FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

I live in the East Coast, in an average town with a few thousand people, maybe five thousand or so, maybe a little bit more, I don’t really know, I don’t really care. Things move slowly here, each day as the one before and the one before that. Events that differ from the average are… rare to say the least, incredible sometimes, even when they are nothing special but by no means the life there lacked any comforts: there’s a cinema down the main road, a car dealer with some nice cars and bikes, a small shopping mall with a few stores, a skate park, a restaurant that specialized in tacos and fajitas, some more utilitarian stores all over and a park, but for all the youngsters and me included, there was one place that was The Spot to visit, capital T and S are not recommended, they are mandatory and very much suited for the situation.

The Hyperion is a comic shop that seemingly has no place in a town such as this one, or it shouldn’t have, but it is indeed here and no one ever complained: it had everything you wanted and then some more, ranging from figurines, comics, manga, DVDs with dubbed or subbed anime, weird curiosities from all over the world and even some… more adult stuff if you were old enough or if the owner was feeling generous or looked the other way for just a moment but I had never gotten that lucky. Not that I could have kept one even if I somehow managed to get it: mom was a freak when it came to sexual stuff, even mentioning a penis or tits was enough to spark a sermon wherever we went, which made the day in which dad had to give me and my sister ‘the talk’ even worse than it should have been. We were cringing inside more because of mom, who was literally glaring at dad whenever the forbidden words came out of his mouth and forced him to walk around and find different terms. Hearing your father say ‘phallus’ and ‘vulva’ was way worse than ‘vagina’ by a long shot, though mom seemed to have less problems with that for some reason. Still, hoping that one day I’d get something far more interesting than a normal comic was not bad, right?

Anyways, since the day that it had opened, the Hyperion was, like many others of my age, the best place to meet, reason for which I was currently browsing through the manga section on the north side, if that was the north side, with Angel, one of the few friends that I had in this sad life. He wasn’t the tallest guy around, standing at roughly 5 feet and 11 inches high, but all skin and bone, which unfortunately made him look like a scarecrow with pale skin and no matter how much he ate or worked out, he could not put anything on that frame of his. We had been in that section for close to an hour, trying to figure out what we could buy and what to get next. A couple rows behind I saw Nathan, one of the more popular guys around the school, very busy chatting with his many, many friends and comparing which cinematic universe was better, ending up in a tie between two major ones that everybody loved. Next to him I saw the braided hair of his girlfriend, likely bored to no end as everyone knew she didn’t like comics or movies enough to make her get in here. Gotta love the role reversal.

All things considered, today was a rather calm day, which made me very happy: I hated when there were way too many people around, it made for a poor experience and I had to squeeze between shelves if I wanted to go somewhere.

“Do you think that the latest volume is worth reading? I mean, after the last one they made where they killed everyone at the climax, I’m not sure I want to see what happened next.” He held up a thick tome with a flamboyant title: Infinity Armament, a somewhat old title but with a good track, still active after several years but rather slow in putting out new volumes. On the cover a man with a comically big sword, the Armament, was battling against a demon of some kind or maybe it was a mechanical monster. I had no clue, not after all the major stuff that went on in the story.

“Angel, they have sent every single character to hell a couple of times, literally, and then resurrected them. I think that if they kill someone, for the third time, they’ll make them come back with some kind of magic ritual or stuff like that and the story will keep going like nothing ever happened.”

“Nah, the ritual has been used to resurrect three people already, now they are wither left with two choices: killing a god and taking their soul as a catalyst or go to hell and beat up the Devils in a challenge, but I think they’ll pull something new out of their ass if they want to resurrect the dead. Again.” The voice of the owner, Theo came from behind us and we both felt a strong hand on our shoulders. “Ciao ragazzi, it’s been a while.” The Italian man, Matteo, or Theo for all the others in this town, was even less fit in a comic shop than the comic shop in the town itself: taller than Angel by a long shot and with more than a little bit of muscle on his body, a charming smile and an incredible track record when it came with women. The handsome bastard was the biggest nerd ever but somehow got laid as much as the jocks at school, maybe it was the beard he sported, the short, ragged kind or maybe it was the Italian charm. I wish I had his skills. Though now that I think about it, it’s the food he makes.

“Hi, Theo.” The man patted me on my back with enough strength to send me forward a couple of steps and almost knock down a shelf with the shoujo manga section. “Hey! What was that for?”

“Well, that was a small punishment for not telling me that your birthday is today! What else?” I looked at him for a moment and then remembered that it was indeed my birthday, the fifteenth of June. I was surprised myself but he was even more shocked. “Don’t tell me you have forgotten that it was today!”

“Man, think I did.” I scratched my neck, feeling more than just a bit embarrassed. “Not that anyone else remembered anyway.” I had not received any messages from any of my friends or acquaintances and my family seemed not to believe in birthdays, especially mom: they were a waste of time since we were celebrating the fact that she had been the one doing all the work and didn’t get anything for that. “Not even you Angel.” The lanky teenager just stared at me and then at the man beside us, then back at me and put on the widest grin ever. In that moment, he pulled out a small box from the backpack he had on his back and gave it to me. “Really?”

“Duh, of course I’ve got something for you, you big idiot. What friend would I be if I did not have anything?”

“A bad one.” Theo said, with the expression of one that knew what he was talking about. “Happy birthday, Tyler.” Another slap on the back. Damn, that hurt! A few more and I’d wake up with a sore back or something like that, not a thing I was in the mood for. “Are you going to throw a party?”

“Dude, I forgot about my own birthday, I think we can say I won’t…” Theo looked at me with pity in his eyes and a great deal of sadness. I knew how much he loved throwing parties, since he did one almost every month, each themed and each something of an occasion for everyone in town, since they had costumes or great DJs every time. “Thanks for the present Angel, I’ll open it at home, alone, in the dark, eating ice cream from a two kilos bucket with a spoon.”

“Tyler, stop being melodramatic, you can come to my home tonight, play a while, have some fun.” I gave him ‘the look of sadness’, which was basically me rolling my eyes so hard I threw my head back and sighed, a clever way to say that I wasn’t allowed to go out for the whole week because of mom’s stupid rules. “Fuck, I still don’t know why you haven’t run away from home yet. Your mother makes Hitler sound like a baby, an evil baby but still a baby. What’s up with her this time anyways?”

“I forgot to hide the bag of chips I was eating in my room and she found it when I went to the bathroom. You know what that means.” I sighed again and cleared my throat, placing my hands of my waist like mom used to do. “Young man, your room is for sleeping and studying. If I wanted to have you eat in there I would have put in a fridge.” Theo chuckled.

“My mom used to do something like that, but grandma was always helping me since we lived in the same home. She brought me cannoli and other sweets when I was still in high school and throughout university, something that mom could not stop regardless of how much she complained.”

