A Summoning: Part XX

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Part XX
~Wheel of Fortune, Part 2~

Anika objected to the idea at first, but it was a mere token gesture. Before the high priestess had even replied to insist or convince her further, she was already making plans: Her nose knew Jess's scent well enough to copy an illusion of it; she had a good enough idea of how Jess acted over the past few days to imitate it. A part of her was a little apprehensive at just how eager she felt to fool someone—even in this relatively innocent, helpful sort of way.

It couldn't be the curse. Wanting to trick people, or pull off magical pranks, clearly had nothing to do with being a girl. But surely becoming a Kitsune didn't magically alter a person's personality—at least not to such a degree that what they wanted to do was completely changed. It was possible, certainly, that there was some kind of base instinct leading fox-people that way, but that couldn't possibly override a person's preexisting beliefs and desires, right?

Really thinking about it, she felt so much like instead she'd always wanted to be a bit of a trickster or prankster like Steph always had been. Or—if not always, then at least since not too long after they'd met. He had always made it seem like so much fun, and did it in a way that never even hurt anyone! But, locked in the person “Andrew” who'd been built up over the years before college, he'd always felt unable to be anything else, to make such a radical change. So somehow...being forced to be something else entirely was freeing, in its own bizarre, unfathomable way.

Not long after her last class, the Kitsune drove off campus. The meeting was to be in the parking lot of a hotel he was apparently staying at; before setting out Anika made sure to not just disguise herself as Jess, but to give her car the same appearance as the priestess's, just in case it came up. She was reasonably sure the real version of that car wasn't being driven right now, and anyway it probably wouldn't come up unless one of them was pulled over or something. Careful driving prevented that, and in almost no time she was there.

The idea here was fairly simple: Find out how much this guy knew, or thought he knew, and tell him as much of the truth as was required to fit with that. If he had a reasonable enough request, then it should be granted—using Zotha's power if necessary. So she got out of the car and waited while the lobby door opened and a tall guy in a hoodie with fuzzy ears walked up. Once she could smell him, her senses immediately declared this to be a wolf—a werewolf, rather.

“...Hey. You're Jess?”
“The glowing eyes don't give it away?” she asked, pointing to them. “Sam, right?” she added, offering him a hand.
“Yeah. You, uh...do that on purpose?”

She shook her head. “They've been this way since I got magic. I could hide it, but I don't really see the point. What did you want to talk about?”

“Ahh, well, a couple things,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck for a second. “I'm aah, friend of Damon's. Fellow streamer and all. Drove down here to see what happened, and..well, that leads me to you. I thought you might be able to tell me more about her, ahh, situation, than her sister can?”

“It's not terribly complicated,” 'Jess' said. “Last full moon, we encountered a werewolf who'd gone wild but was still trying hard not to hurt people, so we tried to help him. She's still got widespread amnesia because the wolf 'ate' her mind or something.”

“I see. And, what can you tell me about the spell you used to 'help' him? Sorry, but, dumb it down a little for me if you can; I don't really know much magic myself.”

“Well, it's supposed to have been a 'taming' spell,” she said, starting to invent a bit on the spot. “Something that would turn a 'normal' wolf into a tame, friendly dog, including physically changing it. Never tried it on a person before, and Zotha pumped a lot more power into it than normal to push back against the wolf's will. We're still not exactly sure why it turned him female, maybe something about girls being weaker and less aggressive generally? But we're waiting to offer to turn her back until she's mentally stable.”

“Yeah, that's..probably for the best,” Sam agreed. “I plan to try to help her out, too.

“So you..know a spell that'd turn her into a guy?”

“Mhm,” Anika nodded. “It's a big change, but it's still a relatively basic transformation spell.”

“Sure. Excuse me if this is a dumb question, but...would a similar spell go the other way?”

“Naturally.”

“I..don't suppose you could do something like that for me, then?”

She stared up at him with a raised eyebrow, a confused expression all the way out to her ears (which he couldn't see, thankfully). “Well..I could, but..why would you want something like that?”
“Ah, well. Y'know. Like I said, I'm a streamer. Girls get a lot more people watching than guys, even doing the exact same stuff.”
“You're not worried that people would be weirded out by you suddenly being the opposite sex?”

