Immense dust devils, pillars of sand and debris, rose from the ground and began to envelop the cityscape surrounding the former park. They were ground into more sand by the traversing winds, revealing new and ancient and ornamented structures of rock, clay, and mudbricks or open spaces in their place. Pyramids, palaces, temples, markets, mansions, amphitheaters, aqueducts, brick roads, verdant park, sculpted lakes, and wide canals. Statues and edifices dedicated to pharaonic royalty, animal-headed guardians or outright anthropomorphic creatures stood beside floating crystal obelisks, while islands bearing opulent gardens and structures rose to float in the sky. While scattered, there were a handful of Fantasy-Roman influences, and other ancient-fantasy styles present.
You watched several rows of parked cars swallowed up and then replaced by chariots, and confused looking horses and camels. While a swerving bus turned into a trumpeting and stampeding elephant that sent the people that had been inside scattering before it rushed toward a source of water. Those nearest the winding canals stretching toward the sea were replaced with fishing boats or the odd pleasure barge where a sports car or limo had been. You weren’t sure, but had that beaten up Saab changed into a majestic winged lion with an eagle’s head?
Many people, including yourself, had fallen into stunned silence and turned away from the cloud-piercing pyramid. But as you suddenly felt winds nearly throwing you several feet into the air, you turned back. All you could see were highest reaches of the limestone and the apex that glowed underneath the sunlight. Everything else had been blocked out by a billowing and thick wall of sand. Screaming was replaced with coughing when those who had their mouth open took in a mouthful of the blistering silt. First, your clothes were shorn until you and those few around you still visible within the sandstorm were stark naked before more appropriate clothes were woven out of the sand. Then you could see flakes of your skin peel. It was disturbing seeing it fall away like broken shards of ceramic, but not painful.
Covering your eyes, you tried to look at one of the people nearest you. Even crowded together, you weren’t sure you could see more than a handful feet out. Anyway, that didn’t matter. The formerly Caucasian man in a business-like suit who stood next to you, was decidedly now of Grecian descent and wrapped in a loose sarong. Rich olive skin, soft green-brown eyes, and dark hair that tossed in the harsh winds. Far more masculine and quite attractive for those whose interest fell that way. But he also had a plume of beautiful feathers sprouting across his arms, with the skin around his taloned feet and clawed hands hardening into scales. He was transforming into a harpy!
African, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean were among the most common ethnicities among those with human features. Other shed their humanity and turned into anthropomorphic, tauric, or hybrid animal and mythological beasts. They were partially or wholly covered in carapace, fur, feathers, and scales and ranged from antelopes to zebras, although clearly favoring those species and myths found around the regions as far out as the Straits of Gibraltar, Africa, and the Arabic Peninsula.
But who really knew what was beyond your immediate sight. Elementals, vampires, gnomes, slime, pixies? You did your best to keep an open mind as more of your skin cracked and fell away to reveal what was hiding underneath. Could be anything.