“You lived with your parents until you finished college?” He rolled his eyes and scoffed.

“University, not college Tyler, two different things, very different: first, Uni costs much less than your stupid colleges and second, I know people that lived with their parents till they were twenty seven and that was still ok for us. It’s damn hard to get a job in Italy these days, why do you think I moved here?”

“Because we have better food?” Angel chuckled and Theo became red with fury, immediately going on a ten minutes long rant about how American food is horrible and how we love sugar way too much and all that, giving the Hawaiian pizza a whole section in and of itself.

He hated when people said that Italian food wasn’t that great and this was the usual reaction. Stuck in Theo’ monologue, Angel looked at me with soulless eyes and begged for me to help him but I just slowly inched back, escaping from the flurry of insults in Italian that he was lobbing at everything that was getting under his food radar. Free from the man, I walked around the place for a few more minutes until I felt the need to go to the bathroom and searched for the promised land of ceramic bowls and toilet paper but for some reason, I didn’t seem to find it at first. Two minutes later, I was kind of feeling really uncomfortable and only then, the sign appeared, stuck to the wall behind a tall shelf and a pile of 3-D models of superheroes, arranged in a pyramid that was as tall as I was. I rushed there and locked myself in, emerging from the stall a while later. From a quick look, Theo was still rambling about food or maybe even politics or something, at this point he wasn’t even speaking in English anymore. As I got out, my attention was caught by an inconspicuous door that was by the side of the bathroom, weird, considering I didn’t see it when I entered before.

The tag on top read something like ‘storage’ but the writing was kind of ruined and I couldn’t make out most of the letters, but a quick look inside the unlocked door, confirmed my hypothesis: the room was big, bigger than the normal looking door outside gave, absolutely packed with dozens upon dozens of cardboard boxes, sealed with tape in the biggest mess I had ever had the chance to see. It was hard to move and harder to avoid the webs and not get my pants dirty with the insane amount of dust floating or deposited on the boxes. My nose itched and forced me to sneeze loudly a couple of times until I just plugged my nose with a handkerchief, though the damage was done and my nostrils burned a bit.

“Just what’s in these boxes?” Not one was labelled, not one was open and I wasn’t going to get some scissors and peek inside, no matter how much I wanted to see the contents. A spider fell from the ceiling and landed right on my arm. I screamed briefly, waving it in an attempt to get the damn thing off me and as I blindly slapped myself, I tripped on cable running on the floor, thus ending face first in one o the many stacks of boxes. “Jesus… fucking spiders…” I didn’t hate all spiders, just the big ones that could potentially get as big as my face. I got up, pushing a couple of boxes that had fallen on my back as I fell. “I really hope Theo didn’t hear this.” My clumsy attempt at not getting bitten by the spider had caused quite a mess and in order not to be discovered, I put each box back in place, or at least tried to.

As I was cleaning up, something caught my attention, something new and shiny in a sea of dust and brown boxes: one had opened and revealed that it contained only one, small comic, alone. My first thought was: what a waste of space but the second one was what made me extend my hand and grab it the shiny cover. Before taking a good look, I peeked behind one of the stacks of whatever was in the anonymous boxes and made sure no one was coming and only then I turned my attention to the comic: the cover of the thin issue depicted a dragon, fighting against a human, both dripping with blood, both locked in deadly combat on the top of an impossibly tall mountain and drawn in a style so magnificent that I would not have been surprised had the characters come to life under my hands.

The dragon was so detailed that I could count each scale on its body and on the man fighting it I could see the hair of his beard and the particles of rust on the sword but it lacked a title, almost as if this was defective. Considering I had never heard of the author, a certain Leslie Parker, both writer and artist and that I had not seen one in the store just yet, this was probably a preview copy or a faulty copy that Theo had dumped in here after reading it. I opened it and looked at the first few scenes and I was immediately hooked: against everything I would have expected, the story wasn’t about some hero battling against an evil beast, but rather a gentle dragon forced to run from its, no, her home and chased by this maniac across the world for her precious scales and horns. The name of the dragon was Illyria, clearly female even if though could have easily been male and the creature itself had no visible female characteristics. It made sense since it was not human, still, female sounded better, right, correct. The story flowed smoothly, with the dragoness escaping multiple times from the hunter and seeing several close friends die under that rusty sword, her managing to save herself by some miracle and in the blink of an eye I had finished it, finding myself wanting more but stuck with the image of a man without an arm and a fleeing dragoness headed for a portal a kind god had opened for her so that she could be saved once more. There were a few clichés here and there, but definitely less than in any normal comic and far more enjoyable than other comics I had read recently. This story definitely had something in it that others didn’t, probably the amazing style of the artist. How many months must have taken to make this masterpiece and how come no one had heard of her before? With a talent like this, she should have been famous a while ago.

I didn’t think even for a moment to leave this here and put it in my backpack immediately, planning to read it at least five more times at home. Once inside, I came out of the storage room and closed the door behind me, being very careful so that no one would hear it lock itself shut, especially Theo.

Stealing was not something I had ever done or planned on doing but hell, this was one fucking amazing piece of art and it had no title or price tag, he wasn’t going to sell it and if he had liked it, he would have put it somewhere less hidden, in danger of being lost or forgotten.

“Tyler, you son of a… Why did you leave me there with him?? It’s been ten minutes of him ranting in my face!” Angel came up behind me, holding a bag with the logo of the shop in his hands, heavy with comics and quite a few other things for sure. He looked very displease with my ‘betrayal’

“You should have not talked about food, Angel, you know him and what he thinks about food and other things like that.” I smirked and he scoffed, the usual cheerful expression coming back but a few seconds later.

“Got good stuff?” A goofy grin meant ‘yes’ “You look happier than me and it’s technically my special day.”

“It would be if you went to a party, but you’re grounded, again, for eating chips. Seriously, run away from home.”

“I wish I could.”

Obviously, I would not even dream of running away from home. Jokes aside, mom was very kind and tried her best to help us in everything we had trouble in, asking only to have a spotless house so that when she came back to work she’d find it clean and wouldn’t have to worry. Just that.

Angel and I walked together for the usual distance after saying hello to quite a few other classmates on our way and by the gods above, Stacy (boring name, I know) was just outside the Hyperion, chatting with a few cheerleaders on the sidewalk. Of course they didn’t even bother looking at the sidewalk and kept to themselves but, unlike Angel, I was not interested in those stuck up bitches, not after I asked one out last year and she not only laughed in my face, but also texted her friends a moment later and mocked me. Stereotypical high school drama but hey, it’s my life folks, and that’s what I need to deal with. Luckily, students have quite a lot of shit to smear on other as long as they have a reason to do so and just a request like mine wasn’t enough to keep them on me for long. Soon I was free of their jokes but I didn’t forget them at all.

