As soon as Finn had said he was going to turn Ben into an item, the short human panicked.
“W-wait!” Ben cried.
This was too much! His friend had magic-reality warping powers?! He’d simply disposed of his friend like that, too, when he could have just blocked the stairs. There were a huge number of ways Finn could have handled the situation, and this was what he chose?
“I’ve waited long enough!” Finn snorted, pointing an accusatory claw at Ben. “Fine, say what you want right now and I won’t turn you into an item! Actually..” Finn smirked, “show me your backstory!”
“B-backstory?” Ben asked.
“Yes. The one I asked everyone to send me a WEEK AGO. And don’t pretend that Tom didn’t tell you to send it me when he invited you,” Finn snarled.
“You’ve played DnD before right?” Finn glared at Ben, “then you know, backstories help me set up the game world, cater to your needs and wants. I can weave them into other backstories. It makes the world more interconnected and realistic. But out of ALL of you, only two people sent me their backstories. Jeff and Charlie. And Jeff’s was literally one sentence, so he was given a backstory I made up.”
Ben thought frantically.
Did he have a backstory? He had a character sheet-it was an Elven Sorcerer, not a fox. But he couldn’t recall if he’d wrote up any kind of backstory for him. Honestly, he always blew off the backstory thing. He hated writing, it made him grind his teeth in frustration. Ben knew what he wanted to communicate, but whenever pen hit paper, the words were lost. He second guessed his sentences and ideas.
“Can I check my phone?” Ben asked. “I think I sent it to you on Discord.”
“What?” Finn asked.
“Yeah, I was pretty sure I sent you something…” Ben pulled out his phone.
He flipped through his messages frantically. Ben had sent a backstory to someone. He must have at some point. It was always a bit late, but in his opinion, having a firmer idea of the story the DM wanted to tell made it easier to craft a proper backstory that fit with the tone.
“Here!” Ben shouted triumphantly, holding up his phone. “Want me to re-send it?”
Finn blinked and cocked his head. “…You actually have one?”
“Of course! I’m so sorry, I was sure you’d received it.” Ben lied.
Ben breathed a sigh of relief and sent the PDF of the backstory to Finn. He waited while Finn read over it. Instead of being assuaged, the dragon looked confused and then, a few moments later, furious. His heart dropped. Somehow, he’d made a mistake.
“Ben…” Finn’s tongue flickered in the air, “did you send me a random backstory, hoping I’d accept it?”
“No.” Ben said firmly, not breaking eye contact.
“Then why did you send me a Sci-Fi character write up?” Finn asked, pulling up the PDF and reading form it. “Sergeant Smithers was a veteran of the Galactic System Wars…”
Ben’s stomach turned. “Oh. Oops, let me go find it…”
“No, it’s okay!” Finn smiled, showing off his fangs and tapping something into his phone. “I understand.”
“Y-you do?” Ben asked.
“Of course!” The dragon walked towards the small young human and patted his back. “It’s completely understandable to have such an embarrassing switch-up.”
As the claw stroked Ben’s back, the human felt a tingle of energy pleasantly pass down along his spine, making him shiver.
Unbeknownst to him, hairs were raising up under that tingle of energy, long and fluffy strands of red fur. The fur spread across his body and Ben suddenly felt hot and stuffy with all his clothes on. Why would someone who had fur wear so many layers of clothes, anyways?
“Oh, you look overheated,” Finn smiled, watching the human’s tongue slip out of his mouth as he began to pant. The tongue flattened and lengthened, flecks of saliva dripping from the tip and onto the floor. Ben’s face was shifting as well, mouth pulling forward, dragging his blackening nose with it into a pointy muzzle. “Why don’t I help you take those clothes off?”
Ben nodded as more pleasant tingles tickled his ears as they rose to the top of his head and flicked happily while white fur grew out to cover them.
The dragon used his claws to easily slash his shirt and jeans off of the rapidly foxifying player, helping him balance as he kicked off his shoes and socks and adjusted to a new, digitigrade stance. Soon, the young anthro fox was naked save for his heavy coat of beautiful satin fur.
“There, much better, right?” Finn smiled.
Ben looked up at his friend wagging his big, fluffy tail slowly behind him. “Y-yeah.”
“Oops, I’m forgetting the fur color theme I’ve got going with the others…” Finn rubbed the anthro fox’s head, making Ben’s tail wag even faster. His red, white, and black fur coat, common with foxes, turned pale white and his eyes went from brownish yellow to brilliant blue. “There!”
