A Summoning: Part XVII

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Part XVII
~Strength~

“You okay there?” the goddess asked; Thomas had been staring quietly at Daisuke for a bit.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. It's just kinda surreal seeing him—uh, her—act like that.”

“Hey, I'm still me!” she protested.
“Yeah, you're just—full of energy, I guess,” he shrugged. “Not used to that part. Or you being suddenly okay with being a girl.”
“Heheh, well, I dunno. Thinking about it is really different from feeling it. I was sure it'd feel a lot more weird, or painful, or unnatural or something, but it just feels good instead.”

“Soo, what about you?” Zotha asked him. “Have you thought any more about something you want?”

“AahI dunno,” he shrugged. “It's a little hard to come up with something on the spot, or in just a day or two. I mean—wealth would be cool and all, but it wouldn't really last. I'd still grow old and die. I guess you've done 'eternal youth' at least once at this point?”
“Sure,” she nodded, “but it's a little—well, the way I did it the first time created some unfortunate complications for the beneficiary. So I'd rather think of another way instead, if possible.”
Thomas exhaled a half-sigh. “I'm not even sure about that in the first place. I mean, maybe some superpowers would be better. Hey, wait—can you do the glowy-eye thing with me?”

Her head tilted with mild confusion. “The..?”

“You know,” he waved his hand, “see what's in my ancestry or whatever.”

“Oh, that. Sure.”

Leaning forward in her seat a bit, Zotha took just a moment to scan him before leaning back again. “Well—this is interesting. I think there's always a lot of different 'magical' ancestors a person has, but I'd say your strongest potential by far is to awaken as a dragon.”
“Thomas is dovahkin!?” Dai said, sitting up in a sudden rush of excitement.
“Come on, don't reference that around me,” he said, shaking his head at some old, bitter memories. Then, to his friend the goddess: “So what're real dragons like, then?”

“Well, very immortal, for one thing. Live on a timescale that makes human lifespans look like blinks of an eye. Aah, different dragons have affinities for different elements, like fire, ice, lightning, whatever, and that can impact exactly which traits you'd have, but what would amount to super strength, agility, and magic power are more or less givens. They have an instinctive urge to gather up treasure and wealth and keep it, feel most comfortable sleeping on a pile of gold—no, seriously—and can hibernate for centuries on end later in life...by which I mean, after being active for a millennium or two.”

“Wow, okay,” he said.

“Um...just so I know, what else is there?”
“Weeell, you have some demonic ancestry lurking around; also celestial—kind of 'angelic' people, sort of?—ironically enough; some Kitsune—aah, fox-person with illusion powers—buried deep in there—which I'm starting to think is rather more common than you'd expect. And a few other things, but to be perfectly honest I've never done a 'targeted' awakening before, and those are such trace amounts that I feel like some expertise would be needed to draw them out without making you something else before they can be realized. For that matter, the 'dragon' is dominant enough that I could make an error even with those first two and you'd wind up as one anyway.”

“Okay, just wanted to know,” he said. “To be honest, turning into a dragon sounds pretty sweet overall. I'm not so sure how I feel about becoming instinctively greedy, but uh..”

“You're already kind of a skinflint anyway?” Daisuke interjected with a teasing tone.

“No I'm not!” he protested. “I just don't like being ripped off.

“I was gonna say, I'm sure I could probably rein it in enough to not be some crippling problem.”

“Oh, certainly,” Zotha said with a small nod. “My impression is that dragons who strive to be generous, can be, and you'd have to actually lack some morals I know you have to go all 'raiding castles for gold' and stuff. Anyway, I can definitely make you enough gold to sleep on if you wind up needing that. But ooone other small disadvantage has occurred to me while we were talking.”
“Which is?” Thomas asked.

“Well, like I said, dragons have a lot of magic power. That also extends to really high magic 'resistance', too. If a person just awoke as a dragon, then their resistance instinctively prevents most magic from hurting or changing them at all. Which means, however you end up looking, you might stay that way for a while, until you learn enough control over the newfound power to alter your appearance yourself.”

