Troy heard the man resume moving towards the kitchen and breathed the quietest sigh of relief that he could. The past few seconds, not knowing whether his body was about to turn into a taxidermied tiger or not, were perhaps the longest in his life. But now that the stranger was moving again it was clear that he hadn’t been spotted.
With the sound of the stranger’s footsteps clearly receding toward the kitchen, Troy popped back around the corner, albeit much more prepared for what he had to do this time.
“Shape!” Troy said, focusing on the stranger.
“What?” came a surprised cry as the stranger whipped his head around to locate the source of the sound. Unfortunately for him, Troy was already back behind the corner and the effects of the Book of Beast were already being felt.
The stranger’s body rapidly shrank while a large, rope like tail curled out from his back. He was only able to take a few steps before his shrinking body was too small to hold onto the Book of Transmutation, which clattered loudly to the floor.
Hearing the book fall, Troy stepped out from around the corner just in time to see grey fur sprout up over the man’s body, while he grew two large, buck teeth that jutted out of the front of a growing muzzle and two small, round ears formed on top of his head. Mere seconds after it had started, the once owner of the Book of Transmutation had been converted into a small rat.
The rat looked up at Troy, a look of realization quickly washing over it as it realized its new position in life. Determined to stay in the game, the rat jumped onto the Book of Transmutation and began chittering.
Troy paused as his heart briefly sank into his stomach – could someone still cast a spell if they could no longer speak? He hadn’t considered that just turning the stranger into a rat might not be enough, but after a few seconds of chittering Troy was still Troy and it was clear that the rat was out of luck.
The situation that now faced the rat was that he was, well, a rat… staring down a very menacing looking anthropomorphic tiger. The danger of that situation wasn’t lost on either him or his body, which instinctually took off running out the front door.
“Shit!” Troy said, as he tried to chase after the rat. He wanted to use the command spell and question him, but any possibility of that disappeared as Troy saw a hawk flying away from his walkway, content with the new breakfast it had just snagged.
With the rat now gone, Troy took a moment to take further stock of the living room but all that did was to confirm Troy’s prior fear. Standing next to the window, with a look of terror frozen onto his face, was a full sized anthropomorphic German Shepard wearing a full police tactical vest – Rusty. But from the dull, cheap look of his fur and vacant stare in his eyes, it was clear that what was standing next to the window wasn’t a living, breathing person but, rather, a life-sized taxidermy of the person that Rusty had been just minutes ago.
At least, it was mostly the person that Rusty had been. Troy’s eyes wandered down to Rusty’s pants where he noticed a distinct lack of a bulge. Walking over, Troy pressed a pressed a hand against Rusty’s crotch, feeling nothing but smoothness through the pants of his police outfit.
As he felt Rusty up, Troy became aware of just how still Rusty’s body was. It was weird. Deep down inside Troy knew that Rusty’s current body was completely incapable of movement. At the same time, Rusty still felt alive in Troy’s mind and for some reason he expected Rusty to react in some way to having his crotch patted down.
Troy’s hand gave an experimental wave in front of Rusty’s eyes. Troy wasn’t sure what he expected – maybe for them to follow his hand – but what he got instead was nothing. No movement, no reaction. Rusty just kept staring at the same, unmoving point in space.
Pushing his finger into one of Rusty’s eyes brought further confirmation of what had occurred. Instead of a soft, fleshy eye, all Troy could feel was the cold, smooth glass of the marble that now filled Rusty’s eye socket.
Perhaps the only bright side to the present situation was that Troy didn’t feel any new memories pushing their way in about a taxidermied anthro dog, so Rusty must have been able to hear the spell cast and therefore reality hadn’t changed.
That was good. Despite Rusty’s inability to move, it meant that the old Rusty was still probably in there. At the same time, if Rusty was still conscious in there… to be trapped in a taxidermy, totally aware that this might be the rest of your life… Troy didn’t want to think about what Rusty must be going through right now.