The new moon hung heavy in the clear sky outside the gothic-looking window. It was slowly rising to its zenith in the sky above the huge tower. It wouldn't be long now before the time was exactly right for the ritual to complete.

In the room, lit only by the licking yellow flames of a fire in the huge fireplace, was a young man bent over. Checking the salt and chalk lines on the floor, he had his robes hiked up to hang no further down than his knees for fear of scrubbing at the carefully worked circle and the runes within it.

His voice was silent—this wasn't the chanting type of ritual. With his amplification circle complete, he disrobed and knelt on the floor and pressed his hands down so that the tips of his fingers were not quite touching the circle.

All his focus turned inward. Even his curse played a part in this ritual as his family's lycanthropy sang through his blood along with his personal power. There was only one thing a young wizard required, at their majority, to continue growing their art.

He required a familiar.

Any hedge witch or two-bit warlock could find themselves a rat or black cat—that was the cheap way out of things. A magic user's power was filtered and amplified by a familiar, such that a mundane familiar bonded to a great wizard being a travesty, while a microdragon or lightning sprite could make up for a lack of power in an otherwise weak worker of the magical arts.

He was determined that he would be neither of those. He, already carrying rarified blood of a long lineage of magic users and beastmen who had clawed back at their wild nature and tamed the wolves within.

Now, with his magic and body on full display, he let slip his beast—but only a little. His face pushed out into a muzzle and dark fur crept along his flesh causing pinpricks as it erupted. When the change progressed down his back and to his growing tail, he halted it and put his mind toward calling the perfect familiar to him.

His ideal familiar would carry the heart of a wolf, like him, and bear great magics. That alone ruled out many possibilities. Wyverns, griffons, and myriad other magical beasts were cast by the wayside. For him he would want nothing short of the most astounding of creatures.

And so it began to appear. Eight limbs, long, tipped with claws. It would be faster than the wind, and a pair of huge wings would make it twice so. A long tail flowed out behind it, and three lupine-featured heads sprang from its neck.

The air above the circle shimmered with the force of magic writhing there. A gateway was forming between the world that is and a plane of possibility. Just as his mighty pegacerberus was starting to emerge into the world, magic hiccuped.

His summoning disrupted, he felt his being completed. A familiar had been summoned and a connection made. With his head bowed, he could feel a rush of power through his connection and believed he had succeeded despite the weird disruption.

Panting with the magic exertion and the amount of werewolf energy that had seeped into him during the ritual, the young man looked at the familiar that was hovering in the middle of the summoning ritual circle with some confusion.

It wasn't a pegacerberus. It wasn't a wyvern, griffon, or even a falcon (for which he was thankful). Not even a house cat.

The familiar stood about a foot tall, seemed to be some kind of wolf creature, but there were some odd things about it he just couldn't help but ask. "Why are you wearing a skirt?"

Planting its hand-paws on its waist, the tiny wolf creature cleared its throat. "Because I'm a girl!" she said in a squeaky voice. "Now, I have a speech somewhere… Ah!

"Great hero! You have been chosen to stand first in the fight against the darkness!" Twirling in a circle mid-air, the potential familiar pointed at the wizard with an expansive and firm gesture. "It is you who will take up the mantle and accept your duty to stand for love, light, and cute little—"

"Wait, you're a familiar?"

"Y-Yes…"

He just stood, staring at the little wolf. Some part of him recognized that the creature was probably exactly what his little sister had meant when she said she wanted a "cutey wolfy pupper", but that certainly wasn't what he wanted. "What will you give me if I finish the ritual?"

"You want to negotiate over the fate of the world?!" Staring at the wizard, the tiny wolf's jaw hung open. "Are you crazy?!"

Rolling his eyes at the ad hominem, the wizard shook his head. "No. I'm careful. What can you give me that a pegacerberus couldn't?"

"A pregnant what?" Blinking in confusion, the tiny wolf lifted a paw up to her mouth and tugged at her lip. "I haven't heard of one of those. Can they give you the power to save the world?"

Inside every wizard is a megalomaniac, though most of them are the kind who will take over the world to save it. But even a pegacerberus wouldn't give him enough power to save the world. At his current rank of magery, it would barely give him enough power to make it through the academy alive. "I have your word on that?"