With a slight, annoyed sigh, Thomas realized aloud what she was getting at: “So, if you use your power to 'awaken' me and I, inevitably, transform in the process, you can't just snap your fingers and help me turn back like you did her.”
“Rright,” she nodded. “I mean, a goddess's power might be able to overwhelm a dragon's defenses, but I'm not the strongest deity around by far, and I'd go into almost unreasonable debt spending so much effort on it. There's a good chance that I wouldn't succeed in 'giving' you a power, and if your body is just forced to transform it may just snap back as soon as I stop leaning on it, and I definitely can't afford to push back against the kind of power you'd have for a long period time. Plus it would stunt your learning of your own, natural powers to have your magic constantly fighting mine. The entire thing would be a nightmare disaster for both of us, I think.”

“So I'd be stuck as a girl dragon, then.”
“Weelll—not the way I think you're thinking of it right now,” she said. “I'm pretty sure you'd start out in a humanoid form with some—really obvious draconic traits, and turning into a huge flying warm-blooded lizard-beast would be natural to you almost right away. But you wouldn't be stuck as the latter, for sure.”

“Well, that's not as bad,” he said. “...Which is good, because you completely sold me on turning into a dragon earlier. I almost don't care what I have to put up with to get all that. Plus, I mean, I could learn to turn back into a guy on my own power after a while if I really wanted to, right?”
“Exactly,” Zotha nodded. “Now, I don't think I have to do a 'command' for you, just pump enough raw magic in that you'll awaken from it. It'd be a lot tougher if I were trying for something that isn't already dominant, but having you awaken as a dragon should be pretty easy. Oh, but—I am planning to correct your eyesight before all that power 'sets' your appearance, unless you tell me you wanna be stuck nearsighted until you learn to fine-tune your magic to fix it yourself.”
“Aw, I didn't even think of that!” Thomas said, a hand unconsciously reaching up to grab one of the temples of his glasses. “Yeah, definitely fix that too.”

“Okay, heheh,” the goddess giggled softly. “Let me know whenever you're ready.”

Thomas carefully took off his glasses and briefly looked for somewhere to put them; noticing this, Zotha subtly raised her hand, making a little end table appear next to his chair, which he then discovered and set them down on. Then he looked back up at her—blurry though his vision was at the moment—and nodded. “Yeah, let's go.”

“Okay!” The goddess simply summoned some more of her power—a blob of glowing purple magic floating up above her outstretched hands—and gently pushed it toward him. It surrounded his body and the chair for a second before fully absorbing into him, and by the time he could be seen there were already some changes—his hair color having gained an obvious green tint, and his eyes now bright yellow with tall, slitted pupils that quickly focused on the goddess before him, his nearsightedness completely gone. A faint glow was left around his body from the magic entering, but its color swiftly faded from purple to a dull green similar to the new coloration of his hair.

“Alright, so far so good,” he said. “W-whooaa..!” Then he jerked forward a bit as a dark blue, scaly tail sprouted from his back, growing thick and long all at once and pushing him forward in his seat as it twitched uncontrollably back and forth behind him. “Aa—aa~aah..!” His voice made a sudden, complete change for the feminine—a low, dark alto almost mistakable as a man's voice—as he drew his arms up around his chest, shuddering while two small wings ripped their way out of his back through his shirt, green fingers with yellow webbing between them spreading outward.

“MnNNngh..hff, hff...!” He continued to hold himself close, his panting breaths coming out as puffs of a bright green vapor that disappeared into the air not far from his mouth, as his body compressed downward a couple of inches and quickly slimmed inward. His face became smaller and softer as his hair tumbled out past his shoulders, long locks framing his increasingly feminine face; his shoulders narrowed and his waist trimmed in as his arms and legs became small and slender, loosening his clothes into a baggy pile before they, too, began to change.

The pants pulled their leggings up shorter and shorter, exposing slim, smooth legs, and tugged close between his legs at the same time, seeming to press what was down there into smaller and smaller sizes as it did so. His shirt fled up off of his stomach and in off his arms and most of his shoulders, and his jacket—already mostly sliding off of him—reduced its size too. “Mnh—mrraa~aAAaah..!” When Thomas's mouth opened, his teeth could be seen rapidly growing longer and sharper, an extra row even appearing behind the original one; his tongue was a bit longer and thinner too, its tip morphing its shape into something more forked and snake-like. “Hh—hhahhhh..” More green vapor came from his mouth then, in between gasps for air, as the increasingly short shorts on his hips pulled tighter still between the legs—and then he finally tilted his head upward and let out a loud “RrrrrRRRAAAAAH!” accompanied with another gout of green mist as his sex fully and completely changed—leaving her female, with a bright blush on her cheeks as she turned her head slowly forward again, still huffing out more of the draconic breath.

