“What the hell is going on?” Aaron asked. Alan’s mind was so foggy and his eyes were struggling to focus. Words and concepts totally alien to him before were swimming around in his head and had he… had he just experienced the most intense orgasm of his life? Aaron had it right.

“Yeah… what the hell is…” Abruptly Alan lost the contents of his stomach all over the damp earth. Somehow despite having eaten very recently, there was thankfully little material and it was contained to the ground rather than splattering all over himself.

“Shit, Alan! Alan? What the fuck! Who the hell are you? What happened to Alan?” Aaron was abruptly shaking him by the shoulders and Alan had to push him aside to retch more. There was more shouting as everyone started freaking out at each other all at once. Well, everyone being the people outside of the pit Alan found himself in. There were two… women? Purleo… no wait, that was some kind of title. ‘Elean’ had taken his hands and done something. At first it was awesome. Clearly some kind of magic. He’d felt something inside of himself, like something was growing, hot and powerful feeling, then things all went fucking sideways.

“Goddamnit, who are you! You’re not John! You’re not Lucy! What the fuck!” Aaron was running around shouting at everyone else now. Apparently barfing was a good way to get someone off your back for a moment.

“Of course I’m John… shit, what’s wrong with my voice? Shit, Aaron, you look like you did at graduation! What the fuck, do I have tits!?” A woman’s voice was responding. Claiming to be John. The tone kept cracking and it seemed almost like they were struggling to talk in a much lower register, like someone mocking a deep man’s voice.

“Don’t give me that shit, you can’t be John!” Now a man’s voice, as if trying to speak too high… There was an audible gasp. “I’m… I’m Lucy but…”

“Shit. No. No, no no, you can’t be Lucy… you’re a…”

“I have a penis.” The declaration was somehow very calm and yet arresting. Alan glanced over at the two… cat-women? Fox ears? Something. Some kind of animal ears. One of them had their hand down their pants and was staring at him while visibly working between their legs. Weird. Actually kind of sexy in that uncontrollable physical response kind of way, but weird. If he didn’t feel completely spent or if he’d been a decade or more younger, he might have gotten all…

Oh. Oh, apparently little Alan was feeling up for it. Huh. That hadn’t happened so quickly in years. His doctor said it was probably a sign he needed to improve his cardiovascular health before damage really started to build up. Forcibly tearing himself from staring at the blatantly masturbating woman, he glanced over at the other one. She was just staring up into the canopy overhead with a blissful look on her face. A different kind of weird. She looked a little familiar…

“Elean?” The woman’s turned her head towards him and continued to smile blisffully.

“I’m free.” Her whisper was somehow intense enough to send chills down his spine. “I’m free!” She whisper yelled. You know, like when you tell someone to whisper and they do it loudly. Abruptly… Elean… rolled over and crawled rapidly up to Alan, putting her face very close to his. Inches away. Not even inches. She looked young, early twenties? Maybe. Hard to tell, when you get to middle-aged that even starts to read as ‘kid’ to you. She was… actually quite attractive, despite lacking normal or abnormal ears on the side of her head and instead sporting very mobile cat or fox ears on the top of her head.

“You are Owl-lan?” She grasped the sides of his face with her hands. Hesitantly and with a confused expression, Alan nodded as well as he could under her grasp.

“Shit. Alan, you’re all skinny and you had animal ears.” Aaron’s voice interrupted. “Is that the elf?” Elean’s blissful grin faltered for just a moment, flickering briefly to annoyance before returning.

“Not elf. Talor.”

“Sorry, sorry… did you speak English?” Elean’s grin widened even more, revealing teeth that were a little bit more pointed than normal human teeth, along with very pronounced canines.

“The Artificial Archive spell worked! Apparently it also has a translation spell built into it. I can now understand your primary language! Owl-lan! Can you feel it? Can you feel your Archive? Can you speak Talor?” She abruptly buried his face into her chest, crushing him against her fairly modest cushions. The sweatshirt material was thankfully thick and soft enough though to make it almost comfortable. “Oh! I am free! The Compulsion is gone! It worked! It worked! After we flee from Talor lands I will repay this debt a hundred-fold!”

Alan pushed away and fell back onto his ass.

“What the hell are you talking about? I thought the Talor would help us? Plus, what the hell is going on? You said something about giving us magic and now I’m different, you’re different… you have animal ears instead of your regular ones. I have…” Alan felt the ears on his own head. The lack of human ears on the sides of his head. The new ears were almost half a foot long, covered in a soft fur and pleasant both to touch and be touched. He probed his teeth with his tongue. Yeah. Yeah, those were too pointy and those canines… sharp.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“And who the hell is that and why is she still touching herself?!” The masturbating woman pulled her hand out from her sweatpants and waved it, visible strings of her fluids dangling between fingers.

“I am a Child and the godling who Summoned you. You may worship me now in thanks.” They all stared at her in silence. She smiled and gestured to ‘get on with it’ but when nobody reacted, her smile turned to a frown. The frown turned to anger. “Fools, you look upon the divine, abase yourselves before me and thank me for bringing you to this world! It is only fitting to worship one such as I!”

