Sometime in the late 19th century, three men find far more than they bargained for in the depths of the Congo.

A transformation tale by  Magnolia-Majestica, with original draft by  Griffonwarrior and editing by Lyra_Roo
Art by  Magnolia-Majestica, with original lineart by  whatthebuggosaw

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The young man looked out from the bow as the sun sank behind the trees, casting golden rays through the canopy and across the shimmering water, a thin line of black smoke curled into the reddening sky as the boat puffed its way up river through the muggy evening. He scanned the tangle of roots and vines on the darkened bank - the jungle air seemed strangely still, no movement nor sounds of birds, only the rubble of the lone steamer’s engine. The noise normally scared anything away, which made his task as an ornithologist very difficult, but something in this stillness felt unnatural. He looked again where the roots met the water, watching them sway in the wake of the boat, only then did he see a dark shape moving in the murk. A first he thought it might be a log snagged in the growth, but it seemed to move gently, almost as if-

Suddenly he was startled when a hand gripped his shoulder “Jackson!” a voice said from behind him, he turned to face a gruff looking man clad in brown, with a coil of rope slung across his shoulder. “Zachary!” excited the young man, “Sorry, I-“ The older man cut him off, “Can’t you hear me, boy? Cayson says we’re going to tie up for the night while we still got some light, and if I’m not mistaken, it’s your turn to get your boots soaked!” The man laughed heartily as he tossed him rope. “It isn’t my fault he never brings you close enough to jump. I’m surprised he’s never made you swim, the way you talk to him" the younger man retorted. "Just find us a spot, boy” the older man grunted, then swore under his breath as he walked away, leaving Jackson alone again. Tensions were a bit high to say the least, it had been three weeks since they had left the last training post, any three men alone for that long on little boat would be at each other’s throats. With a sigh, Jackson bent down and began looping one end of the rope around the cleat on the bow, he glanced up for a moment to where the shape had been, only to find it was no longer there.

A few minute later, Jackson stood on the lip just over the railing, once again scanning the river bank, watching for a good point for the boat to draw up. He spied a spot where the bank sloped down to meet the water; it was muddy, but free of tangled roots and tree-snags. He motioned to Cayson, who began to guide the boat closer to shore, and gripped the rope tightly as they closed the distance. The boat slowed near the chosen spot as Jackson readied himself, then jumped, cleared the gap, and in an instant he sank up to his shins in muck. He struggled to free himself, feeling the rope grow taut in his hands as the boat began to drift, Cayson carefully working the throttle as he tried to keep the small vessel in place at the bank. Jackson both heard and felt the suction as he pulled one boot free, then the other, mud splashing up his khaki trousers and rolling down into his boots as he took labored steps through the slog towards the nearest tree.

“Hurry up, boy!” he heard Zachary shouting over the sloshing of his foot steps and churning of the engine as he reached the tree, and, keeping the rope taut, began making loops around the trunk. As he tied it off, he looked up to see Zachary come to the rail at the stern with another rope in hand, but then a strange shimmer caught his eye; just off the stern was another dark form, and protruding from the water above it was a row of small glowing, purple orbs, as if anglerfish were swimming in a line. Puzzled, Jackson opened his mouth to speak, only for a slimy hand to clap over it and something sharp press into his neck. He let out a muffled cry and struggled for but a moment, before the shot range out.

Jackson felt the hand clinch and then retract, followed by the splat of something heavy falling into the mud behind him. Shakily, he looked to see Zachary stood on the lip of the deck, smoke drifting from the barrel of his revolver, staring white-faced at the thing which laid behind him. It was perhaps the first time had ever seen the man frightened, a fact that scared him more than the lingering feeling of the knife at his throat and sickening taste of the sludge that coated his trembling lips. Slowly the young man turned to face his would-be assassin, and sight that met his eyes made his blood feel like ice, for the thing lay on the ground was not a man, but what he thought to be a demon from the pit.

It was in the shape of a man, it wore a tunic of barkcloth and bracers of gold or bronze on its forearms. Yet its skin was a mix of sickly greens, and brown tiger-striped, the claws of its elongated webbed feet, three-toed with a fourth thumb-like digit like that of an ape, dug into the mud around its long, fined tail, which extended of the trunk of its torso, like that of a giant salamander. Its bulbous fingers, webbed, yellow-clawed, and four-fingered like its feet, clutched at the bleeding hole it is shoulder. It was still alive, the rise and fall of its chest told him that, as did the slight flicking of its fin-like ears, and the gritted sharp teeth set into a rounded muzzle, but more so did its eyes. Good Lord, its eyes! Solid black and glossy, like a shark’s eyes, bulging, and filled hate, and pain, and above all, fear. It seemed more frightened ether of than the two men. Then, Jackson saw a familiar shimmer, as reaching from the beast’s forehead and down to it’s tail, was dorsal fin topped with glowing, purple orbs.

