From Heir to Predator

The wind howled as the blizzard picked up. “Damnit! I hate the cold!” Ixion yelled, cold water, that’s all snow was, he used some of his magic to head himself, like always did, but he knew his mother would be shaking her finger at him if she knew what he was doing now. It was laughable, he was 22 and he had to sneak out of the house, largely because he was a “ pretender to the throne” that the usurping tsar was paranoid to hang on to.
As he was leaving the palace he struggled with the idea of it. He was truly reckless, but never to the point of actually putting his life in danger. He never picked up a sword any other kind of weapon in his life, for fear of being killed on it. He passed over the sea-cliff bridge, and the wave-beaten spire came into view. The mausoleum of Ikonium stood defiantly in its decadent black and white marble encrustation above a black-green sea. A proud Orthodox cross was corroded and old, shimmering vaguely in the moonlight, strapped hastily on top of the monument.
He knocked on the door. Ixion waited for a few minutes, there was no response. He hollered, “Is anyone here?” No response. Using flint and tinder from his back pocket he made a spark, and then created a fireball. Holding it like a baseball, Ixion wound up and threw the burning thing into the door, which incinerated. The ashes scurried away in the snow; Ixion cautiously stepped over the threshold. He entered the doorway expecting a Koranthian gypsy to say “Gotcha!” and throw a goose pie in his face. When he opened the door, the only thing that he saw was a huge hypostyle hall with a square columnless break in the center. There he saw a large golden oblong shape upon a pedestal. As he past the ever-spark lamps under the central arch path, he lit the fires with his hands giving him greater light in the center. He approached the central pedestal ands saw the silver-blue liquid in the bowl. It was real. It was here.
He pulled his phial from his belt; he unscrewed the top and filled it. (Insert Zelda chest-opening noise and Navi saying “Listen!” shortly afterwards) Cautiously he raised the liquid to his lips and drank it.
****
While Ixion drank, another figure entered the doorway, he moved around the illuminated areas, soundlessly. He leaned on one of the arcade columns directly behind Ixion and smiled. His plan had succeeded.
***
Oblivious of his visitor he suddenly felt the effects. Ixion’s body rippled with strength, he could feel power beyond his understanding flooding him. Ixion’s fears were melting away; this is what immortality felt like! Power…. And cold shiver? All down his spine, from his neck to his lower end, he quivered. Trying to ignore it, he made for the door, but, before he re-entered the hypostyle, another shiver replaced it. Then more, came, “What the heck?” He asked dumbfounded. Ixion’s spinal shivers became more numerous, and the pause between them was fewer, and fewer, until the shivers galvanized into pains in his lower abdomen and his neck.
Then it all feel apart, his muscle mass was still increasing, and the pain in his back released as a sharp curved triangular object tore out of his back, he yelled in pain and grabbed, despite it’s odd location. Rushing back to the fountain-pan he stared at into. He had seen it before; it was a shark’s fin. The water had cursed him, but it wasn’t finished just yet, the spinal pains released from the dorsal fin’s escape cascaded full force into his abdomen, and turned his tail bone into a full fledged tail with frightening speed and a sudden “RIIIIIIIIIIIIP”, the sudden forced weight shift through him to the ground. His growing body revealed a drastic skin change; it was darkening in some places, while graying and bleaching itself in others. The dark on the edges of his body spots were becoming pattern like, and orange around the edges of his unnatural designs. His fingers graying faster, each lost distinction of skin and nail, and became scaly and pointed. On bit hands His ring and pinky fingers, and his index and middle fingers combined together, leaving him with two three fingered claws.
His neck finally caving in to the immense pain and pressure lengthened quickly and violently causing him to let out a pained yell. Changes in his dental structures, including a second row of teeth and complete changes of the facial structure perpetuated that yell. The scaly membrane in between his fingers grew up to his mid-finger joints giving his primal claws an adaptation to move in the water, soon to be his home. As his body grayed, and became scaly, his feet erupted from his shoes. They quickly lost all semblance and structure, melting into fins, with even less traction or dexterity, becoming like his finger-webs, a gradation orange to red into black. His ears stretched out into fin-like structures, and two small fins tore out of his elbows. His neck though just freed from the pain of stretching opened itself along with an entire new internal breathing system, five red and operational gill slits on either side of his neck.
The feeling released him. He coughed and sputtered, his clothing was in shambles, and he knew that he was a monster. He walked to the fountain-pan clumsily, trying to accommodate for his tail and largely weak fins. He struggled over and was horrified at his reflection; he had the face and body of those shark-monsters.
A loud laugh pierced the hypostyle hall’s silence, finally devoid of Ixion’s screams. “Fool!” It shouted. Ignacio finally stepped into the light from behind the arcade. “I win now, your family can be completely expelled from the capital, and your house can be a list in dusty ink in the library now.”
Ixion snapped out of his stupor and suddenly a rage he had never known overtook him. “Why!” he yelled at Ixion, completely lost in his anger. “What did I ever do to you!?”
“Your mere existence is a threat. I can’t have a pretender strutting about, from a rival house, not when I have usurped a throne. Seriously Ixion, Why would a mausoleum with no dead people in it contain the elixir of life? True you are immortal, but you just drank the draught that the mersharks forced down human’s throats, to get them to join their ranks against the Merfolk. Ironic isn’t it? You don’t like being cold or wet right? Well that’s basically your future now. Only a perfectly shaped and curse free HUMAN being can rule Pharos. You forthwith banished from pharos, and the Varanok region, Mershark. ” He finished spitting at Ixion’s ruined form.

