You had been relaxing inside your home on an unusually cold May morning. Naked and huddled beneath the sheets, you were idly browsing videos on youtube and taking some idle sips from a warm drink next to you. Next thing you know, it’s like someone pulled the plug to a drain in your room. Everything looks as if it’s melting as it rushes towards a gaping black hole that’s appeared in the center of your room. Everything beyond your room is a black expanse, the world outside having seemingly disappeared. Panicking, you scramble out of your bed and to the door of your room. Having touched the ground, you watch in horror as you begin to ‘melt’, your feet stretching across the floor as they head to the rim.

There’s no pain from it, and you can still feel them as normal. It feels as if you’re being pulled down towards the black hole in the center of your room. Struggling to move with your feet, you manage to crawl over to the door and grasp the handle, only for it to snap off as you try to open the door. A sudden sucking sensation on your legs and arms is all the warning you get before they begin to ‘melt’ into the floor. By now the act of pulling your limbs free is extremely straining and you’re unable to free yourself. Panting heavily as more and more of you is surrendered to the reality warping phenomenon.

You feel your feet slip past the ‘rim’ of the hole, and suddenly you’re pulling much harder. The rest of your body flattening out as you’re pulled in entirely. You lose the ability to comprehend what you’re seeing, as if you had been made into a two dimensional object. As your head and hands are pulled over the edge, you’re caught in a free-fall and what comes next could only be described as maddening. You witness sights, smells, tastes, sounds and feelings that no mortal creature was ever meant to experience. You felt as if you were being pulled through a tight tube, while being blasted with a spotlight, loud white-noise and had a wad of cotton jammed into your mouth.

For what felt like a torturous eternity, you were forced through that tube until you came to a short, merciful stop. Suddenly slamming against something hard, solid and cold as a thunderous boom rang out around you, your hearing disappearing as a sharp, painful ringing began in your ears. Your entire head hurts, and everything about your body just feels weird and off. Though your head hurts like hell, you slowly open your eyes to get a better idea of what just happened.

You’re in some wooden room that’s been dashed to pieces by some event. The walls are deeply scratched and splintered with bits of pieces of shrapnel lodged in the wooden walls. Surrounding you are symbols and shapes drawn in what looks to be some mixture of chalk and pigment, however, a lot of it is obscured by the blood of some creatures around you. Their bodies are mangled and deformed, as if some great beast had ripped them apart. Limbs missing, great cuts to their entire body, one poor bastard is missing his… muzzle?

All of that is concerning, but what’s most concerning is that you don’t look like yourself either. Everything about you just feels wrong, and it looks wrong too. Your hands and most of your arms are cloaked in brownish scales, with your nails being replaced with wicked, thick claws. The scales are also present on your legs along with the claws, and migrate up your body where you would normally have hair. Thankfully you still had the hair on your head. You can feel your teeth are a lot larger and predatory, Your senses also seemed to be much sharper and you could freely move your ears, they seemed a bit pointed. You hoped to god that they didn’t look elvish.

Perhaps most striking was that your legs were a bit shorter and your arms longer, making being on all fours much easier. That and you now had a tail, it was surprisingly flexible and coated in bony nodules and ridges. It almost felt like a third arm. Being a man you also had to check your rifle, and much to your relief it looked much the same. Perhaps a bit bigger, but it was hard to tell given your changed stance.

The headache from earlier was fading away, and you were only slightly panicking. Sure you looked different but you were still all there in your head, and that’s what counted right? You open your mouth to speak, only for a gargling roar to spill forth. Pushing air through your larynx several more times, it doesn’t seem you can manage any language. Your cords feel strained and hoarse whenever you attempt to talk, like you had just inhaled sand. Calling for help wasn’t an option, and you’d probably end up scaring people. Scaring people wasn’t a good thing, people tend to kill what they’re afraid of.

Trying to get out of the circle you were currently standing within would mean stepping in the blood. There was no way around it, and you couldn’t get enough speed to jump over it either. Taking a tentative step forward, you put down your weight only to roar out in surprise as your foot slides along. Taking the rest of your body with you. You thud onto the blood-soaked floor loudly, a splatter of blood shooting up and coating you from face to foot. It’s everywhere, your mouth, nose and your cock too. Retching in disgust you scramble, digging your claws into the floor as you drag yourself from the gory morass and towards the entrance of the room.

The door is relatively simple and lacks a viewing port of any sorts, so you can only stand there as you hear heavy footsteps echoing from behind it. Dread fills your body and bile rises in your throat as the door slams forward.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DO-!”

Standing in front of you is an anthropomorphic bear, his pelt the color of freshly fallen snow. Clad in flowing, purple robes like some RPG mage. He’s massive, easily three foot taller than you and yet you see his eyes widen in fear. He looks away from your blood-soaked body and towards the mess of bodies scattered around the room. Wisely, he then shuts the door back and you hear it lock behind him as he storms off in the other direction.

You’re fucked, you’re doomed. You’re going to have people trying to stick you with arrows until the end of time now. Sticking around would be a bad idea, any minute now somebody could come barging through that door to kill you. Looking around the room in a rising panic, you see a potential escape route. High up on the wall, on what looks to be a second floor of scaffolding is a window.