Shoving out her paw, the little wolf grinned and nodded. "You'll even be able to afford clothes!"

That brought the wizard up short. At last, though, he reached his hand out and shook hands with the tiny wolf. "What am I meant to call you? Do you have a name?"

"I"—the little wolf finished shaking and twirled about, her dress twirling as she did—"am Princess Angel von Snuggles, the fourth."

"Is there a shorter thing I can call you?"

"Angel will do." Grinning, Angel asked, "And what do I call you?"

"Stanton Raveel-Sharptooth," Stanton said. "Just Stanton for short."

Angel leaned forward and gazed into Stanton's face, zoomed through the air to his side and poked his ribs, then dipped a little lower—before shooting back up to eye-level again. "But, Stanton is a boy's name!"

Shock registered in Stanton's thoughts for a moment, but then the bonding process completed and he passed out.

----------------------------------------

Waking up, Stanton felt weird. Something had definitely happened to him when the bond had been fully forged. He lost his train of thought and sat up. The room was cold. The fire had run out of wood to burn and the stone floor of the chamber he used to do all his magic had done its best to leech all the heat out of him.

Stanton glared at the fireplace and triggered the spell to replenish it with wood, then dropped a fire spell into the middle of it. Magic came easier—far, far easier than before. His eyes grew wider at the feel of a hurricane of power within him. "It worked?"

"Oh, you're finally awake?" Sitting up, Angel floated through the air toward Stanton. "Of course it worked. You took the wand and swore your oath to protect the world from the forces of evil."

"That doesn't sound like something I'd do. I don't even remember it." Crouching, Stanton reached for the robe he'd worn into the room the previous evening. Standing back up, he turned as he pulled it around himself. "Can you prove I made the oath?"

"Easy! Hold out your left hand and repeat after me." Angel waited until Stanton did so. "By the shining light of goodness!"

"I wonder if the universe accepts familiar trade-ins?" The frown Stanton saw on Angel's face was worth it. "Alright, alright. By the shining light of goodness." He held out his left hand.

"And with the power of virtue!" When Stanton repeated it, Angel continued. "By the purity of my feminine charms, I call on my wand of power to protect the world!"

Stanton felt his magic rising, humming in his ears with a fever pitch. Twirling around in a loop for no reason he could think to do, he finished the words, "By the purity of my feminine charms, I call on my wand of power!"

A flare of white/pink light almost drowned the world out around Stanton. Ribbons of purest energy wrapped around him and formed up new clothes. In his now-raised hand, he could feel a wand appear that had a thick shaft and, when he noticed it, a big rose heart on the end. And that's when he finally registered what he'd said. "… my feminine charms?"

Glancing down, Stanton looked into his own cleavage, and almost passed out for the second time in twenty-four hours. It wasn't that his chest was covered in fuzzy gray fur, or that his arms were too, or that he could feel a tail behind him or see the tip of a small muzzle between his eyes. "Why do I have boobs?" When Stanton looked up at Angel, he repeated his question. "Why do I have boobs, Angel?"

"Weeeeeelllllll…" Angel tapped her paws together and blushed. "I realized last night that you were a boy! I had to do something!"

"Why?" Stomping forward, Stanton felt a hurricane of magic around him. His arms and legs flexed with physical force beyond the realms of which he'd ever held before. He noticed this, but his anger was focused. "And you still haven't said when I made that oath!"

"Just now. By assuming your magical girl form, you have pledged yourself to the side of good and honor and beauty!" At Stanton's look, Angel grinned a little more. "You said you wanted power! Look at all the power you have!"

That stopped Stanton dead in his tracks. Looking at the horribly girly wand in his hand, made worse by the addition of pink ribbons, he realized it was a literal focus of the inferno that his magic had become. "…" He wanted a good reason to be angry, but while there were many reasons, not a single one stood up against the escalation in power he'd gained. "Damn you."

"See! Isn't it great! And now you can fight the forces of evil as Super Lupine Girl!" Angel performed a routine of high-kicks mid-air, finishing with her fist held high, striking (in her estimation) the perfect pose to inspire hope in good people and despair in evil ones.

