There was a sickness in Palmagarten; a disease unlike any other. The doctors had tried to cure it; the clerics had tried to bless it away; the court's magicians had tried to undo its effects.

Nothing had come close to success, and it was for this reason that Tonia was returning home, riding her horse hard to find her village of Exand in ruins, smoke clouding the air and fire choking the skies.

"Please, you have to help mEE-HAWW!" A donkey-headed woman pleaded for mercy, clamoring at Tonia's saddle. The knight kicked her back, guilt panging her heart but her mind resolved.

Damn her holy vows; damn her oath to protect the lands. She was here for Paul, and for Paul alone.

The female figure spilled to the ground and brayed piteously, only to scramble to her feet at the sight of an approaching wolf. Whether or not the canine had once been human was irrelevant; only the beast remained now.

Tonia turned away, unwilling to see the chase's inevitable conclusion. She rode on through the flames, pretending the ensuing howl wasn't one of victory.

Her house drew closer and her heart clenched. A red cross was painted clearly on the door, a sure sign that the occupant had been infected. Paul... Her Paul, what had become of him?

She dismounted her horse and patted the stallion's rump gently, attempting to calm it. It simply scoffed at that, swishing its tail idly from side to side.

"Damn thing, you're braver than I am." She chuckled faintly, a wistful smile on her face. Her horse had been her companion through countless battles, and yet this would be her last ride. If Paul really was infected...

Tonia grit her teeth and kicked open the door to her house, her heart pounding in her chest. Unsteadily, the woman drew her sword from its scabbard, unsure if she could kill her Paul had he become a predator.

Maybe if he was fully an animal... She might not know it was him then; could tell herself he'd escaped somehow...

Dark thoughts clouded her mind as she entered what was once a home. Even in this time of chaos, it was still strangely tidy, her fastidious husband keeping things neat.

The cleanliness of the house made its silence all the more foreboding, and Tonia clutched at the hilt of her sword a little tighter.

Then a clatter came to her left and she whirled, in time to see a large tiger-man lunging for her.

Her mind went blank, and she ducked beneath its outstretched claws, her steel flashing. The sword sank easily into the creature's gut, and it gave a piteous wail as offal spilled from a ghastly rend in its side.

Without hesitation, Tonia followed her thrust with an overhanded swing, cleaving the creature's head from its shoulders.

The encounter had only been seconds, but as the light faded from the creature's eyes, hours seemed to pass.

Dread sat deep within the knight's heart until she caught sight of the dead creature's arm. There was a tattoo there; the mark of a criminal. It wasn't Paul.

She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, flicking some of the blood from her blade and wiping her hand against the back of her head.

A thin cry broke the silence of the room, and the woman whirled with both hands on her blade to find a piteous sight before her. It was another plague victim, this one almost entirely transformed.

They sported a horse's head, hooves, and a lush coat of brown fur. Only their stance remained human, and she watched as that soon devolved, the person's trunk expanding, shredding what remained of their clothes as they fell onto all fours.

Then the creature began to gag and retch, and Tonia noticed a band was cutting into the skin around its neck. It was a chain necklace with a golden ring strung through it, the metal unyielding to the expanding flesh of the horse's neck.

Her heart fluttered in her chest as she recognized the plain band, and she rushed to the horse's aid, dropping her sword in her concern. It was Paul's wedding ring; the fool of a man must have tried to make a collar so that she could identify him.

Even though it worked, it was now killing him; and the knight tried to work her fingers around the clasp; only to huff as Paul's hooves caught her in the chest, denting her armor and knocking her back.

The woman staggered back, growling and unsheathing her dagger. "Damn you, let me help!" She cried, her voice piercing through whatever had come over her husband's mind. For a moment, the animal panic faded from his large equine eyes, and he looked at her with something akin to recognition.

The fleeting moment was all Tonia needed to dart forwards, hooking her blade beneath the tight necklace and slicing apart the wrought-iron chain. Paul immediately began to breathe easier, and settled from wild thrashes to a quiet sway.

The darkness of animal vapidity once more clouded his gaze as he swished his tail idly, and Tonia bit back a sob. She'd arrived in time to save him; but too late to tell him goodbye.

Still, if she couldn't be with him as a person, then perhaps... The woman pressed her lips roughly against the horse's, closing her eyes at the unfamiliar roughness. To think that these were once the soft lips of her husband!

Tonia fought back her revulsion at the thought of pressing her lips to an animal's, and she deepened the kiss. Her tongue passed Paul's thick lips, and she slid it along his teeth, along his gums.

As she pulled back, a thin trail of saliva connected the two, and Tonia smiled. "I'll be with you soon." She said gently, knowing this was surely enough to infect her; surely enough to force an accelerated change.

A sharp pain in her gut confirmed her suspicions, and the knight doubled over, clutching at her stomach and realizing her folly: were she to expand to a horse like her husband, her armor would surely kill her, crushing her insides as sure as a vise.

Her fingers fumbled at the clasps to her chestplate as she bit back tears of pain, a stabbing, crawling feeling in her stomach. Was this what Paul had to endure? Did he have to deal with such torment without her?

The pain tripled, and Tonia sank to a knee, breathing raggedly as waves of nausea crashed over her. Her pupils dilated as she retched, feeling the strange bubbling of change pass from her stomach up her throat.

She vomited, and the contents of her lunch spattered against the ground, a foul stench flooding the knight's nostrils. The world swam before her eyes as she struggled to regain her bearings, feeling a strange detachment from her body.

It was like she was in two places at once, her mind struggling to keep up with whatever latest hell had been forced upon her. Then she saw the maggots, a writhing pile of grubs dotting her vomit, white and fat and horrible.

