A SHORT TALE ABOUT RIVEN

Riven wasn’t known as Riven back then.

The Constellation Academy was built on a hilltop far from any major cities. Apparently at one point it had been a place of strategic importance, because the academy had been converted from a ruined fortress. Most of the buildings were a mixture of old and new, so that a classroom might have three walls made of modern plaster and one of ancient stone. As a result, even the most meticulous architect would have found it impossible to grant most of the buildings any sense of symmetry, and rooms built for the same purpose were often completely different shapes and sizes. To make things worse, at some point, someone had decided to haphazardly connect each of the buildings, sealing off most of the entrances and making the entire school look like a twisted serpent from the outside, and making the inside endlessly frustrating to navigate. For example, to reach Professor Mince’s class on magical ethics from the men’s dorms, one had to either walk through the cafeteria, the administrative offices and the library or go outside and walk around the entire school to the women’s dorms and pass through them, which was likely to earn unwanted attention. The only other paths were longer and would converge with one of these at some point.

For Riven, however, the school’s design provided one advantage, a one-person dorm room. Tucked in a corner on the top floor of the men’s dorm was a room barely large enough for a bed. The ceiling was angled with the building’s roof, at one end just high enough for Riven to stand at her full height, and at the other end it met the floor. With no windows, Riven kept it lit with light potions. The only furniture was a bed, a trunk, and a desk paired with a chair. The desk was usually covered in various books, school supplies, and copies of Boys Turning Into Girls Magazine (Articles included: “It’s Totally Just a Fetish! 14 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Even Worry About It,” and “Wouldn’t it be Amazing if it Actually Worked Like That in Real Life? Haha, Not That You’d Actually Want That.”) It was a restrictive, uncomfortable room and Riven constantly hit her head on the ceiling, but she considered it far preferable to having to share a room with men. She had always found the presence of men disagreeable with very few exceptions and the thought of sharing a room with them seemed downright nightmarish. She would have considered sharing a room with women much more preferable, but such a suggestion would have been received with disgust by the administration.

At the time, Riven was not known as a treacherous pervert. Instead she was known for being quiet, moony, and odd. She was a talented student, if not the most studious. Although she had some friends, she was not known for being social. And while demons and fairies were far from uncommon areas of interest, the questions Riven asked her teachers about them were strange. While she had the expected interest in their unique types of magic, Riven displayed an unusual fascination with their customs and cultures.

In fact, she was obsessed with both fairies and demons. She read every book she could find on the subject, including several lengthy tomes on how to contact demons. She also spent many days wandering the woods near the school, looking for signs of fairies, perhaps even a path to their realm. Eventually, however, she was forced to conclude that they had no presence in that particular forest.

Although she had several friends, there were two of particular note. The first was Copernicus, a portly young man who Riven had decided was more tolerable than the other men. The two shared an interest in cheap fiction magazines and ate lunch together on most days. The other was Isandra, a young woman with whom Riven was enamored. As one of the few members of the Academy’s sports club, she was tall, fit, and had a commanding presence that made Riven swoon.

On one particular day, Riven was in the library, reading up on transformation spells. Technically, such magic was illegal, but the Academy’s isolated location and the insular nature of the mage community in general meant that the use of such magic was largely ignored as long as it wasn’t openly flaunted. In fact, no area of study was considered forbidden to the Academy, just mildly discouraged. Riven could research curses far more terrifying than simple transformations and no one would bat an eye unless she actually performed one.

Riven had been studying transformation since her arrival at the Academy and she was almost confident enough in it to actually attempt a spell on herself. Right now, she was carefully taking notes as she read, making sure she had everything absolutely correct.

Riven’s downfall occurred so fast that she had to later piece together exactly what had happened. Copernicus was in the stacks, just one row away from where Riven was sitting. Another group of students stood somewhere behind her, quietly chatting. Riven was so engrossed in her reading, however, that she was unaware of both of these facts. She also failed to notice Isandra walking past, chatting with a friend.

That is, until Isandra shouted, “Who the Hell grabbed my ass?”

Riven looked up, seeing Isandra standing there, looking furious. One of the students from the chatting group was pointing at Riven. Riven, not registering what was happening, smiled nervously.

Most mages in Isandra’s situation would retaliate in some magical way. Magic offers nearly infinite possibilities when it comes to crafting revenge, but Isandra preferred a more physical approach. In a flash, she had hurled Riven to the ground, face down, and in another moment she was on top of her, wrenching her arm behind her back.

(When Riven later told this story to her teammates and she described what she did next, Kaylen, smirk on her face, replied “Seriously?”

Riven explained as best she could. “Imagine if someone you were secretly in love with came up and kissed you out of nowhere. This is like that for me.”)

