Chapter 2: Dracodisi

CW - slight mind alteration (will not be common)

 

Chapter II - Dracodisi

 

Sitting up on the bed felt weird. Nathan felt a little different than he normally did. It was like there was something nagging in the back of his mind. It almost sounded like a giggle. Focusing on the world around him was hard. His senses hadn’t fully returned to normal yet. His ears felt like they needed to pop from an immense amount of pressure and his touch felt wrong. The rest of the senses came back to him fairly quickly.

Pulling his attention away from his faltering body, he tried to focus on what looked like a demon version of his sister. The choppy brown hair was the same, with a smattering of light purple dye at the ends. It was cut into a wolf cut, the same as Jenny’s was. Her kind, sweet smile looked back at him with Jenny’s jade colored eyes. The more he looked at the demon, the more he saw Jenny. There was too much resemblance for it to not be her. Not only her appearance, but her slack jawed confused face looked too much like how Jenny looked when she couldn’t figure out a spell.

Her clothes were different from what his sister would normally wear. It was like an old timey nurse stepped out of a documentary, but instead of a red cross, she had a red pentagram. The white dress was the same, except there were cut outs for both her wings and her tail. On top of her head, she had a little sideways sailor hat that did little to cover her horns. They looked like spikes sprouting from the middle of her hair. The bottom half was black and then it faded into a sharp red pointed end.

After what felt like an eternity, the demon that Nathan was starting to believe to be his dead sister smiled a big toothy grin. He got a clear look at her sharp fang like teeth. He started to shake with fear. The demon saw his reaction and quickly stopped smiling.

“Nathan!” The demon shouted his name then clattered him into a rib crushing hug. “Sorry about the smile, I kinda forgot how scary sharp teeth can be since I’ve been here.”

“Hmph-hmph-hmph?” Nathan tried to speak but only ended up mumbling into her shoulder.

“Huh?” She looked down and saw the issue. Slowly, the demon released him, resigning to holding his hand while smiling with a securely closed mouth.

“Um,” Nathan looked at her. He was confused, but she clearly recognized that it was him. “Jenny?”

“Oh! Yeah, sorry. It’s me!” Jenny answered in a perky voice. She was bringing the sunshine back to Nathan’s dark world. He had no idea what was happening, but he just sat there and stared for a second. His mind was reeling with all the possible ways this could have happened. Here he was with his sister again. She wasn’t gone! Tears started to well up and he couldn’t stop himself from beginning to cry. He quickly grabbed hold of Jenny’s hand and pulled her closer to the bed to fully hug her. The two sat in quiet, but happy, silence for a few minutes. Nathan just had to hold her for a little bit. To realize that she was real. He wasn’t going to lose her again.

As the minutes went by and Nathan began to process that this really was his demon sister, questions started to flash through his mind.

“What happened and why do you have horns, wings, and a tail?” He asked the questions looking at Jenny with a seriously concerned face. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but Jenny clearly had some inkling.

Jenny started to laugh awkwardly, twisting her hair. She only ever did that when she was nervous. It put Nathan on edge, making him think that this was only a temporary reunion.

“Well,” she started, “um, I can really only answer that if you explain how you got here. Fair?”

Nathan grumbled a little, but agreed. He was about to tell the story when it dawned on him; where was Sam? Sam was a critical part to how he got here. He’d told him about the shop and Eris clearly didn’t like him, but he was sure Sam had a mirror too.

“Jenny?”

“Hmm?”

“Where’s Sam?”

Immediately her hands went to her hair and began to do slight twists, “Um, sh--he’s um, in a separate room.” She nodded her head as she said the last part. It was as if she barely believed what she’d said.

“Okayyy,” Nathan drew the last sound out while eyeing her suspiciously. Realizing it did little to help find Sam if he didn’t even know where he was, he recounted his tale. He didn’t spare any details. He told her about how he felt the past week, which resulted in some expected tears, how Sam helped, and, eventually, everything that occurred in Eris’ spell shop. Jenny didn’t try to interrupt or stop him. She just let him spill his guts. Once his past had caught up to his reality, Jenny started to talk.

“Ok,” she seemed to sigh with relief, “so you do know about Eris. I was worried you got here through death like I did.”

Nathan’s face looked up at her in confusion and wonder

She began to laugh slightly.

