Pain radiated from the hole in my hand as five streams of aqua jelly burst out of the back. Those streams jerked apart and slapped onto the back of my fingers and thumb before hardening into claws. Not just any claws, though. They were jagged organic looking things that felt unfinished and yet sublimely dangerous.

That and the things extended out twice as far as my actual fingers. This turned a near miss into quite the success as the claws dug ragged canyons through the surprised mantis’ exoskeleton. That my claws were able to do so much damage to the bug was a near miracle, but the bug had redirected power to the wings leaving an opening.

Then the lights went out for me again, as you do. Not for long though as my new claws had apparently used a bit too much power. And upon waking up I was introduced to the cost of overdrawing my power. As if someone had cut out triangles towards my fingers, there were new areas extending out of the holes. All shiny and aqua. Oh, and of course the claws had gone away. Because no, you can’t keep your only means of attack.

The annoying yet good news is I could still feel the claws. It felt like someone had injected a ton of liquid into the palm of my hand. Didn’t look different but it was there. Worst part though was I could tell it was on cool down or some such. If I needed to, I could use them, but it would hurt.

So of course I tried to flex the claws. As I put it, “Memo to self, be more specific”, because I didn’t just get claws on my one hand. A nice new wave of pain assaulted me as aqua ooze came out of my hands, temples, and feet.

The hands matched what had already happened and the start of a couple horns gelled together at my temples. Normal enough stuff, as far as my current life was concerned. The feet, though? They were all kinds of body horror.

The middle of both feet ripped apart and extended, increasing the length of my feet by a good fifty percent or so. Then from right behind the balls of my feet a claw speared out forcing me to stand digitigrade. And of course, even more claws in the style of my hands popped out of the top of my feet. Though they ended up tripling my toe length.

And boy, what a funny scene that made. I’d seen something like it in the past, stilts meant to make you walk digitigrade and let me tell you. Without any costume assistance, your upper body ends up looking completely undersized. It’s like one of those leggy boy maned wolves except without the elegance.

Then I fell over as the claws withdrew, the horns melted away, and my feet sprang back together. Laying on my back I congratulated myself on not fainting again. Though I could feel that it had more to do with my one claw not being ready yet.

Not wanting to stand up, it took a while to process the new areas of aqua. Both hands matched with areas reaching towards my fingers. The feet managed to get through relatively unchanged despite literally being split apart. Just a thin line where the two parts had reconnected. Though I could tell that came from the fact that the entire bottom of my feet was already aqua gel.

As for the horns? That was interesting. It didn’t take my flesh and turn it into aqua. Rather from what I could feel there was a thin dome of the material over my temples. A strange occurrence when previously the goal seemed to be to replace it all.

Not really sure what to do I lay there for much longer than I should have. The aqua goo and the claws had been shocking, sure. But this new development had taken things a little too far for me. Everything else was either temporary or simply replaced what was already there.

With my feet and horns, a new direction came about. A warping of my body that was diverged from the human form. But that wasn’t the problem. Body dysmorphia will ruin a person’s life if they aren’t allowed to change things. That wasn’t what I felt nor what made me pause.

Rather, it was the lack of discomfort. A complete lack of connection to my form. This did not hold my thoughts for too long once I realized what the feeling was. Through my voracious consumption of fantasy and sci-fi books, I had long ago come across such things.

The concepts of forced transformation, evil clones, and numerous other mind-screws were thought over such that I had an answer. I’m me, end of story. As long as the effect isn’t truly warping my mind, it doesn’t matter. However, it was only the recent changes which allowed me to connect the dots.

Something about my mind was fundamentally different. To others, a warped body or a true copy of themselves would have concerning consequences. To me? I just didn’t care, a theme of my life, but that’s simply how things shook out. At least it was finally working for me instead of ruining my social life.

With that out of the way, or at the very least suppressed for now, I turned my attention to the grass forest. Things had been getting greener but the grass wasn’t growing in height. So either the tall grass I had seen was a different breed or a lot closer to the water. Either way, I had set it as my goal.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Problem was, I had gotten a little turned about at some point. My path was still taking me deeper into the greener area but besides that I was clueless. The solution was obvious enough as well. Climb one of the grass stalks.

They were sturdy enough for it. I just needed a method to get a grip and what do you know? Claws were the traditional method for animals. Better yet, enough time had passed for my claws to be ready again. While nothing bad had happened after pulling them out before they were ready, I wasn’t willing to bet that would continue to be the case.

