The Tale of Zoe Jaszczurka

Fresh off parts one, two, and three, here we have the continuation of Umbriel's tale, this time with a fresh twist involving her nemesis Zoë. The art is by the incredibly talented Detts; please favorite it here, commission her to do more in the same vein, and assure her that her humans are as awesome as her dragons

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The Tale of Zoë Jaszczurka

"You sure the library is where you want to be tonight of all nights?" Halley's voice said, tinny from being filtered through Umbriel's cell phone.

"It's not just research for the sake of research…this time," Umbriel said, ignoring a stern look from someone trying to study with an open chemistry book.

"Yeah, coming from someone who sometimes spends all night looking up gross flatworms on the internet just because they're 'interesting'…I'm not super-convinced, Bri."

"Oceanside State has one of the best genealogical libraries in the country, Ley," Umbriel said, exasperated. "I'm researching my past."

Halley grew quiet. "You mean…trying to see why you sometimes…why you…"

"Yeah," Umbriel said softly. "Maybe if I know more about it I can control it."

It had been a struggle to break through the wall of denial that first Umbriel and then Halley had set up around the truth: starting on her 21st birthday and at seemingly random times thereafter, Umbriel transformed into a humanoid dragoness. Those "dragon attacks" had already ruined a beach party, trashed an apartment, scared away shallow sorority girls that Halley was trying to get in good with, and beat back an attempt by the influential head of the Alpha honor society to have the girls roughed up by fraternity pledges.

Even though Umbriel stayed herself through the dramatic and painful metamorphosis, and returned to her human form an hour or two later, she didn't want to risk accidentally changing during an exam and setting the classroom on fire, or waking up to find out that a dragon dream had burned down the bedroom (and roommate) around her.

That and a panicked fire-breathing flight after changing often meant waking up nude in a really embarrassing place.

"Well, have you found anything?" Halley said.

"I think I've been able to find some records of my father's family," Umbriel said. "One of them, my great-great-great-uncle, wrote a book called Historia Dracones that I've been reading."

"In Latin? You can read Latin? How is that even a thing you can do?"

"It must be a mysterious power of the ancient dragons," Umbriel said solemnly.

"Really?"

"Or maybe I just took Latin in high school," Umbriel laughed, rolling her eyes. "You were there! What do you think was in all those books you were always telling me to put down so we could go meet boys?"

"I just knew there were no boys in the books," Halley said. "I'll talk to you later. Let me know what you find."

Umbriel laid down her cell phone and resumed her slow, deliberate reading.

Dragons always had the power to alter their shape, and in that way they meddled in human affairs and influenced us in ways both subtle and overt, she read. They always returned to their true form after a short time, but in the course of their history to their final extinction they begat many children with mortal humans.

Umbriel paused. "Huh," she said. "Maybe that's it?"

These children were marked by their green eyes and their keen intelligence, but could not take draconic form without an infusion of dragon's blood. Legend holds that the great matriarch that razed Troy in 5600 BC was one such, a mortal daughter of a draconic father who imbibed dragon's blood to forever change her aspect and form. For only through an infusion of human blood could such a process be reversed; such is the nature of the dragonline.

That didn't sound at all like the way Umbriel's transformations worked, but…

And it is a separate matter entirely from the curse laid upon my family by Leira, the last matriarch, who cursed our two bloodlines to become one once one of our second children had a second child. We have closely guarded our family since, lest our children find themselves part of Leira's blood on their age of majority.

That was it. Umbriel slammed the book shut, raising a cloud of dust and getting an even more acrid look from the nearby chemistry student. She checked it and the other books out, stuffing them in her bag alongside the genealogical records that it had taken days to accumulate. Home was only a 45-minute walk across campus and through the student ghetto of Oceanside City.

She realized that she'd been followed just before a pair of towering silhouettes blocked her path.

Two more large shadows appeared behind her…as did Zoë Jaszczurka, the head of the Alphas who Umbriel had sort of pissed off. Right before she changed into a dragoness, knocked her down, and causes her to piss herself in terror. Zoë was wearing a designer sweater, a small crimson skirt, and a supremely confident expression.

