“Don’t look at me!” screamed the woman. But her words didn’t reach the boy standing in the doorway. The sight unfolding before him had frozen him to the spot — as much as he wanted to, he simply could not avert his gaze. His eyes were fixed on the woman crouched on the floor. The room itself was quite simple and practical. Only the bare necessities were present. There was an old bed, a simple desk, a bookshelf, a rack for clothing, and a window with a closed pair of thick curtains, blocking out all sunlight. The floor had but a single worn-out carpet, and upon that carpet was an anguished woman, squirming on the ground.
“Please, don’t look! Don’t look at me!” she screamed, with desperation in her voice. The boy heard the words, but his brain simply could not process them. He merely stood in the doorway, unable to move a muscle, as he watched the sight unfolding before him.
He was but a young boy of around 15 years of age, and of small build. His short black hair and black eyes reflected a tone of childlike innocence left within him, but it was immediately clear that he was already mature far beyond his age might imply. His general physique was very slim, but he was by no means frail. At first glance his physique was merely slim, but a closer look would show the toned muscles he had gained through rigorous combat practice over the years. His very body had been sharpened like a blade, and so even while rooted to the spot, his stance displayed perfect form.
Even with all of his honed instincts and training, however, the situation before him left the boy completely unable to form even a single coherent thought. He could neither run away nor approach. All he could grasp was that the woman before him was screaming desperately for him not to look at her, and that she was down on her knees, covering her face as tears fell through between her fingers leaving their marks on the carpet below.
“Azalie?” The boy called out, “Why are you... crying?” The boy reacted as though he’d never seen this woman ever cry before.
The woman didn’t respond. Perhaps she couldn’t even hear his voice at this point — all she could do was cover her face with both hands and scream “Don’t look at me!” over and over.
The woman in question wore a black robe covering most of her figure. This robe was a sort of uniform reserved for the top Black Sorcerers of this continent, and was a status symbol that indicated that she was highly ranked in the Sorcerers’ institute known as The Tower of Fangs. It was nigh-unheard of for a woman of her age — barely 20 years old — to be wearing this robe, which was proof of her talent and skill as a Sorceress. Her black, wavy hair was cut to a fairly short length, most likely for practicality in combat training. Although she kept her face hidden with both hands, her light-brown eyes peeked out from the gaps between her fingers. She was about as tall as any boy of the same age, and her arms and legs were finely toned, making her figure all the more splendid even beneath the robe.
“Don’t look at me! Please, please go away!!” she screamed. But the tone of her voice wasn’t one of sorrow. Instead, it sounded like someone lashing out in anger. Someone unable to control themselves.
The boy noticed this, and very carefully took a couple of steps closer into the room.
“Azalie?” he asked nervously, “what happened? Just wait, I’ll go and get Master Childma—”
“Don’t!” she yelled, “It’s already...” After regaining her composure slightly, her tone of voice changed from anger to something else. Although she still hid her face, the boy was able to make out some of her mumbled words.
“No... It’s too late. Not Childman, not the Elders... Don’t bring anyone else here.”
“But—”
“Get out! Get away from me! Just go! Get away from me!” Azalie commanded the boy to leave, raising one hand from her face pointing to the doorway for him to run away. The moment the boy saw her hand, he noticed immediately that something was out of place. Through rigorous combat training it made sense that her fingers could not exactly be described as delicate, but what entered his vision was far beyond the realm of battle-hardened. For a brief moment, it almost seemed as though her very fingers had warped into claws.
Doubting his own eyes, the boy called out to her once more.
“Azalie? I just saw, your hand—”
“Please, just hurry up and get away from me!” she screamed again. At that very moment, her body began to distort. Suddenly her wavy black hair burst out into tentacle-like appendages accompanied by the gruesome sound of flesh being torn apart from the inside. As the nightmarish sounds of bursting blood vessels resounded through the room, inhuman, blood-splattered appendages suddenly began to sprout from within the woman’s body. Organs that were clearly not of human origin grew upon the outside of her body, and with a clanging noise, her belt fell to the floor — the leather and buckle both torn apart from the strain — as her entire body began to expand in a similar grotesque manner. The boy shrieked as he watched the horrific sight unfolding before him. And it was then that the realization finally hit him.
The woman before him was currently transforming into something completely inhuman.
As her lower body began to expand further and further, the weak fabric of her black robe was gradually torn to pieces. The back of her robe burst open to reveal a pair of blood-splattered wings like those of a bat. But that wasn’t all — far from it. As those leathery wings expanded, the woman vomited all sorts of bile and bodily fluid from her mouth. It spilled out on to the floor. From between the fingers covering her face, bits of shredded meat and blood leaked through and flowed down to the ground as her very bodily structure was ripped apart from within. Her lower jaw fell open so muich that it looked as though it were about to fall off, and a lizard’s tongue peeked out from within her warped mouth.
“Don’t look at me!” only her voice remained unchanged, the desperation in it as apparent as ever. It wasn’t the voice of some monster — it was Azalie’s voice, and none other.
“Azalie, I—” The boy tried to call out one last time, but he simply couldn’t find the words. By this point his brain simply could not keep up fast enough to compose a coherent sentence.
All while the boy tried to figure things out, Azalie’s grotesque transformation continued. The remains of her robe on her upper body were torn to shreds as her shoulders expanded, growing green scales over them from beneath her skin. In the blink of an eye her two arms had increased to four, and she had already grown to over three meters in height.
The woman formerly known as Azalie had now become this indescribably huge inhuman beast. Noticing its own tail, the beast spun around and seemed to have fully grasped its own appearance. The beast’s last words were the same as before, “Don’t look at me...” but much weaker in spirit this time. From behind its now-scaly eyelids covering fiery eyes, the beast began to move. With swiftness unbefitting the colossal creature, it turned to face the window before crashing out of it and tearing a huge chunk of the brick wall along with it. With a thunderous roar following every flap of its wings, the beast broke out of the Tower of Fangs and headed for lands unknown.
With panic and anxiety assailing all his senses, the boy ran through the mess of blood and gore straight towards the window. By the time he made it there, though, neither Azalie nor her monstrous form were anywhere to be seen.
Moving now as if in a trance, almost like he were dreaming, the boy examined the interior of the room once more. Right then, his eyes caught something he had missed until now. In the very center of the pool of flesh and blood permeating the room, there lay a single foreign object. It was a moderately large, rusted, bloodstained sword of some antique design.
It would be a long, long time until the boy met with the woman he knew as Azalie once more. Years passed since this incident. Time marched on, uncaring.