The ball has just begun, and Maxine was excited for an elegant evening with her husband, Francoeur. They had dressed as fancy as they could, with her in a sparkling red dress and heels, while her husband sported the sharpest suit money could buy. They had rented out a limousine, as while their other cars were already the height of luxury it did not exude the amount of regal complexity that she had desired for the incredibly prestigious gala...

Arriving, they were greeted with a beautiful foyer, decorated so intricately, yet subtly enough to be tasteful. People turned and watched as they arrived, and as they handed off their keys to the worker, they strutted with grace and elegance to the main hall, only stopped in their tracks by the sight of a rather gaudy guest. She almost screamed at the sight of her, a woman stood in a ragged black dress, and sported the most tasteless set of boots she had ever seen, not to mention the hat! She shot back so hard she almost spilled her complimentary wine on the floor. The woman turned to her at the sound and tried speaking, but she was shut down almost immediately...
"Erm... what's-"
"I beg your pardon? Don't you know this is a formal event? I have a right mind to report you to the staff for such... feral attire!"
With that, she scoffed at the ill-dressed commoner as she strutted past to the ballroom, unaware of the unknown woman staring back at them, muttering to herself:
"Oh, I'll show you feral..."

Reaching the ballroom, it was everything she expected from it and more... it was massive, with marble pillars contrasted with rich red walls with gold trims. The floor was polished to perfection and the whole room was decorated with a series of curtains and fabrics, topped off with a gorgeous chandelier adjourned with hanging crystals. People danced in the most elegant of clothes, a raging inferno of whites and blacks as they danced around. It was perfect.

She excitedly ran down into the hall and begun her night of regal excellence, followed slowly by her husband as he followed after her. They spent nearly an hour dancing, chatting, having a great time until later in the evening, where undenounced to them, they took some complementary wines from the tray of someone they should've recognised...

By that time, the ball had died down significantly, a large amount of the dancing had faded out, and the orchestra that had been playing was greatly diminished, as their music was replaced with echoing chatter. She was happily chatting away to another, her husband across from her, when she noticed something... off about him. Francoeur was never the fittest, but he looked... bloated... his suit, which had been fitted especially for his size was now stretched, looking as if he had gained a few pounds in the short time, but for some reason, it felt... normal to her... and so, she took another sip of her drink and carried on chatting with the person next to her.

Although, after a couple of seconds, their conversation fizzled out, neither of the two remembering what they were talking about, before the man's face dulled, and he walked away. She went to turn to her husband and talk to him next, but her mind was blank... she couldn't think of anything to say. Suddenly, she felt her feet begin to turn sore. She instinctively looked down at the floor, which was now noticeably grimy, as if the granite tiling had been weathered for some time. She continued to feel pressure building in her footwear, so decided to uncharacteristically take her heels off, planting her feet barefoot on the cold tile below. It felt unnatural to have her feet on the floor like this, but she couldn't think of anything else to do, as the second she discarded her heels they seemingly vanished into thin air.

Upon closer inspection, her feet were strange too... they seemed like they were larger than they were before, her feet longer than her recollection told her they should be, although she was oblivious to that in mere seconds... her heel was also quite uncomfortable, as it had lost the majority of its padding, and her toenails were abnormally long, with chipped nail polish...

She was distracted from her exploration by a button hitting her dress. Looking up, her husband was stood across from her, lightly panting as his body continued to abnormally swell. He had begun to sweat, wiping his brow of sweat as what was left of his hair began to recede into his scalp. His suit jacket hung open, now relieved of its buttons, and as his shirt strained under his newfound weight, his belt burst off, his stomach sagging as his waist was able to readjust to his new size.
"Guess I should've slowed down with the crab cakes, huh?"
The two laughed for a moment, which knocked out Francoeur's fly in the process. Around this time, the ballroom around them began to shift as they began moving away from this modern area and to something more fitting of the couple's fate. On the orchestra stage beside them, the strings of the instruments began to wither and snap, sending discordant noise across the now quiet hall. Nearly every partygoer had fallen silent, standing in rehearsed positions around the room to wait for the inevitable, stripped of thought. Some were even beginning to succumb, as did the couple, losing hair, sporting fangs or even growing leaves in some cases...

Maxine took a nice, large gulp of her glass before being caught off balance. Almost on instinct, her heel shot up, placing her at a more digitigrade stance. She looked down once more, the tile floor now cracked, and stared at her new limbs. They were longer, sporting rough skin and rich blue claws, which on closer inspection were now beginning to develop on her hands too. Her 2nd and 5th toe began to recede until they were lost between her others, which had swollen to cover the entire width of her feet, her big toe especially growing larger and continuing to grow as the claw curved taller and higher. She lifted her now dull and weathered gown slightly to inspect further, and saw her legs completely changed. Her skin from her hips down was tinted a glowing blue hue, and her thighs had swollen to great size. In fact her stomach was also quite plump at this point, protruding noticeably from her previously plump figure. She went to speak, but found she had no words to say, only moving her jaw enough to discover her teeth beginning to sharpen, inspecting them with her now pointed tongue...

