A Summoning: Part V

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V
~Lovers~

“Hello—” Zotha started. Riana slammed the door shut and walked with purpose toward the demoness.
“Look, if you have some kind of mental connection thing or something you need to tell Jerod or whoever to stop and not give that idiot whatever he wants,” she said, angrily poking Zotha's upper chest with an index finger as soon as she was close enough to do so.

“..You I like,” she said after a moment, smiling. It was honestly refreshing to meet someone who wasn't instantly afraid of her—or, at least someone who had completely overridden that fear with a far stronger emotion. “He's your boyfriend,” she then replied, taking a small step backwards out of the physical contact. “Isn't he?”
“Yes. He's also a complete idiot,” Riana said, crossing her arms angrily. “I joined up with this whole stupid cult thing and kept up with him in the ranks just to keep him under control. Look: He can be really sweet, and he's not a bad guy deep down, but he is so immature and he used to be an awful bully back in high school, before we got together. That side of him came out more and more the more Jerod decided he'd earned the right to lord it over other people, and I can't keep a leash on him at all now if you just hand him over some unimaginable power!”

“Hmmn.” The demoness put a finger to her head.

Cameron burst into Jess's room, let the door shut behind him, and strode confidently up to the desk. “You said I can have whatever I want, right? Now that we summoned the demon?” He said.

The high priestess sighed softly to herself. Everyone had known this was coming—well, except maybe Zotha. She'd been mentally preparing for it ever since Prama announced who she was sending in where. The genius girl was right, though, Jess was the right one to send him to. Master didn't know him like she did, not yet.
“That's right,” she said. “So what do you want?”


“I believe we can work this out,” Zotha said. “Would you mind taking a seat?” She gestured to the chair nearer the door, and sat back down in her own.
Riana looked back and forth between the offered chair and the demoness. “...Fine,” she said, slumping into it with all the grace of an eighteen wheeler. “You better hurry though, he'll get impatient if 'his wish isn't granted', I bet.”

“It's funny you should put it that way, 'keep a leash on him'. Given the idea we've had,” Zotha said with a mischievous grin.

“I wanna be super strong! Buff!” Cameron flexed an arm as if to demonstrate his meaning. “None of this dumb flab, ever again! And taller! With a bigger—”

“I get it,” Jess said with a mild wince. “That, shouldn't be hard to arrange. Master's powers excel in physical transformation. Hmn.” She sent some thoughts to her Master and received some back, but was careful not to make it too obvious, or put her hand to her head like usual. “How..would you like to be immune to most diseases too? See in the dark? And have better hearing and balance?” she offered, giving a sweet grin.

“That sounds great!” he said. “Yeah, add that too!”

“We're going to turn him into a wolfman. Sorta like a werewolf, but no attachment to the moon. He'll have ears and tail like a wolf's, though,” Zotha said, pointing to her own ears and tail as she said it. “And a couple of other canine traits. It'll make him strong, buff and tall like he wants—whoa, hear me out,” she said, putting out a hand to stop an oncoming rant from the feisty girl she was speaking to. “This is where you come in. You get some powers of your own, including over him. Let me show you...”

“O-kay then. Just stand still for a minute, if you can manage that,” Jess said.

“Can do!” he gave a faux-military salute. With his left hand. She had to restrain herself from facepalming; this spell required both her hands and concentration. After a brief bit of chanting, she drew her Master's magic from her soul (through her eyes, where the connection expressed visually) and out into her hands. And then she sent it into him in a steady stream. Slowly but surely, Cameron inched taller than he already was; the flab of his belly sucked inward, turning into a healthy set of abs. His muscles bulged slightly more than they already had as he gained more strength than a human body would normally have.

He looked down and around at himself, clearly enjoying the change. “Oh..hoo yeah!” His eyes turned bright gold, and his tongue lengthened, his teeth turning bigger and sharper. “Whoa...haha, rruf!” He gave a single deep-throated bark as his ears grew up into tall, fuzzy wolf ears, the same dark red as his hair. “Yeeaah, that feels great,” he added unnecessarily as a rough, deep-red tail spread its way out from his back.