When we reached his house, a modest looking building with a front and a back yard, two stories and a trampoline right under a large pine tree that according to him had been planted by his grandfather or some other distant relative that had long since gone. A goodbye and one more ‘happy birthday’ later, I was by myself, a pair of earbuds on and a heavy metal song on, walking on my way home.

For some reason, I could not wait to read that story again and again. A shame that it was limited to one nameless issue.

“Hello Tyler, how did it go at the Hyperion?” Brenda, my sister, yelled at me from the high of her bedroom when I arrived in my own home, slamming the door behind me. Good thing that mom was not there at the moment, else she’d have screamed at me or something on that line. Brenda’s slim figure descended the stairs with all the grace that a dancer could have, toned muscle rippling under tanned skin. “I bet you bought some weird comic.” That almost made me skip a beat in guilt as I remembered that I had not bought one but stolen one.

“Not really, I just browsed and got some of the issues I needed but that’s it.” Liar, but it’s not like I could flaunt anything like stealing. I took one of the normal volumes and wiggled it in front of her, quickly stolen from my hand. “You’re welcome.”

“Oh, right, before I forget…” She leaned in and hugged me. “Happy birthday, Tyler.” I was rather surprised. “I am your old, old sister and I remember something like a birthday.”

“You’re three years older, Brenda, not ten.”

“It does count though so, listen to me and my wise words, oh young boy.” She chuckled and opened the fridge, handing a small piece of cake with the numbers 17 written on it. I stared at her and took the cake and the spoon she gave, digging in the creamy goodness without wasting time. “Cream and chocolate, you can’t go wrong with that.” A finger reached for my cake and took a large wad out, which then ended in her mouth, closed with a smirk, “Damn, it’s good.”

“Thanks, sis. As far as birthdays go in this house, we have currently beaten a few records for grandeur and quantities of food. Man, it’s almost as if we have thrown a party.”

“Don’t try and bask in your moments of glory, you, are still grounded for eating those, evil and horrible chips in the comfort of your very own room.” A giggle took me back from the cloud of happiness I was currently trying to ascend to, making me crash down on the chair, with still a spoonful of cake in my mouth, tasty obviously, but now a little bitter.

“Sure you couldn’t let me enjoy my cake for one more minute? Come on…” She stuck out her tongue and got up, stealing the last bit of cake from my plate in one quick motion and then left, swift as the wind and fun as a mosquito at night, the ones that do not make any noise and itch like hell.

I wanted to yell something at her, but she was already out, probably heading to practice and then to have fun with her friends. Ah, being 21, such a great thing, the ability to drink beer as much as you liked. I wasn’t going to tell mom or dad that she had sneaked out of the house many a-times before and got buzzed if not drunk and had to cover up for her quite a lot, taking chores and other menial tasks like, lying to mom why Brenda was not in her room and why she smelled of cigarettes. It was a hard job, but sometimes there were coins involved and small favours, not many, but they were there.

Hidden all the traces of my ‘party’, I went to my room and made sure not to sit on the bed before changing in fresh pair of clean clothes, god forbid I sat on the sheets with the same pants I used to sit on a school chair or, even worse, the bus. Of all the little obsessions mom had, this was the one I was always on board with, mostly because I knew what was going on in the buses and on the chairs, especially the bus that came to his house, when he saw two guys of the football team go at it in the very same seats he had sat the day after. But gay sex in a bus was not what I wanted to get my mind on, though it had been quite the sight, no, I had something much better.

Normally it would have been a quick check for online matches on my favourite games, a few videos, maybe a movie, most of the time, ugh, homework, but with the school closed for the summer and most of my assignments done already, I was as free as it could get when grounded.

Damn, you, you delicious chips! Damn you!

Cursing my afternoon snack that way and wearing fresh clothes, I finally got to lay in my bed and take out that magnificent comic I wanted to read. The dragoness in the cover greeted me with the same column of fire as before and I spent a little more time looking at the details, now that I was sure that no one was going to interrupt me: she had four horns jutting from the back of her head, pointing behind her, two big and two small nestled in between, scales of a deep blue, almost purple and golden eyes. The man she was fighting, Ronan, had scars all over his body, visible through the gaps of the armour made of the scales taken from the dragons he had slain, holding a longsword and mouth open, spit flung in the air as he blocked a claw swipe from the dragoness. Opening to the first page, I read the entire issue one more time, paying more attention to the details and very much more engrossed in the compelling suffering of the unusual heroine but when I arrived at the page where the issue should have finished, I found one more page that had not been there before.

“Did I miss it before? Maybe it was stuck to the previous one…” I read it and found with relief that Illyria was alive and safe on the other side of the portal, the god in front of her waiting to explain why he had helped her. The sadness that came with the realization that now the comic was really over was trampled when behind the ‘last-last page’ I found another one: the god presented himself as Heirun, god of space, and volunteered to assist her in killing the dragon slayer but said that she’d need to get stronger before he could take any actions himself. “What the…” Another page behind: weeks later, Illyria was flying over the sea searching for a great dragon that escaped the mad human. Three pages after, she was talking to the dragon, ten pages after that, she was proving herself as worthy to her mentor, twenty, and she was laying on a stone floor, tired and exhausted, resting from her trials, and looking at me, the reader, almost as if she was actually seeing me. From a measly fifty pages, the comic had turned into a one hundred plus epic adventure. “This is nuts.” I closed the issue and then opened it again, flipping through the pages and as soon as I was met with the ‘last’ one, where I had left off before, the new ones appeared all of a sudden, materializing from nothing, thin air turning into a new fresh page.

I thought about this whole ‘ghost pages’ thing for a long while, pinching my cheeks several times to check I was indeed alive all the while entertaining the thought that maybe Brenda had put drugs in the cake. I dropped the comic on the bed and undressed myself, throwing my naked body, in all my 5 foot 6 and with the bit of pudge on my belly, under a cold shower, handle turned to the right until I couldn’t push it anymore. I didn’t do it to wake up, I knew I was awake, but to cool myself down since I was more than shocked, not sure if by the pages that literally materialized from nothingness or by how I was liking a story that should not technically exist in the first place.

Five horrible and cold minutes later, I came out of the shower, shivering and very much regretting my actions but at least I cooled off enough to get a decent idea: search for the artist that made the comic and see who the fuck she was. Leslie Parker was not on Facebook, not on YouTube, not on 4Chan, DeviantArt, Tumblr or any other site that I knew artists used, though I did find one Leslie Parker that sold mattresses on a cable channel in Minnesota and one account on Zillow. Aside from that, there were many Leslies but none that published anything about their talent and art which brought me to look at the comic once again.

