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I sat on the edge of the large bed, still wrapped up in a blanket and trying my best just to wrap my head around everything that was going on. Beneath the blanket, one of my hands was pressed up against my new breasts, which felt absolutely enormous to me. I hadn’t taken the time to really examine myself, but I knew that I was larger than most of the girls in school. The idea struck me as bitterly ironic and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Lindrell had left the room a few minutes ago in order to get me something to wear, but Julie had remained behind and was sitting beside me, awkwardly trying to comfort me. She didn’t seem to know whether to put her arm around me or give me space, and I honestly didn’t know which I would have preferred at the moment. So I just looked at Julie, who looked so different from the way she always had before. If I hadn’t known who she was, I probably wouldn’t have guessed that she was actually my old friend. In fact, when I’d first seen her like this a short time ago, I hadn’t recognized her.

“Why did she save me?” I asked Julie, thinking of Lindrell and the way she’d always glared at me…and made a point of embarrassing me in class. “She hates me…”

“Lindrell doesn’t hate you,” Julie quickly assured me. “I mean, before this…” She gestured around us with a pained look on her face, “she asked about you a couple times and wanted to know everything about you. And after you were hurt, she was really worried. She said that…that her power might not have been enough to save you.”

I gulped, not wanting to think about just how close I’d come to dying. When I’d been on that floor with the taste of blood in my mouth, I’d been sure that it was over. Of course, I was still alive, but obviously, my old life really was over. There was no escaping that fact.

“You’ve seen the way she always calls me out in class,” I pointed out bitterly. “But I guess she won’t be doing that anymore. I don’t think that any of us are going back to class…”

Julie nodded in sad agreement before admitting, “I think she may have blamed you because I was taking so long to decide… I mean, I didn’t want to leave you and my family, so I guess she was afraid that I might turn her down entirely…partly because of you.”

“So I was just the boyfriend who was getting in the way,” I said with a grimace.

“Lindrell saved your life,” Julie reminded me with a firm look. “And she’s being punished because of it.” I gave her a look of surprise and she continued, “I don’t know much about what’s going on, but I guess she broke some serious rules when she saved you.”

“She’s in trouble because she saved me?” I asked in surprise. “Why?”

Julie hesitated a moment, then reached up to adjust her glasses, only to pause when she realized that she was no longer wearing them. She gave a self-conscious smile and then carefully said, “I look like this because Lindrell changed me…into a Val Kyr. I guess this means that I’m not quite human anymore. I mean, I can feel this power flowing through my veins…even if I don’t have a clue about how to use it yet…”

I stared at Julie for a moment, not at all surprised since this explained her sudden transformation. If I hadn’t been so distracted with my own changes, I probably would have guessed that already. “Then I guess you’ll have that cool magic too…”

Julie gave me a faint smile before saying, “I’m not the only one. Lindrell said that she saved you…by turning you into a Val Kyr too.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised by that one, but I still was. As it was, I was getting hit with one shock after another and I wasn’t sure that I could absorb any more of them. I shook my head, once again wondering if I was caught up in some kind of weird dream. However, I couldn’t buy that one for even a moment. As strange and impossible as this all was, I had no doubt that it was real.

While I was trying to absorb this latest surprise, Julie continued, “But we’re here now…both of us. It was really hard, finding out about all this amazing stuff and not being able to share it with you. But now I can…” She gave me a weak smile and I could see that she was trying to be optimistic and focus on the positive side of all this.

“And I’m still alive,” I added with a weak smile of my own. At the moment, that was the biggest positive I could think of, and reminding myself of it helped to keep from freaking out over the fact that I’d just lost almost everything else.

Lindrell returned just a minute later, bringing me loose fitting gray clothes that were nearly identical to what Julie was wearing. She even brought me a pair of tennis shoes, which were about the most normal things that I’d seen since waking up in this place. Then with barely a word, Lindrell and Julie left the room, giving me privacy in order to get dressed.

