Changed: A New World
 

The twelve students in the cramped classroom sat bundled up in their winter clothing shivering. The old brick building’s heating system was down again.

The professor droned on about the history of printmaking. Most of the students were trying hard to stay awake. Considering this was a fairly low level art class, most we’re simply taking it to mark off their fine arts credit and could make do with any passing grade. A couple were legitimately making an effort to pay attention but the professor’s lecture wasn’t helped by the slow monotone of his presentation. He seemed about as excited with the material as they were.

The sunlight streaming through the blinds of the windows went out…like flipping a switch. Where once you could see bushes, a walkway, and the building next door now nothing was visible. Just an inky blackness…a complete absence of light as if the building were suddenly floating in a complete void.

They had just a brief few moments to notice this before the classroom’s lights shut off as well, leaving them in complete and utter darkness. Some screamed.

A few shouts of confusion…

Then an impression of movement. Body wrenching movement. Mind tearing movement. Nausea hit with a vengeance as their inner ears protested vigorously. They gripped their chairs tightly. Those on the floor took comfort from the hardness beneath them telling them that they were still…somewhere… The screams and sounds of retching comforted some…at least they weren’t alone…

The movement stopped.

The rectangles of the windows appeared. The brick path and the building were back though the light was dim casting a sallow pall across the scene.

Students and professor looked at each other, began yammering and chattering in fear and confusion.

They were all silenced instantly.

One student imagined what came next as a hand. A mystical smoky hand just slamming into his body. He jerked as something… violated him.

Some felt it for a mere instant only to then drop in relief.

Other were not so lucky. Pain…pleasure…the sensation was different for each individual. Some passed out as their minds could literally not withstand the sheer amount of sensation whether it be the touch of a million stabbing knives or the ecstasy of a billion orgasms. Others merely felt the change… in its entirety.

Writhing tentacles came out of the being now known as Kuel's mouth. The creature, immediately crawled out of the room, all the way to the little snack shop that the university had on campus. He knew that the shop had a phone that he could use. With his clawed hands, he immediately attempted to pick up the phone and call 9-1-1. It was the best answer that he had at the moment.

The lights flicked back on as the university’s emergency generators kicked in, though they were noticeably dimmer.

Kuel’s nearness to the door allowed him to slip out without anyone noticing the monstrosity he had become as most were far to bound up in their own misfortune.

As the door closed behind him, the near constant screams of Kelly Capstick were finally softened. Unfortunately, there were plenty of other shrieks and screeches from other terrified throats throughout the building.

Violet Hall was set up with a large open area in the middle with nodes of classrooms at each of the four corners. On every side was an entrance and Kuel now crawled to the one on the south side, seemingly oblivious to the people around him drawing back in horror or others who cowered, their minds shying from the changes that had come over them.

The Illithid passed very close to a huge bull headed man curled up in a ball wailing. Torn clothing hung in shreds from the creature’s massive frame and he took no notice to Kuel as the mindflayer single mindedly dragged himself to the C-store where his adrenaline soaked brain assured him a phone call to 911 would solve all his problems.

Soon enough he’d reached the double doors and he had to kneel to press them open. A blast of muggy hot air hit him immediately as he crawled out. Some part of his mind took note that the icy coldness of the building had been replaced by an inexplicable warmth that only now did he remember. Out here winter was seemingly gone…this was summer…the hot damp summer of the Florida everglades.

His one brief moment of awareness faded once more as he saw the convenient store across the street. It took up the corner of one long row of apartments. He continued his crawl down the stone steps of the building and he refused to notice the car smashed into the side of Violet Hall. No other cars traveled the street; a few were stopped further down at the crosswalk. Their riders out and looking around in wonder and confusion.

Kuel certainly didn’t notice but in the distance to the west and east a wall of trees could be seen like mountains on the horizon in Colorado. These trees had to be huge to tower as they did. Those outside that saw them found them unsettling…intimidating. The shear height…the dark forbidding depths…the fact that they were casting their shadows across the entirety of the campus.

Kuel made it to the C-store and pushed the glass doors and crawled in. His ears were immediately met by an even higher pitched scream than Capstick’s. The old woman behind the counter shouted something about demons and fled to the backroom at the end of the small store. He paid it no mind…he could see the phone…his salvation…

An automated voice, “All circuits are busy. Please stay on the line. Our next available operator will be with you shortly. All circuits are busy. Please stay on the line. Our next available operator will be with you shortly. All circuits-”

OOC: Forgive me for embellishing on the vampire myth, I know they don't have reflections, but it seemed like the best way for her to discover her change.

Hungry.

Arielle was hungry. She tried not to think about it, and kicked herself mentally for sleeping in and missing breakfast, but her stomach pain served as a painful reminder and the constant barrage of "FEED ME" growls kept her in a state of misery.

