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I was so excited to go learn Space magic, it was supposed to be a tool to help the world, so I was determined to get on top to help the biggest amount of people possible. Oh, how innocent. How much time it took for me to finally realize all the help Space mages were nothing but a front, how a lot of uses of this type of magic were publicized, the two most terrifying being conveniently not talked about and any person who realized it would just vanish out of thin air.

I had to make quite a lot of sacrifices to get here. I had to kill some people to carve a modicum of freedom in this hell hole to put my plans into motion, so much so that I felt I wasn’t myself anymore, or I guess I never were.

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Auvrey

Looking at the unconscious body at the table, gave me a bit o a pause. It was not always that you got a Space mage as your client. They generally only do business with the best of the world, since they can just get anywhere they want while having basically infinite money. I was a pretty good Position mage, if I could say so himself, though top of the world?

Still, a client is a client, so that didn't bother me so much as I had a job to do. Before starting, I enchanted myself as I usually do, nudging some organs to produce some stuff in that improved concentration and focus. I could just make most directly into his bloodstream, though it just was much easier to just let the body do most of the work. And I didn't even have all the components figured out, just knew some of the stuff in my blood somehow made my mind sharper for a time in certain concentrations.

Regardless, the ramping up made it better for jobs like this. I started with the easier stuff, drawing curved and organic lines on the body, to just redistribute fat through the body to highlight certain curves, the most basic stuff. Hips, legs, arms, chest, shoulders. Weirdest of all how little effort this took, especially since the client didn't want too much bonework, a theory of Auvrey being that bodies were predisposed to do that.

Feeling my mind getting more focused and sharper, I got to organs. My magical enhancements came out of doing this to myself so many times and extrapolating from there. There are organs on the human body that release all kinds of substances that are a pain to discover what does what. Regardless, after enough time, you start to recognize patterns, and some tinkering later you have yourself a blood of the sex you want. All this is somewhat more abstract, having to change what produces what, having to draw the image of the substance you wanted to be produced into the organs and making the body understand that it should make it and how much of it. It was the kind of change that while didn’t change anything visible, it made all the rest stick.

After that, with the enhancements starting to kick in hard, I got to the skin. Instead of conjuring mana in broad strokes, I focused on the minutia, how every single pore of my body releases mana, and making those flows turn in specific ways to make each its own mini spell. That was such a terrifyingly hard technique that I could make it only at a small circle in the palm of my hand, though that was enough, passing a hand over all the skin to make it softer.

Now the life and death part. I had already done it so many times that I knew I wouldn’t fuck it up, though I would never do this part with the carelessness that I did the start, no matter how much better my skills got. “Nick their brain, and you’re dead” I said out loud, a habit I got after the first few times that I tried anything close, with the supervisor assigned to me required that I said it. I started with facial hair, burning the roots by making an acid out of the pore itself, not that hard doing each individually, exponentially hard doing multiple. But he managed as he did, oh so many times.

Oh, he was dissociating. The enhancements did have that effect after a long enough time, and if he heard anyone saying what he felt like during this, he wouldn’t be fine with being in the same building as that person, never mind being operated on. Though he could bet his life that he improved, not worsened. Well, he was betting his life.

And so he went to the face, drawing elegant lines, meant to push and pull, flesh, muscle and fat, like a potter guiding the clay to the spots it was supposed to be. During these times, he felt like he could almost understand having a body that is a finished product, a final piece meant to represent a whole life, constant regardless of whims and changes. Though that final moment always eluded him, how does someone not want to represent oneself at the current moment, at the current second, but as they decided years ago? Sometimes even not deciding at all.

He looked at his finished product, a body with curves that were natural but noticeable, a feminine face contrasted with a jawline that was more than the sum of the parts. That put a kind of yearning in the back of Auvrey’s head, a “what if I try it?” that didn’t leave. “Well, already as enchanted as possible,” she thought “might as well try it”. And turning your mana inside was much easier than projecting outside her body, so maybe even before the client woke up she would be finished, she really had no idea how much time had passed. It was not the first time a job well done gave her that particular itch, not even close. She had done it, oh, so many times.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Saphena

Waking up was generally meant to be a done deal, one moment asleep the next awake. This wasn’t one of those times, with my brain slowly gaining its bearings, cleaning out whatever stuff it was that giant man made in my blood. When both my mind and eyes cleared enough for me to see, I saw instead of the man I was expecting, a woman with a clashing masculine jaw so different from who I was expecting that my groggy mind struggled to connect it to the previous face, although the color of the eyes being the same and the size of the body confirmed my suspicions. What shocked me more was seeing myself on the portal mirror at the wall, causing emotions in me I was not quite ready to process right now.

