As soon as Dr. Jameson had placed me in one of the smaller ceramic bowls of water on the table for bathing, which was surprisingly warm and pleasant, he left the room, leaving me with Jade. I later discovered that the pleasant temperature of the water was due to some kind of rune magic on the bowls meant to regulate temperature. It seemed like I was going to have to get used to magic being a regular aspect of my life now.

Once I was relaxing in the water, Jade immediately clamped and cut off what was apparently my umbilical cord. It didn’t hurt or anything, I barely felt it in fact, but she warned me not to play with the stump and that it would fall off in a few days. Once that was done, she was able to start using a fluffy cloth to clean the blood and other fluid off me. I would have preferred to clean myself, but I was having trouble even moving my limbs from a mixture of tiredness, general weakness, and unfamiliarity with my new body.

As she cleaned me up, Jade patiently inquired, “You seemed upset when Nathan called you by your name. Would you prefer to be called something else? Don’t worry about trying to speak yet, just think of your answer and I will be able to hear it. I’m a telepath, dear.”

I tried not to blush, and failed miserably, as the green-haired woman was lathering and cleaning my new naked body… and apparently, she was in my head now too. That was a mixed blessing since my tongue, just like the rest of my body, didn’t want to work properly yet. Still, I tried to give some kind of answer that explained why I got uncomfortable with people using my given name. “I don’t like my name. It feels… I don’t know, wrong somehow, like it doesn’t fit me. Maybe it’s just too formal. Eli is better…” I promptly stopped myself from finishing that thought.

“I sense a but there,” she pressed, the warm smile not leaving her face, showing that she had caught my hesitance.

I let out a physical sigh as I added, “It was better, that was what my sister called me, but it still never seemed… right.”

“Maybe you just need to find the right name for who you are now,” Jade suggested gently. “Most of us Fairy-type Altered take on new names after Sprouting because we’re not just changed versions of our old selves like other Altered, the process is different for us and only our minds and memories have any traces of our former selves. We usually take on names connected to nature. If I might make a suggestion, perhaps Lily would suit you. It sounds similar to Eli and will be easy for you to respond to, but it’s different too.”

“Lily?” She was right, it was similar and yet different to my sister’s nickname for me. It sounded feminine, but I was already aware that I at least had the outward appearance of a girl and something about the name didn’t have the cold strangeness and discomfort that usually came when people addressed me by name. Instead, it made me feel warm inside and my heartbeat quickened.

“Yes, Lily,” she agreed pleasantly as she continued to wash me.

My breath caught in my throat, my heart still racing as an unfamiliar sense of euphoria filled my chest as she appeared to address me by that name. That feeling was quickly drowned out by a chilling shiver of fear and dread. “No,” I thought bitterly. “That’s a girl’s name. I’m not…”

“Your new body begs to differ,” the green-haired woman pointed out as she cut off my denial. “You look female, so what is the harm in using a girl’s name? You are no longer the person you were, don’t feel forced to hold on to that and deny something that might make you happy. You are a Sprite now, and there are no male Sprites. Lily, how much do you know about the Altered?”

The sudden change in topic confused me slightly but I managed to mentally admit, “Not much.”

As Jade continued bathing me, she began explaining some things. Most of it I didn’t know, but some things I had heard before, like the fact that every Incursion has lasted forty-seven minutes, and they occur roughly once a month in random locations on the planet. The current theory behind that was that whoever controls the Titans is limited in how long the Breaches can stay open and how often they can be used.

Beyond that, not much is known of what lies beyond the Breaches, whether it is another world, another reality, or something else completely. That was something that the Vanguard wanted to know so they could better fight the Titans, but so far, they haven’t been able to arrive at the scene of a Breach quickly enough to do much more than fight the retreating Titans, so all that the Vanguard knows about their world so far is its effect on our world and our people.

They believe that the world on the other side of the Breach is overflowing with something that Jade calls Wild Magic and that when Breaches open Wild Magic spills out into our world through the portal. That magical energy has a profound effect on a small portion of the population; roughly thirty percent of teenagers within five kilometers of a Breach begin to change after the Incursion is over and become Altered. It is believed that elevated hormone levels are responsible for this since changes have also been noted in pubescent animals as well and, rarely, in pregnant women. Moonlight claiming to have been my filly changed by Wild Magic seemed to confirm this for me.