She sat in her Methodologies and Masterpieces seminar idly tapping away on her laptop, the "I'm so old all my friends are dead" professor drawling on about Marcel Proust and his philosophical writings. No one was paying particular attention, but no one was showing it and frankly, the professor would have taught to a corpse if they were the only thing in the room at the time. Arielle glanced down at the clock on her taskbar and began counting the minutes until the class was over and she could get a bagel. The computer screen flickered as the laptop went into battery mode, the lights in the room flickering and then shutting off. The professor was busy calming the students as Arielle looked at her laptop, the only source of light in the room. Static was coming onto the screen before it too shut off. Arielle stood up, reaching for the penlight she kept in her bookbag, only to be thrown to the ground by some sort of earthquake type thing. She hit the ground hard, her head knocking against the chair next to her. As she struggled to get up, a sudden pain in her neck started to throb. "I didn't hit the floor that hard, so it can't be whiplash." The pain intensified, almost as if someone was stabbing her with two hot knives right above her carotid artery. She blacked out as the pain was reaching its peak.

Slowly her eyes opened to be met with the sharp fluorescent lighting on the ceiling flickering on and off. She sat up, anticipating her head to swim, but finding that she felt fine. Just weird, and hungry. Really hungry. Standing up, she checked her body for injuries. Finding none, she surveyed the destruction in the room, checking her classmates for injuries only to be shocked at their appearances. Most were fine, knocked out at most. Some looked like they had just crawled out of a bad B-movie. Some were waking up and growling, not a good sign. Arielle found the last person wedged in the door, she guessed he was trying to escape but wasn't so lucky. In the end the door had crushed him and left him a bloody mess. She looked at the young man, feeling nothing but hunger. She knew it was insane, but something about that blood looked...enticing. She looked up, the mirror on the wall undamaged, and almost screamed. Staring back at her was not the Arielle that stared back at her everyday. The person staring at her was pale with icy blue eyes. Her hair had grown long and she was even in different clothing, not the paramedic uniform she had come to class in. Opening her mouth to speak, she found no voice as she noticed the two very pronounced fangs where her canines used to be.

"What. The. Fuck." She felt completely foreign to herself, yet completely comfortable in her own skin. She thought about it for a moment and it was almost too impossible to be true. She had changed, into something out of a bad horror flick.

She needed to find people, people who were alive and not monsters. Looking down at the boy wedged into the door, her mouth watered as she easily pulled the door from its hinges to free him, surprised at her own strength. She knew he was dead, there was nothing she could do. She was so damned hungry. Bending down, her hands shaking with either fear or hunger, she put her mouth to the boy's neck and bit. The fluid flowing into her mouth tasted like the sweetest wine and the finest food. She drank heavily, savoring the taste and comforting herself with the thought that he was already dead. After she was sated, she wiped her mouth and walked out of the door, searching the building for other survivors.

OOC: There we go, feel free to meet me on the way out of the building if you'd all like.

I was in my Physics class, looking about ready to pass out when the blackout occured. I took the oppertunity to fall asleep, and didn't even notice the room shaking. However, the moment my head hit the floor from me falling out of my chair did wake me up. My lower body was seemingly asleep, but something didn't feel right. I tried to look but the motion caused me to feel dizzy, and I passed out again.

Sometime later, I woke up, and slowly shook my head. My entire body felt like it had gone though a meat grinder. As I tried to get up, I noticed something that caused me to gasp in surprise. My legs were gone, and consquincely, so were my pants. "What the..." I said, now looking at a long, scaly, snakelike tail that now comprised my lower body.

Michael had been in the AV room of the campus. A pair of large headphones were across his ears, as he rummaged through the stack of papers he had brought with him. "Ok, now play this one." He handed the page of sheet music to his best friend, Ben (profile coming soon, band geek changed into a dwarf).

Ben took a glance at the music, pretty easy stuff, and put his Tuba to his lips and blew a few practice notes. He glanced over to Michael who gave him a thumbs up, then began to countdown with his fingers. 5..4..3.. hat's when the power went out the dark room instantly losing what little light they did have. "Dude what the hell." Ben said as he stood up, then fell down doubled over in pain. Michael attempted to check on his friend but immediately found himself in the same painful pose.

Ben crawled forward through the pain gasping for the door handle with his hand, when he noticed the door was getting progressively farther away rather then closer. In fact if anyone was able to pay attention at the moment they would notice all of his limbs retracting on themselves seemingly doubling over on themselves as they got thicker and shorter at the same time. That is if they could take their eye of the red hair bursting forth from Ben's chin till it nearly encompassed his whole body.

Michael's pains were different from his friend's. He managed to stay standing, albeit leaning heavily on the nearby desk, and slowly made his way towards his friend. His clothes began to bulge and rip as his muscles swelled underneath them. His shoes splintered as his feet became more talon-like and less human. But the most antagonizing pain of all was located in Michael's back, his hands clawed at the source of this intense irritation, till finally a grand set of wings burst through his skin, scraping the ceiling as they did. He gathered the bundle of hair that was his friend and threw the door aside, backpedaling in horror and dropping his now dwarfish friend as he saw what was happening to everyone else.

"By the nine blue hells what's going on Ben." Michael gasped in surprise.

