** I don’t believe there are any potentially offensive fetishes in this story, unless you find transformation offensive. In fact, there isn’t even any sex in this story. Sorry, my lovely little smut fans, but I felt like writing a purely-transformational story for once. Transformation is a huge turn-on to me anyway, voluntary or not. **


The dust in the attic was so thick that Rebecca could hardly breathe in without choking. Stifling a sneeze, the girl kicked the door shut behind her, sending up a cloud that made her hold her breath. When it finally settled down, she let herself breathe again, immediately grimacing. “Ugh. What crawled in here and died?” she muttered, glancing around the cluttered room.


Rebecca’s grandmother had died a month before, leaving Rebecca, her only living relative within a hundred miles, to clean up her house before it was sold. Towards the end, her grandmother had become quite a bit eccentric. According to Nana Braxton, however, she wasn’t eccentric - she was simply dabbling in the occult. “There’s no such thing as the occult,” Rebecca had protested when Nana Braxton had told her of her attempts to transform a puppy into a bird, or a bird into a guinea pig. Now, looking around at the disorganized attic before her, Rebecca had to wonder if her grandmother had gone past the threshold of eccentricity into the realm of madness.


Only one wall was relatively normal in appearance. This wall was lined with bookshelf after bookshelf, and each shelf was filled with books of varying heights and widths. Contrary to its otherwise-normal appearance, some of the books seemed to be written in long-dead languages, some seemed to be simple scrolls preserved in laminate, and another even seemed to be bound in - was that human skin? Rebecca wrinkled her nose, turning away from the wall towards the other curiosities in the room.


Various pagan symbols and runes were drawn in chalk and Sharpie on the floor and the window which took up the majority of the wall across from the door by which she’d entered the attic. Rebecca only vaguely recognized some of them. Those looked like the Egyptian hieroglyphs she’d Googled while bored out of her mind one day. A few others looked like ancient Nordic runes. One symbol she recognized as a pentagram, and another she recognized as a devil’s trap, like on the television show Supernatural. There was hardly an inch of space that wasn’t covered by one symbol or another, and Rebecca had no idea what even a fraction of them meant. What was becoming clear was that her grandmother had become far too interested in this occult business.


A third wall seemed to have been turned into a terrarium. Herbs and plants of all kinds were growing with wild abandon, long after they should have been dead. Peering at the little markers next to the plants, Rebecca recognized some as simple kitchen herbs, but others bore names she’d never even heard of. St. John’s Wort. Witchhazel. Thyme. Basil. Vervain. She shook her head at the ridiculousness of it all.


The final wall, the wall which contained the door, was the most curious of all. Jars and vials of strange and quite possibly illegal substances were spread out all over a table that ran from the edge of the door to the corner of the wall. In the very center of the table was a piece of parchment and an old-fashioned quill and inkpot - really? How much more Harry Potter could you get? Rebecca thought to herself - where her grandmother appeared to have been taking notes on the various articles strewn haphazardly across the table.


Rebecca picked up the mason jar closest to her. A neon green fluid filled the majority of the jar. When she shook it, it jiggled like gelatin. The label on the side of the jar read “Essence of Slime”. Grimacing, she set the jar back down and picked up the next one. The vial held a pale white, almost clear fluid that ran along the sides of the stoppered glass as she tilted it. Written on the side of the vial in Sharpie was “Chimera Venom”. A third container held a number of plain-looking feathers, but was labelled as “Harpy Feathers - DO NOT TOUCH!” Rebecca shook her head. She knew her grandmother was eccentric, but to believe in this stuff? It was beyond insane.


Her attention was drawn to the small object resting atop the parchment on the middle of the table. It appeared to be a small bracelet in the shape of a snake biting its tail. It had been intricately crafted, each tiny scale painted a varying metallic shade so that the whole thing seemed alive when it caught the light. Adding to its realistic quality, Rebecca couldn’t seem to find where its crafter had fused the metal shut, making it appear to be one completely seamless metal link.


Surely Nana Braxton wouldn’t deny me one little trinket, she thought as she slipped the bracelet onto her wrist. Then she went back downstairs to retrieve the broom and several packing boxes that she had brought with her. She cleaned for a good half an hour, sweeping up all the dust and beginning to stash away the books from the shelves in various boxes based on their size. As she stretched to reach a rather large tome from the top shelf, the bracelet suddenly unhooked itself, sliding down her wrist until it caught painfully on her forearm. For a moment Rebecca thought that it was simply a metal clasp which had caught her arm, until a small snake unwrapped itself from her arm, falling to the ground and darting off into the shadows.


