"Go big or go home, dammit!" exclaimed Ricky, turning back to the dragon section. Why waste time being like a wombat or a koala or something when fucking DRAGONS were in the book! It just doesn't get better than that, if the spell book is real, that is.
There wasn't just ONE kind of dragon in the book, oh no. There were SEVERAL. It turns out there are various different kinds of dragon, or at least whoever wrote the book thought there were. There was the traditional Western dragon, with its big scaly wings and its fire breath, as well as its armless variant, the wyvern. There was the Eastern dragon with its antlers and whiskers and serpentine body. There were multiheaded dragons, the hydras. There were the Aztec feathered serpents, and even a real life "dragon", the Komodo monitor lizard.
Ricky decided to go for it with the traditional Western dragon, the stereotypical fantasy dragon from his board games. He couldn't wait to fly and breathe fire. This was gonna be awesome!
Ricky had to find a place apart from prying eyes so he could try the spell. It was a really bizarre ritual. It involved stripping himself naked beside a stream, bathing himself in the waters, coming out after exactly four and a half minutes, bowing his face to the ground three times facing north under the noon sun, and sacrificing a bird at the base of a tree and rubbing its blood all over him. It was really disgusting. He had to cut off its head and throw it from the tree into the lake. Ricky was actually felt pretty bad for the bird, especially since he could be a bird if the book made him one, but what would you do if you had the chance to be a DRAGON?
So as Ricky sat there naked under the hot sun, dripping water and bird blood from his bare flesh, he hoped he had picked the right spot and no one was watching, and most of all he hoped that all of this wasn't for nothing. Fortunately he got the thrill of his life when he glanced at his feet. They were growing! And their skin was starting to sprout scales! He reached out and touched them: they were bigger than he'd imagined they could be, and sharp claws were already sprouting from the tips. His fingers were soon sprouting claws of their own and he got to watch more of his very own scales take shape before his eyes.
"I deserve this," he said out loud. All the people who said Ricky was wasting his time obsessing over all this magic stuff could suck it. He was turning into a dragon and they weren't! He felt his teeth sharpening in his mouth.
Ricky felt a cool tingle over chest, his belly, and the front of his neck. Looking down, he saw that a mesh of smaller, lighter scales had covered the whole area. He ran his palms over them and shivered in pleasure. Then he accidentally scraped this newly more sensitive region very lightly with a claw and screeched in pain. He was going to have to be very attentive about this new light-scaled area while he was a dragon, he decided. Ricky had already known that a dragon's weak point was its underbelly, but he'd never thought about what that would feel like. Hopefully he would get a chance to experiment with it a little more thoroughly later, much more cautiously of course.
Before he could reflect on his underbelly any further, he felt his tailbone unfuse and get forced out with new bones behind him. New muscles and scales bulked up with ever inch. By the time Ricky's growing tail was 8 inches long and thicker than a garden hose it could twitch back and forth just a little. He'd seen enough dragon pictures to know it had barely started. He wasn't sure he was going to be ready for a tail that was longer than he was, but even so he was looking forward to the strength and power he would be wielding back there. He certainly wasn't ready for his neck to get longer and lift up his head away from his body. He was almost starting to feel like that bird he'd beheaded, watching his field of view get shoved up and forward while his torso stayed in place, feeling his head dance and wobble at the far end of a windier and more distant connection to his body. Of course, after Ricky adjusted to the strength and flexibility of his new neck, he really appreciated the ability to aim his head to pretty much whatever angle he wanted. One of the first things he discovered was how to lick his own underbelly in several different places. Damn that felt good! It would probably feel even better once he got his dragon tongue.
Ricky also learned to raise his long neck up over himself, twist it around a little, and stare straight down at his back. He could see it was now covered in the big dark scales that also covered his arms and legs. He could see a couple of bulges on it that he could wiggle a little bit. That must be the start of his new wings! Ricky roared with excitement. Looking further back, he was amazed by how long and strong his tail had become. At the end, probably 10 feet away from him and counting, was a wide, sharp spade tip starting to form. A mental command raced through his long neck and out past the end of his torso into his massive caudal appendage: for the first time, Ricky got to watch the whole length of it thrash around behind him. He felt it slam repeatedly against the dirt and rocks and felt the debris it kicked up bouncing against his scaly calves. Such force, such might, such flexibility, all at his discretion!
* I have a dragon's tail! * he prided himself. He roared again. His balls felt funny and he tucked his head beneath him using that long neck of his, just in time to see his dick and scrotum get pulled up and sealed inside a somewhat bulging mound underneath his legs just under the start of his tail, which got covered up with more underbelly scales. Ricky didn't have any idea how sex was supposed to work for a dragon; hopefully he would get a chance to find out!
A newfound strength in his back made him pull his neck out from between his front legs and discover that his wings had grown in! He stretched them out and their overall span was even longer than his tail! Whoosh! The air they displaced when the moved was like a gale across his torso and the dirt and leaves beneath him. Time to try that again! Whoosh! Whoosh! Soon Ricky was flapping his wings and was now thirty or forty meters up in the air.
* I can fly! * he thought. He hadn't even noticed his muzzle building outward with all these other changes, but he could see something pointing out in front of him. The last new sensation he felt was a cozy warmth winding up through his long neck. He felt the strange urge to open his mouth. When he did so, a torrent of flames and smoke surged out in front of him, far beyond him into the sky, without even the slightest pain to his lips and tongue.
* I can breathe fire! Fuck yeah! I'm a dragon! *