Suddenly A Succubus

Chloé took a deep breath as she passed through the outer wall of her dorm room, ecstatic to finally be finished with classes for the day. Manifesting just long enough to set her backpack down, she immediately released her form and sighed with relief. The last vestiges of sunlight vanished as she lost her sight, the familiar smell of her deodorant evaporated along with that of her own body's, and the cheap carpet underneath her feet drifted away as she floated into the air.

She'd never been in a sensory deprivation chamber before, but she imagined it paled in comparison to her daily routine after returning from classes. Regular humans could only hope to dull their existing senses, whereas she was capable of removing them entirely.

I wonder what I look like to other people. I mean, they can't see me, obviously, but if they could, what would I look like? Would they see my body dissipate into a vague collection of particles only bound together by my consciousness? Would I simply appear to be invisible? Heck, I still don't understand what my body does when I let go like this. If I perceive myself as hovering in front of the desk, is my foot still underneath me? Or, when I pull myself together, is it just rushing to rejoin my body from across the room?

After allowing herself a bit of rest, she briefly remanifested just long enough to remove her shoes and change into more comfortable clothes. Thankfully, because her last class of the day had been unexpectedly cancelled, she was feeling more energized than usual. She tossed her clothes in the hamper with an excited hop, even pumping her fist in victory as they landed amongst the other dirty clothes.

Alright, I'm feeling good, but what do I do with that? I've still got a million games I want to get to, and I have no idea when I'll have this much energy again. Well, no matter what, I should boot up my computer.

The familiar whir of mechanical parts filled the room as she powered up her computer, smiling as the various LED lights stirred to life. While she tried to take great care of it, her relative lack of spending money meant the parts were older than she liked, and it always took several minutes to fully boot up. As she waited, she took advantage of her lack of exhaustion to wander around her room saying hello to all her plushies.

Yet another simple joy her condition kept from her.

When she was fully human, and needed to sleep regularly, one of her favorite things in the world was jumping into a bed covered with pillows and plushies. She loved feeling like she had a little nest, or maybe a dragon's hoard, all to herself. Now, even the simple sensation of sinking into a bed required focus and exertion, which robbed the activity of its pleasure on the few occasions she attempted to recreate it.

After setting down Paige, her oldest and most treasured plushie that resembled a gray ram, she lazily walked around the room to simply enjoy being present. As she did so, her eyes came to rest on the cheap mirror hanging on the back of her closet door.

Her reflection stared back. Its motions mirrored her own, and she found it strangely absorbing to look at herself in this way. When was the last time she'd truly looked in a mirror? She normally didn't have the energy to do so, and spent more of her time in this dorm attempting to recover from a long day of classes.

She looked at her red, baggy sweatpants, her black t-shirt with several faded video game monsters on it. For some reason, staring at herself conjured memories of a conversation she'd had with Tessa weeks earlier.

"It makes me curious if there's other stuff you might be capable of if you started messing around with your abilities and your form."

My form.

She seemed to think my abilities might grow over time, or that I might be able to strengthen them by messing around with what I can do.

Chloé held out a hand, turning it back and forth as she thought about the lengthy process that had been her initial reformation. Weeks spent wandering the campus in an amnesic haze, desperately searching for answers about what she was and why she cared so much about the feelings of her friends. Her senses had returned bit by bit, and in time she fully recovered, but ever since then she'd been too exhausted to truly experiment with what she could do.

She'd reformed the version of herself she was most familiar with, but was that all she could do?

A tentative spark of hope stirred inside her.

It would make sense, wouldn't it? I can manually alter all my own senses, and my body is constantly forming and reforming through the course of a day. If I'm doing that anyway, maybe I can change how I form!

She steeled her resolve by pulling her outstretched hand into a fist.

To start, she looked at herself one last time in the mirror, then let go. As expected, her body disappeared from view, and most of her senses dulled. She kept her vision active and trained on the mirror, knowing it was the best way to observe any potential changes she might be able to manifest.

What's something small I can start with?

Hm.

How about height? If I can make myself just a little bit taller, it'll be super obvious with the way my pants fit.