"I'm not sure Mic." Ben turned brushing the hair out of his eyes, and trying to gather up the bunches of his now oversized clothes when he saw his best friend turn to stone in front of him. He gasped for a moment then composed himself as he began to look over Michael's frozen state. He turned realizing there was nothing he could do, and left the room closing the door behind him.

Unsure of what to do next he grabbed the edges of his pants, and made his way towards the outside.

Ariel Swanson was in the art room, making casual sketches in the margin of her notes on Picasso, while the teacher droned on about cubist anatomy. It was all stuff she'd read before, and didn't even find interesting. "Picasso's deformities of the human body laid groundbreaking principles for abstract art," the teacher lectured. "Before this period, the popular style was of course realism, in which artists tried to imitate the natural human as perfectly as possible." Arielle knew when to nod, and when to make little motions that simulated writing, just to keep the instructor satisfied.

Ariel began to shade the hair on her drawing when the light from the window just stopped. She turned to look out, but everything outside was gone. She couldn't tell if it was something black that had been plastered against the glass, or if the whole world had gone missing. The rest of the students gave some murmurs of confusion, and the instructor was silent for a moment, when the lights followed suit and the level of panic rose. Ariel, somewhere in her mind, way off in the corner, felt sad that she couldn't finish her drawing. The rest of her mind was too preoccupied with terror and trying not to throw up as the world felt like an out-of-control tilt-a-whirl.

Then the light from the windows started again. The mood was instantly 3 degrees calmer, as "what's happening?" became "what happened?" This peace didn't last long, especially for Ariel, who felt something inside her... shifting, twisting, changing somehow. It wasn't TOO unpleasant, but it was definately an alien feeling... The feeling instensified, and it was like every single nerve was firing at the same time, relaying impulses and flooding her with FEELING. She couldn't see or hear anything around her, because there was just so much going on inside, she couldn't concentrate. All this information overwhelmed Ariel's brain, and she fell unconscious.

Ariel woke up. Her first awareness was of tightness in her chest and…somewhere else. Her shirt and bra were constricting her tightly. She could feel warm air upon her lower back. That somewhere else was unsettling. She could feel-

Reaching back behind her with one hand she touched feathers and felt the touch of the hand. Turning her head so fast she almost gave herself whiplash, Ariel saw them. Wings. White feathered wings.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo OoOoOoOo

Arielle strode down the short hallway to the two storied wide open area of Violet Hall’s center. This place was filled with tables and couches where students could study or just hang out between classes. Now it was being used by various deformed people moaning in bewilderment while others huddled in groups talking in hushed tones.

Across the way the vampire took note of a squat red haired man who seemed nearly as wide as he was tall. He was standing at the hallway that led to the northwest node of classrooms.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo OoOoOoOo

Somehow despite the chaos in the room, Ben noticed the tall very pale woman’s eyes on him from the southeast classroom node hallway.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo OoOoOoOo

“Hey listen.” “Hey listen” “Hey listen”

Madison looked up at the green light hovering over her head where the high pitched voice seemed to be coming from. She could just barely make out the nude form of a tiny woman.

“Hey listen…What the hell is going on? I mean like-oh my god! Everything's like totally big! And my clothes they completely just fell off! My designer jeans and my cute blouse...and my victoria secret thong. They're just totally sitting on my chair but they're like totally circus tents. Oh my god! What are we going to do? And um...” she continued speaking in a whisper "I don't know if you've noticed but FYI, you've totally got a eww gross snake tail for legs."

Ariel felt uncomfortable with her clothing constraining her, but she couldn't do anything about it at the moment... At least she was in the art room and could get some scissors for some needed modifications. Ariel got her first look at her classmates. Most had changed into a managerie of creatures, and all were quite panicked. Ariel, on the other hand, felt quite calm. Aside from the chest pain, she felt pretty good. She walked over to one of her frightened classmates, who had become some kind of ogre thing, put her hand on his shoulder, and tried to calm him down. At the touch of her hand, he seemed to instantly feel better, as if part of Ariel's calmness blanketed him. He certainly wasn't fine with his condition, but he seemed to be less panicked.

Ariel left him, and went throughout the class, trying to comfort the students (the teacher was nowhere to be seen). It didn't take long for her to get everyone back to a semi-rational state. She took a pair of scissors and left the room to see if she could free her wings, and maybe allieviate some of the strain on her breasts. Her wings started to ache from the confinement as well, quite the alien sensation to her.

She paused when she saw what was happening out in the hallway, with many students in disorganized chaos.

Ezekiel stood in the hallway, face blank, hand inside his coat pocket. Unlike many of the other writhing, screaming, and crying students who had changed into some fantastical creature, he was perfectly unchanged, as he always had been. His blank face hid his astonishment and disgust.

He could tell some of the creatures were once his friends, from the way they looked at him. They were looking at him as a source of strength, a pillar of power that represented what they once were. He did not pity them.

"Everyone listen up. If you can hear my voice, stay calm and stop crying. I will try and find some help." his voice boomed over the cacophony, strong and clear and very much unlike his normal voice.

"I wish I could back up my claims. It seems the only help these....freaks are going to get is from themselves."