“Ehh, a few would be. But it's not unheard of, even with non-magic people. Drastic changes in looks happen juust often enough that the folks in charge of the veil got it registered as a 'real' medical condition. I guess it hasn't come up for you two, huh?”

“Not really,” she said, while thinking: That certainly explained how the real Jess and Zotha and several others had 'gotten away with it'.

'Jess' crossed her arms. “So—you'd be willing to be completely the opposite sex, and look totally different, just to get more viewers?”
“Well, yeah,” Sam shrugged. “I don't base who I am on my body anyway. And it's my job we're talking about—to put it, you know, real callously: Viewers are money. I mean, don't get me wrong, I know there's some disadvantages to the fairer sex, but I can put up with 'em. Aah, I don't mean to do it right now, anyway. I mean—Damon recognizes me looking like this, and his sister would be pretty weirded out if I suddenly showed up looking different too.”

“Hmm.” Anika couldn't quite understand this guy's way of thinking, but that was no reason not to grant his wish. “Well, I can do better than leave you permanently changed. It should be possible to make it as easy for you to go back and forth as going werewolf is.”
“Wha—really?” For once he looked a little surprised. “That'd be awesome.” And his tail—which she hadn't exactly noticed before—was wagging, flipping a bit of the back of the hoodie up in the process.

“There's no reason I can't do that now, either, although—perhaps in a somewhat more private location than a parking lot,” she said. “If you don't object to using your hotel room...?”
“Yeah. Uh, yeah, that's fine,” he said, nodding. “I'll, ah, show you inside.”

---

Steph parked the car. “Well...here were are,” he stated. “When I called this morning, I just told him I knew someone who was interested in learning alchemy, and that I'd introduce you. You good?”
“Yes,” she nodded, but trembled slightly. “I-I'll manage, anyway.”

“A'right.”

The store itself had a front like a local antiques shop, with a big sign over the door that said “Boreas Potions, Tinctures, and Remedies”. It was also situated out in the middle of nowhere, more or less, with no neighboring buildings in sight. There was also a chimney with smoke rising up out of it. Prama wondered, walking up, whether it was even possible for people under the veil to get to this place. There wasn't anything in the directions Steph had taken to get them here that seemed particularly supernatural, but between this and Jess's forest, could there really be this many deserted, mystical-feeling places in such easy reach of a college campus and town?

The Kitsune pushed the door open, making a bell attached to it ring. “Bore, it's me,” he said toward the front counter—currently unmanned—while he held it for her and let it shut behind them. “Brought that person we talked about on the phone.”
“With you in a minute,” a low voice growled from a door behind said counter. Thankfully, Prama noted, the shop was actually deserted besides the two of them and their busy host. And indeed, after a minute or so, he arrived.

Boreas (presumably) was a very tall, broad-shouldered man; most of his body's features were difficult to make out past a sort of long-sleeved leather coat he had on with various scratches, stains, and burn marks all over it, but that only made him more intimidating to look at for the first time. His head was completely visible, however; his face was wrinkled but not unhealthy, and he had a full head of hair, thoroughly gray though it was. He had bright, golden-yellow eyes and fangs protruding visibly from his mouth, and his hair was the kind of scraggly mess one gets from ignoring it aside from the occasional cut, with a pair of large, pitch black wolfish ears poking out that didn't look much better groomed, either. Overall, messiness aside, he looked rather healthy, even youthful, for someone in their eighties...or at least, for a human. Perhaps werewolves lived longer on average, she thought.

While she was taking in his appearance, he was looking at her with a kind of half-glare that didn't appear to be intentional but, when combined with his overall appearance, was a bit terrifying anyway. “This her?” he asked after a moment, in Steph's direction.

“Yeah.”
Then he looked back at Prama—who had yet to introduce herself at all—and said, “You're too old, miss.”

This statement was enough to snap through her usual nerves, and even her natural response to the old wolf's intimidating appearance, to reply with incredulity: “T-t-too old? You don't even know how old I am!”

“Well, you're human, and clearly not a child,” he said, crossing his arms. His hands had thick leather gloves on them, completing the look of the coat; if anything they'd seen even more abuse. “Some say to make a decent archer, you start with their grandchild. An alchemist at least needs to start young, especially on a human lifespan. I thought Steph had a fellow fox in mind, moon bless.”

