist able to resist the spell- so what? Ethos stationed people like us in various locations to scan the remains. It is all of us chosen nobles against MAYBE two or three stragglers? They aren't going to get anywhere. Even if they squirm their way from us... what are they going to do? Fight Telal Ethos? She will utterly destroy them. It is not like they are going to start humanity over somewhere else- you need more than one person to progenerate a species."

One of the men was suddenly knocked off his feet, and a huge figure leaped from the laneway he was standing on the edge of! Before they could react the huge figure rushed and slammed into the next noble- slamming him with her shoulder so hard it felt like he had just been trampled by a horse!

Grace paused in front of the carriage, with her hands on her hips. She had been following Emily and Naris the entire time they were trying to free the other cows- so she absorbed the most humanity! Now able to stand on her rear hooves easily, her torso is completely humanoid. She has human-shaped hands with thumbs- but her nails are still tremendously blocky like hoof segments and her outer two digits are disproportioned to the inner two, like dew claws versus the primary hoof segments. She only has fur on her lower arms and legs and her upper back- but it is hard to tell where it starts and stops because her skin is the exact same white with black splotches that the fur has.

She has two gigantic breasts that are pastel pink- with areola and huge nipples the same color. Below that are a pair of more reasonably sized E-cup breasts- though the teats on the lower pair are just as big as on the upper ones. The pink coloration continues down her midriff and ends at her crotch- bovine-shaped labia. She has very sharp-looking hip bones and still has her old cow tail. Her muzzle is very short but otherwise her face still looks bovine. Because her face is much shorter though- her eyes can face forward, and her iris has regressed in size giving her humanoid eyes, and her head has human hair. Her hair is all black except her bangs, which are solid white.

Though the straps are damaged and it doesn't fit very well- she is wearing some of Naris' paladin armor! She knows some simple holy spells, and holds his mace in her left hand at the ready! Naris and Emily have always taken such good care of their cows, protecting the herd and caring for them their entire lives. They sacrificed their humanity to save their cows one last time, so now in their wake- Grace will protect them this time! Telal chose nobles to keep human to scan the affected areas in the kingdom to make sure nothing goes amiss somehow, or straggling demi-humans cause unnecessary damage... she did not anticipate that the animals would stand up for the humans. She sees a bitter cold future where humans erase animals, but that is a future that has not yet come to pass. Many animals love their humans and are loved in turn by their humans.

"Holy cow, it's a... holy... cow. G-get away from the carriage! You don't know what you are doing, Bessie!"

"The name is Grace, and I know what I am mooing, er, d-doing. Ugh, embarrassing myself apparently."

The woman tried to rush Grace and pull her away before she could get in the carriage, but Grace swung Naris' mace at the woman! The woman blocked with her arm, but the mace hit her bangle directly and split it! The bangle broke off and the woman shook her head, now looking panicked, and stumbled back, rubbing her now bare wrist.

"N-n-no! You can't, I was supposed to... no! Not me!"

She rushed at the noble still getting up off the ground by the laneway and tried to steal the bangle of his wrist but he obviously wrestled free and knocked her away.

Grace did not waste a moment, grabbing the reins and getting the human-turned-horses to speed away, toward the capital. She had been listening in on their conversation hidden in the shadow of the laneway the whole time. Thanks to their conversation she now knew the source of this madness was Ethos, waiting in the castle in Mountholme. If Grace means to restore the humans, she will need to either convince Ethos or somehow defeat her.

The noble left bangle-less on the street collapsed to her hands and knees, trembling as her body was assaulted suddenly by the magic. She looked around frantically but could not even see any animals- what was she swapping with?! The other two nobles backed away from her, now doubly glad their bangles remained intact. The woman's body seemed to ripple and bloat up a bit, and little nubs formed down her sides! Soon the nubs started to squirm around, wiggling as they developed into small little proto-limbs! Her torso started to stretch longer and her anus projected out off her ass as her body extended beyond there as well! Her arms and legs started to look soft and lose definition... slowly shrinking to try and match the little nub limbs! She was rapidly shrinking into her clothing, and in the corner of her panicking eye, she saw someone else growing beside her- and spotted a rapidly growing caterpillar at the edge of the road suddenly taking on human traits.

Part Three : Street Rat's Revenge

The king's champion Rajh walked into the room, resting his palm on the pommel of his enormous sword in wait.

Pathos shook his head. "Surely you cannot mean to do this to the world?"

Telal sighed heavily. "It is the only way. To leave stragglers among a world turned beast would seem needlessly cruel."

Rajh looked irritated as he spoke up, taking another few steps forward. "To what urgency have I been summoned? Forgive me but I believe I have missed a good portion of this discussion." Rajh is only in his twenties but extremely muscular, and has proven himself a savant at slaying monsters.

Ethos spun one wheel so that she was able to see both Rajh behind her and still Pathos in his throne. "I have witnessed a future... where humans rule the world."

Rajh shrugged. "Sounds beautiful."

"It is not. Humans expand into the territory of animals and nature, forcing them back and killing them when they try to defend their borders. The air thins and becomes stale as the number of trees dwindle to give them lumber. They dredge metals from the heart of the world to encase the land so that nothing can ever regrow. They erase hundreds of species from the world forever, enslave other animals- treating them not as equals or beloved pets and companions but as one regards a piece of fruit. Hollowing it of its juices and flesh before tossing the remnant husk in the trash. Even humans themselves succumb to their own self-inflicted rot. They continue to reproduce with no limit- each trying to claim their own land till there is nowhere left to expand. People starve or die to the elements because there is not enough food and shelter for everyone. Without any natural predators to balance the population of humans they ultimately are forced to invade their own land and fight themselves over what little resources they have left, waging war after war with increasingly destructive weapons until the human race ultimately kills itself- after having already killed everything else, and rotted the world to its very core so nothing can succeed them in its rule."

There was a long silence, Rajh not knowing what to say- so Pathos broke the silence. "Telal intends to scatter humanity. She has cast a spell that encompassed the entire world... when in the presence of a creature other than another human; a person's humanity will now slowly syphon away. The beast will become more human, and the human becomes a beast."

Telal nodded. "Preventing humans from reproducing because no one will be completely human anymore, thus ending the human race within this generation. Total erasure of the species without actually killing anyone. It is the most ethical approach. Otherwise, if they are left to their own devices; everything, everywhere will die slowly till this world is no more."

Rajh drew his sword with a weak huff. "I never thought I would be called to imprison the magnus herself."

Pathos shook his head. "Do not underestimate her, Rajh."

Rajh smirked. "Good thing there are no animals in the castle- so nowhere for our humanity to go."

Telal smiled weakly. "Do you see me as a weak opponent, because I am a woman? Because I do not carry a weapon as you do? Or perhaps because my legs no longer carry me?" She fully turned to Rajh. "People taking pity on me, and looking down on me in this chair is why I dedicated myself to my studies in the first place. They say when your mind is deprived of one of its senses, the others become stronger to compensate. My shattered legs have sharpened my mind."

Telal slowly started to stand up- her wheelchair quickly contorting as the metal wrapped around her legs to help lift her- using automancy to animate the steel around them, to basically puppeteer her own body. Rajh rushed at her to grab her, but she took a step back. A shooting pain fired up his leg and he looked down to see a wolf biting into it, thrashing its head back and forth! The black skirt of her gown took the shape of a wolf and animated itself! Rajh swung his sword at its neck but it returned to inanimate cloth and fell away before the blade touched it!

Telal looked frustrated a moment back at the organ player who had gone silent in fear toward the back of the long narrow room. "No one told you to stop playing, maestro..." Nervously, he resumed playing In The Hall Of The Mountain King on the pipe organ.

In time with the music, Telal literally danced around Rajh's increasingly aggressive attacks- now no longer trying to subdue her but kill her if he could actually hit her at all. Her clothing animated itself and shifted forms as she dances, making it very hard to hit her, because it is hard to tell where she is within her own clothes. Whenever he gets too close to actually landing an attack; the maw of one beast or another emerges made of hardened cloth to bite him before returning to normal fabric!

"Mind over matter, champion."

"I am over you!" He thrust forward at her quickly in an attempt to spear her guts.

Telal's rings turned to liquid and encapsulated her fingers, crowning them with very long narrow claws as she backhands the champion and twirls to the side to evade the attack easily. She left four thin cuts across his face! The metal around her legs stretches and lifts her from the ground- now on steel hooves. The long tail of her gown slithered around behind her like it had become a literal tail. Rajh grunt in frustration and charged at her again. Telal's extremely long crimson hair lifted itself, slithered through the air as the end took the shape of a dragon's head, and bit Rajh had enough to leave numerous puncture wounds in a half-circle on his chest and back! It thrashed a bit, lifting his entire body from the ground before she swung her head and the dragon slammed the champion through one of the marble pillars hard enough to shatter the pillar!

Now with a broken arm from slamming into the stone, Rajh got up slower this time. Telal casually walked over as the sundered stone from the marble pillar gathered through the air and encased her left arm, taking the form of a colossal gorilla arm! Rajh was barely able to lift the flat of the sword to shield himself as the giant marble fist punched him straight through the stone wall of the throne room! He fell at least seven meters through the roof of one of the halls in the servant's wing of the castle. The fall would not have been enough to kill him but he also won't likely be standing up for a good long time.

Telal flicked the giant arm and the marble fired itself back into the exact shape of the pillar as the cracks slowly fused back together- mending the pillar back to its former state exactly. Magnus Ethos just looked back at Pathos as he sighed and fell silent for a long minute.

"He is right though. How do you plan to turn people like myself?"

"I could not turn you even if I tried, your majesty. The ritual in which you were originally crowned king of Etabed wards you from all known magic- even my sorceries will do nothing to you." She motioned out the hole in the wall over the capital of Mountholme sprawling out from around the castle's foot. "As for everyone else- my spell uses an exponential resonance. Like beautiful music it echoes through the kingdom, but when it makes contact with humanity it causes their humanity to ring like a tuning fork- which then sends out another shockwave of the spell, spreading its effects further."

"So every affected human causes your spell to increase in power, and range."

"Yes. That also means that my spell is the 'loudest' where there is the most humanity. The more time that passes- the louder the spell becomes in these areas increasing its effective range. Eventually it will become strong enough to pull animal traits and displace humanity across miles of land. So even someone in the heart of the city will eventually lose their humanity to animals miles away from the city. There is no escaping its effects- their humanity itself is what is powering the very spell that will remove it." The man on the organ nervously looked back to her as he finished playing and Telal looked back with a timid smile. "Hmm, do you know Black Swan? I am afraid music is the only thing to settle my nerves." He resumed playing the organ and Telal looked back to Pathos. "You know I am sorry. I wouldn't have ever imagined doing something like this, but it was the most ethical solution. I don't blame you for hating me."

Pathos shook his head, leaning back in the throne. "I do not hate you, Ethos. But I cannot disregard the feelings of the people in the here and now. You do what you think you must- but I will still do what I must as well."

She nodded toward the hole in the wall. "If that was your best fighter- all you can do against this is add more holes to the castle."

Dirocke is the furthest city to the north in Etabed. It was once a beautiful city overlooking the capital and the vast lake between the two locations- far below Dirocke as it sits on a high plateau against the side of Mt. Black. It is a rich mining city; its buildings made mostly of stone blocks cut from the rock dredged up to make the mine shafts. To say Dirocke is rock bottom now would be a great understatement. Dirocke is below rock bottom, and for a time it was treated as Hell on earth.

The mines are rich but also dangerous- Basilisk slither about underground and for the few shafts that dug the deepest- there are Wyrms deep below in roosts of churning magma. The fumes from the deep magma pits are not good to inhale, so even aside from the extremely dangerous monsters, you can simply suffocate if you are not careful. But at least back then it was the miners alone who suffered.

They dug up more than just precious metals and rare rocks- no one knows for sure, but most have come to believe a plague that hit Dirocke also came from the eternally black underworld. The city was sealed off from all supply, no one could come or go except a brave few alchemists and apothecary from the capital seeking to bring hope to the doomed city. Because no one from Dirocke could leave, the still healthy were condemned to eventually get sick with the plague too, because they had nowhere to run. The entire original population of Dirocke succumbed to the plague. The last few attempted to hide and live within the mines to escape the suffering on the surface. They either starved to death in the darkness when their supplies ran out- or the monsters found and devoured them.

For the longest time Dirocke was a haunted city, occupied only by ghosts. The plague at least died with them- unable to spread beyond, and burned with the bodies. The capital still to this day sends expedition teams to Dirocke because the mines are still very rich in ores, but the teams only stay there temporarily for expeditions before returning to the capital. No, the only permanent residents in Dirocke now are street rats. Runaway orphans, homeless people, thieves, or criminals on the run. The homes in Dirocke are long abandoned but are mostly stone- so they are still perfectly good structures. No one runs the city to be able to charge you for staying there, so anyone at all can go there, plop their belongings into an empty house and claim it as their own. If you had no chance anywhere else- you still have a home in Dirocke.

That is how Griss and his sister Lola came to be here. A gambling addiction introduced Lola to a shady lot, swindling money from anyone and anything. She failed a dangerously big heist and the rest of her crew threw her under the carriage as they say. The old crew tried to hustle Griss out of his own money, trying to blame Lola for their downfall when they were the ones who ripped the rug out from under her. The two of them were forced to abandon their existing lives and came to Dirocke to escape both the authorities and her former mates. They live in a home near the primary mine opening at the back of the town- this put a good layer of rock between them and most creatures when the spell wave hit Dirocke.

The first people to turn seemed to all be porcine. Domestic pigs and sheep were the only livestock kept in Dirocke these days- there isn't enough open land to house enough field for larger animals. Sheep can feed on the little grass there is on the scattered flat surfaces and the pigs can be fed from the garden plots almost every home in Dirocke possesses.

When human traits went to the pigs the first thing to always chance seems to be the limbs- for their body size pigs have extremely short limbs. Their arms and legs grow first, creating the bizarre sight of a tall pig. More human bleeding into the sows causes their ten teats to fatten in spite of not lactating; and then little hills of fat to project the teats outward as they develop ten breasts! The hogs have their shafts expand in girth, causing them to flop out at all times as their sheaths become too tight for their phallus to fit inside of! Human hair grows from their heads next, and eyebrows. Then their bodies compress and their torso shifts proportions which grants them the ability to stand on their hind legs. No pig managed to get any more humanity than that before their owners ran out of humanity to share.

Their owners belly expands first, making them look pregnant- whether man or woman. Then soft snorting unintentionally as their nostrils expand, then surprised oinks as the entire bridge of their nose pops wider and gives them a pig snout. Embarrassment spikes as little spiral tails crown their swelling ass and their feet devolving into hooves puts them onto all fours like a beast. There are not many ranches in Dirocke though... so the same people near the pigs are also near the sheep.

Thick, heavily ribbed, spiralling horns pierce the skin with a sharp but short lived pain. The skin ripples around the base as each rib of horn emerges as the bone of their skull keeps expanding outward more and more. The horns twist and hug themselves as the spiral grows tighter and larger, weighing their heads down to the ground as if to encourage them to eat the grass- to admit what they have become. Ironically while the horns of the rams are the first trait to appear in former humans- it is the last trait to leave the actual sheep, so no caprine fully lost their crown. Women are forced to drop their drawers to make room for swelling udders- not especially big but round and taut with cone shaped teats that jut forward and to the sides. Skin darkens to black but no one took fully from pig nor sheep, so their skin always ends up a blotchy mix of pink, grey-pink, and black as the two skin colors fight for territory.

Caprine traits causes their hair to bleach, turning to a pale cream color as it tightens into fluffy curls to turn into wool but it only grows in certain places as the domestic pigs have an extremely light coating of fur so sparse that it is transparent. Sheep also have short legs though- and this only speeds the de-evolution of their limbs, and sends them to the ground on all fours all the faster. Vocalizations regress to bleating, their breathing marred with oinks, grunts, and soft snuffling.

That was merely the fate of the outer fringes of the city. Further in you have giant white feathered ravens with large pot bellies and a fluffy mat of wool on their chest! Too fat to fly. Wool covered mice running about among discarded human clothing. There is even one skunk the size of a large dog, waddling around with its large belly dragging on the ground under it- testicles the size of softballs and hooves instead of paws! On the other side of the balance you have tiny humanoid people with long clawed feet, banded scales on their legs and a carpet of black feathers across their entire body sitting up on the rooftops. Mice grown into small furry anthros, now with the intellect to know how to use human tools and knowing the humans are no more- so all their food is up for the taking. What had been the skunk is now a handsome middle aged man with two streaks of solid white in his otherwise black hair, walking around the streets in the nude with his junk flopping around like he owns the city. And he might as well own it- who is going to refute him?

The largest of them was Barrus- a gentle giant of a man who did supply runs for anyone, or any supplies for the right price. He was the only one with a horse. He also lived on the edge of town, so he caught caprine too. He increased in size and muscle, his skin turning black. His endowments burst the fly of his pants open without his help at all and outgrew his clothing entirely. He grew a fluffy tuft of a sheep tail but his ass grew large and muscular with equine traits. The cannon bones on his rear legs grew black wool around it, making his legs look like he is wearing woolly socks. Wool grew from his chest in a giant mound of fluff and then up around his neck so enormously fluffy and dense that it looked almost like a lion mane the way it framed his face! His face is long and well defined with huge nostrils like a horse, but his upper lip cleft like a sheep and his head crowned with giant ram horns- sized up to fit a horse head.