“Now, what I just did has a few effects,” Zotha explained after channeling magic. Riana was looking down at her hands; surely it had felt a bit strange. “First of all, you can change yourself back and forth at will between your original self and a tall, strong, male form. Strong enough to take on Cameron in a fight if you had to—and trust me, you won't. Secondly, your boyfriend's new form comes with a certain attachment to you. If he lets you pet his ears, you can change him into a small, weak, cute girl.”
She looked up at the demon-girl, quirking an eyebrow. “What.”
“Jess assures me this is a good idea! She said: 'He won't be able to stand that form, and will obey you completely just to get a chance for you to change him back. It'll be a great way to teach him some real humility and maturity'. End quote.”
“Hmn...she might be right,” Riana said. “It's utterly bizarre, but what isn't about this whole situation, huh?”
“I concur,” Zotha said. “Of course, nobody tells him—or 'her' how this works, you can just ask to touch his ears and go from there. And claim you can change him back and forth whenever you want—which is technically true. I'm sure by the time you've changed her back all you'll have to say is 'ears' and he'll lean over obediently,” she said with a slight smirk.
“You better hope this works as well as you think it will,” she said with a stern glare. “Otherwise you're helping me clean up the mess.”
“Naturally. I'll take full ownership of my mistakes,” the demoness said with a nod. “But I don't think this is one of them. Okay, he's on his way out now, so we should be too.” She stood up, and Riana got up too, following her out.

Jess followed Cameron out to discover a somewhat odd sight: Prama was standing right next to Anika, hugging the gigantic fox-tail close against her body. “Waah~, it's so so~ooft.”
“What th—who are you people? What happened?!” The wolfman, of course, was in shock.

“Uh..s-some things happened,” Anika said. “This is Parker, and I'm uh..um.”

“Andrew,” Zotha said, coming out with Riana behind her. “Anyway, you look happy.”
“I am!” he said, his ears flitting to a confident upright and his tail wagging. “Hey Riana, check me out!” he said, flexing.
“You're, r-really cute,” she said, developing an actual blush. If she'd found him attractive before, it was hard to imagine the upgrade now. She turned this to her advantage, coming closer. “Those ears look neat too. What's up with them?”
“Oh, yeah, they're wolf ears! Awooo~!” he faux-howled energetically. Cameron wasn't really able to keep more than one thing in his head at a time, and Riana's compliment made him forget all about the other girls for the moment. “You wanna touch 'em?” He leaned down slightly, even though she probably could've reached him if he hadn't.

Zotha and Jess made their way over to the vixen and genius, who were bemused at the whole scene (Prama's arms still around that tail) until they recognized the look in the high priestess's face that said 'hey, watch this'. So they did, quietly, watch as Riana reached up with both hands, putting one to each of her boyfriend's ears, and rubbed them a little bit.
“Mnh..rrf,” he barked softly.

“Ooh, you like that?” she said, moving in a little closer with a gentle smile. Cameron became an inch shorter. “I can keep it up if you want.”

“Oh..o-oh yeah..!” he responded, trying to sound confident but clearly finding speech more difficult than before. He shrank two more inches, his muscular arms and legs becoming a little bit trimmer. “Mrrf..rrf, arf..!” At this point she moved in for the kill.

Riana pulled herself close, into a hug, continuing to gently caress her boyfriend's ears. Their color paled to white, their fur turning visibly softer and fluffier, as his shrinking accelerated. His newfound muscle faded, his clothes going from tight to loose around him as his form melted downward. All the while he continued to softly bark and yip, his tail whipping back and forth in friendly excitement. Before they knew it, Cameron was the same height as Riana—not much taller than the demoness. He leaned a small, round face (whose untrimmed fuzz had already been reduced to stubble) forward, nuzzling her cheek as his body hair vanished the rest of the way, leaving his skin soft and smooth. By now both of the new girls knew exactly where this was headed, and Prama let go of the tail to cross her arms and nod approvingly to Jess while Anika looked on with something like empathetic pity, but a resigned sort that suggested she understood why it was necessary here.