Then, someone knocked at the door and as soon as I put the cursed item away in my drawer, I opened it, mom waiting on the other side, wearing a warm smile on her face and a fairly elegant dress.

“Hi, sweetie.” She gave my room a quick glance and found nothing out of the ordinary and thus turned her attention to me.

“Hi mom.”

“Did you have fun with Angel? Did you go somewhere?”

“Just the Hyperion and the taco place before that, had a snack, but that’s pretty much it. Met a few classmates on our way here and Angel got in an argument with Theo about food, again. One would think that he’d have learned by now.” Mom smiled and handed me a small envelope, white with nothing but my name written on it, the address and a… stamp from the Everglades. Curious.

“It’s a small present from grandma and grandpa from their vacation down in Miami, for your birthday.” She probably wanted to roll her eyes but contained herself, which made me both surprised and happy. “Happy birthday Tyler.” Now the sun could have switched off and I would have been less surprised.

“Thanks…” I took the envelope and opened it: the magnificent sight of close to two hundred dollars made my heart flutter and sing in happiness. First Angel and his present, then Brenda, the comic and now mom and money. Maybe my sister did put some drugs in the cake or maybe… the dust in the weird storage room was in fact cocaine and I now am overdosing in a dumpster or something.

“Don’t spend all of it in comics or junk food, save some for later.”

“Sure, I’ll invest half in the stock market, I heard hummus is going to be big and I want in.” As I had expected, the joke flew over her head or she just ignored it but no sermon was in sight.

“Well, I have to go and meet with a couple of representatives from a firm that wants to come to our town and open up a shop, I came back to get dressed. I’ll be out late today and your father will be too, Brenda will be home to watch you and make sure you do not do anything that I wouldn’t approve.” Man, either she really had no idea of the activities that Brenda had done before, or she turned a blind eye for some reason… Still, I was grounded and I was pretty sure that this would mess with her own plans and it would be a sweet little revenge for the spoons of cake she stole. “Have a nice afternoon, Tyler.”

“Bye mom, good luck with work!”

I got one more goodbye, this time yelled from the front door and then heard the sound of the engine from her car start and leave the driveway, leaving me alone for but a few hours which were more than enough for me to relax. The cursed comic would have to wait for the moment, I could not bear myself to look at it any more now, so I decided to open Angel’s present: a collector edition of a female rogue fighter, dressed in a black attire with perfectly stitched clothes and a second set that matched the one that she used in the story. Amazing was an understatement and expensive was the only word suitable for this statue, priced at around one hundred dollars give or take. I’d have to make it up to him.

For the next hour I kept digging for this mysterious Lesley but so far, nothing. There were some legends about cursed books and items that mad artists had created, driving the readers mad, movies and other stories on these legends and whole lot of conspiracies, nothing useful to me of course. Cursed comics were not a popular item or something anyone had ever thought of before, so no one had made any stupid claim on them, yet. I put a couple of posts on a few websites that artists used often and slumped on the bed, resting my eyes since they started to hurt a little for some reason. As soon as I closed them and put my head on the pillow, I fell asleep on the spot, light fading in a haze of colours and a weirdly soft feeling. I dreamt of blood running in rivers and of mountain of corpses, hundreds of dragons dead and piled so high their mass touched the sky, a man wielding a large sword standing at the very top and laughing. His maddened eyes locked onto mine and I shivered backing up against a wall that wasn’t there a moment ago, feeling the hard stone against my scales. Wait… scales? My neck craned backwards in a way that I thought would be impossible and I saw that my body was covered in scales, a deep blue all over, save for the inside of my thighs and my stomach, four limbs keeping me up and well, a tail to top it all. The man screamed something from the top of the corpse mountain and I couldn’t make any sense of his words. With a guttural scream he jumped down and landed directly on top of me, sinking his blade in my side.

I howled in pain and trashed around, rolling on the stone floor that was slick with blood until I felt that same blade cut my neck and sever my head and for a moment I saw my own body and the gushing wound where there shouldn’t have been one. I screamed and woke up, sweating profusely and panting, my heart was going so fast it hurt and my neck hurt even more, but there was no blood nor any other sign of a wound. I jumped out of the bed and rushed to the bath, turning the shower to cold again and waited to calm down, leaving the water run over me once again. I looked at the clock: 5 p.m., still early, Brenda would no be back for a while longer.

“The comic…” I opened the drawer, hair still wet and dripping, and took the comic in my hands: the first page was different now, showing the same scene as the one I dreamt of, the same actions and the same wounds. The only difference was that when it ended, Illyria woke up with her mentor comforting her and wrapping his wings over her smaller body. She was shivering and the male kept reassuring her. Their talk reflected her need to be safe and not have to run anymore, slowly changing from her fears to her hopes and dreams and then to her feelings for him. “Jesus, I hate how much I like this…” I turned a page, I needed to see what happened next and oh, boy, I shouldn’t have done that: the dragoness kissed the older and bigger dragon with evident passion, scales flushed with embarrassment. “Ok, weird.” Slowly, the two got more passionate and their kisses turned into a furious clash of tongues and limbs tails entangled in one big writhing mess.

I stared at the page in which the male finally got hard and presented a gigantic cock to the heroine. Illyria blushed and I did the same as her, weirdly aroused by the highly erotic drawings but mostly by the impressive maleness that was so detailed I could count the ridges on the underside of it. Illyria cooed and licked the tip, the male shuddering visibly and urging her to go on, eager to get to the more fun part of this unexpected event and she obliged, just as eager, lapping at the tip and licking each ridge. In my own bed, I barely realized, with a corner of my mind, that I had begun rubbing my crotch with one free hand as the other flipped the pages that rested on my lap, an erection straining the fabric of the soft pants and growing harder with each page. The dragon forced the heroine on his cock and humped his way inside, close to half buried in, each ridge showing from within her long neck and bulging it out just the tiny bit necessary to make it hot beyond any porn I had ever seen. God, I wish I had that cock on me, how good would that feel? How much would it weight in my hands? How would it feel when I pushed myself on it? What?

As the dragon came in the comic, I felt weird, light headed, hot and struggled to catch my breath but it felt so good I couldn’t stop rubbing the hardest erection I had ever had to date. Illyria came with me, the dark spot in my pants getting bigger and bigger while her vent was gushing and splattering fluids all over the floor and her tail, the dragon on top of her craned his neck and licked her clean, making her flutter. Such a big tongue… I’d love something like that up my… The thought made me moan. No, wait… what was I thinking again?