The result of the transfer also created a sheep with a human head and chest who can no longer grow wool on their upper body, neck, and head. They have human hair- but it is still cream colored and wildly curly like wool. Barrus' mare was now also devoid of all fur. She had a human head, and torso- including breasts- but still had a horse tail, neck, and limbs! The transformation triggers all pleasure nerves in the genitalia when they are turned, which causes unwanted arousal and often results in spontaneous sex, but ironically the animals are less likely to start fucking as a result than the humans are. Because humans are losing their sense of modesty and inhibitions while the animals are gaining it. Barrus could not hold himself back when he seen his changing horse in a futile attempt to mount her and ride out of Dirocke to try and save himself from whatever was happening to everyone. His dick now gargantuan and its weight flopping back and forth only underlined the dizziness from his arousal. The mare had accepted him gladly, but his stamina seems to have exceeded hers thanks to the friskiness of a caprine now running through his veins. He fucked her twice, and now she can be seen trotting around the city trying to avoid him while Barrus mindlessly chases her tail, still wanting more.

Griss and Lola were far enough to the back that these critters were unable to affect them, and they remained human at first. Griss seen the chaos from their rooftop before returning inside every so often, trying to assess the damages. He did not know what was happening- and it seemed extremely weird to target a ghost town with any spells. Everyone in Dirocke is nobodies, what is the point of attacking them with anything? His girlfriend Malia appeared after the first day- already part animal, looking for shelter from the chaos. Lola was against it- assuming the condition was contagious but was proven wrong when Griss invited Malia in and her condition did not affect either of them. Malia had a long bushy tail- taken from her pet dog, but also her hair had turned to a mat of wool draped off her head and growing from her neck. Her hands were partially devolved into cloven hooves so her thumbs were regressed too far to pick anything up, and her feet were completely hooves. Her dainty little caprine hooves clicked against the creaky old wooden floors of the house, which turned Griss on.

Griss is still totally human, so having his girlfriend partially succumbed to this made him feel more powerful over her. She was rather helpless, and distressed, so he could act the savior. Lola had to put up with the sound of the headboard on the bed slamming against the wall as they loudly fucked. She could not leave the house or she would risk transforming too, so she just had to try and ignore her brother fucking the lamb woman.

Because the link was already made; Malia going there only slowed her transformation, it did not STOP it. Her genitals turned black as the skin color bled up slowly from there. This made sex even better for them because rams have narrow tapered dicks- so her vagina became tiny, making her extremely tight wrapped around Griss, and his dick seem giant to her. Her already petite breasts shrank and a fat, round udder swelled up in her crotch. Griss found it hot as hell and continued to have sex with her quite frequently- his balls now clapping loudly against the back cleft of her tits. The transformation was gradual enough that most changes were discovered on accident- no one spotting them when they initially appear. She started to make bleating sounds when they had sex, but soon she would make them at random times. Her nostrils became narrow and her upper lip cleft. Random words would distort to bleating, and then bleats replaced words entirely. When she bleated loudly she would often pause and look confused- as if the sound were so loud that it wiped out all the human thoughts that were currently in her head, forcing her to lose her train of thought.

As the cursed melody of Telal's spell increased in volume; even Griss and Lola were not immune. Both of them noticed what at first they thought was calluses on their hands and feet, but the skin oddly still supple. They fattened up and the two realized they were sharing the stolen traits of a nearby rat. They could not find the rodent in the house for as much as they searched- so it was either hidden well inside of the walls or just near the house instead of inside of it. They could not leave the house to search for it, because that risked turning into still something else, or simply just turning rat even faster than they already are. Their nails turned to the translucent, relatively small claws of the rodent, and then their two front teeth on bottom and especially top jaw lengthened to the point where their lips could not conceal them.

To get away from her brother frequently fucking the sheep woman; Lola remained almost exclusively on the top floor, so a split in their changes occurred. They shared rat, but they were both getting traits from a second beast as well. Scales started to develop on Lola, looking like bumps at first. The scales are very round and large, and turn her skin silver and then rocky grey when fully formed. At seemingly random intervals a stone-hard spike-like scute would form off her back. Griss developed scales too but only on his lower back, and then his tail as it grew rather quickly compared to all the other changes in the house- another inch every half hour roughly. Unlike Lola, his scales lay flat- the scales of a snake.

Griss was able to identify his scales easier because Malia also got them. Her wool started to grow over her shoulders and then in a triangle over her upper back, but everywhere else turned stiffer, then shiny, then started to segment itself as the outer skin turned to snake scales. Her torso very slowly started to get abnormally long and her canine tail also grew larger and longer- though retained a full coat of dog fur. Her hands regressed fully into cloven hooves and her hind legs regressed in size! Her arms were already smaller as they became like a sheep- but snakes do not have limbs at all, causing her legs to be even more abnormally small and disproportionate to her front legs. This made her look like she was squatting or sitting even if she was fully standing! Her plump, round udder bounced on the ground under her, unable to completely clear the floor when she walks.

The bleating got worse- she would sometimes enter a fit of bleating where she could not stop for several moments, annoying and frustrating herself. Soon she imagined the bleating sound randomly sometimes and the sound of sheep filled her thoughts, causing her to echo them physically. Eventually bleats were the only sound she could make- because it was the only thing she could think of. Even turned fully animal did not dissuade Griss from having sex- trying to bury his troubles for a time with physical pleasure, and Malia never protested; always quick to raise her tail for him. Her privates became quite a mess of traits though. Canine traits bled down to fatten and project her mons quite a bit off her, but snake traits squashed her anus and vulva into the same opening- a cloaca, but with a fat puffy canine opening, and quite small and tight like a sheep.

Lola was frankly disgusted at her perverted brother, fucking the animal freak. She was not about to go down there and protest though- not in the state she was currently in. All her teeth extended into fangs and her body slowly grew and became more muscular! The claws on her hands started to grow and made her worry more every few hours when she looked down and seen they were still larger. So large they covered the entire ends of her digits. One, two, three, four inches and still growing!! The only one that did not grow was her thumb, which remained a little rodent claw. The fangs in her mouth increased in number and size, straining her jaw. Every time she opened her mouth to moan and grunt her skull clicked and her face pushed out a little longer, a little pointier. Thick, stiff whiskers started to grow above her lip and twitch in irritation with each new change.

Griss' dick was getting fatter, which made sex even better- though he now had to work Malia up before even trying to enter her, because a little bit of lube no longer cut it, she needed a bit of stretching before he could stuff his cock in her at all. By the end of the third day though his dick started to pulse, like it was trying to get harder than it was able to. Griss groaned and leaned on the counter of their tiny kitchen. He flopped his dick over his pants and looked at it, groaning again at how purpled it looked from blood pressure. There was an itchy pressure at the glans and he used two fingers and a thumb to hold it. There was an unusual amount of give on the head... was his urethra growing? He twirled his middle finger on the pre burbling out to lube it and then shoved it into the urethra to see if he could insert it- but while it went down... it wasn't into the urethra! The urethra split in half- his finger sunk between the forked opening! His unusually wide swollen glans and penis were splitting in half- a snake has a hemipene! But because he does not have a cloaca the hemipene isn't really forming correctly for a snake, either. The split it horizontal- so the two dicks are forming vertically instead of horizontally. It felt like peeling tape off your skin, where the two shafts split apart the further he pushed his fingers between them, but given the tender area it is happening it, it is also accompanied by an electric buzz of pleasure.

Rodent traits swelled his testicles so fast they gurgled from the increased space inside. A carpet of dense but short fur covered his nuts and replaced his pubes. The further his dick split in half the further down his foreskin was shoved- bunching up, thickening and then getting overtaken by fur as well, turning into a short sheath at their base! Even when he had two full cocks- they both shared only a single sheath. Because of the way his original cock split into two- the bottom dick is actually upside down. The two cocks are oriented so their urethra face one another. He grabbed both when the divide finished and started micro-thrusting into his hands from undeniable arousal, mashing the frenulums of both phallus into one another- frotting himself.

The pressure hit an itching height again and the glans throbbed powerfully, oozing pre almost perpetually. Little bumps formed around the corona and quickly started to swell in size, becoming more pale the larger they grew. Tiny bumps, big bumps, little spikes, barbs, huge barbs. The corona started to deform to make room for them all as they grew to almost spike-like shape, making his cocks almost look like weapons! The over inch-long barbs around his cockhead are still just skin pressurized with blood, so as savage as they look, you can bend them pretty easily. The nerve count in them in insane though. He moves his hands up and almost immediately gets off by just brushing his hand back and forth, bending the barbs up and down!

The next time he had sex with Malia, she was extra pleased by the rubbery barbs gently raking the walls of her pussy, and Griss was able to completely forget the apocalyptic situation the world was currently in with white hot pleasure of being able to bang Malia twice at the same time. Shame she did not still have two separate holes still- he can be in two different places at the same time. By now his tail was as long as he is tall and fully encased in scales. His feet have started to stretch to look still more rodent-like. His clothes started to fit loose on him though, and by the afternoon of the next day his outfit slumped off him when he stood up from a nap with Malia. He was shrinking... both the average snake and all rats are considerably smaller than he was. Griss would get hit with random dizzy spells when the shrinking happened, and his whole body felt tight for a moment- he would be forced to exhale as his lungs shrank too small to hold the air he had in them. His large front teeth were no longer flat, thin cutting blocks like a rodent but the fangs of a venomous snake- though still both in the front of his mouth as if they were still rodent teeth. He could barely get his arms up onto the kitchen counter. Just how small was he going to get before he runs out of human? His diffused brown hair lost its coloration and turned base grey, and a fine pelt of grey fur was spreading from the base of his hair in the back down his neck and forming a stripe on his upper back. The fur that replaced his pubes was trailing up his crotch to his navel now.

He was actually just starting to wonder where the hell Lola was. Sure he was distracted as hell with his own regression and fucking Malia to forget his troubles, but he still had not seen his sister at all in the last day and a half. What the heck was she doing up there? There is no upstairs bathroom- she has to come down at some point no matter what. But just as he was wondering he heard the sound of the floorboards creaking upstairs and looked up just in time to jump back out of the way! The roof collapsed from Lola's rapidly increasing weight and she fell straight through to the ground floor, and then impacted the floor on ground level into the small undercroft of the house's foundation where the snakes were hiding.

Lola's long, thick serpentine body writhed frantically to upright itself again. Her legs now looked the same as her arms, but also she had two pairs of arms- giving her six identical limbs! She has a massive, long tail just like Griss except hers is only half as wide as it is tall, making it blade shaped. She groaned loudly and reared her head back, but she unintentionally increased in volume and her groan turned into a roar! Her face cracked and grew even longer before the skin under her chin drew back and her mandibles cracked in half, dividing! Long narrow fangs flipped up on the very ends of the mandibles- the only large teeth still in her mouth. The rest were sharp fangs but tiny in comparison to her now giant head. No mistaking that anatomy. There must have been a Basilisk buried in the rocks of the nearby cliffs!!

Giant, six limbed lizards with craggy scales- Basilisk are a subterranean species that only prowl the surface when food below becomes unsatisfactory. Their pupils are shaped like jagged slits, like an alligator's and their iris are bright orange with golden edges, like a flame. Like a gecko or tree frog- their digits have a bulbous end to them and allow the lizard to walk on walls or across the roof of caves to wait for prey. Before Lola closes her mouth- Griss watches a translucent yellow fluid drip from the tip of her fangs and hit the floor with a dry crackling sound as the wood is turned to stone. Basilisk venom will flash-petrify anything it makes contact with. It is the exact same substance a Cockatrice breathes, except in liquid form. You'd think turning prey to stone would be counter-productive since it cannot eat rocks, but its saliva, gastric juices, and blood all contain an enzyme that counters petrification. It bites a chunk off the human statue and it turns back to flesh in its belly. Currently Basilisk blood is the only known cure for petrification other than holy purification spells from a High Priest or Paladin.

As Lola twists around, Griss briefly can see the soft, chubby cone of a clit she has retracting back into the cloaca... all basilisk are hermaphrodites. Lola isn't just basilisk though. Her ears are large and round and furry, her nose is textured bare skin and moist and cool to the touch, and she has massive, stiff whiskers! Her top jaw still has the large slate-like teeth of a rat and her muzzle is long and pointed- basilisks have flat, broad heads. Her upper back, middle shoulders and her entire front arms are covered in fur as well as her entire head which definitely is abnormal for a reptile. Her rear limbs have four digits and relatively small but sturdy claws- that is normal basilisk. But the middle limbs have four fingers and a thumb and the claws are huge, and her front limbs end the same way except the claws are freakishly giant! A mole!! She unintentionally took traits from a mole- that is the only creature with shovel-like mega claws like those! Her pupils are extremely narrow and her eyes dart around quickly- it seems she also inherited a mole's eyesight. She cannot see shit in the light- her eyes only see in darkness.

"C-can't...oooaaah!" Her voice is hollow and unintentionally loud. "Can't f-f-fight it... anymoooAAHRR-Ah!"

Her tail slammed into the wall on the other side of the house and her feet try to grip the floor but cannot because they keep sliding apart- she is growing rapidly! Basilisk can be huge- they slowly grow as they age... they never really STOP growing so the older it is- the bigger it is. Lola is outgrowing the house! More than that though- Griss had no choice but to abandon his sister and get the hell away from the house. As stupid as going outside in all the chaos is- it is still better than being around for when Lola loses her human thoughts. Feral basilisk? Death waiting to happen. One bite and he is a statue and in her belly by the end of the night.

Griss scrambled across the floor on all fours and got to the confused Malia to help her out- unfortunately she is no longer smart enough to know what is happening or realize she is in danger. And Griss has shrunk down so she can't carry her even though she is mostly sheep and also smaller than she used to be too. He ends up grabbing her tail and just dragging her till she gets enough of a clue to walk with him as they sneak out. Lola thrashes about wildly, unintentionally demolishing the house. Even in the dark house it is too light for her to see- so she doesn't know Griss and Malia are sneaking away; she can't see them.

Griss just shoos the confused Malia away, and darts off in a different direction. No safe places left in Dirocke, he has no choice but to try and get out. Probably won't happen, but it was the only option left to try regardless. Luckily for him, all the strange animals he was passing now used to be humans... and thus no humanity trades can be made. His own forearms now have a mat of grey fur on the backs of them, and sparse fur starting to grow on his shins. He can walk just fine on two legs still but runs on all fours just because it is faster- especially now that he is so small. As Griss was trying to sneak out of the city though, he heard people talking and immediately paused and furrowed his brows. Normal humans? They don't even sound worried, what gives?

He skittered to the source of the voices and seen three noble snobs- one he actually recognised! One of the goons who used to be in Lola's posse! One of the maggots who stabbed her in the back as soon as things went sour, but why is he HERE? All three of them are fully human, still well dressed and perfectly calm in spite of clearly seeing the state the city has taken. And Dirocke is a shithole in the best of times- but somehow always finds a way to get worse.

Griss skittered up the corner of a building onto the edge of the roof and across the other corner, closest to the group to listen in on their conversation. He heard them talking about Magnus Ethos being the source of all this chaos, and that everywhere was being affected. Not just Dirocke, not just Etabed... her spell echoes across the entire globe. Everywhere humanity exists- so does her magic. More interesting to Griss however is that the silver bangles these three clods are wearing is what wards the spell. Telal chose various wealthy people to wear them to remain human and essentially act as curators for the end to try and mitigate damage or violence while the changes happen. What Telal did not tell even these few, is that she chose them because they are rich snobs that do not generally get along with anyone- and thus are not likely to care about the people they witness transform or try to run off and restart humanity themselves. Basically- Telal already regarded them as sub-human without needing to transform them.

Griss grabbed the edge of the roof with his huge snake tail and used it to sling himself through the air, kicking one of the two women in their group of three to the ground- in spite of being only about the size of a large monkey at this point.

"Ah, what the fuck?"

The other woman drew a sword and swiped at Griss, but he easily darted back out the way. Being a street rat, he has to be quick on his feet to survive at all. Especially in Dirocke where all your neighbours are lowlifes too.

"Ayyye, c'mon. You get to stay human? And you weren't going to share?"

The first woman started to get up, but grabbed his tail on the way to make sure he could not escape. "Telal only chose those of the upper crust to be worthy to stand with her until the fall of man."

Griss nodded toward the man. "Then why is he here? Shit-eater lined his pocket with lies and treachery. He isn't the upper crust, he is a bottom feeder with money."

The first woman smirked at the man. "Know each other?"

He crossed his arms with a grunt. "Briefly."

The other woman snorted with brief laughter. "I am sure she had her reasons for choosing him. In any case, it isn't ours to share. Only Ethos can forge these bangles and we don't have extras. If you wish to escape the situation- go find an animal you like best and stand beside it. Transform as quickly as you can. It will regress your mind too- so you will no longer take issue with your form."

