Garrick’s memory of the past five and a half hours was absent. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t even aware that was the exact length of time that he’d lost. He’d been unconscious for the duration of it, after all.

However, he did recall the events immediately prior to that gap. Most of them, anyway, in a blurry sort of fashion that was uncertain around the edges. Which was to say, his recollection was limited entirely to having been in a bar, having been approached by a rather shady looking lizard with dark blue scales, and absolutely nothing afterwards.

In spite of how ominous and mysterious that gap in his memory might have been, it really wasn’t the foremost of Garrick’s concerns. That would be the fact that, at that present moment, he was bound at the wrists and ankles by thick bands of rope and tied down to a table in a room he didn’t recognize. A close runner-up was the fact that he had been deprived of every scrap of clothing he possessed.

Garrick could feel himself plunging into a state of wild panic, but before the entirety of his higher thought processes were subsumed by his fight-or-flight response, he took the time to look around and take in his surroundings.

The room wasn’t immediately comparable to anything he was familiar with. If pressed, he’d probably say it looked like a cross between a wine cellar, an apothecary, and a workshop of some sort of other. The air was heavy with the cool damp of the earth. Clutches of dried herbs hung from beams along the ceiling. The shelves pushed up against the walls were lined with bottles of every variety of shape, size, and colour, the clear ones being more distressing than the ones whose translucence obscured their contents.

Unsurprisingly, Garrick was not the only occupant of the room. Someone had to have brought him there, after all, and that someone turned out to be two people. One was a kobold of a light wine colour, perhaps five feet in height, stripped down to the scales.

The other was more of a dull shade of indigo and significantly more clothed, with a pair of baggy olive pants and a dark sleeveless shirt to his name. He was also a terrifying, eight foot tall lizard. A streak of orange hair running down his back and along his spine gave him a stark, wild look.

The two of them were conversing pleasantly some distance away until Garrick’s sudden bout of panicked shrieking interrupted them. They turned towards Garrick, neither in the least surprised by his reaction, though the kobold seemed rather excited to see him awake. “Gataraque, behold! The moment we have long awaited has arrived at last; he has awoken!”

“I know,” the lizard, apparently called Gataraque, replied. “I heard it.”

“Now we may begin... [i]the procedures.[/i]” The kobold delivered those last two words with a flourish that extended beyond the verbal and into the physical, arms splayed out wide as if baring himself to some invisible stage.

Gataraque was unimpressed. “What you’re doing right now is unnecessary.”

His cool and even dismissal would’ve been enough to snuff the flame of any thespian. The kobold, however, continued on as if he hadn’t heard a word of it. “And who other than I, Varg Voxacashale, alchemist extraordinaire, to head such an operation? I could think of no better force to drive this spearhead into the realm of experimental transformatives!”

A beat passed, then Varg inclined himself in a slight bow and outstretched his arm towards Gataraque. “Not to downplay your part in things, of course.”

“Your graciousness is noted,” Gataraque said. “I don’t know why you do this. Our subject certainly isn’t impressed.”

That was true. Being impressed would imply admiration or respect. Whether or not the kobold inspired those things was moot, as Garrick was incapable of feeling them, still overcome with terror as he was. To him, Varg’s monologue was the buzzing of a fly, Gataraque was a towering horror, and he was so deep in the heart of the unknown that he might’ve been in the bowels of hell itself and not know the difference.

“I would not expect you to understand,” Varg replied, drawing himself back up straight and giving Gataraque but a sideways glance. “Nature has cursed you with a heart as cold as your blood, devoid of passion.”

“If you are the picture of passion, then I bear my curse happily—and with discretion.”

Varg harrumphed and turned away, towards a nearby worktable. Its surface was strewn with all manner of alchemical apparatus: calcinators, alembics, retorts, phials. But they were all pushed to the side, forming a crowd around a cluster of flat-bottomed bottles in the centre of the table, brimming with colourful fluids.

“See to our humble subject, stoic,” Varg spat. “I must prepare the solutions.”

Those were the last words spoken before Gataraque turned towards Garrick, boring into him with a stare from one small, yellow eye. Gataraque did not look at him directly, but with his head held to the side and angled down, giving him an appearance so animal or alien that it was simple for Garrick to forget the fluent tongue the lizard spoken moments before and instead think of him as some common, dangerous monster. He began screaming again.

Gataraque walked towards where Garrick laid bound, straining against his restraints in a remarkable and ineffectual effort to put some distance between himself and the lizard, and stopped beside it.

Those movements had been slow and leisurely. Once he had reached that point, however, that Gataraque’s right hand shot out with a violent burst of speed that perhaps most evoked his reptile heritage than anything else. His palm came down on the side of Garrick’s head, fingers wrapping around his face just above his chin, pinning him against the table and sealing his mouth shut. The human’s screams died muffled in the lizard’s grasp.

Though beyond that, Garrick seemed to occupy none of Gataraque’s attention. The lizard was more interested in the table that Garrick was lying on, neck craning this way and that as he inspected its surface.

A glance at it revealed to Garrick why that was: painted, scrawled with charcoal, and occasionally carved into the wood were a grand array of symbols. Much of it looked like writing, though Garrick couldn’t recognize much of the alphabet, and the few places where he could, none of it came together to form any sort of language he could comprehend. All of it was encircled by flowing lines that curved and twisted, forming a complete loop around Garrick’s body.

He wasn’t an idiot. He could recognize magic where he saw it. Though that recognition didn’t give Garrick any sort of indication as to what that magic was intended to [i]do[/i]. It did imply that the lizard monster presently crushing his face against the table was some manner of magician rather than a mere guard or assistant, a fact which brought Garrick no comfort.

Whatever it was Gataraque was looking for, he seemed satisfied with what he’d found. After a half-minute’s inspection, he grunted, straightened back up, and turned back to face Varg—keeping his hand clasped around Garrick’s mouth as he did so. “The inscriptions remain in order. Your own preparations?”

“Oh, my preparations are long since complete,” Varg replied, turning away from his worktable with three potions held in his grip, one gripped by his left hand and the other two held by the necks in the fingers of his right. “I simply needed a moment to recover from that ghastly stolidity of yours. How do you live, being so... phlegmatic?”

“Do you hope it’s something you can pierce and drain out of me? Call it the consequence of a line of work involving no accidental explosions.”

“So [i]far[/i],” Varg said, striding forward to join his companion. “But you wait. One day, you’ll slur a syllable or misdraw a rune, and then that long tongue of yours will finally be checked!”

“Only if your particular breed of competence happens to be infectious.”

“Dry and droll as the desert sands.” Varg placed two of the potions to the side of the table, somewhere out of Garrett’s vision. The last, he handed to Gataraque. “I’ll let you have the honour of administration, then, as reward for your good humour. Do let me trepan you at some point so I can have some for myself.

“Gracious [i]and[/i] generous,” Gataraque said, taking the potion from Varg’s hand. It looked so much smaller in the lizard’s own. The kobold’s hand had merely wrapped around the neck of the bottle, but Gataraque’s encircled it in its entirety, only the mouth of it peeking out from the top of his fist.

His other hand, having not moved from its place clamped over the lower half of Garrick’s face, at last began to shift. Though it didn’t remove itself entirely; rather, his fingers moved so that they gripped Garrick’s chin, then jerked it down, forcing the man’s jaw down and his mouth open wide.

In spite of his stated intention to let Gataraque handle things, Varg was quick to move close and involve himself in the process as well. He laid one hand on Garrick’s forehead, pressing down on it and pinning the back of his head against the table, while the fingers of his other hand pinched down on Garrick’s nose to block his nostrils.

In spite of the way they spoke to one another—or perhaps as indicated by it—the pair worked seamlessly with one another, with effortless efficacy and wordless understanding. Gataraque wedged the mouth of the bottle between Garrick’s teeth and pushed his jaw up, forcing his lips to seal around the neck of the bottle. Then, he tilted it upright.

Garrick felt the fluid inside rush down, run over his tongue, and splash against the entrance to his throat. Potions, of course, varied in composition and taste as much as more mundane beverages did. Some tasted pleasant, typically from intent on the part of the alchemist. After all, it was easier to convince someone to drink an elixir if one didn’t recoil at the smell of it.

In this situation, however, that was not a concern, and appropriately little effort had been put into making the brew palatable. There was a distinct metallic flavour, as if Garrick’s mouth had suddenly been packed full of coins, the intensity of which was only matched by the saltiness of the solution, like drinking brine. There were other, more subtle notes, but considering the circumstances, Garrick had neither the ability nor desire to exercise a more discerning palate.

He let out a cough as best he could through his forcibly shut mouth, and some of the fluid bubbled out of the corners of his lips or was forced back up into the bottle. It did no good; he’d managed to expel perhaps a few drops of the stuff, but a far greater quantity was still pooling in the back of his throat, and what little air there’d been in his lungs was now gone.

Once the last drops of the substance had poured out of the bottle, Gataraque tugged it from Garrick’s mouth and set it aside before clamping his palm harshly against the man’s lips, forming a tight seal. Now, any hope of him spitting or trying to sneak a breath was truly gone, as slim as it was to begin with. The only options were to swallow or choke.

The choice was clear enough to Garrick. It could’ve been poison, for all he knew, but he was willing to take the chance of a slow, lingering death when the threat of asphyxiation was breathing down his neck as it was. He swallowed, and the feel of it burning as it slid down his throat made him gag, but he suppressed the urge to vomit—there’d be nowhere for it to go, anyway.

It took another gulp before the last of the stuff was cleared from his mouth, but once he’d done so, the lizard lifted his hands away from Garrick’s face. He immediately made use of the opportunity to take a huge, gasping breath, followed shortly afterwards by a fit of hacking coughs. Nothing came up, all of the potion having made its way down into his stomach, but the coughing kept on regardless, as if his body hoped that enough of it would somehow eliminate the continual burning in his throat.

