SoF: Chapter Nine

Scales of Fayt:

Chapter Nine:

Amber had taken the guest bedroom that I had offered her, while I retreated to my room.  I sat down at my computer, something telling me that sleep wouldn't come easy this night.  I stayed up chatting with friends that were still up, and checking out the various sites that I frequented, tiredness pulling at me, but not enough to draw me away.  I heard cars going by outside not really paying attention as one slowed near my driveway.  I stood up, stretching, and headed down to my kitchen, late night munchies having seized me unexpectedly, I rooted around in the fridge for something to gnaw on deciding on some leftover pizza that I had forgotten about.  I turned away, munching on the pizza, and shut the door with a flick of my tail.  I was about halfway to the stairs when I heard someone outside.  It had sounded like a triumphant, yet suppressed, yell.  I froze, turning toward the window nearest the sound, the blinds had not been shut all of the way, and I caught a glimpse of someone peeking in.

I growled, “You've gotta be shitting me.”  I ran to the door, and flung it open, seeing someone take off running, and he met up with a car that had pulled around the block.  Try as I might I couldn't catch it, and retreated home.  I locked the door carefully, and shut all of the blinds again, making sure to thwart any other unwanted eyes.  I wondered how I had been found out and by who.  I pondered that after securing the house to my satisfaction and I had returned upstairs.  I sighed, there was no point in worrying about the why, when there was the what that was more pressing to me, what was he going to do with his new information?  I leaned back in my chair, and kicked my feet up on my desk, sinking into my thoughts.  

I was so absorbed that I missed the initial, familiar sensation of the magic that was changing me when it had started.  When the pain started I noticed immediately however.  I gasped, my legs felt like they were on fire.  I hadn't thought much of my legs, I assumed that I would keep my human legs, maybe with claws on my feet, and the scales of course.  The magic, however, had other ideas.  I watched in a morbid fascination through the pain as my foot elongated, and my shins and thighs shortened.  My toes sprouted talons that were much larger than the claws on my hands, and the balls of my feet and underside of my toes grew thick pads on them.  Another talon jutted out the back of my foot, just above the pad, and they reminded me of the hind legs of a velociraptor from Jurassic Park minus the gargantuan talon on one side, all of my talons were the same size.  I stood up unsteadily since I was unused to walking digitgrade,  I found my tail to be a wonderful asset though, it allowed me to counterbalance myself easily, I paced around upstairs getting used to the new method of walking that I had to use.  I found my happiness at adapting to this new addition to me to be short lived, though, as I heard a window downstairs smash, I rushed down the stairs, accidentally tripping and sending myself head over tail in a most undignified fashion.  I was pulling myself off of the floor when I was met by Amber who had been woken up by the commotion.

“What crashed?”  She asked.

I looked at her sheepishly, “That would have been me...”

The looks she gave me told me that that wasn't what she had meant.  I stood up again, a little wobbly, but otherwise unharmed.  “I'm not sure, I kinda got tripped up.”  She stifled a small laugh at that, but that quickly disappeared when we noticed one of my windows had been smashed in.  I motioned to her to stay where she was, and cautiously approached, taking care to avoid the glass on the floor.  There was a stone, and a hastily scrawled note tied to it.

Perversions of nature and God, users of magic, and those that embrace them, beware.

I poked my head over the windowsill to see if they had stayed or fled, smoke rising from my nose.  There was no-one that I could see, and I snarled in frustration.  I stood up carefully, when I heard something loud, my arm suddenly erupted in pain, and my mind went fuzzy, I was aware of Amber yelling, then pulling me away from where I had landed.  I watched like it was on TV, unsure that anything was really happening.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I woke to white lights, and groaned.  I made to sit up, and found myself restrained and muzzled.  I panicked and started to thrash against my bonds.  I heard a voice from behind me.

“He's started again, get another dose ready, we can't let him hurt himself!”

I looked around, heart beating so hard I could hear it in my head.  A woman in what could only be lab attire approached me with a large needle in hand, I looked at it in horror, I hated needles, and started fighting harder.  I managed to claw one restrained hand free, and grabbed her.  She jumped, dropping the needle, and it shattered as it hit the ground.

“He's awake!”  I heard her exclaim.  She unbound my muzzle, allowing me to speak again.  “How do you feel?”

“Like hell, who the- where the- what the fuck is going on?”

“I called for help, that's what happened.”  It was Amber's voice, it helped me calm down a lot.

“What's with the muzzle?”  I was still really uncomfortable with that having been on me.