Griss tugged his tail, blushing a bit and then looking back at the first woman holding the end of it, sitting on her ass to make sure he doesn't try to attack again.

"C-can you not touch me there? My tail is kinda sensitive... you're going to start working me up and I don't even have pants on..."

"EEW!" She immediately pulled her hand away and the moment she let go of his tail, he grabbed her bangle!!

When the woman pulled her arm back, she took her own bangle off because Griss grabbed it! The second woman immediately darted forward and thrust her sword at him to kill him, but Griss slithered around the blade, then flicked his tail back around her right leg and yanked it out from under her! She shifted her weight to the left leg before falling over- but swiped at him under her as she fell and managed to cut a notch in his right ear. Griss flinched from the stinging pain but knew better than to pause mid-fight. She kicked her leg out, knocking him down a moment as she swung her leg back under herself to get up. The first woman was in a panic and charged at Griss with a dirk in hand.

The first woman was too panicked to be careful, and when she got close enough Griss got to his feet again and jumped toward her rather than away- taking her by surprise! He grabbed her left leg with his tail as he went between her legs and ripped her off her feet! The second woman was once again on her feet and now the man was charging over as well- though did not appear to have a weapon on him. The woman swiped at Griss, missing and sending up a few sparks as the tip of her sword glanced across the stone block road. Before Griss could distance himself again she stomped down hard on his tail, pinning him, and then raised her sword to bring down on his head and split his skull open. Griss bit her leg- jamming his venomous front fangs into her leg deep enough to graze the bone and the moment his venom made contact with the pain receptors in her leg, the agony blasted up her leg and echoed through her entire body! Her leg gave out immediately and she collapsed onto her side yelling in pain from the venom.

Before he could recover, the man got to him next and kicked him in the gut squarely enough to toss Griss into the air, and grabbed him by the hair mid-air!

"Well, would you look at this- you're the same height as my dick. Now I can fuck you like I did your sister."

"You motherfucker."

"Not yet, but if I find your mother too, I am certainly not opposed."

Lola exploded out the side of a nearby building, landing her front right hand directly on top of the man, smashing him against the road hard enough to shatter several ribs and force him to throw up on himself. Griss quickly scrambled away, knowing Lola likely won't be able to distinguish one target from the other. Without lifting her hand she raked her claws down his body, cutting open his clothes and leaving four narrow cuts down the entire length of his torso! She roared at him, spreading her mandibles and lifting her fangs- the force of her voice carried drops of the venom from her fangs. The man flinched at the touch of each of the droplets hitting him, feeling a powerful cringe as his body realized the danger before he even did. He felt stiff, his muscles clenching, balling up... hardening. He squirmed onto his hands and knees and tried to crawl away but the stiffness spread through him quickly! His clothes turned to thin rock and broke as he tried to move in them- crumbling onto the ground. He paused and yelled weakly in discomfort as he sat upright from his knees and his voice petered out. He froze perfectly in place, and then a moment later the color faded out of his skin and hair, and a moment after that he turned solid grey- a stone statue.

The woman who lost her bangle now ran from the city entirely- trying to find a place without animals, a route back to the capital to ask Telal for another bangle hopefully before she joins the commoners on all fours. The second woman used her sword as a cane to walk with her leg throbbing in pain. She needed to raid the old apothecary shop before the venom spreads further into her body to attack her vital organs.

Griss on the other hand went to put the stolen bangle on but it is three times too wide to fit. He shrugged and curled his tail around- slipping it over his tail instead of his wrist and wiggled it down to the base of the tail snuggly. The bangle blocks the spell- it does not reverse the spell. He is stuck in this form, but as long as he is wearing the bangle he cannot transform any further, no matter where he goes. And so he plans on going straight to the capital. Castle Etabed, in the heart of Mountholme. Telal Ethos is the woman in charge of the end of the world- which means if Griss wants to come out on top; he has to be on her side, or at least make her think he is. She needed chosen goons to manage the end- and it just so happens that three of her former goons just shit the bed. He kicked their asses; already proving he is a better choice than they were. He will offer to take their place to Telal, and hopefully she will restore him to full human too. If not... maybe he can swipe something off her to cure himself, heh.

Part Four : Doom Song

Telal moved her Bishop to take Pathos' Rook, but left it directly in front of a Pawn to be taken in turn. Pathos hummed at her questionable judgement. "You aren't throwing the game are you?"

The organist was given a break- now the throne room was filled with the gentle thrum of the strings of a golden harp as the magnus and king play chess to pass the time. Occasionally a shrill roar could be heard from outside- some of the people in Mountholme had taken on traits of Wyvern as there are two Wyvern rookeries in the capital that formerly offered the draconic beasts as flying mounts. Now the Wyvern were all confused, dim-witted men and women.

The champion Rajh had returned the day before- the front half of the throne room now in utter shambles from the fight that ensued. When he returned it was on the wings of a wyvern, making his overall form almost resemble that of a gargoyle. He lost his humanity but remembered his anger for Telal, so once his arms were replaced with wings he flew up back through the hole he was originally rejected out of.

His legs were hugely muscular and ended in equine hooves, and the equine traits also granted a long haired tassel to the end of the otherwise flesh tail gained from wyvern traits. His torso was enlarged and rectangular in shape and his head crowned with two large horns that curved into a loose S shape- traits stolen from an Ox formerly used to pull carts to the market. His face was scaled like a wyvern but shaped like a canine thanks to all the pet dogs within the city. After a violent battle he was once again defeated by Telal, and this time smashed through the thick stone floor- roaming aimlessly in the lower castle now with one of his ox horns shattered off.

"No- at least not consciously, but the thought certainly exists. With all I am doing to you in the real world it seems excessive to also beat you in our game." He picked up the Pawn and flicked her Bishop to the side, making her sigh. "A waste of talent."

"Hmm?"

"All my studies, all my skill in magic- and this is how it was used. To destroy my own race. A world without man will have little use of my talents. And my little trick of time cannot be done a second time- so I cannot see what new future I have created to know that it is any better. I just know that I avoided the grim fate I seen the first time."

Pathos stroked his beard, leaning back a bit. "They are your talents to use- and you used them to see your belief through. That seems as fit a purpose as any. Whether it is right or not- the fact you could do this at all is impressive regardless and will be remembered either through fame or infamy." He watched her make her next move on the chess board. "Besides- the game is not yet over."

"Hmm?"

"Several of your chosen curators have reported back losses and trouble in numerous locations. People are still fighting for their humanity- even some who no longer possess it."

"A ripple in the ocean, no? They cause carnage and pain where they choose to thrash about but it does nothing to restore the situation, it only makes their personal condition worse."

Pathos grinned, motioning with a nod over her shoulder. "Perhaps not."

Telal stood and turned to face a wounded woman, holding a bloody bandaged arm, her clothing shredded to rags on her. "What is it this time?"

"T-the Justicar, Logos Darkrain... he has been seen heading toward the capital! We have tried to stop him but he is large and strong... he retains human thought even though he is fully beast!"

Pathos nodded slowly. "His heirloom pendant- the Blood Of Aeons."

Telal hummed in thought. "Yes. The heart of the pendant is amber- an heirloom that took several generations to even create in the first place, made by layering resin and then etching runes in it before allowing it to crystalize and adding a new layer. An advanced, three-dimensional runic array suspended inside of the amber pearl." She looked back at her wounded minion. "Leave him to me, then. He is clearly more than you can handle, so do not throw your lives away trying, just let him come and I will defeat him myself. He has the mind of a human so he will not cause anyone else needless harm- he is coming for me alone."

To the west of Mountholme is the small town of Dajure- barely a speck on the map. The town is surrounded by a forest of dragon pine- an odd looking tree with a spiralled trunk that makes it look serpentine- and when cut open, its sap has the smell of smoke, serving to scare off bugs that would otherwise try to prey on the tree. Looming over the tiny town however are two very impressive, very old stone towers. Both serve as studies for spell slingers, while one is capped with an observatory and colossal telescope, the other contains a library of books collected from nine different kingdoms. The small town and exotic blue-green pine needles of the surrounding forest create a tranquil environment perfect for studying, so the location is a favorite choice among Magi.

The fact the town is surrounded by forest however meant the townsfolk had a nice variety of creatures to succumb to when Telal's magic blasted past. Unintentionally re-creating the Jackalope cryptid, one fellow at the edge of town grew the impressive rack of a stag but unfortunately gained the body of a rabbit. When his feet stretched enormous and turned to the plantigrade paws he was no longer able to walk properly- only hop, so he could not even try to evacuate the area because he was stuck trying to re-learn how he is supposed to move at all. White fur spread up him and his body shrank- though thanks to stag traits he did not shrink to the size any normal rabbit would be. All said and done he was still the size of a fairly large dog- so big enough that he remains wearing the last shirt he had on. No longer smart enough to know how to take it off.

One poor woman turned into a truly bizarre mix- she had been inside of the forest when the spell wave hit initially, causing her to tether to species further out. She grew enormous, slowly stretching and bursting the seams of all her clothing. Her hands and feet grew huge and while her palms and soles remained naked the rest of her was consumed in a golden brown fur. Her thighs bulged especially giant in muscle. Several bulbous ridges of flesh appeared on her back and split open to let four giant translucent insect wings out before hardening into chitin to reinforce the base of the wings. Her face very much looks like that of a grizzly bear, but before each roar the underside of her jaw and her entire neck stretch gigantic like a balloon before she releases a roar loud enough to knock you flat on your ass. She is a strange mixture of bear and frog, with a tiny bit of dragonfly fallen into the blend.

The majority of the townsfolk seem to have turned to cervine due to the high population of deer in the surrounding forest. Thanks to the presence of humans there are not many of the deer's natural predators around, so their population kinda just goes nuts. A woman who regressed into her pet golden lab- but has extremely long legs for a dog due to deer traits and a wobbling candy pink udder between her hind legs! She was promptly mounted by said former dog- who was still canine enough to not really notice or care about how weird the situation is.

A man who took shelter in his home and managed to delay his changes for a time- eventually succumbed to a bird who landed on his rooftop to unknowingly engage in the trade. His feet became extremely long and narrow with the banded scales of avian legs, then when he tried to escape his home his arms regressed to giant wings, preventing him from being able to use the door. It took him another day to figure out how to turn the doorknob using his taloned feet. He grew a bird tail from his rump in a short fan, but it had a fluffy basin of fur thanks to yet another deer further out that was now connected to him as the spell became 'louder' with time. His balls popped one and then the other into his torso- still very much present but no longer external, and his foreskin divided from his shaft to draw back into a small furry sheath.

The next time his phallus emerged the narrow sheath tugged at the expanding flesh and caused it to lose definition the longer it became, becoming the tapered phallus of a stag. His torso, neck and head turned to those of a deer in that order after that. The growth of his antlers almost perfectly aligned with the recession of his mind- the larger and further his antlers branched the slower and simpler his thoughts became till he finally forgot even himself. Unfortunately for him even once he got out of his house he still could only fly short distances- his bones were not hollow like an actual bird so he weighed too much for even his impressive wing span.

More importantly than his unfortunate situation however is the bird he unknowingly took half his beasthood from. She was flying over the chaos, curious but unable to understand the situation. The chaos seemed to cover all the places humans lived- and humans had settled all over Etabed... which meant she had nowhere safe to land. She remained in the air longer than she would have liked before finally flying over Dajure and finally being forced to land because her wings were exhausted. As soon as she approached the rooftops however the link was made, and suddenly her body felt heavier than it should be. Her wings became clumsy and inefficient and when she tried to take off again to flee, she only managed to do a small hop and fall flat on her face!

Her bones became denser and her body and limbs enlarged. Fingers started to branch and feathers one by one started to fall out, depriving her of her beautiful mantle. Several feral hybrids that had formerly been humans spotted her growing form as it rolled off the roof and clumsily staggered around in its deforming body and thought to make food of her. She did not even regard them, and simply cried out in desperation for her own woes- and instantly all other beasts turned away. Her voice was so impressive it rattled them to the core, confused them and broke their will to attack.

The poor bird was formerly a Silver Songstress- or Aevis Alaguin as the scholars may tell you. Their body is not particularly large- no bigger than a chicken, but their legs are extremely tall and narrow. They have both fierce talons for grabbing fish up from shallower waters, but also webbed toes to paddle out into deeper tides. Their feathers are a grey so pale that it looks white without something of an actual white to compare it against. The top back of their head trails long narrow and pointed feathers that bob and jiggle loosely with its movement- these are slate grey, and fade to a deeper grey mask over the top of its head and face helping transition to its black beak which is- like its legs- very long and narrow. The beak however has two holes in the top sides, filled with flesh to allow them to close or open when needed like nostrils- but in addition to its nostrils which already exist between beak and face. From these- the Silver Songstresses are able to produce a different melody from their mouth and nose at the same time, creating a haunting and strange song that sounds like a duet even though it comes from a single bird.

This one trailed extremely long, huge tail feathers that turned pastel blue halfway down and became speckled with dark blue dots toward the very end. Her shoulders had been pastel blue as well- signifying it is female. Males have short tails and only a tuft of blue feathers on their chest of a dark blue and nowhere else. Unlike most species- the females are the ones to dance to impress the males, as there are very few males to be had compared to the female populace.

From the twin towers the mage Icarus quickly darts out into the streets- well aware of the danger he puts himself in after the town already descended to beasthood. The monsters the townsfolk had turned into cannot contaminate his own form, but they can certainly kill him given they are now feral. In the top of the towers Icarus had been far enough from any other living creature that his own regression was progressing at a snail's pace, but from the tower peaks he seen the songbird fall. He ran as fast as he could to her side- looking with sympathy at her body crumpled onto the empty street surrounded by her own dislodged feathers like a fallen angel. She softly cries at all times for this strange fate she has been dealt. Icarus knelt down and picked her up before rushing back to the towers and locking the door again behind him.

He brought her to the tower of books, and put her down on a velvet couch, surrounded by the thousands of books. She did not move or speak a word the entire time, and it would be two hours after she arrived here before her crying finally tapered off. She had exhausted her tears.

Icarus busied himself in the meantime with collecting dozens of books carefully plucked from the shelf. Being a mage- he was able to determine what was going on without word reaching Dajure from the capital. He then of course started to devise a plan to counter Telal- though unfortunately his options were incredibly few. Her spell did not use her own power- it used humanity as a power source, so it only ran out of strength when you ran out of humanity. Had the people known this was coming at least some small bastions of protection could have been put up where her spell was cancelled out, but learning about it after the fact meant everything was already too far gone to try and save. The only chance of reversing this nightmare was to defeat the Magnus Ethos herself. But if Icarus leaves his tower, he will turn into a beast and lose himself like everyone else. No one could go anywhere without turning into a beast... therefore- it must be a beast that defeats her.

Icarus was slowly turning into an animal already even up in his lofty towers- due to his pet cat Flint who is living in the observatory tower. Icarus's hair became soft like fur, and his beard grew in and connected across his entire face, but now starts to slowly spread across his cheeks in long wisps of fur, like his cat. A long bushy tail grows from his rump, over his pants in the back- though remains mostly stationary; rigid with nerves. His hands and feet now have paw pads and the final segment of his digits now drawn back with a new muscle fiber allowing him to retract the talon-like claws that grow from them. The sharp claws made parting the pages of books easy at least. His ears now those of a bushy cat- and twitch in irritation when his hair shifts against them.

Icarus was dropping off several more books to the table near the bird when she froze him in place with the sound of her voice. Her voice is deep, womanly, warm, and almost has a sort of hollow resonance to it. She was a song bird before so now that she slowly turns human her voice is an impossibly beautiful melody.

"Why? Am I... here?"

"Ah, you have stolen yourself back? I am terribly sorry but I must ask your help! I know how to fix all of this mess, but I cannot do it myself."

"My wings..."

"Hmm? Oh- they are arms now my dear. You no longer have wings."

"Give them... back." She slowly pushed herself into an upright position. Her beak is getting shorter pretty quickly, and Icarus can in turn feel the prickly feeling on his backside of blooming feathers.

"I-it was not me! A woman named Telal Ethos lives in the capital- she did this! She is trying to erase the human species."

Icarus went into detail, frantically trying to educate the bird as much as he could. Her species does not give each other individual names, so she has nothing to call herself; so Icarus named her Amaranth as he is putting all of his faith into her alone- and amaranth is a flower that symbolizes immortality. She surprised him with her own knowledge- casually mentioning the name of kingdoms that do not even exist on any maps! She has flown over human settlements this side of the world isn't even aware exist! As much as he would love to pick her brain for her own knowledge though he had very limited time to try to teach her anything. For the most part, he granted her books. The closer Icarus remains to her, the more humanity she gains and the more bird he becomes which neither of them are keen on. Once he gave her the books she needed and a tutorial on the current situation, he scurried out of the tower and returned to the observatory. Of course- he is still close enough to take her traits slowly, and now closer to his cat again to take even more from Flint- but this was the best he could do. The towers are close enough to one another that he can shout across to her from a window.