Eight percent of those affected by the Wild Magic of the Breach may not know that they have been affected until later in life when puberty is finished. The remainder of those affected begin to show heightened appetites and superhuman regeneration as their bodies change far more than usual during puberty to suit a new genetic template. Close to fifteen percent of those affected physically even change gender as well. Mostly, new Altered take on inhuman forms, most often resembling supernatural creatures of myth and legend, leaning credence to the theory that these Breaches have occurred before, early in our development as a species.

What is less known is that each different species of Altered seems to come with its own set of natural (or supernatural) abilities and weaknesses. For example, Vampires might be stronger and faster than baseline humans, but they are very sensitive to sunlight and need to drink blood to survive. Sprites like me and Jade are small and fragile but can fly and have a natural aptitude for elemental magic. These natural abilities for their new forms are not the only abilities that Altered can get though. Jade assured me that telepathy is not a natural ability for Sprites, for instance.

Once puberty is finished and the hormone levels of the Altered begin to settle in the later teens and sometimes early twenties, the Altered begin to display unusual, and in some cases superhuman, abilities whether they were visibly altered during puberty or maintained their human appearance. This is called the Waking. Variance in abilities from among those of Altered species that are more common has shown that these abilities may be magical in source if not appearance. The potential to tap into the metaphysical to fuel these abilities, and the nature of the abilities themselves, seems to vary wildly among Altered.

Physically changing into another species, learning to use new abilities, and the looming threat of Waking and having to learn about another new ability means that many Altered have a lot of mental as well as physical baggage. When you consider that most Altered are survivors of attacks by the Titans, it’s no wonder that a lot of us have trauma-related issues. Early Altered were locked up in government labs ‘for public safety’ and to be studied as well, only increasing their trauma.

Altered are often still viewed with suspicion and fear by the baseline human population, but things changed slightly for the better in 2024. That was when Dennis Harrison, a lone Elf who had managed to hide his changes, was caught up in an Incursion in downtown London, England. He began to use his abilities to assist the police and to fight against the Titans, and his largely untrained magic proved far more effective at fighting them than anything else that had been tried during previous Incursions.

Video footage of his fight showed the world that the Altered were useful, so a year and a half later, the UN formed a new international military organization called the Vanguard to provide a fast response to Incursions, turn back the Titans, and to try to find out more about our enemies and what lies beyond the Breaches. Their headquarters was built in the razed town of Amethyst Harbour, which was being rebuilt, and in the year 2030, Vanguard University was opened to cater to the Altered on the site of the first Breach. Since then, Amethyst Harbour has become a city with a population of over eighty thousand people where Altered are protected by law as long as they don’t do anything criminal.

“I was born and grew up in Amethyst Harbour,” Jade told me with a sigh as she carefully washed my hair. “A lot has changed since that first Breach when I was a terrified fourteen-year-old girl being cocooned in crystalized blood. I Sprouted in a government lab and the only good that came from that was that I didn’t feel imprisoned or get treated like some science experiment for nearly as long as the others who became Altered in that Incursion. This brings me to a very important point. Fairy types do not get the same experience as other Altered.”

She paused to rinse my hair and wings of lather and sighed before continuing. “Most Altered just have their bodies change rapidly through some form of high-speed regeneration that seems to be a part of the process. Fairy class Altered are only a fraction of the size of our former bodies though and a lot of mass would have to be expelled during the process if we were the same as other Altered since even shapeshifters usually can’t seem to change their actual mass, they just get more or less dense. If that happened when we changed then we would be too heavy to move at our size, let alone fly.”

“So that’s why I sort of burst from my own chest like some sort of alien?” I asked, shuddering at the memory of what was left of my old body.