The realization struck him just as he heard Zachary’s boots hit the mud, “What in the Devil is-?” was all he managed to utter before a pained scram leapt from his throat. Jackson turned to see a bone knife lodged in Zachary’s leg, the Webley fell from his hand fumbling hand, vanishing into the muck as he dropped do his knee. Quickly Jackson began to wade back through the mud, desperately trying to reach the man who had saved him, but as he stumbled and floundered, he could only watch as two pairs of webbed hands shot from the water and closed around Zachary’s ankles, sending him sprawling. The man’s hand clawed at the muck as was dragged backwards, his screams only silenced when he was forced through the gap between the boat and the bank.

Jackson had little time to take in what had happened before two more creatures crept from the water, letting out a guttural, piercing sound, like the shrill cry of a porpoise forced from the throat of a drowning man. Jackson fought to free himself from the mud again as the beasts crawled towards him, before shot grazed one of their finned ears. Cayson stood at the wheelhouse door with his rifle in hand, but he barely had time to cycle the bolt before a set of hands grabbed him through the railing and slammed his back against the steel. Jackson didn’t have time to stay and see the fate of the skipper, he make a frantic grab for the rope, feeling the coarse line between his mud-soaked fingers, he began pulling himself hand-over-hand through the quagmire. Struggling to the tree line, he pulled himself up into to the solid, root-packed ground and glanced behind himself, only to see the two monsters crawling through the mud with great ease, their black eyes fixed on him, their dagger-like teeth bared. Like a rabbit sighted by a hound, Jackson bounded into the undergrowth.

He ran, crashing through giant ferns and hanging vines, stumbling around trees and tangled roots, feeling the two beasts behind him. His mind raced, his breath heavy, he was making a wide turn back towards the river, trying to loop back to the boat, and at the same time trying to lose his pursuers. How close were they behind him? Were their claws inches from the nape of his neck, or had he lost them already? He quickly looked behind himself, only for his foot to snag on a root, sending him toppling forward, dashing his head on a solid trunk, the taste of blood filled his mouth as a red streak trickled down his chin from his split lip. Stunned for a moment, he could hear the wet slaps of webbed feet approaching, quickly he staggered to his own feet and began running again, but his head swam; he was disoriented, he couldn’t tell which way he came from as he ran headlong through the thicket, but he knew he had to get back to the boat, he had to get back to Cayson, he had to-

As he plunged through wall of vines, his feet found nothing on the other side. Down he went, tumbling in-air, without time to scream before he found himself enveloped in water. The sudden coolness nearly knocked the air from his chest, the stagnant water burning his eyes before he forced them closed, the taste of algae overpowered that of blood as it flooded into his mouth. He tried to swim to the surface, struggling against the weight of his soaked clothes and boots, only to feel his foot insnared. He groped blindly, trying to free himself, feeling the water around him stirred by his increasingly panicked efforts; his skin tingled as if he was swimming in seltzer, a feeling as though hundreds of bubbles danced all across him. His hands found the gap in the tangle of roots coiled around his ankle and he began frantically tugging at the bonds, unaware of the green tint that was slowing spreading across his skin, swallowing up his pale complexion. His hands began to feel slimy against the bark, his fingers ached as they fumbled, then they began to swell; a thin membrane forming between them, slowly creeping up from his palms. It grew thicker between his middle and ring fingers, slowly pulling them together until they began to fuse, muscle and bone melding together into a single, bulbous digit. He felt a twinge of pain as his nails thickened, migrating to the tips of of his newly webbed fingers, growing longer, sharper, slicing through the roots that held him.

Freed at last, the blinded man desperately tried to swim upward, but found his body racked with pain, every muscle ached, his elbows seemed to lock up as boney quills pushed out from them. His heavy clothes stuck to his slimy skin, the goo that oozed from his pores uprooting his hair, his waterlogged boots seeming to shrink around his feet as he fought to reach the surface. He grit his teeth, feeling them sharpen in his mouth, his nose beginning to meld into his upper lip as there came a sudden jolt down his spine, small protrusions sprouting from his vertebrae. Then a rhythmic pulsing as they grow longer, with every pulse he felt something pushing from the base of his spine, growing inch by inch with each thump of his heart, slowly slithering down his pants leg like an eel. His toes clenched inside his boots, his feet undergoing the same changes as his hands; the fusing, webbed digits stretching as their burgeoning claws tore at the leather. He felt his hips pop, widening to make way for his forming tail as it slid past his knee, his belt cut into his waist as the new appendage strained the fabric of his pants, constructing his frantically kicking legs. His head throbbed as protrusions, like those on his back, sprouted from the top of his balding head as his ears stretched, slowly fanning out. His body felt different. It felt wrong. He tried again to open his eyes yet they still stung.