“You bit at me when we got you in here, your mind was clouded,, you attacked instinctively.  I'm going to release you now, don't do anything rash, you were shot.”

My mind flashed images of the night, I remembered the noise, pain, then nothing.  She unlatched the restraints on my arms, legs and my tail, and I sat up, swinging my feet over the edge of the bed I was laying on.  My right shoulder hurt like hell, but I didn't see anything when I looked.  I cocked my head, confused.

“They hit you with a dartgun, not a bullet, your scales would have deflected a standard handgun round from that far, a shotgun would have done even less, at least if they didn't hit your underside, the scales there are a lot less strong.  A tranq gun is able to bypass a dragon's scaled defenses though, the needle worms its way between the scales, if there had been anything more potent in that vial it would have killed you.”

“What was in it, my mind went to hell when I felt it hit.”

“We're not sure exactly, but it sent you into violent convulsions, and we had to keep you from hurting yourself.  Sorry about the situation that you woke to, Amber here's been with you most of the time, we had both stepped out when you decided to come to though.  We thought that you were having another episode.”

I groaned, and grabbed my head.  “How long have I been out?”

“Three days.”

I dropped my hand to my side in disbelief.  “What's happened?”

“There have been a few others that  came forward with their changes, we've rounded up those we could due to the attack on you to avoid any casualties.”

“Where are they?”

“They're in the quarters hidden here.  I'll show you in a minute, first you'll want to get cleaned up and something new to wear.”  I looked down, I was in a patient's gown similar to one that would be found in a hospital.  I cocked my head quizzically at her.  “You kinda thrashed everything that you were wearing, we threw that on as a temporary solution.  We have clothes that should fit even with your tail for you.”  I nodded as we stopped a little down the hall, she opened a door and gestured inside.  

“By the way, I'm Claire, I help people adjust to living here, hopefully it won't be permanent for any of you.”

I walked in, it looked similar to a locker room that one would find in a gym, benches in the middle surrounded by lockers on the sides, though these looked much larger, as if they were meant to be a miniature closet, holding all of someone's belongings that they didn't keep with them.  There was also a large section of what appeared to be clothes of various sizes, from minuscule that looked fit for dolls, to something that could only be worn by a bear.  I grabbed a pair of pants that looked like they would fit well enough, and a towel, and carried them over to the showers.  I dropped the patient's gown and stepped in, my claws clicking on the smooth tile floor, and moved to one of the nozzles.  I turned the water on, and started scrubbing down with a brush that had been left there, I assumed that it was for me.  I allowed the water to run over my scales relishing the invigorating heat, and turned to rinse my backside when I misstepped, and slipped.  I managed to catch myself with my hands, but immediately noticed that they had changed when I landed, they now resembled my back feet, and my arms had shifted to where I could walk on all fours with no difficulty whatsoever.  I took a look over myself, noting how I had shifted from bipedal to quadruped so easily, I believed that such an ability would prove useful.  I reared back onto my hind legs, allowing my hands to reform and my body to shift back to my bipedal form.  I finished rinsing off and turned the water off, carefully stepping across the now-slick flooring over to the exit of the showers.  I grabbed the towel and started to dry, buffing my headspikes and horns with a vigor, then moving onto my face and shoulders.  My neck, I noticed had grown longer, but it didn't surprise me in the least, at least a few changes had to have occurred while I was unconscious.  I sighed contentedly, a wisp of smoke rising from my lips,when an slightly asinine idea took hold of me, why not try out drying off with fire?  I breathed deep, not knowing what to expect exactly, and focused on making fire.  I ended up engulfing myself in flames, which did have the desired effect of drying me, but I covered myself in soot and set off a fire alarm in the process, causing the sprinklers to go off over my head, once the fire had been deemed to be out they shut off, and I was left soaked, again, in sooty water no less, the sprinklers not being kind enough to rinse me completely.  I heard the door burst open and voices shouting.  I looked on in abashed horror as Amber and Claire both scrambled to make sure I was fine, only to find me, covered in blackened water and completely exposed.  It was the first time that I thanked whatever gods there were that my transformation left me with a reptilian body, I would have been completely exposed as a human.

“Fayt!  Are you oka-”  Amber stopped mid sentence when she saw me standing there without even a stitch on me.  “Sorry!  I thought that you had hart yourself!”  She exclaimed clapping her hand over her eyes, in a vain attempt to restore some of my lost dignity.  Claire just sat there laughing, having grasped what I had attempted to do.

“Oh come off it, like you wouldn't have tried?”  I shouted at her, only making her laugh harder.