"Hello, Umbriel," she said. "You didn't think I'd forgotten about your little green scaly tantrum, did you?"

"I…I don't know what you're talking about," Umbriel said.

"Oh, come now, you freak," Zoë laughed, gesturing at the beefy fraternity pledges around her. "We were all there, we all saw it. And I called in every favor I have with the campus Greeks to make sure you're outed as the monster you are."

Umbriel inhaled sharply. The pledge closest to Zoë was filming with a video camera, trained directly on her.

"I've devoted my time at Oceanside State to making sure I'm on the way up and indispensable to everybody," continued Zoë, her green eyes intense under her red hair. "Accumulating power, real power, that I could cash in. You made me realize in five seconds that all that was worthless in the face of your…freakishness. So I'm going to wrap up that loose end and squash that challenge once and for all."

"L-look, Zoë," Umbriel said, her hands raised. "I'm sorry about what you think happened at the Alphas, but…t-this isn't going to solve anything…"

"Aww, what's the matter?" Zoë hissed. "Has the little know-it-all girl finally run out of 'interesting' things to throw in other peoples' faces? Stuff it, Van Buren. We're here to to expose you to the world, which will be enough to put you away for good."

Umbriel could feel the first stirrings of something secret and scaly deep within her, but she devoted every iota of willpower she could manage toward keeping it in check. But with her body in full-on panic mode, she wasn't sure it would be enough.

"Go on! Change! Show us the monster hiding underneath that pretty face," Zoë said, mockingly.

Umbriel, with fraternity pledges on all sides, stared back with all the defiance she could muster. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Fine, if that's how you want to play it," the leader of the Alphas sneered. She'd put too much effort--cashed in too many favors--to see her undertaking fall apart now. And the act of lording it over someone else was the greatest thrill that life held for her. She closed on on Umbriel, menacingly. They were both rather tall, roughly the same height, but the flame-headed Alpha still seemed to tower over the latent dragoness. Zoë wasn't dressed for a physical confrontation so much as an Alphas social gathering--she wasn't even wearing closed-toed shoes--but that was because of her supreme confidence.

She lashed out with a balled fist, hitting Umbriel square in the stomach. The other hand darted in to dash across her victim's face, leaving a red mark against Umbriel's pale and freckled skin.

"S-stop that!" Umbriel cried. she was clutching her stomach now, desperately trying to hold in the rising tide of scales. "Please!"

Sensing that weakness, Zoë instead attacked her quarry again with a flurry of blows, delivered with the studied eye of someone who had seen the inside of a dojo. Zoë's parents had feared for their daughter's safety when they'd forced her into those classes; but she had learned early on that dominating them was a far safer road to power. The old skills still came in handy, though. "Shut up and change!"

Umbriel looked up between loose strands of dark hair. Her eyes had slitted pupils, and her jeans and shirt bore lumps where wings and a tail might soon burst forth. The canvas in her sneakers groaned, struggling to contain the claws forming within.

"That's right!" Another blow across the face; this one drew blood, trickling from a nose that was not quite human.

"P-please…" Umbiel pleaded. "Please stop…"

"What a pathetic little girl," sneered Zoë. "Imagine what someone with guts could have done with your gift. And now you've got a lifetime in a lab to look forward to because of it. I can't think of a greater pleasure." Her knuckles were smeared with some of Umbriel's nosebleed; eyes wide, she made a show of licking some of it off before wiping the rest away and folding her arms.

Umbriel had been able to keep herself from completely transforming, but she was still notably not human…and the camera was capturing it all. Zoë grinned, triumphant…

…and then her expression turned to puzzlement. She took an unsteady step, backwards.

"What's wrong?" said one of the pledges.

"I…I don't know…" Zoë said, the menacing edge suddenly gone from her voice. "I…I'm not feeling so good…"

Umbriel, crouched on the pavement, was able to use the break in Zoë's assault to calm down a bit, and she felt her draconic features relax back into mostly human ones. But Zoë…Umbriel was getting a strange sensation from her, in the very pit of a stomach that was still somewhat scaly. "The dragonline…" she whispered.

