(Elves to Various Animals)
The hills were alive with the sound of impending violence.
Thane Thorvald Kvallson looked out to the greenery from his mountain keep, his lip curling with distaste. Of course an attack would be mounted now, during the height of the forging season. If he defended against the siege, his halls would still be sorely lacking in gold come spring. And if he was bereft of gold, his men would be bereft of beer, a fate almost worse than shaving.
“Elves, my lordfulness,” his chief engineer said. Bjarni Gemsbane adjusted his spectacles as he spoke, fiddling with the runes on a stone tablet.
Thorvald scoffed. “I can tell.”
“No, my lordsire. I meant to explicarate that the runes I’ve devingineered should function most delightprusefully.”
Thorvald’s brow furrowed as he took a moment to divine the eccentric’s meaning. Then the coin dropped, and a smile spread across his face. “And you’re certain they’ll function? Yes or no only, will suffice.”
Bjarni looked up, his eyes made rounder by his spectacles. After a moment, he nodded. “Yes.”
“You’ve never steered me wrong before, laddie.” Thorvald patted his shoulder, casting his gaze to his silent guard in the corner of the room. “But just in case, no harm in making sure the men are ready. Double ale to the commander that can muster his troops the fastest.”
“By the time this is finiplete, my sirelordship, we’ll have no need for the troopsmen,” Bjarni giggled madly, slapping a meaty palm onto his tablet.
xXx
“Look at them, Varon,” Elara of the Silver Spears said, lip curling, “even as they muster, they look like mounds of dirt. Have they no appreciation for the art of war itself?”
Varon laughed, musical lilt to his mirth. His hands trailed over his twin swords. It had been at least a dozen years since he’d shed the blood of a dwarf, and he was long overdue. “Barely worth the whetsone, General. My shock troops will have them scurrying into their anthill before we need sup.”
Elara turned towards him, helm under her arm, spear planted into the ground. “Oh? Then should I tell my troops to stand down? I’m sure they’ll appreciate a reprieve from mopping up your leftovers.”
Varon chuckled. “Nonsense. I am nothing if not generous. Besides that, Queen Aelinthra herself has come to watch. We’ll show her the perfection of war.” He gestured with a flourish towards the hill’s ridgetop.
A loud boom interrupted Elara’s reply, and she turned her attention to her troops. “Shield up! Brace for-”
Her voice cut out, throat incredibly tight. A burning, molten heat raced along her body. Her knees felt weak. She went to grab for her spear to steady herself, only to have her palm thump against it. The silver blade fell noisily to the ground with a clatter.
She looked down in panic. Her elegant, long fingers that had made spears sing for millennia were swelling. They looked like those ugly human sausages for a moment, until her skin darkened. Her knuckles popped, sickening snaps echoing in her ears. Her fingers spasmed as her nails covered them, her palms bulged. She soon was left with large paws, tipped with long, curved claws.
“What devilry is this?” She tried to ask. Instead it came out as a series of high-pitched “iip”s.
A cacophony of sound greeted her aching ears, the spears of her men and women joining hers onto the ground. Some of her soldiers were pawing at their faces, revealing more hair than any elf had a right to bear. Some were itching madly at their armor. Some had fallen entirely, squirming on the ground.
Before she could make sense of it, a deep pressure built at the base of her spine, racing up her back like fallen arrows. The skin along her back tightened, and she tensed. Then it burst, hundreds of sharp quills erupting form her back, slicing through the leather of her armor and tunic with ease.
Elara yelped in uncharacteristic shame, paws covering her naked chest. She could feel prickly fur growing against the leathery palms of her new palms. She could feel a pressure all around her body, squeezing her down into a smaller form.
The ground rushed up to reach her face, her hips wrenching her belly to thump against the dirt. Her vision started to blur, and she blinked repeatedly. Each time, the world seemed to widen, as her eyes slid further apart on her head, split by her swelling nose.
She chattered, terrified, desperately looking out to her army, seeing them devolving into little porcupines like herself. All of them bared their quills in blatant mockery of the spears they used to wield. Above her, there was a loud sound, and she instinctively curled into a terrified, spiky ball.
“-advance! For the queen!” Varon glared at the dwarves, doing his best to set aside the small bundles of quills that had once made up the bulk of their army. “All of you, we’ll make them pay fo-OURP!” He burped, a massive bubble of gas bubbling up from his stomach, sending him stumbling. His stomach bloated instantly, snapping his belt buckle with a twang any archer would be proud of.
His helmet, polished to the point of perfection, now felt like a vice crushing his temples. His eyes watered, and he lifted his arms, trying to tug it from his head. Instead, a dull clang seemed to echo through his skull.