“Thank you, Miss Auvrey.” I say as soon as I’m able, my mind finally starts to feel normal-ish. “Do not thank me just yet, Miss Saphena, go get a better look at yourself first” Auvrey says, handing me her hand to help me up. As I was getting to the mirror room, I took a glance at the clock and was relieved to have my prediction correct. That was the biggest gamble of all that I had done until now, especially nerve-racking since how long I would stay under was up to Auvrey, although she got the practice so well done that you could calibrate a clock on how long she took and the gamble paid off.

Now was the point of no return.

I could bail out now, nothing that I did until this point was unrecoverable, I could just leave here and live a couple years more until I got cut in two by someone wanting my position, living in absolute luxury until then. Who I am kidding? There was no turning back now, I just wished the people I dragged into this wouldn’t resent me that much. When I saw her sitting still in a chair, I made my play.

Pushing a small piece of space inside my mouth into the piece of space inside Auvrey’s ear canal, both ends as big as possible without cutting any flesh. “Please don’t move and trust me” I said, moving as little as possible of my mouth and throat, all the while moving the rest of my body as much as possible to not look suspicious. “Space mages can open a tiny portal to everywhere, so they can see and hear anything everywhere, so always assume that they are seeing you.” Looking through one of the mirrors I could see that her mind was working, taking everything with suspicion while not allowing a single word to slip by. “They control a lot behind the scenes and I need your help.” I continue, seeing suspicion rise within her, so I use the trump card I have: “Space shattering events aren’t real, they are just an invention to allow us to kill people who caught onto us.”

I see all the hate, sorrow and angst flash through her face, and feel truly sorry for having to do this. I see her schooling her features with a speed that surely could only be achieved by burning all emotion out of her blood. All I could do for now was done, breaking the portal and walking out of the mirror room. “This is a decent result, Miss Auvrey, I may be seeing you in the future for more projects of mine” I said as I started walking to an open space to open a portal home. She usually gave a response, although I don’t think she had any strength left to talk while keeping emotions out of her voice, so while it did put a risk that another mage would be figuring something was happening, I was hoping my contingencies took care of that. I tossed a sack of gold on a table making them spill all over and pushed the space here to meet with the space in my quarters. Opening to a stone bricked room, with my newly sized clothes conveniently in a chair. I knew what I should do next and while it was nothing compared to what I already had done, it still pained me. As I was on the other side, I turned back and said, loud and clear: “And please have a shower, you smell”, closing the portal behind me.

Auvrey

“HOW DARE SHE!” I bellow in rage. “She comes here, calls my work decent, throws some coins and has me pick through them, calls me unclean to my face and… and…” I trail off, part because my rage doesn’t let me continue my sentence, though part is because a piece of me still is coherent enough to think that if by some miracle Space mages are truly seeing all this, I should be quiet. I could not for the life of me correlate the person who told me supposed secrets of a secret spying cabal, with the petty, arrogant and childish woman that left.

‘Maybe that is the point’ the thought comes to mind. Is not possible that all this is some kind of elaborate plan, is it? While pacing frustratedly, I start casting my thoughts to the start of the conversation, I atack each statement made. Tiny portals to see and hear? They had to be so tiny as to be impossible to see with the naked eye, so while light was capable of going through small openings in a wall to an annoying degree, sound should not be so easy. Smell especially so. I was still mad, though it made my body relax the production of whatever that was that made people mad, slowly to allow it to be similar to a natural body winding down.

The more I thought about it, the more I started to trust her. I had to hold myself not to go looking all over my shop for hidden holes in reality, as I knew I would probably find nothing while making myself really suspicious. All the actions that she made were tailor made to look to anyone looking for nothing having occurred, even my outburst, she intentionally pressing on my buttons to make me rage and mask my feelings by having Space shattering events brought to mind.

Ok, finally it was time to tackle that piece of information. If what she said was true, my parents didn’t just die in an unfortunate natural disaster, they were killed by Space mages. Now that I made the connection, it all clicked in place. They weren’t just random people, but time magic researchers, with some special interest in interaction with the other kinds of magic. Time magic must have some interaction with portals that they stumble into that could expose something, so they must have been taken care to prevent it from spreading. ‘Wait, time magic?’ the thought came to mind, ‘I know pretty well a soon to be Time mage.’

It finally clicked what the spying portals meant. She knew of my past, how I felt about it, who I know and to what degree, how I would respond to certain actions and she is only one person. How much knowledge and power an institution with tons of Space mages could acquire?

‘That’s terrifying’ was the only thing that came to mind.