Ragnarok Shorts: Tales from the Spellbinder Universe

In a world where magic reigns supreme, identity and gender can be as fluid as the forces of nature. A mad scientist, a transgender woman who has become involved with a radical revolutionist group, a goddess of mischief, a supplicant to an inexperienced goddess, and a young apprentice; each person’s life takes a strange and unexpected twist as elemental forces reshape their existence.

‘Bathe in his blood!’ she said as I collapsed to the ground.

I heard the guard’s feet clomp on the floor followed by the clank of the cell door closing behind him. I rolled onto my back panting and clutching at my side where I was certain his repeated kicks had resulted in broken ribs. Each time I drew in breath, the pain which was normally a dull throb swelled to the point I felt myself growing faint.

‘Get up! Fight, kill, burn everything!

“I-I can’t, I don’t know how!”

‘Let the magic burn inside of us!’

My vision flashed a brilliant bright white and gasped and gritted my teeth as I sat up. I could use magic, but given my current state I wasn’t sure I could live with the consequences. I flexed my hand, the female one, and watched fascinated and in disbelief that it could be mine. I cupped my breast and gasped, letting my hand drop back down. There was a jagged split down the center of my body, like two of my victims sewn together in a bizarre mishmash of male and female.

So many years, so many experiments, and it had all come down to this. It all started with twins, but it’d gone far beyond that. How many victims did I abduct over the years? I always had such a clear image of their faces in my mind, but now I could only recall a handful. I’d lost my passion for the work and instead became obsessed with power, specifically magic. Men were denied it’s use, but I’d been determined to find a way to make it mine and… I did.

I’d never been given the time I needed to test it, they came before I could and I’d been forced to inject myself to save the formula. It’s how I found myself in my present predicament, a prisoner of the Nordic empire.

‘Let it course through us. Burn our enemies to ash and cinder!’

“No! I-I can’t. I won’t! It’s too dangerous!”

I hadn’t called upon the magic, but I could feel it boiling just under the surface. It was said that it took years to master the power of the seidh, but the pure destructive force could be harnessed by the untrained if they were willing to take the risk.

‘Let the power burn!’

“YES!” I screamed my resistance slipping away as I let the magic just wash over me. It whipped and whirled. It burned… oh how it burned. I let it go swirling out of me a whirlwind of destructive fire and rage that blasted my little cell into oblivion.

‘We are free!’

The voice had been so right, all this time I had fought it, but she had known. The magic consumed me, eating away at male flesh, but I didn’t care. The voice and I howled out in unison until… I couldn’t discern her voice from mine. We were Mengele.

Tires screech from the street behind me and I pull my apprentice robes close as I step into the convention center. I shudder, and bite my lips. I am worried that the gathered magic users–Spellbinders, Charmers, Enchantresses, and Mages all come at the behest of the Seidskati for an emergency meeting of the council–will see through my disguise. I am an imposter, once a man I had been transformed so that I could tap into the power of the Seidh, a power which is denied to males.

I stop and cup my breasts and get an odd look from the woman next to me. My boobs feel so right, but come with a terrible price. I have always been certain that I am meant to be a woman, but society hasn’t been so understanding. Once, I came close to taking my life, but then I heard about the formula, one which promises to turn any man into a woman and by extension a magic user. Whispers mostly, unsubstantiated, but I had so desperately wanted to believe and as a member of the Sons of Odin it was already in my grasp.

The spellbinders control everything and the Sons of Odin claim to want equal rights for men and even transgendered people like me, but their methods are not those of the righteous freedom fighters they claim to be. There are rumors that they are preparing for the end, the battle of Ragnarok, but if so I think I’ve chosen the wrong side. I hate them. They killed my mother when I refused to cooperate and are holding my sister ransom to ensure I cooperate now.

I have no choice, I must continue or risk losing the only person I care about. I walk slowly through the convention center, craning my neck around looking for a flash of that trademark Le Fey auburn hair. The place was big and it was going to take time. There is a balcony up above and stage at the far end. She could be anywhere. Bryn is Sophie’s friend, and given my transformed self’s resemblance to my sister I am the perfect person to play her. Especially with the illusory spell cast over me.

“Neil?” I ask sidestepping the fair-haired giant of a man standing guard over her. She is beautiful just like her mother, and like Aryanna she has been born male.

Bryn spins around and I watch her eyes grow wide. “Sophie?”

My lying face contorts into an awful smirk. A lie, just like everything else about me. The Sons of Odin want me to get close to Aryanna, and through her daughter, I can do just that. Aryanna is part of the task force hunting down the Sons of Odin and they desperately want to get at her. A lot of people will probably die as result of my actions, but I don’t care. I will do anything to save my sister, even betray her best friend.

Boobs, you gotta love them. As a goddess I have a pretty rocking set, but that hasn’t always been the case. I used to be a dude, but that was another life and I’d tell you all about it if it weren’t so incredibly boring. My new existence is far more entertaining, but that sort of comes with the job description. I am, after all, the goddess of mischief and chaos, which used to be Loki’s gig, but he went and got himself killed (twice) and I got the honour of stepping in to fill his rather robust shoes.

Sex is a riot, but my partners are usually mortals and they just don’t have the same stamina that I do. Take my last two studs. Their affections had been pleasurable, certainly, but I’d done about everything I could think of with them and frankly it was getting incredibly stale. I knew just what they needed, a nice pair of luscious melons. I snapped my fingers and couldn’t help but grin as I watched the two transform, the taller blond one’s short cropped hair grew darker and cascaded down her back in a mass of curls before her body shifted taking on a perfect hourglass figure. The other, I made a redhead and well… let’s just say I left a little something extra between her legs.