Riven moaned with delight and said “Harder! Please!”

Isandra sprang up off of Riven and backed away in horror. “You’re disgusting. What is wrong with you?”

Riven rolled over and looked around. She saw the disgusted looks of her fellow students, including Copernicus, who had appeared from around the stacks when he heard the commotion. She felt her face grow red as she finally realized what had just happened. She attempted to stammer out a response, but quickly realized that her initial reaction had already rendered her reputation unsalvageable. She stood, and walked off without another word, leaving behind her notes.

Over the course of the next few days, Riven tried to curb the rumors that spread about her, but with so many witnesses, including her closest friend, who could attest to the fact that she was in love with Isandra, there was no way to prevent herself from being branded a pervert. Worse, she knew that it was true. She was a pervert. True, she hadn’t been the one to grope Isandra, but she had reacted in a way that no normal person would. No normal person was obsessed with being controlled. No normal person obsessed over becoming the opposite sex. And no normal person moaned with delight when she was in pain. She couldn’t even get the memory of it out of her head. The feeling of Isandra’s weight on her. The sensation of pain from her arm being wrenched behind her. The fact that she had liked it was just as bad as groping her, since she had engaged sexually with Isandra without her permission. She could no longer look Isandra in the eyes or speak a word to her. Isandra deserved a world free of her.

Riven resigned herself to spending the rest of her education in isolation. To have no friends and to avoid drawing attention to herself at all costs. To spend as much time as possible in her room, doing all of her eating and studying there. It wasn’t, she convinced herself, so different from how she had lived before. She had never been terribly social, so the loss of her friends wasn’t the end of the world, as much as she missed her conversations with Copernicus. And she had hardly been able to work up the nerve to talk to Isandra in the best of times. Not talking to her at all was hardly any different when it came down to it.

She lived like this for around six months. Eventually, the humiliation of the event in the library had faded slightly, and the most embarrassing aspect of the whole ordeal was knowing that she was seen as a pervert. One morning before class, while reading the latest issue of Boys Turning Into Girls Magazine (articles included: “It’s Not Like You Think About It All the Time So It’s Not Even a Big Deal,” and “There Would Probably be Horrible Side Effects if You Attempted It Anyway, so it’s Better to Just Let It Stay a Fantasy”) something occurred to her. She was going to be seen as a pervert no matter what she did. At this point, she might as well be open about the fact that she was one. As long as she wasn’t actually creeping on anyone it wasn’t really a bad thing, was it? She took out her rewritten notes on the transformation spell. She had put off attempting it for so long, maybe now was finally the time to try.

When she went to class in her newly-altered body, she was told by the teacher to remove the spell. She politely refused. In the end she was told to leave the class. This led to an uncomfortable conversation between Riven and the school’s administration. Eventually, it was determined that as long as she wasn’t casting the spell on someone else, she wasn’t stepping outside of what the Academy considered an acceptable breaking of the law, and she was allowed to continue enchanting herself.

When other students asked about her change in appearance and insistence on a new name, Riven simply explained that she was a pervert. She told them that she was living out a sexual fantasy and that she had grown tired of pretending that she didn’t want this. They would usually follow up with other questions and she would go on to describe her other kinks. To her surprise, they would not react with disgust. Eventually someone asked about the library incident and she explained what had actually happened and, finally, she was believed.

Of course, that’s not to say everything was resolved and the rest of her time at school was pleasant. She spent the rest of her school days treated as a humorous novelty, never taken seriously by anyone, but she found a certain comfort in being seen as a harmless freak.

Eventually, she would work out that her desire to be a woman was not, in fact, a kink and that she was not the first person to come up with that particular spell. Afterwards, she would look back on this time with some embarrassment. Though considering her behavior in the Adventurers Guild, it seems as if she’d changed very little.

A SHORT TALE ABOUT ANDRA

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Based on her personality, there is much one might guess about Andra.

One might guess that she comes from nobility, specifically an excessively wealthy family from another country, Obelisk. One might imagine the huge manor in the mountains overlooking a vast forest in which she lived. And how she had spent her days being cared for by armies of servants and cooks and gardeners. And how they had traveled often and visited nobles in many other countries. And how she had been free to study any subject she wished at her leisure, though she had elected to do very little studying at all.

