Hellish Heating Potion (OC Hellhound TF) (Patreon)

A chilly wind caused the knight to pull her coat closer around her chest. Ria was not one for the cold. It didn’t play nice with her armor, practically freezing it even with the anti-freeze treatment she’d given it before going out on the expedition and with the coat on top. She could have gone with just the coat probably, they weren’t expecting trouble - but as her teacher had said, it was better to prepare for a problem that never comes than to scramble to recover after being caught with your pants down.

“Don’t you feel cold? Or even a bit chilly?” she asked her companion. She felt cold just looking at the witch - as nice as the black dress and hat were, they didn’t seem especially warm.

Flora cocked her head in confusion. “I mean, yeah. I probably should have worn a coat.” she said. Despite that, she didn’t really look especially bothered - she was crouched down on the path and peering between rocks, and even the cold winds didn’t distract her from her task. Flora was the sort of person who, as long as she was doing something she thought was important, or at least was interested in, wouldn’t complain no matter how uncomfortable it got.

“So, do you know what we’re looking for…?” Ria asked, again. She’d asked before, but while she was no dumb muscle, she also wasn’t an alchemist.

“Anything fire-element,” Flora said, taking a few promising sprigs of a hardy plant and stuffing them in her bag, “Uncle said we were working on some warming potions. It’s cold here, so plants and animals with some natural affinity for fire are common since they can keep themselves warm enough to be viable in the long term.”

“Like that flower?” Ria asked, pointing at the flower Flora had just discovered.

“No, this one’s just pretty.” she said with a smile, adding it to her hat.

It was a bit of a weird feeling for Ria, how Flora seemed so knowledgeable and at the same time innocent. One moment she’d be telling you exactly how to make a de-petrification potion and the next she’d be distracted by a cute forest animal. She needed a minder like Ria to stop her from wandering off a cliff or something. Of course, being friends, she’d have done it for free, but it did help that her uncle had insisted on appropriate payment for the job (to get Flora used to hiring protection, he said).

The gathering was slow and tiring. The rocky path had it’s share of plants, but finding ones that had the requisite elemental affinity, and also didn’t have any negative effects of their own that would negatively influence the potion, was a challenge.

They took a break around noon - or well, Ria did, scrounging up the appropriate materials for a fire and getting it going, while Flora continued to search. Ria warmed up for a bit, sighing as she rested at the fire. “You should come here to warm up, Flora,” she called, “you’ll get sick at this rate.”

“I’m fine, really!” Flora called back.

Ria was ready to settle down again, but she paused. She could swear she heard something, barely audible through the crackling flame and whipping winds. A low growl reverberating through the crags. “Hey, Flora…” Ria called again, “You should really get over here…”

“Oh, hi! I didn’t see you there.” Flora said. Ria was confused for a moment, then realized it wasn’t at her. “Do you want something? I think I have a snack on me…”

“Flora, get back!” The knight leapt to her feet and followed the voice, in time to hear a snarl and a shout of surprise.

She turned a corner and nearly ran into Flora as she stumbled backwards from the threat. At a glance it would have been possible to mistake them for a woman, but further examination showed they were rather more dangerous. The woman had dark grey, nearly pitch black skin and equally dark hair, highlighted by fiery red on it’s tips. Fur covered her essential parts along with her upper arms and below the knees, and her hands and feet were replaced with vicious claws. She was on all fours at the moment, prowling towards them like a wolf stalking it’s prey.

Ria remembered what this was from her many lessons in beast identification - this was a hellhound, a monster-woman of demonic origin that stalked isolated and ill-used paths in search of people to fight and do other, unspeakable things to. And it seemed that she’d stumbled upon this pair and thought they looked fun to fight.

“Stay behind me,” the knight said, drawing her sword and throwing off her cloak. While hellhounds were frighteningly strong physically, their animalistic nature left them without the intelligence to properly apply it in ways beyond brute force. Ria was confident in victory.

The hellhound wasn’t one for a dramatic build up or slow circling or any other pre-fight sizing up and tactics. She simply leapt at Ria, claws out and howling a battle-cry. Ria could have side-stepped it but that would simply send her sailing into Flora, Ria had armor.

She swung her first in a harsh backhand, sending the hellhound off to the side. While normally that would hurt more than it helped, the armored gauntlet lent the blow weight and protected Ria’s arm from the attack.

While the hellhound was stunned, Ria advanced with her sword, and slashed at the beastwoman. They recovered surprisingly quick however and narrowly avoided the swing. When Ria followed up, the hellhound caught the blade in her claws. It became a contest of strength, and it was starting to push Ria back until she launched a knee into her foe’s gut.

