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The Beginning of a New Race

Chapter Four

"What the hell am I?" My body was plagued with tremors of terror and hatred. I was trapped in my own body, not able to escape from this terrible transformation. I had been changed into one of these things. Everything that went through my mind hurt, all the thoughts about how my life would never be the same, how no one I had known before would see the same me again, yet the message still came across.

Fuck these things. Fuck everything here. Why the fuck did this hell have to happen to me? What did I do?

My body wanted to kill the animal that stood before me, wanted to punish something for what had happened to me. I didn't deserve this. There was no reason for this to happen to me, for my life to be taken away right when it was about to begin. I had been turned into whatever had been chasing us before, the monsters that we had been so afraid of. Had been turned into the thing I was most fearful of.

"You are a Homini, one of us. Or to be more specific, you are one of the Vulpes, or fox. Be aware, however, that we are not the ones that did this to you. There is no reason for this sort of thing to happen. None at all. The Sephirans have to be punished." The Homini in front of me, the doctor, looked as if he actually cared about what was happening to me, yet he made no move to comfort my pain. The others that had gathered around were murmuring in agreement to his last statement, or at least most of them were. A few looked as if they wanted me gone.

What a joy that would be.

"Change me the fuck back. Now." Whatever this was, I didn't want it to last. If there was a way to change me, then there had to be something that could reverse it, right?

Wrong.

There was a burst of laughter from the Homini behind the doctor. "Ain' notin' you can do bout that now son, not at all." One of the shorter animals spoke. He had curly brown fur with small blotches of black on his head. His ears were long, and they flopped down below his eye level.

"He's right. We don't know how to reverse this. If we did you'd already be dumped off at that landing site with the medicine flowing through your veins." This time the doctor said this, eliminating any kind of hope that I had left.

I was stuck like this for the rest of my life, the shitty one I had already had was getting progressively worse.

Now regularly, I would have probably sat down and cried away from all the others, moping about how life is unfair and so on and so forth, but right now there was too much rage coursing throughout my body. My sorrow was shoved to the back of my mind, leaving only enough room for the fury to keep hold of my brain.

"Who did this to me? Why?" I at least wanted to know who was responsible for this, even if there was no way for me to seek revenge. If anything, the knowledge would let my mind think over everything, let it brood over the hatred that I felt.

"They call themselves the Sephirans. They're a group of deserters that decided that they no longer needed to live with their original clans. All we know about them is that for some reason crime, especially against anything unlike themselves, is their favorite pastime. You humans found yourselves in a pretty bad spot, being different from anything they had seen before." There wasn't anything I could do except pray for the rest of the people back at the shore. Pray for my family and friends, pray for all the innocent lives that could be ruined.

"So what the fuck am I supposed to do now. It's not like I can go back to my people, not like this." The only thing I could do now was keep my head cool. There was no sense in losing my mind, especially since I still couldn't feel my legs and arms completely.

And the Homini were frightening as hell.

"We have decided unanimously to keep you here with us, train you the way the rest of us are trained. We have yet to figure out how much of you will remain human and how much will change completely. For the time being however, we have to assign you a Magistor, your guide, along with a place to sleep. The Magistor will most likely pick that spot for you, so it is best to impress them as much as you can." The doctor came over to me and chained my arm to his with something that vaguely resembled handcuffs, yet looked very shabby. I wouldn't be testing their strength, however, for I would rather not get beaten into submission by these Homini.

He started leading me towards a village looking area, filled with little huts that looked almost too small for Homini, only coming up to about five and a half feet tall. No one was around or in them, but some had lights on the inside, yet not enough for me to see what was in the huts. We walked for almost a full two minutes in complete silence, still surrounded by the other Homini, who were all staying as close to the huts as possible. It looked as if they were afraid of me, which made me laugh in my head.

Six to seven foot tall dogs afraid of me? Not likely.

I took this walk as an opportunity to study the Homini, to see what they truly were. All of them looked almost exactly like a human from the neck down, if you forgot about the thick fur that is. Their heads closely resembled the animal they took after, with the really no human resemblance. Each one varied greatly from the rest, with about forty bodies colored differently from the ones beside it. They had padded feet and hands, and did not wear any kind of shoes. Now that I was thinking about it, I had lost mine too.

Then I realized I had not just described them, but me too.