Zoë's hands were aching; she held them out to see if she'd broken anything during her assault on Umbriel…and stared in stunned confusion as they began to take on the color and texture of rough crimson scales. Her fingernails audibly popped as they assumed the aspect of nascent claws.

"What's…happening…to…me…?" Zoë grunted, eyes wide and fearful. The pledges were backing away now, watching as the seams in Zoë's sweater began to burst, as small red horns jutted out from the red thicket of her hair. Her toes flexed wildly in her sandals as they also thickened and sharpened far beyond human parameters, scales racing up her legs ahead of them.

"H-help me! D-do something!" Zoë's cries went unheeded--what could anyone have done, after all?--and she continued her sudden and unexpected metamorphosis. Face and nose jutted out, becoming the makings of a muzzle, while Zoë's teeth began to crunch their way into a carnivorous maw above scales creeping along her chin like a strawberry stain. Her hair was shortening, horns growing, ears vanishing…and eyes an ever more pale and feral green. Her clothes were disintegrating at the seams; Zoë awkwardly tried to hold up the tatters of her sweater over her bosom while pulling her skirt down over thick red legs and a new tail that it could scarcely contain. Her shoes were demolished, their remains appearing small and ridiculous next to powerful developing draconic claws. Tiny wings made themselves known as well; they would not be tiny for long.

But something was different. Umbriel had always become a sort of fusion between woman and dragoness, while Zoë…Zoë was already stumbling toward a four-legged gait and a much more dramatic change in mass. She was becoming a complete and natural dragoness.

At this point, the fraternity pledges fled, howling in horror. Umbriel fell upon their forgotten video camera, smashing it and grinding the memory card with the heel of her sneaker. But even then, she couldn't look away from the final stages of Zoë's transformation.

"Uh…uh…UH…AHH!" Gutteral grunts and shrieks were all the Alpha could manage as her outfit peeled off in scraps. There wasn't a trace of human skin left amid all the shades of crimson scales, and the final few strands of her hair were absorbed just as the growth of her draconic muzzle was reaching its apex. She stumbled on legs not meant for upright walking, dragged down by a tail that had flared out to an astonishing length and spasming wings that placed a greater weight on her shoulders with each flap. Finally, the change in posture and size was too much, and what had been Zoë Jaszczurka toppled over.

Her body finished its changes in an orgy of growing muscles and shifting bones. Her neck was now long and motile looking back on her new body with shock and horror evident even on its now inhuman features. Large wings anchored in a bony keel which possessed no signs of its former ample cleavage, powerful paws and claws set beneath massive wings large enough to take flight...Zoë recoiled, much as Umbriel imagined she once had, and took to the sky with an anguished roar. A moment later, she was lost among he hills overlooking Oceanside City, leaving Umbriel--bloodied but human, standing amid the shredded remains of her tormentor's clothing and video equipment.

"Interesting enough for you…bitch?" she spat, before turning back to the long walk home, limping and sniffling as she did so.

And as for Zoë…the next few hours were a blur of flying, fire breathing, and rending both tree and some of the wilderness deer with her claws. Once the initial shock wore off, it was positively…exhilarating. This…this was real power, not the flimsy human ridiculousness that she had cultivated for so long. Before long, Zoë was reveling in it. And when, some time later, she felt her wings beginning to shrivel, she fought the change with all her might. It was no use, naturally; such a small amount of Umbriel's blood was not enough to effect a permanent change, even on one of the dragonline, as Zoë must in fact have been. She was forced to crouch in the wilderness, howling in anger as her fine scales were replaced by greasy skin and her glorious claws were made into the mockery that was human fingernails. Naked and cursing the hair that had grown back only to get in her eyes, Zoë made a solemn vow to the setting sun, as red as she had been for a short, glorious time.

Zoë broke with her old life and her old self. She would not be constrained in such a weak and ridiculous form any longer, but swore to regain the elegant scaly form she had possessed so fleetingly…and the unlimited power and ambition it represented. Weak, petty, irredeemably human Zoë Jaszczurka had been a ruler of men; the dragon Zoë would be a goddess among them.