It took me many hours of continuous eating to devour the beast and its progeny, which I now knew were from a type of of draconic beast called wyverns. I carefully descaled the corpses, which was a laborious task in itself, before eating the flesh. The bones were hard, but just within my ability to crack. It made some sense that they weren’t as strong as a troll’s when I thought about it, as they would have difficulty flying with bones that dense.

I’m not exactly a picky eater, but wyvern meat was probably the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted, especially the hatchlings. Once I’d eaten the flesh and bones, I ate the scales. They were crunchy and interesting, and made that weird part of my mind wish for some type of fizzy drink.

Speaking of that odd corner of my mind, it had objected strenuously to killing the wyvern hatchlings. I ignored it because they were good prey, and were right there. If I’d left them alive, they’d just die anyways without their parent to provide for them and I’d have lost my chance to eat them, which is just unthinkable. After completing my rather bountiful meal, I felt rather drowsy, so I curled up in the now empty nest and dozed off.

When I woke up, the rays from the rising sun were flooding into the cavern. I stretched out and stood up, assessing myself to see what had changed.

I had a tail again! Yes!   Oh, how I missed having a tail, especially one I could use to hit things!  It looked just like a smaller version of the wyvern’s, complete with venomous quills. I flicked my new tail experimentally, and was quite pleased at how flexible it was. My patches of scales had expanded, and now had a very dark green and brown patterning. Tapping on the new scales, they felt much more like the wyvern’s did than anything else I’d eaten before. Aside from my tail, my body shape seemed almost the same, except now with a slightly different balance.

However, the most immediately noticeable difference to me is that my mind felt a bit clearer and quicker than before. More strange memories and ideas filtered out of that weird corner of my mind, but I dismissed them except for some that seemed relevant to my hunt yesterday. The pertinent memories seemed to do with some thing called a ‘roleplaying game,’ and from those memories there was information on beasts like wyverns and other things I might want to prey on. I also learned from that that the horned horse I ate earlier was called a unicorn. Unfortunately, aside from vague information on what they looked like and what environments they lived in, the rest was just a jumble of lines that the memories called ’stats.’

Regardless, I felt so good.

I strolled out of the cave and stood near the ledge, gazing out over the woods of the mountain valley. I closed my eyes and savored the warmth of the sun and the wind on my face. This was a new feeling for me. Contentment.

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After I’d had my fill of standing on the ledge, I looked down to the valley below and lamented that I had not grown wings as part of my transformation. The mental image of swooping down out of the sky like the wyvern had done just seemed so pleasing to me.

As I thought of this, I felt something inside me respond to that image and shift. The bones in my forearms writhed and twisted, then began to separate, staying joined only at the wrist. My forearm widened and flattened as the bone jutted out, and my hide reformed to encase the new arm segment separately, making my arms look somewhat like those of a praying mantis. The bones lengthened and a membrane began growing between the forearm segments, and extending along the arm until it connected to my torso, filling in to become wings each twice as long fully extended as I was tall. My shoulder joints rotated to a more natural position for wings and my torso narrowed and deepened. All the while, my feet changed, to resemble the four toes of a wyvern, with one jutting from the heel and the other three splayed forward.

I now looked more like a wyvern than I looked like my old form.

All of these drastic changes took course in the span of roughly one minute.

I was exhilarated by this sudden change. I’d never changed like this when I was awake! Fuck yes! I can shape shift! And I can fly! Fucking hell, this is awesome! Even that strange corner of my mind seemed excited about this.

Without thinking it through any further, I took a few steps forward and leapt from the ledge.

Oh, shit, I don’t know how to fly. Shit! Fuck! Fucking shit! Oh crap!

I was now plummeting toward the ground head first at a speed that would ensure I would not be able to survive. I strained my wings and snapped them out to my side, but there was no change. What?! Why?!

I looked over at my wings and saw that I was currently holding them parallel to my body. Maybe if I adjusted their angle a bit?

And with that, I felt the muscle in my chest and back tighten at the sudden resistance from my wings as they caught air, and my headlong descent began to turn into a steep glide. I was still approaching the ground very quickly, so I angled them even further and my descent leveled off a bit more, but now I was just flying straight ahead at high speed with little control. I tried tilting one wing slightly, and I began a long wide banking turn.

Okay, okay, I was starting to get the hang of it.

Over the next hour or so, I continued to fly, experimenting and refining my technique. I wasn’t anywhere near as proficient as an actual wyvern, but I was learning quickly. I think it’s safe to say that I upgraded my flight rating from Disastrous to Poor. Eventually, I made my way back over to where I had stashed my club, and executed a perfect crash landing complete with three forward tumbles and a transition into a sideways roll. I shook myself off. I focused on changing back to the form I’d woken up with this morning, and I felt my body comply, gradually reshaping itself, and reabsorbing the excess materials. The reversion went a bit quicker than the initial transformation.

I picked up the club and hefted it to my shoulder, then set off to continue my hunt. While I could fly, I’d rather hunt from the ground until I had better control.