by Liam Lawson
“You shouldn’t be having sex orgies in my house!” Trisha shrieked. “No sex for you! Put some clothes on! Do you have any idea the consequences of what you were doing?”
Trorm got up, which made Trisha spin around and forced Nymal to release him. He found his discarded sweatpants and pulled them on. Winnie slid on Nymal’s skirt and top. She didn’t bother with underwear and her cotton tail lifted up the back of the skirt while her nipples poked through the tank top, which failed spectacularly to hide anything.
If circumstances were just a little bit different, Trorm would have thrown her back on the bed and taken her again right then. She grinned at him, apparently sensing his train of thought.
“What the hell do you two think you’re smiling about?” Trisha screamed. “Do you realize you could have gotten her pregnant?”
Trorm shook his head. “Orcs and therianthropes cannot reproduce. Nor can orcs and elves.” He left out the other reasons why having children with Nymal wouldn’t be possible.
“What about diseases?” Trisha demanded. “Did you think of that?”
“We did,” Trorm said, still trying to keep his voice neutral. “All of us are clean. Winnie and I both got tested a few weeks ago to be safe and Nymal was a virgin.”
Nymal and Lilian made almost identical strangled sounds.
“Oh, Oana,” Abigail said from the hallway.
“Stop calling out to that hedonistic pervert!” Lilian demanded.
“Stop coming at me all logical and reasonable!” Trisha demanded in much the same tone. “No sex in my house!”
“It’s because their participating in a rite that honors Oana,” Lilian hissed. “Abigail wants to become one of her acolytes.”
Trisha whirled on Abigail. “What?”
“There is nothing wrong with wanting to be an acolyte of Oana,” Abigail said, and Trorm could hear the resolve in her voice. Did she want to be an acolyte of Oana? That would explain why she and her sister were fighting earlier, but he’d thought that Abigail’s interests had always been more inclined toward the arcane than the divine. Then again, he hadn’t known anything about her interest in the upcoming rally until just the other night, so what did he really know?
“Devotion to a deity is not something to be taken lightly,” Trisha said, and if Trorm had heard resolve in Abigail’s voice, Trisha’s voice had turned to steel.
“I guess you would know,” Abigail said coldly.
The silence that followed was even colder.
“I am not going to stand here and take this from any of you,” Trisha said, tongue like a sword.
That was when a familiar sensation came upon Trorm. He cast arcane sight quickly and saw the living mist of glowing darkness pressing in through the bedroom window.
“We’re under attack!” he cried out, leaping for his staff even as he cast his shield spell.
He hit the ground. His hand found his staff. The shield spell snapped into place between himself and the mist. Winnie was close enough to duck behind him and the dome shape of the shield created a bubble around them and the bedroom wall, completely cutting them off from the spell.
Nymal was not so lucky. She was caught up in a tendril of the pulsing mist and fell from the bed, writhing and contorting as she cried out. She was so small and the hoodie so large that she slipped right out through the neck. Her hair changed several times, shrinking and lengthening, changing styles, the locks twisting about like snakes. Her breasts shrank away to nothing.
The invisible mist washed through the room and spilled out into the hall, where it captured the Maddens. All three of them cried out.
“HATE YOU,” the mist said, a face with a gaping maw full fangs and light appearing pressed against Trorm’s shield. “I HATE YOU. SO MUCH.”
“Trorm, what’s going on?” Winnie called out.
He pushed her more firmly behind him. “I’m not sure. It’s some kind of creature.” Only that didn’t seem quite right.
Trisha fell to the floor.
Abigail followed, her hair turning from blue to green, then coming undone from the braids entirely and becoming a cloud of black curls around her head as she shrank. She was regressing, Trorm realized, aging backwards. So was Trisha, only it was less obvious with her because her hair wasn’t nearly so dramatic.
He glanced over at Nymal. She was weeping and clutching her flat chest. She didn’t look any younger, as an elf that didn’t surprise him, but there was a subtle masculinity about her features. The spell must have undone the work her hormones had done.
