FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

As Leavold harvested the fallen basilisk's blood, he realized the crocodile-like creature could have been human once. He wondered why this thought had not occurred to him earlier when he had been blindly battling it or before when he had decided to seek it. It's former humanity was certainly a high possibility, for basilisks had not been something known to commonly inhabit the Frost Fjord.

Leavold stared at the mangled corpse and mused about what sort of person it could have been. A fisherman who had made his living off the fish that once ran through the fjord? A woman who had washed her family's clothes in the river daily? Or perhaps a poor child who had been caught playing too close to the river's edge, unknowing of the dangers the Vile had unveiled?

He decided it really didn't matter what the basilisk was before, if anything at all. What the basilisk now was dead. It had provided what he needed--it's blood and he had been more than willing to collect it. There was no reason to mourn potentially lost humanity because humanity was nearly dead anyways.

While Leavold stowed the warm vial of the creature's blood within his robe's pocket, a foul gust of wind blew his way. He wheezed painfully as his lungs and throat burned. He drank a swig from the canister at his side. Afterwards he took a deep breath, one that did not poison him as the one before. He could breathe freely and clearly for now.

The heavens rumbled. Leavold glanced upwards and saw that the once clear green skies were filled with angry purple clouds. From them a single drop of precipitation fell upon his exposed cheek. He winced in pain when the liquid burned his skin and dissolved with a hiss. He quickly muttered a spell underneath his breath just as it began to pour. Though he quickly became soaked, he was no longer harmed by the perilous precipitation. Neither was the basilisk's corpse. It, unlike him, was adapted to naturally to the Vile. It could have bathed in what fell without injury. Leavold was not so fortunate.

He kicked the basilisk into the fjord and watching with a sort of grim satisfaction as it floated down the poisoned waters. He turned away and began his journey back to his home.

The ravenous rain never relented. It was simple to maintain his protection spell, but it served to remind him that if not for his arcane knowledge he would have perished long ago like so many others had.

When he arrived before the gate to his home, he look left until his gaze fell upon fourteen stakes stabbed into the ground. Each one had been place there purposely in remembrance of individuals whose knowledge and ability had matched or surpassed Leavold. Their will, however, had been weaker. They had given up hope and lost their lives to despair.

He trudged up to the graves and examined the ground around them. Though sodden, it was otherwise like it had been before he left: undisturbed. Good. It meant none of them had risen today.

He turned towards the gate and opened it with a wave of his hand and a single muttered word. He moved past the gate, closing it in much the same way, and entered the large stone building that stood beyond it. It was cooler inside, but at least it was not raining death. He quickly walked own the hall, passing empty rooms, spaces that had once been alive with arcane activity. Now Leavold was its sole resident.

He took an abrupt left turn into one of these rooms. The space had once been eminently private. It's owner, Alvar the Alchemist, had never allowed anyone else to enter. Leavold had always wondered why and Alvar's death had given him the opportunity to find out. He had been disappointed when he had founding nothing particularly interesting or scandalous in Alvar's room. Like all the others, it contained a bed, a desk, and a bookshelf filled with books pertaining to mage's specialty. Perhaps the alchemist had been able to rid his room of compromising evidence before his death or maybe he just valued his privacy above all else. Leavold frankly didn't care anymore. Alvar, like the basilisk, had given Leavold what he need to survive and that's all that mattered now.

Leavold procured the vial of basilisk blood and laid it upon the desk next to a jar of dragon dermis, a pouch containing crushed coal, and a piece of paper that had been torn from a book. He knew this because he had been that one who had done the tearing. He picked the paper up and examined it. It had originally depicted a map of the known world, a world that no longer existed. Since then Leavold had marked it with green dye where the Vile had spread. The area for miles around his home was completely covered. The only reason the rest of the map was unmarked was because he had not personally confirmed it. Still, he did not doubt all or nearly the entire map would be colored green if it was true to reality.

Leavold returned the map to its place and took his seat at the desk. The ingredients before him were nearly enough for what he desire. There was just one more requirement...

