Raina hugged her knees and sobbed quietly at the foot of her bed. The pain of the black eye she received from her stepfather was still fresh and sharp.

“I can feel your pain… Your desire… Tell me, my dear, what is it that you want?” Raina’s head snapped up to see a naked woman with pointed ears and the lower body of a deer stride into her room. Behind her was a forest from another world. As she stepped further in, her lower body became human.

“I want, I mean I am… but…” Raina struggled to get the words out. “Make me a girl… please…”

“A wish easily granted.” The otherworldly woman gave Raina a gentle kiss on the forehead. Raina’s face broke out into a smile as the magic flowed through her body and she felt herself start to change…

---

Valin lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. He was glad that no one had been downstairs when he came home from his meeting with Electra because he was sure that the turmoil he was feeling was showing on his face.

He had come to terms with the fact that he would be spending a lot of time as a girl in order to be a mage. He was surprised how easily he had taken to it. But the idea that he would eventually become a she permanently if he kept on using magic was a harder thing to accept.

Or was it? The more he rolled the idea around in his head, the more he realized that if it came down to a choice between being a man without magic, and being a woman with magic, he would choose the latter all day, every day, without hesitation.

But there was more than that. Being a girl was affirming in a way that being a boy couldn’t match. It had been slowly dawning on him since this whole thing began that perhaps the single minded devotion he had cultivated toward becoming a proper mage had been his unconscious way of dealing with deeper issues. Being so close with someone who had been so deeply uncomfortable with his body as Edrin had been, he’d never considered the possibility that he might be a she. 

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. The discomfort he felt with his changing body as he went through puberty that assumed all boys went through. His increasing depression as he grew older and taller and more masculine, that he'd chocked up to anxiety over his increasingly stressful magical education and the dread of failing his approaching exam.

He concentrated, letting the magic well up in him. He cast the first spell he had ever learned, condensing a tiny sphere of water and watching it float free above his head. As he felt the magic gently ripple within his body, the change came over him once again. He felt his body become smaller and softer, his hair grew out into a long, silky pool behind him, his pectorals swelled into breasts, and between his legs, he felt his penis shrink away into a tiny nub of a clit, and finally his testicles retreated back into his body to become her ovaries. She was a woman again. By taking this step, by deliberately transforming even knowing it would accelerate her changes, she felt as if she had walked through a door and locked it behind her.

As the new woman watched the little sphere of water dance over her head, she realized that she didn’t have a name. Valin was the name of the man she once was and would be again for at least a while longer. She would treasure it always, and treasure him as the person who brought her so far in life with his discipline and passion, but she wanted a name for herself. Her mind went to her parents, who had given her her male name. She had never asked them what she would have been called if she’d been born a girl. That’s the first thing she would do tomorrow morning.

The nameless woman rose to her feet and giggled slightly as she felt her oversized male jeans and underwear fall to the floor, leaving her legs and feet bare. She thought for a moment, then pulled her shirt over her head. She stepped naked over to the mirror, looked at her bare body, and smiled.

“This is me,” she said with a smile. The last time she had looked at herself like this was just after her first transformation. She had ogled her body like a voyeur that time, and there was still a bit of that now, but she also felt something else. Pride. She had felt proud of her male body too, but that was a different sort of pride, bound up in the way women, particularly Ari, looked at him with attraction. While her male body had been large and strong, her female body was delicate and cute. “You know what? I’m pretty damn hot!” She said with a grin.

She thought back to her shopping trip. She remembered the guys that had stared at her. That was something that she’d have to get used to, being an object of desire for most of the male sex… and not much of the female one, she realized. She thought back to her erotic dream, and her toes curled as she got lost in the fantasy. She imagined her body entwined with Ari’s, kissing her, touching her, loving her.

“Ari…” She said softly to herself. It would be the end of their relationship, she realized. If there was one thing that she regretted about this choice, is that it would mean losing Ari. Even if they did maintain a friendship, things would never be the same between them.

She closed her eyes. The first thing that I’m going to do tomorrow, she thought, is go downstairs and tell my parents. The second thing I’m going to do is tell Ari.

