Mornings were usually pretty simple for Kendo Virmir. Every day, he woke up to sun filtering into his bedroom through its wooden walls, climbed out of bed, bathed himself, ate some simple, habitual breakfast, and so on. All of that stuff was just preliminary and in the way of what he actually wanted to do: get something done. Drawing, or mowing, or creating; anything like that was his lifeblood, his main hobby.
Of course, he broke it up with some sparse game-playing in between, but that wasn’t anything exotic or crazy.
Everything had been going according to schedule and plan since Virmir had woken up. He woke up before the sun had hit his eyes straight-on, he felt energetic enough to get right into the shower, and had a bowl of cereal at his desk without spilling a drop of milk. He put the bowl and spoon into his sink and ran back to his room to don one of his many capes. After clipping it into place and giving it a nice flourish, he stomped back to take his seat at The Desk.
Right away, he pulled the pen to his tablet out from its slot and started tap-tapping away until he could get to drawing. He experimented a bit with some scribbles and the pressure-sensitivity before he began drawing up the wireframe for himself.
On any other day, dedication like that was what made Virmir able to be productive and beneficial to his own community. But today wouldn’t be the case.
As the gray fox sat there, sticking his tongue out and twisting around in his swivel chair, there was a sickening, slimy sound from his front door. He didn’t notice, of course, because he was way too interested in drawing himself. He drew more and more, getting to the sketching…
Something knocked on the door. Well, less of a knock, and more of a SLAM that dented and splintered the wood inward. “Leave the package at the door!” Virmir yelled behind him, then went straight back to drawing. He could have already been working on the inking if he hadn’t been bothered…
But the visitor didn’t just stop at the door. There was a hiss, followed by a complete crash of the front door. Wood pieces went flying by Virmir’s face and cracked the wall in front of him.
“What in the trees is –“
The fox spun around to face his broken doorway, but there were two very large… things in the way. They looked very similar: both of them were significant in size, bulky, and very naga-like. Only their upper body and lower body were both that of snakes. Their coloring looked somewhat like garter snakes, but they didn’t seem nearly as harmless. The only difference that was visible was the splintered left arm on the front naga.
Virmir only took a few seconds to analyze their looks, and then went straight to flinging fireballs. He wasn’t nervous about burning his house down at all after getting it enchanted with some help from other prominent mages in his area (read: bribing Shifty to steal some tomes for studying) and his rage was only going to help burn up the stupid reptiles even hotter.
But the nagas didn’t catch fire. The slightest spark from the fireballs just bounced off of their scales. The splinter-armed one smiled and swung around a bundle of ropes.
“…blast,” Virmir mumbled, regretting not learning any other spells.
The undamaged naga had already used the time to swing around behind Virmir and wasted no time in elbowing his neck. He swung forward, knocked out, and the two snake-beings tied up the fox’s limbs. They nodded to each other, and the two of them dragged the fox out by his ears.
When Virmir came to, his neck and the entire lower half of his body were incredibly sore. With a groan, he struggled to sit up and check on why the latter of the two was so in pain, ignoring the events before his sudden sleep.
His legs were covered in scratches and bruises, with no real signs of why in the world those injuries were there. He gave them a pat and yelped, just turning away to bother with whatever else might be in the immediate area.
What he found, he hadn’t really been expecting.
“Bug-pony?” he asked, though it was pretty obvious what was in front of him.
The changeling in question looked up from the floor and stared, as blinking wasn’t something that changelings could pull off very well. “Not ‘bug-pony,’ Vir, you know that fully well,” he mumbled, and jabbed at the fox’s wounds to wake the pain up again. As Virmir scrambled back with another yelp, Shifty made introductions as he normally did, making another side comment about the story containing his own background that would eventually, one day, sometime make it down completely on paper.
Virmir didn’t pay much attention to it, though, and tried to wrap his cape around his knees and shins. He managed to do so, sitting up in a sort of blanketed position. “Aside from abusing me as per your MO, what are you doing here?”
