Elrith sat hunched on a log near the burnt out campfire, her black leather vest and skin bathed in the bright yellow sunlight. “Did we...” her cheeks blushed as she hesitated to finish, “did we do things? Did I... sleep on you?” Her eyes stared answer-pleadingly towards Rum, who sat opposite her and cross-legged atop his bedroll. Her intensity quickly vanished though, as her eyes darted elsewhere, suddenly unable to meet his. Yet, the memories continued making their ways through to her mouth. “Did they serve cake out of someone’s butt?”

“You mean my butt!?” Before Rum could answer a woman entered the campfire from the forest. It was Meti, witch of the dungeon, and Rum’s new apprentice. Meti, who was just a little older than Rum if her looks could be trusted, tread through knee-high grass with worn leather boots and her even more thoroughly worn out red robes. The colors on the latter appeared to have been sunbleached by time, like most of the dungeon mages’ robes, while minor stains showed from beneath ineffective attempts at cover-up dyework. A gust of wind caught the buttcake woman’s voluminous hair as she walked, a truly wild mess of a hair, before it all landed to reach its full length, which was halfway down the woman’s back. From thereon, Meti reached up with five fingers to deep-dive into her untamed growth, forcing it backwards and at bay from taking possession of her face.

“So it wasn’t a weird dream.” Elrith, mouth hanging open, momentarily stared towards Meti, a living and alien relic from a consciousness otherwise dead by the fading out of Rum’s spell in Elrith’s sleep.

“Hi” Meti waved her hand to her teacher. The witch mostly ignored Elrith’s eyes on her. But those eyes slowly drifted away anyways, the short human’s face becoming a blushing stupor of reminiscence. “Got up early” Meti added. “Wanted to check you out. The others are still eating breakfast, and they’re doing a second round of packing.” She came to a stop near Elrith’s log, and her eyes went across the scattered bodies of the camp, half of whose members were still asleep. “So much happened yesterday.” Her dreamy words and close presence chained them all to the memories of what’d passed.

“Whaaat’s that taaalking” Rulli loudly complained from his bedroll across the camp.

“Deary” sleepy-mumbled Gilda adjacent of him, “stop being loud. Let’s sleep. Reeest...” The dwarf woman searched drowsily with her right arm for her husband’s body, finding his chest and patting it gently.

“Someone’s not a morning person” Meti quitely commented as she eyed the dwarves in their refusal of the sun’s beckoning.

Rum glanced over at the dwarves too. “I should probably get them some water. And use Filter Body. Few things dries the body up more than a keg of sweetened alchohol.” Rum’s eyes drifted a little, over to another pair of people. Darmon had gotten out of his metal suit for once, and was lying mostly naked with his arms wrapped around his witch friend from yesterday, the latter having apparently forgone the comforts of her dungeon bed. Instead she and Darmon had tried to share his small bedroll, a quite cute if rather failed attempt at outdoorsy romance. For what they’d ended up with was the robe-covered bum of the witch sticking out into the low grass like a lonely lost limb. Still, her face rested in the warrior’s hairy chest, and a woolen blanket hid their legs, so that at least those parts of their bodies had managed to successfully to stay together.

Rum turned his attention back on Meti. “Do you know any streams nearby? I can’t remember where I last saw one.”

Meti looked into the blue for a moment, a thinking expression on her face. “Mmm. We don’t come out often, but, if I’m right, there should be one not far off.” She swung out her arm like a crossbow, aiming it horizontally through the air, while her eyes looked up to the sky, trying to coordinate directions with the sun. Going left and then right for a bit, and back left, her aim eventually settled. “That way. West-ish.” She put down her arm. “Six or seven minutes walking I think.” Rum looked towards the direction. He reached for his own boots by the bedroll’s side, putting them on. “I’ll go get some water then.” Rising to his feet, he wandered off.

He went about the camp first, collecting some empty waterskins. After that, he headed towards the designated direction. Before hitting the treeline, he passed by a pretend-sleeping White Rose next to a lounging wide awake gnome warrior. He gave Electroblade a look. The kind of highly particular look that said: Remember what we talked about yesterday? About not scaring people? In return for his look, Electroblade gave him a scene evoking a total sense of harmony with the morning, with the butterflies and bumblebees flying about her little gnome body. An aura of tranquility with the world at large. She made it seem like all she could ever do was but bathe in the warmth of their magnificent sun. A fascade of the little innocent gnome, practically turned wild gnome, a gnome as harmless as the laziest of house cats. You know, the kind whose claws would dig into your flesh while you stroke their backs, but who won’t even consider touching the mouse hiding under your sofa. That kind of sunbathing lazy cat, just with the additions of the scars from countless battles, a steel peg leg that looks like it belongs on a bird, and of course the missing arm. No, her lounging pose suggested, she was definitely harmless – wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Coming into the treeline, Rum traversed the trip of a few minutes before coming upon a creek with decently clear water. He filled each waterskin, one by one to the brink, before piling it all up in a big heavy armful. Arriving back at the camp some ten minutes later, he let slide off a waterskin down next to Electroblade, before immediately crossing over to the dwarves, dropping a waterskin next to each of their heads. At the sound of water splashing inside the skins, both sleeping bodies stirred to life.

