Strange and Familiar Feelings

Hwa kept the sneer she felt off of her face as she stared down the three men and two women facing her.

“You will discover that working with me is preferable to working against me.”

“Is that right?” The tall gray-skinned male was not human, but Hwa cared little for the invented species of the nightmare witch hostess and her pet, Kevin, so she had not bothered to learn what any of the invented peoples were called.

“Yes.” Hwa didn’t smile, but a flash of sharply teeth was briefly visible between her lips.

“And what will you do if we decide–”

A backhand sent the man tumbling to the ground, while the rest of the room stumbled back in shock. Kumiho were not the most physically imposing to those unfamiliar with their powers, but when they chose to exert themselves their capabilities were far enough above the mortal races that there was little contest. In the span of about half a second, Hwa had sprouted nine tails, dashed across the room, and knocked the nearly eight-foot tall man onto his ass with a single strike.

She then knelt down and laid her fingers across his ankle. A groan escaped his lips as she drew in some of the power Lily left behind when she transformed him from whatever he had been before into his current form.

Hwa’s eyes were pitch black as she scanned across the rest of the room, her tails lashing wildly through the air behind her as she dared anyone else to voice their challenge.

None did.

“What the fuck!?” Tess’ stomach lurched and she swayed in place as a wave of dizziness passed over her.

For a moment, it was as though she was standing in two places at once. She could see herself—her massive, transformed Amazonian body standing tall in its shining silver athletic outfit—but she could also see as a second, smaller, silver-haired woman stumbled forward and spun around to look back.

It was–

“Abby?”

“Tess? Is that you? Where am I?”

The dual vision faded after a moment, but Tess’ awareness remained heightened as her eighteen-year old sister started to shrink in on herself. “Abby! It’s me! I–” She looked around frantically for support, and her eyes found Kevin.

He was staring in shock at the silver-haired teen, so it took him a moment to realize the selkie’s eyes were upon him. Once he did, he shook off the surprise as best he could and held up his hands palm out, then made a few gentle calming motions. “It’s alright—fuck, is it alright?—doesn’t matter, it has to be. Abby, right? I’m Kevin.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Rather than calming down, Abby’s wide eyes darted around to the diverse crowd of people already beginning to disperse in an attempt to find the trophies demanded by the scavenger hunt. A few had paused to look at the silver-haired woman when she appeared in their midst, but most seemed more focused on the event than their competitors.

While Tess struggled to think of how to explain the insane events of the last few days to her only sibling, Kevin responded, “What’s going on is hard to explain, but I promise that you aren’t in any physical danger. No one here is going to hurt you, but your–” He glanced between the two women and hazarded, “sister?”

Tess nodded quickly and Kevin continued, “Your sister and I were brought here by someone powerful, and it looks like you got tangled up somehow at the same time.”

He was doing a surprisingly decent job of keeping his voice calm, but Abby didn’t seem particularly reassured. Tess’ sister had stopped backing away when she realized that continuing her trajectory would have eventually caused her to stumble into the five foot tall frog person who had announced the scavenger hunt event, but that just meant she was fidgeting in place rather than trying to move away.

Every time there was a sound louder than a murmur in the crowd, Abby whirled to face it, and it took Tess only a few more seconds to realize what was happening. “Her senses! It took me a day to get used to the Familiar Spirit passive, she just got dumped in the middle of a festival with them on full blast.”

“Fuck. Alright. Can you carry her? Let’s get her back to The Long Rest. Or–” He hesitated, then amended, “–probably the castle, actually. You have to stay there tonight, and I’m sure you don’t want to leave her alone.”

“What’s happening?” Abby’s knees folded as she sank to the ground slowly. Her eyes continued to dart around wildly, but she didn’t resist as Tess approached, bent down, and scooped her now much smaller sibling into her muscular arms.

She could feel Abby trembling against her chest, and whispered quietly, “Shh. I got you. I’ll take you someplace quiet, and then we figure out what’s going on.”

By the time Kevin followed Tess into the Master’s suite, their group had swelled from three to five.

“She just—stepped out of Tess. It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, and that’s counting the time Lily had a psychic slap fight with Hwa.” Elsie and Penny flanked Kevin as he trailed behind the sisters, and he paused to use the crystal panel at the side of the portal leading to his room to allow them both access. Tess was scheduled to spend the evening there already, and apparently that privilege automatically extended to her ‘familiar’ as the young athlete hadn’t had any trouble carrying her sister over the threshold.

