Discussion Main / ShapeshifterShowdown

A variant is in the Czech (Moravian) song Proměny (Transformations) where a woman sings into what she will transform to escape from her suitor, and the man replies what he will use to thwart her (e.g.: she says that she will transform into a squirrel and hide in a tree, he responds that he has an axe to cut down the tree).

— rather a nice example occurs in Roger Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness, as a Battle Between Set the Destroyer and "the Prince Who Was a Thousand" (a non-dwarfish Ptah, perhaps) — though, technicly the transformations are the effect of the Prince's ability to drag the combattants through Alternate Realities, which morphs the Entire Universe/s around them, as well as their forms!

— Also, in Harlan Ellison's "the Deathbird" a battle between gods takes this form.