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It’s quite peaceful here.
Sure, you’re a little off the beaten trail, walking through the towering green stalks above you, but you’re still here.
It was worth it, this little trip here. It’s a lesser known bamboo forest, sure, but it’s just as nice as the more popular ones. Perfectly tranquil and isolated, only the sound of wind keeping you company.
Your one gripe? You’re… a little lost.
Maybe jumping over the fence that wrapped around the path was a bad idea.
You sigh, gripping your head, as you keep walking in random directions, letting your feet take the lead in hopes you’ll find your way back. Sure, it’s a rough method, but you have a feeling it’ll work.
So you walk.
And walk.
And walk.
…And you get nowhere, seeing only more and more bamboo.
Bamboo which, now that you really look at it, seems… cut in some places. Struck by a unknown type of blade, etching out notches for some mysterious reas-
Your train of thought is cut in half as you notice a humanoid figure dashing off, too cloaked in shadow to make out any details.
You freeze up for a moment, before breathing in and out.
It was just another lost person.
Probably.
You shake your head, trying to rid yourself of your worries as you keep walking on, keeping to your thoughts as you keep moving, occasionally looking up to see more sliced bamboo, or to your sides to see more shadowy figures.
Sometimes, they linger for a bit longer, simply observing you for another second before fleeing from your gaze, running off to unknown areas.
…You really don’t know why they’re watching you, nor do you want to find out.
As you keep moving, you eventually hear new sounds, past the sounds of wind in the bamboo and soft footsteps:
The rushing of water.
Curiosity takes hold of you, as you decide to home in on it.
Hey, it’s something different. You just can’t help but be lured to it.
It takes you a moment, but you get there, and you simply stare on at the sight before you.
A massive waterfall, flowing off a cliffside and into a lake. Etched into the stone that makes up the cliff are several caves, marks from blades that had scraped against the edges present, leaving notable lighter marks in the stone.
It’s… beautiful. And peaceful.
It almost makes you forget you’re lost, but…
…maybe you can stay here for a bit.
You walk closer, staring at the rocky shoreline as you look for a good place to sit down, along smoothed and worn down stones, and…
…notice a massive, rusted blade?
You stare at the odd chunk of metal, poking out of the shallower waters of the lake as they lap against it, flakes of rust peeling off only to sink into the soil.
…Huh.
That’s… not a normal sight.
You look closer at it. The rust chokes out the color of the blade, but you can make out a faint indentation along it, shaped like a four-pointed star with the uppermost point extended across the metal. It’s quite large, and shockingly thick, with only one edge sharpened.
…You might as well get this thing out of the water so it stops polluting it.
You grab the blade by the bottom, slowly heaving it out of the water by dragging it along the soil and sand, cutting a thick line across them as you ply it out of the river, slowly but surely.
After a while, you remove it, and set it down upon the grass, a fair way away from the water…
But as you do, you cut yourself on it, right on the index finger.
Cursing under your breath, you wrap your hand around the finger, feeling the blood slowly seep out of the small wound, your finger seemingly growing heavier as you lean against the cliffside.
Great. Just great. You’re lost, and now you probably have an infected wound. What possessed you to grab that blade, anyway?
You sigh, sliding your hands apart…
And notice a yellow discoloration spreading not just around the cut, but in the same spot on the opposite finger.
You gasp, seeing the discoloration grow in size, skin thickening underneath it as it moves down to your main hands, soon wrapping around your fingers as the nails are pushed out, wrinkles in your hands smoothing down, details fading away into the yellow as your hands seem to harden, a metallic sheen covering them.
Your fingers seem to move on their own, at first merely twitching, but soon moving under the command of an unknown force, cramming together as you hear your bones crackle as your fingers are pushed together, merging into a single, mittlike digit that tapers off into a rounded point, sparing only your thumb as the tip of it sharpens to a point.
You shake, looking at your altered, deformed hands.
What… what was in that blade?