Taking another deep breath, she conjured an image of herself in her mind. Her body, exactly as she'd just seen in the mirror. Five feet, seven inches tall. Her loose sweat pants just a touch too long, dragging along the floor as she walked around. With the picture clear, she reached out to all her component parts and pulled herself together. She imagined herself with longer legs, a taller torso, and then tried to envision herself stretching taller as she reformed.

As expected, her body remanifested rather quickly. She excitedly looked in the mirror, eagerly looking for changes.

But everything seemed the same.

Her pants were no shorter compared to her body, her tee shirt didn't seem to fit any differently. Scrunching her face in annoyance, she released her hold on herself as she prepared to try again.

Okay, how does Amara do this? She's constantly shapeshifting, and she makes it look so easy. Sure, sometimes she's just turning into other people, but she also constantly messes with how deep of a green her skin is, or how bouncy her pixie cut looks.

The next time Chloé manifested, she attempted to give herself a bigger bust. Perhaps a little vain, but without anyone watching, she figured she might as well embrace the changes she truly wanted to see.

Yet again, nothing changed.

Maybe it doesn't happen while I'm reforming? When I scream, it feels like the distance between me and the rest of the world is thinner. Is that something I can do other things with?

I can't scream though, not in a crowded dorm like this.

That's fine! I'll just focus on the feeling, the emotions, the memory of the space around me shaking and warping!

Chloé cast her thoughts back to the moment her unusual power had first appeared: fighting Coven Head Gautier underneath the Science Building. In the moment, nothing had mattered but her fury, her absolute rage at the thought of someone hurting Tessa. She tried to mentally relive that moment, summoning all her anger once more, but this time she pushed it into herself. She tried to pull herself higher, to stretch her form so that she could be a little taller.

Her breath ragged, nerves shot from remembering such a harrowing moment, she looked into the mirror once again.

Nothing.

Her body hadn't changed in the slightest, yet the fury remained. Anger at Brandon for nearly killing her, anger at her stupid powers for practically ruining her life. Most of all, she was angry at herself. Bottling up all her emotions, she threw herself onto her bed and grabbed her largest pillow. Shoving her face into it, she screamed as loud as she could in hopes of venting her frustration.

Echoes of her power lingered in her scream, sending unnatural vibrations through the pillow. Thankfully, her rage didn't accidentally destroy anything, but a loud thump on the wall told her she'd made more noise than she'd wanted to.

"Can you turn down the TV? I'm trying to study!" her roommate Kendra shouted.

Chloé didn't bother responding. Instead, she grabbed several of her plushies and hugged them close. She kept her face buried in her pillow, eager not to stain any of her treasured friends with her tears.

I can't keep this up.

Amara was right. I need to talk to Tessa and ask for some kind of magical solution. She's the one that altered the Lysander Circle, after all, so maybe she can do something like that again?

Okay. Next time I see her, I'll say something.

---

February 24th

Three days until the full moon.

Tessa hunched over her desk, her nose practically buried in her notebook as she continued drawing and redrawing runes. She was running out of room in this particular notebook, already having burned through dozens of different iterations, but with each page she made more progress.

Behind her, huffing with exertion as he continued a lengthy series of calisthenics, was Nick. The last time she'd turned to check on him, sweat had only just started appearing on his brow, despite the fact he'd been working out for close to an hour by that point. His grunts of exertion were only growing louder with each passing minute, and as much as Tessa felt sorry for him, she knew he was just trying to work off the unnatural, lycanthropic energies coursing through his body due to the presence of the moon overhead.

After finishing her current set of runes, Tessa decided to take a small break and check on him again. She grabbed her desk, twisting her torso in hopes of cracking her back, and was rewarded with a series of delightful popping noises up and down her spine. Repeating the motion the other direction proved just as successful, then she finally turned around properly to look at Nick.

She caught him in the middle of a one-handed pushup, and when he finished, he hopped slightly to switch hands. Each motion seemed incredibly fluid, and she couldn't see a trace of exhaustion anywhere in his body.