Shifty’s mood seemed to drop from heaven to hell. “Yeah, uh…” He gestured vaguely. “I was… flying, and then, uh…”
Virmir arched his brow.
A loud sigh went throughout whatever room the two happened to be in. “Okay, I was screwing around with some spells I’d picked up, but I think it got a bit out of hand somehow, and there were these naga things that picked me up and… well, now I’m here.”
“Sounds a lot like what happened to me,” Vir said, and he took a better look at the room around him to try and identify it. There really wasn’t a lot to it, but it helped give him an idea of what it might be. An awful looking toilet was in the far corner, and though it didn’t look like it had been used in years, that didn’t help its looks or the smell that he linked with it. There was a tiny bunk bed that looked like it would accommodate only Virmir’s torso, and no blankets were provided on either bunk. Only one entrance (or exit, as he preferred at the moment) was in the room, and it was a large iron door with exactly four bars at the top for peeking through.
Or clanging mugs and coins against them, he realized. “Some sort of cell,” the fox mused, and Shifty nodded. “No time to waste, then.” Virmir mustered up all the magic he could with some focus. After only a few seconds, he summoned up some sparks in his paws, gathered them together into a tiny ball of fire, tried to grow it into something dangerous…
But the magic fizzled and fell apart before the sparks had even come together.
“Already tried that,” Shifty mumbled. “You think I’d stay in here if I had the chance to get out?”
Virmir growled and sent a death glare at the door, though it didn’t accomplish much. He turned back to Shifty, who was kicking at the floor again. “What do they want with us? We have habeas corpus, or whatever, right? They have to say why they’re holding us.”
“I somehow got the feeling that these guys don’t exactly abide by law.” Shifty gestured around the room. “I’ve been here for longer than a day and they haven’t fed me. Granted, I have a different diet than most, but still, I’m starving here. And what’s more…” The changeling stopped and looked down at the ground again.
The gray fox pushed Shifty’s face back up to look at his own. “What, what is it?” he asked frantically. Normally he would be pretty calm in a case of abuse like this, but isolation from technology, being trapped with a person (or pony of some sort), and not being fed did not sound pleasant. And if there was something more…
Shifty sighed and turned around. “The tail.”
Instead of some weird horse-hair-like mockery made of buggy stuff, there was a tiny, curling, pink twirl of a tail. Like that of a pig.
“…um,” Virmir said, intelligently. “How?”
“I don’t know!” Shifty shouted. “You think I’d do this to myself?! I can’t pull off any magic when I’m starving like this, and the room won’t let me, anyway!” His horn sparked in frustration. “I can’t change it back, and it bothers me a lot, and… ugh!”
Something dimly occurred to Virmir as he sat there with the raging changeling. Snakes weren’t exactly known for eating animals of the size of pigs, but naga that stood taller than Virmir weren’t really normal snakes. If they could somehow pull off magic while they couldn’t, and changed around both Shifty and himself before they starved and died from that, well…
“Have you seen those naga eat anything?” Virmir asked.
Shifty shook his head, jabbing at his aberration of a tail (which Virmir had to agree with). “I’ve only seen one or two walk by the door, and they always move quickly past us, so I don’t think they really care.”
That was only a little comforting. Maybe the naga didn’t care for foxes and horse-things, but did want some pork when they actually ended up as such.
Just as Virmir was getting ready to settle down and take a long sleep to fuel thinking on how to get out, there was a loud rapping of metal on metal at the door. Virmir covered his ears in reflex, but could still hear the scratchy voice that yelled “OUT! FOLLOW!”
The door swung open, and a very tough-looking naga was on the other side. He looked like he was sort of based off a cobra, and was holding a rugged scimitar that seemed to bend in and out. Like a snake, Virmir dimly noticed.