“I’m a white fox now?” Ben marveled at his body. He’d always been a fox, of course, but an arctic fox was more alluring. “Thank you so much!”
“See? All you needed was someone else to make a decision for you.” Finn smiled, stroking the fox’s head.
“But” Finn continued, “Tom really should have asked me before he brought a friend...”
Ben felt tingles of energy continue to shoot through him as his body swelled larger. His spine popped and he found himself falling onto hands that were twisting into paws. As his body finished conforming into a more feral configuration, the growth stopped. He was at least 6 feet tall - an absolutely huge height for a fox.
“Yip?” the dire fox let out a high-pitched whine, followed shortly thereafter by his eyes bulging out in surprise.
“Yip?... YAP!... YIP YIP YIP!?!”
Ben was trying to speak, trying to ask Finn what he was doing, but all that came from his muzzle were the loud, high pitched yips and yaps of a wild animal.
“It’s alright, Ben. Life is hard. So many decisions. You don’t need to make them anymore.” Finn stroked the giant feral fox up and down his spine.
Ben arched into the dragon’s touch, happiness expanding out from Finn’s hand, yipping in joy as he felt magic flow through him, making his fur stand on end. It was like his brain had just been hit by a truck. He stiffened as a cool, soothing wave washed through him. His cock grew erect at how nice it felt. It was as though every ache and pain he’d never even realized had been there were massaged away in cool, pleasant tingles.
Finn took Ben’s chin in one clawed hand and adjusted it to look forwards. Ben’s neck popped as the dragon stroked his head again and again as the coolness passed down his head. The other hand reached down and took the fox’s paws and positioned them in a sitting posture.
“I hope you don’t mind me better placing you.” Finn chuckled.
The giant fox just panted as the dragon released his paws. His forelegs remained firmly in place, just as he’d been posed. Ben’s legs were no longer mobile as the sheen of his fur changed, losing their lifelike quality and becoming static. His legs grew oddly numb - though not badly, like a limb falling asleep. Rather, he didn't want to move it at all. He could still feel the limb, he just couldn’t feel the muscles anymore. And the more he thought about his legs’ new state of existence, the more he realized that it felt... wrong to move them.
Everywhere Finn’s clawed hands stroked, the relaxingly numb sensation spread. His insides changed, a strange emptiness filling Ben as everything underneath his skin just vanished into nothingness. But that empty feeling was quickly addressed as the calcium in his bones converted into the iron of the new wires that would be providing his body with support for the indefinite future.
Ben felt his body begin to deflate as tanned fox hide began to collapse inward from the lack of support that his muscles and organs had previously provided. But then, in an instant, the process reversed. Microscopic portals magically opened inside of the soon to be taxidermy, connected to waste baskets of the finest sawmills and tailors that Finn’s new world had to offer. Sawdust and small scraps of cloth rushed in through the portals, causing Ben’s body to fill with a mixture of the soft, inert material that would be his stuffing.
With his body stuffed and placed in the perfect pose, the dragon’s claws alighted on the fox’s head, stroking it again. Ben’s eyes glazed over, growing shiny losing the natural luster of life. In a few seconds, they became simple glass orbs. His muzzle froze, no longer able to open as wires fused his jaws shut.
Ben grew dizzy as something in his head began to go away. His thoughts stuttered until, with a soft, gentle pat, his brain converted into the same high quality stuffing as the rest of his body, and the transformation finished.
Ben wanted to yip and yap until Finn told him what was going on, but he could only watch as Finn pressed a claw into his phone. Exhaustion washed over Ben. He got the strange sense that his body had been in an unending vigil for thousands of years, and now he was being given an opportunity to rest. Dark circles grew at the outside of Ben’s vision, slowly closing him off from the rest of reality. Before long, darkness had closed off everything but the very center of his view, and then everything went black.
“There you go. No more thoughts. At least, not until the party comes to the temple.” The dragon rested a claw on the taxidermy fox’s body and grinned. “Enjoy your nap, Ben.”
The world around the giant fox shifted and swirled.
When reality re-insert itself, the stuffed fox was posed on a plinth at the center of an old temple. Outside, birds chirped and cicadas buzzed. The fox stared proudly forward, on display for all to see, forever frozen in place. He was a perfectly taxidermied corpse.
And until the party came, that was all he’d ever be.