Ixion responded by pulling the fountainhead clear from the ground and hurling it at Ignacio, he barely turned around in time to slice the marble reliquary in half. Hat it hit him it would have killed him. Snarling, Ixion pulled one of the columns from the arches, scraping it against the ground. A shower of sparks erupted from the floor, and setting down the column, he attempted to ignite the sparks, but only resulted in him burning his hands. Ignacio however fired a fireball at him; Ixion dove out of the way, as the flames collided with central arch in the narthex arcade. With a crash the super structure of the building started to break apart, Ignacio escaped out a hole in the wall, and ran off towards the bridge cackling. Ixion followed him as quickly as he could, trying o conquer his rage and fear with vengeance, but Ignacio was half way across the bridge when Ixion cleared the doomed structure.
As he looked across the way at Ixion, he saw a startling change take place in the tsar; His body frame widened and became … hairy? With a couple of screams form his tormentor, a bear wreathed in flame emerged. The Ignacio-bear coughed a fireball into the bridge and ran off into the darkness. Ixion felt a brief joy; Ignacio was illegitimate too! Meaning- His thought was interrupted by the landmass shaking. With the bridge support gone, nothing held the island- spire up. It slowly collapsed, carrying the burning ruins and Ixion into the deep dark depths of the sea.
******
Ixion awoke under water. Something was moving in the water next to him. It circled him slowly, it was… gray…. and red…. And it was a shark- no it had arms, but no legs. It was a different shark monster! “Greetings slave.” A rough voice spoke as the shape stopped its vulture-like gliding. “Welcome to the Cove of Gremako. I am Carchidimos your master.”
Ixion coughed. “No I really don’t think you are.” He said, getting right in the creatures face. Which was a stupid thing to do really when half an hour ago, one was afraid of dying, and was now staring down the face of a shark bigger than one’s self. “Did you not understand me?” he asked astonished, “I am Carchidimos. I am the alpha male of this war-school. You are in this war school, and you will bow before me.”
“My name is Ixion Maurlino, and I am a human, I was betrayed by that foul cursed creature Ignacio, and I bow before no one.”
“I know him, who do you think told him the secret of that mausoleum you two just destroyed? I got another servant and he got rid of a pest.” He added laughing.
“I will not kneel!” Ixion growled back at him, angering the shark lord further.
Carchidimos lunged at him with his trident, Ixion struck it from his hands, and after punching one of his remoras sped off in the first opening he saw. Carchidimos, shocked, but not harmed decided not to follow him, he was heading right for Pyreahydos, where he would be captured and if he went quietly eventually ransomed to him, or killed if he fought back. Ixion swam as fast as he could, relying solely on new instincts, as he had never learned to swim before this instance.
Surprised by his success at eluding the shark creature he slowed his pace down, but not an efficient amount to avoid colliding with a Pyreahydian solider. “Hey Another one!! Who are you shark person?”
“Ixion.” He answered, “I’m not a mershark!!”
“Really? Then I guess you are a merman, he totally looks like it doesn’t he Actius?” the second one asked.
“Albertian, He totally fooled me! Come on buddy you’re going to Pontus,” the first one said.
“Haaaang on there… buddy!!” A girl’s voce said. “Don’t take him away that’s my boy friend! Ixion’s a little tired form his journey, he’s with me, and we have Pontus’s protection because we ran from Carchidimos.” A female mershark appeared, smiling at the captured mershark.
“Kalani? You know this ragamuffin? Okay fine I’ll take your word for it, but I warn you, he causes any problems and you’ll pay for it.” Actius told her.
Covering the freed mersharks mouth she said a quick, “ He won’t!” Kalani then led Ixion back to her cave where she would explain everything.
---------------
Kalani is © Epiaruna
Ixion, Ignacio, Carchidimos and the two guards are all © to me.

Okay, a longtime coming but here you go Ixion’s transformation from human to mershark. I’m fairly happy with this, though I felt rushed at the same time. Issues with coloring, shading and proportion, obviously, and the Corinthian columns could be better. It does in my defense look better in real life.

Influences:
The arcade in the back was influenced by an image of the hypostyle prayer hall Great mosque of Cordoba (or Cordova), Spain.
The fountain came from a various bunch of Roman, Romanesque and Gothic relief sculptures.