“Lady.” Aaron crouched on the edge of the pit. “I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, but we’re not going to worship some random chick who we wake up near after some crazy shit thing happened who was masturbating while looking at us. Seriously, that is mad creepy.”

“A little hot though…” A woman stumbled a little as she moved to stand near Aaron. She was visibly groping her chest under her sweats. She noticed Alan noticing and just shrugged and kept doing it. “Don’t judge man, if you woke up as a hot chick, you’d be checking it out too.” Alan frowned. Realization dawned.

“Oh shit, John. John, you are…” He took a second look. Even under the relaxed fit grey sweats they were all, for some reason, wearing, he could see the telltale shape of a real bombshell. John had been a masculine kind of pretty as a man but now as a women… wow. Just wow. His.. her? John’s hair was still in the same short haircut it had been before and it hardly detracted from the flawless face that presented itself.

“He’s so goddamned pretty! I wasn’t half as pretty, damnit.” A well tanned young man stepped heavily up next to… John. The guy was just looking appraisingly at the now-woman groping her own chest. “Stop that. Do that later.” John shrugged and put his… her… hands where they could see them, obviously not embarrassed but not willing to keep up the groping when confronted.

“Fuck! Lu! Lu? Goddamnit, Lu… John being a hot girl is one thing, but our hot girl being a dude…!” ‘Lu’ blushed a little and sighed. Lucy was a lean, athletic but not bulky young guy with a soft face that would be ‘cute’ on a man and could almost pass as feminine with the right haircut. Lucy had kept a pretty business professional haircut though that was definitely not a ‘man’ haircut, but was hardly overtly feminine. As such she… he… mostly just looked like a modern teenager, blending the line between genders as seemed to be popular amongst so many.

“At least you look like you’re still yourself, even if you’re a furry now.”

“The ear thing is frankly, freaking me out a little bit. Not having ears on the side of my head is just so wrong. Plus you two don’t look terribly upset.” John and Lucy both flipped him the bird. Aaron decided to jump in to their defense.

“They freaked out pretty good, you just seemed really out of it while that was going on. Besides, I think it’s going to take a bit for the shock to wear off. Plus, after being transported to another world with magic I’m not sure what passes as normal anymore.” Aaron just looked like young Aaron. Still very fit, still with that rakish blond athletic guy with tons of confidence look. Well, scratch the tons of confidence part. He looked worn out. “So, uh, I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

“Elean. Eh-lee-anne. Whatever you call me though, do not call me an ‘elf’. These fantasy races that Summons speak of are not representative of Talor and we take great offense to them.” Aaron held up his hands in placation.

“Yes, again, I’m sorry for doing that, Elean. We don’t have much understanding of this… world… but we have a rich culture and history of fiction and stories to draw upon as references. Please help us to understand where we go wrong and we’ll do our best to separate them.” Elean smiled and nodded enthusiastically. “Now, I’d like to bring up a few points…”

“Do not ignore me! I am the godling which summoned you and I demand respect!”

“…first, you seemed to have been changed too. You don’t look like you did before. In fact, you look like Alan and… that one…” They all briefly glanced at the extra woman who was glaring at them from where she had sat up from her lying position. For all her strange demands there was nothing commanding about her at all and they all felt oddly comfortable about ignoring her. Strangely comfortable. Whatever.

“Second, you did something with magic. Can you explain it to us? How did that change us all?” Elean was feeling her ears and teeth with wide eyes, but still listening carefully to Aaron. “Lastly, you said something about fleeing? We thought you were going to get the rest of the Talor to help us? Is that not the case?” At that last, Elean snapped out of her self-inspection and grew very serious.

“I do not know how long it will be, but Sentinels will be sent to investigate. Rituals generally produce very high signatures and this one…” She gestured to the forest around them, which Alan was shocked to find was visibly dead, “…seems to have drawn in a substantial amount of Life and Mana. The area seems completely devoid of Mana right now. Even if the Outer Lands, the grassland, was not directly affected, the Network would have detected this and flagged it as a high priority. I’d say we have less than a day before the fastest Sentinel arrives.”

Aaron held up a hand to ask for her to pause, frowning. They were all listening, but Alan didn’t think any of them were really understanding what Elean was saying.

“I don’t think any of us are really following what you’re saying.” Go Aaron! Pointing out the obvious when the obvious needed to be pointed out!

“Ah, my apologies. Simply put, in about a day’s time, Talor will arrive who are magically compelled to kill us all. They will likely not attack immediately, at least not in earnest, unless they decide we are weak, but within another half a day at least two more should arrive as well and then they will definitely try to kill us then.” She said it with such a straight face that nobody even thought to question it. Rather, instead, the world devolved into angry shouting as John wanted to know why they would kill them, Lucy wanted to know where we could even go, Aaron wanted more details so he could understand the situation and Alan was really hungry.

“What? I’m hungry!”

“Twenty minutes ago you were twice your weight and just five minutes ago you were puking!”

“I’m still hungry!”