Solana pulled her legs to her body an wrapped her arms around them. She was clearly enjoying herself.

“There is no way out?” I asked.

Solana shook her head.

“Then we should get through with it. We should save our energies for later. We will be still in a tight spot when we leave.” I looked at the others.

“It’s the best in the long run. I’m up to it.” She nodded and glared at Solana.

Gordon just nodded while avoiding to look at anybody else.

“Fine, fine. Let’s start with the first one.” Solana declared.

“Choose your gender!” she sang.

Alessia paled instantly. She shot a glare at Gordon and me.

Gordon hung his head stared down to his lap. Shit!

“May we refuse to vote? “ I asked.

“You may do that.” Solana smirked at me.

“In case of a tie I will break it for you.” Her eyes shone brightly.

Cold shivers ran down my spine. There are genders beside male and female, right. No valid option.

“Then I choose female, obviously.” Alessia groaned crestfallen.

She drooped and seemed to be completely lost in thought.

“I-I always wanted to be a girl! I choose female, too!” Gordon exclaimed after a minute of awkward silence.

Alessia didn’t react at all. Gordon was blushing furiously while observing me with trepidation.

I gulped and hung my head. I could try to use my energy to thwart this, obviously. From a logical point of view sacrificing energy would lead to us being weaker or lacking something to avoid being shanghaied into that fucking army.

Surviving later in completely foreign environment was another point. No. For one I proposed to refrain from doing that in the first place. Second it would lead to two people feeling awkward instead of one. I looked up.

Alessia still seemed to be lost in thought. I could see tears running down her face. Gordon was covering his face with his hands, drooping.

I chose to take the hit.

“I accept the vote.” I croaked.

Solana made a few strange gestures. Yellow strands of light left her hands shooting in our direction. They wrapped around me and I felt a tingling throughout my whole body.

Looking down I saw ample bulges on my chest. Down between my legs I felt a weird emptiness. I resisted the urge to touch myself for the moment.

“Go ahead!” I piped and winced at my much too high voice.

“What? Happened?” Alessia inquired.

“I-I-I! am! a! girl!!!” Gordon squealed.

Alessia sat there with he mouth wide agape, trying to get a grasp on the situation.

Solana had sprawled her arms on her armrest with her feet on the table. A wry smile danced on her lips, she seemed to enjoy the show. Did she ever mention what kind of Goddess she was? I can’t remember. I decided to space out for now trying to digest what just had happened.

“Ladies!” Solana cried.

It yanked me out of my brooding.

Very funny!

Alessia seemed to be a bit tense now, shooting me an occasional pitiful glance. Gordon was clearly enjoying himself. Oh. Herself. At least one of us had gotten something out of this mess.

Solana cleared her throat.

“We will now go on to the next case! You choose who decides how your bodies will look like. Please vote! I decide in case of a tie!” Solana leaned back in her armchair with a smirk.

“What about age? Is this an extra point?” I piped up.

This voice!

“It can be. The one in charge decides.” Solana let her head dangle to the sides with a wide smile.

Her good mood seemed to be endless.

Disgusting!

“We can actually use it for our case. We can either young or old to be useful. Old is crap from my point of view. I want to have time to adjust, since it is a complete new start for me.” I tried to speak in a deeper voice.

I failed miserably.

Solana gave me a smirk and Alessia nodded.

Then Solana clapped her hands.

“I want to do it and I vote for myself.” Alessia chimed in.

“I want, too. And I am voting for me!” Gordon piped up eagerly.

Seriously? Letting a teenage boy deciding would mean I’d trip over my boobs. There is only one valid choice. I was not good at things like that.

Letting Solana decide? No way! She would probably come up with something completely weird.

“I vote for Alessia.” I announced. Solana nodded. “I declare Alessia responsible for deciding how you will look.” she decreed.

She made a slight gesture.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

My body started to tingle all over again and I was covered in yellow strands of light for a moment.