Lilian leapt into the room with a battle cry. Her collapsible sword telescoped to full length in her hands, runes glowing. Light shone from Lilian as she swung her blade around at the empty air. She couldn’t see the mist.
“Above you!” Trorm called out.
She whirled, sword ablaze with holy light, and struck and overhead blow at the opponent she could not see.
The blade passed through her enemy, parting the mist long a strong wind. Only, the mist reformed the instant her weapon was through. The horrible face turned to her. “HURTING HER HURTS YOU.” It cackled “I WILL HURT THEM ALL.”
“No!” Trorm cried out, too late. A misty claw stabbed through Lilian. She jerked to a halt, frozen in place.
Her face swelled up, then the rest of her. Pudge replaced muscle and her entire body lost most of its definition. Acne sprang up all over her face in angry zits and pimples. She shrank, faster than either of the other two. The light fell away from her and she blinked, uncomprehending eyes at the room around her. The sword fell to the ground.
“Where am I?” Pre-teen Lilian cried out. “Mom! What’s happening?”
As if the words were a summon, Trisha Madden rose to her feet. Only it wasn’t Trisha as Trorm had ever known her.
Gone was the mother, replaced by a teenager whose eyes glowed with purple light that crackled with lightning, leaping from her eyes to her hands. More purple light shone through her shirt, burning away the cloth over her lower belly. The scar from before was gone and the symbol of Xosione was fully restored.
“Whatever you are,” said teenage Trisha. “You picked the wrong spell-eater to fuck with!”
Chapter Thirteen
Trisha Madden was exultant with power. It crackled about her in a violet corona of energy and created a wind that whipped her hair about behind her. She was stunning.
Trisha had always been a beautiful woman. She’d also been all business and somewhat matronly in demeanor, so that her natural beauty was overshadowed by her spirit. There’d also been the age difference. While Nymal might have been significantly older than any of them, relatively speaking she was still in their age range. Trisha Madden had always been the Matron of the Madden Residence to Trorm.
The person before him now was a stranger, someone younger than him and rife with power. Trisha’s features, beneath the energy, positively glowed. It was as if she’d been given a full makeover along with her age reduction. And that was before touching on her demeanor. There was something almost gleeful about this person that he had a hard time associating with the Trisha he knew. This person was powerful, used to getting their way, taking what they wanted, and blasting aside all who dared oppose her.
Trorm had known warriors like her before. Berserkers. Renowned for their individual prowess and rewarded greatly for it by all except those who had to fight alongside them. Those fighters didn’t tend to fare so well. In the long run, neither did the berserkers.
Trisha grinned with manic glee and hurled the purple lightning into the mist.
The face in the mist screamed, its maw opening impossibly wide as power coursed through it. Divine power, not arcane. Trisha wasn’t casting like a wizard—she was casting like a cleric. A powerful one. Hadn’t she just said something about being a spell-eater? That’s what the clerics of Xosione called themselves!
Trorm’s eyes went to the glowing tattoo over her lower belly, pulsing with violet light. The divine symbol
for Xosione, the Goddess of forbidden power. The keeper of secrets and devourer of spells.
Trisha Madden opened her mouth and the lightning began pulling the mist into it. The mist screamed. It screamed louder when Trisha bit down, neatly severing the substance in her mouth from the rest of the things incorporeal body and swallowed.
“What the hell is happening?” Winnie screamed behind him.
“Trisha’s a priestess of Xosione and she’s eating the thing that’s attacking us!” Trorm called back, barely audible over the screams of the mist, which Winnie must have been able to hear even if she couldn’t see it because she had her long ears clamped down to the sides of her skull.
Lilian fell to the floor, growing taller and losing both her weight and acne. Abigail’s hair began to reweave itself into her mane of braids, the blue color flooding back into her hair. Nymal seized up and what subtle masculine features had come over her melted into femininity once more. They were all returning to their proper temporal state.
