Opening the door to his work-shop Vikris looked up from his spell book and smiled at his prisoner, they had been brought up from the cells and laid quite naked on his worktable, their body held in place by the enchantments built into the table. It was much easier than having shackles and ropes and chains get in the way, enchantments to sap their strength, render them immobile and silent it made for a much cleaner and friendlier working environment.

Setting his spell book on the stand built into the base of the table the red scaled kobold sniffed the air and smiled. The gnoll was young, strong, and muscular; their fur a rich tawny brown speckled with darker spots much like a wild hyena’s. He had been captured on a raid about a month ago but Vik had been busy and only now had time to deal with them. Thankfully they had been cleaned up, they had reeked when he picked them out of the cells that morning. But that is what came from having cells built into the venting system for the warren’s steam caverns. It kept the prisoner nice and secure but they had no choice but to sit and stew in their own sweat and the humidity rising up out of his clans steam rooms

Smiling at the captive who was glaring at him defiantly Vikris pressed his scaled paw to a inset gem on the table as he flipped pages in his book. There was a faint hum and the gnoll suddenly gasped as the pressure squeezing his vocal chords shut subsided.

“So I thought we’d have a little chat, I believe you said your name was Gnan?”

“Let me go kobold,” the gnoll growled in his gruff language, biting off the words in a slight lisp around his large snaggle teeth, “Fight me fair and I will teach you why you no mess with Gnan’s tribe!”

“Yeah, not happening,” the kobold yipped as he unbuttoned his robe and shrugged out of it, “I just thought you’d like to know how you are going to serve my clan.”

Folding up the robe on a chair Vikris stripped off his gloves and let the gnoll rant and rave about how he was going to eat him. It was always amusing to listen to their threats or pleading but once he was naked Vikris returned to the side of the table and gripped the gnoll’s ankles and smirked up at them as they tried to tilt their head to see what he was doing. Vik made a slight motion with one finger and the hood hanging over the table glimmered, a brightly mirrored surface revealing itself so Gnan could look up at the reflection of his body.

“That’s enough Gnan, it is amusing to listen to you rant and rave but you see I really fancy a new set of armour and you are just the right size for me…” the kobold paused, chuckling at the confused look on the gnoll’s face, he was twice the size of the diminutive kobold, “Well you will be,” he finished and started chanting, reading from the pages of his spell book, arcane energy flowing out of his hands and down into the gnoll’s body.

The changes were almost instantaneous, fur started to flow away from the gnoll’s lower legs, his feet shifted, grew shapeless and undefined and then with a slight twist of his hands they gnoll’s legs came free from the knees down. There was no blood, no pain, just a sharp indrawn breath from the gnoll as he watched his lower legs and feet transforming into a pair of leather, open toed boots designed to fit the kobolds feet and leave his sharp toe claws free. There was a stylish cuff of tawny, hyena spotted gnoll fur around the top of the boots whilst the rest was smooth, sleek leather made from gnoll skin. Gnan started screaming epithets at Vikris but the kobold ignored him and sat back on a chair nearby to pull on his knew boots. They came up to just below his knees and as he stood back up and returned to the table Gnan fell silent as the kobold walked along the side of the table to stand next to the gnoll’s legs.
“You see Gnan I don’t have any need for a big, strong gnoll,” Vikris taunted as he reached out and placed his paws on the gnoll’s thigh, “I can’t let you go, you’d tell people about us and I certainly don’t want to add you to my clan… I do however need some lovely new clothing and you are going to make an absolutely stunning set of armour.”

“No… please…” Gnan begged, “Gnan do anything, nice kobold, turn Gnan back…”

“No… I don’t think so…” Vik hissed and started to recite the spell, the arcane energy flowed into the table, amplified by the preparations Vikris had built into his workshop and Gnana stared in silent horror as his body from the waist down fell away. Flesh and bone twisted, flattened, transformed right before his eyes… his private parts just melted into the rest, his pride and joy gone, transmuted into a pair of tawny coloured baggy trousers with a triangle of hyena coloured fur hanging from the front waistband. The trousers still had his tail attached, curled and posed just above the tail hole in the back of the outfit and to top it all off there was a wide belt of pale beige leather with a buckle made from carved bone.

Gnan tried to find the words, tried to find a way to express the horror of what he was seeing but all he could manage was a faint whine as he lay there and watched Vikris pull the trousers on. It looked… barbarian, roguish; those baggy cotton trousers covered his legs and tucked into the top of his boots just so. The furry tail and loincloth like flap hanging down to his knees added a flare of the exotic and the belt fit the kobold’s waist just so.

“Please…” Gnan began to beg but was cut off as Vikris reached up and pressed his hands to the gnoll’s stomach.

“Please continue I look weird with only half an outfit? Of course Gnan my pleasure…” he laughed and started to chant, magic flowing down his fingers, pouring into the gnoll and making him whimper in despair. He watched as his arms split in two… the lower half from the elbows falling away, fingers twitching, spreading… transmuting into a pair of stylish, fingerless leather gauntlets with a gnoll like pawprint impressed into each palm. Like the boots they had a line of fur around the cuff of the glove but otherwise they were made entirely out of sleek, beige gnoll leather.

He wasn’t finished though, this spell was longer, more complex and Gnan could only lay there and stare as his torso changed. It didn’t collapse into leather, it grew harder, pectoral and abdominal muscles thickening up into plates made of some sort of metal burnished to a beautiful sheen that mimicked his former fur colour. It was so strange, his torso was empty now, his chest had stopped rising, his heart beat was gone, all the viscera and organs that should have filled his torso were just missing. There were just moulded metal plates and leather straps that rested atop a padded leather gambeson with long sleeves. Vikris stroked Gnan’s head as it lay still, held by the enchantments of the table, tears trickling down his cheeks as he stared up at the mirror.

“Why… am I still alive?” he asked as Vikris started to pull on the gambeson and tuck it into his trousers. The kobold grinned at the formerly proud and strong warrior and started to buckle on the armoured chest and back plate, fixing the shoulder pads last before collecting his gloves and pulling them on. Once he was dressed, shoulders to toes in what had until just recently been Gnan’s body he picked up the gnoll’s head in one hand and held it out before him. His proud warrior’s mohawk fell down the back of his head

“You are alive because I need you Gnan, this armour is useless without an energy source to power the enchantments I’ve worked into it, don’t worry… you don’t really have the mind or education for me to keep you sentient.”
“Please, Gnan want…”

The gnolls’s pleas were cut off as Vik summoned his magic and poured it into his head and he started to change. His lower jaw vanished, shrinking into the back of his skull as the interior of his head was hollowed out, tear filled eyes fading away to become vacant holes. His ears twitched upright, growing hollow and open as well, warm fuzzy sheaths through which Vikris’ horns could sit. The mohawk stayed in place, a proud statement nestled between Vik’s horns to add that last finishing touch to his gnoll coloured, gnoll made armour.

Peering out through the eye-holds Vik admired his body in the mirror and grinned widely, the helmet was of course a perfect fit for his head. A fitting outfit for the chief of the Clan Shadowflame and making use of the gnoll’s soul and life stuff he had imbued it with a whole bunch of useful spells. Magical resonance to allow him to continue spell casting whilst wearing light armour, speed buffs, a minor strength enhancement the helmet had a far-sight spell nestled into it to allow him to see further. Of course everyone was going to want one when they saw this but hey he didn’t mind, it was always good fun to play around transforming people into useful garments instead of lay about wastes of space, they’d make useful members of society and their trading partners need never know the source of his amazing armour and other garments.

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No. 2 in my little sketch series, this one is by http://www.furaffinity.net/user/kyrio