“You think I'd try to saddle my best supplier with a trickster apprentice?” he said, half-feigning an insulted tone.
“If the price is right for you,” he said, turning toward some shelves against the wall behind the counter. “I got your usual ready, kid.”

“You're making a lot of assumptions about me just from looking at me,” the small bespectacled girl said. She felt a little more confident, having already spoken out against him once, and—again—being in a gathering of so few people. “How do you even know I really am human?”

“Well, you smell human, and you wouldn't be looking at alchemy as an option if you were powerful enough to make yourself smell like somethin' you're not,” the werewolf said. “You oughta look somewhere else anyway, girl. Alchemy's dangerous, and kills the careless. I'm lucky to have all my fingers.”

“I can be immaculately careful,” Prama said. “And I learn much faster than most people. I recently made a trade with a powerful being, exchanging some other advantages I used to have for a greater intellect.”

“Hmph. Thought the gods still had all the djinn sealed off,” Boreas said. “The answer's still no.” He punctuated this statement with placing some water bottles (of all things!) on the counter in front of Steph, each one half-full of a greenish, glowing liquid which she assumed to be magic-replenishing potions.

“Okay. If you won't teach me, do you at least have any books I could borrow? Or purchase? Or know any fellow alchemists reckless enough to let me try anyway?”

The old werewolf took a moment to turn and look at her, another searching half-glare. It took quite a bit of effort, but Prama propped herself up, standing straight and keeping still rather than trembling as quite a large part of her wanted to do. He needed to see that this request was completely serious, and she wouldn't simply be scared off.

After a moment he exhaled, like the latter half of a sigh. “Listen, girl. I won't have you hurting yourself on my conscience. I guess if I chase you outta here, you'll be rifling through that human net thing for any half-baked crackpot ideas to make alchemy work on your own.”

“To be accurate, I already did, but I haven't found anything that seemed plausible so far,” she said.
“I'll bet. You say you can learn fast, I wanna see it. Let's make a wager, then: I'll get things together to teach you to make a simple potion. Come back tomorrow sometime and I'll do my best to teach you how to make it, and to keep you from hurting yourself if you do it wrong. Either you make the potion right and prove my seventy-eight years' experience wrong, or you screw it up and learn a valuable lesson in a way that won't get you killed, and give up on this particular path of life.”

“And if I make it right, you'll continue to teach me?” she said.
“..Sure. I'm getting on in years, I suppose,” he replied with a shrug. “A half-competent apprentice couldn't hurt.”

“You want to make an official deal of it?” Steph said, looking quite pleased with the way this was going.
“Hmph. You foxes...” Boreas shook his head, and turned back toward Prama, carefully pulling off his right glove. “Listen, I don't need a special name for a simple agreement because my word actually means something all on its own. Shaking on it's good enough.”

“Okay.” Prama came up to the counter, he stretched his hand over it, and she shook it, managing the whole thing but still having a bit of a weak grip throughout. His hand was wrinkled with a couple of old-looking scratch scars on it, but whole—probably thanks in no small part to the gloves. His grip, of course, was like a vise, but he mercifully let go before long.

“Done. Come by whenever you're ready, and don't have nothing else to do for the rest of the day,” he instructed her. “Oh, yeah. I guess you can read the sign, but I'm Boreas Messick.”

“Prama Olivet,” she replied. “I look forward to tomorrow.”

“Hmph. Well, at least you're optimistic.”

---

There was a temptation, however small, to make Sam's new female form an ugly or at least unattractive one; the idea that he'd get more views that way was surely predicated on the assumption that he'd at least be a bit cute as a girl. But Anika remembered what role she was playing just now, and knew that in general Zotha would prefer blessing people to cursing them, so...instead she settled, while waiting on the elevator with him, to give Sam a form which was appealing, but also as much an opposite to his current appearance as possible: Very small, very cute, very unthreatening, with a high voice and everything. In a way, she felt like testing just how little he truly did care about his original appearance.

Soon enough they reached his room, Anika shutting the door behind them. He paused on the way in to look around the room in a semi-nervous way, obviously having not really expected company, but there wasn't much to see. His suitcase was open on one of the beds, and a laptop was set up on the little desk in the corner. After that he turned back around toward her. “So, uh..?”