“Your newest concoction is poorly received,” Gataraque said, looking down at Garrick as he continued to spasm.

“My critics hound me at every turn!” Varg said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Am I to be an expert bartender on top of being a forerunner and visionary in the art of alchemy? Shall I put the advancement of knowledge aside in order to play eager servant to the tongue? You and your tongue, Gataraque, you ought to keep the thing sealed away.”

“You’ve been an avid fan of it in the past, as I recall.”

Varg’s tongue made an appearance of its own at that comment, sliding out as the kobold’s eyes shut tight and he stretched up on his toes to blow a raspberry as close to Gataraque’s face as he could manage. It only got as far as the lizard’s neck, but it was a valiant effort all the same.

That was around the point that Garrick had managed to recover from his coughing fit and, more surprisingly, suppress his terror enough to ask a very important and relevant question. “What [i]was[/i] that?!”

Gataraque showed no reaction to his outburst whatsoever. Varg turned to face him, and for a moment—a moment of surprise and fear at once—Garrick thought he would receive an answer. But the kobold’s eyes did not meet his, even as he splayed his hands out towards Garrick in a grand gesture, as if he were some great work of art just unveiled.

“Now observe,” Varg proclaimed, no lack of pride present in his tone, “as the work of a master unfolds before your very eyes!”

At the same time as the kobold’s declaration, a strong sensation rushed through Garrick’s body, starting from his forehead and washing over every inch of him down to his toes. In one sense, it was a uncanny rippling feeling, what he would’ve imagined a pot of boiling water felt like, though without any of the burning pain that such a comparison conjured. In another sense, it was the answer to his question.

Garrick writhed against his restraints, letting out a kind of gurgling scream as his breath simultaneously caught in his throat and tried to rip its way out of his lungs. There was no possibility of him asking a question to follow the first, the violent sensations ripping through his body precluding all speech or thought.

It wasn’t poison. If they’d simply wanted him dead, they wouldn’t have bothered to go to so much effort. Though given that Garrick had heard the word ‘experimental’ tossed around earlier, the knowledge was only a very small comfort.

What that experiment was in regards to, Garrick was uncertain, but he imagined he would find out presently. Pressure was building inside him, focused on certain areas, as if something was trying to force its way out of his body. Most of those areas were shifting, uncertain, changing from moment to moment.

One spot where the sensation emained constant was his back. Specifically, his lower back. There, the feeling of something pushing against him from inside only grew stronger and stronger, never shifting or wavering. Garrick groaned. Whatever that pressure was, it was coming to a head; something was about to happen.

When it did, it happened all at once, like a dam bursting open. The pressure rushing out of him wasn’t liquid, though; pouring out of his coccyx and the surrounding area was solid flesh and bone, and a good deal of it, to boot. By Garrick’s estimate—which was admittedly suspect, given he was trying to judge the size of a wholly new part of his body purely by feel—it was about as thick as his thigh, and only getting longer by the second.

As for what it was, even for as little knowledge as he had of his situation and as littler he wanted to admit it, Garrick had a good idea. It was a tail. It was coming right out of his tailbone, after all. What else could it be?

“Behold, the tail!” Varg exclaimed. “Is it not a thing of wonder? Have you ever seen such beauty? Observe the subtle curves, effortlessly and gracefully spilling forth from the body of the subject.”

“It looks a lot like your tail,” Gataraque replied.

“Why, Gataraque! Your compliment touches my heart. Your own tail looks nearly as nice. Perhaps a brew for yourself would bring it to the same peak of shapeliness?”

“I’ll take it under consideration.”

While the two of them chatted between themselves, Garrick continued to reel with discomfort and horror as changes wracked his body. His bonds kept him from a good view of his own body, so most of his knowledge of what was happening came purely from feel.

For example, the newest change, which prevented him from crying out and letting his agonies be known to the world. Once his tail had pushed its way out to a length which rivalled that of the rest of his body, the pressure that had been the driving force behind its growth dissipated, only to immediately reform behind Garrick’s face, stifling all sound with its presence.

Everywhere from his brow to his chin was flush with that feeling, strongest around the centre near his nose and intensifying at a far faster rate than it had when it was down near his tail.

His [i]tail.[/i] The fact that he had one was a clumsy, unwieldy thing in his mind. Uncomfortable to bear, but one of the few things he had at hand to try to fend for himself in this confusing and impossible situation, like trying to fend off a charging bear with whatever rock or stick could be found littering the ground nearby.

It wouldn’t be enough. Once the pressure reached the same threshold as last time, the changes burst forth once again, and in much the same manner. Bones splayed and muscles shifted as raw material poured out of his face, drawn from no source he could discern, and formed itself into new features.

Gone were his round cheeks and nose, things Garrick had once been told lent a boyish air to his appearance. Now, his face jutted out into a new array of strange, oddly square angles. There was a surplus of teeth, and an absence of a nose—what he would consider a nose, anyway. His nostrils were still present, but they’d shifted, sitting wider apart than they ought to have been.

It was a muzzle. It was becoming easier for Garrick to identify what the changes he was going through were; the theme was becoming increasingly obvious with each one.

“The handsome muzzle,” Varg said. “Strong jaw, sharp and prominent fangs, well-formed airways. Why, I’d say he has to be the second-most handsome kobold in this room.”

“I note an absence of horns,” Gataraque said.

“Well, if you’d prefer the risk of being gored, I’ll be sure to make our next subject as horny as you’d like.”

Garrick ignored their repartee; a lack of horns was the last thing on his mind. A kobold. So that was what he was to become. Had already in great part become, as a matter of fact. As awful as the situation was, it was perhaps more than anything simply bizarre. Of all things, why a [i]kobold?[/i] Surely not because of any great lack of the things. You could hardly walk ten feet in the city without banging your shin on one.

Then, a prickling, manifesting suddenly across every surface of Garrick’s body. How could one describe such a sensation as that of growing scales? You’d be hard pressed to find even one of the reptilian species capable of doing so, so gradual and imperceptible the process was.

Garrick was one of those special few who got to experience the things forming within the span of seconds, skin pulling up and hardening into great swathes of thick, keratinous scales. Being that they covered his whole body, this was one change that Garrick did not need to strain to see. They were purple, a vivid shade of violet that had a slight iridescent sheen when the light of the room struck them.

“Good,” Gataraque said. “Scales. I’d grown tired of looking at your beskinned kobold.”

“That is why [i]you[/i] are a wizard,” Varg replied. “No patience, no appreciation for the liminal state. You simply want to grunt and wiggle your fingers and have your results materialize instantly. Do you not know how much can be learned from these transitional phases?”

“Certainly: I’d imagine we can learn the uttermost depths of my distaste.”

“Please, Gataraque,” Varg said, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “There are limits to even our own combined knowledge. After all, you are a [i]most[/i] distasteful fellow.”

It was at that moment that Varg felt compelled—and more importantly, actually able—to vocalize. Not to speak, nor even to scream, as horror had compelled him to do several times already. The compulsion was unbidden by any form of emotion or higher thought, but rather a bodily demand, making itself known.

Garrick opened his muzzle and allowed the urge to manifest, not directing it, unknowing of what form it would take. His tongue thrashed, now unusually long and thick in his mouth, and a sibilant hiss that no human would be capable of replicating escaped his throat.

“Charming,” Gataraque said, giving Garrick the briefest of sideways glances.

“Oh, stow your sarcasm,” Varg replied. “We haven’t even come to the greatest transformation, which, if my estimations are correct, should be happening approximately... right now.”

Varg’s estimations were correct. Spot-on, as a matter of fact. As soon as he said the words, Garrick could feel a pinch between his legs. Not in any one particular area, just a general pinch that reached from just below his belly button down to the beginnings of his thighs.

Such a description was as odd and vague as the sensation felt. When it became more specific, turning into a kind of ‘drawing-in’ focused more specifically on his crotch, it also became eminently more distressing. There was a [i]recession[/i] occurring.

All manner of words existed to describe what Garrick was experiencing. Yet for all the euphemisms and roundabout descriptions there were available, none served as well as plain, vulgar language in describing what was happening to him. His cock was going inside his body.

“See the way the testicles pull up against the body,” Varg said, indicating the relevant area with a finger. “You expect them to stop, but up and up further they go, drawn seamlessly inside. Like rainwater returning to the sea.”

Garrick felt it at the same time as Varg described it, and he had to disagree with the imagery that the kobold chose to use. He would compare it more readily to a part of his body that he was deeply attached to and fond of being taken away from him, victim of the work of a mad alchemist.

Probably because that was exactly what was happening. Garrick wasn’t much for metaphor.

“You’ve the soul of a poet, Varg,” Gataraque said. “I can only imagine who you stole it from.”

Whatever the way one chose to describe it, the end result was the same. Garrick’s balls were pulled up until they could pull up no more, then further still. The skin of his sac followed close behind and merged into his taint, leaving nothing but a smooth patch that gave no hint as to ever having been anything else.

Garrick lost track of them shortly after they’d gone inside of him. Far more demanding of his attention was the other half of the equation: his cock, caught in a similar process of retreating deeper into his body.

Retreating was definitely the right word. While it might have looked to an observer like his cock was shrinking and disappearing before their eyes, Garrick could feel everything that was happening to him, and that information meant he knew better. He could feel that every inch of his member had remained intact, merely pulled inside of him, slid into a new and wholly alien cavity.

“And the subtle bulge of the lips of his newly formed slit. Are you taking all this in, Gataraque? This is a moment of fleeting beauty.”

“Yes,” Gataraque grunted. “Puffy.”

“Really? Is that all you have to offer?”

“No. He’s also quite large for a kobold.”