The books he gave her are on a special type of magic- one that is very seldom used in this day and age... incantation. Magic that is cast verbally; Amaranth's voice is a weapon. Icarus intends to send her as a champion to fight Telal Ethos! Amaranth is mortified by what she is becoming and mourns the loss of her beautiful feathers- the loss of her wings and the freedom of flight drives her to agree to Icarus' plan quickly. She will fight whoever she must to get her wings back! Icarus did what he could to teach her as he devolves into an animal himself and new levels of intellect spark to life in Amaranth's head.

Icarus became an odd mix- mostly feline, shrinking into his own clothing, causing it to fall away as he wanders the tower with increasingly absent thought. His head is feline shaped but his teeth melded together and grew beyond his mouth, stretching his mouth and themselves into a short, wide beak! His back is covered with a large diamond shaped patch of feathers and eventually grew two bird wings- but the wings grew in very small even for his diminished size, so they cannot actually function. His legs also grew longer than his arms when fully transformed- banded scales covered the front of what used to be the top of his feet and his toes but the backs were still covered in paw pads and cat fur. The already talon-like claws on the back paws also grew into actual talons, but retained the ability to retract- at least far enough to get the tips off the floor. Both the Silver Songstress and a house cat are roughly the same size in body- so that was the final size for Icarus. Thanks to bird traits his testicles popped up into his torso to be internal only now, but cat traits turned his phallus in a bristly cone.

Flint turned human in body and limb but his head was still just a larger cat head, and he retained a coat of soft fur across his entire body. He still walks on all fours even though he could walk on two now, and still has his tail- Amaranth does not see him much across the way through the windows, but Icarus still wanders to the windows to look back at her often. He no longer remembers why- but he is still interested in her and wants to see how she progresses. Amaranth is glad she does not see Flint often though- being a former bird; she isn't really a cat person.

Amaranth's body stopped its evolution before she was fully human, to her releif- but the damage was already severe. Everyone in Dajure was already a beast, and with the fall of Icarus there was no longer any humans to contaminate her- she could safely wander without worry about becoming more human. The only humans left were wearing the bangles and immune to the magic. Her legs were still fully avian, just sized up to her now human torso, making her very tall despite having a rather petite frame. Her chest was adorned with D cup breasts and very dark, very wide areola, but her nipples do not stand very tall. Her beak was gone entirely and almost all of her feathers. Small soft feathers still cover her entire crotch and hide her now human vulva, and she still has her gigantic tail- the feathers large enough to touch the floor lightly behind her tall legs.

This caused a bit of chaos in her anatomy for a short period of time however- when her cloaca divided into an anus and vulva. She was glad Icarus was in the other tower and unable to walk in on her when that happened. Amaranth scuttled to one of the private study rooms to burry herself deeper into the tower for a time when she felt her privates shift. The pleasure nerves were triggered by the changes causing spontaneous sexual pleasure which made her aroused against her will.

She flops heavily in a chair and kicks it back further from the desk with her long leg. Amaranth cups her breasts as her nipples tingle to erection quickly and starts pawing at them, kneading the soft rubbery flesh, breathing heavily. The muscle and flesh of her pelvic floor started to pull apart and her cloaca split- it was a fast change but felt far too long for her still. Keeping one hand one a breast she moved the other to her new pussy to feel it and as soon as she brushed over her newly formed clit she lurched forward from the sudden shock of pleasure. Oh... she never felt like this before. Her mons already engorged with arousal, pushing her plump labia forward and causing them to blush. She pressed into the soft rubbery flesh here, teasing around the clit and petting it through its clitoral hood- not touching it directly because it was a little too sensitive. She felt an odd bloating inside rapidly and assumed it was more shifts to her sexual anatomy- she was partially right. It seems hitting a perfect half and half split between bird and human sexuality confused the hell out of her cycle!

The swelling object quickly started to shove its way down her pussy from its weight and a lack of space to fit! The bottom of an egg the size of an ostrich's crowned, parting her tender pussy lips on its own! Luckily her arousal already lubed the path ahead of time! She cupped either side of her vulva and grunt, pushing lightly, afraid of trying to hard and hurting herself. She managed to stretch around it fairly easily and once it got to the halfway point the roundness of the egg caused her vaginal contractions to knock it the rest of the way out almost instantly, firing the egg onto the floor. The shell was hard enough that the egg did not break, and spun to a stop against the back wall and floor under the desk!

Amaranth gasped and squirmed in her chair, now a worried as she felt another swelling. Oh no- her body doesn't know when to stop! The bird and human release their eggs very differently and currently her biology is confused as to which one its supposed to be using! As soon as her ovaries eject another egg it swells gigantically turning it into an avian egg! Amaranth moaned frantically, pawing at her pussy as it oozed natural lube. Her back arched so steeply she simply slid out of the chair and onto the floor between the chair and desk! She clenched and balled up trembling as she hit an orgasm but that only sped up the egg laying- firing the egg out like a projectile weapon! The swelling sensation was still there! There was another egg growing already before the second one even left her!

"N-nah-hah-hoh... no. N-no... how... many?!"

She continued to paw at her plush vulva while flicking over her clit with her thumbs. Her entire pubic mound swelled larger, pushed out from the egg moving through it, then her labia were forced open on their own as the egg becomes visible. Then it all collapses back in the moment it is rejected, and yet another is half-grown already in her! A pool of pussy juice formed between her legs and a trail of it was painted across the floor from her eggs spinning through it. Her thoughts spun with hormones, briefly wondering what it would be like to have a human 'fertilize' her in this new body. Another egg, then another almost immediately after; before her pussy could even relax back closed! Then another, and another. One mini orgasm after the other- never enough to completely satisfy her, but always keeping her pleasure at the edge of peaking into another. Every time an egg passed through it stretches her pussy so far open that it also squeezes her clit! There was a pile of nine large eggs by the time she stopped. Her sexual anatomy fully human and settled into the new role- so any eggs her ovaries released now would remain microscopic in size.

Amaranth remained panting on the floor in a pool of her own pussy juice, unintentionally cradling a large clutch of eggs between her long narrow legs and trembling from the unrelenting assault of pleasure on her system that trailed on what must have at least been fifteen minutes straight! She idly looked at her sopping wet pussy- the tiny feathers that occupy her crotch still matted with juices. The skin below blushing neon pink. She bit her lip, grabbing one of her tits in a hand to aggressively knead.

"Nnnngh... not enough. Don't... leave me like this." She moaned, thinking of one easy way to finish herself off- even if it is theoretically an abuse of power.

"Olis... o-OH-o-olis..." She shuddered as it started to work faster than she anticipated. "Raoliso, raoliso a-AH-HAH-a-afel..."

'Cum. Cum. Cum for me, cum for me now...'

She sung the incantation for herself, and every utterance her pleasure spiked higher- easily surpassing anything she ever experienced before! She hit a small orgasm almost immediately, but continuing her chant caused it to be overlapped by another creating an explosive orgasm. Still another before the last two stopped and her pussy was squirting as her hips involuntarily hovered up off the floor from the intensity! Then another and her breathing was reduced entirely to short, rapid gasps- her hands clenched against the floor under her so hard her claws scratched the stone! She commanded herself to cum again and her pussy absolutely exploded fluid- way more than it should have physically been able to, and with enough force to splash off the wall by her eggs! It took a half minute for the orgasm to settle, but then another half minute for the other overlapped orgasm to settle- five minutes to stop entirely, but even then the afterglow kept her shuddering and gasping for another ten minutes, rolling back and forth clenching and unclenching on the floor.

She hummed in satisfaction weakly and whispered to herself. "I suppose that is one thing the human body does well..."

Amaranth has human hair now but it is slate grey like the feathers there formerly were, and has a single streak of pastel blue. Her human lips are plump though her mouth and nose are small on her face. Her lips are a slate grey in color, like her nipples- matching her avian skin color rather than her human skin. Her delicate human hands are tipped with claws- a mid-point between human fingernails and the talons her feet still possess. For a while she would cradle her arms to her torso, not really knowing what to do with them. They used to be wings after all- she didn't know how arms are supposed to work.

Amaranth sighs, flipping through a book on a lectern she stood up just next to her couch. She turns the pages with her large clawed toes, while her hands are occupied kneading her breasts idly. "Skin softer than my mother's down... how on earth do these human creatures survive? No claws, no fangs, no feathers, wings, fins, or plates. They are just tall, flesh-monkeys." She claps the book shut again. "Intellect. To learn to use the world to their advantage rather than their own body. A curse of knowledge. They ponder things well beyond their reach and cry tears for lost stars, a cosmos away. They know their eventual fate and live in fear of death in spite of its inevitability. Even this Ethos witch punishes a world today for something that has not yet come to pass! She claims to do this for the sake of animals- yet here I am suffering for her actions, stripped of my beautiful wings. I did not consent to this! We do not want this humanity!"

Satisfied with what incantations she knew now, Amaranth decided to leave the tower, though picked the guest rooms for usable clothing, since she is stripped of nearly all her feathers, and is ashamed of her bare flesh. She is meant to be a beautiful songbird. This Ethos will pay for what she has done to her! She found a pale teal shawl to wrap around her upper half- hanging as low as her midriff so enough to cover her breasts anyway. Unfortunately almost all the clothing in the tower at the moment is men's, and she has long narrow bird legs so no human pants would fit her properly anyway. She did find one skirt- white and coral striped with a slit up the side. It did not cover nearly as much as she would have wanted but it will have to do. Her talons click lightly on the stone floor as she hops down the many spiralling stone stairs to the base of the tower to leave finally.

Amaranth pauses on her way out of the town when she notices wagon wheels and horse hooves pressed into the soft ground. Fresh. No one in town is going to be able to use a wagon which means it must be Telal's goons here to ensure the town is fully lost to animals. Amaranth smirked and quickly followed the tracks into the town square. It is early evening, the sky a deep blue and the stars already visible. Only some lanterns remain lit still from days past- but no one is around to be able to light them now, so when they burn out they stay out, casting most of the town in darkness once the sun falls.

A young man adorned in a gaudy amount of precious metal jewelry twirls around, tapping his foot with his arms crossed. "Can you hurry up, I want to get into those towers. All that knowledge will be mine now- no waiting, no paperwork to get in."

The other man was older and had a huge belly- but his arms were equally large with muscle and he carries a war hammer in his fist. "Patience ma'am, we gotta job that needs doin' first, aye?"

"I am not a woman!"

The large man chuckled, glancing at him. "Wit skin as soft as tha', I don't care what ya have danglin' between yer legs- you're a pretty lil lass ta me."

"Not every man is a barbarian like you. As a sorcerer, sullying my hands with physical labour is beneath me! Hmph."

"Ah, so a housewife at that."

Amaranth slowly sauntered up, her loose skirt flipping back and forth with the swing of her hips as the talons on her long legs click quietly against the stone of the town square. "I see you gentlemen have a ride- mind taking me to the capital?"

Both men got goosebumps at the sound of her voice. It is so honey smooth and deep while still being womanly that a feeling of warmth builds in you from simply hearing it, as if her voice itself warms your soul.

The young man cocked an eyebrow at her, but his eyes danced over her form, admiring her barely dressed figure. "How on earth did you maintain such a... supple form, against the magnus' spell?"

The larger man sighed. "She didn't ya daft bastard. She inn't human- she's a bird." He turned back to her and shook his head. "An' sorry ta disappoint but we ain't a chaperone service."

Amaranth lifted her arms, unintentionally flashing the undersides of her breasts as the shawl lifted. "But I have some matters to discuss with your magnus. I am not a human, but her spell has still taken my body from me. I will be taking it back."

He shook his head again. "I can't be lettin' ya do somethin' like that now. Necessary sacrifices an' all. It may be hard to understand now but this'll be better for everyone in the end."

"I wasn't asking your permission- I was giving you the option of doing this peacefully."

She started chanting and the larger man grunt and heft his Warhammer into both hands to rush her. The air around them seemed to ripple with her voice, and before the man could get to her she raised her voice and a shockwave hit him like a tornado class wind and slammed him against the wall of a nearby building. Amaranth walked closer, muttering a few more magic words before raising her voice again and this time the wall of the house behind him exploded inward from the force, sending him tumbling into the house and crashing through several items of wooden furniture!

The younger man widened his stance and thrust an open palm forward, causing all his many precious metal bracelets and silver bangle to clatter together. A ball of fire materialized from thin air and spiralled forward at Amaranth and in a bit of a panic she quickly chanted a rather risky incantation and the air rippled so violently her image vanished from sight entirely! The fireball hit where she had been standing as she appears several feet further forward and to the side- she used a short-range teleportation. The incantation version of the spell is even more hazardous than the standard one though and should generally only be used in emergencies, because actually going to the exact place you intended is borderline impossible- unless you don't actually care where it sends you.

Now both the young man and Amaranth cast at the exact same time. A stone pillar rose from the ground in front of her just as the man fired a bolt of lightning- the stone did not conduct the current, negating the lethally fast attack. Before he could try to cast another spell, Amaranth struck the stone pillar with an open palm and launched a chunk of rock free from it as a projectile! The man grunt in frustration and motioned to it as it fired through the air and by the time it hit him, it exploded into sand. It still hit with enough force to shove him back, but was unable to hurt him. A disadvantage of incantation is that the spell itself has no direction or form, so you must telegraph with physical gesture to shape the spell once it is set- which means your opponent can briefly see where your spell is coming from. Amaranth chanted and motioned to him with a beckoning hand and the mage was ripped through space, sliding frictionless across the ground to her side! He was expecting her to hit him or something, so she caught him off guard when all she did was flick the silver bangle with her clawed fingers.

The mage thrust into her chest between her tits with an open palm and an explosion of wind blasted her back- she opened her giant tail feathers to help brace herself to stop while her talons raked thin scratch marks across the stone of the road. They both cast at the same time again- this time the mage created a ball of red flame and Amaranth a ball of golden flames! The two struck each other mid-air and exploded into a swirling mass of fire that snuffed out after rapidly devouring the oxygen in the air, causing the air pressure to clap closed onto it. The two cast at the same time yet again, glaring at each other, trying to read one another. It was a dangerous game of rock-paper-scissors. Will he cast fire, water, earth, or wind? Counter it incorrectly and get hit. Since she attempted fire last time- the mage used water this time, forming a large dense globule of water and launched it at her- Amaranth crouched and summoned a swirling sphere of sand! The shield was blown apart by the explosion of water on impact with the mage's attack- the liquid causes the sand to clump and become too heavy. She chose a defensive spell for a reason however- she only needed a moment to catch her breath.

Amaranth grinned briefly and stood up straight again, taking a deep breath and then screamed at the top of her lungs- an absolutely wretched, shrill sound severe enough to make your ears bleed. Pebbles on the road rattled like there was an earthquake, windows cracked and most of all- his silver bangle absolutely exploded off of his arm. She flicked it earlier to hear its resonance- and then matched it with her own voice, obliterating it with sound alone. She wanted none of his repulsive humanity though- so before he could gather himself and even realize what had happened she chanted a polymorph. The bangle can no longer protect his form- the polymorph almost instantaneously warped and deformed both him and his attire into the shape of a toad, plopping down on the road. The toad had gold and silver colored warts on its back- from having his jewelry fused into his form. He croaked in worry and hopped away before she could do anything else to him.

Amaranth seen the larger man rushing at her during this, but was unable to address both him and deal with the younger man, so the larger man was able to rush up to her uncontested. She bowed below his hammer swing and side-stepped to distance herself a bit again. She motioned to him chanting, but before the spell completed he smacked her hand to the side with a free hand of his own, causing the wave of force to blast the road beside him instead! He is too close to her to actually swing the head of the hammer, but thrust it forward and smashed her in the head with the handle to knock her back! He then swung the head of the hammer at her to break her skull open across it like a watermelon, but she jumped up gracefully, landing back down on the hammer- slamming the head into the road and pinning it under her feet! Amaranth may not be a bird anymore but she is still inhumanly light on her feet.

She quickly chanted the spell of induced pleasure she was using on herself before and the man immediately dropped the handle of the hammer and staggered back in confusion as he erupted cum into his pants- hitting climax almost instantaneously for no apparent reason! Amaranth then chanted another spell and the stone blocks of the road stretched and deformed, spiralling up and encapsulating the man's feet and lower legs! He was stuck to the ground! He could smash himself out with the hammer, but she just made him drop it.

Amaranth casually sauntered away, closing her tail again and flicking it from side to side to knock any dust off it. "Thanks for the ride to the capital, boys. Tah!" And with that, she got into their wagon and took the reins- setting out toward Mountholme, which was only an hour and a half out from Dajure if she hurries.

Part Five : Stone Cold

One of the servants made his way into the basement of the castle, trying to get away from all the carnage outside. Everyone had been in a hurry to scatter away from the source; before most knew what was actually happening. This male servant knew better than most the link was to animals as he was already starting to turn himself- so he was trying to get as far from any animals as possible. Instead of fleeing the castle area, he was trying to go even deeper into it. The guards had abandoned their posts to rush to the king and try to defeat Telal when all this initially happened- so the servant was able to walk in and steal a set of keys to let himself into the dungeon.

