"You poor bastards!" sighs the dragoness, looking down at the shocked couple. "Minestus really outdid himself this time!"
The couple jumps up and gets ready for a fight that both know that they can't win. Astra leaps up, snarling and tail thrashing in anger. Lord Fred grabs for his sword, and pulls it halfway out of his sheath before noticing....it is MUCH larger than he remembered.
Astra and Fred stop dead in their track, surprised that the dragoness is....laughing! An idle wave of her hand causes a fat spark of light to leap out and disintigrate the sword that Fred is still trying to draw forth.
"What do you want, wyrm?" Fred grinds out, and then pauses when he notices that he sounds a bit different. His and Astra's jaws drop when they both notice that Fred is a bit different from the way he was last night.
Astra is looking at a human looking male figure that....has some decidely nonhuman body features! First the body coloration of this this person is much different from any human that Astra has ever seen. There color is not due to fur, but it is reminisent of a red fox with black socks. There is a fox tail growing from the figure's backside and there are decidedly foxlike ears on the top of the male's head. Furthermore, the male is now the same size as the Astra. Astra sees that the face of this stranger is that of a young boy in his late teens. A quick self examination tells Fred what Astra sees.
"Wha....?" Fred asks in confusion and panic. Astra also makes an inquering noise. The dragonness sighs and explains.
"Well my young dragon slayer," the dragonness says. "That's what happens when you sleep with a were-creature. Exchange of any bodily fluid is always risky, but doing THAT kind of exchanging.....! I'm just surprised how RAPID the transformation happened!"
After a few false starts, introductions are made, and stories exchanged. The dragonness looks less amused by the situation, and more sympathetic when Fred explains what happened to him, and why he slept with the vixen. Fred is shocked that this vixen is Astra! The dragonness, Malachi then settles down to explain what happened.
"Fred, since that magical hack had restored your body the way he did made it VERY susceptible to magical alterations. The lycanthropy had a field day with you. It usually takes somewhere betwen a week to a month for the disease to incubate and such.
"Astra, as for you....the reason why you still are in that intermediate form is because....you're pregnant. The transformation to a more humanoid or full fox form would kill the kits, so biology has frozen your form into what it was when you.....when your hunger was sated."
"But what about a CURE, Malachi?!" Fred asks in tight voice. Controlled so that the rising panic won't show through.
"Fred, you and Astra are the victimes of f***ing lycanthropy," the dragonness sighs. "I nor anyone else can cure you....except by using a special ancient magical item that come from the SAME place where this fell curse was created, Atlantis!"
Both werefoxes remember the myths about the war that had sank Atlantis had also played a role in dozens of things that still plague modern man to this day.....including curse that had been turned lose to fight a Alantian faction that nobody remembers. The news of an artifact that could cure them, however, is something neither was aware of until now.
"The catch is....that it now lays in the claws of our mutual enemy, Minestus," says Malachi. "It's called the Crystallic, and maybe we can work together.....What says you?"
What to do?
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5/2/1999 9:47:02 PM
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