That was an accurate observation. For all of the new features he’d taken on, Garrick’s size—proportions, height, all of it—had remained mostly the same. Really, it was only through Gataraque’s say-so that Garrick had even come to the conclusion that he was becoming a kobold. Had it not been for that knowledge, appearances alone would’ve led him to suspect a lizardfolk, albeit one rather on the small side.

Varg huffed. “Well, of course he’s large! I selected the traits I desired and suppressed the ones I didn’t—namely, [i]small size[/i]. Did you think the intention was to turn him into a kobold? If I needed a kobold, I’d have one near at hand soon enough!”

Gataraque looked down at Varg, who’d strode up a mere foot away from him and was staring up at his face with an intense glare. “Yes, I’d imagine you would.”

“Pre-li-mi-na-ry,” Varg said, punctuating each syllable with a finger jabbed into Gataraque’s middle. “Understand? There are [i]stages[/i] to this, you impatient, impetuous lizard.”

“Impatient? I’m the embodiment of patience,” Gataraque replied. “After all, I work with you, no?”

“You are unappreciative of the wonders of our trade.” Varg said, making a sharp heel turn away from Gataraque before stomping off around the side of the table. He came to a stop by its far end, nearest to Garrick’s feet. “[i]I,[/i] however, can appreciate them deeply, in every respect and by every which means.”

As the kobold spoke, Garrick could feel the table he was strapped to shifting slightly. He lifted his head and craned his neck to get a better view, and saw that Varg had clambered up onto the table, crawling on his hands and knees towards Garrick.

That was a concerning thing in and of itself. It was made exponentially more concerning when Garrick’s gaze ventured ever so slightly lower and saw two pink cocks jutting out from between Varg’s legs, big even by human standards and looking positively imposing on the kobold’s frame, either one lined with nubs that grew more prominent towards their respective heads.

“Is this part of the experiment?” Gataraque asked. “Did you not pour enough of your fluids into him with the potion? Have to give him a bit more?”

“Hush yourself,” Varg said, crawling forward far enough that his hands were planted on either side of Garrick’s chest, poised over him on all fours. “The rigours of alchemical experimentation demand this.”

“I’m sure.”

The implication of what Gataraque’s words had not gone over Garrick’s head. While it was difficult to make the potion seem any worse than it was, given the effects it’d had, the knowledge of its ingredients managed it. Garrick wanted to gag at the thought of what he’d been made to drink.

But gagging was suppressed in favour of an equally instinctual and even more pressing reaction, drawn out of him as Varg positioned himself over Garrick. Their tails laid stacked atop one another, Varg’s rubbing amorously against Garrick’s own, hinting at exactly what designs he had in mind. Varg leaned down towards the man’s face until their muzzles were only a foot or so apart, whereupon Garrick put his maw full of newly grown and frightfully sharp fangs on display as he let out a loud, threatening hiss.

Varg pulled back, but only slightly, his hands and knees remaining firmly planted. He seemed more annoyed than intimidated by the display, which was appropriate, given Garrick couldn’t do much while he was tied down.

“Would you mind?” Varg asked, looking up at Gataraque standing at the other end of the table.

“Gladly,” Gataraque replied. Given the position he was in, Garrick didn’t see the lizard approach, but he certainly noticed when a massive hand grabbed the side of his face and slammed it down against the table, pinning his head there and sending stars spinning around the edges of his vision.

“Don’t be so rough!” Garrick heard Varg saying, once his head stopped spinning and began throbbing with fresh pain. “The subject will hardly be of much use if you mash his skull to paste.”

“He’ll be fine. Kobolds are known for being thick-skulled.”

“A necessary trait when you’re dealing with as brutish a lout as a lizardfolk,” Varg replied. Then, considering the matter settled, he turned his attention back to the task at hand. Namely, sidling up even closer to Garrick’s body, now deprived of the sole danger it could’ve posed.

Garrick could feel the heads of the kobold’s twin members touch against his newly formed slit, tips wedging themselves ever so slightly inside. Even without any familiarity or experience with that new part of his body, Garrick could tell that was [i]not[/i] a place that was meant to be penetrated.

Admittedly, that was every part of his body, given he wasn’t given to males and wanted nothing to do with the one on top of him in particular. But his slit especially. Garrick started thrashing about, jerking against restraints binding his limbs and the hand pinning his head, finding his struggles to be equally ineffectual against either.

Though unlike the bindings around his wrists and ankles, the hand pressed against the side of Garrick’s head was capable of responding to his attempts to wriggle free. It pressed down hard, creating an unbearable pressure that threatened to drive the eyes from his skull, and maintained it for perhaps three seconds before relenting. Garrick did not try to wriggle free again.

“See?” Varg said. “When you put your mind to it, your gross strength can be controlled, and you go so far as to achieve competency!”

“The highest of praise.”

Rather than carrying on with the conversation, Varg chose to focus his attentions elsewhere. The ends of both of his cocks having been already aligned with Garrick’s slit, all he had to do was push forward, and they’d sink right in.

But being that he was never one to take half measures, it figured that Varg would go a step further than that. His entrance was not a slow, measured slide. Rather, he slammed himself forward, the nubs lining the sides of his dicks beating maddening sensations into the inner walls of Garrick’s slit as they ripped past.

It was intense enough that even someone far more experienced with this particular and unusual form of penetration would be moved to pause, or more likely, to gasp. Garrick, however, had no such experience, which meant it was merely the crowning jewel on top of what was already a nigh unbearable barrage of sensation.

Parts of Garrick that were freshly formed enough that he wasn’t even yet familiar with feeling them were suddenly being split open and stretched to a degree that would be impossibly intense even if he was familiar with every nook and cranny of his new form. The result was every nerve ending between his legs lighting up and blasting Garrick with a lightning storm of stretching, fullness, all manner of new and fresh agonies.

And that was only having taken the first third of the kobold’s pair of dicks. Without having reached such a depth that Garrick’s own member was being crushed down beneath their onslaught. There was so much worse to come, but in that moment, Garrick was too paralyzed by the awfulness of what he was experiencing right [i]then[/i] to even imagine them. Too overcome to do anything, as a matter of fact—including breathe, finding himself totally locked up and the breath trapped in his lungs.

Not that Varg cared about that, beyond the fact that Garrick’s locked up state translated into a delightful feeling of tightness around his hemipenes. The kobold let out a sigh of satisfied delight. “Gataraque, you simply have to try this. The grip on this subject is incredible!”

“I can’t imagine I’d fit,” Gataraque replied. “I can’t imagine [i]you’ll[/i] fit either, shortly enough.”

“I suppose you’re right. Well, no point in delaying things, then. On with the next potion!”

The immediate question that came to mind was ‘what potion’. Said question was just as quickly driven from Garrick’s mind when Varg slammed forward in yet another wild thrust, sinking himself halfway into the confines of Garrick’s slit.

That was deep enough for the heads of the kobold’s hemipenes to butt up against the tip of Garrick’s own cock, laying dormant deep inside his body. Even through the jungle of senses he was caught in, from the crushing pressure on his skull to the equally intense pressure of the kobold’s maleness stretching his slit wide, the comparatively slight contact of those twin cocktips against Garrick’s own stood out.

Perhaps that was because it brought to light just how different Garrick’s own member felt from usual. No longer the blunt head typical of humans, shrouded by foreskin, it now felt pointed and tapered, similarly to the Varg’s own—though he only had one, rather than the kobold’s two.

Why that was, it was impossible for Garrick to say, and Varg certainly wasn’t going to volunteer the information. He didn’t care about informing the man, didn’t care about his pain, didn’t seem to care about anything beyond his suitability as a hole to fuck.

Or, of course, his experimental potential. That interest was about to be made even more abundantly clear. The hand pinning Garrick’s head to the table shifted, grabbing the underside of his jaw and turning his face so that he was looking straight up at Gataraque hunched over him. The lizard’s other hand was brought to bear with a bottle clutched between three fingers. It sloshed with amber fluid.

There was no time to mount any sort of resistance, even if it would’ve had any chance of succeeding. The fingers wrapped around Garrick’s face pinched his cheeks and forced his mouth open, and before he could try to shut it again, the opening of the bottle was forced past his muzzle.

Fluid started pouring out over his tongue, and surprisingly, Garrick found it wasn’t as repulsive as the last potion. It was terribly astringent, like a mug of tea that had been set to steep for an hour straight, but the flavour was slightly sweet. Very slightly, so much so that the idea came that such subtlety was a result of the stuff numbing his ability to taste.

But regardless of the factors behind it, it meant that Garrick didn’t have the instinctual reaction to spit it out while retching and gagging, which meant that Gataraque was able to empty the whole bottle into his mouth before it occurred to Garrick that doing so might’ve been a good idea. Then, Gataraque’s hand wrapped around his muzzle, and the possibility of any spitting disappeared. A repeat of the first potion, with the caveat that the lizard’s job was now much easier: the shape of Garrick’s new muzzle meant it was that much easier to grip shut.

Garrick let out some hacking coughs into his firmly shut muzzle after an unexpected thrust from Varg caused him to inhale a bit of the potion. That astringency translated directly into burning the moment it hit his trachea, and after having sat in his mouth for so long, he was beginning to lose feeling in his tongue.

It was obvious that if he didn’t swallow it, bad things were going to happen. Bad things would happen if he [i]did[/i] swallow it, too, but those bad things wouldn’t be brought about at the hands of a grotesquely strong, eight foot tall lizard. So, given that choice, Garrick chose to swallow.

The burning Garrick had felt before when he’d sucked the fluid down the wrong pipe was just as present when it went down the right one. It left a trail of blazing fire as it rolled down his throat, though it was worst in the pit of his stomach, which felt like it had been turned into a cauldron of magma as the potion ran down into his belly.

It would have been enough to move Garrick to reconsider drinking it, were it not for the fact that there was so little of it. A single mouthful and it was gone, one swallow being enough to send the entirety of it sliding down his throat, leaving him with no means of recourse but regurgitation—but unfortunately, for all the discomforts Garrick was experiencing, nausea was not among their number.