Unlike the white marble or black veined marble most of the main castle was made of- the dungeon was stone block floors, and dark wood walls and roof that seemed to eat half the light cast by the sparse torches lighting it. The servant attempted to go down one branch from the main halls of the dungeon which seemed to be progressively more infested with mushrooms and moss, eventually coming out into a giant underground chamber. The floor gave way into a giant circle of stone housing half a hundred statues of people. Most looked frightened, but some were making rude gestures... these are criminals that have been petrified. The rest of the giant chamber is a naturally formed chasm- twenty feet down is a pool of crystal clear water that feeds into the castle's wells, and is in turn fed by several narrow waterfalls around the room, filtering in from narrow cracks in the cave roof. This meant that the floor only connected to the pathway from the door.

Seeing all the people frozen in stone spooked the servant who then started to back up, and bumped right into someone who seen him come down this way and followed him.

"Woah there, careful. Slip off the edge and it will be a real pain fishing you out of the water down there."

The servant turned and nearly had a heart attack when he seen who he bumped into, but settled down a bit when he seen the man was wearing a blindfold.

Gregor is an alchemist and apothecary, but due to his species, he was granted these titles because he was first employed as the dungeon master of castle Etabed. Gregor is not human- he is a Gorgon. His tail is nearly twenty feet long and is how he moves about as gorgon lack legs. From his head instead of human hair he has a nest of twenty snakes, all fused to his scalp at the base of their tails. The snakes writhe about with their own instinctual reactions, but share his will- so they are never in conflict with one another, but he also does not directly control them, they squirm about entirely on their own reflexes. Each snake is about two feet long. His tail and the bodies of the snakes on his head all appear to be a dull, dark orange in color but when the light shines off the scales at a certain angle, large black diamonds with a red dot in the middle become visible- looking vaguely like a giant eye. The pattern is only visible at certain angles though- they vanish if you just look at the tail directly.

His skin is a light bronze color and he is fairly muscular from having to struggle with prisoners often. The blindfold he wears is not thick enough that he cannot see through it- it is only there as to not trigger the inherent magical effects of his cursed eyes. The orange reptilian eyes of a gorgon will turn whoever sees them to stone, instantly. That is why he was hired as the dungeon master. The dungeon only houses those who are imprisoned in the short term. If your crime warrants an extended stay, then Gregor will simply turn you to stone, and place you into this chamber as storage. When your sentence is up they will use basilisk blood to restore you. Since he is in the castle anyway- they granted him alchemical equipment and let him study as a healer to pursue his own interests. A gorgon's upper half is mostly human, so in spite of technically being a monster- they have human intellect, so it isn't entirely uncommon for one to work with humans.

Gregor seen the man had elongated ears and the tasseled tail of a jackass and was immediately curious. He offered the man to stay in one of the dungeon cells, and just leave the door unlocked. The cell has a bed and toilet- Gregor can bring food. The prisoners did not feel the effects of Telal's spell- to prevent magic savvy prisoners from simply teleporting out of their cells, the entire dungeon is made with mana insulating layering. Magic cannot pass through the walls or doors. The spell was able to reach Gregor himself, but not the prisoners in the cells, so without any animals to link to; the prisoners remain perfectly human.

Gregor is always curious about unusual biology, because that is how he learns new tricks as an apothecary. In exchange for letting the servant stay in one of the dungeon cells to take shelter- he took a gene sample from the altered human to examine. By the time news of what was actually happening above ground came- Gregor had already put most of it together himself. Some of the servants in the castle remained on duty- granted bangles by Telal so they can retain their humanity to keep the castle in operation, so Gregor and the three prisoners were not cut off of their food supplies from outside. Those servants that came down to drop off food and check on Gregor wore the bangles so the magic did not affect them. But the first servant who arrived... he was already affected. Gregor may be the dungeon master first and foremost- but he prides himself on being a healer as well... he secretly observed the self-imprisoned servant as a test subject. He planned to use alchemy to try and devise a cure for Telal's curse.

He cannot know what blocks the effects and what does not without intentionally transforming the man though. There were no animals nearby, but Gregor has a supply of distilled gene essences for study- opening one of the vials is enough to transfer traits. Most alchemy is a hybrid of magic and science- the gene essences are animal traits copied with magic but then imprinted on physical matter for storage or transfer. So in spite of the samples not being living material- it still works in this transfer. It also means that Gregor could pick and choose what to give the man. He also had limited time to work- the man was already linked to a jackass on the outside, so coming down here did not sever the link it just slowed it. The man's cell remained unlocked after all.

The servant remained oblivious to Gregor watching him, so had no issue flopping out his enlarged, darkened testicles and masturbating to take the edge off the first night he was there. As time went on, his testicles grew even larger and the scrotum turned darker. His taint and anus enlarged and became puffy as the darkened flesh tone bled up from his balls. His foreskin fattened and peeled back from the shaft turning slowly into a sheath as his cock itself got longer and thicker. The changes down here came slow and steady, but that meant that the transfer gave him an irritatingly subtle buzz of pleasure which kept him constantly returning to erection and ultimately making him touch himself to try to get his growing beast to sleep. His ears also grew larger and longer with each session- as if the carnal act of touching himself was what drew more jackass out of him.

The problem with trying to insert mana inhibitors into an animated body is that they also block the flow of the bioelectricity your body is animated by in the first place. Protecting you from the spell is sort of irrelevant if it also kills you. Gregor could not shield people internally from the spell, so instead he aimed to counter it. Two objects of equal force going in opposite directions collide- they both stop moving. He needs to make a waveform of magic opposite of Telal's so the two currents cancel each other out.

He contaminated the man's food with the elixirs he brewed, and then opened an animal essence later that same day to observe the transfer of animal aspect to the man. An elixir obviously isn't going to be able to carry something as precise and man-made as a runic array to make a drinkable spell- it can however transfer mana saturated materials that then react with your natural biology when broken down. The energy then released from the materials resonate with the bioelectricity in your body and the resulting resonance can have the same effects as a spell- that resonance needs to oppose Telal.

The first night he opened a bull vial- first trial run; obviously failed, the transfer was immediate. The man became more muscular, his scrotum grew longer making his large donkey balls more pendulous. Overlapping the donkey traits the tasseled tail grew abnormally long as well. Gregor did not release much essence since it was already clear this first trail did nothing to hinder it- and he did not want the man to become aware of the experiment.

The next night he opened a raven vial. The man's nails grew into large talons and his arms to the elbows became encased in black banded scales! Still more jackass bled into him as his phallus became longer and larger, developing a medial ring and the glans started to deform to become wider and less bulbous. Large bulbs of estranged muscle grew on his upper back and slowly as the night went on developed two huge plumes of black feathers- they would have grown into wings but Gregor did not release enough of the essence for them to develop into actual limbs. The man's ears grew larger and taller still, and now he appeared to be getting absentminded. His thoughts in the early stages of recession.

The next night he opened a vial of elephant essence, and grinned as it did not appear to do anything! Aha! Gregor watched carefully and became increasingly optimistic he had managed to science Telal's magic away. The man started to stumble about his room though, and Gregor realized the resonance of this batch was not only countering Telal's spell- it was also countering the flow of bioenergy in the man! His chakra was flowing incorrectly, causing it to become congested in some areas of his body while starving other areas! Gregor hissed in frustration and had to slither quickly to the man's cell from the observation room and give him a drink- claiming the man seemed 'dehydrated'. The drink restored the flow of energy in the man- it however also immediately let in the elephant traits that were unleashed already. Gregor 'gave the man some privacy' again- returning to his observation room to continue watching the man from the other side of the wall.

His canine teeth grew tremendously, stretching his mouth wide and emerging as tusks thanks to the elephant traits! He groaned as his entire body enlarged bigger and his limbs became thicker, and since an elephant also has a tasseled tail- his already unusually long tail became still longer! His clothes were already ill fit- now they burst apart entirely, preventing him from maintaining any modesty. Most of all, he was worked up to erection again and the effects were drastic on his genitals tonight. The veins throbbed tightly and expanded to the girth of his fingers! His cock stretched even longer but even more than that, it bloated thicker! Too thick for him to grasp all the way around with a hand! Then too thick to even wrap halfway around! His three foot long cock became as wide as his muscle-enlarged thighs! He grasped around the medial ring with both hands to encompass the same portion of shaft and just thrust into his own grip to get off. His now cantaloupe sized testicles swinging heavily under him as he grunts like an animal. His ears now incredibly large and fully asinine. His front teeth enlarged along with the tusks, making it so he could not properly close his mouth and his nostrils flared large as more donkey pulsed into him.

The man was running out of human- and donkey traits were going to infest him whether Gregor did anything or not. Gregor was also frustrated because he now had way more human essence samples than he needed. The man absorbing the traits from his essence samples causes them to turn human. He pondered perhaps creating a dummy situation. If a human gets between another and an animal- the transfer only happens to the person closest to the animal, effectively shielding the other human at least till the first is entirely beast. If Gregor created a dummy body of homunculus cells, it could act as a trait sponge and prevent transformation that way. But that would not reverse any existing changes... and also take far too long to prepare. His current subject would be long gone by the time it would be ready to test.

The man's intelligence was dipping dangerously low. When spoken to he takes several moments to process what you say, and then several more to think of how to reply. He mixes words up and even then only speaks with as few as possible. He gawks absentmindedly at the walls of his cell most of the time, and does not hesitate to masturbate the moment his body feels able to. The animal instinct and lust is completely unhindered- no control over it anymore. When his breathing becomes hoarse while masturbating, it takes on a wheezing bray like the voice of an ass.

The next day the man's middle toes and fingers were starting to enlarge, deforming his hands and feet. The nails were turning black and becoming large and blocky, slowly devolving toward hooves. He has grown a mat of fur on his upper back and his nostrils flared so large now that his entire face is starting to click and crack as it stretches longer in small but sudden bursts every so often. Gregor was taking lots of research notes and getting a lot of interesting theories in his head about this as well as information that will be useful for future research, but that did not help the current situation. The man was not going to survive another full day- this next test is the last he is going to be able to run. Since it did not really matter what species he used he just blindly motioned over the samples and chose the vial he pointed to at random- hippopotamus.

Gregor gave the man a tainted meal before noon- nervous of the man turning fully if he waited too long. Gregor opened the essence and watched the man carefully. After several minutes of nothing happening he started watching the man's eyes and movements specifically to see if it was a repeat of yesterday's blocked chakra flow. It was harder to tell now that his intelligence regressed, but he appeared to be okay. So it worked then?! Gregor smiled. Alright! He still needs to figure out a way to purge the existing effects but considering the short period of time he has had to work on this and his limited supplies- this is a big step. An elixir that can block out even Telal's cursed spell!

Gregor left his room and was already on his way over to the cell to see the man in person when he heard the man groaning and the sound of rapidly stretching tissue! But wait, why? Nothing changed? Oh... the elixir probably burned out. Telal's spell is a sustained effect- it continues to be powered as long as there continues to be humanity for it to destroy. The elixir however has a very limited amount of power. It can block the effects but only for as long as it has power to do so- which isn't very long apparently. Gregor was about to turn around and go back to close the essence to prevent the change but then shrugged and continued over to the door to the cell- the man was going full beast soon regardless, no point in prolonging it now.

The man became so huge he bent the metal framed bed in half in the middle! His limbs became tremendously thick, but especially his legs, losing almost all definition. His feet swelled pulling his toes into the mass that equalized with the rest of his leg, regressing the limbs into massive stumps of flesh! The only remnant of his toes are the giant blocky nails along the edge of the base- the middle of which alone was black and twice the size of the others thanks to donkey traits. The middle talon on his hands was much larger too- the talon itself turned into a pointed hoof segment on the end of an overly large finger. His belly became huge and his torso stretched longer and thicker. His neck became extremely wide and then his face stretched both longer and much, much wider! His mouth became absolutely giant like a hippo, but still framed with small elephant tusks, and lined at the front with large blocky donkey teeth. His human hair remained the same instead of turning into a mane, and the only fur he got was the patch already on his back- he was mixed with three species that do not have fur, so it was unable to progress further than that.

Hippo also have little ropy tails, so yet again his tail grew still longer, dragging on the ground unable to fully lift itself. His balls gurgled and the tissue groaned as they swelled to the size of a medium sized beach ball each, and thanks to the loose scrotum rest fully on the ground under him even when he is standing. Never mind donkey- elephant and hippo have internal testicles but their balls are very large- add those on top of the other species and like the tail the overlapped traits magnify themselves.

Driven to full erection by changes one last time the beast flopped heavily onto its giant rump and grabbed its giant cock the girth of a fire hydrant and started to jack itself off with its malformed claws.

Gregor blushed, briefly rubbing the opening of his cloaca before closing the door and this time locking the cell so the feral beast doesn't wander around and hurt someone. He is a bit jealous- at least of its ability to... enjoy its body.

He had the ability to ward Telal's spells briefly... that seemed as good as he was going to get. The only way to stop all this was to convince Telal to stop, or incapacitate her. If Gregor drinks the elixir himself she will not be able to defeat him with spells- if he takes off his blindfold all he needs to do is get a good look at her, and she will be turned to stone- the spell will end instantly as if he had killed her. Without actually killing her. Gregor is a healer after all, not a killer. Sure he might treat people like lab rats most of the time- he still isn't cruel to them.

At least he did not have far to travel- they are in the same building after all. Though there is probably a mile worth of stairs and halls to navigate for him to reach Telal Ethos- she is technically only about twelve meters away from him. Gregor prepared several vials of the elixir and loaded them into a belt in preparation.

He gathered some extra food supplies and brought it to the only other two prisoners in the dungeons- both women. One was imprisoned for trespassing in the castle, stupidly taking a dare from a friend. The other was arrested for assaulting a royal guard- who she formerly dated. Probably would have gotten away with it if she hadn't decked him while he was on duty, surrounded by other guards. The trespasser was actually supposed to have already been let out- but Gregor left her since her cell is now ironically the best place to be. His tail makes a sweeping sound as he slithers about the stone floor. The snake heads that stem from his help hold food trays with their mouths.

He slid them the extra food. "There ya are ladies- a little bit early and a little bit extra, because I don't know when I will be back. I am, uh... heading upstairs. Whole end of the world thing out there- figured I should probably complain to management."

"How about you just let us out... world's fucked- who are you imprisoning us for anymore?"

"Wait, don't leave us here, what if you die?!"

Gregor nodded. "Yea... that would indeed suck. Here is the thing though- I unlock those cells and you both start slowly turning into animals. The cell is keeping you both safe."

The other woman clacked her forehead against the bars. "Uh, yea but we can't really live stuck in here regardless. And if you end up killed because you decided to take on the most powerful sorceress in the world, we starve to death in a few days because there is no one to let us out or bring meals."

"C'mon... I'll... suck your cock!"

Gregor laughed immediately at that. "Oh really now."

The other woman chimed in. "Handsome snake man? Sure, why not. I will blow you too- ask the guard who locked me in here in the first place, I give good head."

Gregor shook his head and was about to leave but ended up slithering in a full circle. "Well... hmm. I have been rather worked up lately, and being stuck down here all the time..." He took out one of the elixir vials and one of the snakes on his head bit the top and pulled the cork out for him to drink. Gregor also wondered if people going feral was a separate effect, or just a result of the transference of beasthood. Because what happens if they turn into a species that already had equal intellect to a human?

Gregor let them out of their cells, slithering back a bit before reclining on a section of his own folded tail, waiting for them to service him. The women looked at one another before shrugging and kneeling down. Sucking monster cock was still better than being cooped in a prison cell. The banded scales on the underside of the tail stopped at his lower crotch- his cloaca was between two of these bands further down, which meant his dicks were several inches lower than they would be in regard to his torso if he were human. He also has a hemipene- which means there is enough for both women at once- they don't need to share.

When Gregor's twin dicks emerge they briefly look like two bumpy noodles but engorge massively quickly. What first look like little pale bumps stretch out into hooked barbs of flesh scattered across the surface of the entire phallus making it resemble a pink cactus! The dicks themselves are shaped like massive clubs. Either cock connects to its own testicle, allowing them to fire separately. If he was making love to only a single woman, he could use one dick while the other is in its refractory period and keep alternating to fuck continuously without end.

The women glance at one another as they suck on the dicks, synching up their method and rhythm- sliding their lips down quickly and then pulling back slowly to bend all the barbs with the suction of their lips- feeling the dick twitch in pleasure each time a barb flicks back into place. Gregor slid back to lay on the floor, and slowly slithered his tail around the women, twisting around their bodies and limbs to tangle them all together. His tail is very heavy- hard when he tenses it but very soft and squishy when it is relaxed. It is mostly all muscle after all.

After a while Gregor shivered and tensed from an echo of pleasure through his whole body... the elixir wearing off; the spell taking effect and the real show about to start. Gregor is not human- the spell will treat him like an animal, which means without the inhibitor elixir both of these women will lose their humanity to Gregor! One last experiment for the road.

The first change to strike him was on the largest part of his anatomy- the gargantuan tail. Like an accordion the muscles in his tail tensed on their own subtly from bottom to top, causing his tail to scrunch up and each time it shrank a little bit more against the underside of his torso! This also caused his tail to unintentionally squirm against the women since it was so tangled with them, and squeeze them rhythmically. The twin shafts of his hemipene started to get a bit narrower toward the end but the very end did not- causing the head to be more defined against the rest, slowly engorging more to take on the mushroomed shape of a human phallus! The barbs also very slowly started to recede but the nerve concentration within them was not lost- they just relocated to the forming corona of the new glans.