There is no ladder, having been splintered to pieces by something flying into it during your summoning. Shit, you have to think of another way. You turn your eyes to the wooden pillars supporting the second floor, then to the thick claws adorning your limbs. It’s worth a shot. Slamming your hands into the pillar, your claws sink into the wood. Providing a surprisingly strong grip alongside your hands. Sticking your clawed feet in at an angle, you support yourself as you grasp the pole further up. Shimmying up the pole like a coconut picker. Reaching the second floor, you pull yourself up onto the ledge with ease and press your eyes against the glass.

There’s a large tree just outside the window, perfect. It’s then that the door to the room bursts open and your familiar ursine observer barges in. Alongside a group of indeterminate species clad in plate, mail and gambesons. They look around the room for a few moments before one of them spots you and cries out to their fellow anthros. The bear looks at you angrily, clutching his hands together and forming a ball of some purple, arcane energy. You barely duck in time as the magic projectile soars past where your head was, smashing the window to pieces.

You give him a wink before leaping up and onto the windowsill, careful to avoid the large shards of glass. You then pushed yourself off and into the crown of the large tree in front of you, another projectile whistling by the top of your head as you jumped. Now you’re currently tumbling through a maze of branches, scrabbling for a grip amidst the assault of wood and leaves. Your hands find purchase on a lower bough, your ligaments screaming as you terminate most of your velocity before your grip fails and you fall the rest of the way. You land on your back with a soft thud, the grass and dirt beneath you dampening your fall.

With no time to waste, you quickly get onto your feet and glance about. Behind you is some stone and wooden building, which looks fancy in medieval terms. You hear shouts of alarm from within, in front of you is a vast expanse of wilderness. There isn’t a choice and you dash into the woods, eager to leave the whole place behind. You’re not sure where you’re going or how you’ll survive, but anything’s better than getting killed here.

The woods you were currently racing through were temperate, an oak-and-hickory forest. They were pretty, but you scarcely had time to contemplate your surroundings and their beauty. You were likely being hunted and you had to get ahead while you could. If they had full-plate, they could likely afford hounds, or some equivalent. Shit, they could be hounds themselves. That bear could certainly track your scent. You had to wash this blood off, and maybe ride a stream/brook to throw it off.

You slowed your pace to a light jog and began to sniff through your nostrils. You could smell running water. If you could just follow the scent and find it, you could be rid of this rapidly fouling blood and be on your way.

After a forgettable period of running, watching where you’re stepping and stopping to smell. You eventually come across a modest stream, it’s not deep but it’s good enough for its purpose. The forest was getting thicker the further you went into it, and it was starting to get hard to move through the dense underbrush. This stream would provide some welcome and easy travel, without having branches scrape your scaled thighs, or poke your junk.

You slide into the water and barely resist squealing in surprise as you thrash about in shock. This water’s like fucking ice! After a few more moments of chilling agony the pain finally fades away and you begin to scrape the blood off your body. Infact, you rub the entirety of your body against the riverbed. You continue to do this until you’re caked in a fine layer of mud and protoplasmic slime. Not the most pleasant smell, but it’d throw off anyone who could be on your trail.

With your scent covered, you begin to wade downstream. Thankfully it was a warm summer’s day(if you had to guess) and the sunbeams piercing through the light canopy above were a blessed relief from the chill you had just gotten. Taking a deep breath, you let some of the anxiety from earlier fade away. You were going to be fine, you just had to follow the water for another hour or two and then you’d be on your merry way. The water was clean enough to drink, being mostly see-through, so you’d stay close while you figured out what to do.

When the sun starts to set you figure you’ve walked enough and trudge out of the river and up the riverbank. Your feet are a bit numb but not all the way, so you’ll live. The question now is shelter. You’re not going to freeze to death as warm as it is, but you’d rather not wake up with your innards in the jaws of some beast. Looking around you don't see any elevation or hillsides that could spell a cave, but there are a ton of branches and brush around.

Eventually you decide to do it orangutan style, gathering up a bunch of material and constructing a nest within the crown of a broad oak tree. You can climb it without much issue, and it’s far up enough to be out of the reach of most predators. After an hour or so you have a respectable lean-to with a wooden, bedded platform for you to rest on. There’s still a few hours until dusk at the least, so you decide to go exploring a bit more. Raking your shelter tree with your claws, you mark it for easy remembrance when you come back the way you came.

There’s not much of note around here, the brush is so thick on the forest floor that it’s easier for you to lope across tree-limbs or brachiate your way across them like monkey-bars. There’s a couple of game trails scattered about the place, and around a mile from your shelter is a dirt road and a village that’s faintly visible in the distance. Looks to be a rather large one too, with surrounding farmland and pasture. This wasn’t ideal, but perhaps they would be more hospitable to a naked, scaled, half-human than the previous people you’ve met. That was a question for another time however. It was currently getting dark, and you’d rather not get caught out.

Clambering back up into the treetops, you embrace your inner simian and work your way all the way back to your shelter. Moving this way is exhilarating and new, you’re going to have to start doing it more. Sure beats scraping against everything down on the ground. The forest is dark and fireflies are lighting up and you finally reach your shelter. After an eventful day of running around you’re eager to finally sleep. Climbing into the mass of vegetation that was your bedding, you found yourself sorely missing your warm bed back home.

Just how the hell were you going to get out of this one?