So in lieu of that, Garrick started screaming. Shrieks travelled up his raw, burning throat, and found themselves stopped short at his clamped muzzle, muffled into incomprehensibility as they squeezed past his lips.

“Your newest potion is a loud one,” Gataraque said. “Ought to refine your recipe, I wager.”

“Oh, Gataraque,” Varg replied, casual as ever, glancing over with a lackadaisical eye that seemed to only meet his partner’s by chance. “I wouldn’t do that even if the ingredients at play allowed it. Vocalization is the sound of life. It contributes to the alchemy of ourselves, pushing forward The Great Work!”

“Silence is just as valuable an ingredient, and far more pleasing to the ear.” Gataraque paused, then tried pressing down on Garrick’s throat with his free hand in an effort to stem his screeching. It only served to impart Garrick’s screams with a choking, warbling quality, so he stopped. “To entertain your eminently questionable philosophy for a moment.”

“I don’t expect you to grasp the subtleties of alchemical thought, Gataraque. You’re of a baser vein. Here come some more tangible changes that should be more suitable to your dreadfully pedestrian tastes.”

And right Varg was, as he always seemed to be when it came to predicting such things. The changes came faster now, though whether through some predisposition planted in him by the first potion or simply because the latest brew was stronger than the one before was hard to say. 

Ultimately, the reason was the least of Garrick’s concerns, as his attention was more focused on the fact that his fingernails were growing, hardening, extruding out of his fingers by the force of some internal pressure. It took perhaps five seconds for them to have formed into a set of ten black, shiny, and dangerous looking claws. ‘Looking’ being the operative word, as in spite of their size, they were rather blunt at the tips.

Right on the metaphorical heels of that change came something similar happening with his toes. It was somewhat overshadowed by what was happening to his literal heels, along with his ankles, knees—most everything in his general leg area, as a matter of fact. Bones were shortening and lengthening, muscles shrinking and stretching to follow their lead, the whole effect leaving Garrick feeling much like a large piece of moulding clay.

It was arguably the biggest change that Garrick had experienced thus far. The tail was the largest in terms of sheer volume, sure, but that was growing a [i]new[/i] part. This was warping a part of him that he’d already possessed, which somehow felt like the far worse invasion.

The whole thing was not helped in the least by Varg’s continued fucking. Having fit himself two thirds of the way into Garrick’s slit, he’d decided that he’d claim the rest of it in a more vigorous way. Rather than just pushing forward, Varg was now humping his way into Garrick’s slit with short but nonetheless powerful thrusts. Each one battered his dual cockheads against Garrick’s own, crushing it deeper into his body, while simultaneously claiming more of the man’s slit for himself, a fraction of an inch at a time.

“No commentary on the legs, then?” Gataraque said.

“Missing the sound of my voice already, are we?” Varg said, glancing back at Garrick’s still-shifting legs only briefly before returning his attention back to the far more important matter of plunging in and out of the man’s slit. “I’ll indulge you: they’re digitigrade. Hardly a great many reptilians of any sort walking around with flat feet.”

That wasn’t anything that Gataraque wouldn’t have been able to see with his own eyes, meaning the information was of questionable value to him, but of great significance to the one who was being spoken about. The feeling of so much mass shifting around had just about fried Garrick’s perceptions of his own body, so being told what shape they’d taken on helped clarify things a great deal. Not necessarily comforting knowledge, but knowledge nonetheless. Trying to process it made his head hurt.

“And what’s that coming out of his head?” Gataraque said, wrenching Garrick’s skull to and fro using his grip around his muzzle to get a better look at whatever it was he was referring to.

“Why, those are horns, of course!”

“I’d thought you weren’t doing horns.”

“I wanted to keep them a happy little surprise for you.”

That exchange led Garrick to realise that his headache wasn’t psychosomatic, but rather was due to a pair of curled ebony horns having forced their way out of his skull to jut out the sides of his head, just above his ears.

He could sort of feel them if he focused, though they weren’t overly sensitive. Unsurprising, given they were horns. Garrick felt them most and got the most vivid picture of their form when Gataraque grabbed one of them and gave it a sharp tug, as if seeing how much strength it would take to rip them clean off—thankfully, not the amount that the lizard had exerted.

Then, another change, this time notable in [i]not[/i] being a transformation of any sort. Rather, it was the burning in his stomach. It had seemed to be fading earlier, and had fallen away from his attention in favour of the other effects of the potion, but now it was kicking back up with a vengeance. His stomach growled and churned with what felt like liquid flame.

Worse still, it seemed to be threatening to come back up. Perhaps the kobold didn’t do as good a job at brewing his potion as he thought, if Garrick was about to spew it up all over himself. Or in his own muzzle, anyway; Gataraque’s hand would make the actual expulsion of it a problem.

With that unfortunate circumstance in mind, Garrick was trying his best to keep himself contained, but it was a short and losing battle. He huffed and puffed through his nostrils, writhing from the discomfort in his belly rather than that in his slit—a subtle difference—and then, he dry heaved, his very last stand before everything came spilling out.

Varg picked up on that; it was rather hard to miss. His eyes snapped up to Gataraque’s. “Last potion, please.”

Gataraque moved swiftly. He dipped one hand under the table, brought up a flat bottomed vial of transparent, cyan-tinged fluid, and stuffed it between Garrick’s lips before upending it.

Given the whole uproarious nausea aspect of things, Garrick was of no mind to drink a single additional drop of any potion. So he thought, anyway. Once the newest one touched his tongue, though, he realised that this one was different. It immediately infused his mouth with a soothing coolness, like a draught of ice water. Swallowing was an immediate, instinctual reaction.

The coolness rolled down his throat before spreading out into his stomach and snuffing out the blazing agony that had taken root there. It would’ve been enough to make Garrick slump back and breathe a sigh of relief—were it not for the clamped muzzle and kobold continuing to pound at his slit, of course. Even if the eversion of his stomach was no longer a pressing threat, the situation was still far from ideal.

“And what was that?” Gataraque asked. “Panacea for your assorted poisons?”

“Just something to snuff out that pesky breath weapon before it had a chance to form,” Varg replied. “Just think, if you’d been just a few seconds slower, you would’ve been burnt to a crisp!”

“And you’d grieve so.”

“Oh, I would. You’re irreplaceable; nobody else can reach the salamander dust on the top shelf.”

Breath weapon? While Garrick may not have been the most knowledgeable when it came to kobold anatomy, he was quite sure they didn’t have anything like that. That made sense; the alchemist had said that he didn’t intend to turn Garrick into a kobold. So what [i]was[/i] he being turned into?

Well, even the most backward peasant knew of one kind of scaled, horned monster famous for its deadly breath.

“But the biggest change is now upon us!” Varg said, his thrusts in and out of Garrick’s slit speeding up to punctuate his excitement. “The arrival of that grand breeding pole that’ll keep us in ample supply of dragon seed. A ready source of wealth, and more importantly, the pinnacle in alchemical convenience!”

“‘Breeding pole,’” Gataraque echoed. “Right. Then it sounds like your time in his slit is coming to an end. Best finish quick.”

“I’ll finish when it gets so big that it forces me out. The pleasure of my accomplishment is far more than anything a tight hole can offer.”

Gataraque rolled his eyes hard enough that they could almost be heard rotating around the inside of his skull. At the same time, Garrick was having a reaction of his own, to the knowledge that he was apparently becoming a dragon rather than to Varg’s choice of verbage. 

Though a rather subdued one in comparison to the severity of the revelation. After all, Garrick had figured it out for himself a few moments before it had actually been said. Though Varg’s speech had clarified a few of the finer points. So he was to be sold off for gold—or his fluids were, at any rate. By the sounds of it, he was to be something of a literal cash cow, with less than literal milk.

The idea was galling, outrageous. Being turned into some manner of beast, with the sole purpose of lining the pockets of his owner-cum-kidnapper. Abhorrent, even! It filled Garrick’s heart with a blazing indignation, and since Gataraque had released his  grip on Garrick’s muzzle after the most recent potion, he moved to make his objections known.

They came out as something of a squeal when he tried to mouth the words, air suddenly forced out of his lungs by a hard and especially [i]deep[/i] thrust from Varg. Garrick could actually feel the kobold’s crotch press against his body, the only thing preventing him from bottoming out completely being Garrick’s own maleness, crushed down deep inside him but still providing enough of a barrier to prevent a complete coupling. Though it seemed to serve as less of one with every thrust.

Which didn’t quite align with everything that Garrick had heard so far. Supposedly, his dick was supposed to be getting bigger, taking up more space in his slit, but this was the deepest Varg had gone yet. To any observer—or any participant that was paying attention, anyway—it would seem like the exact opposite of what was supposed to be happening was occurring.

But as fate would have it, neither participant reached that conclusion. Garrick was too overwhelmed by dire revelations and being plugged full of a pair of matching cocks, and Varg was far too focused on providing said cocks. His pace was speeding up; for everything that he’d said before, it seemed that scientific rigour had taken a backseat to the pleasures of a tight hole.

“Varg,” Gataraque said, staring down at the writhing and watery-eyed form of Garrick on the table. “I’ve noticed something.”

“Eh?” Varg said, sounding the slightest bit surprised at the sound of the lizard’s choice, as if the kobold had forgotten that he was there—but mostly disinterested, his response perfunctory. “Yes, hm, what’s that?”

“The scale formations on this subject. They seem to group into rather diamond looking patterns, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yes, yes,” Varg said, grunting and grabbing a hold of Garrick’s thighs to better deliver pounding, table-shaking thrusts. “Very diamond-like, keen observation, quite good, knew I kept you around for something.”

“Varg, male dragons have rhomboid scale grouping. Diamond grouping is a trait of a [i]female[/i] dragon.”