“Drink” Rum said. “It’s water. You’ll need plenty of it.” The dwarves begrudgingly sideeyed the skins with half-open eyes. “I’ll cure you of the rest, after you drank.” The wizard walked off, just as abruptly as he’d come, and proceeded over to Darmon and his witch, dropping a waterskin for sharing next to their heads. The two humans also stirred alive from their slumber, their sleep-heavy eyes slowly moving away from his chest and from her soft hair, looking for the origins of the splashing water sounds. “Drink some water” Rum suggested, and once again moved along, back and over to the silent duo Elrith and Meti, each of them sitting on the big log, gathered as if waiting for him. Meti waiting more than Elrith though, Elrith still looked like she was troubled by thoughts.

“Waterskin?” Rum offered.

Both took the skins handed to them, leaving Rum with one for himself, as well as a few skins in reserve. For these, he walked up to the burnt out ashen campfire, and tossed them in a heap near it. He also tossed one over to the last member of their party, Amez, who was still snoring his pretty face into the blue skies. Rum left his sleeping brother alone.

Coming back to the women, the wizard saw Elrith looking at him, her mouth preparing to say something.

“You” she said calmly, before her expression changed and suddenly she looked as if ready to bite him. “YOU!” She stood up now, finger pointing and her whole face and posture accusing. “You are the reason those things happened! You cast a spell on us, didn’t you!?”

Rum stopped near his bedroll. He took a calm long sip from his waterskin, letting Elrith stand there, in her struck pose, intensity on him with more communicated between them. After letting go of the mouth of the skin, he sat down on his bedroll and stared neutrally back at Elrith’s angered face.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Yes, I cast an area spell, and you were caught in it.”

“And yet made me do all those things!” she retorted, her finger still angry-pointing.

“You must be misunderstanding” Rum responded, “the spell doesn’t decide what you do. You wanted to do those things. If anything, all that the gay magic does is to make it easier for you to do what you already want to. I can lower your inhibitions with Gay Aura, make you stop worrying so much, but I can’t decide what you should want, Elrith.”

The Heartpiercer changed her pose, her hands coming down to rest sternly on her hips. “First of all, that’s totally not true. In what world would I want to sleep with–“

“–You told me I looked soft” Rum interrupted. “It was probably true. Lots of hard mountain rock in that kitchen, and I had a blanket. Quite natural that you’d want to sleep on the nearest friendly sack of fat that you knew.”

“That!” Elrith’s finger shot up again as her face twisted with the motions of her thinking . She tried, quite hard it seemed, to find the rest of her comeback sentence. “That’s... a lie! You weren’t SOFT!”

Meti burst out laughing behind Elrith. “Ha ha ha!” The witch’s cheeks turned round and red, her eyes nearly crying with laughter. The Heart-Piercer turned with a frown towards the dungeon witch.

“You think it’s funny to be under a spell!?” She aggressively asked. “What about you – are you really okay with all that happened?”

Meti’s laughter came down some, and with some effort, she managed to stop giggling, and construe a response. “I understand it. We did try to kill him. And you? I think it all turned out fine."

“So, that’s how it is.” Elrith took on a sarcastic tone. “You’re just fine with every time he casts a spell on you, as long as he got a reason?”

“No, that’s not–“ she cut herself off. Sighing, her eyes went down in ground, trying to think of a proper response to Elrith’s reason of fury.

“So, it’s not fine” Elrith insisted. “You actually agree with me?”

“That’s not what I mean. Or...” Meti hesitated. “If it’s a good reason. Yeah, he can cast a spell. But not any reason. But – me trying to kill him? I forgive that. And he saved you” she gestured at the shortie’s full and intact body.

“After using me as a gods-be-damned shield!” Elrith yelled with exasperation. “He saved me only after making me take all your spells right to the face!”

“That... is true.” Meti looked over at Rum, as if hoping he’d help her find words to use.

“I had a split second to save all of us” the wizard explained. “I’m sorry that I had to use you as a human shield, Elrith. But I will add this: been there, done that. I’ve been doing human shielding for others before, and I survived. I know the art now, I’ve got experience. So, I figured I could probably keep you alive. And as human shields go, we have to be honest, you are quite handy for size. If I’d picked the dwarves they’d be too heavy. And Darmon in his metal suit? Forget about it. You had human shielding potential. It had to be you, or it’d been nobody.”

“Then pick nobody!” Elrith shouted down at the wizard. “Or do it yourself, if you’re so experienced!”

“Doesn’t work like that. Can’t be casting Gay Aura while I got 30 wands firing at me. It was a nigh miracle we made it at all yesterday.”

