(a few minutes earlier)
Chris was more than a little annoyed, as Joel just wandered off to explore the house without him, leaving Chris to get the fire ready. He always did this kind of thing, expecting Chris to take care of him while he just flittered off like a freaking butterfly.
Nah, that wasn't really the problem. Chris knew it wasn't unreasonable. Joel went off to see if there was a place to sleep and any food, both of those ideas were pretty good. Unless he got distracted. Which he did. From the enormous gulf of seven months older than Joel, Chris felt like his friend was pretty immature sometimes. Joel was smarter than most people. He'd skipped a grade, and Chris had been his best friend and defender in school, even going so far as to learn martial arts because otherwise the two of them would get beaten up.
Chris fumbled with the light switch for the lounge, and there was a "plink" as the ancient light bulb came on and then died instantly. Oh well. There was a candle on the coffee table, and a book of matches. He lit the candle, and the room took on a yellow color. The fireplace was clean, lacking even ashes and the hearth area was bare, and there was no firewood anywhere in the room.
"Oh great," Chris complained. "Nothing to burn."
He looked at the big deep purple-brown "Wing Chair" sitting near the hearth. It was completely dust-free. As if someone were cleaning it regularly. Then again, the hallway had been pretty clean, and the furniture in this room, while sparse, wasn't covered in dust-cloths. There was a jumbled-up animal-fur patterned cloth piled in the chair, as if someone had been sitting in a small throw blanket and had left when he and Joel arrived.
"Is someone here?" he called out, half-speculating that someone had bought the place and would be upset that they were intruding.
No answer came, not even a "Just me!" from Joel.
Well, there WAS an answer a moment later: thunder boomed overhead and rolled around the skies for a moment, because that's not ominous at all.
"Thanks SO much," Chris muttered, quietly because he didn't want the storm to continue the conversation.
A cold draft from the fireplace pulled all the warmth from him, and he looked to see if the fireplace damper had gotten opened. It was, but only a small amount, probably enough to keep the air in the house moving.
Draping his soaking-wet jacket across the hearth, Chris picked up the striped white blanket, and found it to be heavier than he expected. It wasn't ordinary cloth -- instead, some kind of leather-like material, very soft like suede, but not smelling like it at all. A sleek grey liner on the underside revealed it to be a sort of cloak resembling a tiger skin, with a hood rather than a taxidermy head. There were even jaunty "tiger ears" on the top of the hood, and the front tied with a pair of long "legs" with "paws" on the end.
"Oh now this is really cool," Chris said, and took off his shirt, which was also soaked, dropping it on the hearth while he shrugged into the blanket-thing. It was very comfortable, and quite warm, which led him to remove his pants and shoes as well, laying them and the shirt out to dry.
He realized that Joel hadn't come back yet, and started to call for him, when he heard a voice that sounded a bit like Joel was talking into a pipe, saying "Chris? I need you to see this."
But then he realized he couldn't move. The robe somehow had legs, too, and one of them was moving by itself in the way that blankets and cloth never do, kicking down against his boxers so that he was naked except for the robe. He couldn't call out -- one of the arms had wrapped around his face, while the other was wrapping around his right hand, and then the legs wrapped around his legs and the robe closed itself around him and he blacked out for just a moment, before he woke up again.
The room was VERY bright. He had fallen to his knees ... or no, he was standing, sort of, leaning against the chair, and he could see and feel that the robe had completely wrapped him up.
And it felt GOOD. But he still couldn't talk. His mouth felt wrong, way too full of teeth, and his tongue was too thick and bristly feeling.
He pushed away from the chair and stepped back, and yelped because he'd stepped on his tail and it hurt... tail? Hurt?
"Whadisdis" he tried to say, but most of what came out was "wharowssstis" and he had to look away from that WAY TOO BRIGHT candle.
He looked at his ... front paws? No, they were still mostly hands. His legs were a bit weird, like a cross between human and something else, and his arms were long and very muscled, and his body felt incredibly strong. He could smell the scent of something strange drifting in from the hall. There wasn't any smell of other humans though.