The girl stumbled backwards, shocked by the occurrence. The snake - no, the bracelet - had been made of metal when she slipped it on, she was sure of it. She had examined it, touched its cold iron body. There was no way that it could have been a real snake. Unless, she was forced to consider, her grandmother really wasn’t eccentric. Magic was real.


She shook her head forcefully. No, there was no such thing as magic. She was just imagining what had just happened. Too much dust inhalation or something. But the thoughts persisted in the continuing absence of the bracelet she had worn and the presence of two tiny holes on her arm.


As Rebecca continued to clean, her arm began to itch just around where the snake - no, the bracelet - had bit her. As she scratched at the irritation, she noticed flakes of skin falling to the floor that she had swept not too long before. In confusion, she looked at her arm, and was horrified by what she saw.


Coating her arm in the spot where she’d scratched were miniscule scales the same shade as the snake’s - no, bracelet - had been. They were shield-like in shape, the pointed tips so sharp that she drew blood when she poked at them. And worst of all, they seemed to be attached to her body, as she found out to her chagrin when she managed to hook a finger under one and attempted to pull it off, which only resulted in nauseating pain.


Rebecca wracked her brain for ideas. What could she do? There was no one she could tell about this. She’d end up sounding as crazy as Nana Braxton. “Yeah, a snake - bracelet - bit me and now I’m growing scales.” They’d ship her off to a mental asylum as soon as the words were out of her mouth. No, the best option was to wait this out, for better or for worse.


Thankfully there was a plush, if rather musty chair drawn up to the table which had held the bracelet. She continued to scratch at her arm, peeling away more of her skin to reveal a greater quantity of copper scales. As more of her skin was shed, it came away in even greater quantities, until her entire arm was coated in the strange plated scales.


And it didn’t stop there. Great swathes of human skin began to come off of her entire upper body, even her head and stomach. Relief began to overpower the feeling of nauseating horror as the discomfort eased with each passing second. When the majority of her skin was gone, the itching stopped, and Rebecca ran downstairs in search of her grandmother’s full-length mirror.


She found it in Nana Braxton’s old bedroom. A part of her felt sad to be in the room where her grandmother had passed away, but her pressing concern was the thing staring back at her from the mirror. It had the same coppery scales as the bracelet had had, but these were much larger, each about the size of a pocket watch. There was no hair on the creature’s head, only more scales, making the head look both grotesque and strangely beautiful. Its nose and chin had fused into a short muzzle, its nostrils now narrow slits. It was only when Rebecca felt her tongue flicker out of her mouth without her consent, and saw the thing’s fork-like tongue do the exact same in the mirror, that a horrified part of her realized what she was.


The rest of the transformation hurt, but not as much as the sting of knowing that she had laughed in her grandmother’s face about her belief in magic. Magic was real, Rebecca knew that now. She wished she could tell her grandmother that so Nana Braxton could come and take this curse away from her. That was an impossibility, however. Even as her lower body began to elongate and fuse together, Rebecca dragged herself up the attic stairs to see if she could find anything in her grandmother’s notes that could help her. New, unused muscles propelled her the last few feet up the stairs, her snake’s lower body awkwardly sliding through the door.


Clawing and worming her way towards the table where her grandmother’s notes lay, Rebecca gained enough control over her new body that she was able to coil up her lower half and rest on top of it. Peering at the parchment, she quickly scanned it for anything about the bracelet she had found.


“Amulet of Baal.” No, that wasn’t it. “Ring of Morgan le Fay.” Nope, not it either. “Bangle of Ouroboros.” That sounded like the one. If she remembered correctly, Ouroboros was the snake that had its tail in its mouth, much like the bracelet she had found. Rebecca quickly read over the information on the page. “The bangle of Ouroboros must be handled with care, for if worn having not said the correct enchantment, it will come to life and bite the wearer, transforming him or her. At the time of this writing, I have found no way of reversing the effects of this transformation.” Rebecca felt her heart sink as she read the final words. “No way of reversing the effects.” That meant she was stuck this way. Forever.


Unless… The naga suddenly felt hopeful. She had all the books, all the materials, everything she needed. There was no reason why she couldn’t continue her grandmother’s work. Sure, she had a lot to learn, but she also had a lot more time to practice the occult than Nana Braxton had had. Rebecca slithered to the window and looked out at the setting sun. Tomorrow she was going to call the real estate agent and declare that she was going to move into the house herself. And then the real work would begin...


~~ Author’s side-note: I’m now taking writing commissions! You can commission me at the following links:
https://inkbunny.net/journalview.php?id=165267 [Inkbunny]
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6403414/ [FurAffinity]
http://www.sofurry.com/market/view/offer?id=2120 [SoFurry]
https://www.f-list.net/thread.php?thread=118245 [F-List] ~~