I awoke painfully. My ears twitched and swivelled, catching a clicking sound before my eyes slowly opened. I was already strapped into the lifeform changer, and the last buckle had just snapped shut. It was a strange device, composed of a table within a glass bubble of sorts. Machinery all around it gave the apparatus its life, or so I heard. I was interested in wars and battles, not technology.

My brother stood beside me. He gave me a cruel smile as he made the final adjustments to my restraints. I growled at him, the taste of the guard's blood still fresh in my mouth. It was not enough to enter a frenzy, but if I could just get a little more...

The machinery began to bloop, and a bright light filled the chamber. Sanyi cackled, dashing from the bubble and slamming the curved door shut. Leaving me trapped. Helpless. The light grew more and more intense, and my body began to ache. The noise of the machinery reached a fevered pitch, and the ache turned to blood red agony. I felt my claws stretch and pulse, and my body cried out along with them as the light filled my being.

It stopped. Suddenly. My relief was too great for words, but a small whimper of agony escaped my broken body, and I tried to move my hand. Something strange moved instead. Instead of my beautiful, six-fingered, clawed talon, I had a strange...paw. A paw with five digits and pink toepads? My mouth felt odd as well. Shorter, and only divided into two segments, an upper and lower jaw.

Sanyi strode into the chamber. My brother stopped short as he saw me. His body pulsed with wave after wave of laughter. I glared up at him. Wait, when did he become so large? With a sinking feeling, I glanced down at myself. My...my warrior soul had been encased in a small, long-haired body, standing about two feet tall at the shoulder. With four legs ending in primitive paws. At least my noble, sweeping tail remained.

I directed an angry growl at my still-chuckling brother. "What is this?? What have you done?"

"It would appear, o warlord, that you have become the Earth creature that humans call a 'dog.' The lifeform changer seeks the creature on the selected planet that is most like our species. These dogs apparently resemble us the most."

He picked my atrociously small body up, and while I flashed my fangs and snarled, he could hold my muzzle shut with a single talon. My body shook with fury. This was ridiculous! That mongrel could never touch me with safety before!

"If you beg me, brother," he whispered in my ear, gesturing to the crowd of my subjects gathered around the bubble. "Before all of our people, I will mercifully kill you here and now."

He released my mouth so that I could speak, but I said nothing. My heart flared with pride. Warriors did not beg. They did not plead. But the fate he had set before me was a humiliating one. A path lined with indignity and blistering shame.

I closed my eyes. Oh, father. What would you have done? I could see his handsome red-furred head in my mental vision, but the image so quickly flickered and blurred. He was gone. Only I, I was left.

But the brief moment had given me clarity. I would suffer this torment and destruction of my honor for one reason. My people deserved their rightful king, not my treacherous cur of a younger brother.

I looked him in the eye - with a little difficulty due to my new facial structure - and snarled out, "No."

The slightest amount of shock flickered over Sanyi's face, but he hid it swiftly. "Very well." He tossed me to a guard. "Take him to the ship. We shall send him down."