His hands trembled as he reached within his robe to a pocket high upon his chest. He wrapped his hand around the container stored within and shivered at the touch. He quickly pulled it out and placed it upon the desk, relinquishing his grip immediately afterwards. The green liquid within the contained churned and bubbled furiously--concentrated Vile, the final ingredient to his final experiment.

Alvar had been the only one of the others to suggest using Vile to their benefit. No one, even Leavold, had taken the suggestion seriously. After all, Vile did not benefit humanity. In fact, its effects only seemed to serve to push humanity to extinction. It poisoned the land, changed its creatures, and allowed strange and terrible things passage to reality. Leavold had changed his mind on using Vile after he had buried the last of his fellows for the second time after they had come to unlife and nearly killed him. It was then that he realized he wanted to live, not as a monster or as undead husk, but himself. Leaving the immediate area would contribute to survival but as before, he suspected the Vile affected the entire world. His only choice was to adapt. He knew there were easy ways to do so--what didn't kill him would probably change him--but he wanted to retain his mind and morality.

To adapt, he would have to change. Alvar's alchemical texts gave him just the knowledge to do that. A concoction created with components of different creatures would grant him their resistances and, as a side effect, their appearance. This would be a minor sacrifice compared to being able to live without fear of dying from just being breathing. It was true that a polymorph spell could do about the same, but those were exhausting and nowhere near as permanent.

The difficult part had been identifying and acquiring components. The basilisk's blood had been an obvious choice due to the reptile's prevalence and being one of the few creatures pre-adapted to the Vile. Dragon dermis had been another easy decision. Though the species as a whole was extinct, they were legendary for their constitution and resistance. Coal, the third ingredient, was merely fuel for the fire. Vile, the final ingredient, was both a component and a trial. If its inclusion killed him, then its exclusion would as well.

He uncorked the Vile's container. He put a hand over his nose as he added the other ingredients one by one into the Vile. The Vile hissed and bubbled as each ingredient was mixed into it, dissolving them all until what remained was a sludgy, dark green blend that was less frenetic than before. His work still incomplete, Leavold placed his hands over the container and started to mutter underneath his breath. With each arcane word the potion regained some of its previous energy, bubbling and heating up as energy infused it. When he finished the spell, the potion was complete.

Leavold grabbed the potion and held it to his eyes. What he held in his hands would either ensure his survival or end him there. He didn't even have to drink it. He could throw it to the ground now and try to survive as he had before. However, he didn't want to do that--he wanted to survive, to thrive despite the circumstances and here was his chance.

Without another moment of hesitation, he downed the viscous liquid. He gagged as it slid down his throat. It had tasted terrible, though he had expected worse considering its components. Thoughts of flavor were quickly thrust out of his mind because the liquid burned. The pain was so agonizing that he bent over double. Then he was on his knees, for the burn no longer followed the liquid's trail, but had spread throughout his whole body.

He fell off the chair and onto his hands and knees. The pain was so intense that it was difficult to think. He struggled to come up with a solution to the current problem that the liquid inside was killing him and that he would soon be dead. Perhaps if he could retch, expel it from his system he could survive and mend the damage. He stumbled forward and suddenly fell flat as his limbs gave out. He attempted to force himself up, but his limbs were numb and unresponsive. They no longer hurt. They almost felt cool...

Leavold shivered as the pain was subsumed by an odd sense of formication over these paralyzed limbs. He tried to move again and this time succeeded in having his numb right hand pull the sleeves of his left hand back. He froze when he saw that small, deep purple colored scales were overtaking skin and hair and only continued to spread upwards. When they reached his wrist, pain briefly returned as the extremity's bones rearranged for a similar yet different configuration. His scaled fingers grew longer into taloned digits. He flexed the clawed hand experimentally, overjoyed to find feeling had returned. It seemed that he was going to survive this after all.

He felt the same pain in his right hand. He held it up to the other and saw that they matched. The tingling sensation returned save it was in his legs now. He looked back just in time to watch and wince as the joints in his legs twisted so that he could no longer walk as he had before. He quickly rolled over and leaned forward as he felt his feet press into his footwear. He threw off the roughshod shoes just as the extremities finished their development into clawed, reptilian feet. He was surprised to find his "toes" flexible and responsive, more so than their predecessors.

