No guild thief would touch him. The badge on his hat proclaimed him a Patron of the Guild, the office accorded powerful friends of the cities Thieves' Masters. Only amateur fools would dare attack such a person, not even considering the other evidence of his professional standing as a mage of a very high order.

The four men attacked him behind the stables of the Dancing Donkey. The biggest man had a cudgel with which he struck at the wizard's head. A second man used a weighted rope to try to entangle the legs of the intended victim. A third man hurled a small axe at his back and the last, a mere boy dashed in during the melee and snatched the pearl, prepared to cut the golden chain with a sharp knife if it would not break.

The cudgel sprang back and brained the big attacker and blood ran out of his ears as he fell to the dirty ground. The weighted rope swung wide and returned to wrap itself around the wielder's own neck where it would tighten inexorably until all breath had been used up and death came from slow strangulation. The axe bounced off the wizard's back and returned to the caster to split his breastbone and sever his major arteries; he was the first to die and luckiest.

The boy put his hand on the pearl and felt the wizard's hands, striking faster than serpents, close over both of his wrists. He dropped the knife and pleaded for mercy. "Don't kill me, master. They made me do this, I'm afraid!" he cried.

The wizard laughed. "I won't kill you if you agree to serve me in whatever way I require of you. I was hired to find the gang of rogue footpads that have been giving the guild of thieves a bad name in this city. But I don't have to kill you and I have need of a special servant. Agree to bind yourself to my will or I will cause your very bowels to burst asunder and you will surely die a miserable death!"

The boy wept in fear combined with a little relief. Service to a powerful mage might not be all bad. "Thank you, master. I will serve you as you require." It had to be better than what some of the things his dead companions had forced him to do for he was young and not unhandsome.

The wizard smiled. "You wanted the chain and orb," he said, letting the boy go. "You have earned your life by surrendering so abjectly. I now release you from threat of a painful and lingering death. You shall live and be free if you will it, but if you agree again to be my servant in all ways that I desire, I will give you the orb and chain to be yours as your reward. Stand up."

The boy stood up shakily and blinked. Had he heard right? He sank to the ground in a deep bow, his knees giving way a bit he even knelt before the wizard. "I'm free? And I shall live?" he said wonderingly.

"If you will, you may go as you are able and make what life you can. Or you can accept my offer of service and swear willingly and not under threat or coercion to be my servant in whatever way I require. And your reward, besides a promise of food and my protection, shall be that this chain and orb will be yours to wear and to keep even if I dismiss you from my service or we in other ways part company." The wizard removed the orbed necklace from around his neck and extended it toward the boy, the chain draped over his open palm.

The boy still trembled but his choice seemed clear. The wizard had shown him mercy already, he could hardly be worse than some other master. And a boy, even one nearly grown, needed someone to work for and again, being a servant of a powerful mage was not that bad of a position in life. He reached out and took the chain from the wizard's hand. "I accept your offer, master. I will serve you in whatever way you require." That could mean anything but how could it be worse than what the rogues had demanded of him.

"Put your chain on then, boy, and we shall be off. We've a long journey to make." The wizard said in a kindly voice.

The boy slipped the chain around his neck, "I don't have any shoes for a long journey, master." He said meekly.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of things like that now," said the wizard. "Put the orb and chain under your clothes against your skin, this city is full of thieves." He chuckled.

The boy grinned at the joke but kept his eyes down in respect. He put the chain inside his ragged shirt and the large pearly orb rested against his breastbone. He glanced up to see the wizard still smiling at him and he felt the changes begin.

The middle fingers on each of his hands lengthened and widened, the nails got thicker and longer. The same thing happened to the middle toe on each bare foot. Meanwhile, his other digits all dwindled in size; the nails shrinking quickly too, until the fingers and toes on either side of the longer and stronger middle ones disappeared into the flesh of his hands and feet. He would soon have true, equine-type hooves at the ends of his limbs.

At the same time, the hair on his head thickened and lengthened and a line of long thick hair grew down the middle of the back of his neck till it was as long as the hair on his head. It changed color too, lightening to a bright pale gold. His neck itself changed at the same time, getting longer and the joint of cervical to thoracic vertebrae changed its angle, the neck now projecting slightly backward from its previous position.

It all began so fast that at first he had no time to even cry out.

His shoulders changed also, the collar bone thickening and changing shape so his arms were thrust forward of his ribs instead of to the sides. The shoulder joints themselves became thicker and stronger as the bones of his arms thickened and became longer, too. The two bones of his forearms fused at top and bottom and the bones of his wrist and palm also fused together, lengthening, widening and deepening.

