It wasn’t the shape the struck Jon first, or the size, or that bizarre, mismatched colors.
It was the sound.
A low, earth-shaking rumble emanating from it, a hateful growl that shook Jon to his bones. It was animalistic, predatory, and unnatural—less bestial moan and more something of nightmares.
Then he noticed the other stuff. Not all at once, of course, but in rapid snapshots of the different features and how they didn’t match together. The thing had no eyes and too many legs, jagged teeth pointing in every direction, mats of darkish, brownish, grayish fur. It was massive. Almost as tall as Jon, and long enough it struggled to fit in the room.
“Mikey?” Jon gasped.
Mikey was nowhere to be seen. The creature looked ready to pounce.
“Mikey!?”
And then it did.
Zoe darted forward with her blades out, as if she suddenly knew exactly how use them. “Stop!”
And it did that too. Little more than inch away from Jon’s face, mouth wide open, and it was just… Frozen.
“Fuck me,” Zoe spat out. “Is this thing supposed to be my mount or something? It’s disgusting! And where the hell is Mikey?”
“I… I think this thing is Mikey.” Jon said shakily.
Zoe looked down at him incredulously. The creature yawned.
“You’re shitting me. You HAVE to be shitting me.” She glanced at it, faltered, and let her blades fall to her side. “He’d still act like himself, right? Maybe it’s a squirrel or something that got stuck in here…”
Jon didn’t answer. He was rushing back to his room as fast as his legs could carry him, mind reeling for wishes that’s undo whatever the hell this was.
Worst case, I can at least fix Mikey. Probably. Definitely.
He shoved his door open, dashed for the stone, and barely stopped himself when he realized why that was a terrible idea.
The shades were still down and the room was still dark… Except for a sliver of blue sunlight slipping through, right on top of the stone. Which, horrifyingly, was changing just like everything else the light touched, its rounded surface cracking as if it were splitting apart.
Frick, frick, frick, frick.
Jon didn’t give himself the time to think. He just grabbed it and started throwing out everything he could think of.
“I wish the sun was back to normal!”
Nothing. He yelped in pain as his body began to shift.
“I wish my family was back to normal!”
Still nothing. His skin was changing colors.
“I wish I knew what was—!”
The stone shattered. Jon winced and gripped as tightly as he could, but could only keep a single piece. The others, each shifting to a different color, fell to the floor and vanished into wispy smoke.