Once I was alone, I let go of the blanket that I’d been using to cover myself, letting it drop to the floor. Then I took a deep breath and braced myself before looking down at my naked body again. This time, I knew what to expect so I wasn’t caught by surprise, though I still found myself gasping a little anyway. A quick once over confirmed that I was definitely all girl now, and though I was curious to look myself over more, I dreaded the idea of doing so at the same time. So with a sign of resignation, I focused on getting dressed instead.

“This is so weird,” I muttered, looking down at myself once I was dressed.

The clothes might not have been meant to show off a woman’s body, but with the way my breasts stretched the fabric on the shirt, I still ended up feeling a like I was on display. I bit my lip at that and shook my head, only to have long hair fall into my face. I noted the fact that not only had my hair grown to just a little past shoulder length, but that it had also changed color from the dark blonde I was familiar with to a rich golden blonde.

“Great,” I grumbled, glancing down at my breasts again and knowing that I would now be subject to blonde bimbo jokes. I shuddered at the idea. I took another minute just to steady my nerves and brace myself, then announced, “Here goes nothing.”

I left the room and found myself in a large hallway with wooden doors spread out on both sides along the whole length. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of the same tan stone as the room I’d just left, though there were open skylights along the ceiling which let in natural light. Then I noticed that beside each of the wooden doors, there was a small alcove built into the wall. In the alcove beside me, there was a ceramic vase that was filled with freshly cut roses. The scent from the flowers tickled my nose, just as it had been doing from the moment I’d woken up.

Julie and Lindrell were both standing off to the side, waiting for me. From the looks on their faces, it was pretty clear that they’d been talking about me as well, not that I was surprised. In fact, I probably would have been more surprised to find out that they hadn’t been talking about me behind my back. After all, my situation was so…weird. And the truth was, I barely had any idea of exactly what my situation entailed.

“These were left as welcome to a new sister,” Lindrell explained with a smile a she gestured to the roses. Then she gestured to something else that had been on the alcove, and which I’d nearly missed. A dagger. “And this was left as welcome to a new comrade in arms.”

“Comrade in arms?” I asked suspiciously.

“You obviously have a great many questions,” Lindrell told me with a reassuring smile. “But you must also be famished after your healing and conversion…”

It wasn’t until she’d pointed it out that I realized just how hungry I was. Until that moment, I’d been too distracted by everything else to really notice it. “Yeah,” I admitted awkwardly. “I am pretty hungry…”

“Then we’ll eat first,” Lindrell stated, giving me an odd look before she continued. “Afterwards, I’ll answer your questions and explain the new realities you will have to accept and deal with.” That wasn’t very reassuring, but she was already starting down the hallway so I gave Julie a curious look and then followed.

Lindrell led us through a series of hallways until we came to a large room that immediately reminded me of my high school cafeteria, due to the fact that there were more than a dozen tables scattered about. However, after slowly looking over the wooden tables and stone walls, then noticing the numerous weapons that were hung from the walls, I was reminded of something else instead. This room made me think of a movie set, from one of the scenes where everyone in the castle was gathered together in one room for a huge feast.

In spite of how much space there was to sit, the room was virtually empty. There were only six people present besides ourselves, all of them women. One was wearing armor similar to what Lindrell wore, though she had a sword strapped to her side rather than an axe on her back. Three of the women were wearing outfits very similar to what Julie and I had on, though they had sashes around their waists. The last two women were dressed surprisingly normal, with one in jeans and a t-shirt while the other had on a dress. All six of them kept glancing towards us, but none made a move to approach.

“Take what you like,” Lindrell told us, gesturing to a table in one corner that was loaded up with food. “You’ll find that your appetites are somewhat larger than you’re used to.”

The food was set out much like it would be at a potluck, with trays of fruits, vegetables, meats…and dishes that I couldn’t quite guess at. There was even a whole pig on the table, albeit a fairly small pig that was already partly eaten. I grabbed a large plate and began filling it while Julie and Lindrell both did the same.