“Just stand in the middle of the room, should be fine,” the disguised Kitsune advised him. “And let me know when you're ready. The spell will transform you into the new appearance, and also give you the ability to change back.” She had already settled on a method to achieve this: Calling on a touch of Zotha's power first to 'save' his original form and give him the power to shift between that and the new one, then transform him with her own power, which would give her the most control possible ovet the results.

“Okay...cool.” Sam nodded, heading over that way, drawing himself up, taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out. 'Jess' walked up to a few feet in front of him, waiting patiently.

“...Alright. Ready when you are,” he said finally.

She nodded, and softly chanted in the 'ritual' language to her goddess. This was masked for his ears with something more closely resembling a 'normal' spellcasting chant, just in case he knew a little more about magic than he'd let on. She also gave him a faint purple spell circle around his feet for good measure, which he did take a second to look down at and appreciate. Then, with his original form 'locked in', she started her work.

The first thing to do was to shrink him. He was far, far too tall, and it'd be nice to not have to crane her head up while working on facial features. At the same time she diminished his manhood ever so slightly, which made him blush faintly as his body steadily slid downward, his perspective sinking toward hers. While she was at it, she went ahead and changed his hair. Shoulder length was a start, but he needed longer bangs, softer locks, and...it could stand to go all the way down to his belly or so on his final height. The growing tresses swept down his forehead and down his back a bit, and he brought a hand up to run through it—no doubt the growth tickled his scalp some, too.

By now he was down to Anika's height—still quite tall for a girl, so far from done yet—and she decided it was time to start work on other features. That beard had to go, she thought, making the hairs recede, steadily thinning and shortening them and at the same time softening the skin of his face, making it a little smaller, rounder and cuter. His shoulders she narrowed a bit, pushing his already slim frame in that bit more that turned it from just skinny to outright effeminate. By now his face was done, and he ran a hand across his smooth chin with an almost mesmerized expression, so she spread that skin care on down his neck and across the rest of his body, drawing a bit of a shudder from all the resulting tingling.

The continued shrinking as his eye level slid down to about the height of her neck was making his clothes quite loose on him: The hoodie tenting out and slipping a bit off his shoulders as its hem trailed down as far as his thighs, the shirt under that faring little better, his pants and underwear both getting baggy around his slimming legs and starting to get loose on the hips. Anika decided the she liked the coat hanging across the thighs, but the legs could stand to be a lot more exposed otherwise, and surely he didn't need two layers of tops in this weather, right? So his hoodie simply resized itself to his slimmer frame, retaining its height relative to his as he continued getting even shorter, and lost its hood; his shirt began withdrawing its hem upward, its sleeves inward, and its collar downward; and both his underwear and pants pulled close enough to stay on, their leggings rapidly pulling their way up along his legs. He looked down at the shrinking clothes, tugging at them a bit with a hand that was already looking much smaller and more delicate than before.

He was nearly down to Jess's height now, and Anika decided it was time for him to start feeling a little more of the major change. She shrank his manhood further, reducing it to less than half of its original size in one fell swoop—and at the same time changed his voice, pushing its pitch steadily upward. The result, as expected, was that he let out a surprised “Aa~aa~aah..!” at the feeling of shrinking downstairs, his cheeks reddening with a much deeper blush than before, and the sound of his voice audibly changing all throughout the noise. Oh, that was fun—she gave him a much lighter tug down there and continued changing his voice, listening to the next “aa~aah..aaa~aa~aah..!” steadily pull up through tenor and out of male range entirely, settling at a girlish alto tone—not that she was quite done with it yet.

Sam's underwear was now a soft, frilly pair of panties pulled tight against the hips and the tiny bulge remaining between his legs; his pants had shrunk to a similarly close-fitting pair of shorts so short that the long parka hid them completely. His shirt was a weird sort of mini tank top so short it would expose the belly entirely, with an increasingly low cut down toward the chest. And he was now very, very short, barely four and a half feet in height. Anika decided it was time to deal the final blow to his manhood, pushing her power into him to change his sex entirely and rise his voice to the high, squeaky tone she'd had in mind. Naturally, this drew another startled, excited “AaaAAaa~aah..!” from his lips, the pitch changing more and more by the second, followed by a somewhat more surprising “Rrr~rrf! Mrrf! Aa~ahrrf!” as his sex actually changed and canine instincts started to take over.

