Christine nodded. "But in the meantime we have to get Mike back and get out of here before that farmer comes back with friends." They tried to urge Mike the cow to follow them, but he (or she, perhaps) didn't seem to be interested.
"It's no good, his mind is too far gone" said Brian in frustration.
Christine thought hard, then replied "I can try a spell to change him back. The problem is that he'll probably forget pretty much everything that's happened since he was transformed into this cow."
Joe looked at the calf suckling from Mike's udder and laughed. "He'd probably be glad of that!"
The Drow hunted through her belt pouch for a few ingredients, then cast the spell. A cloud of sparkles surrounded the former centaur, and his form slowly began to change. Suddenly the sparkling lights changed color and began to make a low humming noise. Christine grunted in effort. "Whatever they used to change him is interfering with the spell. I don't think I can fight it much longer, it's taking a huge amount of magic!" In desperation, just before her concentration gave up, she frantically improvised a slightly different version of the spell and cast that as well. The feedback briefly knocked her out, and there was a bright flash of light.
When everyone could see again, they stared at Mike in amazement. He looked back, shaking his head in pain and confusion.
"What the hell just happened?" he asked angrily. He had one hell of a headache, and his memory was blurry. He didn't seem to be able to remember how he'd got here, wherever 'here' was. Looking around, he saw he was standing in the middle of a field, with a few cows milling around some distance off. A couple of miles away a town was visible, one that looked slightly familiar. A young calf was standing twenty feet away staring at him, and he companions were doing the same from rather closer. Christine picked herself up and looked at him in disbelief.
"Whoops" she muttered, appearing rather guilty.
Brian closed his open mouth with a snap, and said slowly, "Mike, do you feel, well, OK?"
Mike nodded. "I feel fine except for the headache. What's going on? Last I remember we were just walking into a town, which I think was that one over there." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Now I suddenly seem to be in a field, and you're all looking at me like I'm a ghost!"
The calf slowly walked closer, in a wide circle to avoid the other three.
The other exchanged glances. "Um. You were captured by the townspeople nearly a year ago, and Ty somehow made us forget about you.", Christine replied slowly, still staring at him oddly. It was only then that Mike noticed the unconscious for of Ty lying on the ground behind Joe. "We got you back, and now we need to get out of here before he wakes up, and find some way of defending ourselves against him." She paused, then continued "Are you SURE you feel OK?"
"YES, other than having a monster headache. Why does everyone keep asking me that question." He was getting somewhat angry by now. Just as Christine opened her mouth to reply to his question, the oddest sensation Mike had ever felt suddenly came from between his hind legs. He jumped forwards and sideways, looking back at the same time to see what was happening. As he did, there was a weird heavy tugging on his underside between his legs accompanied by a sharp pain. He stopped, staring at the calf that was standing with it's head down and milk leaking from it's mouth. Wondering where the milk had come from, he was distracted as the tugging became a swaying as he ceased moving. Slowly looking back at his lower half, he stared in complete disbelief.
His former fur coloration had changed to an oddly familiar black and white splotched hide. His tail involuntarily flicked around, and he saw it was no longer the long horse's tail he had become accustomed to. It was a long ropy thing with a tift of hair on the end. Again, it looked stranger familiar.
The calf approached him again while he was staring, and stuck it's head under his belly. The strange sensation came once more, and unwillingly Mike realised that it was because the calf was sucking on his UDDER!
"What the FUCK is going on?!" he yelled. His companions were watching this all with various odd expressions. The one present who seemed to be having a good time was the calf, contentedly feeding.
They saw a familar but different figure standing there shaking in rage and frustration. Above the waist he was his normal self, very much the Mike of old, but below that his body, while still on four legs and centaur-like, was now that of a dairy cow rather than a stallion! The black and while markings of a holstien covered his fur, and an enormous and obviously full udder swung and jostled between his hind legs as the calf pulled hungrily on the nipples.
As they looked closer they noticed that he also had a small pair of horns sticking through his hair.
Christine glanced at the others, then explained how he had somehow been turned into a cow and spend the months wandering the fields, and had had the calf that was still drinking from him. She explained "The spell I meant to change you back somehow interacted with the one used to transform you in the first place, and I had to abort it before it killed you. Or me. When I did, for some reason you ended up like this. My spell tried to turn you back into a centaur, but the cow transformation interfered and somehow forced it to change you into a cowtaur instead."
"Well, try again! I can't stay like this!" Mike was nearly desperate. The sensations of the calf still feeding from his huge mammaries was very disconcerting, while not unpleasant. Christine sighed.
"I can't, not right now anyway. I've got nearly no magical energy left. That last spell really took it out of me." Mike looked like he was about to explode, and took a step forward. The sudden hard pull of the calf's mouth on his udder nipple made him stop with a slight yelp of pain. She stepped back, just in case, and continued, "OK, hold on, and I'll check if there's anything I can do."
Casting a small spell with a grimace of effort, she examined him magically for a moment. Going as pale as her Drow complexion would allow, she dropped the spell and stepped back a couple more paces. Mike looked at her quizzically as did his two friends. "What?" he asked impatiently.
"Um, you're not going to like this..." she began, then stopped.
"WHAT?" he said again in a half-yell.
"...You're REALLY not going to like this..." she muttered. Looking at his expression, she gulped and went on. "Ah, it looks like several things went wrong at once, the original spell fighting my one, my improvised modification, and then aborting it half-way through." Pausing for a moment, she swallowed hard and continued, whle Mike's expression darkened.
"I think you're stuck like this! From a magical point of view you're a mess. I wouldn't have the faintest idea where to start, and it would take a huge amount of energy anyway. Vastly more than I have even on my best day. I don't think I could do anything to change you at all, in any direction."
"WHAT?!" Mike screamed in horror. "You mean I'm trapped like this? I can't go around half cow for god's sake!"
Christine looked upset, then brightened briefly. "Look on the bright side. No one else will be able to change you into anything either!"
"And we'll never run out of milk" Brian piped up, only to be glared at by both Mike and Christine.
While Mike was trying to think what to say next, there was a faint sound in the direction of the town. They looked that way, and could see in the distance, a mile or so away, a small group of obviously armed and angry townsfolk coming their way. "Ah, guys, I think we need to get out of here, right now", said Joe urgently. Mike's problem temporarily set to one side, they turned away from the town and began moving.
Mike found even walking as a cowtaur to be full of strange sensations. He had become used to being a normal horse-based centaur, but this new body felt quite different in several ways. It just seemed to move in a way that felt odd. Oddest of all, of course, was the dangling and tugging weight of his huge and bulging udder. Every movement of his hind legs brushed against it, squeezing it slightly. The calf had obviously not been able to empty it very much. The weight was easy enough to bear, as his body was obviously designed to take it, but it was very weird.
Speaking of the calf, he looked over his shoulder when he heard it calling out mournfully, and saw it was following him. He speeded up until he was moving at a canter, unwilling to accept that he had somehow given birth to the thing. He found that this was the maximum speed he could achieve without the sensations of his udder bouncing and flopping around becoming too much to bear. Muttering to himself, he followed the others as they made their escape. It was at least a couple of hours before they were sure they had eluded the pursuing townsfolk and they could stop.