"How many are you at?" she asked.

"Fuck if I know," Nick muttered into the carpet. "I stopped counting around two hundred, and that was a while ago."

Hesitating slightly, Tessa struggled with what to say. "...Does it feel like it's helping at all?"

"I think a little bit? It's certainly a distraction, if nothing else, but it doesn't feel like it's tiring me out at all." He paused slightly, and Tessa caught him scowling slightly at the floor. "It's like this kind of shit isn't even enjoyable anymore."

Tessa hated seeing Nick like this, but she knew there was nothing to do. Until Amara and Vee returned with the cure, all they could do was wait. Still, the urge to help was hard to ignore, and Tessa quickly turned around again to grab a small notebook from her desk. This one wasn't for magic; it was instead a series of notes that Ruby had taken while talking to Tadghán. Early pages were mostly simple descriptions of werewolves themselves, but later notes detailed what Nick might be able to expect as his first full moon drew ever closer.

So far, everything written in these notes had come to pass. Increased energy, especially at night, heightened senses, enhanced physical strength and endurance. Pausing on one page in particular, she skimmed over a passage about increased agitation and temper that she'd read dozens of times already. Initially, she'd found it difficult to imagine Nick being anything other than calm and caring, but that had changed in recent days.

He was fantastic at holding himself together, and she suspected anyone else in his shoes would be magnitudes more unbearable, but it was still heartbreaking to see just how much he hated every little change.

"Well, I've hit a good point in my project," Tessa said. "Do you want to go over some basic magic theory again?"

Nick shook his head. "I wish I could, but I'm honestly scared of stopping. There's all this... I dunno, potential buried inside me, and keeping myself tired feels like the only thing holding it back. I took a tiny, five-minute break a few hours back and felt like I was about to begin smashing through walls."

Pressing her fingers even harder into Ruby's notes, Tessa did her best to hide her concern. She wanted to stay strong for Nick, just like he'd done for her so many times, but it was getting harder and harder to maintain hope that her friends would be back in time. Even that thought felt scary, as it threatened to spiral into a dozen other terrifying thoughts. Were they even okay? Had something happened to them? They had Tadghán's assistance in navigating The Wilds, sure, but it was still an incredibly hostile alien plane. What if their absence was a sign something had gone wrong?

She thought of Vee, insisting to go with despite her fluctuating powers. Was she trying to prove something? Did she view this as some kind of holy trial? Tessa knew nothing about religion, and as much as her relationship with Vee had improved over the last few months, it was hard to empathize with her when she knew so little about religion.

If nothing else, she had Amara by her side, which was the foundation of Tessa's faith in this expedition. Not only was she ridiculously strong, but she was probably perfectly in her element in The Wilds. How many times had she conjured bits of leaf and moss to wear when lounging around the house? Tessa had always loved the way her eclectic style accented her ever-shifting green skin, and in the past, she'd grown especially fond of grinding against those strange, leafy outfits; it was the perfect combination of rigid texture and gentle softness.

Shaking her head, Tessa pulled herself back to the present. Now wasn't the time to get lost in idle fantasies about her friends. Besides, they were monogamous, so such thoughts were for naught anyways.

Instead, she flipped through Ruby's notes yet again, hoping to find some small passage she's inexplicably missed the last dozen times she'd read it cover to cover. A tiny scribble detailing a secret ingredient that might calm Nick down, or perhaps some secret method for delaying the full transformation just a little bit longer. Predictably, this didn't happen, and she wound up fixating on a page detailing the final days before the full moon.

In his brief time on Earth, Tadghán had confirmed that the night of the full moon wasn't the only threat; so were the night immediately before and after. This meant there was a three-night window in which Nick would be forced into a new body for hours on end, a slave to his instincts.

Before that window, however, it was possible that he would see other small changes, especially at night. These changes were the result of the curse pushing its boundaries, attempting to warp Nick's body into one more fitting the curse of lycanthropy. Some of these had already manifested; Nick's hair was growing much faster than usual, and as much as he tried to pretend he didn't notice, Tessa knew he'd been growing taller during the last few nights, only reverting back to normal with the rising of the sun. These changes, although troubling, wouldn't negate the cure if Amara and Vee made it back in time. Only the full transformation the night before the full moon was capable of fully integrating the curse into Nick's body.