OK, I'm apparently a tiger guy, he thought to himself rather than trying to say it with a mouth that didn't have the right shape for him to talk.
He inhaled, and exhaled. He was naked. But Joel might be in trouble.
The hall wasn't as dark as it should have been once he got down to the gallery, and he could tell by a faint waft of water and sweat that Joel had come in here. It was full of pictures, which made sense for a gallery. Most of them were of random people ... one of them looked a bit like him, another like Joel. There was a jungle dude or caveman, he wasn't sure. It changed as he stared at it. A flash of lightning changed the illumination in the room and it wasn't a human any more. It was a man who had something like his features, but he was also a tiger, and he had a spear.
"Whuff!" Chris said. Something still smelled odd. He looked around. If this wasn't where Joel was, then he'd have to look further.
Then the picture in the jungle moved, slightly, its feline eyes staring directly at him. He flinched back, then went forward slowly and carefully, bringing his nose close. It smelled like jungle. It had that rainy yet wet yet clean smell, like home should smell like.
"Who'r you?" he asked out loud, his tongue working a bit better. The jungle cat-man moved forward, bumping noses with him, and the world went into spin cycle.
He felt his bones stretch, his stance changing again, shifting so he wasn't walking on human feet at all. He knew he was growing more muscle, because he could feel his skin becoming, not tight, but not as loose as it had been. He smelled more like a cat. When the stretching and bulking stopped he could feel that he was much taller, and he could see that the jungle in the picture was gone, even the canvas was missing, except that his spear was there leaning against the wall, so he grabbed it.
"Kh-riss?" -- it was Joel's voice but not, like he was talking through the vent again.
"Huh?? Yeah, at you Joel? Wheres you at?" he asked, wondering for a moment why his sentences were coming out weird. He'd been the back-up valedictorian and in speech, and he was talking like someone who didn't have a first language.
"Here." The air moved and Chris felt it on his whiskers and he whipped around, spear ready. There was an orc standing in front of a portrait frame, which had only a faint sketch of a scene on the canvas. His first instinct was to panic, his second instinct was to hiss, and his human-brain instinct was to realize that the orc had Joel's features, at least, some of them. Especially the birth mark on his hand. Which Chris had known for years.
"Joel? When is you go green?" Chris didn't shake his head in frustration, but he wanted to. Apparently "d" was a difficult sound to make.
"Just a few minutes ago, and when I was born. My name is Cho'l of Raven Clan."
"Yeah, Joel Raven'ell, all yer life."
"Chris. Who are you?" The orc looked at him patiently. Joel was never that patient.
"Kh-riss Seven Stripe," Chris said, as though it were obvious and normal for ... wait, he'd been Chris Sargeant a few minutes ago.
"You still remember my birt'tay?" Chris asked.
"I never remember your birthday," Cho'l said, snickering. "And Seven Stripe don't know what his birthday is. Still, good that I've found you. You know where we are?"
"Yeah, big house. Htusk Manor," Kh-riss said, and padded over to look at his friend. Straight in the eye. Now that was new. Joel not being a tiny little scrap of a guy.
"You get a fire going?"
"Neh. No fuel. Am hungry. Want cheeseburger," Kh-riss said in a deadpan tone.
"You can has, if there is," Cho'l said, grinning. The orc tusks his friend had grown, made that a much more frightening expression, as bad as when Chris had been worried by Joel's occasional insane facial contortions. His friend's gleeful smile was a sign of danger.
The orc picked up his giant axe, his bow, and quivers, and they headed for the door. The kitchen would probably be downstairs in a house this old. The hall was just wide enough for them to go shoulder-to-shoulder despite their increased breadth.
"Why are we here, Cho'l?" the tiger asked. He was beginning to sort out his memories, half of them being an ordinary human, the other half being an ordinary human who was bitten by his girlfriend and turned into a giant were-tiger. The girlfriend was probably still back where those memories came from. Chris didn't actually like females that way.
"Someone playing silly bugger games, I guess. If we go on long enough we'll flush 'em out."