It's a spell that can't be broken, it'll keep you up all night

“Well, that was a nice breakfast!” Rose stretched her arms over her head and smiled jovially as the trio walked down the hall. “Still, too bad Nick wasn’t there. I guess he’s busy hanging out with Dawn or whoever he’s seeing tonight.” In spite of her smile, the disappointment in Rose’s voice was palpable. Morgana gave her a surprised look.

“Well… probably,” the goth witch agreed.

“I, um, I think… that was probably for the best,” Ella mumbled, fumbling with her rubber-band. She felt like she was standing on a cliff right now, overlooking a foggy pit. She had no idea what was going on with her, but everything felt so warm and weird.

The idea of Nick seeing her while she felt like this… that only terrified her more! She tugged awkwardly at her collar.

“Everything okay?” Morgana asked worriedly.

Ella stiffened up. “Why do you ask that?” She snapped. She sounded almost like Cinder with her tone, which was its own kind of frightening. But if Morgana was worried, she didn’t show it.

“I’m just concerned…” The goth girl looked down. “I hit you with that spell… If anything’s wrong, then… it’s my fault, so…”

Ella blinked. “…Oh. Well, don’t worry, I feel fine.”

She wasn’t usually this stubborn. But if she whined and complained, that would just make Morgana feel worse, and she didn’t want to do that, either.

But where Morgana lacked the perceptiveness to pick up on Ella’s cues, Rose was quite socially aware when it suited her. She narrowed her eyes and pinched her plump lips into a tight frown.

“You’re not fooling me,” she said calmly. “Don’t even try with that.”

Ella’s eyes widened in alarm. “Wh-what?” She grabbed her wrist and flinched. “Thwap!”

“I can tell something’s up,” Rose continued, pointing her finger at the latina. “You’re not acting normal. Your cheeks are flushed, like you’re all nervous, and feeling hot… It’s the effect of the spell, I’ll bet.”

“No!” Ella stomped her foot. “What do you know, anyway!?”

Uh-oh. This was bad. She could feel Cinder starting to leak out. Rose confronting her with the truth was putting her on the defensive, and when that happened…

“Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!”

Morgana’s eyes widened even larger with each snap of the rubber-band. She quickly rushed to Ella’s aid, and grabbed Rose by the wrist.

“Rose!” She hissed at the blonde. “Take it back! You’re scaring her!”

Scared? Is that what Morgana thought? That Ella was scared?

“I-I’m not scared!” Ella sputtered, shaking her head quickly. “I’m just not… not affected by… I’m not, okay!?”

She wasn’t even able to properly formulate words, much to her frustration. And that fact wasn’t lost on either of them. Morgana looked anxious and Rose looked concerned, and both girls now knew full well that something was up with the normally-withdrawn latina.

But how to resolve the situation was something not one girl present could figure out.

Backed into a corner, Ella could practically hear Cinder’s screams. She could feel her alter’s visceral demands to be let out, so she could protect Ella from the things frustrating and frightening her, and part of Ella wanted that, too.

But she couldn’t do it.

Morgana was… well, they were basically friends! And Rose wasn’t so bad, either! Ella wouldn’t turn Cinder loose on them, she couldn’t!

For once, she didn’t want to run away, even if hiding herself in the confines of her mind would be so reassuring right now.

“THWAP!”

Ella loudly snapped her rubber-band, momentarily keeping Cinder at bay. As she did, she looked up and met Rose’s eyes, seeing the look of concern on her face. Then she slowly slid her gaze over to Morgana, and saw the witch girl looked even more worried.

This was all her fault… if it wasn’t for the danger of letting Cinder out, then neither one of them would be looking at her like this, treating her like…

Ella’s heart skipped a beat, and as an awkward silence hung in the air she suddenly became keenly aware of just how hot her body was feeling.

She knew then, feeling the pressure of their tense stares, that she couldn’t keep it a secret for much longer. Swallowing, she summoned up her courage, and removed her fingers from her rubber-band slowly.

“…I think… there is something wrong…” Ella croaked out, her hands trembling. Rose and Morgana both looked at her with softening faces.

“I-!” Morgana was obviously about to apologize again. But she stopped herself, and dug her fingernails into Rose’s arm, much to the frenchwoman’s chagrin.

