Sharkshift

Looking over his shoulders and pausing to hear the rhythm of the currents, he stopped moving. He was alone.

Drifting far outside the borders of Paroceanica, he was prepared to try out the disguise. Ageaus intended to infiltrate a Mershark colony that had not been registered with the imperial government by their ambassadors. If they thought they would go unseen forever, they were gravely mistaken, although the size of the colony was not yet of invasion capacity.

Ageaus had overheard some of the reports, and he knew where the settlement was. He convinced his father he would be all right, and acquired the artifact he needed to put his plan in motion. None of the mersharks knew what he looked like, so his disguise could work, but his sword was an unmistakable icon of the Royal family. Unwilling to leave it in Paroceanica, he had assurances that it would change along with him.

He pulled the shark tooth out of his back pocket, gazing at the smoothness of it, and comparing it with the brittle edges and the original function of the tooth. It had been used before, in the wars of his grandfather to temporarily change a merperson into a mershark during espionage missions. It would be temporary, unless the shark it came from had bitten him and it remained embedded in his body. Rather than wait for a cursed shark to bite him, he had found the tooth strung to be worn on the arm. He set it around his upper arm, and as he tightened it, he felt a jolt running from his brain stem to the tip of his tail.

The jolt fanned into his head, his arms and through his tail, especially at his pelvic fins by his waist. While his scales discolored to blue on his back, they lightened on his front side. These new scales spread up to his upper body transforming flesh to scale. His pelvic fin structure was next to react to the shock from earlier. At once on both sides, the cartilage solidified to bone and along with muscles and flesh it grew out from his pelvis. The sudden increase was incredibly painful, as two much smaller limbs forcibly extended themselves from his body. Those fins turned into flippers capable of moving him through the water. His tail structure as a result was obliged to agonizingly bend backwards as it too began to change.

His arms changed too, they each grew slightly larger as he did, and the colors changed to that of a Mako shark. His arm fins bunched up and became streamlined, their color following in suit with the rest of his arms. He winced, as his hands when affected, no longer sported five fingers, the index and middle combined, as did his ring and pinky fingers. Both hands reduced to three digits, became the webbed claws of a sea hunter. The scales surged up his arms, however not changing his tattoo, from his shoulders to his neck and chest.

His neck thickened, and two more gill slits ripped themselves open below the other three originals. His dorsal fin, on his fully scaled back, became the more efficient and feared fin of the seas and sailors. The scales moved into his face next, pulling it forward, and reducing his mouth and nose into a shark’s snout. Ageaus snarled as he could feel the extra rows of teeth dig their way out of his rapidly changing jaws. He knew that he would soon be an undisputed predatory creature. His ear fins became streamlined like the other mersharks he’d seen, and as his tail continued to grow, he felt it was a secondary part of him, his legs. Strange as it seemed to him, they were soon to take precedence while was in this shape.

His caudal tail fin no longer became the centrally oriented fin he was used to. It galvanized into two different points, aligned with his body vertically. His other tail fins changed as well, becoming their shark equivalents. At last everything had shifted, the change had been painful, especially the legs and the extra rows of teeth, but it faded when he finished.

He took in a big breath through his gills. He was still there, mentally in complete control of his facilities. He did feel a much more primal side to himself now and there was a lot of new senses bombarding his mind as well. Mersharks were his mortal enemy, and to see his appearance as one was still unnerving. Even considering that, he felt a strange release at the same time. His sword had changed into a smaller but still effective dagger but other than that his belt and markings remained intact as they had when he changed into a feral. Experimenting with his new legs, Ageaus soon felt ready to pay the colony a visit. He swam off in the direction of the town, using his legs in conjunction with his tail, and was incredibly surprised by his newfound speed.

Ageaus may not like the way he looked, or be real thrilled that he was descending into a nest of them, it didn’t mean he could try to enjoy the new abilities. Before he landed at the gates of the city, he reminded himself to keep this a secret from Epi.
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Ageaus transforming? And it's not the dragon?

After I got bored of striving for this peace, I decided to re-work and old picture that I had re-sketched during my vacation, and then write a story for it.

Yes the dragon is still gone form his character design.

Epi is © to
Ageaus is © to me.