Gataraque finished speaking at precisely the same time as Varg slammed himself into Garrick’s slit one last time. The kobold’s tail went stiff, his eyes went wide—then, his whole body shuddered. His pair of hemipenes, now fully sheathed in Garrick’s slit, throbbed in unison.

Garrick could feel it deep inside him, in places he’d never before felt stimulated. The one place he [i]couldn’t[/i] feel it was against his cock. The stretching, pounding, and rubbing raw of his slit he’d felt plenty, and it must have been enough to distract him from the gradually fading sensations of his dick being battered by Varg’s own twin members, because for the life of him, he couldn’t place when he’d stopped feeling it.

But he could feel something else: the pair of cocks lodged inside him giving off another powerful throb, a split second before the first ropes of cum they had to offer shot out and directly into Garrick’s body. Lances of wet heat that speared into his innermost reaches, only to work in yet deeper with the next spurt, forcing their way deeper inside.

Garrick clenched down involuntarily at the feel of it inside him, heat less intense than what the potions had offered but in far more unwelcome of an area. Though the reaction did little but squeeze the kobold for even more of his seed and ensure that not a single drop of it escaped. Varg had plenty to offer; he had every bit of output to match his size.

And Garrick found that there was room inside of him to match. More than there ought to have been, considering it was his slit. Packed full of his own maleness on top of that of the kobold, space ought to have been a commodity. Seed should’ve been leaking out from the lips of his slit, forced out under the pressure. But instead, it all gathered somewhere nearer his belly, far deeper than it should have been able to reach.

While being actively cummed inside did serve as a powerful distraction, Garrick’s mind somehow turned over and managed to process what it was Gataraque had said—or about one word in three, anyway, which was sufficient, one of said words being ‘female’.

Given all the changes that Garrick had experienced up to that point, the revelation shouldn’t have carried that much weight behind it. A shift in species was far more jarring than a shift in gender. But then, emotional reactions didn’t tend to follow logical patterns. Perhaps it was a matter of them having set the expectation that he’d remain male beforehand. Perhaps Garrick was simply more attached to his manhood than his humanity.

Whatever the case, Garrick was distraught. He let out a mournful cry just as Varg let out a cry of his own, remarkably less pained in comparison, as he rode out the remainder of his orgasm, shooting the last of his load into Garrick’s slit. Or what had once been a slit, at any rate. Garrick already didn’t like thinking of it with that term, and wasn’t eager to move onto the newest, most accurate one.

Once Varg was finished, he didn’t waste any time. His baser needs were sated, his mind was back in the hotseat, and with the threat of the experiment having been compromised, it was already springing into action. He tugged his cocks free, both of them sliding out of Garrick with a wet sucking sound, leaving a trickle of white oozing out of his gaping hole in his wake.

Not gaped enough for Varg’s purposes, though. The kobold shuffled back and leaned down, shoving his head between Garrick’s thighs. Then, with two fingers on either side, spread Garrick’s slit as wide as he could muster, at the same time straining to look inside.

It was tricky to see with the amount of cum oozing out, but Varg had experience with these things. There was no cock to be seen. The texture of the musculature was all wrong for it to be a genital slit. What he was looking at was a vagina. A cunt. A genuine, bonafide babymaker.

“Female!” Varg shouted, spitting the word like a curse. “A female! How could this have happened? I’ve tried this recipe a hundred times with the wyvern samples, a perfect analogue, and none of them turned out [i]female![/i]”

“Could it be your dragon sample was tainted?” Gataraque asked, curious rather than enraged.

“If it was [i]contaminated,[/i] the subject would be growing fur, antlers, paws, or whatever else, not maintaining specific focus but veering into the opposite gender. The sample—”

Varg cut himself off, then groaned, pinching the bridge of his muzzle with one hand. Some of his own cum stuck to his fingers and smeared along his face, but he didn’t seem to care. “Oh, sweet merciful... I see, I see what’s happened here.”

“Do share.”

“It seems that Crius secured our sample from a female dragon.”

Gataraque’s eyes widened. “You mean that wasn’t... obvious, beforehand?”

“I couldn’t open the bottle to check the stuff,” Varg snapped. “It needed to remain sealed until the moment it was needed in the crucible. Besides, I didn’t expect him to harvest from a [i]female.[/i]”

“Why not? I don’t recall you specifying sex when speaking to him.”

“A male is far easier to collect from, they have a nozzle built in! It was obvious, I didn’t even dream that anyone would think of anything else!”

In the face of Varg’s frothing rage, Gataraque merely shrugged. “I feel you’re getting overexcited. Surely a female has just as much potential for profit?”

“Oh, sure, if you want to wait around for a full clutch of eggs to come to term. This was supposed to be a readily available stream of ingredients, Gataraque!” Varg rose up on his knees as he spoke, arms swinging in wide motions as he spoke. All the vibrant emotion and monopolization of physical space brought to mind the image of a very angry peacock. “I don’t want to wait weeks on end for eggs! That was the whole point of picking a male!”

“Do try to contain yourself,” Gataraque replied. “I’m certain there’s a solution to be found.”

Garrick had a poignant suggestion in that regard: the two of them cutting their losses and letting him go. When he tried to voice said idea, Gataraque’s hand instantly shot out and wrapped around his muzzle before he could form so much as a syllable. Gataraque hadn’t even looked down, giving off an impression that he was hardly even aware of what he’d done.

“Then what is it?” Varg said, and apparently deciding that his knees did not offer sufficient height to convey his frustration, pushed himself up to his feet and stood on top of the table, leaning over Garrick’s supine form to better reach Gataraque’s face. “How do you intend to recoup this loss? Hack the subject to bits and sell them to anyone interested in exotic parts? Keep him—[i]her[/i]—around as a net drain on resources? Waste even more gold trying to get a second sample?”

“Sometimes I fear you get so wrapped up in your own strengths and weaknesses that you forget I have strengths of my own to offer,” Gataraque replied. “If your problem is how long it takes to make eggs, then we’ll simply use magic to speed the process along.”

“That’s not—” Varg started, then stopped, thinking for a moment. “Okay, how do you plan on going about that?”

“Simple. First, get off the table,” Gataraque said, and Varg complied, hopping down onto the floor. He gestured at its surface with his free hand, covered with runes that had gone so easily ignored when the focus was on Varg’s potions and their effects. “This was intended to help maximize milking productivity, but fertility is fertility; I should be able to adapt it to suit our new situation, and then you’ll have all the eggs you desire.”

“I may not be a wizard, but I’ve seen enough of your work to know that this isn’t a transmutation spell,” Varg said, pacing around the table and staring at the strings of arcane lettering wrapped around its surface. “In fact, I’d say this looks very much like a summoning circle.”

“You are very much correct. Drastic and rapid fertility increases can be tricky to achieve. Enchantments are the obvious choice, but the process is expensive and binding those sorts of magics to jewellery is, in my opinion, tedious. Another—”

“I don’t care about what you’re [i]not[/i] doing, Gataraque,” Varg said, drumming his claws along the edge of the table. “The summoning circle?”

“This, after I listen to all your droning about alchemy?” Gataraque said, and it was impossible to tell if the tone of disappointment in his voice was genuine or facetious. Unsurprisingly, reptilian features made deadpan quite easy. “Very well. The easiest way to achieve such an effect is simply to bind a fertility spirit to the subject. They take care of all the heavy lifting, all you need to do is keep them there.”

“Fascinating!” Varg said, interest renewed now that the topic had shifted from ruminations on the arcane to a real and practical solution. “But I feel as if there’s more you aren’t telling. How about side effects? And how does the spirit care for all this?”

Gataraque quirked a brow. “Are you concerned for its welfare? Its feelings are that its bound to its summoner’s will. There may be some minor physical changes as the spirit is entrenched in the subject’s form, but nothing that would impede our purposes.”

“Oh yes?” Varg said, staring daggers at Gataraque, and both his voice and eyes made it clear that he trusted the wizard about as much as he would a fellow kobold. “Describe some of these changes to me, Gataraque.”

Gataraque spread his hands wide. “You were quite ready to chop him to bits before. If you’d like to see the changes, we can proceed with the ritual, and if you don’t like them, then we can return to your original plan.”

Varg stared a bit longer, but for all his blatant deviousness, Gataraque did have a point. It wasn’t as if he was putting anything of value at stake. “Fine. We’ll go ahead with your little ritual. Do you need anything from me?”

“Yes, find something to jam in the subject’s muzzle,” Gataraque said, giving Garrick’s snout a quick, painful squeeze before finally releasing it. “I’ll need the use of both my hands.”

“Got it,” Varg said, moving off to the side of the room to start rifling through a wooden chest there. It looked something like a toolbox, though given some of the things the kobold was pulling out as he went through it—thumb screws, a cat o’ nine tails, what looked like an eleven inch long corkscrew—it was clear they weren’t the tools of any tradesman Garrick was familiar with, or any other upstanding citizen, for that matter.

But shuddersome implements aside, Garrick had finally been granted a moment to enjoy a minute amount of freedom. The lizard’s hand was no longer there to clamp his mouth shut; he could say whatever he liked.

“You can’t do thisss to me!” Garrick shouted, his unfamiliarity with his new, far longer tongue resulting in a significant lisp that he either didn’t notice or didn’t care to acknowledge. “You’re monsters, inhuman! I’ve got people back home who care about me. They’re gonna come looking for me, and when they find you, you’re gonna pay for [i]everything[/i] you’ve done to me. You’ll ssssee!”

Garrick’s speech was heartfelt and impassioned, conjured up from the purest feelings of injustice and rage that he was able to muster. He stood valiantly in the face of his kidnappers as best he could while he was strapped to a table. The courage he displayed while caught in the grip of such a dire and hopeless situation could only be admired.

