Chapter 2

The unicorn paused when it encountered the barrier that proved her maidenhood, retreated slightly, then thrust strongly through it and stopped, buried to the base in her body. Isabelle cried out in pain, surprise, shock, and shame. The sensations up until that point had been overwhelmingly foreign, but pleasant. The rending of her flesh had been anything but, yet it wasn't the physical pain that was the most torturous portion of the process. Instead, it was the knowledge of her loss and what it would mean to her father that tormented her. The unicorn had, in one stroke, rendered her impure, unclean, unfit to be a proper noble female of her society, and the pain of this unpleasant insight tore at her soul.

While her mind had been occupied castigating itself, the physical pain had diminished to a dull throb that seemed to pulse in time with the unicorn's horn embedded within her body. It was a most curious sensation, one that drew her from her largely self-inflicted mental torment. The pain had caused her to arch her back even further and the gradual cessation of it as discomfort was replaced by a spreading warmth which resulted in her body relaxing, diminishing the sharp uplift of her lower back as the tension left to an extent. Changing the position of her body like that caused the unicorn to shift inside her and Isabelle gasped. Whether in pain or pleasure, Isabelle didn't know, too confused by the conflicting stimuli to be able to ascertain anything with reasonable certainty.

Surprisingly, the unicorn withdrew from her after that, taking the warmth with him as he retreated. The unicorn stood, the proof of her maidenhood still coating his horn. The strange haze that came each time a change occurred appeared again around his horn. When it cleared, the horn was once more as it had originally been: long, slender, and wickedly sharp. All of the blood on the horn had been absorbed or cleaned away mysteriously.

One thing that had not grown any more slender was the unicorn's manhood. If anything, it had done the opposite while Isabelle stared helplessly at her ravisher, expanding slightly in both length and girth. Isabelle could have taken the moments during the changing of the unicorn's horn to try to run and escape the beast, but she did not. The magic haze transfixed her and even when it was over, still she did not run. It was not that she didn't think to run, but that, on some level, she felt that she deserved the debauchment she had received. Her current predicament was entirely her own fault for not listening to her father's wishes and Isabelle was convinced that what the unicorn had done and would do in the near future was merely the punishment her disobedience merited.

Thus, she made no attempt to get away, and simply lay there, apprehensively, as the unicorn came towards her once more. When the unicorn approached the terrified, frozen girl on the sacrificial rock and grabbed hold of her generous hips, Isabelle realized what form her penance would take. He would impale her with his massive member and tear her in twain!

Much to her surprise, however, the thrust did not split her in two. In fact, it didn't pain her even slightly. There was some internal stretching and she felt fulfilled in a way she never had before, but that was all.

The unicorn began moving within her and, clearly taking her lack of protest as acquiescence, moved his hands from their dominant position at her hips to her breasts, giving the orange-sized orbs the attention she'd almost forgotten they'd been longing for. He moved slowly but strongly, coming to rest deep within her at the completion of every stroke.

Isabelle was deeply confused. This was her punishment, her penalty for having the temerity to flaunt her father's most stringent injunction? Why, 'twas not painful at all! The longer the unicorn moved, the less strange it became. The intriguing sensations of before began to return. Then, when the unicorn started to vary the speed and depth of his thrusts, it began to increase.

The feeling was small at first, just a tiny tingle that seemed to center around her breasts and belly. Then it grew stronger and stronger until Isabelle could no longer remain still. She had to move. What she was feeling gave her no other option and her hips began to move, tentatively at first, then with more confidence and force as the motions caused the feeling to grow.

The tingling made her breasts more sensitive and the feel of the unicorn's fingers as he fondled and manipulated them gave her great pleasure as they ached and burned with his knowing touch. Isabelle began to sweat as the tingling turned to a warmth that grew and grew until it encompassed her entire body. Straining for something she didn't recognize, Isabelle's hips began to jerk frantically, eagerly seeking the unknown and encouraging the unicorn to aid her, all thought now forsaken.

She ground her hips against the unicorn's own, sobbing in frustration as she sought to obtain something just beyond her reach and then... then suddenly it was no longer beyond her grasp and the warmth within exploded from her body, catapulting her into bliss. Dimly, she felt the unicorn come to his own completion with a snort of satisfaction. She felt the unicorn withdraw from her exhausted body and then, as the bliss faded away, so did consciousness and she sank gently into oblivion.