The two women started to squirm and let out moans muffled by the transforming cock in their mouth. Their own body started to warm with a spreading pleasure as they too changed- and like Gregor the changes started with their tails... which is close enough to their tender bits to ignite the nerves in their vulva, making them blush and fatten. They grew fleshy naked tails quickly, which at first bent against the cloth prisons of their prisoner linens, wedging between their butt cheeks and then unintentionally pressing against their own vulva. One woman managed to flick hers out, though pulled her pants half down in the process. The other woman's tail continued to grow longer forced to curve till it poked out of her pants in the front- eventually growing too large and heavy that the tail pulled her pants completely down with its weight alone.

Gregor was experiencing the strange sensation of growing entirely new limbs as legs started to develop before they were visible at all- they grew within the base of the giant tail, but as the tail continued to shrink and the budding legs grew, they started to emerge as bumps and then little formless proto-limbs. Just the legs themselves at first, but then a foot shape started to take hold as they grew and developed more, and then little bubble-like toes. The nest of snakes on his head were shortening as well now and the reflexes of the serpents were slowing. The scales that trailed up his lower back started to soften and meld into his bronze toned human flesh, receding down to the base of his tail. His cloaca scrunched further up his torso to position itself between the new legs and once his tail became small enough his hips gave a loud, hollow sounding pop and compressed to be MUCH smaller! When his hips changed size, the new legs socketed to the pelvis.

The women were already on their knees sucking cock but now they were on all fours and moaning around his dicks. Their tails were getting very large now and grew in pulses- you could see through the skin the muscles bulge and the growth ripple down the tail from their butts! Their hair started to fall out as their scalp became deformed- the skin there writhing at random seemingly, till the shape of several snake skulls could be seen under the skin- branching from their own skull. Their pupils started to stretch tall and narrow in width to serpentine slits.

Gregor's tail was only about a third of its original size now! It regressed far enough that his cloaca was pulled taut and peeled apart into two separate holes as muscle and flesh formed a ridge to divide them! He felt a surge of pleasure and pain mixed a moment and with a grunt the front hole birthed a large testicle, and then another right after, inverting itself into a scrotum! The rear hole is now his anus only. The deep pink tone of his cocks started to soften and the skin bulked up on the surface, becoming looser and soft in spite of the shaft inside of it still being very much rigid. The stiff bumps that were his barbs completely regressed and the fattening, lighter toned skin advanced up his shafts and for a moment pushed into the mouth of the women before their sucking pushed it back down- Gregor now had a foreskin. The many snakes on his head regressed to nothing more than a collection of bumps on his head and then flattened into a shiny bald scalp before the shadow of human hair started to form- dark brown to match his eyebrows which was formerly the only hair he had. Even the tail he does still have is becoming softer- the scales fading into naked flesh.

The tails on the women lashed around, twitching from spikes in arousal and pleasure the two meaty masses eventually collided with one another and they quickly coiled their tails together- squeezing each other like an odd hug. The base of the tails was expanding so massive that it occupied the space between their glutes forcing their anus to now be on the base of the tail facing forward, rather than on the bottom of their torso. Their hair was gone now and both women appeared to have five short snakes branching from their heads now! Rather than twenty long and narrow serpents, they only have five but the heads and bodies of these snakes are very large, so the bases of their bodies still cover the entirety of their scalp.

Gregor's legs now matched the toned muscle of the rest of his body and he grew in pubic hair around the base of his changed genitals. He was panting heavily watching the fat veins around his crotch pulse as the last remnants of his giant tail regress to nothing more than a large tube of flesh, then a big cone, then a little nub, and finally nothing at all! His human hair grew out to his shoulders and he had to flick his head back to get it out of his face. It just grew in so obviously the hair was not styled in any way to keep it out of his face. He grew a beard as well but it is very short. He could not grow facial hair as a gorgon. Oddly, even once he is fully human his eyes remained the glowing orange of a gorgon- they did not change. He can still petrify with a glance. Apparently though it is genetically passed down the petra-eyes are a magical effect, so the transfer did not cancel it. His pupils became round, but his eyes still worked the same otherwise.

The tails on the women became so large that the base collected their vulva as well, allowing their pussy to expand in size now that it is no longer restricted by the bone frame of their hips. Their anus travelled a bit further down the length. Once their five large head-snakes became long enough to reach their mid-torso the changes to their bodies seemed to pause.

Even fully human, Gregor still had two dicks! They turned completely into human penis but he kept both of them! In human form his glans were abnormally large even in comparison to his impressive twin dongs and when they swelled tight and purple as he hit climax, the corona was wide enough to catch on the backs of the women's teeth, so they could not pull off his cocks even if they wanted to! Their eyes went wide with surprise and they were forced to swallow quickly from the size of the gushing load of cum that erupted from him. As soon as their eyes widened flecks of glowing orange appeared in their iris and spread like embers across a burning sheet of paper- burning away their original eye color and granting them a petrifying gaze as well!

Even after the changes stopped and Gregor flopped back on the floor out of breath with his limbs spread out; the women had to wait a half minute for the glans to soften enough to pop back out of their mouths. Both of his cocks were the girth of a large bottle of pills and when fully engorged his corona distended two and a half centimeters off the shaft all the way around. The cocks were nine inches long each and each one fed by a softball sized testicle- though in human form they could no longer orgasm individually. If you set one off, the other goes off automatically with it.

Confused, extremely aroused, and still buzzing from the pleasure of transforming the two women looked at one another while Gregor was incapacitated and immediately kissed deeply, fondled their tits and then flopped onto their backs! While their tails are still coiled around one another, they pulled each other closer and coiled further up the other's length till they could reach and penetrate one another's pussy! They were so aroused they ended up tearing open and tearing off their scratchy prisoner linen tops- too ravenous to simply slip them off. They were tail-fucking each other while laying on their backs, butt to butt! The five snakes on their heads writhed around and one woman latched onto either of her areola with a snake head and sucked her own tits! The head serpents gained maroon colored scales with no patterns, but no scales developed anywhere else. They did not get enough gorgon traits for their tails to develop scales- it was smooth, bare flesh! Their anus and vulva are both on their tails facing forward, but were never pushed together into a cloaca. They both retain their legs, but their tails are still large enough that they could stand up on them... though, probably not slither around. You've never seen stranger things than two tail-fucking demi-gorgon.

Gregor turned completely human because he was fed humanity from two different people at once- but there was only one gorgon split between the women, so they only half transformed. Since he drank the elixir beforehand, the transfer of traits did not happen till they were already in the heat of the moment, so the women did not have a chance to second-guess their choice. There are no other animals around to turn them any further, so they are stalled in this state till the cursed magic becomes strong enough to drag beasthood from outside of the city. But because all the other citizens of the city have been doing that- the spell needs to reach from even further away to be able to turn these two. So it is safe to say this is their form for at least a while now, regardless of whether they wander around or not. Gregor also confirmed his theory- turning feral is not a separate effect carried by the spell. The women half turned into gorgon but their mental state hasn't been altered at all... because gorgon have the same intellect as a human does anyway. Luckily they are also immune to their own powers so the women did not unintentionally turn him to stone- he still has his petra-eyes so he cannot be turned by looking in his own reflection of something stupid like that. He is wearing a blindfold still but they are not- he will have to get them one.

While the women frantically moaned and fucked themselves on the now warm stone floor, Gregor paced awkwardly around the room. Dragging his feet, then taking exaggerated stomps trying to figure out how legs work. It was an odd sight; a strikingly handsome dark skinned man with two soft, fat cocks taking his very first baby steps, unaware of how his own body functions. Because he has two dicks and they are both quite large even when fully flaccid- they do not tuck away into the cleft of his nuts. When he walks they are pushed forward by his thighs causing them to flop constantly one and then the other. His glans are so big that even when fully soft you can still see their definition pressed into the foreskin drawn over them.

When he heard them shriek in orgasm he wandered back over to the panting half gorgons and knelt down. "So. Since you are out of your cages anyway, what do you say you girls help me topple an evil sorceress, hmm?"

"Hmmm~ we are yourssss~!"

"If... if it means more of this... I will follow you anywhere~!"

He chuckled and got up to grab the belt of elixir vials and some blindfolds for the women. "Then I believe it is time to end the apocalypse."

Part Six : Operetta In E Flat

Grace arrived at castle Etabed at the heart of Mountholme finally. She was glad she took her master's mace- she needed it to get here. The former humans in the capital have forgotten who they are and what they are supposed to be, but they have not forgotten their anger and frustration of having it stripped from them. Now as feral beasts they fight among each other and wander aimlessly in the streets causing random destruction in anger and fucking beasts that are similar enough to their own build to ignite arousal. Grace is at least a full half human- so the new beasts take offense to her form and attack. Her mace is not very long but its head is made up of eight triangular plates arranged in a cylinder so getting swat in the head with it hurts real bad. While she does not look especially muscular she is still pretty bulky for a human woman and still retains her full overall size from when she was a cow. Even without her weapon; getting body-checked by a 600 pound woman wearing sparse plate armor fucking hurts too.

She has never travelled before so she had been looking around frantically as she followed the road north, not knowing what the capital even looks like, and she does not know how to read so the signs along the road mean nothing to her. When she seen a city the size of a giant mountain spiralling up to the base of an elevated castle she knew that must be her goal though. Now she wandered up from the base trying to figure out how to get in. There was a large road spiralling up to the main doors but there are other roads that branch around to separate plateaus around the cliffs under the castle like giant steps down into the city streets. These separate pathways lead to guard towers around its parameter and the barracks in the back, but she doesn't know that, so she keeps wandering down each and then wandering back when she realizes it wasn't the path to the castle. Luckily hooves do not wear out like feet do or she would be done before she even arrives.

Grace paused and turned quickly when she seen movement in the corner of her eye. It did not rush at her to try to attack though- it wandered away quickly. Out of curiosity she trot after it, trying not to be too loud with her hooves clopping on the road under her. She stuck to the corner of some of rock outcroppings against the cliff to try be as stealthy as a seven foot tall cow woman could be. The figure is humanoid! But very small. Wrapped in a hooded cloak, the small humanoid dashes down the path with a large scaled tail lashing around behind it.

Griss arrives at the guard tower and immediately takes out a lock pick and starts working the wooden door at the base of the otherwise stone tower.

"Hey!" Grace stops and points her mace at him. "What are you up to?!"

He nearly fumbled the lock pick in surprise and turned to her in confusion. He is actually wearing a hooded shawl- it only looks like a cloak on him because he is so small.

"What the-? Who are you supposed to be?" He glanced her over but then his eyes very obviously paused on and widened at the sight of her four huge pink breasts.

"I am Grace, the Pala-er... Paladin in training."

Griss put a hand on his hip, noticing she does not have a silver bangle like he does. "How are you still humanoid?"

"There are no humans left to alter me."

It took Griss a moment to realize. "Oooh- you aren't a woman turning into a cow. You're a cow turning into a woman. Hot." He turned back around and resumed picking the lock.

"W-what are you doing?"

"I don't owe you that information." He smiled as the door clicked open but then frowned as Grace grabbed him by the head from behind and lifted him off the ground in one hand.

"And I do not have to let you continue this uncouth behavior."

He lowered his brows. "Well you certainly talk like a paladin. Look- I am breaking into the castle."

"Is it not much further up? I was trying to get in as well."

"The front doors are further up- yea. They are also the front doors. You know, the doors where the remaining guards will be stationed to kick your ass. Not to mention those huge-ass wooden doors weigh a hundred and ten pounds each and are obviously going to be locked, so good luck with that."

Grace looked up at the guard tower. "But how are you going to get into the castle from here?"

"Third floor window."

Grace scanned up the tower and seen a window on either side of the structure on the third floor but nothing connecting to them. A moment later she saw an opening in the rock face opposite of the window facing the cliff-side. There is a hidden passage into the castle dungeon- you have to jump across to the opening from the window in the guard tower! Normally it isn't exactly considered an open door even to the few scoundrels that actually know about it because you need to break into a guard tower to even get in, and then are essentially delivering yourself to the dungeon- but in this particular situation... there are no guards left to man this station.

Grace put him down and Griss huffed at her and skittered upstairs with the cow woman following close behind. He found some sturdy planks resting against the wall behind some crates on the third floor but could not pick them up himself- he is too small to lift them properly. Grace grabbed them up and easily slid them out the window to make a temporary bridge to the hidden passage and the two of them darted inside.

They had to move slowly till their eyes adjusted to the dark because there are no torches or braziers in this hidden nook, so it is completely black. It seems like a natural cave for most of its length since no one is meant to know it even exists. Almost every castle ever built has at least one hidden opening like this to get in and out- because an enemy army could win fairly easily otherwise by simply laying siege to the front gates and trapping everyone inside the castle till they starve to death without a way to get supplies in or out.

She looked down at the little rogue skittering just ahead, relying on his better sight in darkness to guide them. "So you were human? How did you stop transforming? Even people in the middle of the capital seem to have fully turned even though there is almost no animals there."

He lifted his tail up while continuing to walk forward, flashing her the silver rune-etched bangle around the base of it. "Ethos created these trinkets to ward her own spell."

"I have seen those! Oh... but that means you... work for..."

Griss laughed loudly, echoing off the cold stone walls. "No. I stole it off some of the goons she hired. But that is what I came here to do- offer my services to the witch in hopes she restores my body while she is at it. I am at least better than the three she sent to Dirocke, so why not hire me, right?"

"But she is trying to end the human race! Why would you want to work WITH her?!"

Griss sighed, turning to her and pausing their walking briefly. "Look tits- here is a free survival tip; this world works around the concept of survival of the fittest. None of us are stronger than Telal, I think that is pretty clear at this point- so if you want to survive, you have to get on her good side. Like a bird getting a free meal out between the teeth of a crocodile- if you can't beat them; join them."

"But you might be able to defeat her- she is not invincible! Is the entire human race not a cause worth fighting for?! I would gladly sacrifice myself for a chance of restoring justice!"

Griss huffed, remembering all the shit he and his sister have been dragged through in their lives. "Justice doesn't exist."

"W-what?"

"Justice is a man-made concept, it doesn't exist in the world. Life isn't fair, deal with it." He resumed walking.

"Then you should be fighting to bring justice and fairness instead of simply accepting things as they are!"

Griss growled, cringing at her naive, unwavering sense of righteousness. "Well then YOU do it. I am not a volunteer service! I lived long enough on scraps of society- I am not doing shit without some sort of profit to me, and I know you ain't got gold on you- you have no pockets. You're a lone cow so it is not like you got an army to back us up, so what? What is in it for me?"

Grace stuttered a bit, having not encountered a person as morally bankrupt as this before. "T-the salvation of your species and the pride of saving the world?"

"Yeaaaaa- no."

She noticed him gawking at her huge floppy teats again, smirked a little and knelt down to bring them closer to his face. "What about these?"

"H-huh?"

"You ever ride a cow before, little man?"

Griss crossed his arms in thought. Risk his life to fuck a four breasted cow woman? Eh, who is he kidding- she is going to continue to follow him regardless and make so much noise arguing with him that they will get caught and imprisoned anyway if he doesn't agree, might as well take whatever offer he gets just to shut her up.

Her bottom breasts are very big- her top breasts are colossal on even her large frame. Griss is so small and Grace is so large that a single one of her upper breasts can be squished across Griss' entire body! She knelt down onto all fours and Griss flicked one fat teat while latching onto the other and sucking, stretching her boob forward by it before letting it pop out and snap back into shape in a wobbling fit.

Grace inched forward but he put a hand on her other tit to hold her back. "Ah- I am on top."

She smirked again. "Oh? You have pride to hurt after all?"

"Uh, more an issue of me not wanting your body weight to crush my pelvis into dust."

Grace is wearing plate armor but it is sparse so she doesn't actually need to remove of any of it for this. Griss skittered up her torso when she lays back and grabs her top teats while thrusting his genitals against the cleavage of her lower breasts. His entire torso is only big enough to make it around the curvature of the lower breasts and half up the top ones. His sheath fattens as his twin dicks slowly wake up again and her soft fuzzy nuts squash into the soft rubbery flesh of the lower boobs. Her teats are so big and fat they completely fill his hands each and work like handles for him to hold onto her. His large snake tail slithers around her lower body and feels its way down the extra smooth pink flesh of her front to the bovine shaped labia.

Griss' sheath stretched taller as the opening had to contort around two dicks. Once they emerged the bumps around the corona started to stretch into little cones and then the giant spike-like barbs of his full erection! He slid his tail into her pussy, hooked in around her clit so his tail rubbed it in order to get into her vagina, working her up too. Her pubic mount blushed an even deeper tone of pink and her mons fattened in arousal. Griss has the pads of a rodent's feet on his hands and feet, which feel nice against her skin when he grabs into and kneads her flesh. His little translucent claws are not large enough to have to worry about.