“Don’t look so worried,” she said smiling. “I’m good now aren’t I?” She spun in a circle. Nathan could hear the clicking of heels. It wasn’t unusual for Jenny to wear heels, but he did think it was weird of her to wear them to what looked like a job. That wasn’t very normal for her. She finished her spins and began to speak again. “Ok, final thing, did Eris tell you anything about this world and its inhabitants?”

Nathan shook his head. She’d really only told him it was a gift and he assumed reuniting with Jenny was that gift.

“Ok,” she grimaced a little, clearly distressed. “Well, it’s not unheard of for Eris to do something like this to cause chaos, but I didn’t think she’d rope you and Sam into it.” Nathan’s face turned up in confusion, echoing his thoughts of wonder. “Ok, I’ll stop skirting around it. When I died, it was like Eris was picking my consciousness out of the ether. She pulled me into this sort of echochamber that didn’t have much going on but a chair and a table. Both were similar to the ones you described in your story and the same mirror sat on top of the table. She had me sit down and began to give me a speech.”

“She told me that because I was a ‘loyal follower,’ I deserved another chance at life. I didn’t really get it at the time, but, apparently, every magic or crystal shop, really anything similar, she was there. I didn’t even know I was following her, but, somehow, I was. I’m not really clear on that.”

“Regardless, she explained some societal norms and the name of this world. This world is called Dracodisi. It’s a land entirely inhabited by women an—”

“Wait, what?” Nathan interrupted her, “what do you mean only women?” His face twisted up in disgust. “Why are me and Sam even here then?”

She smiled with her mouth closed in the most awkward way possible. “Um, well, ya see. Um, you, um, wereneveraguyandIthinkErisfiguredthatoutandsentyouheretomakeyouawoman.” She seemed to sprint through the actual important bit, so Nathan heard next to nothing.

“I’m sorry, you’re gonna have to slow that down quite a lot for me to understand,” he said. Reaching up from the bed he softly grabbed her hand, “take a deep breath for me and walk me through that again.”

Jenny seemed to calm down a bit. She took a deep breath then spoke, “ok, um, you’re a girl.”

Nathan just stared at her. The corners of his mouth started to rise up until he seemed to boil over and he started to laugh. “Me a girl?” he choked the words out through heavy laughs, “that makes no sense Jenny.” His laugh was still barreling out of him, until he felt a pain in his chest and he started to cough.

His hysterical confusion turned into outright concern as he reached a hand up to his chest. His hand reached his chest a little quicker than he was used to. Instead of the normal sturdy muscle, it felt squishier. Shaken by the sudden change, he looked down. Instead of what he expected to be his normal hand, there was a slender red one with sharp black fingernails. The red skin only extended to his wrist, but he just stared at it slack-jawed, completely forgetting about the fleshy chest situation.

“Um, Jenny?” He didn’t take his eyes off of what was apparently his hand now, “why the fuck is my hand red?!” He looked towards Jenny, now, pushing his hand outward so she could clearly see it.

She grabbed at her hair again, “Uh, haha, ya see, you didn’t let me finish earlier. I was getting to it,” she said, frowning. Nathan pushed his hand out a little more.

“Well? Ya gonna explain?!”

“Ok, ok, jeez. You’re just like mom,” she rolled her eyes. “As I was saying, Dracodisi is only inhabited by women and about half the world are demons. Ta-da!” She was shaking her fingers trying her best to do jazz hands. “Does that make you feel better?” Her toothy grin was back.

Less terrified by it, Nathan looked down at his hand. He picked up his other hand. Without the small support, his back sunk into the bedding. He turned his left over and over, absolutely confused. It was completely normal looking. It didn’t look hellish whatsoever. Somehow, looking at the normal hand felt more wrong than the demon hand. He filed that away in his mind as a “problem for later.”

He gestured to his left hand, “Why is this one normal and this one isn’t?”

“Well, it seems like Eris isn’t just transforming you all in one go.” Her hair was knotting up from how much she was twisting it at this point. Nathan reached his normal hand out and put it on one of hers. He wanted to calm her down and make sure she didn’t damage her hair because of how nervous she was. She seemed to relax a little.

“What exactly do you mean, and, don’t worry. No matter how crazy this all is, I’m just glad to have you back. So, please, don’t stress yourself out,” he said the words as calmly as he could. Regardless of whether he was internally freaking out from turning into a demon or not, he wanted Jenny to be okay. He didn’t want her to stress out over him. He’d felt that pain all too well in recent time.

