FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Caleb walked down the stone steps slowly. The room was carved into a perfect cube - about fifteen feet in every dimension. Having a ceiling that tall made the room feel oddly cramped and overly spacious at the same time. Remembering the advice given to him, he began stripping off his clothes until he was shivering in the middle of the room. Joshua was right; the room did feel almost alive. Though it was cool, especially to his exposed flesh, there was a warm sensation he got from standing there. The walls, ceiling, and floor however told nothing of warm sensations. Every surface was painted with faint dark streaks that smelled like very old blood. The floor and walls had deep scars running through the stone from the claws of his predecessors.

As he was examining some of these marks, he realized that the warm feeling had been steadily increasing to the point where he didn't even feel the cold anymore. In fact, he was quite hot. Even if he hadn't already, he would have been removing his clothes at this point to escape from the heat. Sweat was dripping from his body and collecting in the gashes on the ground. Before long, the heat was unbearable. He lay down on his back, trying to get as much of his body pressed against the cold stone as he could, but it gave no relief. Steam rose from him as he lay there, panting heavily, eyes clamped tight shut. Even his sweat no longer dripped off of him, but was actually evaporating off his body itself. Then he remembered what Joshua said about the Burning... the first part. His draconian blood itself was beginning to awaken and fight with his human blood. With a groan, Caleb felt that his human blood was loosing - being boiled away by the intense heat of the draconian blood raging in his veins.

He was told that this was the easiest part. If he had enough energy to do so, he would have tried to end the misery himself, but all he could do was lay there and moan pathetically as his blood continued to boil him alive from the inside. Then, all at once, he realized what Joshua meant by the Burning being the easiest part. A sharp pain along his back, near his shoulders forced him to roll onto his side. It wasn't just a sharp pain like being stabbed by a knife. Even if it's left in, the initial pain subsides a little bit over time. But this was closer to something sharp twisting and turning, trying to continually rip itself through his body, threatening to tear him apart from the inside. A similar pain along his arms and legs soon joined in, then even his head. He was writing on the floor, contorting himself grotesquely trying to find some way - any way of relieving the new pain he felt.

Every bone was cracking, every muscle fiber pulling and ripping, every inch of skin pulling, every organ shifting around inside. There wasn't a single nerve that wasn't screaming at him, begging it to stop. He eventually managed to get into a sort of kneeling position, doubled over sitting on his legs, hugging himself instinctively to prevent himself from going into convulsions, or even worse - loosing consciousness. The only sounds that could escape his thinning lips were agonizing groans. His face began stretching - his nose and mouth pulling forward while his ears got longer and pulled back. He tasted something metallic in his mouth; blood from his tongue that he must have bitten at some point. Behind his shoulders, he could feel something pushing through his flesh and skin. His shoulder-blades shifted sideways to allow these intrusive things room. At the same time, he felt like the base of his spine was on fire.

Not being able to contain himself any longer, he lifted his head up a little and poured all of his pain into one horrifying cry from his soul. It wasn't a scream or a roar, but something between the two. His teeth had narrowed and lengthened, becoming thinner and sharper, like a row of knives in his mouth. Some blood dripped out of the corners of his elongated muzzle, as it was much closer to resembling now. Past his teeth his tongue extended, which was also now much thinner and longer, as well as being split down the middle toward the end. His nose had merged with his extending face and was little more than two slits on either side on the bridge of his mouth now.

At the very end of this terrible sound bellowing from his lungs, the source of most of his discomfort literally burst into view. On his back, large, long black spear-like objects sprang from either side of his spine at the same time. It took less than a second for them to emerge, spraying dark blood on the ceiling and walls behind him, sizzling on contact with the cold stone. Immediately following their appearance they snapped open, streaking more blood in straight lines to either side of him. They remained splayed wide open; large, black, bat-like wings still dripping with his own steaming blood, the membrane between each vein pulled tight, trembling with the pain he was still enduring.