It was the pain that pulled Isabelle inexorably from the bliss of unconsciousness an unspecified amount of time later. When she reached self-awareness once more, she was extremely confused. Pain seemed to radiate from her very being like a ring of luminescence shone for some distance around the moon when it was full. It was like a living thing, twisting and pulsing and growing inside of her. Isabelle couldn't understand why she was in such unrelenting and incessant agony. At first, she thought that the pain she felt was from her encounter with the unicorn, but aside from the initial bleeding and discomfort, it had been almost... pleasant.

Isabelle knew that "almost" pleasant was probably an understatement at best and a total lie to herself at worst, but "almost pleasant" was all her confused psyche could handle at the moment. If she admitted to anyone, even herself in her own private thoughts, that she had found the somewhat brutal attentions of the unicorn actually enjoyable, then her entire system of beliefs would have shattered beyond repair. Regardless of the fact that she had no control over her own body or anything that could have protected her from the unicorn's attack thereof, or even the fact that she bent and broke as many rules of her father's as she felt she could get away with, Isabelle was nevertheless a product of her class.

And, as a product of that class and society, Isabelle'd had it ingrained into her very being that the only suitable sexual relations were those found within the holy sacrament of matrimony, which were strictly for procreational purposes and certainly were not supposed to be enjoyable. Isabelle naturally had acquired the notion that only serving wenches and whores found any enjoyment in the sex act and "almost pleasant" was the greatest amount of enjoyment she could allow herself to feel without feeling as if she had lowered her proud status as a noblewoman to something common and dirty. The guilt and shame she already felt was already as great as she could bear as it was. If the shame and guilt of having betrayed her class were to be added to what her conscience already had to bear, her mind and soul would be shattered, most likely beyond all hope of repair.

Eventually, even the whip of mental anguish she was flogging herself with, which had proved so excellent a distraction to her bodily torment, was eclipsed by the great physical pain she could not explain. Then, just when she felt as if the pain was becoming so great as to push her back into blissful oblivion once more, Isabelle felt herself change, causing the pain to recede just enough to prevent the escape she desperately desired.

Isabelle writhed under the harsh mistress of the pain scourging her both inside and out, rolling onto her hands and knees and panting deeply in an effort to master, or at least endure, her agony. She stayed that way for long moments, her sides heaving as she tried to catch her breath, the small pain of tiny rocks digging into the flesh of her palms and naked knees going unnoticed amongst everything else she was experiencing.

For some reason the position she was in, on all fours as she was, felt... better, more natural, less painful. Isabelle didn't understand it, but at the moment, she didn't want to, nor did she even try. She was simply grateful for any reprieve from the pain, no matter how small or how temporary.

She kept herself that way, motionless, with her head down, staring blindly at the ground, trying to learn how to breathe either through or in spite of the pain. And, for a while, it even seemed to be working. That is until she felt the odd sensation of a change rippling through her limbs once more. It was the strangest feeling, as if things deep within her, things that shouldn't be moving in unexpected ways, were being rearranged at the whim of some strange force.

The second time she felt this change, it felt as if her bones were stretching and lengthening, much as she imagined the limbs of a prisoner in her father's dungeons might under the influence of the rack, and most likely just as painful for her as it was for them.

But the third and final time that she felt the change was the worst by far. Isabelle felt her hands, her feet, her very head shift and change shape, with a sharp pain gathering and centering on her forehead before bursting apart. Then her skin began to ripple and crawl, as if thousands of tiny ants were marching across every inch of her skin and biting her every step along the way. This last atrocity was more than Isabelle could stand in both levels of strangeness and pain and she cried out in horror. Only to discover a new meaning of terror and fear when the cry that she heard issue from her mouth was not a human scream of fright, but a high, equine noise of terror and distress.

When Isabelle finally calmed down enough to focus her eyes on the world around her, she lifted her head and found it a very different place. Intellectually, Isabelle knew that the world was the same as it had been this morning when she had left the castle, but everything seemed different and strange now. The first thing she noticed was that she could see differently! Without turning her head, she could see almost all the way behind herself. However, she could no longer view what was directly in front of her face. This irritated her, so she cocked her head and directed it down slightly so she could see what was in front of her, like a normal human should be able to do.

This movement gave her a nasty shock, however, because when she tilted her head downwards, she saw hooves instead of hands! Isabelle initially refused to believe her eyes, but when she tried to lift her left hand and saw a corresponding movement in the foremost left hoof within her vision, she was forced to accept the truth. She no longer possessed the body she had been born with and now inhabited this strange, four-footed form. She stamped her back hooves and flicked her tail in annoyance at this revelation and then stopped dead, stunned by the fact that she had a tail.