Cameron continued obliviously nuzzling his girlfriend as he shrank still more, his feet lifting off the floor heel-first, then toes, as only her arms kept his face high enough to remain against hers. His hair paled like his ears had, spilling out into long, messy white locks that reached his upper hips. When some of that hair brushed against his tail the white coloration seemed to spread from it to its fur, and the wagging appendage grew soft, fluffy and white just like his ears.

“Rrf, aah~arf..Yip...!” His little wolfy noises began to steadily rise in pitch now, and a blush was evident on his face...but he couldn't resist Riana's continued petting, even as his muscles softened completely away to nothing, leaving him with slender, short arms and legs and an inward curve to his waist. His clothes abruptly shrank onto his new form just before they could start falling off, the hoodie turning into a light tan sweater with a wide collar to show off his slender neckline and his pants reducing to a pair of short, black girl-cut gym shorts. A rather small bulge was visible between his legs due to the tightness of those shorts, and it visibly shrank even smaller now, as high, girlish yips emitted from his mouth.

“Mrrnh~..rrf! Aaa~ahhhh...” Cameron sighed contentedly, obliviously nuzzling Riana as the shorts, and the underwear beneath them, pulled flat between her legs. And she only yipped happily a few more times as her bust pushed its way out ever so slightly, quickly becoming the smallest pair of breasts among the six girls now present in the cult's initiation shack.

“Mmnnh..” She still didn't seem aware of her situation, even as Riana gently set her on her feet and slowly released the hug (and her ears), taking a small step away. She looked...absolutely adorably cute; her eyes were closed like she was half-asleep after just getting out of bed, and she only now began to slowly wake from the haze of the transformation.

“Mrrnh?” Cameron raised a hand to rub one of her eyes, slowly opening the other one. Everyone looked on in anticipation of her reaction.

“Mnh?” Her eyes bolted open. She reached down and patted between her legs, her ears drooping quickly. “W-wha? What happened?! I—I feel, I'm...I...just...?” Her slight blush grew brighter; the effects of Riana's touch had made her oblivious throughout the change, but allowed her total recall of it after the fact. “R-Ri...?” She stared up at Riana in stark shock; her girlfriend looked back, arms crossed in a displeased expression. “What did you do to me?!” she said, zipping forward and putting her hands up on her shoulders. “I-I'm all small, and weak and, and it's gooo~ooone!”
“That's right, it is,” Riana said sternly. “I asked for the power to make you small like that whenever I wanted to. Only I can change you back, too.” That was a good improvisation, Zotha thought; Jess agreed.
“B-but why though?!”

“Because you've been a bad boy!” she said sternly, which drew a response from the wolf-girl's canine parts exactly like those of a dog being told the same thing. “Always pushing people around and hurting them just to get your way. Not even thinking about it when your actions might hurt everyone else around you! I'll only change you back if you're good. And you only get to keep it if you stay that way, too!”

“I-I...b-but we're,” the tiny wolf-girl said, looking on the verge of tears.
“We can still be boyfriend and girlfriend, don't worry,” Riana said with a crueler smile than even the demoness felt capable of. “Watch this.” Cameron shook slightly, slowly turning her head upward as she saw her erstwhile girlfriend rapidly grow and change, her clothes with her, gaining a foot and a half of height and becoming a well-built if slim, long-haired man, with that almost effeminate kind of handsomeness about him. He looked around at the new view with brief confusion, then cleared his throat. “Th-there.” The voice obviously sounded odd to him. “Now, c'mere...” He gently picked up the small wolf-girl into his arms, her face blushing massively now (and his a little bit too), and then began what seemed intended as a brief peck on her lips, but which lasted several seconds past that mark.