At this point, one of the women finally came over towards us, nodding to Lindrell, then giving Julie an appraising look before giving me a suspicious one. “Lindrell,” she said politely, looking at Julie again and asking, “I take it this is your new recruit…”

“This is Julie,” Lindrell agreed with a faint smile before introducing me, “And this is Michelle…”

The woman made a clear point of ignoring me while she looked Julie over again. Julie squirmed, a little uncomfortable from the attention, though I wasn’t exactly pleased either. I had no idea who this woman was, but she was clearly going out of her way to ignore me. However, since I didn’t know what was going on or who she was, I bit my tongue for the moment.

“I thought you knew better than to make a convert,” the woman told Lindrell, finally looking to me again. Her expression wasn’t friendly. “You know that never ends well.”

“What’s done is done,” Lindrell told her with a scowl.

“There’s a reason we don’t make converts anymore,” the woman insisted.

Lindrell gave her a flat look and said, “Jass… I stand by my decision and I’ll face the consequences. Now leave us be. Our new sisters are hungry and have a lot of questions that need answering, and I don’t want their first impressions of the Val Kyr to be ones of hostility.”

The woman...Jass…glared at Lindrell for a moment, then she glared at me with a look of contempt before she turned and walked away. I watched her go, feeling stunned and confused by her reactions. Then I looked to Lindrell, who’d gone up a couple more notches in my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Lindrell told me apologetically. “But not every Val Kyr will be accepting of you. You see, we’ve had…problems with converts before.”

“Converts?” I asked. “What exactly is a convert?”

“Our term for men who’ve been converted to Val Kyr,” Lindrell explained as she led the way to an empty table. “Converts are…uncommon…but not unheard of. Unfortunately, a lot of them have had a difficult time adjusting and have given converts a bad reputation. The last one before you was converted three hundred years ago. Ever since then, the practice has been virtually banned.”

Lindrell had a grim expression on her face, which suddenly reminded me of what Julie had said earlier, about her being punished because she’d saved me. After this, I wondered if she was in trouble because she’d saved me…or because I’d been a guy when she did it. And of course, that led to the question of just what kind of trouble was she in. But then again, I had about a million questions at the moment, and she had promised to answer them once we’d finished eating. I could be patient that long.

Lindrell set her axe on the floor beside the table, then began to eat. I watched her for a moment, then looked around again before commenting to Julie, “Why do I feel like I’m surrounded by larpers at a convention?”

“I was thinking of it as more like a ren faire,” Julie responded with a grin.

After that, we began to eat, not speaking much as we did so. I tried not to think about how odd I felt or how surreal the entire situation was, and I was hungry enough that the food on my plate was able to distract me from those things, at least for a little while. By the time I was finished, I’d eaten every bite on my plate, which surprised me since I had three times more food than I normally would have been able to eat. Lindrell had warned us that our appetites would be larger, but I hadn’t really believed her until now.

“You will find that you can now go without food for much longer periods, when necessary” Lindrell explained when she saw me staring at my empty plate in surprise. “But most of your appetites will have grown larger as well. This is due to the val flowing through your body.”

“The val?” I asked blankly.

“The val is what we call the magic we wield,” Lindrell explained, shifting into the lecturing mode that I was quite familiar with from class. “It is a form of energy that fills our bodies, flows through our veins, and gives us all of our special abilities. In fact, the term Val Kyr literally means…warriors of the val.”

“And it only works for women,” Julie volunteered, though she did glance to Lindrell as if waiting for confirmation. Obviously, Lindrell had already explained all of this to Julie while trying to recruit her.

Lindrell nodded agreement, giving me an almost apologetic look. “Indeed. The val is a powerful magic, but it is a magic that can only be harnessed by women. The val improves our bodies, heals our wounds, fills us with strength, and vastly extends our life spans. However, if a man is given this same power, the val not only does these same things for him…it also converts him to female form. Always.” She paused at that and stared straight at me as she explained, “There are some among our sisters who view this as proof that women are superior to men.”

I nodded, trying not to be offended by that, or at least trying not to show that I was. “Is…is there a way for me to change back?” I asked this carefully since I didn’t want to insult Lindrell or make her think I wasn’t grateful for her saving my life. However, I didn’t really have much hope for the answer. I figured that if she could change me back, she probably would have told me already.