The weird thing for Stanton is that when his familiar struck the pose, there was a surge of magic power through him. "What are you doing?" Turning back to his robe, where he'd dropped it as he'd been given a wardrobe change he hadn't asked for, he noticed said new clothes were kinda tight in places. "Can we talk about changes to the outfit?"

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"The outfit is non-negotiable. It shows any who look upon you that you are the perfect image of feminine beauty." Angel made a show of looking at Stanton and nodded. "And lupine beauty."

"Okay. Look, I get it. You have some kind of—of thing going on. Ribbons. Girls. All that." Stanton pulled his robes around his shoulders and immediately felt a weight fall upon his magic. It was like, with just one garment covering him, his magic potential had halved. Halved from able to glass an entire desert to only able to glass a modest-sized beach. He could live with that. "But I have another two years of academy study to complete before I am considered a journeyman wizard."

Turning to face the little wolf floating in the air, he gestured to his chest. "I can't just let all this hang out. They know I'm male, they will ask questions if I start attending as a girl. The questions will be an embarrassment to my family."

Frowning a little, Angel had to ask, "Why would being a girl be embarrassing?"

"It's not being a girl. Not even becoming a girl. People swap and change all the time. Questions about why I'd become a girl, and the answer being that I blundered into it, would reflect on both my family lines." Pulling at the robes and tightening them around his chest, Stanton started trying to think of a good polymorphic spell to make him at least not have to choke off his air to hide his chest. "So, for about a year, I need to hide this. Easiest way will be to just use a transformation spell and become male again."

"Whoah! Hold up!" Flying as fast as she could, Angel crossed her arms and floated just in front of Stanton's eyes. "This—you—are the symbol of power. If you become male again, all that power will be gone."

"…" Stanton had no words. He reached up and pressed his forehead to his hand, paw, hand-paw. He pulled back just far enough to make sure it was definitely a cross between a hand and a paw, then returned to the full facepalm position. "What about illusions?" He lifted his head and looked at Angel. "Could I actually be a girl and use an illusion spell to make myself look—uh—less girly?"

"It will reduce your potential, but with no physical changes, it might work." Tilting her head to the side, Angel smiled. "You do look pretty with those ribbons in your hair, though."

"You're not helping, Angel."

"It's true! Oh gosh, I bet you could find such a cute boyfriend!"

Moving with the grace and speed his werewolf heritage gave him—and then a pile more from his newfound power—Stanton swung the robes off his shoulder then around and over Angel. Finally he balled them up. "This is for taking it just a little too far. Now, the first thing is to, I guess, power down from all this. Uh, hey, wand, I just want to be normal again!"

Flashing with a bright white light, the wand vanished from his hand and Stanton felt the outfit he was dressed in relax, releasing its death-grip on his under-chest area and returning him to a human—if female—form. "Thank you, wand, wherever you went. At least you seem helpful."

Managing to pull her way out of the balled-up robes, Angel stuck her tongue out at Stanton. "That is not fair!"

"I don't care about fairness, Angel, I only care about graduating without getting kicked out of my family."

"What about saving the world? You promised!"

"Okay, sure, why not? Since you gave me the power to do it, I think I can save the world. Hey, I just realized I still have clothes on. Part of the wand's thing?" Stanton checked himself out—at least the clothed part. He had a shortish, pleated blue skirt, a white shirt with some kind of blue paneling over the chest area, and a weird little blue scarf around his neck that completely obscured his cleavage.

"A girl must maintain her modesty. That is a superior garment designed specifically for learning institutions." Angel took to the air again and this time circled around to land on Stanton's shoulder. "You should change your name. Something like Yuuki or—"

"No. I'm not changing my name and this—I can't wear this in public." Leaving his robes where they lay, Stanton stalked back to the hallway between rooms and to his bedroom. Throwing open the doors, Stanton froze. "Angel?"

"Isn't it wonderful! So fluffy! So soft!" Rushing into the room and doing spirals in the middle, Angel eventually just ceased flying and landed in the huge bed with a FWUFF sound.

"So… pink. Angel, turn it back." Walking to his wardrobe, Stanton threw open the doors and was overwhelmed by yet more pink. "And this. I want my normal clothes back."