His chest began to burn, not just from lack of oxygen, but a feeling that welled up deep inside him, a tightness in his chest that was growing unbearable. The pressure in his boots continued to mount, his feet still stretching within, sharp pains shot up his legs as they reached their limit. Muffled pops reached his finning ears as the leather gave way, his elongated feet continuing to stretch as his webbed toes fanned out, his big toes drawing back into thumb-like grasping digits. There was little relief as his growing tail still snaked down his pants leg, the tip brushing his calf as the seat of his pants tore open, the forming sail tenting his shirt, pulling the fabric painfully tight around his neck, like a hangman’s noose. Air! He needed air! His lungs felt as if they were being pulled apart down the middle, unstitching like a loose thread being pulled from a gown, the same feeling stabbed at him from between his ribs, flesh and muscle peeling apart. The taste of blood once more flooded his mouth as his jaws popped, inching forward, crimson seeping through the sides of his ill fitting khaki shirt.
He pulled at his tightening collar as he thrashed, ripping his shirt down the front, tin buttons joining the clumps of hair floating in the water around him. His tail convulsed, finally ripping free of his pants, the force sending him tumbling head-over-heels. He couldn’t hold his breath any longer, a stream of bubbles cascaded from his half-formed maw as air was forced out of him. Reflexively he tried to draw a breath, only to feel the cool water pouring down his throat, filling his burning chest. He tried to exhale, yet nothing came from his mouth, instead there came the alien feeling of water being forced out the sides of his chest, through newly formed slits. He took another deep ‘breath’, then another, panting as the burning and tightest in his chest slowly eased away. The flow of oxygen filled him alertness, allowing him truly to take in how wrong his body felt, all the bizarre sensations that surged through his changing form.

He needed to get out. He began swimming upwards, feeling the water rushing against his webbed digits, finding swimming surprisingly easy, even with his aching body and the weight of the 3-foot appendage that sprouted from his pelvis. He broke through the algae covered surface, taking a shallow, pained breath as water dripped off crest atop his head and over his newly formed fin-ears, he opened his eyes for first time since he had fallen, the pupils now unnaturally large, his field of vision winder. He found himself to be in a flooded sinkhole, or cave, the walls a mix of natural stone and carved blocks that stretched up a few dozen feet to the fading light of the sun above, below him the earth itself seemed to have fallen away, the water descending ever downwards into a black abyss. He knew he needed to get out of the water, even if he had to climb. He swam to the nearest wall and reached out to grab the brick work, only to see his own green, webbed hand. He let out a cry, but it was not the cry of a man, instead a shrill, inhuman sound, like that of a porpoise.

He clung to the wall, his whole body throbbed, he could feel the changes as his tried to fight against them. His tail curled around his leg as it gained more length, his stretching feet grasped at nothing as they continued to grow, becoming nearly as long as his shins, the fins on his elbows extending, tearing through fabric. He felt his eyes becoming larger, bulging against his closed lids as his forking tongue lashed against his gritted teeth. His muzzle continued to press forward, three inches, then four. The fin that ran from his forehead to the tip of his 5-foot tail still continued to grow, he felt orbs forming at the end of each spine as they pressed against his loose-fitting shirt. His belt was pulled tighter and tighter, painfully tight; It was cutting into the sensitive membrane of his spinal fin, it had to go. He reached a clawed hand down and easily sliced through the leather, relief radiating up his spine as his ruined pants sagged down his legs.

Then there come a feeling within his changing skull, something like a voce or song, he tried to force it away, will it out of his mind, yet it grew louder as the orbs grow larger. Despite himself, he opened his eyes as looked upwards; above him stood a large golden head, an idol, sculpted in the likeness of the beasts he had seen, the very creature he was becoming. It’s amethyst eyes reflected in his own as the pupils swallowed up his irises, expanding until his eyes were solid black orbs. The voices grew clearer as his spinal fin came to full mast, the orbs beginning to glow faintly as he felt something creeping into him, seeping into his very core. It felt warm. It felt right. His panic faded as a calming wave rolled into his mind, the voices were clear now, an ancient story of a race older than man, of a grand city under the waves, of a cataclysm, and of the survivors spread thin. This was a temple, one of their last, where was kept some of the few artifacts that survived, things with magic unthinkable, powers only thought of in myth, like those to turn man into beast. No, not a beast, he was a Rēštûāli, the first-born and highest race among the Apsûrābiṣu, the wielders of magic and the guardians of this sacred place. As power intertwined with him, forever binding itself to his very being, the orbs along his back began to shine with an unearthly brilliance, he understood what had happened to himself, the gift he had received, and what he must do with it.

