Selina reached into her pocket and pulled out a glimmering white gemstone. She held it up, looking at it for a moment, and then looked back at me. “But I’m sorry to have to tell you that this part is required,” she said.
I swallowed hard. “What — is that?”
“Insurance,” she said.
She stepped closer, and I struggled, but the centaurs behind me held me too well. She lifted up my hand, placed the gemstone in it, and curled my fingers closed. She took a step back, and then another.
It was warm, and I could feel the warmth spreading outward. I tried to drop it, but my fingers wouldn’t uncurl. I felt woozy, and my body seemed to feel warm.
“Better let him go, guys. Kasia says you don’t want to be too close for this part. The Stone is primed.”
The hands loosed me, and I fell to the ground, the world swirling around me. I tried to stand up to run, but everything was shaking and dizzy, and I fell back onto my hands, my left hand still tightly clasped around the stone.
Suddenly a vision dashed through my head of a horse, and then another, and another, galloping through my brain. They ran and ran in front of my eyes, and crashed into me, and kept running. I choked and startled, and then more of them came. Spotted, patchy, solid brown, yellow, white, dozens and dozens, galloping through me and past me, but a few of them stopped in front of me, as if they were sizing me up. I didn’t like the looks of most of them, but there was a dark brown one on the end that seemed more my style. He nodded at me, and I nodded back. Another few horses galloped by, knocking me to this side and that, but the dark brown one approached slowly, taking his time, carefully stepping toward me. I reached out to him, and as my hand touched his leg, all of them suddenly disappeared —
I could see the world again, and it was still shaking, with Selina standing a few yards away. “Ohh, it’s starting,” she said.
Something erupted in my body, and it felt like the worst indigestion I’d ever had. I shook on the ground, violently spasming, and suddenly I heard a wrenching tear as my rear end burst through my pants. I glanced back over my shoulder, my eyes swimming, and my body was covered in dark brown hair, just like the horse in my vision had been. Another shake, and a tail burst out of my spine, and my body stretched, and another, and another, and I was growing longer and longer, my hands sliding in the dirt. I couldn’t tell if my midsection was being pushed or pulled, or maybe both, but either way I was growing, bigger and longer, and whatever was happening it was all through my body everywhere now. Then suddenly it seemed as if a thousand glass plates shattered at once, and my body slammed into the ground, my muscles having given out.
I lay there, breathing hard for a moment, and then breathing more slowly, my eyes just barely able to take in the world around me, and not focusing on anything well.
“Help him up,” came Selina’s voice.
The centaur guards came over and gently started to lift me off the ground.