"And then the incantation," the man murmured. His eyes lit on the words and he stared blankly. "How do I even pronounce that?"

He paused, flipping pages carefully in the old book, looking for any indication of how to say the words, but he found nothing. The spell he was trying supposedly would give him great power to do good and with the recent troubles he'd seen around him, he figured it was worth a try. No strange ingredients, just some pretty common stuff and a very particular time and place.

It'd taken a week to decipher the particulars, and a hike with no trail to follow to get to the place. Now he had everything set, and didn't know how to say what he was supposed to say.

"Thah my a... till geed air falb milk?" he tried. "The me ah till gee-ad a-ear falb-huh mmm olc?"

Nothing happened with either try. He sighed and glanced at the reflected moonlight in the tiny mirror he was out of time. "It's probably a fake thing anyway," he muttered, closing the book.

His head itched above his right ear and he reached up to scratch it. "It was worth a try. At least I had..." What his fingers encountered was not his hair. And though his ear felt him touching it, his fingers didn't feel his ear. A fuzzy flap of warm skin blocked his fingers from reaching his head. He felt along it cautiously, trying to rectify the idea that he was touching his ear with what his fingers encountered, and then stopped when he realized that his arm was changing.

Fur sprouted on his bare skin, then faded, moving to other places in waves. Skin to fur, then back to bare skin, and then back to fur, like it couldn't make up its mind.

"What the heck?! What's going on?" he demanded, very unusually calm. He took stock of himself and discovered with horror that his whole body was experiencing these waves of change. Like he was turning into a fuzzy animal, but... not. It couldn't decide.

"I can't go home like this. I can't go anywhere like this. Holy heck!"

He wasn't sure why he wasn't more panicked than he was. Something in his mind told him this should be making him freak out.

"You really didn't know what you were getting into when you started the ritual, did you?" a voice said soothingly. He would have spun to face it, but it didn't come from any direction that he could discern, so he looked around wildly. Nothing was to be found though. "I can feel your confusion through the panic. You didn't know this would turn you into a spirit beast of great power. You didn't know this would require a simple, yet decisive sacrifice. A pledge spoken to give it away."

"It? What's it? What would I have to give away?"

"Far too late for that now. You are stuck in between," the voice crooned sadly.

"How do I get unstuck?" he asked worriedly. "I can't live my life anywhere safely like this. Will it stop soon? Can I go back to being human?"

"It stops when you finish the ritual, or when you go back. But now you can do neither by words alone. Only actions can send you back to your human life or fully into spirit beast form with the power you seek."

"What do I need to do?" he asked, trembling.

"Do. Or not do. There is only one thing, but whether you do it or you denounce it determines your direction."

"What is this thing?"

"Something evil. Anything evil. Not questionable. Evil. Any horrible thing that you could do to seal your determination. It must cost something to somebody else. It must draw a price from an innocent. Whether you kick a baby, strangle and disembowel a hare for no reason, burn someone's home down, steal a car and destroy it... anything of sufficient evil will work."

The words and the thoughts of doing any of these things sickened him. He wanted the power to do good. He didn't want to be evil. Not even mean. He didn't have a mean bone in his body.

"No," he said decisively. "Nothing is worth hurting others for my own benefit. I will not do evil."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. No."

"Even if it is the path to what you seek?"

"Especially not just for myself. No."

As that word left his mouth for the third time, he sensed his path had been locked in.

"You have denounced the evil borne by humanity," the voice crooned. "Welcome to your new power."

What's next?

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