Good. That had been Trorm’s primary reason for not going on the offensive. Now, with Trisha’s help and his allies restored, it was time to change tactics.
With a roar, he stabbed his staff out through his shield and summoned lightning. It crackled from the staff and filled the air with the smell of ozone as it careened into the mist, wracking through it. The effect wasn’t so pronounced as it was for Trisha’s divine spell energy, but it definitely made an impact. The face in the mist whirled on him, screaming and lunging forward to snap its jaws at his shield, Trorm’s own lightning crackling between its fangs.
The jaws bounced harmlessly off the barrier and Trisha yanked their attacker away from him, then pulled more of it into her mouth and ate it. Whatever the thing was, it kept screaming. Good. Trorm readied another lightning spell and Trisha yanked the mist-monster away and launched her own purple lightning into Trorm’s shield, forcing him to redirect his focus and withdraw his staff back before the end could get seared off.
The divine energy crashed into Trorm’s shield and splashed off in a shower of violet light that lit the whole room. Had it been actual electricity Trorm had no doubt that the house would have been set ablaze. The force of the magical attack drove him and Winnie back into the wall as it pressed into his shield. Trorm raised an arm to shield his eyes from the painful, blinding light.
When it died away, the creature was gone and Trisha was glaring at the now broken window it must have fled through. She turned her glare on Trorm. “You let it escape.”
Trorm straightened. “I did no such thing.”
“You distracted me,” Trisha said, then gave him a more thorough once over. She licked her lips.
Trorm blinked and wished he had his sunglasses. He must be misinterpreting what that expression meant.
“I was trying to kill it,” Trorm said. “You attacked me.”
“Of course, I attacked you,” Trisha said, slowly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You were trying to kill it. I wanted to eat it. If you killed it, then it would have dissipated, and I couldn’t have done finished eating its power.” Energy continued to crackle around her. Both her eyes and the tattoo still glowed. It added a menace Trorm would not have believed possible to her petulant tone.
“Evidence suggests that killing that that thing would restore you to the state you were in prior to the attack,” Trorm said.
Trisha looked around, taking in the trashed room and the girls sprawled across the floor. She glanced out the window. “Am I living in a suburban neighborhood?”
“Yes,” Trorm said. “Those are your daughters.” He gestured at Lilian and Abigail.
Trisha wrinkled her nose in what Trorm thought might be disgust. “Seriously? I grew up to be a fucking soccer mom?” She looked around. “Where the hell are my acolytes? Please tell me I’ve got at least some kind of servants around here to clean this mess up.”
Trorm thought for a moment. “You have some employees,” he ventured cautiously. “You own a tavern called the Roaring Stag.”
Trisha gave him a flat look. Purple lightning sparked from her eyes. “No. Really.”
Trorm didn’t answer. He also didn’t lower his shield spell.
Trisha glanced at the girls on the floor again, who were beginning to come around. “Okay, they’re clearly adults now. So, fuck this.”
“Excuse me?” Trorm asked.
“Fuck this,” Trisha, enunciating each word. “I’ve got a second chance. Clearly something went wrong last time around. I’m not going to pass this by.”
“You’re going to abandon your daughters?” Trorm asked.
Lilian pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, then stared wide eyed at her mother. Trisha barely gave her a glance. “I don’t know these girls and that one’s clearly a paladin of Thodos. I don’t owe them anything.”
She made to leave.
Lilian got to her feet shakily, picking up her sword in a weak grip as she did. “Mom?”
Trisha recoiled. “Eww. Please don’t call me that.”
“We need to restore you to who you really are,” Trorm said. “You made the decisions you did for a reason.”
“And I’m sure they seemed like good ones at the time,” Trisha said, holding her hands out to indicate the trashed room. “Clearly something went wrong. So, like I said, I’m taking my second chance.”
Trorm swallowed. He really, really did not want to do this. But he had to. “I can’t let you do that. We don’t know how long those effects on you will last.” Or what kind of damage she might cause to the life she’d built for herself and her daughters before those effects came undone. If they ever did.