"I can't do that."

"Can't or won't?"

"Both, actually, since you're the one doing it and I can't override something you're doing." On her back, Angel wiggled her arms and legs about, making sweeping indents on the super-soft covers. "Why would you even want to? This is amazing!"

Lifting his hand up to his forehead, Stanton let out a small groan as he completed the face-palm maneuver. "Then teach me how to fix my wardrobe, at least. None of this will aid me in protecting the world."

Angel lifted her head and peeked over the crater of comfort she'd created. "Huh? What do you mean?"

"Well, this outfit—loathe as I am to admit it—is practical. I can kick, I can punch, and I can run. Most of these…" He gestured at the closet full of mostly ball gowns.

"Oooooh! I understand. And you think physical combat is important to saving the world. Yes. Yes… I can understand where you're coming from." Floating over and glaring at the riot of fashion in the walk-in wardrobe, Angel let out a puff. "Nope. I can't condone destroying a single one of these."

"But—"

"But," Angel grinned as she turned to look at Stanton, "we could turn the closet into an extra-dimensional space and add more things appropriate to your needs."

Stanton wasn't happy with keeping what was there. He wanted no part with looking female. "Trousers. Shirts—Why is my hair so long?"

"Your hair is effected by the purity of your magic. Don't even bother trying to cut it." Angel was starting to catch on to Stanton's ideas.

"Affected."

Angel stopped her line of thinking and tried to figure out what he was asking. "Huh?"

"You said my hair is effected by my magic. Affected is the right word."

Swooshing around to hover before Stanton's face, Angel booped him on the nose. "No. It's effected. Your magic makes your hair grow long. If you become more powerful, your hair will get longer."

Caught with his mouth open and nothing to say, Stanton just stared at the cute little wolf girl. When his brain caught up, he let out a deep groan. "This is crazy, but okay. Why not? I'll believe everything you tell me, I'll even wear that outfit when I fight, and insanely I'll even save the world—if you give me a wardrobe at least half filled with shirts, trousers, and wizardly robes."

"I already said I can't—"

"No, I got that. Can you teach me how to change it?"

Angel zoomed around Stanton to land on his shoulder again. "Well, the first trick is you need a looooooot of magic, but you have that already. All that's left is to get in contact with your inner feminine self." After a moment of nothing happening, she turned her head to look at Stanton. "What?"

"Maybe I'll just get used to walking around naked. I'm sure not more than half the population of the academy will be upset with that." Stanton reached up to pick at the ribbons keeping his hair up, completely failing to undo the bows and in the end uttering a cantrip to untie them for him.

"You wouldn't."

Hooking his thumbs into the waistband of the skirt, he started to pull it down. "Try me. Technically, this isn't what I look like. I probably won't even get that embarrassed."

"Ugh. You're the worst, you know that?"

Stopping with just the skirt on the floor, Stanton looked sideways at Angel. "Well, you want me to be the best, so work with me here."

"It's the imagery. You have to picture what you want the Wardrobe of Infinite Space to look like, push your magic into that, then it will take that shape and have those things in it." When she detected incredulousness in Stanton's expression, Angel humphed and pouted. "What?"

"That kind of magic is normally, well, personal. It's like when I become a werewolf or when a forest elf steps through trees."

Angel's expression fell to a deadpan glare. "You're a font of femininity whose magic is based around style and grace—and you're surprised that a magical wardrobe is now one of your personal special magics?"

Stopped in his tracks, Stanton sighed. "Sure. Why not? Of course that makes sense." When Angel just nodded to him, Stanton rolled his eyes. "Sarcasm is wasted on you."

Focusing himself on the wardrobe, Stanton built an image of it. Now he knew he could make it whatever he wanted, he briefly thought about banishing all the gowns and dresses—but he had made a deal. So, he pictured a walk-in wardrobe that was twice as deep with all the gowns and dresses on one side while opposite was several designs of shirts in various tones and patterns, pants, cloaks, robes, and other associated masculine clothing.