“Ok, you’re right. I need to calm down. We’re not kids anymore,” she breathed a big breath and released it slowly. Her eyes became more focused. She looked less concerned and more in control. It was a little odd considering she was normally an odd ball with no attention span. She’d usually take days to stop feeling emotional about something, now it was mere seconds.

“Like I said. This world is about half demons from what I understand. Eris didn’t give me all the details. She said something along the lines of that ‘total information’ was ‘no fun.’ I’ve only really been here since I died. So what, like 3 weeks?” She paused trying to do the math in her head.

“Anyway, Eris did specify that this world was her creation. She was tired of those on Earth not worshiping the ‘true gods’ anymore, so she sought out new ways to garner a following. I’m not exactly sure how she’s doing it, but she’s getting ‘fresh’ and ‘new’ souls to inhabit this world. She didn’t really go into specifics with me. She did specify that this world was supposed to reflect her truest qualities and that everyone was a woman. I’m not exactly sure what that means yet, but I’ve started to understand.”

“I haven’t met anyone other than demons and no one, other than me, you, and Sam, remembers anything other than Dracodisi. I’m not sure if that’s only because they’re new souls or Eris took some special interest in us.”

“I understand why she brought you here. I mean you’re the densest egg I’ve ever seen though, so she was probably helping you. I don’t understand Sam though.” She seemed to scrunch up at the thought of Sam. “I always thought he kind of bullied you. I’m glad he was somewhat there for you I guess.”

“Hey! What does egg even mean? And Sam’s a good guy!”

She isn’t really a ‘good guy’ anymore. Hehehe~

A voice resounded in Nathan’s head. He screamed out in confusion.

“What?!” Jenny stood up and suddenly looked strong and ready to defend.

“Did you just say something?” Nathan asked, clearly distressed.

“Well, duh, I feel like I had a whole monologue,” Jenny looked annoyed and started to sit back down. “In the last couple seconds, no. Wait! Did you hear something? This might be a new thing!” She seemed to lean forward and rested her elbow on the bed. She put her chin between her clasped hands and looked directly at Nathan. Her wings were fluttering with excitement. 

Nathan looked at her eyes and saw that there was some dark black that was receding from the center. It looked like it had pooled around the whole eyeball, encasing it in darkness just a second ago. Her jade colored eyes were still sharply contrasting the darkness as it flowed back inside her tear ducts. Trying to ignore the weirdness he spoke.

“Uh, yeah. It was like this feminine voice that spoke up after I mentioned Sam.”

“Ooh! I wonder what that is? It might just be your inner voice though,” she snorted and started laughing.

“Hey! I think I’d know if my inner voice changed entirely.” Nathan crossed his arms in annoyance.

You are reading story Child of Eris at novel35.com

Jenny giggled. “Would you really?” Nathan nodded his head annoyed. “Just like you totally would notice any sort of changes on your body?” She eyed him curiously, obviously testing him while simultaneously teasing him.

Nathan looked at his changed hand with a frown then looked back at Jenny. “Ok, not noticing one change like this is not that surprising! I was just thrown from my normal reality into an entirely different world!”

“Oh one I can understand,” she started giggling, “but, two or three? That’s quite the obliviousness.”

Nathan stared at her absolutely befuddled.

“Oh no. What do you mean?” He glanced all over himself. He pulled his feet out from underneath the blanket, no change. Next, he pulled the patient cover-up up a bit to check underneath it. He made sure to angle away from his sister. There was no change. He checked his arms. Nothing. Resigning that he had found no changes, he looked at Jenny annoyed. “You’re fucking with me aren’t you.”

“For once, no. Wow, you really are oblivious,” she seemed to enjoy the tormenting. “First, check your head, dummy, second, really feel your chest.”

Hearing her give him clear instructions kind of terrified him. He slowly reached his hands toward his head. He wanted to cover as much area as he could. He wasn’t prepared for the little stumps and how they would feel. His normal left hand felt a little hard piece of some sort of organic material. It was heating up his hand and making him feel really nice. His demonic hand felt the same hard small piece of material, but the feeling was different. Instead of exerting heat, it was like he was absorbing it from his hand. Warmth flooded through him and his eyes rolled back from the good feeling. He quickly pulled his hands away from the tiny nubs and looked at his sister with a concerned face.