Towards the end of Garrick’s impassioned speech, Varg had found whatever it was he was looking for, and moved towards the table with it gripped in his hand. The moment the last word had left Garrick’s lips, he found them held open by a metal ring shoved in the front of his muzzle, with Varg’s hands wrapping and buckling straps around the back of his head to hold it in place there.

Garrick made a noise of protest. The ring prevented him from forming any sort of coherent language, but his volume was unaffected. He could holler incomprehensible indignation all he liked.

“Did you have to use the ring gag?” Gataraque said, speaking to Varg even as his eyes were focused on the table. He had a stick of charcoal in either hand, rubbing out old symbols and drawing in new ones in two places at any given moment. “It doesn’t very much help with the noise.”

“Well, I would have used the muzzle, but [i]someone[/i] misplaced it.”

“Then I suppose it’ll have to do,” Gataraque said, walking in a slow circle around the table, fixing and marking and modifying. When he’d made a full circuit, he dropped his charcoal onto a shelf under the table and dusted his hands of any residue. “Done.”

“Already?” Varg said, eyebrows raised.

“The circle is quite similar to what I’d already prepared.”

“Well, what are we waiting for, then?” Varg said, bustling around the table, wanting to be in the right place but unsure of exactly where that place was. “Let’s start!”

“[i]I’ll[/i] gladly begin the summoning, Varg,” Gataraque said, again reaching under the table, this time coming out with a long wooden rod, capped with brass at either end, about half the length of a quarterstaff. “You, however, would be best suited for a purely observational role.”

“Why is it you never let me help with your spells?” Varg asked, crossing his arms in a huff.

“It’s a delicate process. I’ll incorporate you next time, I assure you.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Varg said, then took up a spot a few feet away, watching the table from a safe distance.

Gataraque took the opportunity to begin, and Garrick took the opportunity to start making louder, more unintelligible noises. They made it somewhat difficult to make out the strange, guttural syllables that Gataraque was mumbling under his breath. That was fine, as neither of the other two would be able to understand them anyway.

As he chanted, Gataraque moved the rod a few feet above Garrick’s body in slow sweeps interspersed with sudden bursts of jerky motion. There was a slight hum in the air that was hard to detect under the din Garrick was making, a subtle note of lavender hanging in the air, and a noticeable lack of pyrotechnics. As far as magic went, it was rather underwhelming.

Though there was good reason for that. Gataraque wasn’t flinging fireballs or shooting bolts of magic from his fingertips. He was trying to call a spirit into a circle. All of the hard work was in constructing said circle; the calling was only as difficult as the spirit was to convince or force, as circumstances dictated.

Luckily, fertility spirits weren’t known for their obstinacy or cutting intellect, so Gataraque didn’t have to chant for much longer before something started actually happening. The spirit appeared.

It really was as simple as that. One moment there was nothing, then the air ripped like it would over a flame before the spirit popped into view. Huge plumes of smoke with the stink of brimstone tended to be for demons, devils, or other similarly intelligent outsiders that cared about making an impression. But spirits ran the gambit from that sort of intelligence to mere primal aspects, and the kind of fertility spirit Gataraque was after definitely leaned closer to the latter of the scale.

It looked like a pink, translucent mass, rippling at the edges and in a constant state of flux between two or three different forms, all recognizably animal but implacable in terms of species. Put simply, it was as ephemeral as a spirit would be expected to be. It floated above the table above Garrick’s body, featureless head snapping from side to side with what seemed to be either interest or distress.

Though only for a moment. The second after the spirit had appeared, Gataraque made a sharp chopping motion with the rod, down towards Garrick’s body. There was such force behind it that it could be heard cutting the air, but it stopped short just of striking Garrick’s body, and the arc was aimed such that the rod never came closer than an inch of the spirit.

But regardless of the lack of contact, both of them reacted, the spirit first. It was wrenched downward as if the rod had struck it over the head or as if it were tied to the thing by invisible strings, forced down towards where Garrick laid splayed out on the table. 

When it made contact with his body, rather than stopping, the spirit’s form continued moving right through him. Or rather, into him; a glance under the table would reveal that the spirit wasn’t passing through to the other side, but was being absorbed by Garrick.

Garrick’s reaction was immediate and violent. He started thrashing around on the table, limbs jerking at the ropes binding them with motions that seemed less like him trying to break free and more like him attempting to use them to tear his arms and legs free from their sockets. It wasn’t any conscious attempt at escape on Garrick’s part. Gods knew he had no wish to inflict such pain on himself. Loud screams rang out through the ring in his muzzle.

Energy suffused every fibre of Garrick’s body. That was the best way to describe it, in all its meanings. A sense of unnatural strength and vitality that, while not enough to break the bonds that tied him, was still readily apparent in his struggles. A feeling of electric burning as if lightning were coursing through his veins. Raw potential that made his body, ill-equipped to contain it, feel like it was getting wrenched apart.

“Ooh,” Varg crooned, taking a few steps closer and leaning in to get a better look. “Are those his veins glowing?”

“Very good, Varg,” Gataraque replied. “There will be a good bit of glowing until the binding is complete. Excess primordial aspect bleeding off any way it can, the subject only being able to soak up so much so fast before their body is suffused.”

Garrick coughed, and a plume of mauve smoke escaped his muzzle, glittering in the light for a moment before dissipating. His vision came through a filter of bright lavender as light of the same hue poured out of his eyes. Any way, indeed. 

“Though that’s all just inefficiency and waste,” Gataraque added. “The majority of that energy will be put towards more productive and interesting effect.”

Gataraque seemed to have the same knack as Varg when it came to calling things at just the right time. The moment he’d said that, Garrick could feel that energy inside him start taking directed and decisive action. Not like the potion had; the potion had been a gradual buildup, a mounting pressure. This was sudden and aggressive, like his body was a pair of boots someone had just shoved themselves into.

Appropriately enough for the analogy, Garrick’s feet were the first place he felt the changes. There was an implacable shift of energy inside him down towards his legs, and a second later, his feet were rippling as if they were fabric in a stiff breeze.

Garrick had admittedly paid little attention to the transformation his feet had gone through earlier, more concerned with the rest of his legs as he was. He’d hardly even noticed the clawed lizard feet he’d had, and now he never would, as they shrank in and compressed down on themselves. His eight toes—Garrick wasn’t sure if he’d lost the one on each foot then or earlier on—became stubbier and drew in on themselves into a tight, rather round shape.

While that was the limit of Garrick’s own knowledge, the other two were in a better position to see what had happened. Before their eyes, Garrick’s feet had been changed into a pair of paws that would look well at home on a wolf. Scales lent them a bizarre appearance for a few seconds before they gave way to a coat of brown fur pushing its way to the surface, reaching as high as Garrick’s knees.

“Paws?” Varg snapped, suspicious, somewhat annoyed, in great part confused. “Why paws?”

“It’s not [i]solely[/i] a fertility spirit. It has other elements, some of which will be helpful to us.”

“That’s the reason you did all this!” Varg shouted. “You just wanted an excuse to indulge your perverse tastes for all things furry. Why can’t you enjoy a nice set of scales like a normal person?”

“Does the word ‘litters’ mean anything to you? Higher yield for a single pregnancy on top of decreased gestation time. More eggs, faster. It’d be foolishness to choose a more neutral spirit rather than one with a lupine bent.”

“Bah!” Varg shook his head. “Fine excuses for your deviancy. You ought to develop a taste for the reptilian. Feel some pride for your kind.”

“Oh, don’t be so up in arms. There’ll be some scales left over for you by the end.”

As Gataraque said that, Garrick felt a wave of awful prickling wash down over his tail from the base of his spine. Tufts of fur began sprouting out of its every surface, layering over one another to form a full, fine coat of brown fur. It shone in the light, the picture of lusciousness and volume.

“Well, perhaps not there,” Gataraque said. Varg let out a very unhappy grumble.

Though certainly no more unhappy than the noises Garrick was making. All the paw-making and fur-growing had been bad enough, drawing out a steady stream of screams as Garrick continued to thrash endlessly against his bondage, but now his noises were taking on an even higher note. The focus had shifted from what was below his legs to what was between them, an intense heat making itself known right where his slit laid.

Heat could be an ambiguous term when applied to canines, such as Garrick seemed to be rapidly becoming. In more precise language, it felt as if a red-hot iron rod had been shoved into his crotch, flesh feeling like it was set aflame as it started swelling and growing [i]outward[/i] in an inversion of what the alchemist’s potion had done to him before.

It would’ve been unbearable to endure for any significant amount of time, which was why it was good that it only lasted about three seconds. Part of that was from the violent nature of the transformation, similar to what had happened to his feet. But the greater reason was that there wasn’t nearly as much that needed to be changed.

Garrick wasn’t growing a cock, as he’d briefly suspected. His slit had swollen outwards, certainly, but only by perhaps an inch—and the raw material that was his flesh moulded itself into folds that formed a distinctly spade-like shape. A trickle of kobold cum rolled out of the cleft between them, squeezed out during the transformation.

“I hope you at least have some appreciation for this part,” Gataraque said, eyeing the new addition between Garrick’s legs.

Varg shook his head in slow, solemn disapproval. “Your deviancy knows no bounds, Gataraque. I can appreciate a bit of fun with a wolf as much as anyone, but ruining a perfectly good reptile for the sake of it is too far.”

“Genius is never appreciated in its time. Hopefully you’ll be able to derive at least a morbid fascination with what happens next.”

Another prediction of imminent changes, though one that was less impressive than some of the prescient ones Gataraque had made earlier. As he was saying it, thick clumps of fur were already pushing their way out of Garrick’s neck to form something like a mane, which was a dead giveaway.

Garrick slammed the back of his head against the table repeatedly as the fur formed, feeling it as an unbearable sensation of pins and needles all over his neck, felt as deep as an inch below his skin. He tried to scream. When he did, the sound of his voice had changed drastically, even further from its now long lost original sound. Now, it had a deep, warbling quality to it. The howl of a pained wolf.