As the feeling of formication continued to his torso, he unsteadily got to his feet, noting that he stood on his digits rather than his feet. He felt a little unbalanced when he hastily doffed his robes. He would be nude if not for the underclothes covering his waist and crotch. He glanced to his chest and saw that the purple scales that covered his limbs were spreading throughout his torso. When they reached his neck, pain flared in his cranium. He held his head. It took all of his willpower to not cry when his skull ground and crunched together. His face pushed forward into a muzzle, one that resembled the basilisk's long crocodilian configuration from before but shorter and stubbier still. His previously existing teeth inside his mouth sharpened and lengthened into appropriately carnivorous molars, and others joined to fill missing places. His tongue grew longer and wider so that, unlike a crocodile, he could stick it out of his mouth if need be.

Following the completion of his face, Leavold ran his hands over the changed cranium. His human nose was gone, superseded by two holes at the end of his snout. His ears were likewise nowhere to be found and he couldn't find any obvious auditory organs. His neck was thicker, allowing more support for his heavier head.

He ceased his examinations when a painless pressure pushed at his spine. He could only wait as a fleshy nub emerged from the base of his spine. From there it pressed outwards until it was the pointed tip of an increasingly longer and thicker scaled tail. When it finished growing it was nearly three feet long. Leavold did not feel weighed down by it. Rather, it completed his balance and he could move it without even thinking. He looked back and lifted it with his hand. With proper practice he assumed he might be even able to grab things with it.

His new appendage was quickly forgotten when his crotch tingled in such a way that the sensation was nearly the opposite the tail's growth. He hastily dropped his undershorts just in time to see his still human genitals retreating into his scaled crotch. His testicles were the first to recede. He groaned in terrible pain as they tried to force their way through a passage smaller than themselves. Somehow they fit, causing Leavold to shiver as they made their way up to a tunnel that yet carved its path. They subtly altered on their journey, so that by the time they reached the uterus they were a pair of fertile ovaries. At this point in the journey, they separated and took their places across from each other at the top of the uterus and began to emit estrogen.

Leavold whimpered when his shrinking shaft was the next to retreat. It did not disappear within. Instead, it shriveled until it was a small nub, his new clitoris. Next, the opening widened as scaled folds grew over it so that Leavold was now the owner of a freshly formed feminine sex.

Still in shock at what had occurred, she reached down and brushed a claw against the slightly puffy lips of her sex just as her womb began to form. She shuddered both from the strange new sensation and as her womb came into completion. Her hips cracked and widened just as developments on her upper chest began. Before her very eyes the flesh beneath her hidden nipples pressed out into two mounds. They steadily grew larger and larger until Leavold was left with a pair of hefty breasts that hung heavy on her chest. She cupped them and kneaded them experimentally, noting their sensitivity and softness compared to the rest of her chest.

She dropped them and waited for a minute in case of any other unexpected changes. When nothing happened, she stepped out of the room and walked down the hallway. She entered another room, one that had a mirror. She looked at it and at herself.

She was taller than before and her new walking posture only served to enhance that. She also didn't recognize herself--there was nothing left of the man Leavold, at least in appearance. What stared back at her was a purple-scaled reptilian, a hybrid of draconic and crocodilian attributes. An exception were her eyes, which were pupiless black spheres. She still looked humanoid, but she was most certainly not human, and neither was she male.

As she continued to examine herself, she wondered if this was really a bad turn of events. So what if she was female? She could have changed in more significant ways. A reptilian body, a pair of breasts, and a vagina was not so terrible. If the Vile had caught a hold of her, she might have died, or worse become a mindless creature. She had retained her mind and morality as planned. Her humanity was intact. There was only one uncertainty left.

She left the room and walked down the hall, this time towards the door she had entered. She opened the portal upon arrival and looked outside. It was still raining, of course.

She lowered her protective wards and stepped outside. Drops fell upon her naked body, running down from her head to toe without any harm. She inhaled a mouthful of the toxic air and breathed without choking or coughing.

She had adapted. She had triumphed. Though her body was altered, humanity would carry on within her. She would survive. She would thrive. And maybe, just maybe, she would be able to do something about the Vile.

Standing in the ravenous rain, a smile swept across Leavold's reptilian visage.