Varon looked down at his hands in betrayal. Where fingers should have been, only hoof remained. They were dark, cloven things, numb yet somehow warm. The leather of his boots split as similar cloven hooves tore through them with ease.
All the while, the pressure in his head was building, building. He wobbled, falling onto his hooves. He shook his head. CRRACK! Two curved horns burst from his forehead, shattering his helmet.
“Baa-aa-aah!” He cried. It was a far cry from the usual melody of his voice. It sounded stupid, like a caricature of a creature that chewed on whatever it could find.
To his right, one of his shock troops, Sylah, dropped her blades. Her face stretched, her beautiful eyes warping, pupils spreading until they were almost rectangular. Small horns curled from her head and she bleated back at Varon, terrified.
His own face was next, he could feel it. He grunted, chest bulging, thighs bulging, face full of so much pressure. Fur burst from his pores, just as his skull distended, pushing his nose and jaw forward. His tongue glopped from the side of his mouth.
He looked back at… Name… Goat… Mate. He lowered his head, scuffing a hoof against the ground. Then he ran into her, his curved horns thumping against her flank.
She bleated in shock, butting him back. He didn’t so much as budge, and she bleated eagerly, contentedly. She lowered herself, tail wiggling. All around them, goats butted horns, chewed on the scraps of their old clothing, mounted each other.
xXx
“Do something! Fire!” The commander’s voice was panicked, which set Lissandra’s nerves edge.
She drew her bowstring, trying to ignore the animalistic shame that had claimed their infantry. Her eyes picked out a dwarf on the ramparts, one at her curiously from behind his spectacles. She sneered. That they even needed help seeing was testament to their imperfection.
The arrow clattered to her feet noisily, her fingers losing their grip. The string twanged, empty. She looked at her hands, finding her fingers numb, leathery, wrong. Before her terrified eyes, they clumped together into a small hoof.
Before she could so much as scream, a wave of vertigo hit her, the ground dropping away as though she’d been launched into the air. Her spine creaked, the noise seeming to echo within her pointed ears. It was her neck, stretching inch by inch, pulling her head into the air. Her skin burned like a rash, and she rubbed her wrists against it, feeling the hard enamel of her hooves against her throat.
“Ghhuh… Hhulp…”
Her tongue felt dry in her mouth. Her ears shot up, twitching at the sound of her fellow archers also choking on their own necks. She could swear she heard a laugh from the dwarven keep. She gritted her teeth, only for them to scrape against each other, her jaw extending to give her an embarrassing underbite.
FWPOOMF!
Thick wool exploded from her body, from the bodies of all of the archers, with enough force to be heard. It was thick, warm, suffocating. Lissandra pawed at it deliriously, her long neck swaying like a tree in a storm.
Her knees wrenched violently, and she dropped down onto all fours. She coughed, gagged even as her spine realigned, stretching her neck back, tugging a small wiggling tail from her backside. Her throat felt full.
She spit, her fading mind horrified by the indignity of the action, and wasn’t alone. The former archers let loose a volley of mucus at nothing in particular, each of them grunting and bleating as their brains faded.
xXx
Gwynde was a genius, even amongst elves. She could calculate the exact position each of her artillerists would need to rain optimal death on their foes. A huddle of her fellow engineers surrounded her, looking down to the plan she’d drawn curiously.
There was a commotion from outside their hut that should have distracted her. But her throbbing teeth had taken up too much of her mind. It was like her incisors were growing, trying to escape her mouth. She lifted a long-fingered hand to them, brow furrowing.
With a sound like two ballistae firing, her teeth shot downward, well over her lower lip. Her chin receded to make room for them, her cheeks puffed with muscle, her nose twitched, shrinking, twitching, flattening, damp, sensitive. Thick fur fluffed out from her features, concealing the flush of her cheeks.
The other engineers seemed stunned to have their maestro’s head warp into that of a beaver’s. Then they too started to change, some clutching their bellies, some fanning at their backsides.
Gwynde tried to rationalize what was happening, even as she naturally slouched into a quadrupedal posture. The table in front of her looked like it was growing, and its leg, imported from the Forest of Silver Echoes, looked delicious.
The backside of her trousers split as a massive, thick tail slapped behind her. She thumped it again, easing her nerves. It felt so good, so leathery. She wiggled her widening rump, tilting her head, gnawing at the treat in front of her.
Her arms and legs sucked into her torso, making her waddle a bit closer to the table as she chewed. It was rough, but the flavor was so soothing. It helped ease the pressure in her teeth. She chewed a little more. Sawdust drifted towards the ground as her knowledge of arithmetic faded.