The cry dragged on and on, unhindered even when the last dregs of breath had been squeezed from Garrick’s lungs. Garrick tried to stop, but found himself incapable. Some foreign will was asserting itself, and with the aid of the same magical vitality that Garrick had felt scalding his veins, had chosen to scream. At the same time, his body started thrashing around with no clear sense of direction or control but with enormous vigour, whipping around as if he were caught in the grip of a grand mal.

“Why is the subject doing that?” Varg asked. “Is what you’ve done really that painful?”

“Oh, no,” Gataraque said. “Well, perhaps, but that’s not the reason [i]why[/i]. We’ve reached a point of equilibrium. The spirit has as much control over the body as the subject does.”

“So this is the spirit doing this, then? Doesn’t seem as if it’s very pleased with the situation.”

“No, I’d imagine it’s either bewildered or furious. Thankfully, I don’t especially care about its feelings.”

Garrick was ostensibly in the best position to tell which of those possibilities was accurate, but in reality, he had no idea which it was. He had no sense of what the spirit was feeling, no sense of telepathy or mental communion; it simply inhabited the same body as him, and had an equal amount of control over it.

What it lacked was an ability to use it. Hence the wild seizure that wracked Garrick’s body as the spirit, unable to do anything, attempting to do everything, to move in every direction that the bindings prevented Garrick from moving in. His muscles were already singing with pain from the spirit’s careless use of them, and he felt traces of blood from where the ropes chafed against him. Left to its own devices, the spirit would tear his body apart.

Garrick put forth his best effort to stay still, trying to assert dominance over a body that was apparently now run by committee. It was something equal parts physical and mental, the latter being a kind of strain Garrick had never before experienced. Self control in the face of a self that was being hijacked.

It was a herculean task, and Garrick didn’t entirely succeed, but his attempt was enough to stop the spirit from trying to dislocate all his limbs by wrenching them against the restraints. He managed to quash it down to a mere feeling of tension, like his whole body was coiled and ready to lash out, but that only occasionally gave way to a jerk or twitch.

“And you’ll see now that the subject has reached an uneasy peace,” Gataraque said. “Or more accurately, an impasse. Neither the spirit nor the subject can assume full control of the body.”

“Is that it, then?” Varg said, pacing from side to side to get a full view of Garrick’s body from multiple angles. “I don’t see any other changes happening.”

Garrick was certainly an interesting sight after everything he’d been through. There was no trace of his former humanity left, unless you counted a rough equivalence in size. Everything above his waist, his chest, head, and arms, were all cut into the scaled, sinewy form of a kobold, replete with a curved set of horns. Below that point, he had a set of furry, pawed legs something like a werewolf’s, though the thickness of his tail offset that comparison—even if every inch of it was covered in a similar layer of fur. It looked somewhat like an otter’s, if anything.

“Yes, that should be the last of the physical changes,” Gataraque said. “Which leads me to the next section of the experiment.”

Gataraque carefully set the stave down, then unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned the fly of his pants. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband, yanked them down, and allowed his cock to spill out into the open. Over a foot and a half of thick reptile cock, replete with ridges, nubs, and a proportionate and therefore utterly terrifying looking knot. It made a loud [i]thunk[/i] as it slapped down onto the table.

“What, liquidating the subject?” Varg asked, staring wide-eyed at the lizard’s dick, throbbing and already starting to drool onto the table. “There’s no way that you’ll be able to fit.”

“Come now, Varg,” Gataraque said, climbing up onto the table on his hands and knees. It groaned under his weight. “If your potions imparted the stretchiness of a kobold and capacity of a dragon, then there ought to be no trouble at all.”

Garrick had not seen the deadly weapon that Gataraque called a cock swinging between his legs, being that the effort that would be needed to crane his head to look at it was being put towards trying to maintain control of his body, but he had heard everything that had been said. Moreover, he was well and able to see the enormous, muscular, sharp-toothed visage of the lizard come into view as he crawled over top of him. A few moments ago, Garrick would’ve thought it impossible for Gataraque to look any bigger than he did leaning over him from beside the table, but there it was.

Naturally, Garrick’s focus on keeping still slipped in the face of such a situation. In fact, he found that, quite suddenly, his goals were quite aligned with those of the spirit possessing him. He started kicking and thrashing wildly against his restraints, even attempted to flex control over his tail and bring it into the mix, only to find Gataraque’s own long, heavy tail pinned it just as well as any rope could.

Though its weight wouldn’t be necessary for long, as only seconds after they’d started, Garrick found his struggles dying from within. He’d [i]thought[/i] his goals were aligned with those of the spirit in terms of struggling, but when Gataraque was positioned over top of him on all fours with that enormous lizard cock dripping fat droplets of precum onto Garrick’s stomach, that was the moment when the spirit decided that it was actually quite content with staying still.

Garrick’s will to motion slammed against that desire for stillness like a brick wall, and the end result was the same state that he’d been in before, a tense paralysis with the potential for action that was never quite realised.

While Gataraque could’ve made some manner of comment, he refrained. As much as he enjoyed explaining his procedure to Varg, he felt that this particular portion would be better served by a practical demonstration. He looked down, and could see the terror in Garrick’s eyes. The spirit must not have had much interest in controlling the face of their shared body.

Gataraque maintained eye contact as he reached down with one hand and grabbed a hold of his cock by the base, using it to adjust his aim as he probed for Garrick’s cunt. As soon as he found it, the pointed head of his dick sinking just the slightest bit into the cleft of Garrick’s spade, as if it belonged there, he started letting out another warbling, animal scream through his ring gag.

It didn’t dissuade Gataraque in the slightest. He gave a few experimental prods, testing how much resistance Garrick’s cunt had to offer. Given the immense tension present in Garrick’s every muscle, it was unsurprising to find that he was tight, clenched down hard in an attempt to lock everything—and everyone—out.

Though not so tight as to make fucking impossible. No doubt Varg had helped plenty in that regard, loosening him up enough that Gataraque would have no trouble when it came his turn. Or at least, no more trouble than was enjoyable.

Gataraque started pushing in nice and slow, gradually increasing the pressure of his cockhead against that tight, wet spade. Sure, he could’ve just slammed inside all at once, skewered Garrick on a dick so huge it didn’t even look like it would be able to fit inside, but there was no reason to be so hasty. He wanted to take his time and enjoy the moment.

But as Gataraque continued to push and push, the problem was becoming apparent: things were moving [i]too[/i] slowly. Garrick was screaming louder as Gataraque tried to push inside, but that extra volume didn’t translate into any other sort of progress. He was too tight, muscles refusing to give an inch even under the not-inconsiderable press of Gataraque’s hips.

Gataraque huffed a breath through his nostrils. Well, so much for taking his time, then. He eased off the pressure, pulling back until the tip of his cock was just resting against Garrick’s entrance without any sort of force behind it.

Then, he slammed himself forward with all the force he could muster. His dick ripped past whatever resistance Garrick’s clenching muscles could offer, a third of his shaft sinking into their warm and almost painfully tight confines with a single stroke.

Almost painful for Gataraque, that was. For Garrick, pain was an inadequate word to describe what he’d felt. It was something like being punched in the gut, a bit like being stabbed, and certainly like he was being stretched to the brink of being ripped apart by the cock of a lizardfolk almost twice his size, in increasing order of similarity. His breath caught in his chest for a moment, strangled by pain, before ripping its way out of him as a shriek of throat-rending intensity.

“I’m going to get a headache if that doesn’t stop,” Varg said, leaning against a nearby wall with his face scrunched up with displeasure.

It took Gataraque a moment to respond, caught up in the joy of Garrick’s walls clamped down around his cock as he was. It was everything he could’ve wanted, the thick, puffy lips of Garrick’s vulva giving way to slick insides that were no less tight for their recent defloration. It would’ve been easy to ignore Varg entirely and lose himself to those sensations—but instead, he tilted his head towards the kobold and fixed him with a lazy gaze through one lidded eye.

“Oh, fine,” Gataraque said. “If you’re going to browbeat me into it.”

Gataraque shifted his weight to one arm, so that he could reach out with the other and grab a hold of the side of Garrick’s face. He craned his neck down, bringing his face right up against Garrick’s own. He could feel hot air washing over his face, blasting from the lizard’s nostrils.

Then, another push forward, this time in the form of Gataraque’s muzzle.  It opened and his tongue slipped free, shooting out to plunge into Garrick’s mouth. The ring gag meant there was no way he could try closing his lips, biting down, or put up any other sort of struggle. There was nothing to prevent the lizard’s tongue from sliding as deeply as it liked.

Gataraque certainly took advantage of the opportunity. His tongue felt enormous, a huge muscle that easily overpowered Garrick’s own, pushing it to the side to make more room for its advance. He wasn’t satisfied with the room Garrick’s mouth had to offer, either. It only took a few seconds and not even half of the lizard’s tongue to occupy all of that space, but that didn’t stop Gataraque; there was still more territory to be conquered.

Garrick gagged when he felt Gataraque’s tongue push past the entrance to his throat, but all that did was cause his throat to clench down around the invading organ, as if trying to keep it from pulling out. His screams, having been muffled by the kiss that had been forced upon him, finally cut out entirely; it was impossible to scream while gagging, or while a huge lizard had their tongue buried in your throat.

If Garrick had a touch more clarity of thought, he would’ve realised that was the intention, but he was much too preoccupied with the physicality of the invasion to think too much about the reasons driving it. All the more so when Gataraque thrust forward again, maintaining the kiss all the while, and Garrick’s attention shifted to the [i]other[/i] invasion that was still occurring at the opposite end of his body.

About two thirds of the lizard’s cock had been sunk into Garrick’s cunt, going by sight. Going by feel, Garrick was so full that he’d assumed that Gataraque had already bottomed out inside of him, and the only way that the lizard was managing to go even deeper was by using magic to better torment him.

