Miggs got to her new feet and opened her eyes up. Having just finished making a prayer to the Devine Spirit, she made a comment about how painful her additional transformation had been before deciding that it was probably worth it. Putting her hand to the side of her head, she grazed her knew horns, rubbing her temple as a slight buzz continued through her skull. As she tried to shake off the dizziness, she knew that she would have to find a male and do him harm… but what male?
As if in response to this question, a sound caught Miggs ears. She couldn't quite make out what it was… a thick rustling of the grasses outside. Perhaps its Regina… Miggs considered, but grew quite as she heard the unmistakable sound of a human woman crying. No… not a sound, but a feeling, she thought as she knelt in the shadows of the loft. She is heart-broken… betrayed and angry, Miggs noted, realizing that the only empathic feelings she received from the person were those of a man's betrayal. What has happened? she wondered, watching as the large figure appeared at the barn door below.
From the doorway appeared a tall and thick form, but not something easily definable as having once been human. The face was that of a giant snake, the distance across its face wider than any humans would commonly be, with a boxed out snout that pushed forward into a squared shape away from the eyes. Fangs curved over the front lower lip from the top, the nostrils on the face burrowed into the side of the muzzle near the end, making the nose a bit of a triangular cut out to the end of the snout.
Miggs had never seen a face quite like it and though it was not human, she could sense something powerful and attractive about it. The eyes wide lengthwise to either side of the snout on the face and mostly pointed forward, thought they were shorter height wise. Though their irises were colored the light blue that Regina's had been before the change, their pupils were now split into two slender black slits inside either pupil, parallel to each other. Over the top of the eyes were no eyebrows but instead scaled ridges covered in hard black circles that might have been bone like Miggs' ebony spikes.
The back of the head was the most interesting part of the creature, though. Flat, backwards from the center of the eyes was the beginning of something that could have been like a snake's hood or the neck frills of a reptile. They were scaled in the same black color with a sheen of red to them and went out almost straight backwards from the top of its skull.
The frill itself covered what would have been Regina's hair, but was now not unlike a nest of snakes. They were all the same red-yellow-black-yellow-red color as the creatures had been from the Chaotic Realm the morning before. Each one had beady little red eyes that glowed lightly with some dark power, and they shifted and moved as if they were trying to get away from the back of the creature.
Regina's chest pushed outward not unlike her breasts had, but was flattened to her form not unlike the chest of a world-class body builder. The thickness of her muscles and bones gave her broad shoulders to her upper arms to the point where she could have been a linebacker in some other Realm and some other Time. Both her sets of arms, connected at the shoulders, were thick of muscle and scales, ending in lump fingers at the ends of those black scaled hands.
The body contained no noticeable gender to it, though. If the lumps on her chest were breasts, they had no nipples. If she had a vagina still it was hidden somewhere within all her scales. The width of the body of the creature she now was maintained it's thickness from head, neck, belly, and on down beyond her waist. The stripes repeated their pattern of poison down her entire length ending nearly fifty food later in a nub of a point at the end.
She is huge! Miggs stared in amazement, watching as the naga wiggled itself back and forth naturally, pushing Regina at a good and steady pace into the barn. Standing up, she walked over the loft so as to drop down to the floor and introduce herself, but was stopped by Regina's curiously fast motion over to a set of shelves just inside the barn's front door. As Miggs watched, she felt the anger of betrayal build up inside of Regina and it felt bitter in her mouth. Sure enough, Regina removed a vial from a coffee can there on a shelf and pulled up a black vial with a little white skull on it.
Miggs had seen such a vial before… it was rat poison. Considering Regina's feelings of betrayal, and that her husband is now a dog-rat thing, it wasn't too far a jump of logic to figure out what her frame of mind was.
Miggs dropped down from the loft, subconsciously realizing an opening may have presented itself to her. Just as she her hoofs silently struck the earth of the barn floor, the snakes fluttering about on the back of Regina's head all hissed towards Miggs, sensing the vibration of the impact. Miggs blinked, and a moment later Regina's upper body turned to face the succubus, sliding effortlessly right up to her and raising herself up to where her head went up passed the height of Miggs.
Regina glared at the intruder as each of the snakes on the back of her head tried to sneak a peak from around behind her frill. "You," she hissed without realizing it. Miggs took a step forward into the light to be better seen by Regina when the naga slid backwards and to the side to keep her distance. "No, you are not the one. You look different," she said, holding the vial hidden in one of her large right hands. "What business do you have here, demon? Couldn't let your sister have all the fun? Come to finish us off?"
Miggs slowly held up both her arms, palms forward to Regina. "Regina," she said, thinking her voice sounded a little like herself from before puberty. "I am sorry for what has happened to you and your husband. I never wished to change either of you… but I have not been the creature you see before you for longer than two days and I do not know its powers," she explained. "I beg your forgiveness and—"
"Forgiveness!" Regina rumbled down the length of her spine. "This cannot be forgiven… my life turned on its head already, I'm a monster now… there is nothing left for me here," she said, motioning out the barn door towards the house. "I'm to loose my home and family and now my chance to be human?" Her three hands not holding the vial all clenched up into fists. "Were it within me, I would kill you where you stand… but I refuse to be the monster you have made me," she said, realizing that this succubus had revealed she was the same as the one who transformed her and thus must have changed her appearance.
Miggs took a deep breath, still holding her hands up and thinking this through for a moment. She was closer to Regina now than she had been while up on the loft, and she reached out to her with her feelings. Spiritually, she could not read Regina, or anyone else… but her powers as a succubus would grant her the ability to read the desires of men… but also be empathic of women affected by men. Taking into account the words of Oscar from the trip to the farm that morning, and what she could glean from Regina's feelings right now, she blinked and said: "Oscar has been unfaithful."