“Poor thing. She must be terrified.” Penny’s face showed obvious concern for the young woman, but also a touch of confusion. Once she and Elsie were through the portal and standing on the thick carpet of the DM’s chambers, she reached out and touched the brownie’s shoulder lightly. “If we’re going to talk to her, we’ll need to–”

Elsie didn’t hesitate. She turned towards the taller siren, and stepped up for the kiss that would allow the pair to understand the native Faroese of the selkie sisters.

Kevin did his best to avoid leering as the scantily clad slender English woman all but hurled herself at Penny to bury her tongue in the blonde woman’s mouth. The kiss seemed to stretch on and on, and when Elsie finally dropped to the ground with a gasp, she had a smile on her face.

Penny looked a little more off-balance, but the plaintive sound of Abby across the room pulled her attention away from the sudden kiss and back towards the matter at hand. “I’m going to go talk to them and see what I can do to calm things down.”

“We should hang back.” Elsie stepped to Kevin’s side and took his hand as she spoke, before adding, “Let’s avoid crowding the new arrival. Not everyone is going to adapt to this quickly, and remember that it took Tess a full day before she was willing to leave her room.”

The feeling of warm fingers slipping into his own was surprisingly welcome and reassuring, and Kevin nodded his agreement as Penny began to walk across the room towards Tess and Abby.

“You know that Lily did this on purpose, right?”

Kevin was surprised to hear Elsie all but whisper at him the moment Penny stepped away. He glanced to the side, but the English woman’s eyes were staring across the room at the three women now clustered together. Rather than placing Abby on the massive bed, Tess had positioned her on a divan-like chair, and was in the process of pouring a glass of water from a pitcher nearby.

“Tess was the other person she gave an extra class to, wasn’t she?”

Elsie nodded. “For me, I think she did it because she wanted me to jump in feet first. And it worked. I guarantee I wouldn’t have been as eager to get your dick down my throat if she hadn’t. For Tess, though–” She shook her head. “I’m less sure.”

Glancing over at the silver-haired woman, Kevin did his best to think things through. She was shorter than her sister, if only by an inch or two, and more slender. Still obviously athletic, but she looked more like a gymnast than a track star. Combined with her slightly more youthful features, he felt somehow guilty just being in the same room as her.

Still, he couldn’t deny that she was a very pretty young woman. And, as much as he might personally have steered away from relationships with younger women in the past, Tess had mentioned that she was eighteen, so it wasn’t like it would be illegal in the US–

He tore his eyes away from the Tess and Abby before his mind could wander too far down that path. “I’m going to get us some food. I think giving her some space is a good idea, but let’s not make her face this hungry.”

Across the room, Tess was too focused on her sister to watch as Kevin summoned one of the castle servants to order some food.

Instead, she was focused on Abby, and doing her best to avoid freaking out.

“It’s alright, sweetheart, no one is going to hurt you. I know this must seem weird, but–”

Penny’s voice was quiet and so soothing that Tess was certain magic was involved. The fact that it might have been siren magic rather than whatever power Lily had imbued the woman with was actually somehow reassuring—as pervasive as the hostess’ influence might have been, it was nice to be reminded that they were not entirely without agency of their own.

“Tess? What’s happening?” Abby’s voice cut through Penny’s and reached Tess’ ears at the same time that her body began to inform her that it was time for a change. She had re-activated Flexible Shape not long before trying out her Familiar Spirit ability, but the walk back into town from the fair ground had consumed most of the duration and the effects were finally coming to an end.

She felt herself began to shrink, and it was all she could do to hold in the moan that threatened to burst forth from her lips. Familiar Spirit’s enhanced senses felt incredible when she was charging through an obstacle course or hurling a javelin with pinpoint accuracy. Now, though, as the size-changing outfit rubbed against her skin while it resized itself, she was filled with scintillating pleasure that threatened to embarrass her in front of her sibling.

“Power. Wearing off. Back to normal soon.” Tess grit her teeth against the pleasure, though from the expression on Abby’s face she misinterpreted it as pain.

Her little sister was usually the more reserved of the two of them, the more shy. It wasn’t that she was any more empathic than Tess—in fact, the opposite was probably true—but when Abby reached out and took her sister’s hand, it was clearly with the intent to comfort.

Tess hissed quietly and pulled away. Then she winced at the hurt expression that flashed across Abby’s face. “No, please, it’s—I’m fine, it just–” She closed her eyes and took a slow breath to steady herself as the transformation finished and she returned to her lesser form.

My normal form. My human form.