Illyria hissed and spread her legs for him, his cock still lodged inside her throat and pumping seed in thick waves of raw male dominance, claiming her for himself. His tongue roamed across her folds and made her shiver in pleasure and I felt hotter and hotter, pressing against my cock that was still hard regardless of the insane amount of spunk currently wetting my grey pants. She moaned again and I grunted with her as that massive pole of hot flesh pierced her virgin vent and spread her enough to make such a powerful and strong dragoness tear up. The male licked her neck and pushed deeper inside her, Illyria willingly giving up her body to him, the stronger and more powerful one, allowing him to ravish her with all his might.

My eyes widened as the motionless drawings suddenly took life and began moving, pages flipping by themselves so fast it had almost become a movie, flashing before me. At first it seemed like an old movie, but soon each page was flowing so fluidly it rivalled the best IMAX projectors, but I didn’t care, it felt so good and the action was so arousing I could not stop stroking myself. The comic rose in the air, still fluttering madly and showing me a close up of the dragoness’ vent and the cock pounding it.

With both hands free I pulled my pants down and grabbed my own, pathetic and insignificant cock and resumed stroking it, weirdly small in my palms now. I timed each stroke with the dragon’s, matching the tempo of the magnificent beast, trying to last as long as he could in one last attempt at being like him. I came, again, but the dragon was still a way off from being close to his own second climax and that was embarrassing. If I couldn’t last even as long as a fictional male from a comic, what was the point of being a male? Why was I trying to match up with something that had been designed to create pleasure and make any female moan and come again and again?

Maybe… maybe it would have been better to be the one receiving the grace of that godly cock, yes… bow and show him how superior he was, show him how much I appreciated his form, how much he made me moan just from imagining him straining my insides to no end… yes, that was much better than trying to beat him. It was right, simply and purely the right thing for me, a weak male that needed a stronger one. No, wait why would I want to be a male? They were strong and powerful, I’d be a weak male and a weak male is just… a female… right?

I stroked a cock that was getting smaller and smaller, retreating in fear of the male pounding the female in front of me, my fingers slowly sinking in the flesh surrounding my microscopic member. I was somewhat sad that this was happening to me, I liked being a male, but with each heartbeat and every inch lost, I only felt better and gave in to the wonderful feeling of joining Illyria in her pleasure. Her eyes shone for a moment and then she craned her neck, looking at me from within the comic, golden pupils drawing my eyes to hers.

Yes, Tyler, that’s it… give in, you’ll like it more than being a boring human. Her voice, I knew this was her voice, echoed in my ears and suddenly, I could hear her moans, her pants and the squelching sounds of his hips slamming against her soft backside. Isn’t it better to be like me, beautiful, graceful and with a strong male to my side, than a sad, human boy with no one to fuck? God, she was so right. You could be more beautiful than Stacy and those skunks she calls friends, the boys would fawn over you instead of driving you away…

“Yes… that would be nice.” She smiled and moaned again, her teeth glittering in the fake moon of the comic, but oh, so real to me. “I hate that bitch, making fun of me…” The dragoness in front of me kept smiling with her perfect features, moaning softly under the rough pounding of such a virile male.

Of course, you are more beautiful than her, Ty. Look at yourself: you vent is so much more sensitive and warm… I shakily looked under my hand and saw the last of my small sack drawn into a slit between my legs, growing hotter and more sensitive, swollen with desire and needed to be filled. She’d sell her fake hair to even get a look at yours…

“My… my vent… I have one…” I was scared but even the smallest touch was like a lighting running inside my body, jolts of unbridled pleasure when I pushed one small finger inside. God, if one was so good, what would a real cock would feel like? “Hnnng, fuck…”

And it smells so good, Ty, can’t you smell it? Take a breath Ty, you’ll see. I obeyed the blue dragoness and inhaled, the scent of a fertile female burning my nose and etched in my brain. My scent… mine and mine only, so… so ripe, dense, sweet and perfect, unlike the raw and strong musk of a male in rut. Yes, so ready to be taken and filled. She moaned as the large male, still silent, save for the occasional grunt, pushed harder against her. On my end I felt my new feminine part spread by something invisible but terribly good, invisible ridges rubbing against the soft and delicate folds. Illyria kissed the male again, tongue coiling on each other, his eyes lost in a haze of pleasure whereas the female was very much in control, squeezing his cock and making sure he’d stay inside. Yes, he thought I was the one submitting but males are so easy to control right? After all, you were one before, so gullible. I blushed, ashamed of ever having thought that being a man was a good thing, but the dragoness chuckled.. We are the ones in control, me and you Ty, we are the ones using them for our pleasure and let them think they are hot shots. Because it’s fun for us, us real females, not bitches like Stacy and the others.

Illyria silently ordered the male to go harder, he obliged and I felt his cock push deeper inside her, inside me… us, my skin stretching and assuming a blue colour where the tapered tip hit and pushed. I moaned, my voice getting higher and higher with each plea for more, moving towards that horrible crackling voice that all teenagers had before getting to adulthood and then feeling it replaced by a high and sweet tone, more suited for a female. I threw my head on the pillow, sinking deep and biting the edges as I pinched a nipple that was slowly growing more erect.

Oh, excellent. Mmmh, I’ll make a fine woman out of you, one with big breasts but not too big like those sluts that walk around, I’ll give you a perfect ass that will make every man, married or not, turn and look at you and every woman envy you so much they’ll stare too… Her words became reality moments later_:_ soft blue skin began spreading from my nipples, breaking down in a myriad of scales of the same colour just as the flesh beneath began swelling and filling up. That’s it girl, feel your new body grown, feel the pleasure.

I clearly remembered wanting hard pectorals and abs of steel, muscles all over my body, but this was so much better: soft yet firm breasts ballooned under my palms, filling them and pushing my hands out reaching DD cup in moments and stopping maybe a size beyond, full and topped with perfect nipples, so sensitive and just the right size for pinching or… biting them. As I started groping my new breasts, I felt something push me up from below: a big bubble butt, round and plump sprouted from the lanky and small one I had before, wiggling as I shook a wider set of hips, suited for pumping out egg after egg after egg.

The scales had invaded half of my body now, all of my belly and up until my knee and elbows I was of a deep blue, smooth like a baby but so much more sensitive. Upon my back I suddenly felt the weight of something so big, I had to fall on all four limbs just to support myself. I feared I might have been crushed but my muscles, not nearly as visible as a male’s but just as strong, supported me as I grew out in size, easily surpassing six feet. Put like this, the male’s cock, that had not stopped pumping inside me, picked up the pace by several notches and made me scream in pleasure, forcing me to bury my face in the sheets and howling against the mattress. God, he was so deep, fuck… More… More!!

Mmmh, that’s it girl, take him, all of him. Isn’t it the best? Illyria smiled yet again. You look so perfect, my dear, but we are lacking something very important. The comic flew right in front of me and for but a moment it stopped fluttering and glowed as the surface reflected my face on it: a combination of horrible human traits stuck on a perfect draconic body. Brown eyes stared back at me, lingering on the pitiful stubble of beard I had worked so hard to grow and the acne that plagued me like many other males. I buried my head again, in shame this time. Don’t be embarrassed, Ty, it’s not your fault you are human. Shall we see to that as well? I nodded and the comic resumed its endless movie of pleasure.