She walked back to her bed and hopped in. She thought about putting on one of Valin’s T-shirts but resolved to only wear clothes of her own from now on, even if that meant sleeping naked for tonight. She spent a long time turning the events of the day over and over in her head, but eventually she fell asleep and faded into a dream…

---

“OOF” Valin let out a loud groan as the red rubber ball hit him hard in the leg. He was out. He walked over to the padded wall and sat down. Valin stared off into space blankly. It was a month into his first year of high school.

High school was unusual for the children of mages, because it was the time when a mages magic training started in earnest, and it was the only time in their education which they shared with mundanes.

This was to both to prepare the mage for interacting with the mundane world, and to test their ability to juggle many responsibilities at once. In addition to the full slate of traditional mundane education, the young mages would be expected to learn the magical curriculum as well, in preparation for their examination in four years time. It was as brutal as traditional magical education typically is, and unlike college, there was no way around it. To even be granted a seat at the exam table, you had to maintain your grades in both worlds.

These high schools generally masqueraded as high end prep schools, so as to keep out what snooty mages termed the mundane hoi polloi. The result was a rather awkward melding of cultures, where half the students had no idea why the other half shunned them. The occasional memory wipe when someone saw something they shouldn’t only deepened the uncanny valley found in such schools.

Valin had been dreading going to high school, and his fears were proved correct. The Alathea name was famous. The first day of classes, there was a buzz of whispers when his surname was announced. He would never forget the humiliation of the first time he called on to demonstrate his magic, and that tiny splash of water came out, followed by whispers and barely suppressed giggles. He was marked from that day forth. He was the dud, the black sheep, the ugly duckling.

All that was on his mind as he sat with his back to the wall in gym class. They had been playing dodgeball. In a culture obsessed with “character building” through artificial hardship, dodgeball was a particular favorite. Valin had the physical abilities to be quite good at it. But today was a day when gym just happened to be directly after his practical magic class.

He was vaguely aware of someone sitting down next to him, but he didn’t pay them much mind until he felt a delicate hand on his.

It was Ari. He looked at her, and she looked at him. He recognized her from their practical magic classes together. He didn’t pay too much attention to the other students during those classes; He tried to spend as much time daydreaming in them as he possibly could, but he vaguely remembered her being one of the weaker students. He recognized the pain in her eyes as the same pain that he had.

No words were exchanged between them that day. In the days and weeks that followed, they slowly opened up to each other. Before they knew it, they were in love. They became each other’s emotional support through those miserable years, practicing together, picking each other up when the rigors of that school beat them down.

---

Valin woke up to the sound of his alarm going off. He remembered dreaming vividly about the time he and Ari first met, and all the events of yesterday came rushing back to him.

He briefly wondered why he was naked, then remembered his decision not to wear his male clothes anymore as a girl. He shut his eyes, took a deep breath, then cast the same spell that he had last night. He felt the change come over him, and the unnamed woman emerged.

This was the first time that she had transformed so early in the morning. She padded over to her bathroom to take a shower. The hair tickling her butt reminded her that she had never had to wash it before, and that it was suuuuper long now.

She pondered for a moment what to do. As her hair regrew and retracted every time that she switched forms, she decided to simply rinse it. Normally she liked hot showers, but today she decided to tone it down a bit. The lukewarm water felt wonderfully refreshing cascading over her breasts and body. She was struck by a desire to go swimming in this body. It was something she loved as a boy, but somehow she felt it would be even more fun like this. After having fun soaping up her body and washing it off, she stepped out of the shower, dripping wet.

She grinned, and with a little buzz of magic, she was instantly dry. One of the advantages of being a water mage.

She put on her jeans and a T-shirt and went down the stairs to breakfast. She felt a little thrill run through her body. She was going to get her name!

It was a surprise for her parents to see her in girl mode at breakfast, something she had never done before. It was even more of a surprise when she asked them, quickly and directly, “What would you have named me if I had been born a girl?”

Her mom blinked for a second before saying, “Naia.”

Naia smiled. “Naia.” She sounded it out, letting it roll off her tongue. It sounded playful, airy, and fey. A perfect match for her new body. “Thank you! It’s perfect.”

Slightly taken aback by his daughter’s curious behavior, Naia’s father asked, “What brought this on?”