“Mnh..mmf...!” Cameron started enjoying the kiss very quickly, her ears lowering and her tail wagging, her arms wrapping around her partner. Seeing it was enough to make most of the others blush, and Jess even moreso when Zotha gave her a sly grin. She was panting heavily when it was over, visibly extremely confused at what she was feeling. “Th-that was, what was..wha~a?”

“Heheh, you're really cute,” he said once again, running a hand through her hair; it had an entirely different meaning now. “I think I'll call you little Kamari, how's that sound?”
“U-uhm...” Kamari blushed, speechless.
“Let's have a seat, hmn?” He carried her to a nearby loveseat and set her down right next to him, putting an arm over her.

“Indeed, now that everyone here has been 'rewarded', we need to discuss a little bit of cultic business,” Zotha said, taking charge of the situation. “Please everyone, find a place.” She chose a couch across from the one Riana had and it took only a single 'come-here' wag of her finger to get Jess sitting right next to her, still blushing furiously while the demoness hung an arm over her shoulder, too. Prama and Anika took a couple of comfy chairs next to each other, the Kitsune sitting too far back at first and needing to scoot up to make room for her tail.

“First of all, I don't..really like my followers being called a cult, actually,” Zotha said. “I guess we should probably come up with an official name or something since the goal is to—at least eventually—stop being a shadowy secret society and invite anyone and everyone in. So be thinking about new names while we work on the rest of this. Secondly..well, what's transpired here already necessitates some 'cleanup'. You two” (she indicated the wolf-girl and currently-male Riana) “can collectively change yourselves back to mostly normal. I think Cameron could get away with claiming some undiscovered wolfman lineage finally surfaced and caused some, relatively moderate changes to his appearance. Unless you're gonna be so bad that you stay that way into next week's classes.”
“Noo..I'll be good,” she said quietly, slumping in her seat and looking even smaller. Her boyfriend picked her up a bit, gently teasing her ears with his fingers, and she quickly descended into some quiet, pleased barks, taking her mostly out of the conversation for the moment.

“Right then. You two” (she waved toward Prama and Anika) “are more of an issue. There's somewhere people can go to report supernatural incidents who'll try and help get the victim's life back on track where that applies. The two of us went to them this morning, but it's important that our cover stories appear to be separate incidents so they don't, you know, start investigating us as a group too quickly? Maybe you released a djinn by accident and they granted you one wish; you wished to be smarter but then they 'corrupted' it by also changing your appearance?” she suggested to the smaller girl first.

“That's reasonable enough, and plenty close to the truth,” she nodded. “Assuming djinni even exist?”
“They do,” Zotha nodded. “I'm not entirely certain how I know, but yes.”
“And does your mysterious knowledge extend to knowing what one would plausibly look like?” she pressed.
“Ah, good point! Well...I'm pretty sure they're powerful enough to look however they want. So...you can probably think something reasonable up yourself. If anything it's better we don't all know each other's cover stories, just in case. As for Anika...?”

“Mnn~nng,” she half-groaned, half-whined. “Please don't call me that name.”

“Oh, sorry.” Perhaps the curse made others want to use the feminine name for her too? “Andrew.” But there was definitely no compulsion to that part if so.

“I'll just disguise myself as my old self,” she said, folding her ears down in annoyance. “I can't possibly face everyone knowing I'm a girl now. If even my roommate finds out something like this happened to me, I will never hear the end of it!”

“Cool, cool. Sooo, for when that inevitably fails, how about you report right away that a powerful Kitsune offered you a tail and didn't inform you that it came with a significant change of appearance?” Jess suggested.

“You really have that little faith in me?” the vixen said, giving Jess some unintentional puppy-dog eyes.

