Queen Mab seethed internally as she moved from room to room, mindful to not be noticed by the guards posted in the various halls of her palace. Her palace! Or at least it was, before that haughty prince dismissed all the warriors loyal to her and installed himself as the new king only days before.
Mab was a powerful queen of the city-state of Danna that no one wanted to cross, mainly because of her knowledge and expertise in the magical arts, particularly potions and exotic dusts. The queen could manage herself in a direct magical duel, but she preferred more subtle ways like poisons or potions, and mainly considered boorish the other forceful methods.
The woman ducked inside a room as a guard patrol almost spotted her, listening with bated breath as the warriors kept on walking, missing entirely the hiding queen.
‘This is humiliating! Hiding like a thief in my own kingdom’ But the sorceress knew that she would not be able to overpower many guards in her weakened state, particularly because the rumors of her defeat started to spread into the city below and the ones that hated and envied the queen’s position now felt emboldened by her misfortune. Now that the fear was gone every subject would turn their back on her without a second thought, whose capture then would see Mab brought before the newly crowned King Perse, the usurper, to be punished and ultimately shipped again to that loathsome and undignified… prison.
‘Oh, who am I kidding? Prison? Let’s call how it is, I was changed ironically into a mare by my own potion and confined as a common beast into the royal stables, all because Perse liked the twist of keeping me as his personal horse. And I would have probably spent my entire life as a filly if I wasn’t so paranoid, and previously hid a counteragent in every stall of the castle, just in case, accessible only by me. This trick though will only work once, it will not be difficult for them to use my own stock to transform me again and remove the hidden antidotes if caught’
The problem, and the reason why she was so weakened, was found in the transformation itself, because one of the known law of magic clearly stated that only human wizards and sorceress alike could interact with the ever-present energy called magic, so an animal, even with the intellect and knowledge of a master of the arcane would be as powerless as a normal critter. That was one of the motive why powerful criminals were sentenced into a life as animals, and the reason why Mab was so fascinated by the discipline, after all one firm shape-shifting and the opponent would be out of the duel most of the time, because even if he or she was able to return human with a brew the forceful removal from the energy field would weaken considerably the magic user for hours, if not days.
And one of those altering dust was the beginning of her troubles.
She was a very demanding woman and unashamed to admit that loved sex a bit too much, the string of lovers over the years a testament both to her beauty and appetite. And that was the problem with her, inevitably she would tire of the skills the various men brought to bed and seek another expert partner to start over again. In the beginning she tried to keep one of the most well-endowed in her service but the more time passed the more she tired of the man, a second son of a king in a distant land, until in the end she couldn’t stand his presence anymore and in a moment of anger the queen picked up one of her magic dust pouch and threw it to his face, after one too many jokes about him being an irresistible stud and the fact she was lucky to have caught his attention.
Even after all those years she didn’t remember what prompted her excessive reaction, but in a mocking tone Mab remembered how she stated that if he wanted to be a stallion so bad the prince should have only asked, because she was happy to comply. In a matter of minutes the prince changed into a black stud and startled by the shape-shifting started to buck everywhere in panic, at least until the guards posted were able to subdue him and bring what the at the time princess told them was a runaway stallion to his rightful place in the stables.
Mab was young when she tried her first changing dust, but no less pleased by her first success as she observed the young horse be hauled to his new home, and replayed the entire scene with a fond smile.
She enjoyed seeing his body gaining mass and hooves as his weight pushed the man into all four, she liked to see his pleading eyes as his face morphed into a muzzle and the reality of the transformation became apparent to all and literally reveled into the helpless look of the prince as he grew a tail and a matching mane and became a complete horse in body.
But most of all, she liked to have that kind of control over her former and now helpless lover.
It was not difficult for the fledgling sorceress to regain the initial success, and with every successful brew a new kind of animal was added to her expertise, even as she gained a fondness for barnyard animal, especially equines. Her countless suitors, both nobles and common people, became her new test subject, and to not warn others of her activities she filled the forest around the keep with wildlife. Everyone by now knew that Mab rejected every lover after a short while, and after every affair the queen, under pleading from her daughter, banished the men from her small kingdom.
Someone suspected foul play when the young men disappeared shortly after, but no one had proof of any wrongdoing.
After a few years of experiments her mother, the queen, disappeared in mysterious circumstances, in the same day the princess allegedly went to the nearby market to buy a new mare for her lessons in horseback riding, a spitfire of a red roan mare that behaved strangely every time a stable hand approached her, trying to draw in every way attention. A few days later, she told the court how the king was very shaken about the disappearance and chose to travel the world and left the city in her capable hands.
With her mother unable to rule the country and the father currently retired permanently in the stall adjacent as a breeding stud her reign began, and now that there was no one capable of stopping her the various ways she disposed of former lover was more alike an open secret between the population, obviously under specific orders not to warn or steer away the potential victims of Mab. One of those unfortunate men was called Perse, the last of a long and uninterrupted string of former humans who won a permanent place in the stables of the kingdom or sold as livestock in the nearby market, but unlike his predecessors this youth was smarter and had a plan to take care of the sorceress.