Worse, she saw herself through them.

Another lurching wave of nausea rushed through Tonia as she retched again, this time feeling the grubs worming their way past her throat, wriggling in her mouth before they spilled upon the ground.

And, gods help her, she could feel them. She could feel every single one of the writhing larvae; feel their bodies as though each of the hundred was her own. A grub still writhed in her mouth and she spit it out harshly, whimpering as she felt a part of herself bounce against the ground, dying from the rough impact.

This wasn't right; couldn't be real! She was supposed to be changing into a horse; not some mass of writhing insects! Her eyes stung as she retched again, but instead of tears, only more maggots slipped down her cheeks.

All the while, the pain in her gut continued, spreading throughout her body. It felt like she was being eaten alive from the inside out, and Tonia mewled for mercy as she pawed at her armor, her fingers weak.

Her hands had gone limp, reducing her efforts to unclasp her armor to simple pawing, the clank of gauntlet upon chestplate filling the air. Then a loud thunk met her ears, followed by a wet slap as she pawed at her chest again.

A glance downward told her that her right gauntlet had somehow slipped from her hand, and the sight granted to her by her maggot bodies told her why. Her hand looked to be boneless, like more of a glove than an appendage.

Worse, Tonia could see something bubbling beneath the surface of her skin, writhing and squirming. She choked out a cry of horror, slapping her hand against the ground and thumping her other hand against it, hoping to crush whatever had begun to live beneath her flesh.

Pain coursed through her as she succeeded, her action having the additional effect of splitting her palm open. Hard, scuttling shapes spilled from the hole in her palm, scuttling against the floor and surrounding her larvae protectively.

"No!" Tonia screamed, watching her hand deflate as more and more of the insects scuttled from the gash in her palm. She tried to pinch it closed with her other hand, but then that too fell limp, twitching and spasming beneath her gauntlet as bugs ate it from the inside out.

Only... They weren't just bugs; she could feel herself gorging on delectable rotting flesh. They were a part of herself, just as the larvae were.

Disgust and self-loathing flooded the woman's heart as she fell onto the ground, mashing a few dozen of her larvae beneath her cheek as she hit the floor. She looked with numb eyes as Paul began to panic again, rearing back on his hooves and breaking for the door.

No, not his hooves... Her hooves. There was no cock between her husband's legs, just the swollen vagina of a mare in heat. It was so tragic that it was almost funny: even if she'd gotten her wish and had become a mare, she'd still not be able to be with Paul.

Tonia choked out a loud, hysterical giggle as she sobbed again, reeling with her helplessness.

As despair touched her mind, hunger touched her stomach. A rich, delectable scent filled the air, drawing her scuttling beetles away from her body towards another. She could feel their jaws sinking into something; taste a rich and meaty flavor.

Despite her horror, drool began to pool in her mouth, honest saliva; not the squirming maggots or bugs that filled her body. Her head turned towards the enticing flavor, only to find the cooling body of the tiger-man she'd found earlier.

Tonia retched, coughing slightly as a small bundle of maggots flew into her mouth, like a bundle of writhing phlegm. Some of the squirming larvae dripped past her lips, trailing down her chin as she began to clamber her way towards the corpse.

She moved like a puppet with unkempt strings, her every spasm uneven and halting. Her other hand split as she put pressure upon it; her leg was gashed open by her fallen dagger as she crawled ever-closer to the body.

A part of her, the human part, was horrified by what she was about to do; by the prospects of consuming what had once been another human. The needs of this facet of her were outweighed by the needs of the hive, and she mashed her face into the still-dripping wound she'd inflicted on the furry man.

Her face began to split down the middle as her jaw worked relentlessly, forcing mouthfuls of flesh into her gullet. Hair fell from her head and her skull cracked open, a large and fat insect crawling from it into the still-warm carcass.

It was like a mix of a wasp and a spider, with a distended abdomen and a hard carapace. Its pedipalps twitched before a set of clacking mandibles, and the creature's wings thrummed as they tasted free air.

Tonia quailed in horror as she realized all of her dominant sensations now came from this body; the human form nothing more than a twitching husk behind herself. Her eight hard legs burrowed into the meat as she tore herself savage mouthfuls of flesh, and a torrent of her beetles spilled from the hole in her skull, her body deflating into a crumpled sack within a hard shell of armor.

How funny it was, that she had once worn armor only to live in it now. She chittered loudly, a keening sound that called her other forms to attention. Gods above, she could feel them all; could feel herself being split over many bodies.

Many bodies, but one mind... She wasn't given the mercy of becoming an animal like her husband. No, she was a hive; a living plague. Her human mind screamed for mercy; begged for death. But her human mind was now nothing more than a passenger.

Tonia didn't control her forms; she didn't have the mental fortitude to even hold over a single insect form. Instead, they were driven by hunger, instinct, and a mindless purpose: to spread and infect.

The wings of her bodies that could fly thrummed, and she found hundreds of herself lifting from the floor. Tonia's hive buzzed madly, flooding out from the house, past the burning village and the screams of the damned.

They ignored the horses rutting in the front yard; ignored the wolf-thing feasting upon a fresh kill. They ignore all the living infected. Instead, they descended upon the healthy; upon the pure.

Those that could be transformed were; those that could not be were consumed as mass for the plague hive-or were infested, becoming walking corpses full of thrumming insects.

A single mind screamed relentlessly as she spread across Palmagarten; but her cries were only voiced in the form of a keening wail from carapace-clad bodies. She wanted death; wanted an end to this nightmare existence.

They were prayers that were forever unanswered; her mind forever trapped within the hive. Tonia was the plague now; she was eternal.