“Again,” the priestess continued unabated, “this is technically mostly true. But also tell them you only have one tail, so you're just not strong enough to change yourself back. If they do discover the curse and can't break it either, they'll reasonably think it was said tail-giver who hit you with it. Just tell them you want it to remain as much of a secret as possible from everyone else; I'm sure if you're honest with your reasons for that you'll convince them not to start announcing it around just yet.”

“I'm really good with illusions!” she protested again.

Jess was having none of it. “Oh, but be sure to get their appearance clear in your head before you go. Strong Kitsune can also look more or less however they want, so chasing them down won't seem realistic to them; but you don't wanna be caught out on inconsistent descriptions either.”

“Say, how many tails do you have?” Prama asked, leaning toward the fox-girl a bit. “It looks like only one?”
“Th-that's private!” Anika said quickly, leaning away.

“Why?” she asked, an eyebrow raised.
“I-if someone knows how many tails I have then they know exactly how strong I am, and that....that's...uhm..bad.” Her speech slowed down as she seemed to realize that she didn't entirely understand her objection to the notion.

“She clearly feels very strongly about it, anyway,” Zotha said. “Jess and I know, and that's bad enough already. Right?”
“Mm-hm!” She nodded at first, then stopped. “Wait, how's Jess know?”

“Mental link.” The priestess tapped her head with a finger. “I think, more of a soul link to her power, but we can channel thoughts over it all we want.”
“Pretty handy,” the demoness said. “We'd just figured out how to make it work when you four arrived.”

“Sooo..” Riana said, the wolf-girl now quietly hanging off of him and nuzzling a cheek, “I guess after that your plan is to 'reward' everyone else too?”
“Precisely our next order of business, yep,” Zotha said. “I think we should get as many of them as possible in here tomorrow morning, aaand...at least everyone here except Kamari should be able to interview them; that's five at a time instead of just two. With my estimate of our numbers...we could be finished by lunchtime. Except, well...Jess and I can grant things right away, and there may even be a few things in Anika's reach—” Prama cleared her throat loudly, and Zotha realized she'd used that name again. “—err, Andrew's, reach. But for the rest we'll need to come up with some sort of system to not make the two of us a bottleneck and negate all the advantage of more people.”

“Why don't we just 'pray' to you?” Prama said. “Jess told you you're basically a minor god of some sort now, right?”
“Not in so many words,” Zotha said, “but I came to the conclusion myself, yes. Jess's communication with me is sorta like prayer, but when she chants to use my power it's even more so. Hmn...” She ran a hand through her hair, 'reaching out' with her power to try and see whether something like prayer would work.

It was sort of like sending a ping out to all of her followers, and receiving their feelings toward her back. Zotha could still feel the mixture of terror and mild hope from everyone not presently in the room with her. There was also overflowing gratitude from Jess, something similar but less extreme from Prama and Riana and..Kamari, too? She would have expected the wolf-girl to be more angry at the trick they'd helped Riana pull, or perhaps afraid or annoyed or something. Anika had a mixture of gratitude with distress about her curse, along with a tinge of hope that Zotha would help her fulfill the conditions of breaking it, all of which was to be expected.

“Maybe if one of you thinks something 'at' me I can feel it?” she suggested.
“Umm..” Prama shut her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. “...Hear that?”
“Not a thing. I really thought I was 'listening', too...”
“Ah! The ritual language,” Jess said, suddenly realizing. “Even I use that when requesting power from you. You all know it really well, too, 'cause I taught you. Try speaking some of that.”
“But it's just nonsense,” the bespectacled girl objected. “There's not even a discernible grammar to it, much less—”
“Just try, please?” the priestess said.
“Fiiine...” Prama spoke a few words of the ritual language, and Zotha could immediately feel the desire she was trying to express through it.

“You're..hungry? You want some ice cream,” the demoness said.

“Yep,” she nodded, “I thought it was a good test case. And, I really am a little hungry, too,” she added, tapping her index fingers together cutely with a very slight blush.

