[center][b]An Experiment Gone Strange
By: VeronicaFoxx
For: Arrow[/b][/center]


Richard felt extremely awkward and self-conscious standing nude on the lawn of the Bastion estate, but that also seemed like an extremely silly feeling to be having.  The vast majority of the beings that hung out there wore very little clothing if any at all, and no one was really paying any attention to him.  Well, the whole harpy flock was, and Cyrillion and Svetlana were, and Crimson most [i]certainly[/i] was, but there were several dozen [i]other[/i] sets of eyes that [i]weren't[/i] focused on him.  Crimson and the flock were understandable; the red-and-gold hawk morph had told her "sisters" about his intentions, and the feathered females were excited to see if he could accomplish it like their larger, wild cousin could.  Cyrillion had a purely academic interest, and Svetlana was... well, she was showing some obvious appreciation of his body, but she also had a notepad ready to jot down anything that her mate deemed worth remembering.  Angelmaris apparently had no interest whatsoever and was off playing with Hemlock with some werewolf pups, apparently some of Svetlana's nieces and nephews.


The half-dragon sorcerer put the finishing touches on the spell circle that he had insisted on putting down before the shifter made his attempt and stood up to dust the frost off of his hands.  A ring of bare earth showed around Richard through the thick carpet of grass, with sigils scribed along both the inside and outside of it.  He wasn't really certain that it was necessary, but Cyrillion had said it would assist with his observations by preventing any external influences from affecting the shifter, and the human could only suppose that was a good precaution to take for a first try.  The black-clad albino made a circuit of the ring, looking it over with a critical eye and making a few adjustments along the way.  When he reached his mate once more, he finally gave a satisfied nod.


"Well, that looks to be as good as I can manage, which is [i]very[/i] good indeed, if I do say so myself.  That should insulate you from even my own influence, and..."  The half-dragon paused to cast a glance towards the fae lord who was currently fleeing before the canine pack.  "If he still had any influence over you, that should be blocked as well.  Unless it was a soul bond.  Nothing you can really do about that.  Anyhow, think of it as a Faraday cage.  The only magical wavelengths that should still reach you are those naturally generated by the Earth itself, which is something already tied to your particular ability.  So... go ahead then."


Richard cleared his throat and fidgetted, looking over his audience.  It was really, [i]really[/i] dumb for him to be so nervous.  He was only shifting.  He had done it hundreds, if not thousands, of times before.  Except, he was trying to shift in an entirely new and novel way, a way that he had never even considered before seeing Crimson go from her human form to the half-avian hybrid shape that had once been her natural state.  He wanted to know if it was just because she had originally been a harpy or if any shifter could learn to do the same thing.  And once he had mentioned the idea, Crimson had insisted on telling the harpy flock, and then Cyrillion had insisted on being allowed to watch, and now Richard was the center of a [i]lot[/i] more attention than he would ever want during a shift.  Even on the rare occasion when he met with other shifters to change as a group, they didn't [i]watch[/i] each other...


He gulped and did his best to settle his nerves, shut his eyes to try and ignore those who surrounded him, and focused on the twist of magic that was an inherent part of his being.  He was surprised to find that it felt far more... [i]present[/i] than it ever had before.  Even when he was out in the national park, it didn't quite feel so strong as it did now.  He supposed that was due to the circle blocking out everything else, leaving only the nature-fueled energy that his shifting ability was tied to.  It seemed to want to leap out and fill him, almost as if it had a will of its own.  Which he guessed might well be the case.  It was formed from the energy of living things as well as that of the world itself, which included thinking beings.  So it [i]could[/i] theoretically have some sort of consciousness...


He was stalling, and he knew it.  But he also wasn't really sure how to go about [i]doing[/i] what he wanted to do.  Normally, he'd just give the twist a little... tug.  It was like pulling a single strand of yarn in a skein, which somehow unravelled the whole thing and made it twist back up into another shape.  He never really bothered with trying to [i]control[/i] how it came back together, just let it do what came naturally to it, and that was where he was getting hung up.  He [i]wanted[/i] to control it this time.  He wanted it to do something [i]other[/i] than what it regularly did.  And he wasn't sure how to make that happen, but there was no real way to find out unless he tried.  He focused even more on the quirk of energy at the core of his being, concentrating on it as hard as he could, and gave it the tug that he always did.  This time, though, he didn't let go of it.


