Talver flexed his new fore legs up and down and think of any way to make them work like hands again, but he was helpless. He turned back to face Sereth again.
"PLEASE, you GOTTA help me, you just can't let this happen. I know I ain't a good man, but I ain't some mangy MUTT!"
"Not yet, you're not. But see, you're almost there!"
Talver felt his insides burning worse than ever, all throughout his torso. He winced and moaned. His organs squished and squirmed inside him. His chest barreled out, and his lower belly thinned. He begged again:
"You gotta CHANGE ME BACK!"
"I don't GOTTA do ANYTHING for you! You've made your bed as far as I'M concerned. This dog stuff is just your life now."
"You don't GET IT! My life is OVER! My time in the GANG is OVER! Ain't no one -- ow! my insides! ACH! -- ain't NO ONE gonna recognize me. (huff, huff, huff) Not my momma, not my homies, not NOBODY!"
Sereth looked at Talver like he was an idiot. Didn't Talver know that was the point?
"Yes," he said, "I know you're life is over. That's why I'm doing this. Just be thankful you're alive. My sister's not. Thanks to you and the others. She's a corpse. You're just a stray."
"NO I CAN'T BE! PLEASE! You saw what they'll do to a stray dog out there! Where am I gonna go? How'm I gonna LIVE?! Please, ya gotta help me! It can't end like this, it can't--"
The man was groveling before him now, and Sereth almost felt a little bad for him. Almost. Was this what his sister looked like when they killed her? This was the first time Sereth had taken his revenge on someone who liked this ... broken, scared, pathetic. Talver panted out the heat of the magic a little more, drooling on the ground, and then looked up at him pleadingly:
"Please, you gotta ... know something I can do ... somewhere I can go! Do you ... do you need a dog? Do you ..."
Talver stopped in mid-sentence after realizing what he'd just said. Really? He was offering just to give himself away to someone? Like if he was an actual dog? He gulped. Sareth's eyes widened.
"Really? You wanna be my dog? Like a pet? You think you deserve to be my PET? After what you did to my family? You think I would take you in my HOUSE?!"
Talver's feet ached, and he looked away in shame. He turned his head back to see them getting longer, his big toe shrinking, his other toes fattening, claws finishing. He couldn't even see his manhood any more beneath his shaggy gray-tan fur. He screeched out one last time when the burning reached his face again. It hurt really bad. The bones in the front jutting forward. The jaw creaking. The long tongue getting longer, flatter, floppier. His nose racing away from him under his eyes. His lips catching up to it. His scream became a canine howl and it was over. He was the perfect copy of the dog he'd seen getting kicked by the fire bin.
"I'm getting out of here," Sereth said. Talver couldn't manage a word out of his own long snout any more. The aches and burns were fading. He sniffed the air, then looked toward the exit, padding toward it slowly on cooling paws. Watching Sereth get to the door before turning and looking at him. Talver paced forward quickly with a gleaming hope in his eyes. Sereth bit his lip, watching the newly transformed dog's reaction.
"You, you really wanna do it, don't you? You wanna live with me, as a house pet, rather than free on your own in your new form?"
Talver remembered Sereth saying he would get the hang of begging, so he tried something. He bounced his front paws off the ground and let his hind legs take his weight again. It didn't work too well, but he managed to keep himself up long enough to look like he was begging for something. Talver hoped it looked adorable, at least. He sacrificed his dignity before to please his betters. His bosses in the gang were almost as scary as Sereth and had much bigger guns.
Sereth winced and looked to the side.
"Ugh, you're pathetic. Fine! You can follow me home if you want. But you're an ANIMAL to me now. DON'T think you are getting special treatment."
Talver's tail had never wagged so hard in his entire life! (Well, he'd only had it for a brief few minutes of his entire life. But he'd get used to it!) He walked out beside together beside Sereth keeping just a tad behind him. He even tried licking Sereth's hand a few times, but Sereth pulled away each time. They both hoped they had made the right decision.