Then I started to fall and fell into the soft cushions of the couch. I yelped and heard similar noises from both of my sides.

Alessia and the She-Gordon were replaced by identical looking naked young girls. They both had ash-blond hair and deep blue eyes.

I noticed an ash-blond bang right beside my eyes a well. As I looked down the mounds were gone. My legs and arms were slim.

As I realized I was naked, I blushed deeply.

Quickly I pulled my legs up and wrapped my arms around them.

Alessia had crossed the arms before her chest and pulled her feet on the couch, using her legs to cover herself up as well.

Gordon had simply pulled his knees up to his chest.

Both were blushing as well.

Solana, I had to look up to her now lounged in her armchair clearly enjoying the view.

“Cute!” she gushed.

I wanted to blush even more.

“The last decision is about choosing powers.” Solana explained.

“We will vote again. I like votes.” She smiled deviously.

“This is for the group powers, right?” I piped.

This voice is ridiculously high. I even blushed more.

“Yes, dear.” she cooed.

“You may use your personal energy to add to the group energy. Choosing group powers are a more efficient use of energy. You may end up more similar though.” she rubber her chin with a smirk.

“I want to choose powers and I vote for myself.” I raised my hand.

Let’s start the final round. It is time to do something useful I think I have a knack for.

“I vote for Michael.” Alessia piped up.

Gordon looked slightly disappointed but nodded after a few seconds.

“I accept the vote” he said firmly, looking in my eyes.

“One moment!” I looked at Solana with wide eyes.

“Yes dear?” she cooed again.

“I am going to put all my energy to the group pool. For one because it’s more efficient regarding energy. Second I would be able to do something more comprehensive with more energy available.” I looked Gordon and Alessia in the eyes.

“What will have to do to transfer my energy?” I back looked Solana.

“Simply think of it. As soon as all of you have decided how much you will give I will start.” She propped her head on her elbow. smiling.

I looked at Solana. She mentioned mind magic at some point. I needed a rundown about how that works. I would take all the time I could get. Alessia was still pondering while Gordon looked at the chandelier, entranced.

“Let us begin, dear!” Solana declared with a wide smile.

“The two other are frozen in time until we’re done.” she pointed at Alessia and Gordon.

They looked like they were frozen in place.

“Just like the last one?” I looked at Solana tilting my head.

“Yes dear. Come here.” she cooed and patted on her lap.

Seriously? I frowned. Solana simply smiled and waited.

“Why?” I furrowed my brows.

“I want it.” she smirked fluttering with her brows.

“I don’t!” I glared back at her.

“I can wait.” she said with smug smile.

“This is silly!” I crossed my arms below my chest

“I’m waiting. We have all the time of the world.” She laughed and patted her lap again.

I waited for a few minutes, glaring at her.

“This is boring!” I bit on my lower lip.

“That’s your responsibility.” she stretched her arms over her head and winked at me.

I pouted. This was pointless.

“Are you always getting what you want?” I scowled at her.

“Yes, dear.” she gave me that smug smile again.

“Shit!” I spat staring daggers at her.

“Language!” she reprimanded with and waved her index finger.

Finally I got up and walked up to her, pouting.

“Satisfied?” I looked down at my feet, blushing.

She laughed, picked me up and dropped me on her lap.

“Finally! Shoot.” She patted my head.

I sighed and rolled my eyes.

“You mentioned mind magic. Is it possible to read our minds to find out what will happen now?”

“Yes, this is possible.”

“Are you able to remove this information from our minds when we leave without causing permanent damage?”

“That would be possible. It will cost a little bit energy though.”

“Make it so.”

“Done.”

“Is it possible to become something different than a human?”

“Yes, it is. But it will be costly since it clashes with Alessia’s appearance responsibility.”

“Damn! What about changing to something different over time later?”

“That would be possible. You would need magic to pull it off.”

“Fine. Then I want an overview over magic. I will ask for more detail when needed.”

“That seems to be a decent approach.”

