The four transformed friends looked at each other. It was, all in all, a very awkward moment. John, apparently, was now an almost but not quite too-muscular short redhead chick with all the right curves for a pinup poster. Lucy was sporting the ambiguously raced semi-Caucasian semi-brown just-a-little-Asian male underwear model look along with I-do-MMA-cage-matches-for-fun forearms peeking out of the sleeves of what seemed to be a new uniform outfit for everyone. Aaron was, well, shit, Aaron looked the same just in different clothes. Freaking Aaron with his lack of self-image issues or curiosity.

“…hey, are you ignoring your god?”

“Aaron, what the hell man? Why am I a chick and you’re just, freaking the same?!”

“Dude John, didn’t you hear what I said, we look just like our character description!” Lucy argued. Man Lucy. Alan was getting a headache. Quickly. “Look, Alan is like, younger version of himself, but shorter? Also I’m not sure he’s ever been half so fit in his entire life?”

Alan turned dead eyes to Lucy’s unfamiliar face and flipped the bird to her, him, them, shit wait, it’s still Lucy right? Should just default to ‘her’ unless, uh, she wants it different then. Oh man, that headache wasn’t getting any better.

“I dunno, I think we can all agree that the ears are pretty cute. So fluffy!” Aaron had managed to move over in the moment without Alan noticing and had reached out to tickle the wispy fluff that curled out from inside his big extra ears. The ears promptly flicked, slapping Aaron’s hand with a painful slap, while Alan simultaneously ducked away from the tickle and from the sharp pain in his new feature. The sound too had seemed particularly loud and starling.

“Ow, dammit! Those are real apparently!”

“Sorry Alan.” Aaron did look sorry. Not as sorry as he should have been though, in Alan’s opinion.

“Alan, let me touch them too!”

“What? Why? Back off, uh, Lucy!”

“…hello? Still here…”

“Noooo, please?” Lucy at least didn’t actively try to just cop a handful of ear fluff, but she did hound him for almost a minute, during which he finally relented. Having a new set of furry ears was a very, very confusing experience. Made all the more so confusing by the fact that Lucy was a man who looked like he could be her brother or a close cousin, though with the attractiveness slider moved towards the max. Perhaps even more confusing was that, maybe because of not having really been touched much both other people in his life, it was causing a little bit of an unwanted physical reaction.

“That’s enough…”

“Oh… fine. Thank you Alan. They are like the floofiest dog ears I’ve ever petted.”

“…”

“Can I touch them ag-“

“YOU LOST YOUR CHANCE.” Alan snapped at Aaron. The big man made the most ridiculous pouty face, but Alan did not give in. It made him wonder, just what had John been doing this entire time? A quick glance at the redheaded woman using one hand to peek down the collar of her own shirt while the other was clearly slipped up from the bottom and fondling herself was enough to send his already awkward response to the ear petting into overdrive. Also, to make him feel so very irritated with John.

“GO SOMEWHERE PRIVATE DICKHEAD!”

John looked up with a dumb happy look on his face, flushed almost as red as the hair which cascaded from his head like a wild flow of water through rapids.

“What?”

Collectively the three of them groaned and turned away from the self-objectification. They knew better than to expect a whole lot of braincells to be firing in that head for the time being.

“Your god demands-“

They were pulled out of the moment by another person groaning, this one being the woman who’d thrown the spear. She just stirring, long slender fingers grabbing fistfuls of the soft leaf litter as she appeared to struggle with returning fully to consciousness. Aaron barely hesitated, rushing to grab the spear from the ground and then placing the long, sharp bladed tip against the back of the woman’s spine, right in that place you can’t quite reach unless you’re really flexible and so you end up itching with a fork or something. The woman froze immediately.

--

“Hands away from your body.”

Their new hostage hesitated, then slowly complied, extending long arms out to the sides and over her head, like she was cheering for her team’s victory at a highschool football game. Aaron asked Alan to come and take the knife from her, which he did quickly, trembling a little with fear and maybe with excitement.

“You can understand us?” Aaron asked. The woman was still face down in the soil, but her head was turned and she was looking up at them with empty looking eyes. The unnatural green hue of her iris contrasted with the stark white, short cropped hair and the veritable eruption of two large fox ears to match Alan’s. Notably, as with him, she also had normal ears on the side of her head, yet they were pointed. Looking at her almost too-long features and height, evident even though she was lying down with a spear tip pressed against her back, Alan thought two things. Supermodel. Also, elf. This was clearly an elf. What else could it be?

Well, now she was an elf with fox ears? That was different.