The doctor turned left towards one of the small huts, one with bars instead of the open hole that the rest had. There were a few others like it, but they all seemed to be uninhabited like the first, with the only thing moving inside being the flicker of a candle dancing against the small wooden walls. The doctor, or now the jailor, opened the bars and promptly shoved me in to the small hut, making sure my head was bent so I could fit. He then closed the bars and pulled out a key, quickly locking the gate behind me.

I felt like a true animal.

*

It felt like an eternity had gone past before anything started to happen outside the little hut. I had given up my watch at the gate, instead settling with lying down and listening. Not much happened around my cage, and if it weren't for the great hearing that had come with the fluffy white ears now on top of my head I would have thought the place had been abandoned.

There seemed to always be a slight murmuring going on in the shadows just out of sight from what I could see through the bars, as if Homini were sitting and watching me, waiting for me to do something about what had happened to me. As if they were judging to see how I acted in this situation.

Doing nothing about all your problems has to get me at least a ten out of ten score.

Besides hearing the whispers that hung out at the edges of the shadows I had heard the crackling of multiple fires going on nearby, once again out of eyesight. It was one of the only signs that there was true life here, yet no voices could be heard other that the murmuring that still hung out around the other shacks.

So much for out of sight out of mind.

Not one person had gone by the front of the shack, as if the Homini thought I was dangerous. I was an outsider after all, so there was no knowledge about me. No facts for them to use to find out how I worked. Maybe I was dangerous, yet I had no idea what my strengths were now that I had a new body. Until I met this Magistor, as the Homini called it, I would be in the dark about most everything that was going on in and around me.

The furry body that was now mine seemed other worldly. I would get startled when I wanted to move my arm and saw the white arm before me move on command. I didn't want to inspect my body, but it was too hard to resist finding out what had changed. I felt my ears; my fingers finally having gained back some of their feeling, and found a very soft and short layer of fur covering the tall triangles on top of my head. They could swivel, but I didn't know how to make them do anything. It was as if they had a mind of their own, moving to and fro without a care for what I wanted them to do. Maybe the guide would teach me that too, but I don't see how. I guess it would be more like learning how to walk in the fact that I would have to find out in time.

My fingers moved down to my face, finding a muzzle with the same type of fur covering the entire surface. My teeth, as expected, were sharp as hell. I quickly found this out by accidently cutting myself on one of them. My nose was slightly wet, and it felt like I had a cold.

My hands themselves had a very soft pad that covered most of my palm and the entire underside of my fingers, and through time they would get ruff with wear. Oh well, can't stay baby soft forever.

My fur was bright white, with no color alterations whatsoever. I quite liked it, and thought it was considerably better than having to clothe myself each day.

Lazy.

I picked up a clanking noise in the distance resembling that of keys bouncing off one another, and noticed that it seemed to be coming right for my hut. Not much I could do but wait for whoever was holding them to arrive and give me directions. My body was draped with a very thin layer of fright. This Homini that was coming towards me would most likely be the Magistor, the one to guide throughout the rest of my time here.

What if they hate me because I'm an outsider, choosing to punish me throughout the lessons?

But through this fear, I also had another small feeling begin to take hold. Excitement. After all this shit that had happened, I was excited for whatever was going to happen next. There was no reason to mope, what was done was done.

The murmuring had stopped; the origins had probably picked up the sound of keys well before me with their honed ears. I still couldn't see where the noise was coming from, but I knew it was close. I searched for the source, scanning through all the shadows. My vision had increased greatly, allowing me to see through most of the darkness, but it must have been pitch black by now. The only thing that gave off light were the torches that lined what I thought must have been the main pathway through the village, the same way I had come, and the clanking came from the other side of this line. In a few moments, I would see my guide.

At the very edges of the light I saw movement, and the intense spike of interest made my ears point forward and stand at full attention. My tail, the thing I had refused to pay consideration to, had started swishing back and forth, even after my attempts to stop it. I tried to grab it, but it kept moving nonetheless. Even after rolling over on it the tail kept moving.

A body came into view, one of the most beautiful I had seen the entire time I had been here. Her sleek black and blue fur hugged her body, showing off her curvy form. Her ears had been pierced several times, each on directly beside the others. It was a wonder she could keep her ears up with all the metal that was present. Her face was slender, but very soft looking, as if she had never felt anger before.

All of this reminded me of Amita, yet I knew she would never look at me the same. Not after all this.

"Stand at attention when your Magistor is present." The voice was familiar, one that I had heard before. One that hadn't been all too pleased with me.

"Zen?"