She **** herself to think of her smaller state in those terms, refused to acknowledge how badly she was tempted to return to the amplified and larger-than-life state that Lily had given her.

“I’m sensitive. Even more-so when I’m transforming.” Tess flashed Abby a quick smile to reassure her, though it came across as a little ****.

“Tess?”

“Yeah?”

“What the hell is going on?”

Tess closed her eyes for a moment and drew in a breath. “I’m not really sure. I mean, I can tell you what they told me, but first—I need to know something from you.”

Abby’s voice was always a high, sweet thing, but Tess couldn’t find it in herself to feel jealous of it now. Not when there was such an obvious tone of confusion and fear woven through it. “What do you mean?”

“Do you remember when I disappeared? When I was supposed to meet with you and Jeremy?”

“Yeah?” The confusion in Abby’s voice was heavy enough to override the fear for the moment, but then it was Tess’ turn to fail to understand. “It was like an hour ago, of course I remember. Jeremy said he was going to check for you at your usual spot, I went back to your dorm room. Then everything went black and I was in that festival with you.”

Tess opened her eyes and looked back and forth between Penny and Abby. Then she looked across the room, to where Kevin was standing next to Elsie. Both were watching from across the room, so she didn’t have to do more than beckon them over for the pair to begin to approach.

She quickly explained what Abby just told her, which brought a wince from Kevin.

“It sounds like she was in stasis, or something like it. I’m not sure exactly what Lily did, but–” The American man obviously had some kind of theory, and by the way he and Elsie shared a glance she had some idea what it was.

“Lily? Who?” Abby, to her credit, seemed to finally be calming down. She pushed herself upright on the chair, and while the way she folded her legs up to the side might have looked defensive to someone who didn’t know her, Tess could remember her sitting like that since she was five or six.

Kevin took a deep breath, then explained, “I’m going to start from the beginning, but first, Tess–“ He turned towards her and instructed, “–It’s going to be up to you how much time Abby spends here. She’s been around for most of an hour, and the ability that summoned her is about to wear off. You can re-summon her, and it sounds like Abby doesn’t really experience the time while she’s not present–”

“What!? Tess, what is he talking about?”

“I can’t just let her–” Tess ignored Abby’s question for the moment and shook her head, then started again. “I’ll reactivate the ability right away. If I reactivate Flexible Form as soon as it runs out, it basically doesn’t go away—it’s what I was doing earlier. I’ll try that, and you can explain what’s going on.”

Kevin nodded, and turned towards Abby once more. “Alright, Abby, right? I’m Kevin. I’m going to ask you to let me do my best to explain everything that’s going on all at once. If you have questions, I’ll answer them as best I can, but I can’t promise that I know everything. About five days ago…”

When Abby’s original summon began to wear off, the younger sister had automatically sought out Tess. The moment their flesh had touched, she was absorbed into her sibling like a drop of water vanishing into a pond.

At Elsie’s recommendation, the group waited a few minutes before Tess re-summoned her ‘familiar.’ Then the entire room got to watch as Abby slipped out of Tess once more to stand on her own.

Just as when the party members had first been summoned by Lily, the younger Joenson had arrived in the outfit she’d been wearing at the start of the show. In this case, that meant a relatively conservative set of jeans and a sweater, which stood out against the more fantastic outfits of everyone else in the room all the more by contrast.

The next hour was spent first explaining what Lily had told everyone on their first day in Adventuria, then asking about Abby’s experience in the five days which had passed since. The latter portion didn’t take long, though—it turned out that the silver-haired selkie only had memories of the hour after Tess had vanished. The moment Lily had used her veto to grant the Familiar Spirit transformation in Adventuria, the eighteen year old’s waking memories cut off.

As far as she was concerned, her sister had vanished for an hour, everything had gone dark, and she had woken up in a fantasy universe in the middle of a fair.

“It was—almost like a dream? I think I was aware of time passing, but only just.” Abby shivered and drew in on herself. She was still seated on the divan that Tess had first dropped her on when they arrived at the master’s suite, though by now she was sitting up and holding a cup of tea in both hands.

Around her in a loose circle were Penny, Kevin, Elsie, and Tess. Chairs had been gathered from around the room, and the remains of the dinner the castle’s staff had brought were still spread across the small table in the center of the circle from when the group had eaten an early dinner.

“And the same thing when the summon wore off?” Elsie’s question was asked with earnest curiosity. The brownie’s own cup of tea seemed to have been forgotten—she still held it in both hands, but hadn’t taken a sip in the last several minutes while listening to the younger selkie describe her experiences.

