In Nathan's world, people who enter the Divine Realms have the option to get a "Mark" from a god, binding them to that god. Those who don't sign up with a god have a risk of being "forcemarked" by clergy of any deity, a sort of divine press-ganging. While a voluntary mark usually leaves you in your base form, a forcemarked individual is often transformed by the deity, reducing their age to early adulthood. (Some of the gods can override a mark not their own, though this happens very rarely, as the costs of doing so are almost never borne out by the benefits.)

One possible result of being forcemarked by a Midgardian deity is ending up as a Ratatosk, which is basically a squirrel with a rhinocerous-like horn on their head. Ratatosk are mentally acute and good at solving puzzles, learning new things, or retaining information, as their primary purpose is to act as information gatherers. Or less politely, "spies". However, ratarosk generally only live about 10 years, leading some forcemarks to morbidly refer to becoming a ratatosk as "an eight-year death sentence."

Fenris, yes, that one, is one of these deities who can override marks or transform people who already have marks. Nathan has had prior...issues, with Fenris. So maybe in this canon Fenris just decided to get Nathan out of his fur for good. Certainly not something Nathan seems to be enjoying.

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I'd been considering a picture of Nathan becoming something much smaller for some time, as most of his transformations are into relatively big creatures or birds. I had wanted something similar to my other post-TF shrinking pics, but I didn't want to do pure squirrel, because that's Thenyr's thing. But then a friend showed me a picture of Ratatoskr in a book he was reading and everything clicked.

Art by Jakkal
Nathan is mine.

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