I couldn’t wait to take the two for a test drive, but it was time to perform some of my godly duties. It was a bit of a bother, but once in a while I could derive some fun from it. I snapped my fingers, disappearing from my abode and reappeared in the domicile of a mortal, a silly little man who was always praying to me and whimpering about all kinds of dreary things. I don’t often answer prayers, but when I do, as you might imagine, things don’t usually turn out quite the way the supplicant envisions.

He couldn’t see me, which is how I like it when I’m working. The little guy went about his monotonous little existence doing all sort of tedious things. He wanted me to make his life more exciting, you know give it a little spice, and I giggled as I realized just what gift I’d confer on him, a pair of mammaries. You know it’s funny how often it comes down to that. I grinned, but instead of snapping my fingers, I switched it up and wiggled my nose.

His chest bloomed into a pair of glorious mounds, and his hips, legs and the rest of his body soon followed. Hair splashed down her back where before she had almost none and her face morphed into the perfect vision of feminine beauty. I smiled and left her to discover my handiwork. I heard her scream just before I vanished and I rolled my eyes. You know, some people are just never happy with the gifts bestowed on them.

Tiny little droplets, trickled down my cheek and I stared up at the statue of the goddess begging her to answer my prayers. If the Aesir were so powerful why wouldn’t they grant my simple appeal? I would think she, of all the gods, would be the most sympathetic to my plight, but I guess the worries of a simple mortal like myself were beneath her notice.

I stood and pulled my hood up over my face, glancing around the temple and shook my head. Her shrine was unlike that of any other god or goddess, there were no priests, priestesses or even an attendant in sight. Other than a simple altar and a towering statue with her likeness the room was empty, but even as I looked around I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was not alone. Was it the presence of the divine that I sensed or was it merely a product of my imagination?

I shook my head and moved for the open archway which led back out into the city, but before I could I felt a hand on my shoulder. My heart was racing as I slowly turned to meet the gaze of the smiling figure. The statue didn’t do her justice, her soft features were framed with long auburn tresses and one look at her body was enough to make me weak in the knees. She was perfect in every sense of the word, and I doubted that anyone, man or woman, could find fault with her voluptuous form.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked her hand reaching up to touch my cheek.

A simple nod was all I could muster, but it seemed to be enough for her. She backed away, then shook her head and placed her hands on her hips. It seemed so strange, but there was something very… human about her posture. Everyone knew her story and how she had been born to a human mother, but somehow I expected that she would have shed her humanity. To see that it was still very much intact seemed so… odd.

She shook her head and turned her back to me. “Prayers are… still a little weird for me. So, forgive me for taking so long. I-I’ll gladly help you, but you do realize that once it’s done, it will be permanent. It’s a big change, I know, so if you don’t think–”

“NO!” I screamed, then ran a hand through my hair and grimaced. “Please, you can’t come all this way just to tell me no.”

“I didn’t intend to.” She spun back around and smiled.

It happened so quickly that I don’t think I was fully prepared for it. Whirling bursts of energy flew out from her fingertips. The brightest light filled my vision, and when it cleared again, the goddess was gone. I looked down at my now flat chest and smiled, finally my prayers had been answered.

Lights swirled and whizzed through the room at almost sickening speeds. Sometimes one would bounce of a wall and ricochet off in another direction, and other times it would simply disintegrate. There was no rhyme or reason to it, but magic could sometimes be unpredictable that way. My master and his wife were pioneers in inter-gender magic research and the lights were one of many unforeseen results of their experiments.

The lab was a simple unadorned room, with cupboards lining the walls and a large workspace at its center. Empty beakers and test tubes lined the counters, but they weren’t what I had come for. The more dangerous stuff was locked in the cupboard at the back of the room and it was there that I went. Otto and Thora would be gone for some time and I knew that if I didn’t take advantage of their absence I may not get another chance.

I unlocked the cupboard with the key, I had swiped from my master, then quickly gathered the magic artifacts made from Thora’s power, a feather of wind, three fire beads and five small phials of spirit essence. I memorized the recipe the last time my master had granted me permission to view his valdbok and I was familiar enough with potion making that I was confident I would be successful.

Potioncraft was a new art and it was one of the few ways in which male and female magic could be used together. Otto was fond of saying that the power of the seid for men and women were like different sides of the same coin. While either type differed slightly from the other, they were both elemental and some abilities, like transformational spells, were much more difficult for men to perform. Women’s enchantments had their own weaknesses and it couldn’t exactly be said that either sex was overall more powerful.

Inside a large beaker, I mixed the ingredients in the order the recipe had directed then closed my eyes and began to funnel the required amounts of male energy into the container. When I opened my eyes again I found that the ingredients had turned into a clear blue liquid. I grinned then, before I could chicken out, quickly downed the entire potion.

A moment later the world started fade into darkness and when I came to again, I was laying on the ground. I shook my head then stood up. Something felt wrong, and when I looked down at my chest I found a pair of breasts sticking out from it.
“Crap!” I yelled.

A check inside my pants revealed a new vagina. The spell was supposed to make me more appealing to girls not turn me into one! “Double crap!”

“Alibran?” A voice, which belonged to my master, called from the other side of the door. “Did you sneak into the lab, again?”

“TRIPLE CRAP!”

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