Amber shook her head, “What the hell were you trying to do even?”

Claire answered for me, between laughs and stuttering, “H-h-h-he tried to dry off!  With firebreath no less!  And s-s-s-set off the sprinklers!”  After this she devolved into another fit of laughter.

Amber started to laugh at this too, I just growled in indignation.  I returned to the shower area, scrubbed the soot off of me, and dried off with the towel that I had, opting out of using fire again, it wasn't the best answer when I couldn't control it just yet.  They both were waiting for me to get cleaned again, when they asked me almost simultaneously, “So what prompted that genius idea?”

I scratched at the back of my head, embarrassed.  “Well, I was reminded that I could breathe fire, recalled that I was fairly well immune to fire and heat, and thought 'why the hell not?'”  I pulled the pants that I had been given on, while talking.

“Well, maybe you'll be a bit more careful with your abilities?  You know there are places to practice these kinds of things so that you have a handle on them when you need them.”  Claire informed me.  She looked at me confusedly and asked, “No shirt?”

I shook my head, “I've got at least one more thing about me that has to change for this to be done with, and a shirt would be shredded when they grow in, I'd rather not have that happen.”

She nodded in understanding.  She motioned for me to follow as she headed towards what I guessed would be a communal gathering area.  Amber and I followed close behind.

“Thanks for helping Claire.  Since I haven't introduced myself properly I'm Fayathon as I'm sure you've guessed, and I go by Fayt for short.”  I followed her down a long white corridor that reminded my quite unnervingly of a lab complex from any number of horror movies.  My tail twitched nervously, “Now where are we exactly?  This looks like a hospital, and I hate hospitals.”

Claire turned to me, “We're in the Aegis North America stronghold, we've had this base under the mountains near town for the last hundred years, it took forever for the Aegis to get established stateside, no-one believed us about what had happened all those years ago, at least no-one that was rich or powerful enough to help us build this structure.”

I rolled my eyes, “Can't say I'm surprised, I wouldn't have given you anything helpful either, I would have thought that you were all nuts for believing in magic.”

She let out a light chuckle, “It does sound a bit crazy, but it made sense to me, there are to many things that magic just makes sense for it to be coincidence for my tastes.  Ah, here we are, now be ready, there are a lot of people, or rather creatures here that have been anxious to meet you.”

We had come to a large set of double doors with what I assumed was the Aegis insignia emblazoned on them.  I hung my head, I was going to be stuck in the limelight no matter what I did, short of possibly dying, and even then.  I sighed as she pushed the doors open, to a clamoring of different individuals, some partway through their own changes, some just starting, all sharing their experiences with each other, and talking of what they thought was going to happen to the world with magic returning.  I saw everything from centaurs and satyrs to fairies and imps.  There was a griffin, and a lamia, and even a harpy.  I was surprised to see so many myths that had came to life before my eyes, the shock rendering me speechless for a minute, until I heard a fluttering next to my  head, one of the imps had flown up to see the new arrival and was checking me out.

“You're Fayathon aren't you?”

All I could do was nod to acknowledge him.  He would barely have came up to my ankle if I stood as tall as I could, I estimated he was maybe seven inches at his  tallest.  His small frame was completely thrown when he yelled out to announce that I had arrived.

“Guys!  Look who woke up!”  I started, not expecting him to be able to produce that level of volume, and I looked at him incredulously.  He saw and flashed, for lack of a better term, and impish grin at me.  “Magic, man, I've been changed for a while, and have had lots of time to practice.  Those of us that had changed before you exposed us were found and rounded up by either the Aegis, or the other guys, those that the Aegis found have been safe, the rest, well, I've seen nicer things done to torture victims.”  His smile changing rapidly to a look of extreme remorse.  I was about to ask him what he knew about what he meant, when I was caught in a whirlwind of commotion, the others seeming to have realized who I was, and had swept me into the crowd, each one greeting me in turn, or asking if I was alright, they seemed to be relieved to see me okay, which struck me as quizzical until I remembered my strange dream the night I had received my claws.  I was to protect them, but what good was I if I couldn't even protect myself from one crazy person with a dartgun?  Everyone was clamoring for attention when the door swung open again forcing a hush on the crowd when they saw who it was, and a familiar face walked in, beaming a smile that could blind when he caught sight of me.

“Fayt!  At last you see  the Aegis proper, welcome to our stronghold.”

I couldn't help but smile back.  “Yeah, too bad I had to get shot to get here, good to see you too Greg.”