Isabelle couldn't help herself, she felt absolutely compelled to look behind her and see the thing she had unconsciously moved in her earlier anger. The sensation had just been so very strange. She moved her head slightly behind her and, as she had been both dreading and expecting, saw a long, silky tail protruding from just above her posterior. Objectively, it was quite pretty in a shade of white that resembled the color of the milk that her nursemaid used to bring her when she was small and sleepy. But to Isabelle it was an abomination, an aberration, and it filled her with an unspeakable horror to actually feel it moving and know that she was the one responsible for it doing so.

The turning of Isabelle's head also accomplished one other thing; she could now see the unicorn, the beast that had ravaged her and who must somehow be responsible for her new form, standing directly behind her, carefully positioned in the one place behind her that Isabelle's newly enhanced field of vision did not show without physical adjustment. At some point when she was either unconscious or writhing in pain, he had changed back to the four-legged form she had first seen him in. She was rightly upset and angry at her current predicament, and so she did the first thing that came into her head when she saw him - she tried to kick him.

Unfortunately for Isabelle, her attempt to kick him using the power and reflexes of her new form was awkward and slow. Awkward and slow was, in fact, a charitable way of putting it. Her effort using unfamiliar muscles was pathetic and the unicorn had absolutely no trouble avoiding her attack. And, in payment for her pains and temerity, she received a sharp nip on her flank from the unicorn in reprimand. Startled at the sudden and unexpectedly painful retaliation, she bolted forward a few paces and then stopped, unsteady limbs shaking with exertion and fright.

Then, for the first time, she heard the unicorn speak. Only it wasn't really speech as she knew it. It was difficult to describe, but it was as if the horns sang to each other and the noise his horn made was translated to words in her head. As the horn sang, Isabelle noticed that the unicorn's horn developed a golden aura around itself, almost like when it had transformed, but without the obfuscation that activity had produced. The act of communication the unicorn performed held an odd visual fascination for Isabelle, but what he said to her filled her with fear. "Come," he said. "Follow me or I can make your new life much less pleasant. You have no other choice, the humans you once knew will kill you as soon as they see your new form."

Isabelle realized with dawning horror that the unicorn was right. Her father would have no way of recognizing her if, by some miracle, she was able to escape her ravisher. She was still just as much the unicorn's captive as she had been while he was physically restraining her. Isabelle resigned herself to doing as the unicorn wished, for the nonce.

The unicorn, apparently having no doubts as to what Isabelle would do, had already begun moving out of the clearing, in the direction opposite of how Isabelle had entered it. Isabelle was incensed that the unicorn was so certain of what she would do, but there was nothing she could do about it at the moment. Perhaps later his arrogant certitude would prove to be his undoing, but for now, all Isabelle could do was stamp her hind hooves in annoyance before moving to follow his lead.

Isabelle had a lot of time to fume over the arrogance and unfairness of the unicorn's words and actions. Isabelle was surprised to notice that it was midmorning in the forest; she had been unconscious much longer than she'd originally presumed when the pain had pulled her awake. It was natural for a person who swooned or fainted to assume that little time had passed since they departed the land of the aware, no matter how often this proved not to be the case.

She followed the unicorn for a very long time, so long that hunger and thirst overrode the anger she was feeling towards her captor. Isabelle tried to tell him that she wanted to stop, to find food, to look for water, but either he ignored her or she was unsuccessful in her attempts to communicate as unicorns do, for he did not acknowledge any of her complaints.

At last, just when Isabelle was ready to abandon the unicorn, regardless of the consequences, in order to find food and water, they arrived at their destination. The concealing trees gave away unexpectedly to a large meadow, complete with lush grass and a small stream trickling through the northwest corner of the area. Isabelle immediately moved to take advantage of the water that was beckoning her tantalizingly. This must have been acceptable, for her captor made no effort to dissuade her from forsaking his side in favor of the stream's cool embrace. She found it necessary to step fully into the water in order to access the liquid she so desperately desired.

Isabelle had tried to kneel at the edge of the stream as she was accustomed to doing as a human, but her efforts proved extremely awkward and left her feeling extremely vulnerable. To what, she wasn't quite sure, but the experience was uncomfortable enough that Isabelle decided it was best to drink while standing directly in the stream. At first, she had tried to bend at the waist in order to reach the water, but that attempt produced no results at all. After a moment of confusion, Isabelle realized that she had to crane her strangely elongated neck downwards in order to reach the object of her desire. This action finally produced the desired result and Isabelle drank her fill of the clear, chill water.

Sated just enough to make her willing to face her captor once more, Isabelle left the water and began to make her way back to the unicorn once more. When she threw her head back and briefly to the side for a moment to see what was directly in front of her, she finally noticed what her single-minded desire for water had blinded her to previously; there were other unicorns in the glade!