“…I can. The language was unfamiliar to me before, but I can understand and speak it now. Somehow.” Aaron glanced at each of them briefly, before returning his gaze to the woman.

“Why did you try to attack us? Are there others? Are we in immediate danger?”

At his questions, the woman’s blank, almost empty expression twisted a little into a frown. After a few moments, she looked almost surprised. Then it was schooled again. Those eyes though looked a little less hopeless. Alan wondered what had gone through her mind?

“I am a Sentinel, enslaved to guard the lands of my people. There are others, not nearby. You are not in immediate danger.”

“How can I verify your story?”

“Hellooo, ignoring someone important!”

“Lucy, John, can you keep an eye on the weirdo who fell out of the tree?”

“Weirdo?! I’m not a-oof!” Lucy’s foot easily rolled the weakly struggling ‘weirdo’ over onto her back. “Don’t hurt me!” The ‘weirdo’ squeaked. John finally joined Lucy and together the two of them started conversing quietly with their own captive, frowning increasingly at whatever was being said in response to their questions.

“Now, back to my question?”

“I don’t know. Sentinel are usually far apart. We are only able to be near each other when someone calls for help or for short periods to exchange resources and news. It is a… punishment. Whatever happened seems to be interfering with the magic that is used to control us. Normally I wouldn’t be able to answer any questions, just try to kill you.”

“Why try to kill us?”

“You are in my people’s land. Sentinels kill anyone who is not of the people.” Everyone grew silent at that, including the other woman. They all tried talking at once, panicking a little, until Aaron shouted to get everyone’s attention again.

“Let’s get more information, then we’ll decide what to do, alright?”

“Alright…”

“Yeah…”

“What you need to do,” the Sentinel interjected, “is leave. Also,” she added quickly, before anyone could respond, “take me with you!”

--

“What do you guys think?” Aaron gestured with the deadly spear an oddly casual motion at the two women. One was kneeling, arms bound as best as they could manage with strips of material cut from her own long sleeves, now mangled and fluttering with each movement. She kept her silence and if not for the big triangles of furry expressiveness jutting up from her short white hair, only the slight glint of desperate hope in her eyes belied any emotion as she watched them. The other woman, who continued to insist she was some kind of god that had brought them here and that they should worship and care for, was propped against a tree. Her ‘lack of familiarity with physical form’ was the explanation that was given for why she seemed to be suffering from neurological damage.

Something about her, though none of them could actually put voice to the feeling, made them feel immediately dismissive and even irritated with the woman. A normal reaction to someone falling from a tree after vomiting, then demonstrating severe motor control issues, was definitely not to just ignore them or even be annoyed. Yet that was exactly how they had reacted and it felt, if anything, like some deeper instinct inside was telling them to do exactly that even now.

“We’ve been magically transported to some strange land. Emphasis on magic. Then there was the whole transformation bit. Well, except for Aaron.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Aaron snorted at Lucy’s statement, shaking his head a little. All the while, their de-facto leader never stopped keeping an eye on their two captives.

“No, there are definitely changes. I’m a bit more buff. More flexible. Pretty sure I’m inhumanely tough, actually. Also younger, though I know I did a pretty good job of maintaining my ‘youthful appearance’, there are little things that I feel. Some scars missing. Joints are smoother, lingering pain from that time I had the hamstring injury just gone. Lots more energy too.” Now that it had been pointed out, they could see the outward indications too. Little to no lines around the edges of his eyes and mouth. Maybe a bit more healthy appearance to his skin.

Actually, as they all thought to look for it, they had all aged backwards a little bit. Early to mid twenties rather than mid to late thirties. It was a detail that was easily missed when the other three of them had changed, outwardly, in such a drastic way. Lucy was now the tallest of the four friends. And a man. John, the previous tallest, was now the shortest, shorter even than Alan. At least Alan had stayed the same gender. He’d confirmed, especially after it was pointed out that he had a fairly feminine appearance for a man now. Thinking on their campaign characters though, it fit not only the written descriptions but even, if anything, each individual player’s own mental image of their characters. Alan had always thought of his character as a sort of short, slightly built, almost non-binary guy. The white hair and fox ears were mostly a reference to a common anime trope for the pretty, young boy who did the magic stuff.

At least he was still an adult and not some hormonally challenged teenager. That would have been terrible. John had finally stopped checking out his new ‘rockin bod’. Alan privately noted that even Lucy kept steeling glances at the curvy short woman that was being piloted by their arguably sexist, pervy friend. That, and, Lucy wasn’t looking at John’s face. Huh. Alan was secretly a big fan of gender swap stories. He’d always been curious about the perspective of other genders and people. Maybe Lucy’s transformation was already changing what she instinctively found attractive? It seemed unlikely though to have such an effect. A lot of behavior, such as focusing on breasts and such, was socially driven, rather than just instinct. Lucy was more than familiar with seeing breasts and not being sexually attracted to them.