Her husband was not having as pleasant of a time, sweating profusely as he bent over in discomfort. His shirt popped open fully, revealing his chest underneath, which was soft and yellow, sporting only wallpapered over features of a human chest. It was at this time that his limbs began to shift too, his hands shaking as they swelled, as if he had had an allergic reaction. The seams of his pants began to fray, and his expensive shoes tore open to reveal a pair of swollen feet. His pants split down the middle, and out of it pushed the beginning of a tail, which along with his now rounded feet made him almost lose his balance. He began exhaling loudly, and as he bent over, the back of his suit broke open too, the indents of growing spines appearing as his back began to puff up from behind him...

The gala had also received some damage as well. The venue had now begun to fall into ruin, the windows cracking and breaking and the wallpaper beginning to peel. The chandelier was more leaf than glass, and the ceiling began to tear apart, revealing the pre-moon sky above. The musicians stage caved in, and the instruments, as if watched by Medusa herself, began to harden and distort into stone, the instruments drawn into a pile by the buckling stage as they loudly and distressingly ground into dust before them. The guests didn't fair much better. A lucky few began to twitch and move, now powered by a reptilian instinct to remove their tattered clothes, but the rest began to lose even the vague idea of sentience. One gentleman's suit tore open, a flurry of twigs launching out as his head began to peel apart into a body of leaves and branches as he formed into a common bush. Another had lost both their legs, their beautiful white gown shredding away to reveal nothing but stone underneath as they began to sink further and further into the ground below. A lot of the guests had congregated under the chandelier, and they now begun to spring into action. Their clothes tore away, any semblance of individualism washed away as their skin turned to bark, their bodies congealing together as they began to raise towards the chandelier, which began to extend it's branches down towards them...

Maxine couldn't care less, however, as she felt her human features melt away into ones she was now far more familiar with. Her dress began to tear away, the entire lower half flopping down to the floor, the tile now scarce, destroyed or replaced by dirt as blades of grass began to permeate the former ballroom floor. She looked behind her as her spine began to adjust, bending forward slightly as her back arched and her neck lengthened. She didn't care, however, as she was concentrating on her tail, which began to force its way out of her backside and began to stretch far beyond her body. She looked back down at her body, which was completely flat, her entire body now coated in bright blue scales. Her thumb and little finger cracked, slowly losing mass as they slinked effortlessly into her now diminished palm. Her other fingers grew as well, her ring bursting like a balloon from the pressure and dissolving into the air, as did her discarded clothes before her. Her stance continued to list forwards, and as she began to enter the final stages of her transformation, her eyes thinned into thin strips as the last of her mind began to burn away...

Meanwhile, the man she might've of recognised as her husband before tore free of his clothes, calming as the restrictive pain of his former identity peeled away. His body continued to bloat still, his hands and feet swelling into thick stubs, their palms forever pressed to the floor. His nails widened, becoming large plates on the sides of his otherwise featureless legs, and his legs finally got the message, placing him at a digitigrade stance, on all fours. His back began to harden and darken, and his spines finally broke free of his skin, growing to a size more fitting of the massive beast he had become. His tail stretched to the length of the rest of his body, continuing the pattern of spiky spines on his back down to his tail, as the tip began to expand. A tumor-esc orb of spines and flesh developed and swelled upon the end of his tail, growing to nearly the size of his head. His neck bloated, signalling to him his transformation was coming to an end, and he decided to close his eyes and accept his fate as his nose up turned a rich dark green...

The raptor began its final act with it's nose, which cracked out of place on her face. Her make-up smudged, than evaporated, which removed the last of her peach complexion and caused her face to beam a beautiful blue. Her jaw, upper and lower began to extend, bringing her nose first forward and out as its nostrils grew, and new teeth formed in her mouth. Her scalp shrank down to sit uniform with her now incredibly wide snout, which lowered her capacity for thought significantly, and the sides of her now long skull caved in slightly, her back and shoulders readjusting with one final shiver to the shape of a picture-esc raptor.

Meanwhile, her husband opened his mouth and let out a horn-like animalistic howl as his teeth rolled casually out of his mouth, his gums splitting open to reveal a large, brown beak which grew rapidly, pushing his jaw and nose out with them. His cranium catered in a similar way to his former wife's, but in its place, two long, strong horns took their plate, and the extra skin created by the lowering were used to fashion two flaps on either side of his head, him swinging his tail in delight as a newly built ankylosaurus.

The two stared at each other. They didn't recognise each other at all. In fact, they had no memory of who they were previously! The raptor, seeing a large beast before her, began to hiss, attempting to get it to flee. A few more raptors came out of the forest surrounding her and joined in, but the ankylosaurus was not swayed, instead stamping its foot in defiance. The raptors, sufficiently spooked decided to flee, the ankylosaurus happy with itself before walking back into the nearby plains to meet with the rest of its pack.

They would never know what they had lost.