“Yes, the cocoons preserve our former bodies in a sort of stasis, keeping them alive and converting one of our lungs to an improvised womb where our new bodies are formed, grow, and mature to adulthood, feeding off the nutrients in our still-living former bodies. Even as small as we are, forming those bodies and growing them to adulthood takes time, as does the transfer of our memories and thoughts. I know that, to you, it may seem like you were a teenage boy one minute and that now you’re an adult Sprite, but that’s not the way it happened,” she gently explained.

“Shit… it’s been months, hasn’t it?” I thought toward her as I trembled in the bath, not certain if I wanted to know the answer.

“I’m afraid not, Lily,” she responded in the tone of someone about to deliver very bad news. “It can take years for the process to complete. I’ve read your file, Lily. The Incursion that you were in occurred on April 22nd of the year 2038. It is now the fifth of July 2041.”

That was… almost three and a half years. I had essentially been in a coma for years. “What…” I couldn’t even finish that line of thought. I was too stunned, and what could I even ask that might make the sudden tightening in my heart go away?

“Yeah, I was shocked too when I found out,” Jade told me sympathetically while giving my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “There are benefits to being a Sprite though. We can fly, and use magic, and nobody even knows yet how long we and certain other types of Altered can live. I haven’t aged a day since I Sprouted. And since you’re an adult now, you’ll likely Wake soon and can start learning to use your magic and whatever other power you get. It’s not going to be easy, but I’m here to help you with all of that through your rehab.”

I knew she was trying to help by showing me the positives, but this was freaking me out. Not only did I have all of this to get used to, but for some reason, I was in a strange city, and I had no idea what had happened to my family. And what about Kelly and Mom, were they dead, or was there some chance that they could be rescued someday? It has been over three years though, what have they gone through during that time, if they were even still alive? “My family…” was all I could think of.

“I’m sorry, Lily. Your father died in the attack and your mother and sister are missing and assumed captured along with several others who were known to be on your family ranch. The Vanguard team that found you was able to identify you by your implant and they talked to your remaining family, but they were…” she hesitated before adding, “not receptive to taking custody of you so you were brought here.”

From what I knew of how my grandparents and my uncle’s family thought of Altered, that was probably putting it mildly. So, I was all alone now. It wasn’t terribly surprising, but it did hurt. However, what I couldn’t get out of my head right now were my mother’s and Kelly’s screams as they were carried away by those massive mechanical monstrosities. “Mom, Kelly…. Why did they only go after the women? One saw me, I know he did, but he just turned around and left.”

“I can assure you that men were taken in that attack as well, Lily, but the Titans are confusing,” Jade told me as she lifted me out of the bath and sat me down to start gently patting me dry. “Their tactics are always changing and a lot of what they do seems completely random at times. I have friends in the Vanguard though and from what they’ve seen in recent attacks, you’re not the only one to get passed over when they could have been captured, and every one of you has ended up Altered.”

That got my attention, and my eyes went wide. “All of us!?”

Jade nodded, a serious expression replacing her kind smile. “That’s what I’ve been told. The tech that they use is some kind of fusion of magic and technology, so the current theory is that maybe they have a way of seeing which of us are being changed by the Wild Magic and they don’t want us for some reason. A lot of us can counter their tech, so maybe they’re afraid of us?”

That gave me a lot to think about. If they were afraid of us, then maybe there was some way that I could get inside a Breach to find Kelly and Mom. Maybe my small size would make me harder to spot? Then I could rescue them. There was that nagging thought that I might have to avenge them instead, but I brutally shoved that into a box in the back of my mind and securely locked it. I was brought out of these thoughts and back to the real world as Jade said, “There, all clean and dried now.”

With that done, Jade carried me to one of the smaller doll-sized beds, explaining that she would be keeping me near the baths and other facilities for the first part of my rehab therapy, while I trained the muscles in my new body to get past the weakness of just being born and learned to use my wings. After that, I could choose one of the Sprite houses on the walls to live in until my therapy and general education on being a Sprite, using magic, and flying were complete, and I could be released. Generally, Sprites were able to get used to their bodies enough to walk, talk, and do the basics like feeding themselves within a few days. The rest of the time would be spent building up strength and stamina, especially in the muscles that controlled my wings, and learning about the basics of elemental magic.