In fact, one was "speaking" with her captor, if the glowing horn was any indicator at all. Isabelle couldn't hear what they were saying to each other, but there was an irritating buzzing in the back of her brain, as if they were murmuring to each other and if she concentrated just a little harder, she could understand them. And, although she tried, she just couldn't quite comprehend their speech. There were only a handful of other unicorns within the clearing, most lingering in the trees just beyond. They were difficult to see, but Isabelle could almost feel their presence, although whether this was a help or a hindrance, she did not know.

Apprehensively, she approached her captor and the new male where she had left him in her quest for refreshment. Isabelle had been ready to face her ravisher, but the addition of another unicorn made her wary and uncertain once more. She stopped several feet away from where the unicorns were standing, not wanting to be close enough to them to be gored by their horns, either accidentally or on purpose.

Isabelle waited and waited for them to acknowledge her presence. Finally, disgusted, she stamped her forehoof impatiently and tossed her head. This rather juvenile action on her part finally gained Isabelle the attention she desired and the unicorns turned their heads towards her. The only question was, now that she had their attention, what was she going to do with it?

Isabelle was thoroughly dismayed when she realized that she had deliberately attracted the attention of her ravisher while she still knew of no way to assure herself that he could understand the complaints she wished to express. She stamped her forehoof again in frustration, then marshaled her thoughts together. Mayhap if she concentrated really hard on just one thought, she could get her horn to glow like the others had. Isabelle focused intently on what she wanted to know, the short, simple question that had been plaguing her relentlessly in the hours following her transformation: Why me?

For just the smallest moment, it appeared to Isabelle as if her hastily-conceived plan was actually succeeding, but her hopes were soon cruelly dashed when the unicorn abruptly spoke. "All your efforts to communicate will result in naught. Kitalings, the created ones, being not born of the horn, cannot wield it. Neither will you be able to take advantage of the horn's healing qualities, nor any other ability it possesses of which you are not yet aware, and may never be. So it has been since the beginning of our History and so shall it ever be."

"Your life shall proceed thusly," he continued. "By day you are allowed to roam the forest to forage. You must do this always in the company of either myself or another male unicorn. This is for both your protection and to ensure that you do not try to foolishly flee back to your human family. You are kitaling now and you are therefore important to our kind. You must not be allowed to endanger yourself until well after the Time has come.

"The purpose of the kitalings and the continuance of the unicorn race as a whole rests upon this premise. Because of this, you will not be allowed to abstain from nourishing yourself. If you refuse to partake of what the forest provides, you will be forced to do so, regardless of the methods we are compelled to employ. No harm must be allowed to come to you, whether through your own actions or those of others.

"At night, you will rest in this glade, with the others of your kind. This is for your safety, for there shall be unicorns to guard you, and for your comfort, so that you may be with other kitalings such as yourself. There are fewer of them than there are leaves on a small branch, yet we have found that the kitalings react better to their new status when they are allowed this small thing.

"You may rest easier," he added suddenly, "knowing that you shall not be troubled any further by the attentions I paid to you earlier today that resulted in your current state. What we did has accomplished its desired purpose; there is no need to repeat our actions.

"Come, it is late. You are undoubtedly tired from the transformations of this day. I will show you where you are to sleep this night. It is underneath a tree for this night only. I shall be at your side, for your protection. Tomorrow evening, I will show you your place amongst the other kitalings. Mark well my appearance and distinctive markings this night, for you will need to be able to tell me apart from the others.

"I will even help you to identify me," he added magnanimously. "Every unicorn is born with five rings to his horn. This is enough to grant him certain abilities that are basic to our race. For every two turns of the seasons thereafter, he gains another ring to his horn, along with further strength and mastery of his abilities. I am graced with ten rings."

It was obvious that the unicorn was proud of this fact, but it did not impress Isabelle. She had no idea if that was a worthy age for a unicorn to reach or not, nor did she care. She was only concerned with how the unicorn's speech affected her. Not able to speak? How could she abide such constraints of her new life? She had always used her voice, her winsome ways, her whining and cajoling to get what she wanted. How could she get what she needed, or even inform her captor of what those needs were if she could not give them voice?

Isabelle didn't know whether any of those things would even be possible to do in her new life as a... kitaling, and this made her a very unhappy girl indeed. So, dejected and depressed, Isabelle meekly followed her unicorn to the tree and lay down where indicated, her body language screaming sadness and resignation. She briefly struggled over how to lower and arrange her new body comfortably on the forest floor, but eventually managed to get her limbs comfortably arranged beneath her. Isabelle's head lowered and eyes closed as her ravisher settled on her other side and she sank willingly into the temporary oblivion sleep offered.