The cock that had disappeared for but a moment returned, bigger, thicker, the ridges more prominent and filling me up even more than before. I howled as my bones cracked and reshaped, growing out and engulfing my nose into a more slender muzzle, teeth growing and sharpening, whitening in the process. I felt my tongue grow as well, splitting in the middle, longer but thicker, perfectly suited to wrap around a big cock and lapping all the spilled seed the males would give me.

Right above my new ass, I felt a pricking sensation that grew to be an itch and then almost painful right before the nudge of a tail sprouted out, elongating by the second, stretching my spine and skin as it pushed out further and further. I hissed in pleasure again, more and more cock buried inside me, wide enough to allow me to see the very depths of my own body.

We are almost done Ty, almost. We just need a couple more things. The same itch returned, but this time on my skull, something sharp and pointed breaking through the bone and scales. No proper dragoness can go around without some horns, right? Yeah, sure, she was right. Four horns just like hers grew and grew, stopping when they were roughly ten inches long, each pair pointing in one direction, running over each other. Very nice Ty, you are one beautiful dragoness but one more thing is necessary… something closed my eyes, something big and covered in scales just like me and warmth spread in my new muzzle, burning hot after a few moments. When I opened them, I saw a blue claw retreat inside the pages and a very pleased dragoness stare back at me. Sister, you are one magnificent queen, too bad I cannot go out and be with you.

“Why? Why can’t you? You changed me, surely you can do more!” I was begging her, I owed her so much, I had to thank her. “Please.” Her gaze softened and the male previously mounting her disappeared just as my talons grew out and pierced the soft fabric and the mattress, one last pop and the bones set to a new configuration.

I’m sorry, Ty. My power is just this much because my maker decided it to be so. Lesley? She was real? Illyria nodded. There’s more of us, more people waiting to be changed, but your change is over. After this, I’ll be but paper and ink. I felt a tear fall on my chest, followed by one more and then several others. The comic stopped fluttering and just showed the image of my beloved sister looking at me. Don’t be sad, I won’t die, just return to my maker so that she’ll be able to infuse me in more books and make me change more people. I hope… Her eyes closed and her mind wandered somewhere I couldn’t even imagine.

“But I need you!”

No, you don’t. Look at yourself in the mirror. Shakily, I got my feet on the floor and balanced myself using my new tail, now five feet long, thick at the base and gradually thinning to a smooth tip. It was a slow process, learning to walk, as my very bones were different but somehow I reached my bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror: the very definition of beauty stood in front of me, deep blue scales that resembled the sea, golden eyes that glowed with life and power, all sitting on top of a slender body that went all the way to six feet five, a good foot taller than I was before but stronger, more agile… perfect. I felt beautiful, not cool or muscular like I had always wanted, beautiful like a woman, beautiful like I deserved to feel. You do not need me, girl, you only need to ask and it shall be done, any male that is not a degenerate will throw himself at your feet and lick them clean if the need arises. I blushed heavily, lifting a talon to admire the deadly claws and the soft pads underneath. They were cute, almost like a cat’s but far more strong and reliable.

“But… my family… how can I? Oh, fuck! How am I supposed to go around if I look like this? I’m not human anymore!” My chest rose and fell with my worry, breasts bouncing slightly with each movement. “Fuck!!”

Worry not, my maker is not someone that stupid. Look in your room now. Illyria chuckled as I walked through the door that led to the bathroom: what was once a boy’s room was now clearly more suited to me, with green and red pillows sitting on a large bed of a pastel blue, larger than before and lacking the cuts made by my claws and the drops of fluid I had spilled.

All over the place, everything had been replaced to suit my needs, everything my size and matched to my colour. The photos I had made throughout the years and had hung on the walls changed too: the one in which I had been ten and fresh out of a swimming class, hair stuck to my head like a bad imitation of a kelp was now a photo of me, a smaller version of me, a paler blue and with no boobs and minuscule horns but me nonetheless. The selfie I had printed and put next to that one, after a dinner with all my friends and classmates just before the result of the finals for this year, all of them normal save for me, a blue dragoness with a glass of coke raised, in the same position I had in the original. One old framed photo after my birth became one of my egg before I had hatched and the last one, where I went to an agility contest at school and got seventh place by some stroke of luck, became one of me winning the school’s poll for most beautiful girl of the year, with two more standing next to that one. Three years, three victories.

But one thing was out of place in every photo: I never wore any clothes, not a bra, not a pair of panties, always as nude I could get, flaunting my perfect body and letting everyone know that not only I was beautiful, I was showing them I was out of their league by not letting them touch me. I was as naked and defenceless as I could get but I had the power of them, not words, just my looks.

Illyria chuckled and floated in front of me, pages fluttering ever so slightly.

“How?”

Beats me, sis, but this is your new life. I’m sure that you’ll want to finish our little session and have some alone time, but I’m afraid I can’t help you anymore. Just… think of the big guy and he’ll come back, take it as one last present from our benefactor.

“So, you’re going now? Forever?” I swore I saw a tear fall from her eyes. She nodded.

But, one thing I can promise, the next person that I get my paws on, I’ll send your way to have some fun, for both of us… I love you, for all the love I could give in in five hours I met you, sister. Goodbye. She smiled one last time and then the comic fell on the floor, motionless. I picked it up and flipped the pages, now all blank, void of anything save for a small signature at the very end that belonged to Leslie Parker and one short sentence: have fun with your gift and do not do anything too stupid.

“She’s gone…” My heart ached for the loss but my grievance was cut short.

“Who’s gone sis?” Brenda’s voice popped out of nowhere and her lithe body slumped on the new bed, eyes locked onto me. “Sis?” I shook my head and tossed the white comic book in my drawer.

“Ehm, no one Brenda. Hey, I’m still grounded, right?” She looked at me sideways and then nodded. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy that at least something had stayed the same or annoyed by the fact that I was, well grounded. “Fuck me.”

“Oh, not today sis. I have my boyfriend over and I want to have some fun when he comes so, please, for the love of all that is holy, do not try and fuck him, got it?” She looked at me with an extremely serious look. Was she for real? She had a man for herself and she, one of the hottest girls in town, was worried I’d steal him? Damn… that feels so good!

“I promise, but… I’ll need another cake for my birthday.”