Elrith looked away. She was still angry but she’d ran out of the words herself to fight with. Instead she just shook her head, and walked a little circle. In the end, she slumped down onto the log.

“Whatever mage. But that back there? It wasn’t me.”

Rum’s eyes met with Meti for a thoughtful second, before they both eyed the slumped form looking all depressed all of a sudden, sitting there on the log with her whole body acting like one big sigh.

“Perhaps it wasn’t” Rum said.

Elrith looked up, an eyebrow raised in curiousity.

“Who am I to say what you are? I can only speak from my own and other people’s experiences, and in the end, they cannot decide over yourself. Only you can. I say it is you, because I think that perhaps if you wasn’t so stuck up with your need for self-control, you would’ve been a little more like that. But... who is to say that your inhibitions aren’t part of you?”

“They are” Elrith answered, assured of herself.

“Exactly. Perhaps only you can decide what you are, from who you want to be. There’s an argument for saying that ultimately, you are that which you at the same time wish you’d be, and are capable of being. And of course, without my magic, your inhibitions appears to qualify as such. Dependent on my spell, you can be that woman, cute on lap, and brave enough to save my life. Without my spell though, all by yourself? It seems that you are only that business-like, hard warrior type, which you’ve always displayed.”

Elrith folded her arms and straightened her back, looking down at Rum and thinking over his words. Her staring turned into something of a superiority-pose, as if she’d just heard him admit his own conversational defeat, and she pondering whether she shouldn’t press her advantage, or be merciful and spare him.

“So perhaps you shouldn’t have let the hard warrior embarrass herself like that?” The rhetorical question left her mouth as her hard eyes attacked him with accusation.

But Rum only stroked his beard in thought, seemingly unbothered. “There is of course–” he started replying, sounding like another lecture was forthcoming, “–the fact that whoever you are right now is surely dependent on factors of its own. Are you more yourself in this self” he gestured to her, “just because more time is spent in this self, or because this self preceeds yesterday’s self? I mean, is quantity in being a particular version of oneself, is that what decides the core characteristics of one’s true being? Is yesterday’s Gay Elrith a less true Elrith, because she only existed in that time? But what if circumstances were like this. What if there was a constant curse of personality hardness cast on you from your birth, does that mean you are truly a hard soul? That Hard Elrith is the true Elrith? And what if we reversed this, what if me and my brother made an enchantment on you that imbued you with forever gay magic. If we did that while you were still a child, so that most of your life would’ve been under this spell, would that mean your true self would’ve been Gay Elrith?”

“What stupid nonsense!” The Heart-Piercer retorted. “A curse or enchantment does not change who I am!”

“But are you not change? And what does it matter if that change comes from a curse or an enchantment? You change all the time since you come into being. First, you have to become a baby. Then, you have to become a toddler, learn to walk, speak. Your whole life at that time is nothing but change. What if a powerful spell gave you wings? Don’t you think you’d come to think of yourself as a being of wings, as someone who can fly whereas other humans cannot? But what if you’d never learned to walk? No wait, that’s not a good example. No, what if you’d never learned to swim? Once you learn to swim it seems like the most normal and basic thing in the world. But there are plenty of people who never learn to swim, poor people. They never undergo that change.”

“I am not a fish!” Elrith barked. “Whether I can swim or not, has nothing to do with who I am. And I can swim, for your information.”

“Okay, but if someone was drowning in a lake, and you were on a beach in sight of them, and there was nothing else on that beach but you and the sand. Could we determine whether you were the sort of person to stand by or to help, unless you knew how to swim? Because if you can’t swim, there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do, least we should have two people drowning. So, it seems to me Elrith, that ability has something to do with what you are. And different circumstances yield different abilities. If I cast gay magic on you, you are differently able than without. But also, this time you are able to think differently, and want differently. And what am I getting at? Well, perhaps most of your life, including right now, there is something not quite like a spell but with comparable effects, that is making you into this tough, hard-hearted warrior persona. Giving you the desires to be that way, and the ability to see to it that you act that way. And as for who you are? Perhaps there is nothing to truly discern the two Elriths, except by the steadiness with which circumstances enable the one or the other. You are always the product of causes, so are we all. And in the end that means there is no true self. There’s only different causes for selfhood.”

“Well this Elrith won’t have you let out another Gay Elrith! So keep your magic hands to yourself!“

“That is fair enough” Rum nodded, as if the Heart-Piercer had made a profound statement. And, indirectly, I actually believe she has. “Ethics, it seems to me, might dictate that any current version of a self has the privilege of deciding their own development, or lack thereof, towards other selves. But of course, if you were ever to become Gay Elrith again, then it seems only fair that that Elrith should be able to make the same choice. Shouldn’t it? Of whether or not to return to Hard Elrith.”

Elrith opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She was at a loss for arguments. She quite literally couldn’t think of any, yet that line of reasoning didn’t sit quite well with her. If she, if Hard Elrith lost consciousness, bringing herself back should be the right thing... Shouldn’t it?

“Hello there!” came a voice from the trees.