I woke up on day eleven and tried to rub my crusty eyes, almost cutting my face with a nail, which had grown back far beyond where it had been when I cut them the first time around. Well, I should probably call them claws now, rather than nails, pointed and thickened as they were. No wonder the scissors had struggled with them. I'd have no hope now. I'd need a grinding disk or something equally industrial.

Breakfast was a pigeon. They hadn't even bothered with the fruit and veg today. I ate it up with every sign of enjoyment, even crunching up the bones, and noting the changes to my teeth that made it so easy. The ones at the front felt more like fangs, pointy enough that I was worried about stabbing my own tongue. Eating raw meat was... less nauseating than yesterday, letting me better enjoy the flavour. Perhaps because pigeons weren't cute and fluffy, so the mental barrier was lower? The bird disposed of, I moved onto my voice practice, happy to find it hadn't deteriorated any further, followed by strenuous exercise.

Or at least, I'd intended it to be strenuous. By the time I'd done five hundred one-handed push-ups without any sort of strain or disturbed breathing, I started to suspect I'd be able to keep it up indefinitely. I did my best, even utilising the pile of books as extra weight, but it looked like exercising myself to exhaustion was suddenly a losing proposition, and lunch arrived before I'd been able to wear myself out.

It was squirrel again, but at least lunch came with more fruit. As great as they tasted, the mental damage from eating small, furry animals was unbearable. The thought of what these bastards were doing to me was enough to make me want to gut them. Line them up in front of me, and I would...

I caught myself as my anger built up. That wasn't me. Sure, I wanted to escape, maybe even get some payback, but I wasn't the sort of person to seek revenge through personal violence. I looked down at my feet, scaled and now slightly arched, obvious claws growing from each toe and one more starting to poke out of my heel. I'd been imagining raking along their stomachs with those claws, and the resulting waterfall of guts. That was very definitely not a human move, even if I was willing to prioritise revenge over escape. Damn, I was getting more harpy instincts. I could still think rationally, but things were getting worse.

I was terrified. The changes to my body were one thing, but losing my mind was something else entirely, and now a combination of fear and anger was doing everything for me that my workout had failed to achieve, whether I wanted it to or not. And right now, I really didn't. I didn't want this to go any further. I didn't want to lose my mind. I just wanted it all to stop.

In another first since my capture, I seriously contemplated suicide. The claws on my hands were every bit as nasty as those on my feet, and it would be easy to rake them across my throat. I could deny my captors their prize, before I lost my mind completely. Losing my rationality and becoming a mindless monster would be no better than death, anyway.

I couldn't. I thought I'd been brave and held up pretty well, given my situation, but there were lines I couldn't bring myself to cross. It wasn't certain that I would lose my mind. If it was just some instincts, I could cope.

I kept telling myself that as I chewed up the squirrel that had been provided with my dinner. It had a somewhat different taste to the rabbit. Less succulent, but somehow richer. It was definitely my favourite so far, and I regretted not partaking yesterday. I felt like I could eat half a dozen of them.

Yeah... Despite my expectations, I wasn't feeling nauseous at all this time. I could keep telling myself I could cope as much as I liked, but standing there munching on raw squirrel, with blood running down my face, and enjoying it, it was obvious that even my mind was becoming less human by the minute.