“Sure, sure, anything, as long as you do not, I don’t know, bend over and flash him that vent of yours or jump in on us when we are in my room. I’ll lock it ok?” I nodded, she sighed in relief. “Thanks sis, you’re the best.” Brenda hugged me and I felt her breasts push against mine, dwarfed by the supple and soft scales, letting out a moan as she pressed herself closer. “Damn, you always feel so good. Had I not been hetero, I’d be all over you.”

“Sorry, Brenda, I think I too prefer big cocks, though you’re not so bad yourself.”

“Sweet talker…” She blushed.

“Speaking of sweet things, get me that cake before I change my mind.” She paled and ran outside, wallet in one hand and keys to her car in the other.

I threw myself on the bed and roared, scaring quite a few squirrels and birds. I felt… powerful, strength and power bursting from every vein and muscle fibre in my new body. I loved it and I wanted more, more and more…

I stared at the ceiling for a few moments until I felt a familiar tingle in my vent, one that urged me to fill it with the first big and thick thing available and I knew exactly what. In my mind I pictured the big dragon from the comic, concentrating on the feeling for a long minute. When I opened my eyes, there he was: a big hunk of muscle and scales, smaller than the picture version but enough to fill most of the room. He purred and looked at me with reverence and desire but keeping his paws to himself.

I got on my feet and ran a hand on his neck, feeling the power buried beneath, the beats of his heart, the air flowing in his lungs and most importantly, the eager throbbing and the spreading musk of his maleness. The cock, unlike the rest of his frame, seemed to have maintained its proportions and the three feet of pure meat stood proudly below his belly, pre gushing in a thin but continuous stream that pooled on the floor.

“Hmmm, my big boy is eager to bury that big fat cock inside me? Is that it?” He nodded several times, the look in his eyes was pure adoration and lust. “Then we have to do something about it, don’t we?” I moved below him and knelt in front of that wonderful pole of cockflesh, throbbing harder and harder, and gave it one small lick. I closed my eyes at the wonderful taste and took another lick, he shuddered and the throbbing intensified, pre gushing out in large globs, hitting my chest and splashing on my scales. I took a mouthful of the clear fluids and spread it on my tongue, smearing the rest on my whole body, feeling the wonderful slickness coat my scales. “You’re not allowed to cum until I say so, got it?” He whimpered but nodded. “Good. Now fuck me.”

I put my hands on the bed and spread my legs for him, tail raised high, vent puffed and swollen. I’d have thought that he’d mount me on the spot, but he buried his nose in between my cheeks and inhaled my scent, tongue lapping at my folds, gathering the fluids dripping from my slit, worshipping my female sex. The feeling of a large and big tongue pushing deep inside me was something out of this world, squirming and pushing against all the right spots. I let out a moan that became stronger and stronger as he kept digging inside me until his tip reached my womb and a jolt of pleasure wracked my body. I clamped down on his muscle, squeezing it hard and spraying him in my juices. I bet that had it not been for my order, he’d be spilling seed on my carpet right now.

The dragon licked his nose with that amazing tongue, pleased with himself and the pushed on his forelimbs, landing on the bed. The metal frame creaked under his weight and I felt his scales press against my back, the sweet and wonderful weight of a powerful male forcing me to use my new strength to resist being pushed against the bed, though that would not be totally bad. That would give him the feeling of being in charge and become a little more forceful and I’d love to feel that for sure.

I felt the tip linger at the entrance of my vent for far too long, teasing me, pushing just a little bit inside and then pulling out, again and again, until I felt the need to yell at him to get moving and then, beating me by a few instants, stifling the order bubbling in my mouth into an incoherent string of sounds. By god he was thick, I almost felt pain as he just rammed his way into me, almost. It was as if he had just been made for me, everything about his cock was perfect: the way he stretched me, the way he went deep and everything else.

The ridges were the cherry on top, further distending my vent with each powerful thrust and I could feel all of them, one by one. Gael licked my neck in a show of dominance over me, growling and pushing his tongue in my mouth, invading it and forcing me to fight for air, each breath a struggle that made me clench tighter around him, a vice of wet flesh on hot flesh. He moved forward just a bit, just the tiny bit necessary to push all of that wonderful cock inside me, hilting himself, slit against slit and then pulled out completely with one long movement.

I felt my insides shit to fill in the gap left by three whole feet of cock only to be pushed aside in the next moment, as he hilted himself again and again, each thrust long but powerful enough to make the bed shake and the floor tremble. Each thrust was an orgasm, each one was a wonderful experience.

“Hey sis they didn’t have any cake sooooo……. Jesus fucking Christ!” Brenda walked in, opening the door as if nothing could be heard from outside and saw Gael ravishing me. She dropped the small bag she had in her hand and stared at me but my male wasn’t going to stop anytime soon and instead made sure to impress my sister and quickened his thrusts.

My eyes were watering and I couldn’t control my body anymore as the poor male throbbed so hard I felt his heartbeat inside my vent, the hard cock painfully erect and he still dutifully fucked me. For five more minutes of excruciating pleasure he hilted himself, five minutes of near constant orgasm for me. I started feeling bad for him and for Brenda who still hadn’t left or closed the door and that was a major turn on. She loved me, she looked up to the new me and now I was being fucked silly by a magical construct, skin stretched around a cock that should not have been able to fit.

“Cum for me.” It was incredibly hard for me to say those words, but he deserved a little treat.

He bit my neck, fangs sinking in my scales but not drawing even a drop of blood, simply prickling my skin and roared with enough strength to make the entire house shake as gallons of seed poured into my abused vent, the overflow splattering on the floor and on the carpet. My arms felt like jelly as the warmth of his seed poured into me and I crashed on the bed, immediately followed by the one above me, breath knocked out. The poor beast kept thrusting madly and pumped more and more seed in my womb, spilling an unholy amount with each push and pull.

Eventually, whatever fuelled his existence was gone and the large male left in a puff of smoke leaving me mid-orgasm and causing the seed inside to flow out in a lewd waterfall of lust. I groaned and bent over in an incredibly strenuous act and lapped at my vent, cleaning it from all the filth and waste, still under the eye of my beloved sister and the man that had just now peeked his head from the door frame, and then proceeded to lick the floor clean. It took a while to lick off every last drop of precious seed but it was well worth it. The two stared at me swallow large globs of seed as if it was the most delicious thing ever, vent still twitching and gaping wide enough for the man, sporting a rather sizeable erection, to put a fist inside and have a little room left.

With one last effort, I slumped on the bed and waited for the fatidic question.

“What was that?”

“Dragon.” One word was the one thing I could say. Brenda waited a few minutes until I caught enough breath to say more. “I made him I think. You know how you said that I couldn’t fuck your boyfriend? Well, I’m grounded and it’s not like I can go out, so I made a friend.” I waved at the man and he shyly waved back, soliciting a glare from her. “Hi.” Just to tease him, I leaned on my side, breast pushed between my arms and neck craned in a long S, tail waving behind me.

