Wretched Little Human Things

Storm

A spell had gone haywire in a strange new way. Magic wasn't really supposed to work the way it just had, and everyone would forever be confused on the hows and whys of the whole matter. Unfortunately for everyone, that would never be explained. Your mind would probably implode if you ever found out. It's best to let it be. None of that is the point of this story, anyhow.

Pyronia woke with a gasp and scrambled backward until she hit her head on on something. She reached up to grip the back of her skull, wincing. The second thing she did was launch into a bout of coughing and wheezing so intense that she feared she would pass out once again. The air was burning her lungs, and with Pyronia being a fire mage, it really had no right to do that.

It took some indiscernible amount of time for her to get her bearings. When at last she did, she was no wiser to the situation.

There was dirty gray stone all around. Her fiery robes were soiled by grime and filth and liquids of questionable origin. The stone was fairly wet, but only on the bottom, bringing Pyronia to the wonderful realization that she'd somehow teleported into the bottom of a drainage ditch. There was a stone bridge above her, and beyond, she spotted some rather sickly greenery. None of that was what concerned her the most. No, what captured her attention as well as her ire, was the other figure she'd come to this place with: the person whose own attire was a bright, blinding mixture of blue and white.

Gale. This was her fault somehow, Pyronia was sure.

It wasn't long before Gale launched into wakefulness and endured the same general process as Pyronia had. She trudged halfway up the slope and sat down, waiting for her nemesis to get her bearings. Couldn't very well berate her before she was lucid enough to understand that she was, in fact, being berated.

Finally: "Well, my dear, your incompetence strikes again. Just look at the mess you've made of yourself."

"I.. wha-what did you do?" Gale screeched, trying and failing to get back on her feet. From the look of things, she was lightheaded. "We were just in the Valley of Glowsprites! I was about to secure the Mountain Kingdom's grandest victory yet! But you... You! What did you do, you blasted little candlewick?"

"I didn't do a thing wrong. My magic is precise and controlled, as any proper mage's."

"Utter ratspit! You did this; I know you did! Tell me where you've taken me, you vile little emberlick!"

"Oh, enough with the juvenile name-calling," said Pyronia. "We can argue until the Fang Cycle turns, but it won't help a thing."

"Where are we?" demanded Gale, her cloak's hood at last slipping off, and the movement drew Pyronia's attention to...

No. What? It didn't make any sense.

"I don't know. Gale, look at your hair." She slid carefully back down to the bottom of the ditch and crept closer.

"Look at my hair? What are you going on about, you-"

She knelt, grabbed her by the wrist, and her gaze burned into Gale's blue eyes. "Look."

Pyronia took a handful of her long hair and pulled it up so that Gale could see.

It wasn't white anymore. It wasn't the color of an ice mage's hair. It was a pale, golden yellow. Gale was in borderline hysterics at once, rambling this way and that about what Pyronia had supposedly done to her. Meanwhile, Pyronia examined her own. Hers was still the same curly brown, which put her mind at ease. When she tucked it back away behind an ear, her mind was un-eased all over again.

Her ears. They were round, and they had a strange little dangle at the bottom. The points were gone, as was all the control of movement she was used to. Her ears were no longer the catlike ears of an elf.