Or was she? It’s not like Alan was ‘used to’ seeing penises just hanging around, even though he had one. Also he didn’t really know that Lucy wasn’t attracted to women even before…

“What are you thinking, Alan?”

“What? Oh, uh, just still coming to grips with everything.” It seemed like they accepted his cover up for his thoughts. Not that it wasn’t, technically, true. “If these Elves are as violently insular as she claims, then I think we should definitely leave their territory. What I worry about though is how we’ll survive if there aren’t any neutral settlements for weeks of travel. We have some OK clothes, but no supplies and we’re not exactly survival experts.” The group shifted into a discussion about their ability to even survive in the wilderness. The self-called Sentinel provided information upon request, though it was still up for debate as to whether they could trust the information.

Aaron had done survival training. Despite being a tech CEO and such, he had managed to have fairly reasonable working hours and, being someone who never dated and who had excessive funds, he had done a lot of different things. Survival training was just one of them. Though, he acknowledged, he’d not done it extensively. Still, he knew enough to start fires, do some basic hunting, make shelter. Unless they encountered some unexpected danger or large predator, extreme weather, or a lack of resources, they should be able to survive. It would be tough, but possible.

The Sentinel had offered to go and retrieve supplies, tools, weapons for them. That was a huge stretch of trust, even beyond the lay of the land and the hostility of its owners. They’d been inclined not to let her leave their sight. Keeping the woman effectively hostage potentially ensured their safety, at least a little. Though she herself insisted that other Sentinels or Elves would kill her on sight, now, too. That brought them back to the issue of the other one. The so-called god.

“I can help!”

“She can’t even sit up without assistance. I don’t know… then again, if I think about it logically…”

“…we can’t really just leave her here, right? She’d die for sure. Even if something instinctively tells me just…”

“…ignore her. Right?”

“…yeah, me too.”

“I can teach you to do magic!”

Now that, got their attention.

--

Alan had been the one most willing to try it. Of course, all of them wanted to do magic. That was a given. Alan though had insisted that he was the best choice to risk anything. He hadn’t used the argument that he was simply the least important member of their group. That he had less value to society, to them, to himself even, than any of them. Rather, he argued that John and Lucy had gone through a much more upsetting and traumatic change. That Aaron was too valuable as their closest thing to a survival expert and yes, though he denied it, their effective leader. Alan was the only logical choice.

Internally though his reasoning was really of two parts. One, he was the most expendable. Two, he really fucking wanted to do magic. What was the point of being transformed into your wizard-monk dual class character if you could do neither magic nor punch anything effectively? Lucy at least had done cardio kickboxing and was a real yoga and Tai Chi buff. John had done mixed martial arts, strictly low contact sparring though, as part of his fitness regime for years. Aaron did a lot of things, but he had personal trainers. If anyone was a potentially legit fighter, it was Aaron.

Alan had just been a lazy engineer who just did the minimum to keep a stable, low paying, low mental effort job in HVAC system design and analysis. Even someone with a high school diploma and the Excel documents Alan had partially inherited and largely created and modified in just the first few months of the job, could do the work at basically the same level. The rare special occasion could be filled by another engineer and often was. Alan coasted at work the way he coasted at life. Head down, minimal effort, don’t make friends or enemies. In just ten years at the same employer he was, or had been, approaching being the most senior engineer on staff, just from retirements and people moving on to better paying positions elsewhere. Yet he’d never been promoted and never wanted to be.

Now though a fire was lit inside of him. He could learn magic. HE COULD LEARN MAGIC. So he listened to the floppy limbed, too scrawny, too haughty ‘god’ as she verbally walked him through the meditation meant to ‘get him into the right mental state’. How she knew about this kind of thing given her claims that she had been incorporeal until just recently, he chose to ignore. If she really was some kind of higher being, then there were probably all sorts of explanations. Everything went out the question queue though because FUCKING MAGIC.

Alan listened to her instructions. Meditation was something he’d done a few times. John actually had often tried to lead him through it. Mostly to get him to ride some roller coaster or go on some hike he didn’t really want to do. Still, it did help him feel calmer and more in control. So it wasn’t like he’d had no experience with it. His breath grew slower and deeper. He acknowledged the feelings of his body, not trying to suppress or control them, just being aware. The slight crunch and shuffle of the soft, almost spongey forest floor underneath him. The way he was able to sit fully cross legged without the usual tightness in his hips or the numbness of a pinched nerve from the attempt to contort himself.

