Calypso was shivering. And not because the air was cold that night.
It was the idea that she was walking with her professor into the forest, the two alone, and she was all too aware about the imagery that could be read from such. Every step, she hid behind a tree, watching and waiting for Mrs. Moses to traverse ahead before darting to the next.
“I-I don’t want to come across picky, but why couldn’t you offer me any--?” Calypso whimpered out.
“Despite being charitable as I can be, I am not one, Ms. Grimes,” the woman kept moving forward, as she traded her normal wheels for ones that can handle terrain. “Besides, it’d be a tad redundant.”
Calypso snaked out of her hiding place, the covers pulled tight against her bare body. “‘Redundant’…?”
The duo found themselves in the middle of an empty field. Dying grey grass swaying in the night breeze, the Moon being visible from the absence of trees.
“Now then,” Mrs. Moses turned to face her confused student. “With the aid of your Illuminator, your transformation can go much more smoothly. Turn, here and now.”
Calypso gulped. Conflict written all over her tired face.
“W-what if I just simply turn back into whatever I was again…?” Calypso asked.
“This is why we have to do this now,” Mrs. Moses unwaveringly explained. “You have to re-establish that this is simply another facet of you: regardless of the danger, regardless of what becomes unearthed—if you let conflict of the two halves dictate and dominate your mind again, then this one chance will be entirely wasted.”
The girl’s wavering lips allowed Calypso to pant softly in fear, on the verge of hyperventilation.
“I j—Just don’t want you to kill me—” Calypso stumbled. “Kill you—kill anyone—”
Mrs. Moses quickly shut the remark down with a lowered head that allowed her to stare daggers at her student. “Then allow that to be your motivation, Ms. Grimes.”
That rocked Calypso to the core. Whatever that was made up of, nowadays.
With a shaking hand, she let go a bit of the cover, before letting it fall completely to her ankles.
Lifting up a hand, Calypso still couldn’t fathom how her Illuminator managed to get into her palms. But she shook her head. There was no time for reason.
Gently, she folded her slim fingers onto it, brushing and then pressing onto the surface. Watching it not only glow a pale white, but see her soul writhe in the ghastly facsimiles. Beginning to form faces that screamed in silent agony.
Around the same time she did, as Calypso wailed out from the throat, immediately hitting the ground with her bare knees.
Glancing at her hand in pain, she saw the stone immediately sink into the skin like waves drowning ships, allowing her to finally slam both palms into the ground. Just to express how grueling it was, to regain the little control she had, anything. She didn’t know, because she couldn’t think anymore. It scared her, that she couldn’t think anymore.
What made it worse however, was realizing that she couldn’t ball her fingers into a fist anymore, either.
Calypso watched as her digits shot out bone claws, tearing away at what was once human within seconds, and individually at that.
As she screamed, she can feel her tongue rubbing up against her sharpening teeth, making the sensation somehow more horrible as it twitched and writhed, therefore raking itself over the pointed edges.
She tried looking at her teacher, but her locks were already growing out of control.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been granted mercy at all.
“The more you try to bargain for control, the more the transformation will take your autonomy!”
Calypso struggled to raise her head, as her spine rocketed out of her back and was slowly pushing the spikes. But she eventually did, to gawk at a determined looking Moses.
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The professor’s hair was bellowing with the wind, her stoic façade dropping into a spirited scowl. With her own claws being out, scrapping against the handles of her chair, being the thing to bring Calypso into shock.
“This is re-establishment!” Mrs. Moses shouted over her pupil’s agony. “Braving the body shutting down! Surviving against the pain! And being able to flex, to feel, to move, to reclaim the form again! It’s you, Calypso! It’s yours!”
If the prior imagery didn’t do it, hearing Mrs. Moses’ resentful, yet determined passion was what did it.
Calypso lifted her head upwards as she was on her hands and knees. Not screaming, not shouting, but groaning out, lulling her growing tongue out of the sharpening mouth. She didn’t have the strength to vocalize her resolve, but she had it.
The skeletal armor soon quickly fastened itself around her gestating body, rocking as if she was being pulled and jerked around by invisible parties. But she threw her head back further, allowing her aching body to rise up, once again just on her knees as they grew spikes.
Letting her hair grow into a mane, feeling it coast across the throbbing back, she closed her eyes as she used her claws to comb through it, as her elbow scythes finally had the room to manifest. Humming as it all happened, but she wasn’t quite sure why.