“What exactly is on my head?”

“Horns!”

“What?”

“You’re growing horns!”

Nathan looked like he was gonna be sick. “Why horns? And why do they feel different in each hand?” He looked and sounded distressed.

“Oh, I heard from some of the people that were born here that this is normal demon physiology. Horns are pretty sensitive when they grow in. They also have two functions. One elicits a pleasurable response, that’s only done when a non-demon touches it. The other accepts pleasurable responses, that’s when a demon touches it. I’ll spare you the details because you’re my sibling and that’s weird, plus I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Anyway, I think it’s because one hand is a demon hand and the other isn’t!” Jenny looked proud of herself. It wasn’t often she got asked a question about this new world and knew the answer. She was still relatively new herself.

“Ok–I–I guess that makes sense,” Nathan struggled with the words because he was still finding it difficult that he was losing his humanity. “What was the other thing you said I hadn’t noticed?” He sighed. It was beginning to be a difficult few hours. First, getting into a fight with Sam, not really resolving it too well, being thrown into a new world by a goddess, being reunited with his not-so-dead sister, and now he was changing into a demon. What else could go wrong?

“Uh, your chest,” Jenny seemed a little worried to say those words. She started to pull her hands up to twist her hair but stopped herself.

Nathan sat there for a second. He wondered what else could’ve changed? Was it more red skin? Did he have some sort of terrifying flesh sac? What if he was part spider or something? All the ideas gave him the heebie jeebies. He shuddered. With little resolve left, he put his hand toward his chest and felt something fleshy instead of his normal chest. He’d felt it earlier, but he didn’t think of it as a change. He’d assumed it was more along the lines of depression making him flabby.

He pulled the patient's cover-up neck away from his body to get a better look. He looked down and saw his normal chest was extended a little. It didn’t look that much different from his normal chest. He looked at Jenny.

“It doesn’t look that much different. What changed?”

“Holy shit, did they make your shell out of metal or something?”

He looked at her in confusion.

“Sorry, I keep forgetting you probably don’t know what that means. I had way too many trans friends and their jokes kinda rubbed off on me.” She smiled awkwardly. “There your budding boobs baby sis!”

Nathan just stared. Somehow, this was less shocking than the demon thing. It was weird, but not as weird as losing your humanity. Nathan scrunched his face up. “What? And you’re a minute older, will you leave it alone?”

“A minute what? Did you say older? I think you did,” she smiled smugly. “That makes me what? Ahh yes, older? As in, older sister. Meaning you, by default, are the baby.”

“Whatever,” Nathan groaned. As much as he missed his sister’s antics, it still drained him. “Can you please explain the boobs part?”

“Oh yeah! You seem to be taking it a lot better than the demon thingy.” She eyed him carefully.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s been a lot going on today. At least this is something I can understand. The new world and demon stuff seem a little more unknown.”

“Yeah, right. I’m sure that’s the only reason,” she giggled as she spoke. “Anyway, like I said, Dracodisi is only inhabited by women. You, my little dense ass egg, are turning into my little sister!”

Nathan looked down at his chest. It wasn’t a large difference than this morning, but it was clearly larger. It looked less like how he remembered and more like what he had seen on women. There was no laughing his way out of this one. He could deny it all he wanted, but that didn’t change that it was happening. His mind was spiraling. There was so much going on that he just started to space out.

“Nathan?” Jenny was waving her hand in front of his face trying to get his attention. After a couple of seconds, Nathan snapped back.

“Sorry. This is just a lot,” he spoke the words with little to no conviction. His whole body slumped back into the two pillows that were supporting him. He looked around the building trying to take in more of what his new world was.

It was a singular room with high ceilings. The ceilings looked like some alien form of architecture. It wasn’t like something he’d seen before. The closest he could attune it to was some version of gothic, with a lot of buttressing. The stone looked foreign too. It was a dark black, almost obsidian color. There was an iridescent shining quality to it, shimmering a faint purple. The floor was a smooth greystone. There were various beautiful inlaid carvings throughout the wall. The common theme was flowery with a lot of apples. The language was different than Nathan was used to, but he somehow understood it.

The Fairest

Shaken from his stupor at something new, Nathan spoke up. “Why can I understand that language?”

“Huh?” Jenny turned around to see what he was looking at. “Oh, it’s probably because Eris wanted us to be able to live in this world so she made us understand the common language.”