“No,” Lindrell answered with a faint frown. “The val is a part of you now and will remain so for the rest of your life, however long that may be. You are Val Kyr now, and it would be best if you accept this fact and move on.”

I winced at the casual way in which she’d basically just told me to forget about my old gender, body, and life. Then I scowled, my thoughts turning to everything that I’d just lost… I felt a knot in my stomach as I thought of my dad. Though he wasn’t the man he used to be, and we hadn’t gotten along very well lately, he was still my dad. How could I possibly tell him about this? Would I even be allowed to try? After all, Julie had said something about a non-disclosure agreement and had indicated suggested that she’d be forced to cut ties to her old life in order to join the Val Kyr.

I was starting to tremble a little so Julie put her hand on my shoulder and insisted, “Everything is going to be all right…” She still gave me a worried look though, as did Lindrell.

“I know this isn’t easy to accept,” Lindrell told me with a sympathetic look. “But your old life is gone. You are Val Kyr now and will have to accept this.”

“What does that even mean?” I asked, a little bitterness slipping into my voice. “I still don’t even know what this all is…”

“Understandable,” Lindrell said with a sigh. She stared at me for several seconds, then continued, “As you have undoubtedly realized, there are a great many things in the world that most people simply aren’t aware of.”

“That’s an understatement,” I responded wryly.

I’ve read a lot of science fiction and fantasy books, and one thing that they frequently did in the urban fantasy genre, was having magic and odd things coexisting with the modern world, but with most people never knowing the supernatural really existed. In those books, they used different things to explain how most of the world remained blissfully ignorant to the things that existed in their back yard, and I imagined that this was no different. Maybe the Val Kyr intentionally worked to keep these things hidden, maybe normal people just rationalized all the evidence away, and maybe there were other factors at play. I’ve read all the explanations before in different fictional stories, so I didn’t bother asking Lindrell about how this was possible. If that surprised her, she didn’t show it.

“You won’t find any of this in any history book you’ve ever read,” Lindrell continued in her lecture mode, “but some myths and legends do at least have hints of the truth.”

Julie was staring at Lindrell with a look of rapt attention, the same expression I saw on her face when she was watching one of her favorite shows. I was pretty sure that Lindrell had already told her all of this, but that didn’t keep her from being fascinated. After watching Julie for a moment, I gave my full attention to Lindrell as well.

“Long ago, gods wandered this world,” Lindrell stated, using the same tone of voice that she had in class when discussing the events of the first World War. “However, they were not what most myths suggest…and certainly not the creators of the world. According to our records, which do extend to those times, they were travelers…beings from another realm…what you might call another dimension. When they came to our world, they brought other things with them…or perhaps it might be more accurate to say, they were followed by other things. We call these things daemons.”

“Lindrell said that they’re like rats,” Julie offered helpfully.

“Rats?” I asked, remembering the monstrous creature that had nearly killed me. “Damn big rats…”

“What I meant,” Lindrell said, giving Julie a look of faint annoyance over the interruption, “is that they were probably just vermin to the gods. You can think of them as being like the rats that would sneak aboard the sailing ships that traveled the world. The sailors would inadvertently bring rats and other vermin with them, spreading them wherever they went. Daemons are like that...an invasive species that we can’t allow to take hold.”

Lindrell paused at that and stared off into space for a moment with a thoughtful expression. I suspected that she might be trying to get back on the right mental track after that interruption. After a few seconds, she said, “We don’t know for certain why these travelers came, but I’ve always suspected that it was for their version of a vacation…a chance to escape the rules of their own realm for a time. We have few records about the gods themselves, or at least about most of them. However, we know that one of them took it upon herself to clean up the vermin that had come with them. She gathered the women who followed her, imbued them with the val, then set them the task of eliminating the daemons and other invasive species. These were the first Val Kyr.”

“So, the Val Kyr are basically glorified rat catchers,” I said, still feeling a bit bitter about how I’d ended up in the middle of this.

“We destroy monsters and prevent them from taking the world,” Lindrell stated proudly, giving me a look of annoyance. “That is the purpose the Val Kyr have fulfilled for thousands of years.” She continued to stare at me for a few more seconds before relaxing again. “After being here for many centuries, the gods left and have never returned. However, when they departed…they left behind the daemons and various remnants of their power…”

“Like the Val Kyr,” Julie offered excitedly.

