Witchbreaker (Dragon Apocalypse) by James Maxey

rising into the air, with her human torso balanced atop it. She was suddenly thirteen feet tall. It was oddly empowering to look upon the world from such a vantage point.
    As she crawled from the grave, a large fragment of black glass caught her eye and she momentarily forgot about her thirst. She stretched out her hand toward a particularly large remnant and her body obeyed her unspoken will to lower her toward it. She picked up the glass, a good fifty-pound smoke-blackened chunk.
    Glass was one of her favorite materials to manipulate. She had only to touch it and think and it would flow to whatever form she imagined, unlike iron or copper, which she had to physically sculpt. In moments, she’d coaxed the glass into a long flat plane, which she rested against a tree trunk.
    She willed herself before it. The midday sun that pierced the leafy canopy was bright enough to turn the dark glass into a mirror. She stared at herself for a long time. The scales of her tail glistened as if they were wet, though when she touched them, they were dry, smooth as polished wood, slightly warm, and hard as bone. But despite the hardness, she could feel the pressure of her fingers in the muscles below. Sliding her hands around, she even found that she could feel a pulse. She wondered how her heart found the strength to push blood such a length. And where had she gained all of the new mass? While she could shape glass and wood and other materials, she couldn’t create these from thin air. Nothing new was added or subtracted from the total mass of the objects she sculpted. Why should this new nail giving her command of decay suddenly allow her to magically create matter?
    She thought about Greatshadow’s words. She wasn’t creating mass. She was channeling it. Rott manifested himself as a giant black serpent. Her new body hadn’t come out of thin air. Somehow, she’d opened a gate. Her own body was now a door that the dragon was slipping through. Why? And, more urgently, would he continue to do so? Had the changes stopped?
    Pressing her lips together, she untied her blouse. She shed it, and stood naked before the mirror. From her pubic mound up, she was still completely human, with no hint of scales. She turned and peered back over her shoulders. Her buttocks blended into the serpent body. The line of transformation seemed to mirror the shape of her pelvis.
    Frowning, she pondered the gross yet practical matter of how she now went to the bathroom. The loss of her reproductive organs was tragic, yes, but it wasn’t as if she’d been using them. But even if she never planned on having children, she did still plan to eat and drink, and these actions had consequences.
    With a sense of both revulsion and curiosity, she ran her fingers along her front. The scales of her back and side were the shape and size of the heads of garden spades, but her front scales were more like ringed bands. She explored the length of her body until, three feet from the tip of her tail, she found a gap between the bands that her fingers slipped into. She withdrew her fingers at once; the flesh within the gap was tender. She furrowed her brow. This was a very long way for food to travel. And there seemed to be only the one hole. When she returned to civilization, she would have to seek out a naturalist who could explain the intricacies of snake anatomy.
    Ah, yes. Returning to civilization. That might prove to be a challenge. Even in as wild a port as Commonground, full of half-seeds and the most jaded of humanity, she couldn’t imagine she would get a warm reception. She bent down and picked up her blouse. She slithered once more toward her tent, paying little attention to her surroundings as she buttoned her clothes shut once more.
    Twenty feet from the tent she stopped, looking up. She heard something.
    She stared at the silk walls. Was there someone moving inside? Had Brand and Bigsby tricked her?
    In answer, the tent flaps opened and two forest pygmies walked