“Mnn~ngh..rrrh..!” Her cries were mixed with something like an animal growl as her chest began to puff forward, pushing into the arms still hugging herself closely. Brown horns began to poke their way out from the sides of her head, just above the ears, steadily growing as she continued to develop an increasingly girlish figure. “Rrr, aah—aah...! Hff!” Her waist trimmed further in, her hips and bottom expanding out a bit, as the small breasts began to rapidly expand, forcing her arms out of the way and pulling the top increasingly tight against them as they grew bigger and rounder by the second. Her tail continued to twitch wildly as this happened, her wings flapping themselves a bit, and she let out more green vapor alongside the excited panting.

“Aah, rrRRrgh..m~mnnh..” Thomas shuddered as the growth of her chest finally slowed, her horns nearly finished growing—the left one developing a crack a third of the way up which then broke, the upper part falling off and landing on the armrest of the chair—and her form began to completely solidify itself. “Hff..a~aahnn...ff..” A weak, very feminine noise came from her mouth as one last little push completed the growth of a generous pair of breasts for her otherwise quite slender, tall frame, and she doubled forward for a moment, panting and exhaling more green mist as she slowly caught her breath, the blush steadily fading from her cheeks.

“Mnh..mirror,” she said after a moment, suddenly standing up. Her head darted back and forth, searching the room. “Mirror?” she asked finally, in Zotha's direction.
“Uh—sure, here you go,” the goddess said, pointing to one side of the chairs and making a full-length mirror appear standing up in place in that spot.

“Thanks,” Thomas said, hurrying over to take a close look at her new appearance.

She gave her body a sidelong glance at first, letting the jacket slip the rest of the way off of her arms and dropping it off in front of her feet. Then she opened her mouth, eyeing the spearhead-like teeth adorning it and sticking out her tongue, placing a finger under it for a second in disbelief that it was real. “This is uh..how can I still, talk?” she wondered aloud.

“Would you rather you couldn't?” Zotha said, coming up next to her. “So what do you think?”
“I dunno. It's, I...I feel, really good like this,” she said slowly, the corners of her lips turning upward just a bit. “Like I wouldn't have guessed I'd like any of what I'm feeling right now, but now that I am it's very...nice.” Her hand reached up and slid through her hair. “Long hair, sharp teeth...boobs. Even the tail and wings and..horns,” she added, the hand going up to feel the broken-off one—which didn't seem to hurt. “Height loss was...minimal, right?”
“Yeah,” Zotha nodded. “You're really tall for a girl, I'd say.”

She nodded. “Girl parts aside, I feel like...this is how I was meant to be. Like I was stuck in a weak, human shell, and now I've...hatched.”

“So what kinda dragon are you?!” Dai said, bursting over to join the party. “Emerald?”
“Uh..earth,” Thomas said, dropping her arms to the sides. “Ffh,” she added, breathing a small puff of green vapor again. “I think that's acid breath..should prolly be careful with that. Anyway, I can feel the ground under my feet, and through the floor. Rocks, dirt...a pretty long way out. Feel like I could just—” she lifted one of her hands, palm-up “—and make it go where I want. Maybe even do a localized earthquake, if I wanted to.”
“Um..you, don't though, riight?” the goddess said with a touch of concern.

“Nah. I like the ground how it is,” Thomas said. “And, I don't want to mess up anyone living on it around here either. Just saying...it's how powerful I feel right now.”

“You don't seem all that happy,” the Oni pointed out.
She shrugged. “But I am. I just feel...calm. 'Grounded', even.” The slight grin she'd had before reappeared at the joke, and she turned toward Zotha. “You said something about thriving on gratitude, right?”
“Yep,” she nodded—considering explaining further, but sensing Thomas wanted to say more.

“Well—thanks, then. I guess you've got the eternal gratitude of an earth dragon now. Orr..however long it is I happen to live, anyway.”