Your wrists and the lower halves of your arms bloat out, thickening as the yellow discoloration covers it, forcing them to adapt and gain that metallic sheen, skin hardening and thickening out alongside it. Four blades dig themselves out of your changed skin, two on the sides of your fattened, hardened lower arms, and the other two on the upper half, all evenly spaced apart.
As you wiggle your hands, you can’t even feel your fingers. Just a single, awkward mitt, with skin that feels more like metal than flesh.
Your arms slim down, a gray discoloration moving up them instead, but the same thickening, hardening, and shining of skin can be felt, as the changes wrap over your shoulders…
…and a new sensation wraps over them.
A horrid, agonizing one.
The skin right before your shoulders seems to rip itself off, bloating and turning a dark red as blood leaks out from the wounds, as it extends outwards to a point before thickening, even more than the skin prior had.
You cover your mouth with your mitten-hand, trying not to scream out as you feel them shift, the sensation of your chest flattening being blotted out by the worse feeling of the skin across it and your back ripping off, changing color to a brighter red, hardening, and changing in composition, before resettling, over the changed pre-shoulder area, forming a faux open kosode, fused to your body.
Your sides and the center of your chest are spared the pain, instead merely turning gray, and you can’t tell if that’s a mercy or not.
As blood trickles from your wounded form, your vision blurs, and you fail to notice two brighter red circles forming on each side of your “kosode”.
But, you do feel yellow metal rip from your skin, attaching to your “kosode” by the innermost edges, and, by proxy, your skin, as a gray discoloration slithers out and across it, moving across your torso and sparing your neck and head. You feel your body bulk up, muscle adding itself to your form as a V shaped marking forms down where your pecs meet, as your torso seems to lose all other detail minus your new marking and your “kosode”.
You pant, trying to get your bearings, as your blood hits the grass beneath you and the stone behind.
This… this isn’t real. This whole trip isn’t real. This can’t be real.
The skin on your waist turns black, as the sensation of… something forms inside of it, right under your skin, until it breaks out, causing you to scream out as round blades emerge from your waist, tearing apart your skin as it heals up, remaining that accursed black shade. You feel blood trickle from both your mouth and your waist as you shake, feeling more blades form from the ones already wrapped around you, extending outwards and circling around your form, extending outwards to about how long your arms are, should you stretch them out.
As your vision swirls and blurs, threatening to black out completely, the gray discoloration returns, dyeing your groin as your privates sink into your changing, hardening flesh, losing all purpose. You can feel your internal organs shift about, squelching about as they change position and shape, even adding a few new ones, which does little to help your nausea and pain.
As your organs eventually settle down, a darker red slowly begins to creep down your thighs, starting from the gray discoloration of your groin, and moving downward. Under your hardened skin, you can feel the fat and muscle tingle, plumping them up and forcing them to grow bigger in size.
As they grow and the red discoloration sweeps down the skin covering them, moving down to your knees, the gray discoloration returns, just for a moment, to form a chevron shape on the front of each knee. Your calves plump up, just a little, as a gray stripe forms just above your feet, which begin to ache horribly, as if something is moving inside of them…
You brace yourself to the best of your ability, still nauseous from the blades that ripped free from your body.
Your toes merge together, cramming against each other, struggling to be the last remaining as the number you have on each foot goes down to two. Their fight seems to have been meaningless, though, as your bone crackles, ripping apart your skin, socks, and shoes, hardening and merging with exposed muscle to form silver cloven hooves. The rippage of skin extends, consuming your whole foot, as you weakly shake off your own skin, forced to see it splatter against the now bloodstained grass, the blood from it leaking over your discarded, torn, and now useless socks and shoes.
You breathe a sigh of relief after a while, hoping the worst is over…
…But tingling around your neck disproves your hopes.
The gray discoloration moves over your collarbones, giving them more definition as black markings form on your skin, marking them out, as your neck thickens in size, muscle forming on it as you feel it expand, in both mass and length, your bones and windpipe cracking and snapping as the flesh around it expands.