So Naia explained to them the events of the previous day to her parents, and her decision to embrace womanhood. Her mother smiled, and her father said, “If you’re comfortable with this, I’d be glad to have a daughter.” After some hugs were exchanged, Naia reminded herself of the other thing that she had to do today.

Naia sighed heavily. “Well, I’m off. I have to tell Ari about this.” Her mother smiled sadly, and her father made a little gasp of realization. They both understood what this would mean for their daughter’s relationship with her girlfriend.

“Wait. You’ve got your initiation in an hour!” Naia slapped her forehead. Of course! In all the turmoil of last night, she’d completely forgotten. It probably wasn’t a good idea to have this painful heart to heart on a time limit.

“I guess that’ll have to wait then,” Naia said. She hated having to postpone something like this, but she wouldn’t miss her initiation for the world. 

—

Naia was seated on the stage in the Alathea clan’s air conditioned Grand Hall. The Alatheas, while being a very old clan, were thoroughly pragmatic when it came to their own residences and gathering places. This was appreciated by everyone in attendance to this particular initiation, since it was 120 degrees outside. 

The Hall was in the middle of a particularly inhospitable desert, the kind that only gets rain once a year or so. It was well warded against both mundanes and mages as well. This kind of thing was pretty standard fare for any clan stronghold.

Naia was proudly wearing her clan robe. Black, with an enchanted trim going from purple at the shoulders to blue at her feet to match her hair color. While not all members of the clan had red hair, owing to intermarriage, adoption, and so forth, her coloration was definitely unique. Naia took some perverse pride in the looks of curiosity she was getting. She’d always stood out for all the wrong reasons. At least now she wasn’t an object of pity and scorn.

Naia smiled at her parents and Edrin in the front row. It had been a pretty crazy few weeks, but somehow they had all come out of it ok, despite the interdimensional visitor and subsequent abduction. 

Naia looked down the line at the four other initiates. Three boys and one girl. They all looked  younger than her, which wasn’t surprising; they probably took their entrance exam as soon as they were old enough. Naia didn’t recognize any of them; she’d never bothered with the Alathea’s social gatherings, figuring she could make friends after she’d become a proper mage. Had she failed, losing them would’ve been heartbreaking. 

To her immediate right was a tall, deeply tanned boy with shoulder length black hair and delicate features. He was talking animatedly with another boy who had the standard flame red/ruddy combo that most of the Alathea’s had. This one was stockier, and by his muscle tone it looked like he worked out. The third boy was next to him and the other girl was on the far end. Both of them looked supremely bored.

Then, Talin came out from the little entry door behind the stage, and the assembled crowd quickly quieted down. He was Naia’s mother’s brother, the senator, and the de facto head of the family. Naia was close enough to him that she never really thought of him as a politician though. She also got the feeling that he considered his job an unhappy familial duty. But mostly she thought of him as her friendly, outgoing uncle. Slightly cynical from years of hobnobbing with the worst people on the planet, but totally devoted to his family.

“Today, I get to perform the happiest duty that any senator can ask for, the induction of five deserving young men and women into Clan Alathea, forging a bond based not on the tawdry transactionalism of political advantage, but the highest virtues of fellowship, fidelity, and love.”

Naia was having difficulty controlling her emotions. Talin had probably given this speech a million times before, but sitting here, listening to it, about to finally join her clan after years of desperate yearning and pain, moved her like nothing ever had before. Still, she figured she should probably not start sobbing with joy until after the ceremony.

Talin’s speech barely lasted five minutes, which was for the best. Naia didn’t know how much longer she could hold it together. Soon enough, the five initiates were being called up to the stage one by one. Naia was last. Blinking back tears, she held out her hand to receive the cipher from her uncle. 

“Do you, Naia Alathea, agree to join Clan Alathea, and serve it from now until death?”

“I do,” Naia said, her voice shaking.

“Then accept this cipher and badge of office as a symbol of your eternal commitment.”

Talin held Naia’s hand for a moment to transmit the cipher. Naia felt it flow into her. It was easy to pick out the subtle strains of it, the harmony that would identify her to any other clan member. And more importantly, doors. The badge of office was two pairs of amaranth that instantiated on her shoulders and chest. “The flower that never fades,” the symbol of her clan.

And it really was her clan now. She’d finally done it. 