His ragged shirt burst and fell away in tatters and the golden chain and orb hung about his neck, revealed for all to see. The chain began to change also, becoming wider and entwining itself in his hair as it grew up his neck like a reticulated collar of golden webbing. The orb was pulled up to rest in the hollow of his collarbone.

His pants burst also from the growth of his flesh and like his shirt fell away in threads and scraps of cloth. He had no other clothing now except the net of gold on his neck that had grown up to his ears. A golden rope on each side emerged from the net and threaded itself through the hole in each earlobe.

All of this happened at once. Similar changes in the bones of his feet put him up on his tiptoes, he couldn't stand easily that way on the single remaining digit on each foot and so he fell forward, to stand trembling on all fours; his new lenghtened arms became his front legs, nearly as long as his rear ones.

His balls shrank during all of this, shrank up and disappeared inside his abdomen, migrating and changing into ovaries while his penis dwindled also till it was only a small nub hidden in folds of flesh above a new opening in his groin. Vaginal lips formed from his scrotum to surround the new vagina, rapidly opening into a bifurcated womb connected to the new ovaries by tubes that would bear the eggs down to the waiting childbed. The womb had two chambers instead of only one, more like a feline uterus than that of any hooved animal; the new she would be able to support two pregnancies at once.

She tried to scream as what was happening to her became more apparent but her voice box moved in her throat. It would no longer block her breathing when she ate or swallowed though she had also lost some of the subtlety of her control over it. Her voice came out as a wordless scream, a high pitched whinny of fear.

Her jaws lengthened and widened somewhat, also, and her teeth became larger to fit her new mouth. Her chin did not grow with her jaw and became rounder and receded.

Her lips became very full and even more mobile than they had been, but her tongue, even though longer, lost some of the subtleties of movement and change of shape it had been capable of. Her nose and pharyngeal passages deepened and widened to enable her to breathe in more air for her new larger body. The olfactory bulb also grew larger and more complexly capable of recognizing scents. Her tongue and lips were now full of new nerves, too.

Her eyes became larger, and some of the cones in her retina changed to rods; she would have very good vision for details and dim light but would be partially color-blind. Her lenses hardened and the muscles controlling their shape atrophied and disappeared as did the muscles for moving her eyes in their sockets. The top part of her lenses would focus for distance and the lower part for nearer objects; at the same time her face widened and her eyes moved apart, turning to the sides a bit. There would be less overlap in her vision field, less stereoscopic capability but she would be able to tell accurately how far something was away by where she had to hold her head to focus on it. She had a nearly panoramic view, able to see to the front and both sides and nearly behind her.

Her eyelashes became very long and thick and curly and a new, inner eyelid, operating sideways from her outer ones, formed. This eyelid was as clear as the lenses of her eyes and even harder; it would protect her eyes from wind, sand and water and give her another way to change focus.

Her outer ears changed also, the folds of the pinnae became even more complex as they lengthened and became pointy at the top, sticking out of her thick hair. Inside changes accompanied the outside ones. She could now hear both higher pitched and lower pitched noises than she could have as a human. Her earlobes became larger and thicker also, and like her lips and tongue, even more filled with sensitive nerves than had been the case before. The lobes also were pierced with a large hole, one reinforced by a circular pierced gristle inside each lobe.

Structures in her brain began to change to accomodate the changes in her body. New sensory wiring grew to control and interpret her new senses, and old wiring that no longer had a use atrophied. The structures in her brain for creating language dwindled and became rudimentary, it increasingly became more difficult to initiate thought in words. At the same time, structures for interpreting sounds into words became more connected and integral to decision-making circuits. While she would be unable to speak and would understand less of what was said to her than before, it would be difficult for her to distinguish between outer voices and her own thoughts with voices coming in seeming more real and compelling than internal decisions.

The frontal lobes became smaller, her forehead receding a bit. Her sense of self became less certain and defined, still more like that of a human than of an animal but less individualistic. With the other changes in her brain, it would make her more docile and willing to accept commands and travel with a herd. She remembered that she had been other than she now was and felt some shame that she had been so transformed. She did not yet realize that she had become female. The hair on her head now began just above her eyes, merging with her eyebrows which had become long and feathery, projecting forward like awnings over her eyes.

At first all of this seemed painful and frightening, but as the limbic system in the center of her brain became larger and differently connected, it began to be less painful, less frightening. Intense emotions, not unlike pleasure and ecstasy submerged her fear in excitement and the noise she made now sounded more like that of a woman enjoying passionate sex. All of her senses now had increased connections to enhanced libidinal structures; she would be able to enjoy and become aroused from many sorts of stimuli.