Still, she was logical enough to recognize what was happening. Somehow, her assistants, her fellow engineers, had become fat, brown beavers. Instead of terrifying her, the thought reminded her of the array of war machines outside the tent. She wriggled excitedly, wondering what they might taste like, and how well they’d fit in a dam…
xXx
Thelas wiped at his brow, glaring around to the underground tunnels he and his men had dug. “This is dwarf-work, unfit for an elf.” He said it ruefully, knowing that there was no possible way they could convince a dwarf to tunnel beneath their own homes.
Really, it was a brilliant plan. Who’d expect elves to take on the role of sappers?
“Captain? Do you see that?”
Thelas turned towards his private’s voice, finding an engraved stone in the dirt. It seemed to glimmer for a moment, then flashed with a dazzling brightness that left the elves reeling.
What sort of trap was this? Something meant for an underground attack? No, there would be more of them if that were the case. Then what? Surely the dwarves hadn’t set up some sort of rune circle, that would be beyond them.
To his displeasure, his vision wasn’t clearing. Then he felt his eyelids swell, skin thickening, puffing out, squeezing his eyes shut. The light around him faded.
“What’s going on!?”
“Captain!”
“Help!”
He stumbled, hands before him, reaching out blindly. He felt and heard their bones pop, felt them shrink, curve. Rather than the dexterous fingers he’d once had, these now felt almost like paddle-claws, meant to burrow through the earth. His palms grew tough, leathery.
His fingernails thickened, and he fell down onto the ground, suddenly curious, pushing through the earth. Digging was much easier like this. And that was… Good?
There was a fog settling over his mind. He felt his clothes billow around him. A pressure built in his head as his skull shrank around his brain. He wriggled, a near-cylindrical wriggling shape in the dirt.
Something squeaked beside him. It sounded like vermin. He and his troops hadn’t encountered any on their way under the dwarven keep, though. He tried to shoo it away, but a squeak left his mouth as well.
Another squeak. This one like his. Familiar. His nose twitched and he felt it stretch from his face. He took in a deep sniff, even as small, pink, fleshy tendrils twitched out from it, feeling at the dark. He could smell other moles like him, and the delicious flavor of earthworms. How had he not noticed them sooner?
The female squeaked again to his left, and he squeaked back, digging towards the food-smell, unknowingly undermining a support he’d set minutes before. It snapped, and a torrent of earth poured onto him.
His old self would have been buried, claustrophobic, terrified. Instead, he was delighted. It was like a hug against his furry, little form. He wanted to feel more of that. He dug towards another support, unknowingly undermining the battle lines of the mixed goats, porcupines, and llamas directly overhead.
xXx
“Hurry and cast faster, we must shield our queen frAAWM.” Yriona clutched at her throat, eyes widening, looking to her fellow mages in distress.
What she found chilled her to her bones.
Their slender ears were stretching upward, growing, thickening, widening, gaining thick, coarse fur. “D-dawwn’t let it dEEEstract you!” One of them called, revealing thickening teeth in his stretching mouth.
Yriona moved quickly, fingers weaving a tapestry in the ambient magic around herself. Her skull ached. She tried to ignore it, focusing her spell, refining it, settling the protective charm into the Queen’s amulet. After this was done, she’d work on defending herself. Aelinthra was more important. She was everything.
Beside her, an elf she’d always admired spluttered around his thickening tongue, lisping out a failed abjuration. He squeezed his eyes shut, and his face streeetched out into an asinine muzzle.
Yriona shuddered, but allowed herself a moment of pride as she completed her charm. Then she started to weave a spell around herself. Even if it just froze her like this, a half-ass, she could at least find a way to undo-
Her fingers stiffened, and her connection to the ether was severed. Shocked, she looked at her darkening hands, then out to Aelinthra. Words failed her. Logic failed her. Her mind hazed over, her eyes glazing, widening, shifting on her sloping skull.
“DhhuhRRAWWW,” she drooled as she brayed, wobbling on her two legs, then falling flat onto her ass.
Part of her was mortified by this inelegance. Most of her was hungry. She wriggled towards some of the herbs she’d earlier set inside a magic circle meant to divine the future – not that her current brain was capable of remembering it.
Her beautiful, hourglass figure stretched into a humiliating pot belly. Her arms and legs became long and gangly. She stretched her growing dopey face towards the herbs, taking a big bite.