“Oh, silly me, that should have been obvious,” Nathan spoke in a sarcastic manner.

Jenny just glared at him. “Ok, fair, but you didn’t have to be an ass.” She pushed him lovingly.

The two sat there for a minute. Nathan thought about everything going on, while Jenny thought about her own problems. She’d been here for a whole of three weeks and suddenly she had a lot more to worry about. She’d been treating this kind of like a vacation, and now she had her old family back. She needed to care a lot more about what went on in this world than she did this morning. Her back went rigid as Nathan spoke again.

“Can I see Sam?”

Brought back to reality, Jenny scrunched her nose and reached up for her hair. She couldn’t resist twisting with what she was about to say. “Well I tried to avoid it for as long as I could, but, Sam’s not really Sam anymore.”

Nathan just stared at her. He looked more and more annoyed. She laughed slightly.

“She’s um–”

“She?”

Jenny just awkwardly laughed and just shook her head. “Yeah, um, she. She chose that, by the way.” She looked at Nathan for some kind of approval, but received nothing. “Anyway, Eris did a similar thing to her that she did for you, but Sam woke up way faster. She hasn’t messed with her name by the way, but she’s definitely farther along than you.”

Nathan just stared forward. He was completely and utterly shocked. Not only did Sam somehow get roped into this because of Nathan’s desire to get something for his sister, his best friend is now a woman. That really only confirmed to Nathan that this was real. If his athletic and manly friend could just become a woman, then it was almost guaranteed he would too. The thought made him giddy. It was odd, because he thought he’d be more concerned.

Sighing, Nathan gathered his mind. “Can I see hi–her?” He mentally cursed at himself for almost immediately messing up the pronouns that Sam apparently picked. He didn’t have nearly as many trans friends as Jenny (his total coming to a big round zero), but he was still respectful.

“Oh yeah, give me one sec. I’ll go get her!” Jenny seemed excited to go get Sam. Nathan wondered about what she had said. If Sam had woken up before him, how far along was she in the switch? The whole situation was curious. What confused Nathan the most was why Sam woke up before him.

Oh my gods. Will you please stop referring to yourself as a man? It took a day for Sam to realize she’s genderfluid and she hadn’t even known about the concept. You live your whole life trapped in the wrong body and you can’t even acknowledge it?

The strong voice was back, only this time it was berating him. With a sudden magnificent burst of golden flame, there was a figure standing in front of the wall. She looked to be massive at a large 9 feet tall. She had black snake-like hair with a bloody head band wrapping the tangled mess into something manageable. The strands weren’t actual snakes, but they coiled up at the ends and shimmered in an almost scale-like fashion. It looked like she had just come from war. Her massive back arched into black leathery wings. She looked powerful, lovely, and terrifying all at once.

“Ahh!” She stretched as she spoke. Her voice was deep and powerful. “Miss me?”

Nathan just looked at her in complete shock.

“See, you’re not mortal anymore, so I can show you my full form without you exploding,” Eris flexed as she spoke. There wasn’t extreme muscle, but she looked extremely toned and stronger than most people Nathan knew. “Also, as much as I wish Sam chose those pronouns, that’s what she’s gonna stick with for a while. At least until I say so. She deserves to experience womanhood. All men do. But I suppose she never really fell into that category. That makes me feel a little better.” She smiled as she spoke while looking at Nathan as if he was lunch meat.

“Ew. I can still hear you referring to yourself incorrectly. This is for your own good. I’m just deleting that word from your vocabulary. You won’t need it here.”

Nathan was confused. Trying to think in the third person was almost impossible. Would Jenny know what was going on? She was usually better at these things. Nathan stopped thinking.

She? They? Nathan tried to think of another pronoun but couldn’t. Repeating the process, Nathan resigned that she could only refer to herself as she or they. There was no other option.

Eris just started giggling which seemed entirely wrong for an almost 9 foot beautiful, but fearsome, demon thing to do.

“Ready to talk, sweetheart? This is your only real chance.”

Nathan looked up at her. Gripping her new demon hand, Nathan tried to think of what to say.

“I want you to tell me everything you told Jenny and what I can expect in the next few days!” Nathan tried to make it sound intimidating, but it was hard when she was staring at a 9 foot tall goddess.

Eris looked at her and smiled. “Let me call in a favor from Chronos.”