One might then imagine that she had originally left home not to seek adventure, but as the result of a conflict with her parents. One might even go so far as to work out that this conflict involved marriage. And that leaving home had been frightening to her, but not because she feared being cut off from her parents’ money or because she would have no protection when interacting with commoners. She had (incorrectly, as it would later turn out) assumed she had brought enough money to sustain her luxurious lifestyle indefinitely, and she had already had much experience interacting with commoners as she had a habit of dressing as a maid and sneaking out, pretending to be on errands for her family. Rather, leaving home was frightening because it meant giving up her entire future, both during life and after death. She was supposed to spend her afterlife with her ancestors in the True House von Ekko, an afterlife estate of infinite size and dimensions where she would be served by generations of the family’s most loyal servants. All of this was given up because her parents wanted something from her that she deemed unacceptable.

One might even guess that the first thing she had ever stolen was money from her family. One might then work out that the second thing she had ever stolen was more money from her family, after her parents had tried to take away what she had purchased with the first money she had stolen and Andra realized that she could no longer live with them. And that after a few years, she had squandered this second treasure on lavish hotel rooms and expensive food and clothes and eventually been forced to seek out work. And how she had determined that adventuring was the only work worth doing for someone as brilliant as her.

From here it becomes harder to guess Andra’s past, but one might still correctly imagine her first kiss on the moonlit balcony of her family’s mansion. It had been with the princess of Starfal Kingdom, who was visiting Andra’s kingdom to meet her future husband. The princess’ stay at House von Ekko was a brief stop on her way to the capital and the family had thrown a ball to celebrate. However, just about every house the princess had stayed in had thrown a ball and the poor girl had needed some peace and quiet. So Andra, taking her by the hand, had led her away from the noise of conversation and music and the smell of food out to the balcony where they had whispered quietly together, sharing their worries about their respective futures before their lips had eventually touched. Unfortunately, they were seen by a particularly stuffy butler who had informed Andra’s father and she had been punished.

One would be less likely to guess that Andra had attempted to kiss one person before the princess. At boarding school a year earlier, hidden beneath a weeping willow. However, one would likely be unsurprised to learn that she had developed feelings for a boy who absolutely worshiped her, following her around and constantly singing her praises, to the point of even imitating her style of dress, wearing soft colors with frilly lace and fitted trousers. She had led him out to that private place in hopes of sharing her feelings with him. Unfortunately, not only had he not reciprocated her feelings, but he had been quite disturbed to learn of them, and afterwards the two had grown distant.

One would probably be surprised to learn that a few years earlier, when she was a child, Andra had been the eager follower. How a group of noblemen from nearby estates, including Andra’s father, would often get together for hunting or other forms of leisure, and would bring their children with them. How these children had been Andra’s first friends and how most of them were slightly older and how she had looked up to them. She had tagged along on many of their adventures, always impressed by their smooth mannerisms and the ease with which their more mature bodies performed acts of athleticism that were difficult for her.

One would almost certainly never guess how these friendships had ended. How, when Andra was around twelve, the group had decided to play a secret-sharing game and how Andra had shared a secret she thought would be funny. How the other children, now teens, had been disgusted by this secret and how she had been rejected from the group. After that, what had once been trips Andra looked forward to became ones she dreaded as her once-kind friends became her bullies. She was the victim of prank after prank, constantly having clothes ruined and possessions destroyed until she fell into a depression. She complained to her father, and he told to always remember that she was better than them. She never forgot that, and somehow it made everything slightly more bearable. She began to hold her head high, no matter how badly she was treated, and by the time she entered boarding school she had learned to look down on everyone around her. If they couldn’t see how great she was, it was just proof of how inferior they were.

Every person is a work of art, shaped by those around us. It is unfortunate that we only get to see that art from a single angle.

A SHORT TALE ABOUT KAYLEN

Queen Vilotta liked to wander marketplaces in disguise.

Her servants acted as if this was something scandalous or inappropriate, but Vilotta knew better. This was excessively common among nobles and royals, both for fairies and humans. There were simply too many wonderful and fascinating sights to be seen and she couldn’t imagine how anyone could expect her to resist it.

She would slip out of her castle through a door she had made, one no one else knew about, and adjust her glamour to become a goblin, tiny and green and unassuming. Then she would make her way through the forest or the caves or even out into the human world, wherever the market happened to be on a particular night. She would slip into the crowds and wander.

There were fairies of all types to be found. Elves were usually the most common. Existing between the two worlds in the way they do made them perfect merchants. Goblins were common, too, of course. But there were everything from gnomes and brownies to leshies and selkies. Pixies would zip through the air, looking for people they could dazzle with their dancing. Spriggans would stalk the aisles, searching for those who weren’t watching their possessions carefully enough. A dullahan or a troll might be seen standing guard at some of the wealthier merchants’ stands.