Caleb drew several sharp, hissing breaths through his teeth. One of the worst parts was finished, but it was still far from over. At least for a few precious seconds, he could relax a little. Then he felt his body start tearing itself apart again as the screams continued coming from his throat, which were becoming even more of a shrieking roar and loosing the familiar sound of a human's pain. The pulling sensation at the base of his spine increased in intensity. Up until this point, his legs didn't feel anything the rest of his body wasn't already experiencing, but now was their turn. He shifted his weight forward, instead of putting all his weight on his legs, he got on his hands and knees to allow for the new changes.

His spinal column began lengthening - his spine along his lower back popped and extended as each individual spinal bone broke in half and then grew into two separate bones, similar to the way a single celled organism can simply divide in two... but a lot louder. The same was happening to his neck, though not as quickly. The pain that shot up and down his spine trumped all other pain up to this moment. He felt like he was getting hit by a shotgun at point blank range with every pop as a new vertebrae was born. His new tail coiled and lashed out behind him, smearing some of the blood on the floor from the birth of his wings.

At the same time, his thighs and lower leg stayed relatively the same length and size, but his feet changed dramatically. His toes grew thicker quickly, and eventually, the smaller sets of toes merged together in pairs until there were only 3 on each foot. While this happened, the rest of his foot grew longer and a little thicker as well. His ankle stretched and became narrower until it was surrounded by the growing muscle around his foot and leg. Since this happened during the changes in his spine, he barely really even felt it. But it would have been much worse if hadn't shifted at least some of his weight to his hands before this.

Finally, his wings relaxed and drooped to the floor along with his tail. The worst of it was now finally over, but still not complete. If he had cared less about his pain and more about his appearance, he would have said that he looked like some kind of hairless man-bat. For most of this phase, his head had remained relatively unchanged. His nose and mouth grew longer and narrow, his tongue a little thinner, and he had lost his eyelashes and eyebrows... but the changes were much more subtle than everything else that was happening to him. Again, his rest phase was brief. A few deep breaths was all he was allowed.

Caleb's torture was renewed his forearms felt an acute, sharp, stabbing pain right above the wrists. There was a new bone forming and growing through his flesh. Slowly, like a worm coming up through the soil, a single sharp boney claw emerged from just above his wrist. Instead of simply growing straight out, it extended, retracted a bit, and then extended some more. It continued in this in and out pattern until it was about three inches outside his skin. His hands were also changing, though the pain was not as intense. At the same time as the claw on his arm finished its final growth, a similar change was occurring on each fingertip; but not nearly to the same length. Each finger now had its own sharp, bone-tipped claw and his previous fingernails were being pushed up in what would normally appear to be quite painful.

The transformation of his feet wasn't finished yet either. At the same time as his hands and wrists were growing their talons, he also felt the sharp pain in the tips of his toes and from behind his heel, in the base of his calf muscle. A similar repeating pattern of growth, retraction, and more growth forced a three inch spike out of the back of his leg near his heel, and similar shorter claws out of the tips of his toes. With every push of these spines, blood came with it until he was kneeling in a small steaming pool of his own dark red fluid. However, his fingers and toes were not where he was directing most of his focus.

During these recent changes, his entire back felt like it was being ripped open. In a sense, it actually was being torn open from the inside. On each vertebrae, a spine was growing from the bone itself up and out through his skin, poking a small hole that grew with the bone. Unlike his fingers and toes, these did not retract and then extend as they emerged. Instead, they just grew straight out at a constant pace, leaving him no brief moment of reprieve from the pain that was growing all along his back, even from the base of his neck to the end of his tail.

Finally, more noticeable changes were again occurring on his head. This time, on each side of his forehead, about three inches above and behind his eyes, horns began to grow. These grew quickly, causing hisses of pain to come from his clenched teeth. Blood ran down the sides of his face as they forced their way out, splitting his skin as they grew thicker and longer. Finally, after they had become a gracefully curved nine inch pair of horns sweeping back over his head, they discontinued their growth.

