Amorphous sci-fi beings, and a hint to what's hidden in the four other longest answers

Usage examples of shapeshifters.

And this tale that Tunigorn had to tell - the grand processional abandoned, the Coronal venturing into the wild jungles where the Shapeshifters lived - no, no, it was too much, it was beyond all reason!

The Shapeshifters have been scheming against us for centuries, and their time is at hand.

Not even the Shapeshifters, when Lord Stiamot had finally subjugated them and dumped them down in a forest reservation just across the River Steiche from the western reaches of Gihorna, had cared to cross the river into the dismal lands beyond.

And perhaps the Shapeshifters have been flying up from Piurifayne on broomsticks or magical flying machines in the night, and scattering some baleful enchantment on the land.

And he has had an irrational fear of Shapeshifters since he was a young man.

That time we went among the Shapeshifters, you scarce believed you were Coronal yourself.

So the situation is precisely as I heard Sleet express it to the Coronal, when they were at the Labyrinth at the beginning of the grand processional - and which I heard the Coronal refuse to accept: that the Shapeshifters are making war upon us.

Carabella had courage and endurance but little skill as a pathfinder, and the Skandars were strong and brave but not very bright, and Sleet, for all his shrewd, sober-minded ways, was in this region hampered greatly by the paralyzing dread of Shapeshifters that had been laid upon him in a dream while he was young, and which he had never fully been able to throw off.

He sensed everything, even the harsh bitter thoughts of the Shapeshifters, even the slow throbbing emanations of the sea dragons.

I think we will be a long time understanding what it is that links the Shapeshifters and the sea dragons.

Who could have supposed, Khitain, that the Shapeshifters were such ingenious scientists?

He had been abandoned at birth by his parents, and found by a small gang of shapeshifters who hung out in the corner of the basement of the Hamatochi tower.