The Degenerate (Mythics Book One)

23

All I'd ever wanted was to find out who I truly was.

Where I belonged.

What if you never belong?

I stepped into the water. Immediately, the transformation sizzled against my feet and all the way up to my ankles. Skin cracked and flaked off. Bones shifted and lengthened, ligaments and tendons stretching and adjusting. I kept my gaze trained straight ahead---

---and kept walking.

It became hard to breathe once the water reached my chest, sucking the air right out of my lungs. I gasped, letting my arms submerge themselves completely. The pain was excruciating and impossible to grow used to. My body was changing, shifting like that of a werewolf. Adapting. My fingers cracked and grew, lengthened and became stiff, just like my toes.

I sucked in a breath and dunked myself all the way under, the change tingling and rushing over my head. I opened my eyes. My hair swirled like ink around me, drifting. Straining overtook my eyes, a dull ache, and I felt my vision shift into something more. Like normal eyesight adjusting in the darkness, the depths became clearer to me. Even my ears adjusted shape to better understand the cacophony of an ocean's abyss. Pointed and rippled, like an elf's.

I watched as my splayed hand continued to transform, my fingers lengthening and small webs spread between them. All the better to supposedly help me swim faster with stronger strokes. My feet and hands were a matching set.

I was a new creature. I was sleek and shining, a predator dressed in scales. They crested over my entire body, the color of blue-green opals. Flexing my knuckles, I watched them shift like plates of armor as I bent my fingers. My mind made a connection and flickered back to an image of Mystique from the X-Men movies, all blue and elegant and covered in bumps and ridges. Unnatural. Still a creature of deadly grace.

The last of the air escaped from my mouth in a torrent of bubbles. They popped up to the surface. My body still trembled with tingling pain and a strange fatigue. I kicked my powerful legs and propelled myself up to the surface, breathing in real air, not the stuffy water that I could take in just as easily. Breathing it in feels almost foreign once I'm completely shifted, like switching hands while writing. A weak muscle.

I didn't like that. Not at all. Breathing air was normal, human. I wouldn't let it go. I couldn't.

I sucked it into my lungs.

Out there in those few minutes, I answer to no one. I shoved all worry into the back of my mind and stroked the water with my hands, letting the cool liquid part and churn around me in little whirlpools. My timer ticking down, I made sure to rub the dirt off my body, run my hands through my hair. Sweat and grime gets massaged off my scalp, and I was extra careful with the fading knot on the back of my head.

After everything, I realized I forgot my clothes. The dirty ones were in a pile a few feet away, but the thought of sliding them back on my freshly cleaned skin made me shudder. I glanced down. I was just wearing my panties and bra, kind of like a bikini, right? Not that I had much experience wearing bikinis...

Crap. Crap, crap, crap. How did I manage to forget my clothes? I blushed, even though there was no one around to partake of my embarrassment.

Yet.