“Everyone who wants to use magic needs mana. There are different flavors of mana like nature, wind and so on.

When you don’t use the correct flavor of mana for a spell it consumes more mana. Powering a wind spell with fire mana for example.

An there is pure mana. Pure mana is the most versatile type of mana. It is less efficient than the specialized mana, but may be used at that cost for any magic. Pure mana is very rare.

Then mana can have different colors. These are in effect different energy densities. Red mana is pathetic, orange mana is better but still pitiable. Yellow to green mana is the stuff decent mages have. Cyan, blue and violet mana are very rare but even more powerful. Normally you’re born with a color of mana and that’s it.

How much mana you can store depend on the size of your mana pool. Generally using mana often expands that pool over time. The larger the pool the better. Mana recovery depends on size of the manapool and it’s efficiency to collect mana. The efficiency is pathetic in the beginning, but will get better over time, depending on mana usage.

Ah. You have to reach puberty to use your mana pool at all.”

“Darn. No help for the summoning room!”

“You got it.”

“You said normally the color of your mana won’t change. Can you elaborate?”

“There are rituals known to mortals to upgrade the mana color. But usually the mana pool is damaged by these rituals. You could do it safe once if you’re careful . Using it twice or even more often has a fat chance to totally destroy your mana pool.”

“Is it possible to have a mana pool changed without damaging it?”

“Yes, but there is a drawback. Most mages wouldn’t want to do it in a non-damaging way. Normally they try to get the converted mana pool as large as possible.

It is fairly safe, albeit not known to mortals, to change to a small mana pool. The smaller the safer.

Another point is that the rituals try to keep the mana regeneration high. Resetting the regeneration gives the mana pool enough time to recover and adjust.

Doing it safe would be a major drawback to your magically power as you need a lot of time to reach your old performance again. There are usually enemies who will try to exploit it or more often allies or superiors who will be disappointed loosing a valuable asset.”

“I see. Would it be possible to trigger such a safe conversion automatically at some point?”

“You could use a trigger that reacts when enough mana is in your pool.”

“Is it be possible to this multiple times?”

“I’ve never tried it, but it should be safe.”

“What about these powers you mentioned?”

“A powers efficiency is tied to the color and size of your mana pool. You don’t have a conscious control just like your autonomic nervous system. Spells are something completely different. They need conscious effort and the use mana.”

“Would these powers upgrade in the case you upgrade your mana pool?”

“Yes, with some minor changes actually. The normal ones have no use for that.”

“How do my spells interact with the upgraded mana?”

“They can be changed manually with some effort, but they can be build to use mana of any color.”

“Does it affect the energy price of all the stuff above if they are behind barriers and are not usable until a certain conditions occur?”

“It may be possible to a certain degree, but I would have to be careful not to break the protocol of this summoning ritual. Your questions are quite promising, dear!”

“I’ve got more. Then back to non-humans. Can we tie a gradual transformation to a non-human species to the power of our mana or manapool?”

“Hmmm. This would be no problem.”

“Would the behind a barrier discount be available?

“I think.”

“Let’s get going! Ah, another question. Since Alessia is responsible for how we look it would be the best to let her decide on the visible change of our bodies under the memory security protocol. But form follows function!”

“That would be the best!”

“Are there dragons?”

“No. Not anymore. The last one was killed a few thousand years ago.”

“Would it be possible to change to a dragonkind or something like that? A humanoid with claws, fangs, wings, tail and so on.”

Solana looked into the space for a whole minute. Actually she was quite comfortable to sit on. Should I feel honored using her as a seat? Unfortunately no one but her will know since were going to forget all that happened here. Maybe otherwise she wouldn’t have done it.

“Yes. This will actually be real fun if we pull it off! You don’t know the backstory, but you will discover it at some point. I’m all in!”

I was truly scared! Every time she got in such a good mood something weird happened!

“I can see what you want. Nice. Really nice. This will be much too complex for a mere mortal. I take over now!”

“What??? Stop!”