She smiled and thrust her chest out suddenly, causing Griss to fall forward and then she fell back flat against the cave floor- clapping all four breasts together around his head, smashing him into her four-way cleavage! She chuckled as he thrashed about trying to pull himself out from between her heavy melons. He grumbled at her laughing once he was out and immediately skittered down to her pussy- now worked up and wet thanks to his tail. Grace quietened down and raised her legs slightly in anticipation when she felt the turgid glans of his dick on both her vulva and anus at the same time! Two dicks- one for each hole. Thanks to the size of the massive barbs around the corona his cock is able to stretch open openings that should definitely have been too big for him.

Grace's pussy and anus gradually opened as he pushed harder against her- his barbs slowly bending till the tension of the barbs and the muscle ribs of her inner passages found balance. They popped in and her passages immediately clenched from the pleasure jolt back in on his shaft to hug it while the barbs spread back out on the inside and raked softly across her inner walls! He could feel his dicks against one another through her inner lining! Grace moaned several times in a deep pitch, mirroring the lowing of a cow. Her black hair pooled around her head against the cave floor with her face tilted back and eyes closed with a blissful look on her face. Bull penis is very long, but not particularly wide, so while Griss was nowhere near the length of a bull- he still filled Grace just fine. Once his barbs loosened her up a bit more he started to thrust with enough force to make her breasts rock back and forth too- softly plapping together while her large teats flop over one way and then the other on their tips. Griss hooked his little hands onto the sharp edges of her still semi-bovine pelvis and her large muscular legs were bent up at the knees and softly hugged him from the sides with her meaty thighs.

Griss had been doing a good job edging himself, but Grace's pussy put the death grip on his cock once she climaxed ahead of him! Grace's ears fluttered as she rolled her head back and let out a loud moo. Her inner walls rippled and sucked at Griss' twin dicks, causing him to lean heavily forward and with one final thrust in he climaxed too. Well, at least if he dies fighting Telal it will be with empty balls.

With a short time to recover, Grace picked up the little man and plopped him on her shoulder and the two walked the rest of the dark path, seeing the dim glow of a lantern ahead where the path converges back into one of the main halls in the dungeon. The end of the cave takes several abrupt turns so it is hard to see the opening even if you are right beside it in the dim light. As soon as they came out- Gregor and the two half gorgon women were standing there. The two women were distracted, giggling softly occasionally and glancing at one another with bedroom eyes while their tails writhe around one another behind them, tangling and untangling constantly. Gregor is only wearing dungeon linen pants, but has three belts on and a satchel slung over his shoulder loaded with dozens of potions and elixirs. He just stood with his arms crossed- waiting for Grace and Griss.

"Having fun in there?"

Griss scoffed. "What's it to you?"

Grace blushed brightly. "Y-you heard?"

Gregor chuckled, snapping his fingers to send the sound down the long passage. "Bit of an echo in here if you hadn't noticed- sound tends to bounce around."

Griss looked him over, seeing just a hint of the glowing orange iris through the thin fabric of the blindfold. "And who are you supposed to be, exactly? One of the witch's pawns?"

"I am but a simple healer! Gregor is the name."

Griss motioned with a grin at the two women behind him barely able to keep their hands off each other. "And a player."

Gregor shrugged. "The entourage is a recent addition- you know what they say; the more the merrier. Now... I cannot imagine why anyone would walk toward the source of a cataclysm instead of away... unless you intend to go toe to toe with the magnus?"

Grace nodded eagerly. "We intend to convince her to revoke her spell. With force... if we need."

Gregor nodded and then continued walking down the passage ahead of them. "Then you will probably need a healer. The stairs up to the main floor are this way. There are still servants wandering around with protective bangles but they do not stop intruders. Me and the girls here can simply turn the guards to stone if they give us any trouble."

Logos plods into the main hall, having been able to shove open one side of the huge double-door enough to slip inside with the help of Harbinger. The doors were obviously locked as well; but the Blood Of Aeons- his heirloom pendant- is able to unlock it. As former Justicarius, Logos is permitted to come and go from the castle as he sees fit just as Telal does.

*Stay here Harbinger. There are still servants active in the castle, and the king will be in here somewhere too. Try to round up as many humans as you can and keep them safe. I have seen the extent of Telal's powers- our fight will be fierce and I do not want to hold back from risk of hurting bystandars.*

"Not sure the sheep will flock to a wolf, but this one will try."

*That is all I can ask of you.*

Logos walked through the colossal hall that is the foyer, hearing his hoof-paws click on the floor and echo off the marble walls. Even the giant ornate chandeliers remain unlit. The castle is an eerie, cold place in its current state. He has never seen it so empty and dark. It has always been a bright and pristine home for the king, and inviting space for the lords of the various houses that serve the kingdom to come and seek council.

A pale glow fills the end of the main foyer from beyond and he walks out onto more scattered marble tiles embedded in grass. There is no roof over this portion of the castle- this courtyard is a crossroads for the many wings of the ground floor of the castle, and looking up to the sky above you can see where the throne room is from here- the only area on the fourth floor of the castle. In the middle of this court is a colossal rotunda made of ancient, weathered stone that looks like it is plastered together with thick, spongy green moss. It shelters a large statue of Lord Argain Baul- the first king of Etabed.

Past frightened servants who part to let him pass, guards posted to keep such people out who are too afraid of Logos to actually do their job, and even a few animals wearing the tattered remnants of clothing; Logos wandered through to the far side of the castle to the stairs leading up. Getting to the king's throne is no easy feat- the stairs leading to the next floor is on the opposite end of the castle as the previous entrance; so to get to the fourth floor you need to walk from one side to the other three times in a row. Logos even passes a servant sadly handing out food reserves to a stallion wearing stretched and torn socks on its legs with the few stretched threads of a shirt around his torso, knelt down on the ground beside a colt wearing a stretched but intact shirt itself. The family of the servant... she was chosen by Telal to serve to the end, but her family was not. Now she is forced to keep her own family as if they were pets. If you look hard enough you can find some of the silver bangles here and there in the castle that no longer have an owner. People who were chosen to remain human but could not bear to witness the world fall and took their bangle off- wishing their human mind to be erased.

Logos passes the monster that used to be the champion Rajh. Still has dried blood crusted to one side of his head from the splintered stump of the horn Telal shattered off in their last encounter. On the second floor Logos is approaching the stairs to the third when King Pathos wanders into the hall from his bedroom and freezes up in surprise at his presence.

"Oh. Logos?"

*My liege.*

Pathos smirked, motioning for him to follow as he started ahead to bring him to the throne room. "Quite the form you have there. Oddly appropriate. Honestly I do not know if you can fight her, Logos. You know as well as I do how talented she is though, and you still came."

*Even if there was no apparent hope, I would still fight if only to make her job all the harder. I would rather die for justice eagerly than die with idle hands. Or... hooves.*

"Aaah- a joke, from you? Has the calamity given you a sense of humour at last?"

*Formality seems moot among the chaos.* There was a brief pause. *If I hold back against Telal she will surely defeat me...*

"Hm..." Pathos bowed his head a bit, understanding.

*I may have to kill her.*

"We all do what we must for what we believe."

Pathos opened the door to the throne room- this time he was met with the sound of a violinist playing at the side of the throne room. Telal twirls about to the music with her eyes shut and arms out to her sides as if to feel the music wash over her, or move her as a dance partner would. She is wearing a two layer gown today- the looser outer layer synched at the hip with a golden rose and again at the shoulder with an inscribed runic crest. The outer gown is golden on the outside and royal purple on the inner side. Under this layer is a less revealing black gown with elegant lace hem. Every one of her fingers and thumbs is adorned with a simple ring and below both layers of skirts her legs are encapsulated with the animated metal that is her transformed wheelchair, granting her the ability to stand.

The violinist abruptly stops on seeing Logos behind Pathos in the doorway; striking the wrong note and making Telal cringe and stop her dancing abruptly as well. Pathos continued casually through the room toward his throne and Logos took only a few steps into the room before stopping- glaring at Telal who now turned to see him.

"Justicarius. You know I pondered allowing everyone to retain their thoughts as you do. I need only remove their ability to produce more humans in the future and the species will peter out on its own. But it seemed too cruel."

*You are hereby charged with conspiring against the kingdom as well as innumerable accounts of unlicensed magic usage in restricted areas, tampering without consent, and magically assisted genocide.*

"They cannot mourn their loss without the capacity to understand what they have lost in the first place. Turning them all into animals removes their ability to reproduce allowing me to remove humans from the world without actually killing anyone. I did not do this on a whim- I have thoroughly planned this and weighed the options. This was the most ethical course of action."

*Normally the sentence would be death, but due to your lofty status and history of service; your punishment may be negotiable- depending on the reigning sovereigns descission.*

Telal sighed. "Not even listening, hmm? Do you even think about the choices you make, Logos? It seems more like you let the rules think for you." She started to slowly walk toward him down the very long, narrow room. "Does that not seem like it would make you unfit to properly cast judgement?"

*My feelings do not write the law, and neither do yours. Feelings are fickle and only relevant to the individual- the law is not selfish, it exists for everyone to maintain order, it does not make exceptions. It does not matter how you feel, it does not change how things ARE and continue to be.*

"Ah, but every life is to the individual. Each one unique, every person in a different situation and with different feelings on the matter, so to cast them all under the exact same unbending rules seems folly. If someone stole a loaf of bread because he felt like it, or disliked the shop owner- you charge them as a thief. The same as if someone stole a loaf of bread because they and their kin were about to starve. That doesn't sound very just to me." She stopped immediately in front of him- even though he is on all fours their eyes are on equal level. "This isn't about pre-written rules, it is about ethics. Rules written by the nature of the world- the reasoning between both our actions and the actions of the creatures we share their world with. Laws are written by man, for mankind. But that is the issue here, is it not? You do not own this world, why should you write its rules?"

Logos took the opportunity of her being so close and lunged forward, snapping his maw at her face but Ethos dipped back to avoid the attack the red carpet below them lifted up, forming into a giant fist and slammed into Logos's underside, smashing the air out of his lungs and bouncing him off the roof. Ethos casually started to walk away again.

Logos got to his feet quickly enough afterward. *Hah, quite the speech, from a human.*

She paused and half-turned to him. "What?"

*You cast your judgement on the entire species, and you alone judged them unworthy to even exist, based on something they have not even done yet. How very... human of you.*

Ethos growled and flew at Logos- all the rings on her right hand melted together and encased her hand, extending off it as a two-sided blade! Logos dodged to the side and attempted to bite her again, but the rings on her left hand managed to seal her forearm and hand in a cocoon of steel to protect her from his fangs. Ethos thrust her right hand forward and left a gash down the left side of Logos' long face. Pathos sat in his throne, tapping his foot while watching it all unfold nervously.

Logos tried to yank her left hand to the side to get at her bare flesh but he also seen her outer dress swirl out under him and quickly let go to dodge backward just as her dress formed into a huge alligator jaw and snapped at him. Her extremely long crimson hair swirled around her head and formed into the head of a dragon. Logos dashed to the side as Ethos bowed forward and the dragon head breathed a stream of flames onto the floor, following Logos in an attempt to incinerate him. Logos ran just ahead of it and then turned toward Ethos herself to attack again- she cannot breathe fire straight down or she will light herself aflame. Her dress turned into a snake's tail and coiled around him holding him off and she swiped downward- Logos could only partially turned to dodge; she cut the top half of his right ear off. He now had streaks of blood building on either side of his head.

She tossed him into the air and the dragon head caught him in its maw, shaking him a bit before throwing him straight through one of the marble pillars. Ethos turned to him fully again as her hair fell back limp and she brushed the creases out of her dress.

"Pathos' chosen champion could not defeat me in two attempts, what superfluous arrogance drove you to believe that you could succeed where he failed?"

Logos huffed, grinning with his bloody fangs as he slowly got to his feet again. *What I believe doesn't matter, remember?*

The blade from her right arm grew still longer. "Then I will grant you wish, and disregard your personal input."

There was a deep thrum in the air a moment causing everyone to pause before the heavy metal door to the room was torn clear off its hinges and fired across the room as a projectile! Ethos put her arm out and the door froze in space the moment it touched her fingertips.

Amaranth casually walked into the room with Grace, Griss, and Gregor standing just behind her. "Knock, knock."

The faintest hint of a smile twitched at the edge of Pathos' mouth. "A Siren, Rogue, Paladin, Healer, and Justicar. The rulings cannot silence the heart they were born from. Each fights for what they believe in... may this end in a consensus of the heart."

The door hovering in front of Ethos' hand crumbled itself into a ball and immediately fired across the room back at Amaranth like a giant bullet! Amaranth hummed a beautiful melody and thrust her hand forward- from the point where the two would have touched the ball of crumpled metal almost instantly turned molten, glowing with heat and writhed in mid-air to avoid touching and burning her hand. Amaranth started to chant magic words and Ethos stepped forward to silence her- but Grace charged at Ethos from around Amaranth! Ethos's outer dress opened on one side as a giant golden dragon wing and slammed Grace into the wall hard enough to crack it. Ethos was barely fast enough to jump back and avoid the giant eleven foot long lance Amaranth formed from the molten metal to impale her on!

Amaranth walked toward her as the others slipped into the room behind her. "You do this for the animals and yet here I am stripped of my wings. You torment us now with the effects of your wretched spell to avoid something that has not even come to pass yet!"

"It was the most I could do- I am one woman against a world, it was never going to be perfect!"

"The future has never and will never be a guarantee for anyone- what you seen MAY come to pass. But what we suffer now thanks to you HAS come to pass. You traded a possibility for a reality. I will take my wings back, whether you give them willingly or not!"

Amaranth chanted and motioned to the side- but Ethos was watching her for the attack and did not realize she was motioning to the broken stone of the shattered pillar which formed into a huge stone hammer head and crushed Ethos against the wall, winding her and breaking at least one rIB: Gregor dashed into the room and one of his girls dashed over to Logos to help him. Gregor himself threw a potion vial at Logos catching him off guard- he could only bow his head so the vial shattered across the top of his head and did not get into his eyes. The potion stung his open wounds but after a moment his wounds felt cool to the touch and the bleeding on his ear stopped! The gouge down his face knit itself closed again and vanished entirely. It is a healing potion!

Gregor just winked at him. "The unofficial royal apothecary, at your service."

Logos grumbled. *Unlicensed medical practices?*

Pathos shrugged. "W-well, royally sanctioned."

Amaranth took another step forward and a deep breath- ready to shatter the entire room with a scream but the carpet under her spiralled up and immediately yanked tight- forcing the air back out of her lungs as Ethos cast the stone away from herself again. Amaranth could not breathe- the rug is crushing her, she cannot use magic if she cannot use her voice! Grace rushed Ethos from behind and smashed her in the right side of her face with the mace, breaking the skin open between the bone of her skull and the steel of the mace head! Ethos fell back partially against the wall- her head spinning and filled with shooting pain so unable to act fast enough. Griss skittered up a pillar and used his tail to swing around and off it, straight onto Ethos and plunged his dirk straight into her heart.

"Nothing personal, witch. I just didn't see any profit in letting you live." The carpet holding Amaranth fell limp, releasing her.

Logos got there just in time to bite Griss' tail and yank him away! Griss hissed and was about to protest when he seen the bladed fingers made of blood, rising from Ethos' chest that would have eviscerated him.

"The fuuuuck?"

*She is the magnus; Ethos is versed in ALL known magic. Necromancy included!*

Ethos shoved herself off of the wall with a jerk and flicked her right arm toward Grace- firing her body across the room hard enough to smash through yet another pillar. "Annoying."

Gregor flicked an elixir bottle across the room at her. "Think fast!"

Ethos put her hand up in a stop gesture and the bottle froze in place in the air, but then Amaranth whistled and the bottle exploded- getting its contents all over Ethos anyway! It only seemed to irritate her however.

Gregor backed up a bit so she did not target him. "Wait... it didn't work."

Griss looked at him. "What uh... what was that supposed to do, exactly?"

"That is an elixir I made that can for a few moments block the resonance of her spell. It cannot undo its effects but it would prevent it from spreading. By hitting HER with it- it should have prevented the spread everywhere because I would have cut off its source."

Griss tilted his head. "Which means... she isn't its source."

Grace charged at Ethos again who turned to her with a scowl as her dress started to flutter up off the floor again, ready to transform. Logos lunged at her but a hand made of condensed blood reached up from the hole in her chest and grabbed him by the face to hold him off a moment before she slammed the blade on her right hand through his head! Logos pulled back in time so the blade did not lance his skull but instead the side of his long muzzle, spearing his lips and cheeks straight through to the other side and even cutting the surface of his tongue inside!

Amaranth kicked Ethos across the face while she was distracted with Logos, raking her talons across her cheeks before leaning back and then screaming at her! Everyone was knocked back from the force and even the marble walls started to crack and chip from the abrasive sound! Logos quickly backed up and shook his head to try and gather himself. Ethos flicked her left finger at Amaranth and her ring dislodged like an arrow- turning into a throwing dagger mid-air and lanced Amaranth directly in her throat, immediately silencing her. Gregor quickly grabbed a healing potion and dashed to her aid.