“H-hi, I’m Matt.”

“Well Matt, aren’t you a cute one.” He blushed.

“Matt? My room, now, no clothes.” The poor man nodded and rushed out, slamming the door to her room shut and probably fumbling with his pants. “Really? Didn’t we just talk about not trying to fuck him?” I squeezed my breasts and watched them giggle under my hands. “Sis?”

“Oh, come on! I just got fucked silly, do you really think I’d steal him from you? I’m not that inconsiderate. Yes, he’s a cute and packs a punch in those tight pants of his but I am not a slut.”

“You do look like and act like one.” She smiled. “I’m not going to ask how that felt because I saw it very clearly. Maybe the boys of this town can finally give up in their quest for your attention.” I scoffed and willed a cup of water in my hand and it appeared, shocking me more than her.

“I’m not letting any of them off the hook. Gael is very big but a big cock is not all I want in a man, you should know that.” Damn, I was really getting into the ‘girl’ act. Well, it wasn’t an act, but it all felt so, natural, like I was meant to be a girl, a big sexy dragoness for my whole life. I felt wonderful.

“Yeah, sure, miss size queen… I’ll be in my room.” She pointed a finger in my direction. “No interruptions and no threesomes, please.” I crossed my heart with a sharp claw, making her sigh.

Brenda left the room and headed for hers, slamming it and turning the lock. Barely two minutes later I heard the grunts of the poor Matt and her moans. Two horny rabbits going at it… how fun.

Since I had gotten off the need thanks to my little friend, I had nothing else to do and thus decided to get out, after cleaning myself of course. I was not interested in going out dripping spunk all over the place as hot as that may have sounded to me in this moment.

Five minutes later I was out, holding nothing but my scales as I strolled. Oh, the thrill of being naked on the road made me feel so… weird, I guess. For the people I knew it might have been normal but for me, the me from now, it was all so new and different but it was not going to stop me, no sir. The stares I got from those that passed by were something that stroked my ego quite a lot and teasing them was oh, so fun. Quite a few tented pants were going to meet with a hand somewhere private sooner or later while the lucky ones would have a wife or girl to tend to them and they’d know it was me who gave them those hard-ons. How did I manage not to jump on them all the time was a mystery.

“Hey, Tyler! It’s rare to see you around here at this time of day.” A feminine voice came from behind me, one that I knew very well. I turned around and saw the extension-plagued hair of Stacy, the most popular girl at school, well, before ‘me’ that is. She stared at my chest as I folded my arms beneath my tits and leaned on one leg.

“What is it, Stacy? Do you want something?”

“Well, you know I admire you, Tyler, so I thought that maybe you’d, ehm, want to come to my party later this week, there’s going to be pretty much half the school and you’d probably like it.” Had it been earlier this day I’d be all over this invitation and would beg my way in to the party but as I was now, it sounded more like a chore than anything. “Please?” I thought for a moment and then decided I might as well have some fun, take this body for a good spin.

“Fine, I’ll come, but I don’t promise to hold back in case something happens, ok?” Stacy looked at me and then her mouth curled in a beaming smile.

“Thank you so much, Tyler! I have been waiting for something like this forever. For the most popular girl in the town, you sure make it hard to get to know you and take you anywhere.” Was this a mechanism to protect me before time caught up with my change? Was it just my history rewritten and their memories fixed so my old behaviour would match my new form? Regardless, from now on I’d take the lead around here.

“You know how it is, Stacy, boys want this…” I pressed my breasts together in front of her, running my hands down to my waist and then to my ass and thighs, feeling as my fingers sank in my buttocks and felt it wiggle. Stacy stared, green with envy and I loved it. “… but it’d be a waste of good material if I just… gave it to anyone with a bit of cock in their pants. We’re women, not prostitutes.” She knew I referred to her, or at least the her from before, but it seemed that she kept her less than proper behaviour even in this reality. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to go and do a couple of things.”

She waved me goodbye while I raised one hand in a half-assed wave and headed for the Hyperion, finding that the trip felt much faster than normal now, maybe because of longer legs? I don’t know, I don’t know anything anymore.

As I entered the shop, every eye locked onto me and quite a few turned their heads as friends or simply the other customers looked at me and made them turn as well. Did I not come here often? Or was it the fact that they were all nerds and now I had come in? Still, I roamed around for a couple of minutes and then began to search for the storage room: I searched virtually every wall, isle, every corner and went to the bathroom and then back out a couple of times but that damn door just wouldn’t come out. Considering Leslie’s power it wasn’t hard for her to make such a thing as a door that disappears, after she had literally rewritten time and reality with a comic.

“Tyler, can I help with something?” Theo came up to me, smiling as always, though his eyes roamed on my body far more than the others did. I felt that strong hand grab mine and squeeze it. “Before I forgot to actually give you your presents. There was a large delivery last week and a messy one at that which means that there were a few extra copies and some extra things I didn’t really order. You can take them if you like having some… assorted comics.” He flashed me a toothy grin and my heart skipped a beat as he took a few issues from a small box on the counter and passed them to me, but none were what I thought it’d be, just… normal comics that looked interesting. I almost felt disappointed but a look at the stories made me think of the contrary. “Since it’s your birthday, it’s on the house. Have fun with them.”

“R-really? For free?”

“It’s a present Ty, would I make you pay for a present?” Many ears picked up that it was my special day and probably began formulating evil plans and counting cash to buy me something. Already everyone that passed by wished me a happy birthday. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few items to unpack.”

I stared at the comics in my hands and walked out of the store, flashing a bit for the ones that took the time to talk to me and blew them a quick kiss, making their day a bit more worth it as I returned home.

“What do you mean that a boy found the storage room?”

“I didn’t say that Leslie, I said that the storage room found the boy.” Inside a dark room stood a man, alone, in the middle, holding a tome that fluttered in the air, suspended by invisible threads. The pages moved about in the same way as the comic in Tyler’s room and inside there was a figure sitting in a chair, blurred by fog that fell through the pages. “I put all manners of spells on that place, which means he couldn’t have entered even if he wanted. The only explanation was that he was chosen.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Me neither, but it happened nonetheless.” The man scratched his neck. “And I don’t know how to revert the spell anyways so…” The figure sighed heavily, the fog squirming in synch with it. “What? You were the one who made it in the first place, I just helped. My specialty has always been protection charms and wards against evil, not shapeshifting.”

“And yet, you failed.”

“I didn’t, the book chose him, well, her.”

“You know what? We might even learn something from all of this. We never did see the results of such large scale spells before, it might prove to be invaluable to us.” Silence fell for a few minutes in the room. “I’ll still try to search for a counter-spell if you’re worried but I require some data from the field in exchange.” The man nodded slowly and then the book slammed shut.