Slowly, the fox lowered his hands from his ears and stood up shakily. Shifty stepped ahead of him, trudging up to the naga and keeping his head down. Virmir didn’t much want to break the trend, and followed suit.
The cobra-naga began to lead the two prisoners on, past dozens of other cells. None of them made a sound. Either there were no other prisoners, or they were all “taught,” somehow, to keep absolutely quiet.
And since neither of those things were very positive, Virmir wished that he didn’t think too deeply into things like this.
Virmir just stared after Shifty and the naga in front of him as they stepped forward. He dearly hoped that they weren’t headed to a butchery room, and were just mistaken prisoners being brought outside to freedom. Though he quickly dismissed that thought, it began to resurface when he began to smell the scent of flowers and heard the trickling of water. When the naga slithered out into full sunshine, Virmir allowed himself to think that he truly was being let free.
The sun was a bit painful to his eyes at first, but the fox adjusted and glanced around. Wherever he was, it was beautiful: There was a stream that made only the slightest of noise; there were kudzu growing up around the walls of the stone building he was in; dozens and dozens of flowerbeds, with busy bees, were scattered around; a few birds chirped and flitted overhead, and Virmir watched them as they flew over to a large gathering of stone. He looked a little closer, and saw what the stone actually was – a giant statue of a Greek warrior, complete with armor, literally chiseled musculature, sword, and shield.
Cobra-naga glanced back at the two of them and made a sort of “hyuck” noise. Not in a laughter sense, either; it sounded more like a spit than anything. His hood flared and wiggled back and forth, and Virmir just watched in fear. This snake-guy could be a spitting cobra, after all, and dying in such a pretty place was better than a cell, but not much better.
Seeing no recoiling from the fox, the naga turned away and slithered off again. “STAY,” he said, and both Virmir and Shifty did as instructed. They looked around the beautiful outside once more, then looked back to each other.
“Um, I know it’s not the best circumstance to ask,” Shifty started, “but have you been, uh, packing on some pounds for winter or something?”
Virmir gaped a bit at the question and stuttered, well-aware that he had only been eating sparing amounts of veggies in the last month, and none of it had been celery. But when he looked down, he saw his gut was indeed distended, drooping with extra weight that he could not remember ever picking up.
“And, uh… you shave your tail?”
Now THAT was nonsense. Kendo Virmir would never do such a thing, and he looked back to see his tail –
Which was now just a thin little brush of a thing with bits of hair at the tip, flicking around incessantly.
“GAH!” Virmir shouted, the only way he knew how to react. “H-how?! W-why?!”
Shifty poked at the pudge Virmir was now sporting, snickering to himself. “Interesting. Probably some sort of effect from that room. Or maybe that spittle…”
Virmir gagged and pushed Shifty back, holding his belly to himself. “Spittle? What are you talking about?”
The changeling stepped forward again, though he seemed to be lumbering a bit more than before. He pointed at the fox’s side, before said fox swatted his hoof away. He looked down and saw a bit of green goop that was quickly melting away the fur where it was, but it looked to be dissolving at the same time. Still gaping, Virmir tried to wipe the gunk off with his cape or push it away somehow. When nothing worked, he considered jumping into the stream to try and fix what was happening before he remembered the instructions he was supposed to listen to.
“No one makes a lap-fox out of me,” he spat, and jumped into the stream.
Shifty gave a bit of a shout to try and get the fox to climb back out, and quickly, but Virmir was already at work trying to clean the spot off. The goop just wouldn’t go away and it was driving him mad. He picked and scratched at it, but it dug in further. It was forming into something, but he just could tell. It looked like it was black, pure black, and it was still infuriating him and he wouldn’t have it –
“Misssster fox.” A sultry and hypnotic voice reached Virmir’s ears as he was trying to clean himself off. (The sultry part had no effect, but “hypnotic” certainly did.) The fox perked his ears up further and looked back to where Shifty was.