The breath was knocked from the hellhound - which, being a hellhound, came in the form of a gout of flame. Ria withdrew from the beast as she kneeled and tried to recover.

They weren’t given the time to do so - instead, they were blasted with a spout of high-pressure water. Flora had drawn her wand, and after some time managed to cast an aggressive spell. The water knocked the hellhound back, and it growled with anger - water was at odds with it’s affinity for flame and it definitely didn’t seem comfortable with the attack.

As Ria prepared herself to strike again, the hellhound seemed to decide she had bitten off more than she could chew. The beastwoman withdrew from the fight, running away with its tail between it’s legs.

The knight watched for a while to make sure it had truly fled and wasn’t just trying to lure them into lowering their guard, then sheathed her sword. “Flora, are you alright? No injuries?”

“Yep, I’m fine! And you?” Flora said, dusting herself off.

“Hellhounds are tough, but not when they’re alone. My instructor would have had me back for another year’s training if I’d lost to one!” Ria said with a proud grin. It felt good to have done her job.

And maybe to have shown off for Flora. That felt good too.

Flora had walked up to where the fight took place, and was looking at something on the ground now. “Hmm… I wonder…” she muttered.

“Flora? Do you need something?”

“Ah-hah! I was right!” Flora declared, standing up with an arm raised. There were some black tufts in her fingers.

“Fur?” Ria asked, cocking her head.

“Hellhound fur! I think it could be the ingredient we need.” Flora said, “I remembered that hellhounds are strongly fire aligned - far more than even those native to the biome. Come to think of it, I wonder where she came from… anyway, it would be a great ingredient to go into a warming potion!”

There was a certain amount of logic to that even for a laywoman like Ria. Hellhounds, being, well, fire-demon-dogs, had an affinity to flame. Flame was hot. Heat counters the cold. The logic checked out on that front. But the “demon” part of that made Ria concerned. “Are you sure it’s safe…? I can’t imagine bits of demons are a normal part of potion creation.”

Flora wasn’t listening. She went back to the camp and rummaged through the pack she’d taken with her, and brought out a bottle filled with a cloudy brown liquid and pulled the stopper, before dropping in some bits of hellhound fur. The potion let out a harsh coughing sound and a plume of smoke, before shifting color to a strange red-black swirl; it felt like they should have mixed, but instead the colors remained distinct somehow. “I brewed a few test potions before we went - all the other ingredients except the one for fire already mixed in.”

If only she could be as forward thinking for anything else in her life, Ria thought with a sigh. Maybe she’d give her friend fewer heart attacks that way. And then the thoughts were chased from her head as Flora raised the potion to her lips and took a drink. “F-Flora, are you sure that’s safe to drink!?”

“Yeah, nothing in there is poisonous.” Flora said. She paused. “Nothing in there is poisonous when properly treated. Which I did.

“No, it’s not about that - though, wait, that’s a problem too isn’t it? It’s about the hellhound fur!”

“Oh, I’ll be fine!” Flora waved away the concern. “It’s just a bit of fur. All it did was give the potion the right elemental affinity. Probably.” It wasn’t entirely wrong either, at least. Flora did feel a spreading warmth throughout her body as the potion got to work. She was feeling nice and toasty in moments, despite her less than appropriate clothing for the chilly weather of the area.

“How’re you feeling…?” Ria asked hesitantly, seeing Flora shaking a little bit.

“Oh, I’m feeling great now. Really warm,” Flora replied, “I probably should have worn a coat in the first place huh? Well, lessons learned.”

Ria frowned. “Are you sure? Ingesting a piece of a monster…”

“I’m fine, I’m fine!” Flora said.

“Uh huh. Fine. And that’s why your hat just popped off your head.”

“Huh?”

Flora blinked in surprise, trying to see upwards to see what had caused the comment, before realizing her hat had been knocked off by something. Ria, on the other hand, had a good view of it - a pair of black canine ears had popped from her hair at the top of her head. “Do I say ‘I told you so’ before or after we bring you back to your uncle?”

The heat was building inside Flora, and she realized now that it went well beyond just the heat of a warming potion. Her body was hot, far too hot. And that wasn’t hyperbole, as parts of her clothes started to fray and then rip apart as they were burned by her heat. “Maybe there’s some minor side effects,” Flora said, trying to catch her hat as it gently floated downwards.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have the dexterity for that anymore - her fingers were thick and stubby now, and began to be covered in a blue something that looked not a small amount like the coat of the hellhound they’d just driven off. Flora kept trying to catch her hat, but it was of no use with digits not meant for fine control. “Call it moderate.” Flora corrected herself. As if on cue, her boots burst, as fur-covered hind paws grew and stretched out. “Maybe I should not have put the fur in.” she admitted.