That ended the quickest of the phases, but there was still one more to endure. Again, he let his wings and tail slump to the floor, but kept himself propped up off the ground. He didn't care about getting blood on himself, as he was already streaked all over with crimson lines and blotches from all the places things had pierced him from the inside out, but he felt that this last reprieve would be short as well and it would be harder to brace for the next event if he allowed himself to relax too much.

This time, the pain was more gradual. It started as a tingle along every inch of his skin. For the first brief moment, it felt similar to when his foot would fall asleep and it'd get the feeling of being poked by a hundred needles... but instead of being localized to just one foot, it covered all of him. He wanted desperately to scratch at or rub up against something - but he somehow knew that it wouldn't make a difference. The tingling continued to get more and more intense over several minutes, until it grew into a burning sensation. There was still nothing that could be visually seen from the outside that was changing, and there wouldn't be anything to see for several more minutes of this. His skin felt like it was now covered in fire ants, all of them continually biting at him all at once. He took deep, but quick breaths, trying his best to just endure the pain, telling himself that it would end soon enough.

Finally, the source of his searing torment could be seen. Very slowly, his skin began to darken. It didn't look like it was getting tanned, but rather like something very dark was growing behind his skin, and his skin was gradually becoming transparent. Still unable to do anything about it, he continued his weakening attempts to regulate his own breathing and dug his talons into the floor, leaving new, small canyons for his blood and sweat to collect. With every passing minute, the darkness behind his skin grew, and eventually the outlines of scales could be seen pressed against the thin, almost completely transparent layer of skin that had been stretched by the intruding scales. Even now, he still couldn't do anything to relieve the pain. He had to wait for it to subside to let him know that the scales had finished forming.

After what felt like hours, he could finally not feel any pain any longer; only an uncomfortable feeling of something limiting his movements. At last, he pushed himself back and stood. As he did so, his skin pulled and ripped in a few places. This time, there was no blood, and no pain. It even felt good to him. Reaching up with one of the claws on his hand, he raked it across his skin, starting from his chin down the front of his neck, along his chest, and continuing until he reached his navel. As he pulled his talon across his skin, it split and peeled back neatly, reminding him of unzipping a zipper. It took a minute or two to get all of the old skin off of him in this way, peeling it back and removing it, almost exactly in the same way as a snake sheds its skin.

Shedding his skin, it was now much easier to see what the finished product looked like. Caleb now stood eight feet tall, majestic horns crowning his head. His blonde hair was now white, but was still there as the scales on his face and head were relatively small, and allowed his hair to grow between his 'natural' armor, but only here. Every other trace of body hair was gone - even from his eyelashes and eyebrows. Most of his body was covered in black scales, except for a lighter, gray area that went from his chin in a narrow band that gradually widened as it traveled down his regally curved neck, which was now about three times longer than it once was, and across his entire chest and belly down to his legs where it faded back to black along his inner thighs. Folded neatly behind him, his wings stretched up until they were about six inches above his shoulders, and continued down until they were about level with his knees. His tail swept gracefully behind him along the ground. The spines that adorned his back were the same color as the talons on his hands and feet - they were definitely bone, but were the color of gravel and almost looked like they could be stone or some kind of soft metal. His legs' shape didn't change much, but instead of standing and resting his weight on his heel, he kept his heel raised in the air and now walked on the ball of his feet, adding to his already increased height.

He very carefully removed the last two remnants of his human skin from his eyelids, which he had not once opened since the Changing began. Finally free of every trace of humanity now, he finally opened his eyes for the first time as a fully changed Dragonkin. In spite of all the other changes that had occurred, the eyes were by far the more dramatic. His pupil had changed into a narrow slit, and his iris had grown so it now covered most of the surface of what could be seen. When they first opened in the dim room, it looked as though someone had set off some kind of electrical surge as the room was instantly filled with a radiant blue light. Taking a deep breath, he let out one final roar - this time not in pain, but in triumph.