Damon honked in the birdcage and Chris's clothes somehow just fell away from him and landed on the ground. He covered his tried to cover his nakedness with his hands while he darted his eyes around in shock. Now Chris was really freaked out. How had she done this? He hadn't seen anything but that light or felt anything except his instant nudity! Almost as suddenly as that happened, though, he felt a fresh strength course through him, like he could pick up more or run faster than ever before. He decided he was done with listening to this old freak, so he looked for his opening to grab something and run out after John. Before he could manage that, though, he felt a something strange. Something was moving around behind him! It was stirring up a breeze against his buttcheeks and brushing up against them with long hairs!
Chris turned around to see a forest of long dark hair swishing around over his butt. Startled, he stuck out a hand and tried to get the thing away from him! He screamed when his forceful yank not only failed to dislodge the furry intruder, but instead managed to strain some sensitive new joints he didn't even know he had! He didn't let go, but he did loosen his grip a lot. Confusingly, he could still feel his hand touching himself back there, and he finally realized that the brown furry thing was in fact rooted deeply into his own back.
"I'd be careful with that, if I were you," chuckled the witch. Chris stayed still and stared down attentively at the thing he was holding, gradually making some sense of how it felt to do so. Gingerly, he moved it around a little with his hand, and then without his hand. At last, he took his hand away completely and swung his new addition all the way around in a few big circles, working some of the pain out of it from when he'd pulled on it, before turning back around to look at the witch.
"What is it?" he asked stupidly, knowing perfectly well that it looked like a mule's tail.
"You're going to need more than a furry tail to carry all this stuff back to my cottage!" she said and stuck her wand out at him again. "Like some new footwear for a start!"
Chris stumbled around as his heels jerked themselves off the ground and his feet lengthened and fused into sturdy bone pillars that he nevertheless was having tremendous trouble balancing on. He just couldn't take himself off of tiptoes right now! He fell over onto his hands and felt his toes seem to merge and get lifted off the ground by ... his toenails? He looked back again and saw his tail hanging down between two equine hocks, with greyish hooves down below. His legs were noticeably muscled up with short brown fur all over them! His hands went through a similar change, and this time he got to actually watch it happen: his elbows shortened and ducked up into his body, which felt tremendously disorienting, while his hands lengthened enough for him to keep a solid for-legged stance on the ground. Chris's wrists became more like knees while his fingers joined up to take on his weight. They grew out into a canon and pastern while his fingernails grew out into a circle! The young man stood there a moment trying to steady himself, amazed that he was basically standing on his fingertips! He swished his tail again on impulse. Finally getting used to his weight distribution he stared at it his new hooves, and it finally hit him that he was going to be transformed completely into an animal.
"NO! STOP THIS! I don't wanna be a mule, please, I'll give everything back, just make it st-HAAAAWWW!!!" It wasn't almost like a donkey's bray, there was a bit of a whinnying quality in it, too. He completely lost his human voice as his neck stretched out and his mouth grew forward and took his nose up front with it. He got louder and his breaths got deeper as his torso inflated with new bone, organ tissue and muscle. It felt bizarre, but not nearly as weird as having his arms and legs totally reworked at the skeletal level or gaining a whole new appendage at the end of his back. He was soon reliving the new appendage feeling when his mule ears swiveled around for the first time. He couldn't see how long they were, but he could hear the ambient noise getting clearer and more muffled in different directions as they scanned around him. His face kept growing, and his last change scared him the most, because his changing face actually started to push his eyes apart, before they blurred up and lost part of their color vision. Chris found himself rearing up on his back hooves, staring out at the left and right sides of a purplish/gray-yellow world before the witch paralyzed him and laughed in his face.
"Now you are the perfect big strong helper to keep your promise and get my precious heirlooms out of this filthy hideout. And no pesky fingers to pilfer anything out of our cargo. Now I'm going to load you up and you are going to march those sturdy hooves all the way back to our cabin with me by your side, and if you try anything funny you can be sure that you'll stay in that long-eared four-legged body forever. Now how's THAT for a deal!"