So in my ignorance I popped all my claws and climbed up the grass, getting the juices all over my hands and feet. Fragrant, sticky, and most of all, defensive juice. I’m about to learn a lesson the hard way that anyone who wasn’t exiled to this place would learn. Let me share with you a small snippet from an info packet.

“[The Grass Forest] is a safe enough place as long as you don’t damage the grass. Through untold years, the local mantids have developed the ability to smell the juices of a damaged stalk from miles away. A helpful mutation as their main prey are gargantuan herbivores who find the grass a delicacy. While the mantids live alone, the scent will drive them into a feeding frenzy which gathers them together into what some have described as a flying swarm of piranhas.”

Suffice it to say, things were about to get bad for me.

Of course, things didn’t go bad right away. I had killed the nearest mantis already so it was going to take some time for trouble to find me. And during that time I had a goal again. Even though the climb had rang a dinner bell, it also allowed me to reacquire the direction to the closest area of tall grass.

But in the end, it was literally walking into trouble. The only way I could have avoided the mantid menace would have been to run in the opposite direction. Even then, it would have been a coin flip.

Still, I’m not down with changing the past so there is no going back. Especially not by this point. I had walked too far and entered the next mantis’ territory. A mantis that introduced itself to me at high speed.

The bug flew right at me with blades extended. I don’t know how I managed to react to it. Until now they had all gone for the stealth kill so such a direct approach stunned me. Yet despite my mind being frozen, my body was not.

There wasn’t time to fully dodge, but my body managed to sway to the side. Then, as the mantis flew past, it left a nasty cut across my side. Though I would take a cut to my side over disembowelment any day.

And I got my pound of flesh as well. The mantis tried to swing back around but at that point I had recovered and was ready. All it took was a step to the side and a quick flare of a claw. Then the bug took care of the rest for me as momentum ripped the mantis in half on said claw.

Of course, this action also snapped my finger like a pretzel stick. While the claw gave some support, it wasn’t able to fully negate all that deadly momentum that had finished the bug.

On one hand, this taught me that my goo ability, goobility if you will, can heal bones. It does so slowly and painfully, but I was willing to take what I could get. Not like I had a choice in the matter.

Anyway, I sat around for a bit to let my finger heal and that is how the swarm found me. I wasn’t caught completely unaware, thank goodness. While alone, the mantid monsters are silent enough. As a swarm, any pretense of being quiet was thrown out the window.

There I was, feeling the aftershocks of a finger shattering. When suddenly there is this deep, almost bone rumbling buzz. I had no clue what it was except trouble and it sounded as if it was coming from all directions. So, I started running towards the area I thought had water.

Or, in other words, directly towards the largest concentration of the frenzied mantids. Not to say my plan was necessarily wrong. I had figured that whatever was coming likely was tracking me by smell. This was technically true and a dip in some water would have washed off the grass’s scent. Except for the fact, most of the mantises lived by said water.

I soon learned the error of my ways as tens of mantises rose up in front of me. At that point, I gave up. Not on myself, but on any hold I had left on my previous life. When killing the previous bugs? I barely managed them one at a time and still got what would have been life-threatening injuries.

And now? Now I faced a swarm. So fuck my humanity. I hadn’t been holding back, per se. Rather, I just didn’t have to go all the way before. This time, I let go.

The flesh on my feet shredded, expanding in a moment what had taken seconds. A scale-like texture covers them and spreads up my legs as a thin coating of aqua goo.

From the holes on the back of my hands a deluge of goo bursts forth, wrapping everything as it flows two-thirds of the way up my forearms. The scale pattern once again covered everything and the claws take on a deadly glint like well sharpened knives.

A pressure builds on my upper arms and back, only to explode outward. A great rift splits my back, shoulder to shoulder, as my spine sends out aqua spikes and elongates. My shirt is shredded as the spines extend out a membrane that connects them all.

Mid bicep, my arms completely split, increasing their length by a third and adding extra leverage to muscles that flatten out despite the feeling of much greater power being hidden within.

And while all of that happened at the same time, my head was saved for last. As if it had waited to make sure I could stand the pain of my body ripping itself apart. That or it knew. Knew that no matter how well I could handle pain, what was to come next would have pushed me over the edge.

At this point, you would expect me to start going into body horror levels of detail on the process. That isn’t going to happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it was gory enough with things like my skull grinding itself into a fine powder or what have you.

The fact of the matter is that either the pain was too great or the process messed with just the right bits of my brain. Long story short, I don’t remember anything from that moment. The only reason I even know it had hurt comes from a memory of a memory. Though like a shortcut on your desktop after you’ve deleted the original file, it only shows what might have been.