Rose shook the goth girl off of her and stepped forward, her face unusually sympathetic for Rose of all people.

“Hey now, it’s fine,” Rose said, offering Ella a friendly smile. “We were trying to figure out what was going on, remember?”

“…Yeah,” Ella said curtly.

“So describe it.” Rose placed her hand over her own chest. “You said that something feels wrong, right? And you’re looking all flushed and sweaty…”

“I-I don’t know,” Ella admitted, shaking her head. She looked down sheepishly. “I feel like… like when I had a fever. My body, it’s just… it’s getting so hot… and I…”

There were other things, too. A pinching between her legs that was unlike anything she ever felt before. It felt strange and wrong, like she was dirty down there. Akin to when she’d first started going through puberty, and her lower parts had bled.

She had been terribly frightened that first time. Afraid that she was going to die. And that woman had not been a comforting hand to her.

Back then… she had been **** to figure it all out on her own. And handle it herself. Like she always did…

But right now?

Right now, she wasn’t alone. She had friends who wanted to help her.

“I feel… down there,” Ella mumbled, her fingers ghosting slightly towards her nether regions. Oh, why did she wear a skirt today!? She had so many clothes she could pick from, and she went for a frilly pink skirt like usual!

Rose and Morgana shared looks of concern.

“Down there, you mean your… you know?” Morgana blushed just thinking about it.

“…Cunt.” Rose did not blush.

Ella looked at the blonde with alarm, her jaw dropping at the vulgarity of the french girl’s words. “That-!”

“Well, is it?”

This was one of those situations where Rose was technically correct, but Ella definitely didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of being so.

And yet, she couldn’t deny it, so she just nodded sheepishly.

“It’s that, yes,” she admitted, turning red as a chili. “I… I feel all hot down there, and also…”

“Are you getting wet?” Rose once again lacked any sort of filter with her blunt questions, much to Morgana’s horror.

“Rose!” The 18-year-old girl screeched. “You can’t just ask her something like that!”

“Why not?” Rose asked. “It’s the only way we’re going to get to the bottom of this. The specifics. Come on, Morgana, you’re all bold and brave now, right?”

“I… well…” Morgana may have become more direct since staying in the Luxury Suite, but there were still limits! She couldn’t imagine asking such insensitive questions like Rose was doing!

Ella couldn’t really process what was happening to her, either. Her cheeks were scarlet and she just wanted to curl up and die. But she knew that if she stepped back, if she retreated, then she’d be turning her body over to Cinder, and that…

…Yeah. Cinder being the one to go through this, instead of her? That just seemed so much worse in pretty much every way. So she bit down on her lip and snapped her rubber-band again, and **** herself not to panic.

“I think I’m… getting aroused,” she managed to admit, unable to meet the eyes of either woman. It was a natural thing, she knew. And something she’d had to contend with several times in the past, infrequent though it may be.

But that didn’t make it any easier to admit.

“I’m so sorry…” Morgana whimpered, looking down. She hid her face behind the brim of her hat. “This… this is all MY fault, if I hadn’t-”

“Hey now, getting aroused is perfectly natural,” Rose interjected. “I mean… Cinder’s gone through it, right?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, not nearly as sympathetic as Morgana. “She stabbed me with that vibrator knife. So clearly she has no qualms with dealing with arousal.”

“That-!” Ella let out a little squeak and looked at Rose in alarm. “That was completely different-!”

“Well, maybe, because she was active during that whole second part of the game,” Rose agreed. “Running around and making everybody cum their brains out, me included. And when she fell in that moat… You saying you don’t have any memories of that at all?”

Ella shook her head. “It… it doesn’t work that way. I’m not conscious when… when Cinder’s out. What happens to her, I don’t feel it, and I wasn’t active until… until after all that had happened.”

After Cinder had been washed clean, and there were no traces of aphrodisiac left in her system. Ella had been terrified of the possibilities in that challenge, and to her relief, she hadn’t been **** to confront them.

She was confronting it now, though.

“…Still, it’s a natural thing,” Rose said, still trying to make the issue seem like not so big of a deal. “Morgana and I, we get aroused all the time! …Oh, wait, maybe that’s it! Maybe it isn’t related to the spell at all, and it’s just Morgana’s Sotto Voce transformation kicking in, since you guys have been talking so much!”