The golden ropes in her earlobes lengthened and stretched, both forward and back. They became a set of reins lying on her withers and a bridle looping through holes that pierced her cheeks. Inside her mouth, the golden bit pierced also her tongue, near its new base and formed a bell-like tube just above her tongue.

She did not know it yet but the changes in her brain and vocal apparatus, plus the golden bit, would give her a new capability to produce melodic whistles of great complexity and beauty; naturally inventing new tunes to express her moods and instantly learning, and being able to create variations on, any melody she might hear. She would also be able to produce harmonies by whistling from her nose at the same time as from her mouth. The flesh around her nasal openings had become muscular and almost like another set of lips. Threads from the bridle also pierced these new lips.

She arched her back in involuntary pleasure at her transformation just as her backbone changed from the human s-curve to the simple curve of a hooved animal. Her pelvis lengthened and widened, pushing her rear legs further apart while her hams and buttocks thickened and became more rounded. Her back also became longer, while her chest widened and deepened, too. Her waist did not thicken as much and gave her a very feminine outline if seen from above.

Her human coccyx, the degenerate vertebrae of a lost tail, now grew in size and proliferated in number. A supple tail, four inches wide at the base and long enough to reach what used to be her ankles grew from her backside. Hair like that covering her head and the back of her neck grew from the tail and the surrounding flesh immediately around it.

Inside this covering hair though, the end of her tail was nude for the last ten inches and ended in a very finger-like organ, complete with a toughened, thickened nail. This caudal finger had four knuckles, the base one halfway to being a ball-joint rather than a hinge. The finger tapered from about two inches to about one inch in diameter and was supplied with tissue that could cause it to swell and become very stiff.

The male teats also grew longer, thicker and darker; the areola darkening also as the flesh behind them became heavy with growing mammary tissue. A second and third pair of teats grew further back on her new longer torso and a two more pairs of human-like globular breasts formed. The teats were all as much as three inches long, an inch in diameter, constantly erect and stiff and full of sensitive nerves. All six breasts were larger than almost any real human ones, even the artificially enhanced ones of exotic entertainers. They were also full of milk that would be constantly reabsorbed and regenerated unless she were milked frequently or engaged in regular vigorous exercise on a reduced diet to an extreme. Her massive mammaries had become food and liquid storage organs for herself and others. Her new hips and buttocks would also store fat and fluid in their bulk.

New muscularity covered her frame; she was stronger now, though a thickened layer of skin and fat under the skin kept her looking smooth and soft. Around what used to be her ankles and wrists down to the tops of her hooves, feathery curls of hair grew nearly long enough to touch the ground. The hair on her head also curled around her face but became straighter as it grew down her neck to her withers. The hair of her tail grew straight and thick and the only other hair on her body surrounded her new pussy with curls extending a short way in a backward-pointing triangular wedge onto her belly.

Her skin had darkened to an all-over dark golden color, like a deep natural tan, with lips, tongue, asshole, pussy and nipples a vibrant deep pink. When her tail moved, the color of her pussy would immediately attract attention. Her eyelids were now naturally tinted blue-green, a lighter, brighter shade of the same color as her eyes. Rosy highlights on cheeks, buttocks, shoulders and breasts enhanced and accented the real curvature of those areas. Her hair varied in color from the bright flaxen curls around her face to more golden hair on the back of her head to true shining gold on neck, tail and leg feathers. Her pubic hair grew out bright blonde.

While her body as a whole had gotten larger, her waist had maintained and accentuated its slenderness in proportion. She now stood about five feet ten inches at the withers, just under seven feet six to the top of her head in a natural position. Her ass remained wider than her shoulders, or withers however, and was higher placed, about six foot two inches high just in front of her tail. Her large globular breasts hung below her chest and belly, the middle pair slightly bigger than the front and back pair; the nipples long enough to reach what used to be her elbows; their massive roundness also made them wider than her chest or even her ass. The front ones were easily visible between her front legs, and the middle pair bulged out far enough to be visible from both the front and the back.

Her altered face, while no longer quite human, maintained a pleasant symmetry and a pleasing expression of wide-eyed surprised pleasure. Her eyelids drooped slightly, the better to show their color and hint of a dreamy eroticism. Her lips either curved in a smile or puckered in a pout, slightly parted in either case and gleaming with a dewy moisture renewed by occasional licks from her long supple tongue.

Her new neck and head were not quite long enough for her to reach the ground with her mouth so she would not be able to graze as cattle or horses do. She remained, in any case, internally adapted to a more omnivourous diet, preferring large amounts of grain, green vegetables, fruit, eggs, dairy products and occasionally meat. Her new digestion would require, however, copious amounts of bulk and fiber to function properly and she would likely need to browse on shrubs to fulfill this need. She would have to kneel to graze on grass or drink from a stream however.

