As an Andalite aristh, I’d been trained in morphing. Back at basic training they first transformed us with the morphing technology. And they gave us a djabala to acquire and morph.

A djabala is a small, six-legged animal, maybe a third the size of a young Andalite. It has a mouth and a tail and no natural weapons. It lives by climbing trees and eating the highest leaves.

You have to morph the djabala in order to pass the morphing proficiency test. So I did. But then, like a lot of arisths, I morphed a kafit bird. I have heard that some planets have many types of bird. But since we only have three, and since the kafit is the best species of the three, it’s popular with young cadets looking for fun.

It was a wonderful experience. I always loved the idea of flying. But of course, morphing for pleasure is discouraged. So I only did it one time.

That was all the morphing I had done. A djabala and a kafit bird. I had never even dreamed of morphing a Taxxon.

Taxxons are a nauseating species. Even if you’ve seen holograms of them. But trust me, till you’ve been up close to a Taxxon, you just don’t know how awful they are. The smell alone is enough to make you sick.

But now I had no choice. I had to show Alloran that I was still a good soldier. I had to prove that I was brave, no matter what he thought of me. I couldn’t show any hesitation.

So I focused my mind on becoming the Taxxon. And the changes began immediately.

I felt my upper torso begin to melt down into my lower body. As I watched, my blue-and-tan fur ceased being individual hairs and melted into a plasticlike covering. The bare flesh on my upper body did the same thing, turning hard and shiny.

I felt myself falling as my legs shrank. They seemed to be sucked up into my body. Way too fast!

My stomach hit the deck so hard it knocked the air out of me.

Then, almost as quickly, I was lifted back up off the deck. Dozens of sharp cones were sprouting from my belly. I was growing Taxxon legs.

I looked backward through my stalk eyes and saw that my body was stretching out behind me. I was rapidly becoming a fat worm. Ten feet of rippling, slimy segments rolled backward, engulfing my tail. The process made a sound like wet cloth being dragged over gravel.

I could hear my own internal organs dissolving. Squishing, slippery sounds. I could hear other organs, organs I didn’t even have a name for, take their place.

Then … I was blind!

My eyes had all been blinded at once. I couldn’t see anything. I felt fear grow within me. Fear that threatened to become panic. I was blind!

Muddy at first, then sharper, my sight slowly returned. But it didn’t exactly make me feel better. It was an eerie, distorted, broken world I saw.

Taxxons have compound eyes. Each red globule eye is really a thousand smaller eyeballs, each one taking its own tiny picture of the world. Everything I saw around me was shattered into a million small frames. It was overwhelming.

And then I felt something new. A new sense …

I moved unfamiliar muscles and realized that they operated my mouth. My round, red mouth. And through that mouth came a deluge of sensory input. It was like smell. And like something I’d never really experienced before. It’s called the sense of taste, I think.

And what I tasted … what I smelled … all that my senses cared about was the bright smell of blood.

I never even felt the Taxxon’s instincts well up beneath my own troubled and battered Andalite mind. I had no warning. All at once, the Taxxon was in my head.

How can I even convey the horror?

Have you ever felt in yourself some awful, evil urge? Some fugitive thought that you quickly snuffed out? Well, as I became fully Taxxon, I felt such a feeling. And it was not some faint wisp of thought, but a raging, screaming hunger.

A hunger for anything living.

A hunger for anything with a beating heart.

My shattered Taxxon eyes saw two Andalites.

My own people! I wanted to devour my own people.

But Taxxons are not fools. My Taxxon brain saw and understood the Andalite tails. It knew they were weapons. It knew it could not fight them. And that weakness gave rise to a rage that was like a nuclear fire in me.

I was hungry! Hunger like no hunger any other creature can ever know.

As I struggled to reassert my own identity, I understood why the Taxxons had made their alliance with the Yeerks.

The Yeerks had weapons. Weapons to use to feed flesh, warm flesh to the raging Taxxon hunger.

The Taxxons had given up their freedom. But freedom is nothing to a Taxxon, compared with that hunger.

<How are you doing, Elfangor?> Arbron asked me.

<Fine,> I lied. <Only …>

<What?>

<When you morph, be very careful. Be strong. You’ll have to fight the hunger.>

Arbron laughed. <What, are you afraid I’m gonna morph and try to eat you?>

<Yes, Arbron. I am afraid.>