She clutched at her head, feeling her head spilt open, Calypso knew what she had to do. Both to appease her teacher, and her fervent mind.
Calypso put her hands flat, and pulled at the sides of her head. Growling as she did it, her eyes squeezing shut, but ultimately helping to allow the skull-like crown to crest from where the opening was formed.
Her eyes shooting open, as they swam in dark voids, the pupils glowing amber being the only source of light.
There was no sound at first. All Calypso could hear was the hammering of her heart. Before giving way to her very audible and visible steaming pants.
Finally, hearing the clapping, causing her gaze to fix towards it.
Seeing Mrs. Moses, earnest but worn grin, as she clapped with her scaly claws.
“You do have potential, my girl,” Mrs. Moses congratulated her student. “You just had to understand what many others before you had to learn the hard way. Myself included.”
Calypso chuckled. Again, empty, almost without breath. But she lowered her head, despite it being crowned.
“I have you to thank, my merciful teacher…”
Calypso couldn’t see, but heard Mrs. Moses’ chuckle of amusement. Approval.
“Now then,” Mrs. Moses’ voice continued. “We better get your meal.”
The monster girl rose up. Being in such a stronger body, compared to how she usually was, it was more challenging to reconcile that they’re one in the same, versus the radical change itself.
“So…” Calypso looked at her claws, balling them up. “How do I hunt…?”
“Thankfully, it’s rather simple,” Mrs. Moses adjusted her glasses. “But for the sake of brevity, I’ve fashioned a backup plan.”
Before Calypso could ask, or even finish tilting her head—she was slammed into.
Sailing in the air due to the sheer force of it, Calypso’s new instincts gave her the moment she needed to correct herself before she landed, digging her limbs into the soft ground.
On all fours once more, but in a more predatory posture, Calypso rose her head with a growl.
Before her fierce face softened in response of what she saw.
It was pitiful as it was horrid. It was a black snail, but with human remnants acting as a shell. But only halfway, the arms of the former human dangling off the side it occupied.
But what was telling, was that fact Calypso recognized the small scraps of clothes that covered the corpse.
“The campsite…” Calypso sadly realized.
“You stumbled across the mess, did you?” Mrs. Moses asked.
“I did, yes…” Calypso looked on. Crestfallen. “Ironically, I wanted to eat whoever was there too. And yet I’m remorseful…”
“You shouldn’t be.”
Calypso turned her head at Mrs. Moses.
“Or rather, remorse isn’t going to help in this case,” Mrs. Moses clarified. “Again. What before you is no longer human in any sense of the fashion. Just a filthy Skinwalker, and not even a regular one.”
Calypso looked forward again. The thing couldn’t even charge like it did before, it slithered towards the women, as it haggardly exhaled from the human’s mouth it took.
“I’ve been tracking it for its crimes,” Mrs. Moses explained. “Subsumed in general can sniff us out, they want to find us so they could lay claim to fame, to kill us. Even the misshapen and pathetic stains like these types. In a way, it was like you not so long ago. A hanger-on that can barely keep itself alive.”
Calypso nodded. Still glum. Still hesitating.
“I understand. You want to know if there is a chance, to save them, to give them absolution from this… Utterly horrible fate. I’ve been searching for answers and a way for years, and I’ve sadly kept reaching the same conclusion. You have to kill it. You have to restore this unnatural and unfair order in your own way.”
“…Thank you,” Calypso uttered softly, her eyes closed tight.
Before a guttural shriek ripped through the monster girl’s throat, Calypso leapt forward in barely contained frenzy.
She was too hungry to cling to her humanity anymore. And yet held too much awareness and reasoning to solely be this monster.
The opposing sides formed into the drive Calypso needed, as she chomped down into the ink-like flesh. Shuddering, on the verge of moaning. Everything, every level, being met all at once after so long.
There was no stopping, after that. Her itch was finally quelled.
It took minutes for her, to finally let her head away from the now complete corpse. Calypso hollowed out the body, only leaving the back of it. Fang and claw marks etched across, and still so fresh.
Calypso purred, unexpectedly from herself. There was something, about looking at the aftermath, the carnage. It was like another aspect of the meal.
Something plopped next to her, causing her to crane her head in response.
Only to realize that it was Tupperware.
“Slice off a slab, would you?” Mrs. Moses called out. “I was going to eat, but then you came along, so—"
***