Her long neck and the flexibility of her spine, because of her narrow waist, would allow her to turn and lick her ass or pussy, more like a cat than a horse. It would almost certainly occur to her sooner or later to try it and in the future, if not disciplined by her master, it might become a sort of vice for her. She could also insert the finger-like ending of her tail into her pussy, her ass or her mouth, deriving pleasure from all of those for the finger had as many nerve endings devoted to arousal as her pussy, nipples, lips or ears.

She could also reach her nipples to suckle from them as she was sure to also discover. Her milk, always available if she had enough to eat, would be rich and nourishing and to some folk, perhaps another possibility for overindulgence. For unless ordered not to, her body would release an addictive substance into her milk that would sap the will of any imbiber. Being milked would give her intense pleasure in the future.

Her withers had a natural shape almost like a saddle and her gaits would all be pleasant to a rider and erotically stimulating to herself. She would be unable to gallop while her breasts were engorged but with a pacing gait could cover much ground quickly without tiring, and her rear feet would fall exactly into the prints left by her front ones. Without a rider or someone to lead her by the golden reins, she would stand placidly in one spot, using tongue and tail to pleasure herself unless driven by hunger to seek food.

She would also be fertile to mate with any equine, human or humanoid race, or other large animal and would produce filly colts of her own species in all cases, incorporating some of the features of the father after a pregnancy of 515 days. The colts would reach adult size and breeding capability in five to seven years. Being able to support two pregnancies at once, she would feel the urge for frequent sexual stimulation unless both of her womb chambers were occupied and she would produce pheromones to encourage male humans and animals to mate with her.

The wizard knew all of these things because he had spent some years defining and refining the transformation. And he had used the orb to provide himself with such exotic mounts before.

As the transformation completed itself in a final ripple of flesh and hair and golden bridle, the new mare-woman closed her eyes and whistled her pleasure softly. "Good girl," said the wizard, satisfied. "Now, kneel, so I can ride."

Obediently, unable with her altered brain to tell it wasn't her own idea, she bent her hocks, like a camel, allowing the wizard to quickly get astride. Pleased with how that felt, she whistled a short arpeggio ending in a descant trill. The wizard laughed, and using pressure from his knees and the reins, guided her out of alley and onto the road.

Somewhere in her mind, she knew she should not be enjoying such treatment but even shame had become pleasure and she paced along with her head held up. People she passed gawped at her, a golden mare-woman with a wizard riding her being an unusual sight even in a city where anything could happen. A little uncertain on the concept of a mirror now, she wished she could see herself but wasn't sure how that could be done. Unable to produce thoughts of her own in words, though, she couldn't hold onto that idea long and relaxed to the pleasant jostling of her large breasts, the friction of her thighs on her pussy, the tug of the bit in her ears, and nose and mouth and the weight of her master in his seat on her back.

She whistled a wordless question to her rider and he answered, "It's a long way across the desert to the City of Brass and you are now equipped to make it comfortable for both of us. When we get there, I suppose I could change you back." The pearly orb on her breastbone shone in the sunlight like a full moon seen in the middle of the day.

She whistled her acquiescence, a long trip full of the pleasures she could now experience suited her well enough and the concept of having a contrary wish could no longer occur to her. Her tail-finger discovered her pussy. Slightly embarrassed by this at first, as they emerged from the city and set off toward the horizon she began to diddle herself with great enjoyment. She lengthened her stride and whistled a low tremolo in pleasure as the contractions of her powerful thighs compressed her penis-like tail inside her.

The wizard chuckled, aware of what his steed was doing and somewhat aroused himself. Time enough to indulge himself in the pleasures his mare-woman could give him later. Her flexible, elasticized pussy would accomodate and pleasure his merely human proportions, or the massive cock of a giant stallion, or the barbed dick of a lion just as easily.

"I think I'll call you Mara in this form," he mused. The wizard felt no guilt at all for what he had done; Mara had her reward, for the orb and chain had become part of her now and she had willingly agreed to serve him in any way he desired without threat or coercion. He'd have to make another orb and chain later in case he needed it in the future. "I suppose I could change you back when we get there," he repeated. "Then again, I could sell you to the King of the Jann. He's a bit kinky, too, and I think he'd like you. He bought the last five mares I brought him after all."

She stuck out the tip of her tongue and blew a sweet melody, a romantic tune that sounded like desert winds playing with the palm trees of a beautiful oasis. The wizard's words seemed like her own thoughts to her and she felt pleased to know that someone would like to own a beautiful mare-woman like herself.
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