All that was left for him to do was to push his magic into it and—with a flash—the wardrobe became the vision he'd had. The sigh that escaped him was, he could acknowledge, two octaves higher than normal. "Excuse me, I need to get changed." Reaching up, he lifted Angel from his shoulder and set her on the floor of his bedroom, then closed the closet doors.

Slumping to the floor, his knees folding and depositing him on the carpet, Stanton finally felt alone enough to freak out. He cried. He panicked. He screamed at the injustice of it all. Lastly, and most importantly, he took off the rest of the uniform his magic wand had left him with.

"This is so messed up. Look at me. I—I can't be seen like this and I don't want to be a girl. I'm a guy! This—" Tears started to well-up as Stanton just surrendered to the overwhelming emotions.

The crying had nothing to do with "female emotions" and everything to do with the stress of attending the academy stacking up with a new problem.

In private, and without anyone able to see him do it, he just let go and let the emotions pour from him.

Eventually, after trying to regain his emotional stability several times and failing, Stanton was simply empty. Empty of emotion, but not of purpose. Straightening out and standing up, he caught sight of himself in the mirror.

A young woman stared back. Her hair was the same brownish color as his, her face looked almost the same as his had (excluding the puffy eyes from crying), but everything from below the neck was wrong. Wrong to him on a fundamental level that made it almost not exist. Reaching up to his chest, he froze for a moment. He'd had three girlfriends before, two had been servants at his father's estate (whom he'd been careful with, as was required of someone in his position) and one had been a peer when they were much younger.

Taking a few breaths to steady himself, he focused on each and every part of his new body before taking it in as a whole. He had to admit, the girl in the mirror was pretty. Not his type, but he was sure she'd be someone's type. Probably many someones' type.

Now he had to hide her so no one would ever see that girl. Holding up his hands, he framed just his face like he'd seen impressionists do before deciding where to put their imageographers. He had to smile at that, his face at least looked mostly normal. Wearing a set of hooded robes would help.

"But what about all this hair?" It trailed down to the middle of his back. Long and straight, the brown locks looked impossible to work with. "If I cut it off, it'll regrow, so…"

He decided to try several things. Reaching up to just gather it, he attempted to use a cantrip to hold his hair in place—the magic failed as a crackle exploded from his hair and nullified it. "Oh, come on! Magical hair?!"

Glaring at the hair, he lifted it up again and this time tied it in a knot. "If you won't do what I want, I'll put you in hair-jail." With that done, he selected a shirt off the rack and pulled it on.

The first impression he had was how normal he looked—until he looked harder. Sure enough, the outline of his chest pressed against the shirt in what even he could tell was an untidy way.

An errant look—just a glance—at the other side revealed what he should be wearing. "Ugh. Fine. But only because this just makes me look like some girl sneaking out of a guy's quarters when she couldn't find her underwear."

He knew what the parts were. He'd helped his last girlfriend take them off a few times and watched her put them on. "How hard can this be?"

Half an hour later as he was finally getting the lace-up-sided underwear on and snug, Stanton had to admit both partial defeat and yet a strategic victory. Grabbing up his shirt, he pulled it on and saw the girl in the mirror smile as now the fabric clung to the right places. The right places, of course, if he wanted to get caught as being a woman. "I'll just have to keep my robes fastened all the time. No big deal there."

What surprised him, as he walked around and even jumped in place a few times, was how comfortable the things were. "Screw this, I'm going to bed early." Turning for the doors, he opened them and stepped out into the overly-pink room, having to shade his eyes from the retina-blasting brightness of it all. "How do I beg, bribe, or plain pay you to restore my bedroom to normal?"

"You can't. I love this bed too much." Angel didn't move, not even to look at Stanton.

Snapping his fingers, Stanton lowered the mage-light above to a bare whisper of flame—but the room was still very, very pink. "Angel, that's the same bed I had before, it's just pink now. Can I please have this back to normal?"

"Mmmm… Let me think about it." Angel felt when Stanton sat on the bed, when he lifted the covers, and when he slid in. "You don't really mind the pink, do you?" She gave him her best puppy eyes.

"You can keep the pink for one night." Snapping his fingers again, he snuffed out the light completely and plunged the room into darkness.

Available at: https://www.royalroad.com/profile/220350/fictions

This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.