Nick jumped to his feet, briefly starting Tessa. "I need something else; I'm going for a run."

"O-okay," Tessa mumbled. "I'll leave the door open, just some on back whenever you're ready. Sydney and Riley are out for the night, so this is a safe place to come back to if, um... anything weird happens." She tried to avoid hinting at further physical changes, but after sharing a quick glance with Nick, she knew they both understood what she meant.

With nothing else to do, Tessa returned to her project. Although nowhere near as scared and frustrated as Nick, she was thankful that she had a magical puzzle to occupy herself with as the full moon drew ever closer.

It felt like no time at all had passed before the front door opened again. Tessa was used to losing track of time when wrapped up in her magic theory notes, but she swore Nick had just left. As the door to her bedroom opened, she turned to look at him. "What, you forget something? I swear you just left."

Huffing quietly, he closed the door behind him. His curly, light brown hair was much shaggier than normal; in fact, she swore it had grown significantly since she'd last seen him. Bits of sweat clung to his brow and his shirt, highlighting his impressive musculature that had been present even before Tadghán's bite. His shirt also appeared to be shorter, as several inches of his midriff were now on full display. As he raised an arm to wipe a bit of sweat from his face, the shirt raised even higher, giving Tessa a perfect view of his incredibly defined abs, as well as the two defined lines that highlighted his sculpted hips.

"Not enough," Nick said, his voice raspy from exertion. Grabbing the bottom of his shirt, he pulled it off with a single, flawless motion before tossing it in the corner. His eyes met Tessa's, and she swore she saw his green irises flash with pale reflections of moonlight. "I need something else," he growled.

Tessa's eyes scanned his naked torso, appreciating each and every curve of his chiseled musculature. While she understood that his current temperament was due to a terrible curse, a deeper part of herself stirred with excitement at the thought of Nick working out his animalistic frustration on her. She'd never seen him so aggressive before, and she happily stood as he walked closer.

Ordinarily, their bouts of passion began with gentle kisses, groping, maybe a bit of teasing on Tessa's part. Nick was always a timid guy, even in bed, though she'd been able to convince him to loosen up slightly over the last few months.

Instead, as Nick closed the distance, he grabbed the back of Tessa's head and pulled her in for a kiss without a moment of hesitation. His intense grip also pulled her up onto her toes, confirming her suspicion that Nick had once again grown taller. Kissing him back, it only took a moment for his tongue to find hers. Hot breath cascaded over her as they made out, and soon Nick's hands reached further down. He grabbed her ass hard, pulling their bodies together and eagerly meeting her hip thrusts with his own. Even through her pants, she felt a thick, powerful length pushing against her from inside his gym shorts.

Before she had time to process what she wanted next, Nick moved his hands to her shoulders and pushed her to her knees. She gasped with surprise as he shoved her to the ground, shocked at how rough he was being without even checking in with her, but her surprise was short lived and quickly replaced with intense excitement.

One hand moved to her head, intertwining with her hair and gripping it tight, while his other quickly removed the rest of his clothing. Tessa barely had time to appreciate the hard cock in front of her before he pushed it against her lips. She opened eagerly, sticking her tongue out to welcome his throbbing head as she happily sucked him deeper into her mouth. There wasn't an ounce of hesitation on his part, no desire to slowly ramp things up or enjoy the intimacy of the moment. With Tessa's head firmly under his control, he began sliding his length in and out of her mouth, grunting in pleasure each time he thrust deep into her.

Tessa gagged loudly as Nick picked up the pace, his soft gasps of pleasure growing louder as she warmed up and managed to fit more of him inside her mouth. With each powerful thrust, more spit began to coat his cock and drip down her chin. Every drop that slid down her neck echoed a drop of precum that she swallowed, and in time she gave up attempting to match Nick's frantic thrusts with her own movement, content instead to simply enjoy his current temperament.