He gripped the wall tightly with his clawed hands and spread his legs, tearing away what little remained of his left pant leg as his prehensile toes grasped onto the stonework. He began to climb, scaling up the wall like a gecko, the task made almost trivial by his new form, what would have taken hours for a man now took mere minutes, even with the weight of his drenched clothes and the tattered remnants of his pants dangling from his ankle. He soon reached the vine covered lip of the cave, panting as pulled himself up and crawled onto the root crossed earth, he realized how shallow his breaths were. He reached back and tore at his shirt, the fabric yielding to his claws until his dorsal fin sprang free, glowing orbs filling the darkened air with purple light. He looked down at his exposed torso, noting the water that dripped from the slits between his ribs, six on each side, and took a deep breath, feeling for the first time his water ‘lungs’ constricting, liquid tricked from the slits as his air-breathing lungs expanded. In his head he knew of his new anatomy, two pairs of lungs, an inner and outer set; the inner set simply a smaller pair of bronchi-filled human-like lungs, but the outer set hollow, a pair sacs made to draw water through the mouth and then out the gills. The scientific part of his mind found it fascinating. He tore off the sleeves that clung to his arms before looking down at the ruined shoes still squeezed around his heels, ripped almost in half by his shockingly large webbed feet, but his claws made quick worked of stranded leather, stripping it away along with the remaining scraps of his pants.

Freed from his former clothes, he tried to stand, but found his new feet unwieldy, being as long as his shins, and not helped by the new bowlegged stance caused by his tail, which twitched as he tried to take a few steps, finding it impossible to keep the new limb from dragging on the ground, as it was almost longer than he was tall. Suddenly an acrid stench assaulted his sensitive snout, the smell of kerosene burning from somewhere not too far off, he knew it had to be from the boat, and he knew he had to follow it. He slowly he began making his way back through the jungle, soon finding a comfortable position to walk in his new form, half-crouched and crawling when needed, following the smell until he could see the glow through the undergrowth. Shuffling through the brush, he came to the river bank once more and saw boat in flames, the blaze throwing amber light in all directions and sending shadows dancing amongst the trees the bow low in the water, slowly dipping further as he watched. Motion across the river caught his eyes, in the flickering light he could see three figures emerging from the black water, two on ether side of one who seemed to be struggling to move, fumbling with his new limbs as he tried to untangle himself from the ruined brown coat draped around him, firelight glinting off the golden bracer clamped to his forearm. The white hat and ruined clothes silently floating in the water, illuminated from below by many purple lights, told him that Cayson had a met a similar fate.

Suddenly his finned ears perked up at the sound of footsteps approaching from out of the jungle. Turning he saw three familiar forms, one recognized by her freshly wounded ear, and the other by his now-bandaged shoulder, being aided by the third. They gave a shrill chirp in greeting, and Jackson returned it in kind, before the four of them slowly crept to the dark water around the sinking boat. He looked one last time at flames, knowing the vessel would soon vanish forever below the surface, leaving no trace of their fate to be found by the outside world. He slipped into the river alongside his new kin, water flowing again through his gills as saw for the first time the hidden realm blow the water, the underside of the bank pockmarked with dozens of caves, ancient façades hewn into the stone, walls carved intricate symbols and figures. Home. He understood that is what his place was to him now, what is would be from now on, as he followed his kinsfolk into the network of tunnels, their fluorescent orbs guiding the way. He knew he would have much to learn about the race he was now a part of, about his new form, and the power it held, but as they swam into a small chamber circled with moss covered slabs, he knew that would all come later. He watched as his fellows tenderly laid their wounded kith on upon a slab, before he himself swam to another, finding the moss covering to be as soft as silken plush. It was only when he laid down that he realized how tired he was, not just from the exertion and changes he had gone through, but the whole journey up to that point, for it was the first time in months he had slept on anything other than a cot. He found his thoughts drifting, his past becoming muddled, seeming so distant now, starting to fate ever so slightly. As his mind drifted further into the realm of sleep, a smile crept onto his face as he heard that same mystic tune he had heard in the temple, welcoming it as it lulled him away.