Morgana’s red eyes widened in alarm. She hadn’t even considered that! Just another way she was making everything worse.

Ella gulped. “That… maybe,” she begrudgingly admitted. She had felt weird during her conversations with Morgana in the past. Antsy and nervous, with a slight warmth between her legs. But if that heat had been like striking a match, what she was feeling now was like a house on fire.

Wait… a house on fire?

Ella gasped.

“It… it is the spell!” She blurted out. “That’s why I’m feeling like this!”

Rose stared at her. “…Yeah, we know.”

“No, I mean… well, yes.” Ella blushed, realizing that she had just loudly exclaimed what was blatantly obvious. “That picture… Morgana, you said that the picture you touched was like a house burning down?”

Morgana clutched her spellbook to her chest and nodded reluctantly.

“Well… that… it’s how I feel right now,” Ella stammered. “I’m so warm… my body, it’s… heating up, and I can’t really control it…”

Rose winced. That sounded rough. “Ella…”

“The spell, it-it must be… something that arouses anybody hit with the fireball,” Morgana fretted. She was trying to talk with as few words as possible now that she remembered what her transformation could do. “Ella, I’m sorry… it should wear off soon, right?” She looked hopefully over to Rose, who held her hands up.

“Hey, don’t look at me, witch girl. It’s your spell,” she pointed out, drawing a gasp of dismay from the goth.

Morgana hung her head. She knew Rose was correct, unfortunately.

“That’s… true,” she admitted, biting her lip.

For all they knew, this spell would never wear off. And that was a problem.

Ella felt a twitch down in her lower lips and she gasped. She clenched her thighs together and winced, looking down.

“I think it’s… getting worse,” she said, her face reddening. The pulsing throb between her legs was getting more insistent.

“Well, that’s not good then,” Rose said, stroking her chin. “Considering how this show does things, I wouldn’t be surprised if that spell is going to keep heating you up until you end up, well… you know. Finishing.”

Even Rose could be delicate when the situation called for it, and judging by Ella’s current mental state, that was definitely the case right now.

It didn’t stop the flustered woman from looking even more alarmed.

“Y-you mean… I have to-?!” She clenched her thighs together tighter.

In spite of Ella being a modest girl, and a virgin, it wasn’t as if she had zero experience with her own body and its needs. Now and then, when her desires got too strong, she had manually stimulated herself, and it wasn’t as though she felt shameful or dirty for doing so.

But that had always been in the privacy of her own little room under the staircase. It was a whole different story when other people knew what she was doing and why.

“Well… it’s just a thought,” Rose said, trying to smooth the situation over when she saw the look of alarm in the other girl’s eyes. The last thing she wanted was to freak Ella out even more. “There’s no saying whether or not that’ll actually help anything, you know?”

Ella let out the faintest sight of relief imaginable. But unfortunately it didn’t bring any relief to her.

“We probably shouldn’t be experimenting with that spell anymore, though,” the blonde said, looking warily over at Morgana’s spellbook. “Not until we know how to reverse the effects.”

Morgana agreed with that. She never wanted to look at that page again after seeing what it did to Ella! …Probably.

“I… I’m fine,” Ella stammered, seeing the worry on the goth girl’s face. “I’m feeling… a-aroused, but… I can handle it.”

Rose cracked a grin. She was about to make a joke, but decided not to at the last second for the sake of the poor girl’s dignity. Instead, she nodded in support and smiled gently towards her. “If you think that’s for the best, then okay,” she agreed.

Ella sighed in relief.

“What… what now, though?” Morgana asked, petrified with concern. She still had little idea as to what they should actually be doing. “Are we going to experiment with the other spells, or…”

“We should,” Rose agreed. “What, are you just not going to use your transformation at all, because there’s a chance it might go wrong again? Forget that! You shouldn’t let your concerns keep you from actually making use of the tools at your disposal, Morgana! You’re Nick’s hot little goth witch girlfriend, it would just be wrong for you to not put that magic to work!”

Her words were oozing with support, and they captured Morgana’s heart just as they were intended to do. But neither woman was entirely cognizant of the source of Rose’s suggestion, and the fact that it was her own transformation pigeonholing Morgana into that role in the first place.