“Yes, I know,” she said with a small nod and grin of her own. “It's very sweet.”
The dragon-girl raised an eyebrow. “What—like, you can taste it?”

“In a metaphorical sort of way, yes. I find I have preferences regarding what emotions I want people to feel toward me; I think any kind of 'reverence' would be able to sustain me, but gratitude is way better than fear.”

“Hey, can you fly with those?” Dai asked as they started back toward the chairs, more or less on Zotha's lead. “They look pretty small.”
Thomas gave her wings another sidelong glance in the mirror. “...Maybe not. But..” She rotated her shoulders back, and the wings suddenly spread out, growing to about her body's height with a span at least as wide as she was tall. “..Yeah. Easy enough to spread 'em out. Little inconvenient indoors, though.” Briefly tensing her shoulders again seemed to retract them back to the smaller size just as easily, and she continued back to the chairs to take a seat.

“Dude, you can fly! Right?! How are you not more excited about this?” Dai pressed, leaning over toward her draconic friend as she just shrugged. “Hey, you can fly too, right?” she added toward Zotha.
“..Probably. I haven't really tried. I mean, I can sort of teleport anywhere I want to go,” she said. “That's convenient enough.”
“Forget convenience. Flying is awesome. You gotta try it at least once.”
“Yeah, and I'll be sure to pick you up on the way,” Thomas said dryly.

“I guess you already know how to turn into 'full dragon' mode, too?” Zotha said, changing the subject a bit.

“Uh..” After thinking about it for a second, she nodded. “Yeah. Not a good idea indoors, either, though.” Then she leaned over to one side, picking up the discarded glasses and broken-off piece of horn to examine for a moment. “Any idea why this broke off?”

“Not particularly. I guess if you grew up looking like that, it wouldn't be unheard of for it to chip on a doorframe or something,” Zotha said, “so maybe it makes you look more 'natural' for them to not be pristine? I'm also reasonably sure it'll grow back.”
“Well, it's a nice souvenir, anyway.” For now she set them both back onto the end table.

“Are you two planning to change your names?” the goddess asked next. “Oh, yeah—you might want this too.” A card—a copy of one she had been given on Saturday—appeared floating in front of the dragon-girl, who carefully plucked it out of the air to look more carefully. “They're usually involved in helping people who used to be normal humans but got involved in magic and changed one way or another. We've been, trying to keep it from them that I'm a literal goddess though, so maybe you could tell them you just suddenly turned into that today? It could happen that way if someone slipped you a powerful enough potion in a cafeteria drink or something.”

“Fair enough,” she nodded. “And..I dunno. Dai?”
“Huh?” she said, having briefly lost the conversation after the jump in topic. “Oh—names, right. I dunno, 'Dai' sounds pretty neutral to me. And, I think at least at first I'm gonna stay a guy in public, and just look like this around friends. So—doesn't seem like I should, right?”

“I'm pretty attached to 'Thomas', I guess,” the dragon-girl said. “If I think of something I like better, I might change it, but nothing really comes to mind. No one should care if I keep a guy's name anyway, right?”

“You might get a funny look or two introducing yourself,” Zotha shrugged. “But you should do what you want. I just thought I'd bring it up in case you forgot it—like your glasses.”

“...Ah.”

“Well, anyway—you guys wanna hang out for a while? With your permission, I can summon pretty much anything from your places like board games, consoles, whatever. I can also make stuff, but I don't think I understand the inner workings of technology well enough to make one from scratch.”

“You could copy extra controllers, though, right?” Dai said, leaning in a bit.
“Pretty sure.”
“Well, grab some of my stuff then! Let's get the party started!” Thomas remained mostly impassive, but gave a small, subtle chuckle at the end result of her friend's newfound energy and typical eagerness working together.

---

Zotha reappeared in the dorm room around 10 PM. Jess was at her computer, putting the finishing touches on the write-up for the book of rituals her cult had been more or less based on, and sat up, turning around as she felt the powerful presence of her deity arrive. “Welcome back, Master!”
“Hey there, cutie~,” the goddess said, coming over to pull her arms around the smaller girl's shoulders. “How's it going?”

