Gabrielle
By Scythe14

Gabrielle stood at her post outside the walls of the village, with her short sword in hand. A hydra had been attacking the inhabitants of this village, and she had been hired to stop it. The locals told her she needed a longer weapon, such as a spear or claymore to avoid being blooded. But business for mercenaries had been bad lately, and she could barely afford the short sword and shield she had.

She heard a noise in the distance. Her sword and shield snapped up as she took a combat stance. Then the creature charged. It was an insanely large hydra, almost one hundred feet in length. It had one large reptilian head, with eight smaller heads, each on its own neck. Gabrielle threw herself out of the way as the central head attacked her. She spun and hewed one of the heads from its body. The monster then turned and left. Then she noticed the black blood covering her right arm. "Oh, shit," she mumbled to herself. "Hydra blood."

Suddenly, Gabrielle felt and intense pain in her neck. She reached up and felt eight fleshy appendages sprouting from her neck. Oh my God, she thought, I've been blooded. Her legs began to fuse together. She fell over and passed out from the pain.

When she awoke, eighteen eyes opened instead of two. She felt new sensations she had never felt before. She could see from nine different angles. She had nine separate brains. But I'm still me, she thought, still just one personality. Gabrielle swiveled one of her heads to look at her new body. She still retained her basic humanoid form. Her head had not changed much, just a ridge of reptilian spines replacing hair. Her new heads, however, appeared slightly more serpentine. Scales had replaced skin, and what had once been her breasts were concealed by rough stomach plates. She now had claws in the place of nails, and her legs had fused together into a long, powerful tail. She felt much stronger than she used to be. I could get used to this, she thought as she flexed her tail experimentally. She resheathed her short sword and slung it and her shield onto her back.

Then, reality hit her. "Damn, I really am a blood mutant!" she realized. She would be considered a danger to normal beings. Anyone she met would attempt to kill her. She decided that her best course of action would to continue traveling. Protect other blood mutants. And "normal people" if they made no attempt to kill her. She slithered down the path.