Everything was a blur now. Naia vaguely remembered making her way back to her chair while Talin concluded the ceremony. Somehow she managed to hold herself back until she made it to her family. Then she fell into their arms, weeping freely, knowing that all her years of striving had not been for nothing. She was finally, truly, a member of her clan.

—

“We have a council meeting,” Naia’s mother said softly as they were making their way back to the teleport dais.

“Oh, uh, see you when you get back then,” Naia said distractedly. She was still absorbing the fact of her initiation.

“‘We’ includes you,” her father said with a chuckle.

“Huh?” It took a while for that statement to penetrate Naia's happy haze.

“We’re discussing the circumstances of your transformation. And other related matters. It was decided that you should be there.”

Naia blinked. She’d never had any ambitions towards joining the council before all this happened, not that she'd had much of a chance before her empowerment. She’d been perfectly content to develop her art and leave all the stormy stuff to her clan’s heavy hitters. It was slowly dawning on her that this wellspring of magic she’d been gifted might come with actual expectations. 

Her parents caught the slight grimace on her face. “Don’t worry, it’s not going to take very long. From what Talin’s said, there’s not much actual information to go over.”

Naia’s mother punched in some coordinates on the dais and off they went.

Naia found herself in a windowless, well lit room with walls of marble. She got the distinct impression that she was underground. Her parents immediately debarked from the teleport dais, and she followed them through a door, then through a hall. After a minutes walk through said hall, they entered a pair of carved red wooden double doors into a large gathering chamber. There was a large circular table surrounded on all sides by chairs, with a silvered projecting lantern in the middle.

The assembled crowd of Alathea bigwigs ceased their conversation upon Naia’s entry. Apparently she was the last person they were waiting for, because they immediately took their seats. Her parents led her to a chair and sat down on either side of her.

Naia heard a familiar voice from directly across her. It was Uncle Talin. There was a conspicuously empty chair to his left. “We’ve convened this emergency meeting of the council to discuss the recent events that resulted in the transformation and empowerment of one of our clan members, Naia Alathea, née Valin. As you’ve no doubt surmised by the change in name, Naia has very recently chosen a female gender identity, so please be respectful of that.” 

Talin paused for a moment before continuing. “The hard facts are these. There was a dimensional incursion. It definitely did not come from Gehennom, the energy signature was completely different. So we’re looking at a brand new alternate reality that’s starting to interleave with our own. Further, unlike Gehennom, this dimension has at least one sentient being in it. A sentient being that’s capable of breaching the walls between realities at extreme divergence.”

Gehennom was the devil or demon dimension. In earlier times, before the two realms diverged to the point where contact between the two realities was virtually impossible, the mundanes referred to it as “Hell” or the “Underworld,” and not without reason. It was a place of extremes, of elements taken to their furthest degree. It was also very mutable. One week a portal opened in a specific place might be habitable for humans, the next week it might be 1000 K. Or 0. When the dimensions were aligned enough that portals could form independently, this could make things… unpleasant.

A tall, willowy woman with red hair a few shades darker than was typical for the Alathea, seated to Talin’s immediate right, spoke up. 

“The powers that this being displayed are disturbing in their implications. The rapid and intuitive nature of Naia's physical transformation, as well as the massive increase in her magical capacity are things that we’ve never seen before. Further, Naia's rapid acceptance of her new body, complete enough that she's taken a new name to match it, suggests that either this being has the ability to discern unconscious mental characteristics, or that she can alter minds at will.”

Naia blinked. She had never considered that the reason she was so accepting of her female body was that her mind had been messed with.

“She seemed as surprised as I was when I, well, turned into a girl,” Naia piped up in a small voice. 

“That doesn't necessarily mean-”

“That will do, Elena,” said Talin, cutting her off.

“As you all can see, we have a lot to consider, and precious little hard data to go on. Everyone’s flying blind here. Lots of wild speculation. There’s been a slight uptick in abnormal weather events. A tiger leapt out of its enclosure in west Lemuria and mauled a guy. Is it related? Who the hell knows, but it's not stopping anyone from making the most ridiculous assertions imaginable…?”

Suddenly, the red double doors behind Naia burst open. Arcturus, looking out of breath, barged in before exclaiming, “There’s been another incursion. Same being, same MO. Only this time, she transformed a mundane.”