She eyed him up and down, then shook her head, making her still whirling hair bob and weave as if caught up in an underwater current. “Magic and muscle. If you didn’t have that huge stick up your ass you’d be the whole package.”
“I can’t let you leave,” Trorm said, stepping away from the wall. Winnie gave him a tap low on his back. He didn’t glance back but felt her duck low and pull away. Here was hoping whatever she was planning would work out.
Lilian stepped up beside him, sword held up but shaking. Trisha barely spared her a glance.
Instead she cocked her head and her hip, simultaneously inquisitive and provocative as she looked Trorm over. “That’s an impressive shield, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“Too bad you’ve clearly forgotten something.”
Trorm furrowed his brow. “What’s that?”
Trisha jerked her head at the broken window behind him. “We’re on the second floor.”
Purple lightning leapt from her in a raging torrent, not to strike at Trorm’s shield, but the floor around him. In moments it shattered into splinters and insulation. He and Lilian both fell, crashing into the dining room table below, which collapsed beneath their weight.
Overhead, Trisha laughed—then screamed. Then Winnie screamed. A loud thud followed. There was no more screaming.
Trorm groaned and tried to get up, only to scream in pain. Blood seeped into his pale sweatpants, saturating both pant legs. Both legs were in bad shape, he could tell, but the right was worse. The bone had punched through the cloth of his pants and was sticking up into the air like the broken mast of a ship. “Winnie!”
Lilian groaned beside him. She’d taken the fall a little better than he had. Her face was bloody, but she didn’t seem to have any broken bones.
A moment later, Trisha came causally down the stairs, a backpack slung over one shoulder. “I’m taking a few things,” she said into the dining room as she passed by. “Figure I probably paid for it all anyway.”
“Mom!” Lilian called out, forcing herself upright.
“Later losers!” Trisha waved and disappeared through the door.
Lilian fell back. “What just happened?”
Trorm grunted. “I’m not sure.”
Lilian’s attention was jerked to his b
leeding legs. “Oh, Thodos!” She placed her hands upon the wounded limbs and golden light came over them. “Thodos, Lord of Justice, I beg thee hear my plea and restore my ally who was wounded defending my home which is also your temple that justice may be done and the wrongs done to him, our ally, be set right.”
The bone slid back beneath the torn fabric and into Trorm’s leg. Flesh painlessly pulled itself back together as Lilian continued to pray and her hands continued to glow. Each moment stretched on for an eternity before his legs were fully restored. Once they were, both of them leapt upright and raced up the stairs. Neither was fast or steady, but they pushed through as hard and quickly as able.
They found Nymal and Abigail kneeling in the entrance to the room over an unconscious Winnie. Smoke was curling from her though there was no visible wound.
“I don’t know what to do,” Abigail cried out. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ve got her stabilized,” Nymal said. “But transmutation really isn’t good for healing. Long term, anything I try could do more harm than good.”
Lilian brushed them both aside and fell to Winnie’s side, hands glowing. Once again, she prayed to Thodos and the light suffused Winnie’s body. The smoking stopped. The light faded and Lilian fell backward onto her butt, breathing heavily, sweat cutting paths through the blood drying on her face.
“I-I’m sorry,” she whispered, barely audible.
“What do you mean, you’re sorry?” Nymal demanded, voice rising in pitch with her panic. She looked back and forth between Lilian and Trorm. “What does she mean she’s sorry.”
Trorm went to his knee beside her, numb inside. “You did all you could?”
Lilian nodded.
“What does she mean she’s sorry!” Nymal demanded again. “She’s a paladin!”
“Trisha’s a powerful cleric,” Trorm said. “This…it’s some kind of curse?” He made the statement into a question, looking to Lilian, who nodded again. “It’s too powerful for Lilian to break.”
He forced himself upright and gathered Winnie in his arms. “We’re taking her to the hospital.” Where there’d be doctors with access to medicine and healing magic that could do Winnie much more good than anything they could do.