Instead, he held the imaginary thread pinched between an equally imaginary finger and thumb, trying to feel what it was doing as it began to writhe and twist and reshape itself.  He barely felt his own body as it did its work, but he knew that he had to pay attention to that as well.  He needed to moderate what happened, control the transformation.  It went a lot more slowly than it usually did as a result.  His skin itched distantly as feathers began to sprout over his body, replacing his hair and attempting to cover him.  But he didn't want it to cover him entirely.  He wanted to look like Crimson did.  He peeked an eye open momentarily just to catch a glimpse of her to refresh his memory and held that glimpsed image in his mind.


She had hair atop her head, but feathers also crested it in a strip along the center, with a few poking out here and there between the strands.  Her shoulders were bare skin, along with her face and stomach, looking almost perfectly human except for the red of her irises and the sharp teeth that filled her mouth.  He needed to keep those parts of himself the same as they were now, though smaller, like she was, and definitely with the lighter bone structure of a bird.  Otherwise, he'd never get off the ground.  Feathers stretched up along her sides and across her chest to meld with her wings, and he knew that they also covered her lower back in keeping with her avian lower body.  When the itching had faded in the areas that he was focusing on, he felt the numb, putty-like sensations of his bones and muscles starting to reconfigure.  He peeked once more to refresh himself and guided the transformation further.  Wings, raptoral talons, a long plume of tail feathers, but the legs were longer than you'd generally see on a bird of the appropriate size, more like a secretary bird or a waterfowl.  They were still otherwise the same as a hawk, despite her odd coloration.


The magic wriggled and writhed in his grasp, but he held onto it tightly as he kept the image of the harpy clearly defined in his mind.  It tried to jerk and jump away from him, but he gave it another twist, trying to force it into the shape that [i]he[/i] wanted.  And it suddenly snapped into place.  Hard.  It felt like something cracked inside of him, sending a shattering pain through his body.  He felt grass against his cheek as he gasped and moaned in the aftermath and heard some distant shouts.  Slowly, awareness of his body returned.  He peeled open his eyes to find himself lying on his side, Svetala holding Crimson back as the harpy struggled to enter the insulating circle.


He groaned and tried to push himself up, but something was odd about his arms.  He stretched one out in front of him and... it was a wing!  Blinking, he looked down at himself, seeing a mixture of feathers and bare flesh and long, orange-yellow scales across his legs.  He blinked again and tried to focus in on the beak that would normally project from his face, but all he could see was the little nub of his nose.  It had worked!  Carefully, wary of any further pain, he rolled onto his stomach and gathered his legs beneath him, the same as he would do if he was fully a hawk, pushing himself upwards so that he could give himself a more thorough examination.  Crimson calmed down as he did so and grinned at him, but Cyrillion drew his attention with a wave.


"Well, that looks to be successful, though it certainly didn't look very pleasant," the sorcerer observed.  "Try changing back, now, and we'll get you fed.  Then you can see about doing it a second time.  If that's also successful, we'll see about flying, hm?  Walk before you run, and all that, yes?"


Richard attempted to agree with him, but what came out of his mouth sounded more like an avian shriek than intelligible words.  Right.  Harpy.  Crimson had only ever made bird sounds in this form, even when it had been her only form, so that made sense.  Instead he nodded, and concentrated once more, reaching down for the twist of magic once more.  This time, he simply tweaked it towards human and let it go.  The shift was far swifter and [i]far[/i] less agonizing, for which he was extremely thankful.  But when he opened his eyes once more, he saw surprise on every face turned towards him.


"Um...  Richard?" Cyrillion said, surprisingly tentative.  "Did you mean to come out like that or...?"


"Like what?" he asked, and his eyes shot wide.  That was [i]not[/i] his voice.  He hastily glanced down at himself, and...  Well.  That was definitely new, and [i]definitely[/i] not what he had meant to do.  "Uh...  help?"


"Well...  I'm not exactly certain if I can.  Transformational magics are [i]not[/i] my specialty.  I'll, um...  I'll consult a few people.  I've honestly never seen this before.  Certainly, it [i]has[/i] to have happened, but, again, this is nowhere near my area of expertise.  Our best hope is that you can correct it on your own.  Otherwise... I guess you'll need to get used to being a woman for a while."


"Oh.... crap..."


[center][b]The End[/b][/center]


Tags: shifter, human, harpy, half-dragon, werewolf, male, female, transformation, nosex, no sex, nudity, gender shifting, male to female, mtf, magic, story series, character development