Right next to the changeling – rather, holding the changeling like a little pony – was a large, shapely naga with bright, piercing red eyes. Deadly-beautiful snakes were in place of her hair, twisting about in a leisurely manner. Her form was covered in shining green scales that reflected the sun in a wonderful way, and while Virmir wasn’t very interested, she was a pinnacle of hourglass bodies with how her bust and hips were. She was wearing a long, flowing dress that nearly reached the ground, a silky red that helped to bring out her eyes further. The underscales of her belly could only be seen around her neck and chest, and they were the typical yellow, but looked so much better and more exotic than the word “typical” could possibly account for. Her tail was gently curled underneath her, ending a wider tip that looked almost like a spade. And on her forehead was the most expensive ruby that Virmir had ever seen, shaped like another eye.
Virmir scrambled out from the water, hefting himself more than he should have with the extra weight, and stepped over to the gorgeous naga-lady. She simply smiled, showing a pair of opal fangs against her scales. "Kendo Virmir, yesss?" Her voice was truly captivating, but the "hissssing" was a bit harsh on the ears.
The fox nodded, finding it a bit difficult to form some words.
"Good to know that my goonsss could do one little tasssk. Unlike before..." She sighed and began scritching behind Virmir's ears like he was a simple pet. He felt he should object, but it felt too nice for him to complain. "You may know me from mythology, or legendsss of the sssort. I am Medusssa. I welcome you to my abode. Currently, you and your friend here are in my rock garden. What do you two think of it?"
Shifty nodded from his spot in Medusa's arms, staring at both her and the area around him at the same time. Virmir looked back to the garden, managing to tear his eyes away with the suggestion. He gathered up his thoughts and glared out at the statue in the garden. "It looks real nice and all, but you took us up from our homes and threw us in a cell. Why are we supposed to join you in some pleasant conversation?"
"Oh, don't be ssso hateful. You can look at me. I won't petrify you, dear fox." Virmir didn't turn around to look, but he could hear the pouting in the naga woman's voice. "Oh, fine. I take all the bessst artissstsss from over the world and even other onesss. I bring them here to relax and ssspend the remainder of their livesss in paradissse. They can work at their art all they want, in the beauty here."
Virmir soaked that in, accepting that somewhat. He WAS a great artist, and the place WAS pretty grand. His treehouse probably wouldn't ever be so well-kept, tidy, and beautiful simultaneously as this garden was.
But still, he had to be cautious. "Where are these other artists, then?"
Medusa didn't hesitate in the slightest. "Working. I hope you two will begin to do the sssame, very sssoon, or I will not keep you around."
Virmir tapped his foot, which felt heavier than he remembered and folded his plumper arms. "You're not a god of beauty, or art, or anything of the sort, and we know. Well, at least I know. The bug-pony might be falling for you, but I'm not. You were vain and made into the ugliest thing that those old men in the sky back then could think of, and you also got the bad habit of turning your courtiers into statues. Now, if we're here to be your indentured servants of some sort, we refuse." Shifty started to protest, but Vir went on. "I speak for him on his off days, which happens to be now."
Medusa, unhappy, laid her clawed fingers on Virmir's shoulder, digging the claws in just far enough to draw blood. The fox cringed and kept looking away. "You will draw for me," she said, her voice right up against his ears, "or you will be my art."
Thinking about it, maybe it was worth it to avoid being a statue that birds would inevitably defecate on if he just had to draw all the time. Hopefully, he'd be fed, too. "What do I have to draw? Because I'm sure you don't want my foxes. They eat you, don't they?"
Again, Virmir could hear the expression on Medusa's face: a very large frown. "No. None of your kind. I want picturesss of me, all day and night long."
"What?! No! I need a bit more variety than that," he said, stepping further away and looking around for an exit he could leave through. Whatever was happening with him, he felt much heavier than before, and was starting to lean forward on all fours. "Offer refused, now, can you show me and my friend the way out?"