Not that Morgana would be complaining, of course. She was downright eager to go along with it, finding the whole idea of being Nick’s witch casting sexy spells on his harem to be an incredibly arousing thought.

…You know, if not for the way this one had massively backfired on her.

Stupid reality, ruining her best fantasies.

“Do… do I…?” Ella wasn’t all that thrilled at the prospect of being present for more of this magical experimentation. After all, she wasn’t even supposed to be a part of this! Rose and Morgana might have had a standing appointment, but Ella had just gotten caught up in the crossfire on the way down to breakfast! She had no intention of getting caught up in another spell!

…Then again, if she left, she might miss her chance to undo this spell, and quell the fire blazing in her loins.

It was a risky gamble, Ella was keenly aware of that. But maybe… maybe it was a gamble worth taking.

Or maybe it risked turning Cinder loose, she had no idea.

“Anyway, we should probably head outside,” Rose decided as they reached the lobby. “Less chance of accidentally catching one of the other girls with a spell, you know? If any more fireballs come shooting out, they’ll only hit one of us!”

Ella let out a little squeak. That was just what she was afraid of!

But Morgana couldn’t agree more. The last thing she wanted to do was hit someone like Dani or Dawn with a spell and ruin their day. Or, god forbid, Amelia?! No, no way, she wouldn’t chance it. If it was just the three of them, that would be for the best.

So in spite of Ella’s unstated concerns, the three women headed out into the fields beside the hotel, where they could experiment with Morgana’s spellbook with a bit of privacy.

“Alright, this should do,” Rose said, fanning herself. The buggy heat of the island’s climate was always such a drag, compared to the air conditioning of the hotel. “So what other spells have you got in that book, witch girl?”

“Um… two more,” Morgana said, cautiously cracking the book open again. She showed the two remaining pages to Rose. “Not sure what they do, though.”

Rose looked blankly at the symbols, and then at the strange drawings. A woman in a fancy dress, and then a peach tree? She had no clue what that could mean at all.

“Which one do you want to try first, then?” Rose asked.

Morgana glanced warily at the picture of the woman. Something about it reminded her of those old stories she used to read, about spirits being trapped in books. What if they turned something loose on the island!? Some dark witch?! No, no, far too risky.

“Let’s do the tree one,” she said finally. Nothing bad ever happened with a peach tree, right?

Swallowing her doubts, Morgana gently ran her fingers along the page, feeling the drawing. It felt so alive and vibrant, she could practically feel the touch of the leaves against her skin.

The book started to glow, just like last time. She nearly dropped it, flinching in anticipation of some tree branch shooting out of the page, or maybe a big floating peach.

Rose raised her arms to shield herself as well, while Ella ducked for cover. But unlike the last spell, nothing seemed to come out of the book. The glow receded, and everything seemed normal.

“…That was it?” Rose lowered her arms, sounding disappointed. “Gotta say, not very impressive.”

“I-I don’t know,” Morgana said, looking around. She wasn’t sure what she expected. An orchard of trees to pop up around them? Or maybe-

“Wait, what’s that smell?” Rose asked, sniffing the air.

Morgana blinked. “Smell? What smell?” She didn’t smell anything.

“There’s a definite smell,” Rose said, scrunching up her face as she tried to place it. “You smell that, Ella?”

Ella came out from behind the rock she’d hidden behind, cautiously sniffing the air. She could tell something was up, too. “Yeah,” she stammered. “It smells… smells like…”

She couldn’t place the aroma. But it was sweet and fruity.

“…Peaches!” Rose gasped, her eyes widening as a gleeful grin spread across her face. “It smells like peaches!”

“Oh…!” Morgana sighed with relief. So it was some kind of peach-smelling spell? Thank goodness.

“Not sure what about this spell is sexy, though,” Rose said, stroking her chin thoughtfully. “I mean, maybe it’s to conceal the smell of sex or something? That could… oh, hold on…”

She reached down and tugged at the hem of her dress. The darn thing was so tight and uncomfortable all of a sudden. And was it just her imagination, or was it getting shorter?

After a few tugs, she gave up. “Ella, is something up with my dress?” She asked, turning to the other girl. “Is it caught on something?”

Morgana’s eyes bulged in shock as Rose turned her back to her, and she nearly dropped the spellbook.

Rose’s butt was growing, and at a rapid pace, too!