Isabelle tumbled headlong into the pattern laid out for her in the days that followed. It was like some strange nightmare. Trapped inside the body of another creature entirely without any way of communicating with those who held her loosely imprisoned, Isabelle felt impotent and helpless in a situation that was largely of her own making. In the beginning, she tried to find some way to communicate with the other kitalings, but they were few in number and even more docile and resigned than herself.

After a heavy internal sigh and a fair amount of mental deliberation, Isabelle gradually allowed her repetitive days to lull her into a sense of false security, peace, and numbness. The only things that changed from day to day were the weather and the temperature, and even the effects of those were muted and dulled by the forest canopy above.

The days ground on and on in an ever-repeating pattern. Isabelle would roam the forest by day, searching for tasty grasses and the occasional fruit or vegetable to eat. At night, she would sleep in a cave with the other kitalings by her side with the male unicorns both sleeping by and guarding the entrance outside.

In fact, Isabelle's days were so monotonous and her body was so unfamiliar that she completely failed to notice the tiny, minute signs that things were changing for her yet again. She had no idea what was happening at all. Then, one warm, late-summer evening, it began.

Isabelle didn't know what was going to occur, she just felt oddly nervous. She settled down for the night just as she had every night for the nearly three months previously, in the cave with the other kitalings. But this night it was different. Isabelle felt incredibly restless; as soon as she'd lay down on the floor, she would feel the need to rise again. So she'd pace a little to try to work off some of the inexplicable nervous energy she was feeling, then try to lay down again, with the same results. In addition to being restless, she felt uncomfortable. She was sweaty, annoyed, and her tail switched back and forth constantly as a result.

Suddenly, Isabelle felt a veritable flood of liquid course down her hind legs. Incredulously, Isabelle turned her head to look behind her. What in the name of le bon Dieu was happening to her?

Isabelle watched carefully, but nothing else seemed to be happening back there and no more water appeared after the embarrassingly large amount had passed. Isabelle was shamed that she had done such a childish thing, but when nothing more occurred, she dismissed it as simply drinking too much water earlier that day and resolved to pay better heed to the demands her new form made of her. Mayhap now she could get some rest.

She lay down once more and thankfully this time she didn't feel the need to get up as soon as the majority of her body had reached the cavern floor. Isabelle managed to rest there for a short time, but then the most awful pain began radiating from her midsection. For a brief, happy instant, Isabelle thought that, by some miracle, her punishment was over. That she had learned the lesson in humility that she had apparently needed and would now be returned to her original form so that she could go back to her loving family. But alas, poor Isabelle soon discovered that such a scenario was not to be. Her pain was too localized, too different from what she'd felt before to be the change back to a human.

The pains swiftly escalated, accompanied by cramps similar to when Isabelle had her woman's time, only infinitely stronger and more forceful. The pain was terrible, different from the pain brought on by the change, but just as excruciating in its own way. Isabelle rolled and got to her feet before the next wave of pain came and brought her to the floor once more so that she could repeat the process. She just wanted the pain and the cramps to stop and rolling on the ground seemed to help slightly.

After a few moments, the pain became constant and rolling wasn't helping at all, so Isabelle lay quivering on the ground as she prayed for the pain to leave. The pangs became almost constant and Isabelle felt an incredibly strong need to push the pain away and out of her. So she did. She saw no reason why she should do otherwise. She didn't know how it could possibly make things worse after all. And, slightly to her surprise, after several minutes of pushing when the pain and the cramps came and resting whenever it ebbed, her efforts were rewarded with a cessation of the wretched pangs that were vexing her so.

The end, or at the very least significant drop, of her pain was not the only reward she received, however. When Isabelle raised her head wearily to see what had come of the bewildering and dreadful experience, she got a terrible shock. She had given birth! There was a small version of her captor on the ground next to her and it was still attached!

Isabelle stared, aghast at the... thing that she had borne. She desperately wanted to do something, anything to sever the tenuous cord that kept her connected to the slimy, disgusting four-legged beast she had given birth to, but she was still too exhausted from the ordeal of expelling it from her body. After a moment, the helpless horror was hazed over slightly by the lingering pangs of pain and her mind simply stopped working.

She stared, uncomprehendingly, at the newborn as it stirred and made awkward attempts to raise itself. After a few false starts, the newborn unicorn finally stood successfully on all fours, breaking the umbilical cord connecting them in the process. Isabelle's eyes saw the entire thing, but her mind stubbornly refused to acknowledge what she was seeing except in an unfocused, distant way.