As she sat me down on the bed and started working my muscles, she explained, “There are two types of Fairy-class Altered, Pixies and Sprites, but we are very different species. Pixies can get up to a foot tall while Sprites only average around five inches. Their wings are more like those found on moths and butterflies, whereas ours are more like those of bees and dragonflies. We are each ‘born’ aligned to a specific type of elemental magic reflected by our appearances, while Pixies use illusions and other mind magic. Pixies can be either male or female and can have children together like humans, while Sprites all appear female, but our gender is… complicated.”

“Wait, what do you mean by complicated?” I asked in concern as she gently maneuvered my left arm to work the muscles.

Jade frowned for a moment, probably trying to think of a way to explain it simply before finally doing so. “Our biology is… odd. We have our human, mammalian, characteristics, but we’re also sort of like the magical equivalent of plant life. Where plants can get energy from sunlight, we can get it from mana, though we still need to eat proper food for certain nutrients. It’s why we’re so good at sensing mana and using our magic. We bear our young in our wombs and give birth to live children like humans, but how we get fertilized in the first place is different.”

That was when she gave me a somewhat twisted version of the birds and bees talk. Apparently, while Sprites can engage in sexual activity, and do enjoy it, it’s not how we make babies, though it does play a role in inducing labor. Instead, it turned out that I was very lucky to have not Sprouted a few weeks earlier because, around the time of the summer solstice, sexually mature Sprites go into bloom. She wasn’t even joking as she very seriously told me that a big ole magical flower grows out of our navels.

The flowers bloom for two days, and during that time Sprites end up feeling tired and sluggish, not wanting to even move, we just want to chill, absorb mana, and feel an urge to be pollinated. If we manage to get pollinated with pollen from another Sprite’s flower, then the ‘seed’ that results from it retracts back into our womb and makes itself at home until the resulting baby is ready to be born. Jade was one of the early ones to learn how this all worked the hard way and warned me not to be out in the open during this time of year if I didn’t want to risk becoming a mother.

“Wait, so you…” I started to blather mentally, both terrified and elated by this revelation for some reason that escaped me at the moment. Why would I possibly be happy about this? Why did I have this surge of joy every time that Jade called me Lily? I was a guy, and as much as I sometimes wished I could be a girl like my sister, didn’t all guys feel that way?

I mean, nobody wants to be big, blocky, hairy, and awkward, right? Being a girl was so much better, they were so soft, pretty, and graceful and they weren’t limited in what they could wear like guys. I hadn’t really gotten a good look at myself yet, but this body already felt so much nicer and more comfortable than my old one. I wasn’t really a girl, as much as I had always wanted to be, but I could at least enjoy looking like one now. I just needed to be careful about the flower thing.

“Yes,” Jade said, interrupting my chaotic thoughts, “I have three daughters that I’ll be going home to once my shift here is done. Speaking of that, Oak should be here soon, so I’m going to let you get a look at your new self and get you something to wear before he shows up to take over for me.”

Without another word, the green-haired Sprite stepped away to drag over a stand-up mirror that would have been tiny for baseline humans but was floor-length for us Sprites. For a time, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the girl sitting on the bed who was being reflected back at me. Her build was all graceful curves with a slim waist, wide and well-rounded hips, and modest but perky breasts. She was pale with long, pale sky-blue hair, and delicate-looking translucent wings could be seen behind her slight shoulders. It was hard to tell from a seated position, but her legs looked long and graceful too.

It was her face, sitting atop a slender and graceful neck that most captured my attention though. It was heart-shaped with a delicate chin and jawline, full pouting lips, a pert little nose, big blue eyes with thick lashes, and long elfin ears. She was beautiful. “She’s so pretty,” I thought in awe.

“Yes, you are, though that does seem to be common for our kind,” Jade said with a laugh as she interrupted my gazing into the mirror to put a simple, Sprite-sized paper hospital gown on me. She told me that Fairy types usually wear clothes made from bamboo or silk since coarser materials tended to be rough on our delicate skin. Thankfully, she didn’t take long to put the gown on and I was able to stare at the girl in the mirror until Jade’s replacement arrived.