Of course, it wasn’t the fairies that interested Vilotta. She could see other fairies anytime she wanted. It was the others who visited the market. Demons with their long horns and fiery claws. Vampires gliding along in tight groups. Orcs trying and failing to befriend or challenge trolls. Once, she had even seen an alraune. And of course there were humans. It was the humans Vilotta loved most of all. Sometimes they were there as customers, other times they were there as wares. Sometimes they had wandered in by accident. But they were always fascinating. Whether it was rows of charmed humans standing docile as they were sold as food or pets, wide-eyed wanderers foolishly accepting gifts, or wizened visitors who knew how to avoid tricks and glamours, humans always interested Vilotta. There was something about their helpless cuteness that drew her in.

On this particular night, the market was in the human world, in a forest near a village. Vilotta wasn’t sure what country the village was in, but it hardly mattered. Vilotta loved when the market was held in the human world because it meant human visitors were more likely. And tonight did not disappoint. They were everywhere. Being tricked into buying leprechaun gold and trading away their names for baubles. Everywhere Vilotta looked, there were adorable humans clumsily selling themselves into servitude and pledging their hearts and souls to fairies charming them with glamours.

One particular human caught Vilotta’s eye, a crying woman pleading with a dryad to help her child. The woman was dressed in red and white, marking her as a priestess of the goddess Sanguis. A priestess was very unusual in the market.

Vilotta crept up to the woman and said, “A dryad can’t help much with sickness or injury.”

The woman, surprised, looked down at Vilotta with eyes wide. “Then who can?” she asked desperately.

“Someone I know, perhaps,” said Vilotta. “But first you must tell me what troubles you.”

Between sobs, the woman, whose name was Doris, told Vilotta about her daughter. It seemed that her daughter’s behavior had become stranger and stranger in recent days until tonight, when her daughter had done something terrible and was now lying at home, critically injured and awaiting help.

Vilotta asked why Doris did not heal her daughter herself and Doris explained that the girl had committed an act of blasphemy against Sanguis and that Sanguis would not allow her to be healed. There were no priests or priestesses of other gods in the village; however, Doris had learned that the market was being held tonight and that anything could be bought there. So she had traveled there to seek something that could heal her daughter.

At that moment, Vilotta decided to reveal herself to Doris. She adjusted her glamour into its usual configuration, and appeared before Doris in her full royal glory. The human woman was stunned into silence and stood there staring at Vilotta, mouth slack.

“Take me to your child,” Vilotta ordered.

The priestess expressed her undying gratitude and led Vilotta out of the market and through the forest. The two traveled together for about an hour before they reached the village. It was a typical human village, an adorably pathetic reflection of fae architecture. The woman lived in one of the larger houses, no doubt courtesy of the wealthy Sanguian church. Since it was late at night, there were no other humans around, much to Vilotta’s disappointment. She would have loved to see the crowd gather around and gaze upon her beauty. Instead, the streets were abandoned as Doris led her past the church and into her home.

The girl was lying in her bedroom, attended by her other mother, Ellen, whose shocked expression matched the one Doris had given Vilotta when she had first revealed herself. The girl herself was unconscious, stained with blood and sweat. Vilotta looked her up and down, checking her wounds.

“Yes, I can heal this wound, if you desire,” she said.

Doris did not hesitate. “What will it cost?” she asked.

The priestess was smart to ask. Though, Vilotta thought, she was likely not as smart as she thought she was.

“It will cost your child,” Vilotta replied.

“What do you mean?” Ellen asked.

“I will heal your child, and then I will take her back to my castle and she will belong to me,” Vilotta explained.

“No!” Ellen said defiantly, her voice cracking slightly. “You can’t!”

“Then your child dies. That is the only payment I will accept,” Vilotta said, giving her voice a sharp edge that set Ellen crying and repeating “No” and “Please”.

“Ten years!” Doris shouted suddenly. “Give us ten years, then take your prize.”

Vilotta smiled. Doris definitely thought she was smarter than she really was.

“Deal,” said Vilotta.

“Wait, Doris, we can’t!” blubbered Ellen.

“It’s our only choice.”

Vilotta ignored their argument. As far as she was concerned, the deal was made. She turned her attention to the girl, and with a wave of her hand she wove a glamour around her, closing the wounds. Perhaps they weren’t truly closed, but they thought they were closed and the world thought they were closed, and that was enough to heal them. She restored the girl’s lost blood and returned the color to her face. Then she made some other changes.

The two women looked over Vilotta’s work.

“W-what did you do?” said the ever-frantic Ellen.

“This was not part of the deal,” Doris added sharply.

“I am simply ensuring that my prize remains undamaged for the next ten years. Do take good care of her.”

With that, Vilotta vanished, leaving the two women gaping in shock at where she had once stood.

A SHORT TALE ABOUT FIONA

Fiona sat quietly in her jar, jiggling slightly.