The gray discoloration wraps around your chin, spreading up the sides of your face, painting over them with that dreaded monochrome shade, sapping your humanity from you second by second.
Your mouth cracks, forcing itself open as your lips peel back, teeth sinking into your gums as they harden, causing you to gag and drool as you feel your teeth crackle, vanishing as you topple over, coughing onto the bloody grass. Your internal mouth turns black as your tongue seems to just… vanish, sinking into the muscle and flesh that is slowly hardening into steel as your saliva slips from your now gaping open mouth.
But, as soon as it opened… it closes back up, your mouth cracking and reshaping into a sort of W shape, a gold discoloration and shine spreading across the top of it.
The new discoloration swiftly crawls across your face, taking it over, and hardening up your skin. Red markings, also shining like the golden discoloration on your face, form at the corners of your eyes as they grow bigger, sclera yellowing as your irises fade, leaving only your pupils which extend upwards, turning into rounded slits, as your eyelids turn black.
Your ears sink into the gray discoloration wrapping around the sides of your face, as your nose slowly seems to grow clogged, blood trickling down from it as a bloody, red line forms down from your face, blood trickling from it as it itches, the sensation growing worse and worse, until…
A massive blade, gold in color with a single, forwards facing silver edge and indentation shaped like a four-pointed star, breaks out of your skull, ripping free from your flesh, destroying your nose as you scream out in agony, covered in your blood as your vision, once again, twists about, threatening to give out completely.
But it doesn’t. You are not gifted the mercy of death.
Extra blades, black in color with red edges, form from the base of the blade, right where your nose was, and extend outwards, matching with the blades around your waist as they reach out to the length of your arms, should they be outstretched.
You feel the tip of your head itch, as metal wraps around it, forming a helmet that then attaches to your scalp, the upper half of it red, and the lower half of it black, and covering the sides and back of your head, shielding them from the outside.
Your hair itches, each strand thickening as the texture and shape turns to something more akin to wire and it all turns black, with a few red streaks scattered in it, mostly on the top, as it begins to grow, longer and longer, past your back, then thighs, then feet , then even beyond them, nearly swamping over you, as your now much, much thicker hair seems to tie itself up at the bottom, almost forming a sort of knot, as you…
…find yourself rising up?
Hang on. You’re not moving yourself…
But, no matter how hard you try, your body refuses to answer to your commands, letting itself be puppeteered by an unknown force, as you soon find yourself sitting on the knot of your hair, body shaking from the agony of your transformation, head heavy thanks to the new loads upon it as your vision remains swirling, but slowly calming down.
This… this is…
…You don’t even know if there’s good enough words to describe this.
Well, first things first, you’re standing up. You’re in control of your own body, damnit!
At first, you try to simply stand up, like you usually did, but all that you do is twitch your legs a little. You double your efforts, focusing all your strength on your altered legs, as they begin to twitch more, feet also joining in as you feel them paw at the ground, desperately scraping at the soil.
You’re getting there. Just a bit more effort, and…
…You finally rise up, your body shaking from the effort.
You’re not… standing up right, though. Your body is hunched over, the weight from your hair and head blades pushing down on your spine, as the latter unties itself, gracelessly lying on the grass. You can feel yourself shake, legs shivering as if they are screaming at you to just sit back down.
But you’re not doing that. You’re getting out of here.
One step. Your hooflike feet, forced into digitigrade posture, nearly slip on the bloodied grass
Two steps. You feel them tremble and ache, thanks to the fact you’re not used to walking right on your toes.
Three steps. You breathe in through your closed mouth, feeling the shaking in your legs worsen.
Four steps. Your feet ache, as if they’re threatening to break apart.
Five steps. The sensation spreads to your knees and back, growing worse and worse with each second.
Six steps. It feels as if your bones are about to shatter, the pressure in them utterly agonizing.
Seven steps. You give in.
Your hair curls back into that knot as you sit back upon it, the pain in your body slowly starting to fade now that you listened to its demands.
