Jerrod heard a weird bell-like sound from above and looked up to see a spot of purple light near the back of the tent. Before he could try to figure out what it was, a pulse of heat shot down from his fingertips all the way to his shoulders. Startled, he looked back down and gasped. His already-dark skin had turned coal black and shone in the lamp light, soft human skin hardening into a familiar pattern of scales. Muscles pulled and both arms began twisting like the black snake, suddenly missing bones. The next moment, his fingers and thumbs split apart into rounded protrusions that continued to separate up what had been his forearms, all the way to his shoulders.
He heard the others start to scream, but when he opened his mouth all that came out was a hissing sound. Vision multiplied, impressions of scents and touch and heat bombarded him. Awareness was dividing, each flailing tube gaining a recognizable snake's head and providing him with more eyes. Jerrod had a final, terrified thought that he was dissolving into a mass of snakes, and then what had been his brain ceased to exist, and the single boy's mind now inhabited 20 baby snake bodies. There was no knowledge, no memory, only instincts.
Eric was the first to see Jerrod's transformation, and he cried out as the boy's arms split into a mass of wriggling snakes. The same thing was happening to Jerrod's legs, a snake's head forming at the end of each writhing tentacle. The boy was shrinking, collapsing in on himself. And then the tentacles no longer had a body - they were a mass of baby black snakes, each slithering rapidly away to find cover.