Regina held the vial of poison closer to her thick chest as she put her corresponding left hand over it as well. "What?" she asked, her mood dropping to concern. Once she stopped thinking of betrayal and vengeance and started thinking about concern overing being caught. Miggs could no longer read her. "How could you possibly… unless it is you!" she hissed, holding the vial back away from Miggs. "Seductress… you have stolen him away from me? Come to gloat, then!?" she demanded.
"Succubus do not gloat. They are not home-wreckers. They are those which feed on the sexual energies and life forces of males," Miggs said with conviction. Though she had known only cursory information about them before, her Enchantment had given her a lot of insight into her being. "For the most part, they do not even deal with the lives or feelings of woman. If your husband had been taken into the thrall of a succubus then she would not be doing it to hurt you… she would be doing it just because it is her nature," Miggs continued, thinking that buzz in her head was becoming stronger by the moment. It really wasn't going to give her much more time to find a male. "Furthermore, if this has been going on for a while, know that it is quite unlikely to be a succubus that is your problem."
"Again, I ask you: Why?" Regina frowned, not trusting of this monster down before her. The end of her tail flicked in agitation as if she might be ready to strike Miggs down…
"Succubus are not Vampires, Regina. A succubus will not commonly draw out a relationship with a man to continue to feed off of him. It is ineffective and dangerous over the long term," she explained. "Succubi don't need to feed every night… why, a man who fulfills his part as a lover and is completely drained by a succubus will very likely die in her embrace… and then she may go on living in secret for weeks at a time before needing to feed again," Miggs explained. Though she spoke and understood her woods, Miggs couldn't help but consider she had just learned all this moments ago from her further transformation.
Regina's stance lowered, and her head came to rest about Miggs' level as her upper body moved forward closer to Miggs. "I think he has been unfaithful for years… only recently has he begun to be so in obvious way around myself and others," she explained, the feeling of hurt and pain seeping back into Miggs' image of Regina… like another color to how she appeared. "Friends of my parents saw him and another woman leaving a pub just the other night," she said. "I had asked to go with him to town just this morning so that I could demand he explain himself in their presence," Regina said, glancing away.
Miggs considered this, putting a hand to her chin as she stepped silently to one side. Pacing for a turn, she watched as Regina's head-snakes followed her movements for a time before getting bored and mulling about behind her head again. Miggs looked back towards Regina and said, "I can discover if he is cheating on you." Regina's head turned to look at her. "It will not repair the damage I have done to you… your altered form… but I feel that your pain has driven you to murder. Would your pain not be even greater if you discovered you were wrong, later?" she asked.
Regina watched Miggs, but then nodded. "Perhaps it is monstrous thoughts of mine… this cursed form you have put me into… I do not know. He is a monster, a rat, and I would have no trouble discarding his corpse as I would any other rodent from the kitchen," she said, glancing away. "I don't know why," she said, though Miggs guessed. In Regina's current form, Oscar would probably just about fit for her dietary requirements… "If he had betrayed me, I would surely want him dead. If he lives, he will leave me and take all he owns and I will be alone in this world," she sighed, knowing she could never return to her parents home. Not like this.
"Regina… it is likely you feel this way as a woman scorned, not simply because of your form," Miggs said, stepping up to her. She put a hand on Regina's shoulder, but also another hand onto her head. "But I must ask you… if I discover that he has been unfaithful to you… may I drain away his life force? You were, perhaps, going to kill him anyway… and if I do not have a male now after my transformation, I will die," she said, looking into Regina's eyes.
"How can you ask such a thing so calmly?" Regina wondered, looking into Miggs' eyes. "And how would you even know such a thing? I have been unable to get answers out of him for all this time. If you are new to us, then how would he trust you with that answer?"
"He need not trust me," Miggs said. "I will be able to feel from him his desires… which means that if you are not what he desires, then I will see another woman in his mind's eye," she said, pulling her hand away and placing it onto the other side of her head. Her eyes closed as the fire of the change burned within her, demanding it be completed with the energy of a man. "If he is guilty of what you suspect, then I can remove him from your life and your problems… everything will go to you, and you can start anew."
Regina looked back towards the house, closing her eyes. She thought about this offer, and it felt wrong. But part of her didn't care for her husband as much as it had when they were first married. She knew in her heart that Miggs would find Oscar guilty… and if he was, then there was little else she could do. Here in the land of Vermillion, she would be lucky if the men in charge of the laws would even hear out here case. If Oscar didn't get what he deserved this way, then he would never be brought to justice.
Regina's tongue flicked out as she tasted the farm air. Turning back to Miggs, she nodded her head, "If he has been unfaithful… but… if he doesn't love me… then it is all that is befitting of him," she sighed. "He will meet no other justice here in Vermillion."
"Vermillion?" Miggs asked, opening her eyes back up and staring at Regina. "We are in Vermillion?" This is no good, she thought, Vermillion is nine days travel from Quell. We'll have to leave right away! "We have little time then. I know of the lawlessness of these lands. Oscar will be seen to, and I will drain him," she said, hoping Regina didn't question that. At this point, she would not make it to another man in time… she would have to drain Oscar or Yaun. "If there is nothing else for you, Regina, then I would ask you come with us. The prince and I seek to cure ourselves of our forms. Yaun too. We would be happy to see you returned to normal as well," she flinched as the pain returned to her head. "It's my fault, and I need to repair the deed. Please, come with me… I have little time," she said as she began walking quickly to the house.
Once inside, she saw Oscar sitting back in a chair playing solitaire on the table in front of him. The little-rat man had shifted form into something more finished since the last time she had looked him over. He was wearing a kitchen apron as a shirt on his much smaller frame. Only once Miggs stepped over to him, moving passed Yaun, did she understand his desires, It was then that she knew where he stood with Regina.