You raise a metallic hand to your face, noting that it isn’t injured by your blades. This trip just became a nightmare…
More nausea rises up in you as you clench your eyes shut. You know that you need to leave this hellish forest… but something about it feels… right. Like you belong here. Like you are meant to be the lord of these woods.
…Oh god, first your body, now your mind?
You shake your head, trying to rid yourself of those thoughts, as you decide to find that rusted blade. Maybe… maybe if you destroy it, you’ll turn back to normal?
So you look, scooting around on your hair as a few locks untie themselves from the main knot, helping pushing you around as you keep your eyes down, searching for that accursed blade… but….
…all you see is flakes of rust, scattered around the indentation in the grass the blade left when you dropped it.
Your eyes widen, as you keep looking around for the damned thing in a panic, but… it’s nowhere in sig-
“Sir?”
You jerkily turn around, seeing…
…a small, gray humanoid figure with no visible mouth, face a lighter gray in color with wide black eyes with yellow sclera, red limbs, arms tipped with small knives and feet tipped with two silvery toes that vaguely resemble rounded claws, four blades on its torso with two on each side, and a black helmet with a red upper half and blade right on the center.
It looks up at you, little eyes scanning over your changed body, clothes torn and bloodied, yet clinging onto your frame.
…It kinda looks like the current you, you realize as you stare down into its big round eyes.
Not only that, but it seems to idolize you, judging by how big they are.
…You’re not in the mood to deal with this.
You scoot away from it, only to see and hear it following you. You turn around, and try to calmly tell it to leave, but it just… runs up to you instead, hugging your leg, and joyfully calling you “Sir”.
Well, it seems to only be able to say the word “Pawniard”, along with chopped up versions of it, but your altering mind seems to interpret it as normal words
This is… weird.
Several clones of the little thing seem to show up, all happily chanting “Sir” and climbing all over you, clearly in awe.
One smaller one even climbs into your hair, nesting in it.
You carefully pull the smaller one out, avoiding its blades despite the fact that they cannot harm a being like you, and just… look at it.
It makes little “grabby hands”, which is a lot more scary in person, thanks to the little knives it has for hands, but it seems to mean no harm.
It just… loves you. And you get that. You’re the lord of these woods.
You shake your head slightly, trying to disregard what you just thought of yourself as, and set the little thing down on the ground with care, as all the others follow suit, dashing off into the forest, not a worry in their little heads.
You’ll let the little Pawniards have their fun. They’re kids, they deserve it.
…How did you know what they were called?
Granted, they were shouting their names… but disregarding their odd language, how?
You grab your head again, trying to just… think.
The little ones, the pawns in your army- why are you seeing them as that?- are gone now, leaving you alone with your thoughts in your woods.
No, in THE woods. Not yours. Sure, you’re the great lord of this forest, the commander of the Bisharp and Pawniard who reside here, and the final authority on all that occurs, but it’s not YOURS…
Okay, maybe it is. A little.
…Or a lot. Or completely.
Come to think of it… you kinda like the idea of ruling over this place. Having subjects to answer to your every desire, to kill in your name, to command… you like that. It sounds great, not being able to worry about anything, and just having the pawns and bishops be your eyes and ears. They idolize you, they see you as their king, so… why not take the throne?
It seems to be empty… so nothing’s stopping you from taking it.
Besides, what did you have back home? Some boring job? Taxes? Human relationships? All meaningless to a being of your splendor and power.
You can’t help but chuckle a little, as you discard the bloodied rags that cover your form, revealing its full grace to the world.
Oh yes, you’re perfect now. The perfect Kingambit. The mighty lord of this woods.
You laugh out into the bamboo. You’ve arisen, to take the throne of this forest, and make sure that all Pokemon that dwell within know it. And should they disagree? Well… you’ll have the Pawniard and Bisharp cut them down to size.
This is your kingdom now. You’re ready to leave your mark upon this place, and you’re certain that every single pawn and bishop will gladly agree.
You don’t even notice a pair of the latter hiding away that rusted blade.