“You don’t say,” Ria said, but she wasn’t able to help her friend at this point. She could just wait it out.

Flora’s transformation continued apace, her skin beginning to take a darker cast that spread from her gut where the potion had settled. Her hair grew longer and more wild, and the fur along her arms and legs rapidly reached her elbows and knees. Her clothes continued to fall apart, making her glad she had extras.

It was hard to think about that at the moment. Not just because the transformation was distracting, though it most certainly was, but because things like clothes and modesty seemed completely unimportant now. The burning heat of the transformation felt good as it worked to scour away her humanity. It felt really good. Flora giggled. “Ehehehe, feels nice~ I take it back, this was a great idea~”

“Flora…” Ria groaned, “Just… try and settle down.” she said. Of course, fighting a transformation caused by quaffing a potion was a losing battle to begin with.

Why did Flora always think about others, she wondered. Did it really matter? She should just have fun for herself, enjoy herself. The whites of Flora’s eyes began to darken, taking on a more sinister cast as they turned a demonic black against which the blue-silver of Flora’s natural eye color stood out. Wild thoughts were filling Flora’s head. Or maybe thoughts wasn’t the right word - that would imply more thinking than was going on. They were primal instincts, brought to the fore by the potion.

As Flora’s blue hair began to tinge black and her skin took on a coal-like cast, it was exceedingly difficult to worry about anything. Why should she? All that mattered in life was desire. Eat, sleep, fuck. Flora’s humanity had been burnt away - she was a hellhound now, and giggled with a maddened voice as her reason left her.

Ria didn’t draw her sword even as the newly made hellhound seemed to notice her for the first time and began to stalk towards her. She was not going to hurt Flora. She was confident she could use the sword to subdue her without major injury, but that wasn’t a risk she was willing to take - bare handed it is. Or, armored-handed.

“Flora, you feeling alright…?” Ria asked, but even as she did she took a combat stance. She was no fool - Flora was a very sweet young woman normally, but Flora’s normal personality wasn’t especially relevant at this point.

Flora, for her part, responded with a growl, as she approached with hackles raised and her tail swishing behind her. Human words were pointless and didn’t feel right with a mouth full of sharp teeth anyway. The growl she felt could communicate her intent quite well - fight the human, take them as her own. That would be fun. That would be so much fun. Ria would be better if she stopped being a dumb human.

The hellhound lunged at Ria, eager to get into a fight with her. But she wasn’t especially stronger than the previous one, and Ria was no less capable in a fight. She took the lunge on an arm, and forced Flora to the ground even as she ineffectually bit at the steel gauntlet. “Calm down! Sit! Bad girl!” Ria snapped - if she was going to act like a bad dog then she’d be treated like one.

Flora growled incoherently, trying to scratch at the knight with her claws, but as wicked as they were, Flora had just become a hellhound - she didn’t know how to leverage her superhuman strength to break through the armor, and besides which, Ria wasn’t giving her much room to move and use that.

Ria was on top of Flora, keeping her pinned to the ground. It wasn’t going to last long - only until Flora realized she was physically stronger and didn’t have to let Ria keep her down. But while she had the advantage she had to take it. Flora’s arm flew at her with claws out, and she grabbed it. So did the other paw, and that met the same fate. Without any hands free, Ria wasn’t able to attack - and Flora was starting to force her up. So Ria resorted to the last weapon she had.

Her head.

The headbutt dazed the hellhound, who clearly hadn’t expected the brazen blow, and allowed Ria the breathing room she needed. “I’m really sorry about this Flora, but I’m sure it won’t leave a mark!” she said, before bringing a mailed fist on the girl’s head.

Flora slumped over unconscious, groaning a bit. The blow would have been truly severe, even mortal, on a human - the weight of a steel fist is not to be underestimated when a well thrown bare-knuckle punch can render the unprepared insensate in a blow - but on a hellhound, all it did was knock them out.

Ria took a moment to withdraw, breathing heavily with exertion, before sighing again and going to gather up the things Flora had dropped. She just had to hope that she wouldn’t have to give back her pay for this - it wasn’t exactly her fault that Flora was reckless beyond reason. Her uncle would surely be able to reverse the change, but Ria hoped Flora wouldn’t get too stern of a talking to…

The knight slung her transformed charge over her shoulder and began the trek back. It was actually almost more pleasant than the way there, as the hot body of the hellhound warmed her up considerably.