The kiss prevented Garrick from getting a good look to confirm or deny that hypothesis, but another sensation at least served to tell him that, whether or not everything packed into him was real or magical, it was definitely [i]there.[/i] The feeling of his belly brushing against Gataraque’s scales, in a spot where Garrick knew there should’ve been have been any contact between them, confirmed that.

It seemed that the rumours about the stretchiness of kobolds were true, but the ones about them each having their own personal hammerspace were not: Garrick’s belly was distending, bulging out from the force of Gataraque’s cock pressing against it from the inside, enough to touch the underside of the one stuffing him so full to begin with.

That bulge became even larger when Gataraque followed his last thrust with another right on its heels, cramming another few inches of himself into Garrick’s pussy and claiming a bit more space that Garrick didn’t have available to offer. It was taken regardless, insides stretching and straining to accommodate. 

It was enough to bring Gataraque down to his knot. Garrick felt the great, swollen mass of it slam against the lips of his pussy, hard enough to leave them stinging. The thing felt larger than his fist, definitely bigger than when he’d last seen it, no doubt having grown fat with the lizard’s excitement.

Garrick wasn’t the only one who felt it, either. When his knot finally made contact, Gataraque let out a rumbling growl that rolled down Garrick’s throat and into his chest, bassy vibrations drowning out whatever muffled screams he might’ve tried to offer. He spent only a brief moment grinding his knot against Garrick’s entrance, either basking in the pleasure of the tightness or testing if that same tightness would permit his knot entry, before pulling back for another thrust.

Though not much of one, or far too much of one, depending on how one judged such a thing. It was short, only an inch or two of movement, but what the stroke lacked in length it made up for in power and speed. Gataraque slammed himself forward, driving his knot like a battering ram into Garrick’s spade. If Garrick was going to keep thinking of that knot as fist-sized, then this was definitely a haymaker. He clenched down around Gataraque on both ends, throat tightening around his tongue and cunt clamping down on his shaft.

Which did nothing to stop or even slow Gataraque in the slightest. He had more than enough power to thrust right past any clenched muscles, their grip only serving to motivate him further, and the slickness provided by Varg’s cum and whatever moisture his cock forced out of Garrick provided more than enough lubrication to enable his thrusts. In the effort to shut him out, Garrick had only managed to turn himself into an even better fuckhole for Gataraque.

But there was nothing else he could do. Relaxing and loosening up felt impossible. It felt like it would be giving up and resigning himself to his fate. It felt like the tension was the only thing holding Garrick together, and that if he released even a tiny bit of it, Gataraque would pound him into dust right then and there. So Garrick did nothing and remained a delightfully tight, quivering mass, choking on the lizard’s tongue and gurgling around it as that knot battered against him at ever increasing speeds.

Gataraque’s teeth pressed into Garrick’s mouth, sharp points gouging into sensitive flesh, not with malice, but with an utter lack of concern or awareness. All that Gataraque cared about at that moment was getting off, filling the role of wild brute that so many who looked at him assumed he was. He could feel Garrick stretching a bit wider with every thrust, giving way more and more with each slam of his cock. Just not fast enough. He had to go harder, faster.

The room was filled with the sound of flesh slapping against flesh, flesh slapping against the table, and the table creaking and groaning as it supported Gataraque’s assault, plus whatever growls, moans, and screams managed to escape the seal of their joined muzzles. Gataraque grabbed a hold of Garrick by the shoulders and gripped down on them for leverage, claws poking into his scales and drawing small trickles of blood where they managed to poke through. Just a bit more, and...

Gataraque thrust forward one last time with all the force his hips could muster, and after such a drawn-out assault, Garrick’s body was no longer able to shut him out. His cunt spread wide, splitting open to accept the lizard’s knot, the stretch only beginning to slow after half of the bulging thing had already been jammed inside.

In response, Gataraque simply pushed harder, drawing on yet untapped reserves of strength. It was the crowning moment, the point of no return; he could feel his knot starting to swell, and there was only so much time to jam it in before he lost the opportunity. That added pressure was enough. Both of them could feel Garrick’s spade being pried its widest yet, spread far beyond natural limits to accommodate a mating that it was never meant to endure.

Garrick shook like a leaf in spite of Gataraque’s firm grip on him, feeling pierced in so many different ways: the claws digging into his scales, the teeth pressing into the sensitive flesh of his mouth, the oversized member that was pushing so deep inside Garrick that he could measure its progress by the sight of his belly just as well as from the feel of it sinking inside. 

Or he’d be able to do that if he could look down to see it, anyway. Pinned down as thoroughly as he was, there was nothing Garrick could do but writhe as he felt the widest point of Gataraque’s knot slide past the lips of his vulva. After that, the gates were wide open: the lizard’s knot got thinner towards the root, meaning a startling decrease in resistance which allowed the whole thing to slip inside at once.

Both of them let out a moan in unison, Gataraque’s a deep rumble of pleasure, Garrick’s a high noise of pain. Both of them mingled and merged between their sealed muzzle, rattling teeth and jaws as the din escaped out through the cracks in the kiss. Their volumes fluctuated and wavered as Gataraque’s knot swelled even larger, creating a unique melody of pain and joy as they were tied together.

Then, the peak. Gataraque’s cock bulged even fatter inside of Garrick’s body, pulsing and throbbing, as the first rope of cum shot through it and into his guts. Appropriate enough for the size difference, it was more powerful and plentiful than even Varg’s own considerable load. The jets were powerful enough that Garrick could [i]feel[/i] them as they shot past his cervix and splattered against the back of his womb. They pooled there, the bulge in his belly rounding out as it bloated wit seed.

It took a long while. Gataraque had a lot to give, and it seemed like his body was in no rush to provide it. The two remained in that position, clamped down around each other, letting out moans and groans as spurts of warm cum were pumped into Garrick one after the other, for moments that dragged on for ages. Garrick’s world had shrank down to encompass only parts of Gataraque, the claws digging into his scales, the knot throbbing inside of him, arms, legs, tail, teeth and ever questing tongue.

But it did eventually end, as such things always had to. Once Gataraque had finished, he relaxed, releasing his tight grip on Garrick and pulling his tongue free from his throat with a shlicking sound. Garrick went limp against the table, gasping for breath. He tried to push himself up into a kneeling position on the table, rather than laying on top of Garrick.

Gataraque’s attempt to pull away was hindered, however, by one last point of connection. His crotch was tightly bound to Garrick’s own, the lizard’s fat knot ensuring that neither of them could come apart. Gataraque stared down at it for a second or two, letting out a grunt.

Then, bracing his arms against Garrick’s thighs, he pulled back with all his might.

Garrick certainly must have retained the stretchiness of a kobold, as that was the only reasonable explanation for how he wasn’t torn apart as Gataraque’s knot ripped its way back out of him, having not been given the slightest chance to deflate. The folds of his spade stretched obscenely around its bulk, like the petals of some obscene flower, being pried apart wider and wider. He screamed the whole way—it going out was exponentially worse than it had been going in.

Thankfully, it was also significantly shorter. With the strength and focus Gataraque was employing, plus the intense stretching that Garrick had already gotten prior, it only took a few seconds of effort before Gataraque managed to tug his knot clear and free. Once it was out, the rest of his shaft slid right out, leaving Garrick to slump back in pained exhaustion with a painfully gaped cunt. As soon as Gataraque’s cock wasn’t plugging it, a thick tide of cum started to ooze out of it and pool on the surface of the table.

“Done?” Varg asked, having taken up a position leaning against the wall.

“Done,” Gataraque replied, grabbed a nearby cloth to wipe off the various juices that coated his shaft before stuffing it back into his pants, waiting for it to retract back into his slit.

“I hope you understand how dreadfully [i]boring[/i] it is to have to wait around in silence while you do that.”

Gataraque looked over. He tried to look at Varg’s face, but found it quite difficult to ignore the fact that the kobold’s cocks were hanging free from his slit. And that the floor in front of him was splattered with his cum. And that said cum was also smeared across his hands.

“But it seems as if you found means of entertaining yourself in spite of that.”

Varg’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you were pleasuring yourself to the whole display, it looks like.”

Varg let out a single, barking laugh. “Pleasuring myself? To you and that furry monstrosity? Please. I have standards.”

Gataraque looked down. There wasn’t just a minute amount of cum on the floor. Varg’s loads were big; the stone was absolutely splattered with the stuff. “I’m to believe that’s someone else’s mess, then?”

“Oh, no, that’s definitely mine. The point is I wasn’t masturbating to what you were doing. You just happened to be in the room at the time.”

Gataraque sighed. “I’m glad you refrained from this sort of prattle until after I was finished.”

“Prattle?” Varg shouted, bringing himself up on his toes and puffing out his chest. “Oh, now you’ve gone too far. I’ll show you the true meaning of prattle. You’ll get an earful of it until you understand the value of my commentary!”

“And as long as it’s not during the sex, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Varg crossed his arms and deflated in a huff, turning his gaze to the side—where it happened to perfectly land on Garrick, lying limp on the table, leaking cum onto its surface from his gaping spade, and generally looking reminiscent of a thoroughly used dish rag.

“What are we going to do with him, then?” Varg asked, leaning in to poke the sole of Garrick’s foot. His toes twitched in response.

Gataraque raised a brow. “I remind you that this was [i]your[/i] idea.”

“Ah, right. Well, in that case, the experiment must continue. The subject is still going to lay eggs, even given their... new parts, correct?”

“Correct. The spirit won’t affect the state of their young, merely quantity and speed.”

Varg clapped his hands together. “A mere hypothesis! We must test it for validity, and to do that, we’ll need to make sure the subject is fertilized. How does making an evening of it sound?”

“Oh, Varg, it seems there’s the rare insight even in the ramblings of a madman. Let’s.”