There was a loud, grating hiss behind Virmir before the naga slithered in front of him and snatched him by the snout, tearing his face up to look right into the giant red ruby on Medusa's forehead. Immediately he was paralyzed, standing stock still and unable to remember how to move a muscle. "Your way out is right over here, you animal." She pointed to her left, and Virmir couldn't help but start stepping in the direction she had indicated.
When his eyes finally broke free from the gem, Virmir began to form thoughts again and try to stop himself, but he failed. Over and over, many times, in fact. He found a pedestal in front of him that his hands and legs began to clonk upon, though he couldn't much tell the difference between the two anymore. They were all hard and indistinguishable now, with no thumb to hold anything. And, to make matters worse, he could begin to feel a tingling sensation low in his gut that felt similar to when he was changed into Lucile, which happened more often than he could readily remember now. That tingling began to take form and dig out from his skin, and though he couldn't see it very well, he started to get the feeling that he knew what was happening with his body.
"Cow," he mumbled through grated teeth that were shifting to eat veggies, and only veggies. "A... blasted cow."
It felt like an eternity of standing still and feeling odd changes go on through her body before Virmir saw something change in his sight. Medusa came over and plopped the changeling she had been holding onto the same pedestal. Had, as it was a changeling no longer, but a nondescript pig with quite a bit of fat to it. Though, Virmir thought, he was probably no better in terms of slimness.
Still struggling to try and move, Virmir caught a glimpse of Medusa sliding back with her hands in a mock camera shape, her ruby giving off a dull gray color. His options were running lower and lower, now, figuring that the gray was nothing good. His suspicions were confirmed when he felt a lack of feeling in his limbs, the stone already seizing up his joints. Cringing, he tried to move toward Medusa, figuring that if anything, he could ruin her art as a final insult. It was incredibly slow and begrudging to lean, and he couldn't tell at first if it was even working. But he noticed that his vision of the petrifying piggy in front of him was slanting, and kept working at leaning, and leaning. His sight was getting kinda foggy. His sides felt creaky and hard...
"Hmm... odd, ssseemsss to be off," Medusa mumbled, much to herself, and slid forward to try and push the cow-Vir back up.
But gravity works on the side of good.
There was an immense WHUMP in the garden, followed by the sound of many, many different people taking deep breaths. Virmir himself began to feel from his body again, and it was back to being foxy and male. Experimentally, he wiggled his arm, and swished his bushy tail. He let out a deep breath before he sat up, realizing he had been laying on an incredibly bruised and squished snake woman.
Dozens of other people looked around in awe of their returned selves, though none of them stuck around too long. Virmir turned to see some old Greek warriors, pirates, vikings, samurai, and more displaced fellows run off and climb over the walls to the outside. He thought about what kind of effect all those random historical types would have, being released on the current world and all, but quickly dismissed it as not his problem. He looked to Shifty, who was kicking at the pedestal and Medusa alike. "Can't even eat bacon," he said, before spitting on the crushed naga.
Vir smiled just a tiny bit. Walking off, he looked forward to working on his drawing again, hopefully without being interrupted by more snake-type-people.
"Gah!" The gray fox fell flat on his face as he tripped on something rough and stony. He spun around, hoping that Medusa didn't have golems that were designed to come to life and murder whoever did her in. Instead, he found the large red ruby, released from her forehead and glimmering. Shifty was already flying away, making the garden completely empty now. And leaving the gem behind for those other naga just wouldn't do...
Virmir sat up a bit straighter in his chair, sipping at his ice water and grabbing his tablet pen. He scribbled there, and here, and added a touch there...
He leaned back, content with his work, and tapped at the statue in his work room. "I think you'll like this. Plus, you learned a valuable lesson; give me a reference, or I'll make one!"
Shifty didn't move from his petrified spot, somehow looking both pensive and shocked.
Virmir grinned and juggled the ruby around before he uploaded the drawing and closed his laptop.