Alan’s body grew relaxed. His muscles felt strong. Vibrant. His tendons stretched and yet there was a sense of incredible resilience. His breath rattled a little with the excited thought of being at a state of physical athleticism that he’d never been at in his entire life. The sensation of a body which could snap into action like the crack of a whip was exhilarating. It was also a distraction. He acknowledged the thought and then, he let it go. It fluttered off to join the mass of idle mental ramblings he’d already let come and go. Gradually, the only thing he really, truly paid continuous attention to was the voice of the stranger who was leading him through the process.

Let his mind turn inward. Don’t force it, don’t search. As he lets go of the world he will fall naturally into his ‘Archive’. For a moment his thoughts turned around that word, the one that you could just hear was capitalized, but then, it to, was let loose to roam with the others. Recognize it. Acknowledge it. Let it go. So he went until even the voice guiding him faded away and his mind, quite literally, seemed to fall inward.

He was floating. A presence without form. Inside of a sphere which contained a very, very faint mist of something he instinctively felt must be magical energy. Mana, she’d called it. Which of course worked neatly with his mental constructs so driven by far too many games and novels.

“Right, well done. I honestly didn’t think you’d get it on the first try. Now-“

Naturally, when you find yourself bodiless and floating inside your mystical private space and somebody starts talking to you like they are inches from your ear, you scream. Interesting, perhaps, for you to know, is that you can, in fact, scream without a body. Inside your special magic place, your attempts to talk are made manifest into a sort of simulated sense of sound.

Oh, also, you can get slapped in your non-existent face. Which he was. Immediately.

“Don’t yell at me, stupid mortal! I cannot possibly guide you through actually doing anything with Mana if I can’t communicate! I’ve simply connected my own Archive to yours with a thread of Mana so that I-“

“Oh, I see you’re already here.”

Alan screamed again. This time he was slapped, by two different sources, at the same time.

“Why do you keep hitting me? Also, also, how are you both talking to me? Wait, no, how are you slapping me? I don’t even have a body right now!” The two women tried speaking over each other and eventually after a small bit of argument, the ‘god’ took the stage again.

“I was not aware that the Elf was making an attempt to connect to you or I would have prevented it.” This received nothing but the mental impression of a glare from the other presence in his mind. “In either case, the changes wrought to both of your bodies and the form created for me have tied us together. Even I would find this extremely challenging to accomplish with your... friends… unless they trusted me truly and explicitly. Though I admit I was unaware of the existence of the connection to you until I entered my own Archive.”

Alan’s mind reeled and he immediately started to push back at their presences, which sent a shockingly sharp pain through out his entire ‘self’.

“Don’t do that! You could injure yourself with your inept mental flailing!” The ‘god’ grumbled and insisted that he calm himself down before she taught him something, after which she’d show him how to push them both from his Archive. “Look, listen. I’ll explain. This space is part of your soul, yet it is intrinsically linked to your physical body as well. In some cases, specific or major injuries, usually crippling or entire loss of a portion of your body, will have effects upon your ability to interface your Archive with the physical world. Additionally, since you are new to this and not currently circulating Mana through your body, there is only so long you can stay within this space without becoming physically exhausted.”

So he listened. With great effort. He followed her directions. Occasionally the Sentinel’s mental voice added something, though mostly it was a presence, curious, tentative, deliberately nonthreatening and out of the way. He hadn’t forgotten the mental slap though, so he kept a partially wary ‘eye’ on the sense of her presence.

The Archive served multiple purposes, defined apparently by higher level beings which wrote the rules which governed all of reality and even their souls. While physical laws may vary between ‘Realms’, apparently the Archive was universal. Though some ‘Realms’ were sealed from Mana. Without any Mana at all, it was impossible to access your Archive. In fact, following the slight drain of the thin, wispy energy, was how he was directed to find his ‘Nodes’. The Nodes were where his Archive interacted with the physical world and more specifically, with his body. Later he would create pathways within his body, but for now, the Mana sort of disbursed into his form like he was some kind of sponge.

When he asked where the Mana came from, he was told it came from his own life. Just the act of living produced Mana. Using his Archive caused his body to consume Mana at a slow rate. When his Archive was filled, excess Mana would also spill out. Right now his body couldn’t use any of it, so all excess just spilled into the environment. Later he could learn to draw in and use environmental Mana, but for now, he needed to work with what naturally gathered.

[ORIGINAL IN SPOILER, REWRITE WILL BE POSTED ASAP]