A Slight Change...
You nervously reach for the dimly glowing formation, hesitating for a moment before firmly grasping your left paw around one of the bigger ones.
With a single, sharp movement of your wrist, it breaks free. It shines more brightly for a moment before crumbling in to faintly glowing powder, coating your paws and lightly drifting towards the floor
"Well, that was a bust." You think to yourself. You turn to walk away, shaking your paw in an absentminded effort to clear the dust from it. Without warning, it begins to burn fiercely.
<i><b>CRACK</b></i>
The bones in your paw shatter. The sounds are followed immediately by your pained screams. You collapse, hitting the cave floor with a dull thud. The cracking and reforming of the bones in your paw grate on your sensitive ear drums. Every nerve in your paw screams along with you as you writhe helplessly on the ground. Just when it seems as if it will never end. It does.
No searing pain. Nothing. You lay there a moment longer, asking yourself if it's really over, but you know deep in your gut, it is. You push yourself into a sitting position and instinctively lift a paw to your face to wipe away the tears running down your muzzle. Rather than a furry paw, you now see a scaly hand, complete with dagger sharp claws. You examine your new limb with awe. The crystals' light refracts off of the bright red scales now coating your hand..
You give it an experimental squeeze, closing your hand and running your claws across the scales on your palm. With a sigh you silently ask yourself what you've gotten yourself into. Pushing the thought away, you decide to press on.
You know you need light to continue, but the last attempt at procuring a light source is still fresh in your mind. Regardless, you take a deep, shuddering breath and grab another crystal with your new hand and break it off. It brightens like the last one, but instead of fading and crumbling, it stays that way.
Glad your trusted your gut, you continue on your way.
Written by Naraki Kennedy on 26 April 2016
The end (for now)