1 Hour Commission: Lexal Hunter

The apothecary seemed to be abandoned. Wooden shelves were knocked over littering the floor with dust and splinters. Cobwebs covered the corners of the room. At one time this was a bustling store front. But those glory days were very clearly past.

A blue shark stepped gingerly over the rubble on the floor, as he looked through shelves and dug through storage cabinets. Lexal was a stranger to this city filled with transformation around every corner, and that spelt danger for the shark. No one came to Marielda and left quite the same. If Lexal wasn’t careful he could turn into just about anything. Out of an abundance of caution he’d run into an abandoned apothecary, hoping to stay away from any people or items that might TF him. This wing of the city looked to be dedicated to magical items and businesses that sold them. That suited Lexal better than the science district or the cartoon district. At least he was somewhat familiar with magic and curses.

“Phew, this place will be safe. No cursed treasures or wayward wizards here,” Lexal said, brushing dust from the shoulder of his green hoodie. He found a small chair behind a decrepit cash register and took a seat, situating his long shark tail carefully around the back. As long as he didn’t move from this spot he’d be safe.

Suddenly a pair of rope cuffs clapped into place on his wrist and an arcane sigil lit up beneath the chair. Before he had even a chance to yell for help, Lexal was whisked away through a teleportation circle.

“HELP!” he cried into the dark chamber lit only by purple torchlight. Another flare of light illuminated the center of the room, nearly blinding Lexal. He turned away briefly as his eyes acclimated. When he looked forward again, a fox in a dark hood had appeared.

“Hmmm,” the fox pondered as he circled the tied down shark. “Yes, I think this test subject will work fine for the Potion Of Greater Dragon Polymorph.”

Lexal squinted at his captor to make out a face. The hood was covering most of the fox’s features aside from a devious vulpine grin. “Kit? Is that you in there?”

A gust of wind surrounded the shark, blowing his hoodie helter skelter. “SILENCE! I am the Great Wizard K.K.! And I will not be spoken to that way by my test subjects.”

Lexal started to struggle against the heavy leather bindings that held his wrists and, to his surprise, his tail against the chair preventing escape. Whoever this “K.K.” is, Lexal knew a dangerous TF situation when he heard it. Test subject was a major red flag; something bad was going to happen here. If only he could get free from this darn chair…

The shark was too distracted and hadn’t noticed as a glowing, deep green potion floated to his face held aloft by purple sparkles and magic smoke. The hooded fox grinned as he muttered a word of power and the bottle pushed its way between Lexal’s lips. With another set of magic words, an enchanted rope tied itself around the shark’s snout to keep the bottle in place as it slowly drained into his mouth. Everything was happening so fast Lexal wasn’t sure what to focus on. Should he discover the wizard’s true identity, or struggle to get the bottle out of his mouth? He wasn’t sure exactly what a “greater dragon polymorph” would look like, but he- wait. Is that strawberry flavored?

Somehow, the potion tasted absolutely delicious. Maybe it was magically enhanced? Lexal couldn’t think straight for a moment as the sweetness of the elixir toyed with his senses. In the span of less than a minute he’d completely chugged the whole potion. He was in the middle of licking his lips clean when he realized exactly what happened.

“W-What? Why did I drink that?”

The hooded figure bowed. “A trick I picked up from fairies. Add a little glamor to your potions and the drinker can’t help but enjoy it until the very last drop. Now if you’ll excuse me, you’re about to get… much larger.” He painted a magical rune in the air with his fingers and with a flash The Great Wizard K.K. was gone. The purple torches around the room went out leaving the room illuminated only by the single large flame in the center of the room.

Now that he was alone Lexal became very aware of the gurgling in his stomach that was growing in intensity. He hiccupped once and felt an odd stretching sensation around his neck; like the sensation of inflating a balloon animal. His perspective rose higher and higher… his neck stretched toward the ceiling as if he was part giraffe.

“Oh. That’s a weird feeling,” he said nervously, looking down as his shiny and smooth shark skin flaked apart into thick scales all across his body. There was no time for him to gawk. He needed to stop the changes and escape! The rapidly transforming dragonshark looked all over the room for anything he could use. A sword to cut the bonds… an antidote potion to save his body… the closest he got to anything useful was a tiny letter opener on the wizard’s desk. A chill sped down his back, going numb as a set of draconic fins popped all the way down his spine. His hoodie was totally ruined with the new additions.

Lexal worried that at this rate he’d be stuck to this chair for hours. Stupid rope cuffs, they wouldn’t hold him down if he was bigger.

RRRRIP

The seams all the way down his clothing collectively decided to quit. His green sweatshirt fell to the ground, covering his feet just as they thickened and grew talons at the end of each toe. That was as good an indicator as any to the transformed adventurer. He would get his wish to be bigger, and those rope cuffs wouldn’t hold him for long. A small blessing, but now he was faced with a new issue. A gurgling sensation at his stomach preceded the coming storm of growth just as the whole lower half of his body thickened with muscle and fat. His athletic, top heavy body readjusted to the pear-shaped, bottom heavy dragon form with gusto. And it felt… good. The internal dragon fire in his chest flared, warming him like a cozy blanket or a bowl of soup.

The ropes broke at the same time as his chair collapsed. Cold cobblestones pressed into Lexal’s scaled rump, but didn’t particularly hurt. At least the thick hide could benefit him somehow. Now that he was free he could make his way out of the room! He looked around for a door to escape and found… nothing. Now that the wizard was gone there was no door to escape through. And besides, as he compared a paw to a nearby bookcase it was clear he wouldn’t fit through a door anyway. He had to be at least 20 feet tall now, bare minimum. The horns atop his head bumped into the stone ceiling painfully, forcing him to crane his neck down back into the room.

“Shoot, don’t have much time left before I have to bust my way out of here by force!” he fretted. With only precious few moments left until all the furniture in the room would be destroyed by his growth, the dragon looked once again for an antidote. He combed his loveseat-sized hands through books and alchemic ingredients and came up empty again and again… he felt his tree-trunk thick tail being forced to snake around the space as it ran into walls, destroying a desk and candelabras and anything else in its path.

Finally, success! On a shelf labeled ‘Finished Potions’ was one bottle with the word ANTIDOTE typed across its label. Gingerly, he reached two fingers out to grip the solution to all his problems between his claws. But he wasn’t used to his own strength and felt the glass shatter. Pink serum dripped down his claws and onto the floor, but none of it made it to the dragon’s mouth.

Lexal sighed as he looked at the bottle fragments, and a shudder ran through him. In an instant he’d bloated to fill every inch of space in the wizard’s chambers. 30 feet of dragon pressed into the room’s walls making the stone prison creak. He felt like an overinflated balloon about to burst; except he’d been a balloon plenty of times before, and this felt more like sheer draconic mass. He squirmed to attempt an escape to no avail. The cold stone pressed in at him on all sides.

He shuddered yet again and the entire room shuddered in synchronization. The ceiling buckled shortly after and his elongated neck pushed up into a very familiar room. “Wait… this is the apothecary. That whole wizard’s room was underneath the apothecary?”

And now the apothecary shuddered in time with Lexal’s growth too.

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From the top of a skyscraper in the Science District, the Great Wizard K.K. pulled his hood off to survey the results of his experiment from a safe distance. He watched the struggling Apothecary suddenly explode in all directions, replaced with an abundance of bottom-heavy blue dragon. He mentally crossed off ‘Dragon TF’ from a list, and began to plot his next experiment for Lexal. In a city the size of Marielda there was no lack of chances to change your friends. And at that size his draconic friend wouldn’t be going anywhere.