A flash detonated in her brain, leftover magic tickling her thoughts. She saw a future being mounted by jack after jack, giving birth to a field of foals. It was such a warm, wonderful future. She chewed more, savoring preordained paths her donkey brain would soon forget.
xXx
“M-hrrnk-miladEEEeeEEE!” The last of the royal guard reached out to the queen, his handsome face stretching into a snout. His nose flattened on his face, turning upwards, an inverted heart that mocked the hearts he’d carved for her at their proposal.
Then, just like that, a pig remained where a proud elf had once stood, snuffling at his clothing, and at the tall woman before him.
Aelinthra was terrified. She didn’t want to show it, but she was. Her hands clutched tightly at the amulet around her neck. Her future husband was a boar. Her lover was a donkey. How was this even possible? Dwarves shouldn’t be able to cast anything-
CRK.
The false gem in her amulet cracked beneath her grip. It wasn’t a real diamond, she’d thought wearing a proper gem to a battlefield would be foolish. This mistake was her undoing.
A loud tearing shattered the stillness of her thoughts, and she glanced down to find her waistline was expanding, bulging, rippling outwards. It was heavy. Round. Full. She pressed her palms to it, a half-plea bubbling up from her throat.
“N-no… Not me toooOOO…” She looked to the pigs in dread, praying to become anything other than one of them.
Her neck thickened, muscle piling on between her shoulders, ready to support a head far more massive than her own. As it stood, it looked ridiculous on her, giving her noble frame a stunted, hunchbacked appearance.
“I-is there anyone left?” She whimpered, a snort involuntarily bursting through her swelling nostrils. She took a huff in through them, whining at how cold the air felt on her expanded sinuses. She shook her head, as though that might clear them.
The only thing she could hear was the sound of dimwitted animal content. Snorts from the pigs, bleats from the goats, small squeaks underfoot as tiny animals poked their heads from the earth.
The ground beneath Aelinthra’s right foot caved in, her body too heavy for the mole hole beneath herself. She fell clumsily onto her hands, dislodging the tatters of her royal robe. Her fingers clawed at the dirt as they thickened, hardened, grew into heavy, thick hooves.
They didn’t look like a pig’s, at least. Aelinthra half-hiccupped with a stressed, anxious laugh. It was enough to cough something grassy from one of the new compartments of her stomach into her mouth. She chewed on it like it was a salad. That felt good, comfortable.
It shouldn’t. She was dignified. Aelinthra tried to rise, but a pig’s twitching nose pressed against left breast. The whiskery, thick lips of a donkey pressed against her right. Both of them licked at her, started to suck on her nipples.
“MMMRRROOOOUH,”
Aelintha’s ears twitched, eyes rolling. Was there a cow nearby? Which of her troops had-
“MOOO!”
Oh. It was her. She crossed her eyes as her nose spread further, pushing outwards, creaking her skull into a muzzle. Thousands of years of knowledge smoothed away as her brain smoothed. She drooled a little, wiggling her rump as her breasts drifted towards her legs.
A tingling, soft sensation built at the base of her spine, popping with a sense of release a moment later. Her new ropey tail swished behind herself, rubbing against the backs of her fat thighs.
Aelinthra, Daughter of Starlight faded fast. Her lineage drifted away, far less important to her than the appetizing grass before her. She dropped her head down, rolling her shoulders and hips, wriggling her back, working out all of those last pesky elven bones and muscles.
Her long, beautiful eyelashes fluttered. The magic used to style them now served as a constant mockery of the life that she’d left behind. Not that she would ever remember.
“MRRROOOO,” the cow bellowed contentedly, allowing the not-calves to suckle at her udder. She took a deep chomp of grass, grinding her jaw slowly from side to side, green drool spilling past her lips.
xXx
“Very good lad, very good! Did you see the look on that knife-ear’s face as she started to nurse! I knew there was a better role for her than a ruler!” Thorvald guffawed, slapping his knee.
“W-well, I would hypostulate this to be an enormitude of success.” Bjarni smiled proudly. His fingers glided across the stone of his tablet, and the faint glow across the would-be battlefield faded. “Should I communicalize the soldierfolk to stand down?”
Thorvald paused, his smile still wide. He thought of the myriad animals outdoors. Wool to shear, quills to harvest, milk to… well, milk. “Not yet. I think we’re about to enter the livestock business, Bjarni.”
The engineer’s eyes lit up at the prospect of needing to engineer underground farms for their new acquisitions. He began muttering to himself, lost to thoughts of supply and care.
“Then…” Thorvald continued, stroking his beard absently. “I’d say that heifer could use a bull. Perhaps we invite those Northland elves to our gentle estate…”