“I'm, uh, almost done with this. Maybe a few more little notes here and there.”
“Great. Steph?”

“I let him trick me,” Jess said, sounding disappointed with herself. “Guess that's what it's like to be around a life-long Kitsune. But...” Jess mentally communicated the details of their meeting, into which her concern about Anika also leaked.

“Well...I'm glad he agreed to help, even if that is a funny way to be honest. And, ah, judging by what I've read off of Anika the past few hours I would say that their meeting afterward was anything but unpleasant for her. I guess you let Prama know too?”
“Mm-hm,” the priestess nodded.

“Alrighty. Well, I don't plan on reading this tonight, or tomorrow morning, sooo, you can do the last bits later, right?” Zotha stood up again as she spoke.
“Yep!” Jess also hopped to her feet and turned, finding her goddess already wearing a fairly revealing nightgown. With a click of her fingers, she changed the smaller girl's clothes to just a tank top and panties and grinned down at her for a moment, the two of them exchanging a long glance for a moment.

Zotha paused, moving her shoulders a bit and stretching her wings some.
“Hmn? Something wrong, Master?” Jess said with some concern.

“I dunno. I feel kinda...the word 'itchy' comes to mind, but not a real, physical itch. Mmnh...” Spreading her wings out fully, a change rippled across them from their bases out to the tips, the fuzzy, batlike wings sprouting plumage, large, black feathers that wouldn't be out of place on a gigantic crow. “..Aa~ah,” she sighed in relief, turning her head to examine them and running one hand's fingers across the feathers for a second. “Much better. I suppose that feeling was me needing a change?”
Jess's head tilted slightly. “La Lune and Fox both made it clear that gods tend to be bound by their nature. Maybe...as a goddess of change, you don't feel right keeping the exact same appearance for a long period of time?”

“That makes sense. Well, it's not the worst tic to be stuck with. If anything, it could be fun,” the goddess said, smiling again.

“Maybe I'll play with your form a little, too. Hmmn...” The winged woman picked her priestess up, an embrace immediately returned, and brought her over to the bed, setting her down on her back before landing atop her. “Now then~.”

With a simple twitch of her will, Jess's ears grew out, becoming tall triangles of black fur, and a long, slim tail covered in velvety fuzz of the same color slid out from her back. At the same time, Jess found her mouth opening in a brief “Aa~aah..!” as her teeth gained some feline fangs, her tongue grew slightly longer, and her eyes shifted slightly, the irises lengthening to become more like those of a cat. “Mmh, mrro~ow...” she mewed, finding herself with some new feline instincts as well.

Zotha grinned down at her. “I thought you might make a cute kitty-cat,” she said, gently brushing Jess's hair before letting herself the rest of the way down on top of her, rubbing the ears with her hands and having her tail slide across the fuzzy appendage coming from smaller girl's back. The response was some shivering, followed by eager, affectionate purring and nuzzling. Jess found her furry parts intensely sensitive to her goddess's touch, and wouldn't have had it any other way; she gave in right away to new feline instincts, once again willingly submitting herself to the deity's every touch and desire.

---

Thomas tossed and turned in bed for a while, finding it impossible to get comfortable. Among the issues, certainly, were the tail and the wings and the horns which together seemed to make lying on her back or sides difficult at best. But her body also seemed very much to not want to lie straight; she didn't feel at all relaxed that way, instead wanting to sort of curl up in a way that tangled the sheets and pulled her head down off of the pillow.

Eventually she got out of bed, throwing the covers to an empty corner of the room in frustration—with a force that would have been quite a lot as a human, but wasn't a fraction of her strength now—and went out to the living room, eyeing a big burlap sack which Zotha had insisted on conjuring (creating?) for her before they left. “...Seriously...?”

It was nearly 3 AM; it couldn't hurt to try anything, right? She sighed, picking up the bag, and went back to the bedroom, yanking the covers out of the corner, dumping a pile of solid gold coins, bars, and other random shapes into the same spot, then grabbed the twisted, partly-torn sheets and blankets and dove onto the pile, letting them fall on top of her. It was bizarre to feel something cold and solid under her, but her body seemed to accept this right away, curling up and half-burying itself in the miniature mountain of valuable metal before letting her drop off almost immediately into a peaceful sleep.