“Awwh~. Well that should be easy enough for me here.” Zotha snapped her fingers, and an ice cream cone appeared floating in front of each of her present followers in a small puff of purple smoke.
Jess and Prama took theirs without much thought; Anika reached half-out to the one in front of her before getting a concerned expression. “Uh...you just, made these? Are they really safe to eat?” she said, finally taking it cautiously. By now Riana had also taken his and Kamari's, offering the latter toward the wolf-girl's mouth and chuckling softly when she stuck her long tongue out to lick at it, finally returned to enough awareness to look, wide-eyed, around the room by now.
“Of course. Why would I make food you couldn't eat?” she said.

“Tastes great, too,” the genius added.

“But if you can just make food then, aren't you spending something to make it? You couldn't sustain yourself this way, right?”
“Mmm. Ahh, that is a good point,” Prama said after swallowing some more. “And wha'd you mean it's easy 'here'?”

“Mmh..I can only arbitrarily make and alter stuff like the furniture or food or whatever inside a place that's 'mine',” she said, trying to explain. “Land around here belongs to Jess's parents, and they more or less consider this shack hers, so by extension she 'gives' it to me for my use. I was able to make stuff in our dorm room too, but nowhere else.”

“But anything she makes is real, and just as permanently present as mundanely-made objects,” Jess said. “It can be taken out and used, sold, whatever, no problem.”
“I don't think I technically need to eat since I 'eat' people's beliefs in me, and gratitude, and so on,” Zotha continued. “I still enjoy food though, and I think eating is far more pleasant than using my power to supply metabolic energy nonstop. As for the question of cost—a few ice cream cones isn't even equivalent to the power I got during the past couple minutes, much less the burst of gratitude you four fed me over the past hour or so. Plus you're all grateful for them, so they've paid double for themselves already. All the redecoration I've done, and passively maintaining a little space-bending, is relatively expensive, but nowhere near being a problem for me.”

Anika had finally given in and started eating her cone by now, but she paused to ask another question: “The arbitrary powers in your own space doesn't extend to people, does it? You have to cast spells to change people, or draw some of your power together into a usable form to hand it over to someone else.”

“Very astute,” Zotha said. “I think this 'make or change stuff at will' power only applies to objects—not counting someone who literally has my power inside them,” she corrected, patting Jess on the head once to indicate her meaning. “I couldn't even exterminate insects in this space by only willing them to unexist themselves. Although..I believe I do have the power to banish any entities outside that I don't want here, and keep them from coming back unless a stronger power than mine breaks them in, or the place stops being 'mine'.”

“So uh, speaking of that—we probably don't need to ever take donations or anything,” Jess said. “Master could just make things and we can sell them. Like a 'bake sale' of delicious foods she made, or furniture on ebay, whatever.”
“Uh. Do we even need money when you can just make stuff?” Kamari said.

“You'd be surprised just how helpful money can be in a lot of situations,” Jess replied with a wide grin.

“Plus, more 'domain' for me means more room to make things in without needing to spend extra power on space-bending,” Zotha pointed out. “So purchasing—or if the dorm room's anything to go by, even renting—some real estate or storage space would help immensely.”

“I believe we have gotten well off track,” Prama stated, already finished with her cone by now. “The point is, using the ritual—or maybe 'prayer' language, we can ask you for things. So—we should be able to use that to ask you for whatever it is people want tomorrow, without you needing to do all the work yourself. A comprehensive reference of how you want wishes to be granted, which ones we shouldn't grant, and so on, would be appreciated, however.”

“Well, there's no reason I should be the only one to have a say in that. Riana already found one case where what a person asked for wasn't really best for them...or even what would make them the happiest. Isn't that right?” the demoness said, grinning down at the wolf-girl.

“Wh-what d'you mean?” she said, blinking in confusion.
“We'll talk later,” Riana said, patting her on the head a couple of times. “Anyway, yeah. It seems like a good idea to hash as much out here and now as we can, and then if something we hadn't considered comes up tomorrow it can be handled on a case-by-case basis.”