Sam's eyes were shut as she became a girl from the outside inward, her face aglow with a bright blush, her ears lowered nearly to the sides of her head, and her tail whipping back and forth vigorously in an excited wag. Anika took the opportunity to make her fur a little softer, thicker, and fluffier, and change her eyes from a very dark red to a bright, girly pink. Then she piled on the new feminine feelings by plumping out the new wolf-girl's hips and bottom a bit, shrinking what was left of her shirt down into a bikini top which only held onto her shoulders and back by thin strings, and then blessing her with a brand new pair of breasts.

“A~aah..rrf, yip!” This drew more excited, high yips and barks from the girl's mouth, her voice fully changed now, followed by an outright howl as Anika made her little breasts bloom out into a pair of globes that might be mid-size on someone a little bit taller, but stood out as quite large for someone of her new, petite stature. The loud yet adorable “Awroo~ooo!” with her head tilted back slightly made the Kitsune especially glad that she'd fully soundproofed the room more or less by habit on the way in. For some finishing touches, she grew the new girl's nails out, painting them bright pink like they'd been freshly manicured, and changed the look of her top a little more with some pink stripes and a cute paw-shape for the zipper (and pulling it down around halfway to expose her chest just a bit).

“Fffh, haahhh...” The little werewolf took a second to catch her breath and get her bearings, slowly opening her eyes and looking around the room with the blush still fresh on her cheeks, then down at her own appearance, patting the sides of the top a bit to feel some of her new proportions from the sides. Then she looked up at Anika with the widest, cutest grin on her face. “Aww yeah!” she said, “This is perfect!”

“And here I was, scared it'd hurt or something. That felt great! Does everyone have a reaction like that?” she asked, leaning in slightly.

“Well, uh..” Remembering her own 'experience', Anika nodded, “it seems..fairly common. We don't have a lot of data to check. But—I did anticipate it enough to make a few silent soundproofing charms before all that, um, started.”

“Oh, ah, good. I didn't even think of that,” she said, blushing again while putting her hands behind her back, locked together, and rocking back and forth on her feet. “Did the uh, I guess the spell changed my clothes too?”

“Rrright. It's more of a side effect,” Anika explained, “of the first-time transformation. Your original clothes have been enchanted into those new shapes, which should wear off in a day or two. The spell can only really give you the power to change your own body, so you'll need to get new clothes or..put up with wearing the ill-fitting old ones, I suppose.”
“That's cool. I should've expected I'd need to do that much,” Sam said. “And I'm glad my favorite T-shirt isn't gone for good,” she added, tugging at the middle of the bikini top a bit.

“As a result of that, I'd also suggest not turning back while you're wearing the enchanted clothes. They..wouldn't exactly fit you too well.”
“Also an excellent point,” the wolf-girl nodded.

“Aah, do I...owe you anything for this? Seriously, it'll be a huge help, like, you don't even know.”

“Your..gratitude is enough,” Anika said, “but I would also appreciate it if you could continue to try to help Damon as much as you can.”

“Like I needed more motivation,” she said. “No worries, I'm gonna do some research of my own on how to help a formerly wild wolf, and then visit her again tonight.”

“Glad to hear it. I suppose I'll leave you to it, then?”

“Absolutely,” she nodded. “But let me know if you, aah, actually need something that I can do and wasn't already planning on.”
“You've got my number,” 'Jess' nodded, turning to leave.

After reaching the elevator, she breathed a (hidden) sigh of relief. Keeping up the charade had been relatively easy, but that was exactly why it might have been possible to ruin it at the last moment. Now she just needed to get to the parking lot and drive back to campus, and anyway Sam was almost certainly focused on something other than the window at the moment. But...

Beyond the exhilaration of pulling off this—admittedly somewhat minor—trick, Anika wondered to herself about the werewolf's enthusiastic reception of the tiny, fluffy, weak form. It had several disadvantages the Kitsune didn't have to deal with, physically speaking, and yet she was utterly happy with it. It even seemed like she'd have been equally happy stuck that way, from the way Sam had first made the request in the parking lot. Some people, it seemed, really didn't care.

Why couldn't she be one of those people?