Jon groaned, absolutely exasperated. So not only was she stuck in an alien body, minus both her hands and her original gender, now she had to go to the bathroom, right in the goddamn middle of nowhere. She didn't even know how. But fortunately, it wasn't too urgent, and she could hear running water not too far off, which would be handy if she screwed up. She made her way towards the sound.
The source of the noise, she discovered, was a burbling spring that was the source of a small river. Jon squatted down a few dozen yards away and tried to do her business. All things considered, it went pretty well, but she still found herself in need of a dip; not having anything to clean herself with, or hands with which to do it, was going to get old pretty fast. She turned towards the spring...
That was when she saw the sign. It was a battered, weathered old piece of pine board nailed to an equally aged post, the lettering worn almost to the point of illegibility. Jon walked up to it and stared intently at it, trying to make out the text. SP..NG OF T..N.F.RM...ON? She couldn't help but get Wheel Of Fortune flashbacks as she tried to piece it together. "Spring Of Transformation," maybe?
Jon had a brief flirtation with doubt as she thought about the idea of a magic spring that turned you into something else, but then she remembered that she was a bird-girl trapped in another world by an arcade game. Sure, why not; it was probably one of the more plausible things about the whole affair. She thought about testing it, but she wasn't too sure it was a good idea; what if she became something even worse? What if it only worked once?
She stood there for some time, wrestling with the urge to just dive in and pray that she got her hands back and/or became male again, until... "Who are you?" came a voice, not too far behind her. Jon nearly jumped out of her skin at the noise, and whirled around to see who was talking. The voice seemed familiar, and although the figure was clearly not human, it still looked like...
"Karyn!!!" she yelled, rushing towards the strange, snakey figure, wings outstretched. She was so overjoyed to see her friend again that she barely even noticed how weird it felt to have her breasts pressed up against someone else's as she embraced her best friend. Karyn, for her part, was confused for a moment, until she put two and two together and realized that this harpy might just be the harpy she was looking for, then smiled and returned the hug. "Jon!" she laughed. "Since when are you a girl?"
Jon's face flushed. "Well," she said, "there was this 'random' option, and I was kind of in a hurry, and obviously I never guessed I'd actually be my character."
Karyn nodded. "True. I guess I might've done the same, if I hadn't known."
"You mean you knew you'd be sent here?" Jon could hardly believe what she'd just heard. "But...wait, you came to rescue me, didn't you?"
Karyn shrugged. "Well, I hope so. The truth is, I don't know how to get out of here, and wherever we are, it's out of the stone's range. We might both be stuck."
Jon could feel something stinging at the corner of her eyes. "You didn't have to do...oh God, Karyn, I can't tell you how glad I am to see you!"
Karyn smiled. "I missed you too, Jon-boy. Or is that 'Jon-girl?' Anyway, what's this place?"
"The sign says 'spring of transformation,' I think." Jon pulled out of the hug and walked over towards the bank. "I've been debating whether or not to try it out."
"Well I damn well am!" Karyn said. "I think I've got some wires crossed in this body's brain or something, and it's been doing some...embarrassing things." She began to slide towards the spring.
"Well, I won't ask, as long as you promise not to try and embarrass me about the being-a-girl thing," Jon said.
Karyn chuckled. "I don't know if I can resist the temptation," she said, "but fair enough. Come on, we'll both do it, and if one of us gets screwed, the other can take care of her."
Jon wondered what would happen if they both wound up in bad forms, but followed Karyn's lead. They slid into the warm, inviting spring and sat there for a moment, but nothing happened.
"Maybe we need to submerge completely," Jon suggested.
"Good idea," Karyn said. "On my mark: three, two, one!"
They both plunged beneath the water. Jon reemerged a second later, took a deep breath, and looked down. From what she could see in the ripples, she'd become a petite Asian girl, but below she could see the eight octopus arms that had replaced her legs. She had her hands back, but this was not what she'd hoped for. And where was Karyn?
Just then, a tiny figure rocketed up from under the water, coming to a stop at about face-level. Karyn looked down at herself, to see what Jon was staring at. She had become a pixie, no more than four inches tall, with a slight build and modest figure. Aside from the blur of wings behind her and the fact that her hair was green, she actually looked quite a bit like she had before her accidental wish the other day, which made her happy. And if she recalled correctly, pixies had been another good caster choice...
"Eh, I'll take it," she said, turning to Jon. "You, though...can you even move on land like that?"
"Maybe," Jon said. "These things do feel pretty strong. But I'd rather try for something else. Preferably male. Assuming it works multiple times, that is." She dove under.
The spring did work its magic again, but Jon's resulting centaur body, while more practical for their travels, was still female. After another dozen attempts, it became clear that the spring only change species, not gender.
Jon sighed. So much for that idea. She had her hands back, at least, and her legs, but she was still stuck as a girl, for now. Her latest transformation had left her as a sort of half-dragon, with bony, red-skinned wings, small horns poking out from under her long, firey-red hair, and about three feet of scaly, reptilian tail extending from the base of her spine. She was much less petite than she had been; not particularily tall or stocky, but sturdily built nonetheless.
Jon weighed her options. If she was stuck as a girl for the moment, this wasn't a bad form; she wasn't much larger or smaller than normal humans, like centaurs or fairies, and she had all her limbs. And if she was to be the party brawler, this was probably actually a pretty good choice. On the other hand, she might get something less obviously non-human by trying again. On the other other hand, what if there really was a limit after all, and she got stuck as something worse?
"Hurry up and make up your mind," Karyn urged. "We need to find civilization. And food. And clothes."