Lindrell nodded at that, her expression turning grim. “Unfortunately, we aren’t the only ones to wield a remnant of their power. There are others too…including those who use…or even work with the daemons. Their human allies are an even greater threat than the daemons themselves, because they provide organization and strategy. We’ve been at war with them for nearly as long as we’ve existed.”

I scowled as I remembered the man in the tattered cloak, the one who Lindrell had called a summoner…right before she’d killed him. Obviously, he’d been one of those people who were working with the daemons. I clearly remembered what that daemon had done to me, how it had felt to have my insides torn out. The very thought of that made me shudder, and I knew that I didn’t want to ever have to face that kind of pain again.

“What if I don’t want to get drafted into your war?” I demanded quietly.

“Mike,” Julie started, giving me a look of surprise and then disappointment. That look on her face hurt, but she was the one who’d agreed to that…not me.

For a moment, Lindrell just stared at me in silence, her expression unreadable. Then she simply stated, “I’m afraid that you don’t understand the realities of your situation.”

“That I’m a girl now?” I responded grimly. “That I’ve lost my old life and can’t go back? Or that you want me to fight against those things again?” I shuddered, feeling a surge of terror as the image of that monster flashed through my mind.

“You are Val Kyr now, whether you like it or not,” Lindrell told me in a calm tone. “I know you may not think so at the moment, but this was given to you as a gift and an honor. If you choose to turn your back on that and walk away, I will understand, though many of our sisters will not. They will see this as proof that converts are not suited to be Val Kyr.”

I slumped down in my seat, suddenly feeling small and ashamed. With a casual ease, Lindrell had just pointed out that I was being ungrateful to her for saving my life, insulting her by not accepting what she thought of as a valuable gift, and at the same time, I was proving that Jass was right about me. If inspiring guilt was a martial art, then Lindrell had to be a black belt.

“If you were to leave,” Lindrell continued, this time sounding almost sad, “you would not live long.” I gave her a look of surprise. “Our enemies have ways of sensing the val, and though there are ways of hiding from them…sometimes even for years…they would eventually find you. It would not matter that you were not acting against them, they would kill you and everyone near you just to be certain.” There was something in the way she said this that made me think she had personal experience with that happening. “If you remain, we will teach you to use the gifts you have been given…and help you become strong enough to defend yourself the next time you come face to face with a daemon.” With that, Lindrell reached over and put a hand on my shoulder and looked me straight in the eyes. “I did not save your life merely to sacrifice you to a daemon. Trust me and give the Val Kyr a chance.”

I stared into Lindrell’s eyes and KNEW with an absolute certainty that she was completely sincere. Somehow, I could feel her…feel that she only wanted to help me. It was a surprising realization, especially considering the way she always seemed to have a personal grudge against me in class.

My thoughts turned and I suddenly began to think of all the books I’d read where the main character was faced with ‘the choice.’ In most great stories, the protagonist came to a point where they had to make a choice about whether to stay with the safe and familiar or go into danger and the unknown. This was always an important moment, the point where the protagonist took an active role in their own fate. And though I’d always enjoyed those parts of the story, along with the character growth that developed as a result, being forced to make such a choice in real life was quite a bit different. I was scared…even terrified about what it would mean to accept.

I resisted the urge to look at Julie, knowing that she’d already made her own decision. Now it was time for me to make mine. Luke chose to leave Tatooine. Frodo chose to go to Mount Doom. Now I was choosing to see where my new life would lead me.

“Okay,” I said, trying sound confident in my decision in spite of the butterflies in my stomach. Julie smiled at that. “What do I need to do?”

Lindrell gave me a look of approval and said, “You will have to train hard as there is a great deal for you to learn. But more immediately, you will need to be introduced to our leader.” With that, she picked the axe up from where she’d set it on the floor and strapped it to her back. Once Lindrell had done that, she looked to Julie and then me, announcing, “Come…it’s time to meet Freya.”