“I think—I think I was aware of what was going on, a little, but it’s like it was a dream. I think I can remember the room, but now that I think back on it, I’m not sure if it’s because I’m trying too hard to remember and my imagination is filling in the gaps.”

The younger Joenson had started to—after a couple of hours of conversation and some food—calm down. She still looked more than a little frazzled, but considering the fact that she had just been told she’d been **** by a succubus, kept in suspended animation for half a week, and then dropped onto a multidimensional reality TV show where a group of women that included her older sister were being pressured to form a harem for a man they’d never met, ‘frazzled’ was an improvement. Kevin was frankly impressed that she was coherent at all, but hadn’t wanted to press the issue.

The older sister was still in her ‘default’ form, having no reason to assume the amplified state of Flexible Shape. In it, the resemblance of the siblings was obvious—with similar features, light hair, and tall athletic frames—but the differences were just as striking.

Where Abby’s chest was little more than a couple of pert bumps that pushed out the front of her sweater, Tess’ silver outfit highlighted a pair of perky Cs. The older sister’s dandelion fluff was an uncontrolled mess after the day’s exertions, while even after being bridal carried across half the town the younger Joenson’s shoulder-length hair fell in waves of gorgeous rippling silver.

It was Penny who finally spoke up to voice the question they had been dancing around since Abby first arrived. “So, Tess–”

Both sisters turned to focus on the siren. “–you have a choice. Are you going to keep summoning Abby, knowing that you’re potentially subjecting her to whatever Lily has planned to make her Harem Hotel show interesting, or are you going to let her sleep?”

While Abby’s expression showed a flash of horror, Tess’ briefly flickered through a range of emotions fast enough that Kevin couldn’t quite place any of them. Then her head fell, and she sighed out. “I don’t know. Abby—what do you want?”

“I want to go home.”

The response was immediate, and plaintive, and it felt like Kevin’s heart was being ripped from his chest. Abby was an adult only in the technical and legal sense—she was barely into college, had only left home for the first time less than a year before.

She didn’t deserve this.

He cleared his throat. “Abby—I know that this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but—I can’t promise that you’ll get home exactly as you are now, but know that all of us–” He gestured around the assembled circle, “–will do everything we can to make sure you come out of it as okay as we can manage.”

To his surprise, Penny shot him a quick dirty look. While he was trying to figure out what that meant, though, Elsie added, “And if you do wind up coming out, you might have some fun!”

“I—I mean, today wasn’t actually too bad.” Tess’ voice was quiet, and she was staring at the carpet rather than meeting anyone’s eyes, but the selkie managed a faint smile. “The festival, I mean. If it’s still going on later, we could maybe go back?”

Abby sighed. “This is way too fucked up. Tess, I guess you win this one—I’m in your hands. For now—let me sleep. We’ll figure it out later.”

Kevin and Tess sat in plush chairs opposite each other in the master’s suite, both wearing exhausted expressions.They were alone, with Penny and Elsie having left to ensure they weren’t accidentally **** to spend the evening with the Dungeon Master as the evening curfew approached. The latter had offered to remain, but Kevin had ultimately turned her down so that Tess didn’t have even more to deal with when she was already feeling obviously stressed.

“We never did find the trophy for the scavenger hunt.” Kevin’s voice was quiet, the comment something made more for the sake of breaking the silence than anything else.

“I took first at four events. No bonus GP for me.”

Tess actually sounded bitter about that, which brought a ghost of a smile to Kevin’s lips. “You really are competitive, aren’t you?”

A quiet snort of a laugh escaped the white-haired selkie’s lips. “Always. Blame Abby for it. Until I was nine or ten, I was always the one who wanted to make sure everyone else caught up and was having fun. Then she came along, and at first she was just one more person to include. But then she managed to shift first, and the way my mother doted on her…”

She trailed off, but Kevin could pick up the rest from context. “I meant to ask you about growing up as a selkie tonight. It’s—I can hardly imagine what that must have been like. Literally—I didn’t even know that magic was real until Lily summoned me. Of everyone here, apart from Elsie who didn’t know that she had magic of her own, you were the one I was hoping would be able to tell me what it was like.”

“What, being magic? It’s, I guess–”

It actually took Kevin a moment to realize what happened. At first, he thought that he had simply misheard Tess when he failed to understand her words. Then he realized that mid-sentence, the Tongues effect had worn off.

The native Faroese she spoke sounded beautiful—slightly lilting and smooth, her accent a mix of Irish and Scandinavian, and he found himself watching her face as she did her best to put a complicated concept into words that seemed to tickle at the edge of his understanding.