Grace and Griss attacked from two different directions at the same time, but as Grace swung her mace- Ethos's dress turned into the snapping maw of an angered wolf, bit into Griss' tail and swung HIM into Grace's head, knocking them both away!

The frightened violinist called out in protest a moment as one of Gregor's girls yanked the violin from her hand and held it up. "Hey Greg~ is this important?"

He finished pulling the dagger from Amaranth's neck as his potion closed the hole carefully around it so the least amount of blood escaped. "What? A violin?" She turned it, revealing an extremely complex runic array etched in tiny writing across the entire back. Gregor then glanced over at the pipe organ on the other side of the room and also seen runes on it, and then the harp too. "The resonance. She used literal music. Destroy them! She cannot amplify the spell any more without the music!"

The girl went to smash the violin but shuddered and collapsed to her knees, then bucked her head back and moaned! She is still half human- Ethos is flash-transforming what humanity she has left to incapacitate her! Her legs and arms shortened and her soles and hands rapidly stretched as paw pads fattened up, trapping her on four legs and unable to stand back up! Her ears grew rapidly long and narrow, dangling limp on either side of her face as her face stretched rapidly degenerating her cries and moans to whimpers and yips. Feathers exploded down her body except for the snakes on her head, and her tail finally gained its coating of scales to match them! Her breasts regressed into her chest as six large erect teats appeared on her midriff and her mons billowed out huge pulling her vulva into a pillowy triangle! Ethos turned her remaining humanity into an odd breed of dog from the eastern kingdoms known as Cu Sith; a dog that is covered in feathers instead of fur.

Grace had been knocked back with Griss, falling almost directly between the two other instruments however. Grace smashed into the organ with her mace and Griss played his dirk blade across the strings of the harp- popping them all in half! Gregor's other girl dashed over to grab the violin and finish what her counterpart started. Gregor called out to Logos and tossed another healing potion into the air. Ethos went to transform the second girl, but Logos bit into the potion mid-air and it started to heal his lanced face as he continued to spin on his front limbs, and then kicked Ethos full-force with both of his back legs; which are half horse. He slammed her against the wall hard enough to make her spit up blood all over herself, and she was unable to stop the other girl in time- as she smashed the violin. The spell could no longer spread now. All that was left was to stop it entirely- which meant stopping Telal Ethos herself.

Ethos' eyes pulsed with light a moment and in a wave across her body her own wounds started to mend themselves.

"Wretched pests! You will not take the future of this world for your own petty cause!" She thrust her arms out to either side and an immense shockwave of power erupted from her body!

The force of the blast was so gigantic that all four walls of the entire room exploded outward! Everyone fell to the floor and had to scramble with their arms and legs to try to grip the floor long enough that the blast did not launch them out of the building entirely! This is the only room on the fourth floor, there is nothing but open air outside of the throne room. The roof fell at them, threatening to crush them all now that there were no longer any walls to hold it up but then it too was shattered to dust and cast away from Ethos.

In a ruinous vortex the shattered remains of the entire throne room rose up over them all and re-converged into the shape of Ethos herself! A colossal avatar of her upper body made of white marble! The black marble that veined the pillars now concentrated into two black demon horns on the head of her avatar, and the avatar's 'hair' is made of the flowing cloth banners that bordered the entire room formerly. The sun was starting to go down- the metallic orange light of dusk glittered powerfully off the surface of the massive lake in the distance and made it difficult to see. Stars started to appear in the sky as if arriving to observe the outcome of this battle for the human race.

Ethos' outer dress rose from her billowing out into two dragon wings. Her black dress lifted her off the shattered floor and stretched into a tail for her to slither on and her hair animated itself, once again taking the shape of a dragon's head ready to incinerate anyone who tried to stop her.

When she spoke, her avatar also spoke with a much louder echo of her voice. "How many people exist in the world today? How many animals? What of tomorrow, and the next? This moment- this present is nothing in the face of the entirety of the future! You will not trade eternity for a mere moment!!"

Grace picked Griss up and threw him at Ethos like a human cannon ball trying to hit her from behind, but Ethos was ready and poised for an attack from any direction at the moment. She half-turned and elbowed Griss in the gut before he got to her body and before he fell off her arm she flicked it out and back- slicing him across the gut with the bladed end! Griss fell to the ground holding his belly to try and slow the bleeding- Gregor again seen a patient and made a dash for him, going around the others so hopefully Ethos does not see him.

Grace bowed her head and charged forward like an angered bull from behind her and Logos rushed at her from the front at the same time. The avatar slammed its giant marble hand into Grace's back and crushed her against the floor hard enough to impact it slightly- threatening to cave it into the floor below. Ethos clapped the dragon wings and Logos for a moment was suspended in the air as the blast of wind was equal in strength to his momentum- making him seem weightless a moment. Before he could touch down to move again the dragon head blasted him into the floor with a stream of fire! He had to frantically roll to try and prevent the flames from spreading- his entire body covered in flammable fur. The remaining half gorgon grabbed a potion off Gregor's belt and went to help Logos as Gregor himself was busy closing the gash across Griss that was almost deep enough to spill his intestines.

Ethos heard Amaranth start to chant and picked up the winded and hurt Grace and threw her at the Siren to silence her! Amaranth had speak faster to change her melody half way in, and managed to slow Grace in the air to be able to catch and put her down rather than them violently colliding. The avatar was able to see for Ethos- that is why she can perfectly counter attacks made to her backside; she can see her own back with the avatar. She seen Gregor healing Griss and her avatar turned and pulled back its left fist to punch them into the floor. With a fist that big- a direct punch would pop their bodies open against the floor like water balloons.

The avatar stopped for a moment when Grace quickly attacked- throwing her mace as hard as she could at it, but then resumed immediately seeing how little the attack did. She threw it hard enough that the metal mace actually wedged into the elbow of the marble arm but that was it- it is the size of a thimble compared to the colossal arm. Ethos heard Amaranth chanting again and recognised the incantation- in a panic she tried to chant her own but Amaranth's stronger voice cancelled her out and finished hers faster than Ethos could have countered regardless! She summoned lightning from the clear sky! Normally lightning is a hard attack- it's so fast and hard hitting than even the person summoning it cannot control it properly. Grace fixed that part. The metal mace was high enough and conductive enough that the lighting had no choice but to use it to land- the force of the electrical current exploded the elbow completely off of the avatar, ripping its left arm off! The fist just barely missed Gregor and Griss and slammed into the floor hard enough to easily cave it in, removing a massive section of the floor! The two of them had to scramble away quickly to make sure they did not fall into the hole too.

Logos once again rushed her body- she flicked her left hand once in either directon- firing rings off two more fingers and turning them to throwing daggers to pierce him! One struck into his right shoulder and the other into the base of his neck. He did not slow his attack and snapped his maw at her but she slithered back on the black tail of her inner dress. Her avatar spotted Griss a moment too late to stop him- he lunged forward to Logos, cutting the dress open with his dirk! The tail was broken and forced to return to inanimate cloth, dropping Ethos abruptly. Logos did not hessitate in lunging forward again in spite of his bleeding neck and this time Ethos could not stop him- biting into her left arm and thrashing his head to gore the flesh! Logos was punched off her a moment later, winded and given several broken ribs as the avatar's right arm punched him straight through the edge of the floor and lower wall- blowing him straight through the building and out the side! Amaranth quickly rushed to the edge and started chanting but her voice trembled with emotion, causing her incantation to fail! Logos crashed through the roof on part of the third floor and out of sight for now before she could save him.

Ethos stomped her foot down on Griss' tail before he could distance himself from her and brought her bladed arm down at his back! Suddenly her wings crackled and turned to stone! Ethos paused and glanced back as the thin stone cracked and broke under its own weight! She then looked at Gregor with fury- he had pulled his blindfold up long enough to glare at Ethos. As the magnus she is familiar with the magic of a petrifying gaze so the innate magic could not do anything to her... however her dress was woven from organic material, which means her clothing can succumb to his cursed eyes. She still had Griss pinned in place however. Grace charged her with all her strength again to try and save the little man. Grace was not bleeding all over the place but she definitely was still not doing good from that crash against the floor. Spreading bruises marked where she was bleeding internally and the sundered stone of the floor left her with several small triangular puncture wounds. This beef was tenderized.

Grace tackled Ethos to the ground, forcing her to let Griss escape and briefly winding her from the weight of the bovine woman. Amaranth started changing and motioned to Griss to yank him back to her through space quickly before readying another attack of her own. The avatar swung her arm again this time to smash Grace off the building! Grace got up quickly, but Ethos' hair coiled around her neck holding her in place so she could not evade and started strangling her!

Amaranth raised her voice and the air vibrated powerfully as a wall of force collided with the giant marble fist, freezing it in place! The fist was too strong to deflect but the force too strong for it to move forward! Amaranth raised her pitch to a deafening tone for a moment and the marble started to crack and shatter from the frequency of vibrations! The holes in the floor started to crumble and widen, reducing the space everyone had to stand even more. Amaranth lowered her pitch again while maintaining the melody and the frequency lowered returning the force from piercing to pushing- and now full of even more cracks the force got BETWEEN the stone and ripped the arm apart! Chunks of marble rained down on the city below as she blew the avatar's remaining arm away! Amaranth then collapsed to the floor gasping for air- she had exhausted every molecule of air in her lungs holding that for so long without being able to breathe in.

Too small to be noticed as easily as the others- Ethos was too distracted to spot Griss once again charging at her, jumping up and cut her across the face with his dirk- splitting her left eye and face to her temple. She cried out in pain and staggered back, holding her heavily bleeding eye. Griss pressed his luck and as soon as his feet his the ground again he jumped forward again trying to split open her guts- but he should have known he has never been that lucky. Her hair formed into a giant fist and grabbed him for her- squeezing till she started to hear his ribs pop and he vomited blood onto himself! Gregor threw a potion at him, shattering it across Griss' forehead to keep him alive longer. Grace punched Ethos in the face staggering her back again and breaking her concentration enough to drop Griss again before completely crushing him to death. She was unable to see Grace coming because she is now blind on the left side.

Logos returned to the room, having to jump onto the floor from the stairs because the last few steps have collapsed. He charged Ethos the moment he arrived again without pausing long enough for Gregor to heal his bloody wounds, so Gregor once again simply threw a potion at him hard enough to shatter open and spread its contents loosely across the wounds. Good enough to stem the tide of blood anyway- the best they can afford with no time.

The armless avatar started to change shape; her marble face stretching outward and teeth sharpening while the horns remained the same- becoming the giant head of a dragon. The armless torso reformed into its neck. The sky was turning dark blue and purple as the sun started to dip below the horizon now. The stars became brighter and the metallic sunlight glittering off the distant waves of the lake became more violent. The entire area was suddenly illuminated in dull orange and red as the giant marble dragon opened its mouth and a colossal fireball started to form! Everyone's hearts tightened in fear- if that thing breaths down on them they will all be incinerated in one hit! It is big enough to delete their entire party!

Ethos attempted to form her dress but having sections of it turned to stone and crumbled away prevented her from properly shaping the cloth. Grace attempted another attack but Ethos thrust her bladed arm forward- launching the blade off like a javelin! Grace turned in shock just fast enough that the metal spear lanced her left shoulder rather than her heart! Logos jumped while running forward as fast as he could, clearing several feet of space with his lunge before biting into Ethos' midriff and leaving a dozen puncture wounds from his fangs before her hair formed into a giant hammer head and smashed him off her into the floor hard enough to start caving it in again. The ball of fire overhead grew larger and wisps of flame started to form gathering into it from even further away, the dragon head lowered to face them all.

Amaranth could not counter the fire- it is too big, a water incantation even from her inhumanly powerful voice would not be enough. She could attack Ethos but the avatar moves independently- she could hurt Ethos while she is distracted with Logos, but then the fireball still kills everyone regardless. She took a deep breath and froze a moment, trying to gather and steady herself as much as she could as quickly as she can. If she wavers during an incantation she has to start over from the beginning again. She chanted out loud motioning her arm forward. Ethos glared at her past Logos, ready to deflect whatever the siren intends, not realizing she was not Amaranth's target. Pathos quickly dashed out of the way as Amaranth whipped her arm upward toward the throne and launched it as a projectile- straight into the underside of the dragon's jaw! She forced it to close its mouth on its own fireball and the entire sky turned red for a moment and filled with flames from the gigantic explosion! Marble chunks rained down across a ten mile radius as the avatar was completely annihilated by its own attack!

Ethos finally took her hand from her face, revealing her necromantic powers had regenerated her split eyeball, restoring her sight. Logos would not give her time to take advantage of it.

*You condemn humanity for what it could do. You have completely neglected their capacity to change, to learn! You have shown no faith in your own species! Rather than guide them and try to fix the problem you completely discarded it, ruining your so-called eternity for an entire species- the very crime you accuse everyone else of!! I hereby charge you with hypocrisy!*

He lunged at her again but she moved back to evade it- but the attack was a feint. She cannot dodge twice without throwing herself off balance and tripping. He landed on his front legs and immediately braced, leaping as high into the air as he could, twisting in mid-air and tucking his back hoof-paws in for a kick at chest-level! Ethos' hair started to lift but then flopped back down limp! Her eyes went wide as she noticed the pale yellow glowing runes across the floor around her! Grace used her minor holy powers to consecrate the ground under Ethos! The consecration negates any spells made with ill-intent! Amaranth let out one last scream of power before collapsing onto her hands and knees- the wall of force slammed into Logos and shoved him into Ethos just as he kicked!

Ethos was hit with so much force it looked like she had teleported- vanishing from in front of Logos and re-appearing as her spine smashed against the stone floor several feet away, and a split second later the back of her skull bounced off it. He knocked Ethos unconscious. They knew immediately she had lost consciousness when the metal and wood twisted around her legs to animate them fell away limp. In a shockwave from the magnus' body a pressure everyone was not even aware they felt was suddenly lifted. Everything felt lighter suddenly as Ethos's spell collapsed in a shockwave that would be felt the world over. Animals almost immediately restored to their proper bodies- the humanity rejected and streamed back to its original owners! People became vaguely aware of what they had been doing the last while as their conscious minds fully woke back up. Naked and confused the human populace of the world was restored.

Griss restored to a man- though his shawl no longer cut it as clothing and had to cup his hands over his exposed balls in front of the king. Grace turned back into a simple cow, and Logos back into a towering man as he snapped off one of the pauldrons from Grace's ill-fitting armor to place over his own crotch casually. Gregor rushed over to give Grace several healing potions and help pull the metal spike out of her shoulder- she was still quite hurt. The two half gorgons turned back to women and Gregor passed his pants to one of them to wear while the other hid behind the first. When Gregor turns back into a gorgon he has no legs again- eliminating his need of pants at all. Amaranth turned back into a Silver Songstress, flapping her wings and hopping lightly on her long legs as she skipped around the room in glee. Unlike the others she did not linger long- remembering the mage in his towers she took flight to see if Icarus was alright, and thank him before leaving these human lands to the marshes and lagoons she belongs in. Before she took off, she sung them all one last haunting melody from her beak this time, and off she went into the night sky.

Logos became even more a decorated hero in the kingdom even though he is supposed to be retired.

Griss and his sister were given a home in the capital- and enough money that his sister no longer had to rely on unsavory means to survive.

Gregor was granted even more equipment and allowed to open his own potion shop- though because of his continuing duties in the dungeon, someone else must man the shop for him.

Grace was a cow again, and had no need of awards, medals, titles, nor gold. She was returned to her masters back on the ranch, and everyone was told of her service to the world. Though she no longer understood their words of praise- she did recognise the large bronze statue of herself erected in the shade of the wisteria tree at the center of her home town. She was already the favored of her owners- now she was revered the kingdom over. Everyone who visited the town would always stop by the ranch to pat her on the head for good luck- and she will usually give them a friendly lick on the hand.

And the Magnus Telal Ethos? Well- the stories are often conflicting. Most who knew the truth of everything assumed she was killed... how else would the world be restored? The vast majority of the people still had no idea what actually happened. Officials told them it was a unique instance of malicious magic- but little else. So they never knew Telal was the source in the first place.

People outside of Etabed had zero idea what happened and would form their own legends about what happened in those dark times. Some believed it to be the wrath of an angered God, some thought it was nature rising up against them. The ultimate results were the same. They shared the flesh and form of animals for a time, everywhere. They now better understood the animals, and could sympathize better with them. They were more conscious of the repercussions of their actions on the world around them. They treated the beasts with a bit more respect, a bit more kindness- and were often surprised when the beasts did the same to them.

Telal never left Pathos' side, so outside of the castle everyone assumed she was dead. She was never even arrested. Ethos never enjoyed what she had done, and having lost to Logos now, she had to admit defeat. She was even there when Pathos gave Logos a new assortment of medals to commemorate his many new achievements- though she simply stared at the floor with an empty expression, standing half-behind the throne, unwilling to make eye contact.

Pathos did not want to punish her any more than her defeat already has, and the weight of her actions. Ethos was not wrong, nor was Logos. Just two sides of an argument- their correctness entirely dependent on what side of the argument you yourself stand. There was no more need of punishment or suffering. Peace has been restored to the kingdom, humanity to the people, beasthood to the animals... and most importantly- hope, to the future.

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