Lucian woke up with a whimper, the sound muffled by the leather clasped over his mouth. His jaw was sore and somewhere in the blinding pain he had bit his tongue, but it was nothing compared to his tail. The switchblade was nowhere to be seen, but the evidence was obvious. Patches of shiny scales were missing, leaving dull, angry skin in its place. Blood dripped from a few spots, tinting the puddles around Lucian a dull pink.
“Okay, now that that’s over with,” Jules spoke with no warning, making Lucian flinch, sending needles of pain through his tail as it scraped on the floor. His breath hitched, and he trained his eyes on Jules, listening attentively to what he had to say. “Why don’t we get started with this?” Jules grabbed the syringe and held it up in front of him. “Would you like that?”
“Ye-es, I would.” Exhausted as he was, Lucian knew he still had to at least reply to Jules. That much he could do. He didn’t move otherwise, his sentence trailing off with a groan as he involuntarily twitched his tail.
“Alright!” Lucian barely felt the prick of the needle going into his neck. The effects of the drug were almost instantaneous, sending the pain in his tail up to an unbearable level. Lucian screamed through the muzzle again, but the sound wasn’t as piercing this time. When it finally faded, Lucian allowed his head to tip forward, glancing down at his- wait, no, that wasn’t a tail.
Taking the place of his glistening red tail, were two legs, tightly squeezed together. It took Lucian a moment to realize that they were his now. At least the pain had subsided, if only by a little bit.
“Already? That was faster than I thought.” Setting down the empty syringe, Jules inspected the creature in front of him. “Well? You gonna try them out?”
Lucian was too in shock to respond for a moment. He didn’t hear Jules talk, didn’t feel his hand tipping his chin up, didn’t remember Jules staring into his wide blue eyes. All he could think about was his tail, the thing that made him him, the thing that allowed him to swim and play and explore the depths of the ocean, was gone.
Lucian didn’t even feel the backhanded slap across the face that Jules gave him for taking too long to respond.