She was beautiful, and impassioned, and it took him longer than it should have to speak up and ask, “Tess? Can you understand me?”

Tess stopped mid-sentence. She stared for a moment, then a faint flush touched her pale cheeks. The selkie glanced around the now empty master suite as though searching for someone else to assist, and Kevin responded by holding up his hands.

“I know you can’t understand me, but you don’t have to—you know. We can just hang out the rest of the evening.”

Tess’ brilliant ice-blue eyes eventually locked back on Kevin’s, and she slowly rose from her chair. He mirrored her, and the two were soon standing face to face no more than a foot apart. The athlete was the tallest member of the party even without Flexible Shape active—discounting Stheno’s monstrous form—with an inch or so of height over him, but they were close enough that when she stepped forward and tilted her head to the side, neither of them had to bend down for their lips to touch.

They had kissed to activate Tongues earlier in the day—more than once—but this felt different. There was something tremulous in Tess that hadn’t been there before, but when Kevin’s tongue slipped past his own lips, hers parted to accept it willingly.

Tess’ eyes fluttered shut, and for the next minute, Kevin forgot that what he was doing was activating a magic spell put in place by a succubus with seemingly limitless power. Instead, he was simply kissing a beautiful woman. After a moment, he lifted his arms and slipped them around her torso. When he pulled her gently against himself, not only did she not resist, but she pressed herself gently into his body.

It was only when he realized that he had no idea how long they had been kissing that Kevin pulled his head back and broke the kiss. Both he and Tess were breathing heavily, and her eyes remained closed for a long moment while he studied her face from mere inches away.

“Kevin?” The white-haired woman’s voice was breathier than usual, and she opened her eyes to meet his gaze as she spoke.

“Yes, Tess?” Kevin felt lost in Tess’ bright blue eyes as she studied his face. She was beautiful, but so young, and looked so incredibly **** that it was all he could do to keep from simply gathering her up into a tight hug.

“What should I do?” The question came out in a plaintive rush as Tess’ voice nearly broke, and Kevin gave in to the impulse to squeeze her. For all that she was younger than him by a decade and a half, the selkie’s body was a solid frame of lithe muscle which felt surprisingly sturdy against his chest.

His arm stroked up and down her muscular back, the smooth fabric her outfit had transformed into silky-smooth under his hand as he reassured her, “We’ll figure it out. I know it’s not much reassurance, but I promise you that I’ll do everything I can to help you—and Abby—get through this as safe and unchanged as possible.”

He felt Tess’ hair against his cheek as she rested her head on his shoulder. The white locks seemed to float on the air around her head, as fine as dandelion fluff, and they sent a faint shiver down his spine as they brushed against the skin of his neck.

Tess did her best to keep the quiver in her legs from shaking the bed.

In the end, while she had hugged Kevin for what felt like an hour—and the two had parted with a surprisingly sweet kiss—they had settled on opposite ends of the massive bed. He was tucked in and—judging by the regular sound of his breathing—was already asleep.

Hardly surprising given the day the two of them had, but Tess’ body was far too awake and alive to let her relax into slumber just yet.

The silver nightgown that her Shifter’s Suit had become when she slid into bed was already up over her hips. The outfit included a tiny scrap of silky material that covered her sex, but that was already pushed to the side. A soft moan escaped Tess’ lips as her fingertips danced along the sodden lips of her swollen cunt, and her entire body spasmed in response.

Within her, she could sense the second consciousness that Lily had implanted. It stirred, and another groan escaped Tess as her familiar—as Abby—reacted to her older sister’s touch.

Two fingers plunged into a sopping wet hole, and for a moment Tess wasn’t sure if it was even her own.

It was easier when she didn’t know. When she could tell herself that it was just the hostess’ magic twisting her mind. Earlier, when Abby had finally emerged, the sensations had faded and become more distant.

Now that her sister’s consciousness was imprisoned within her own, though, Tess had no escape. No recourse, **** but to admit that the echoing lust that reverberated through her like the aftershocks of a lightning strike did not come solely from within.

Her sister might have been ****, but Abby’s body—wherever it was—was reacting to Tess’ touch on her own cunt.

And Tess could feel the response.

Just—just one. Just one would let her sleep.

Tess moaned and rolled onto her back. One of her hands slid up beneath the nightgown and clutched desperately at her breast, pinched her nipple hard as she pumped her middle two fingers into her hot hole and hoped that a single orgasm would let her sleep through the night.