“Uh. Hey, Syd?”
“Yeah?”
“Why are we taking the stairs to the roof of this apartment building? I thought we were going to Shadow Town.”
“You’ll see when we get up there, pup.”
They had taken a bus followed by a subway line all the way up to the western edge of downtown Abraxas. They still had to cross through downtown to the east side, so Lexi was more than a little confused by the sudden detour. After climbing all the way to the top of the stairs, Lexi was surprised she had barely broken a sweat, whereas even yesterday she would have been completely winded. Just like her appetite, her stamina was growing.
“It’s rush hour on a Friday, so all the streets and public transit in downtown are gonna be fucked,” Roxy said.
“And, like, I insisted we get there before the shops close,” Sabrina piped up. “We can do our sneaky secret stuff a bit later tonight, but I said I was gonna take you properly shopping, and I’m nothing if not a lady of my word.”
“That still doesn’t explain why we’re heading to a rooftop instead of heading over,” Lexi said.
“Oh, we’re gonna head over, all right,” Syd said, chuckling.
Finally they arrived at the rooftop. The sunset behind them lit up the glittery skyscrapers and older brick buildings of Abraxas in hues of soft pink, vibrant orange, and dark red. The rain from earlier was drying up, so everything looked like it had been wiped down and cleaned, a shiny landscape of metal, glass, and concrete. From this high up, Lexi could understand why cities were called concrete jungles—besides the smooth facades of the skyscrapers, it seemed like every building had texture and depth to it, as if she could reach out and grab ahold of one of the fire escapes, or slide down a drain pipe, or use protruding bricks as hand-holds for climbing. Hell, some of the gaps were narrow enough to jump from rooftop to rooftop.
Of course, who would be crazy enough to do something like that?
Syd faced away from Lexi and squatted down. Jerking a thumb at her broad upper back, twice as wide as Lexi’s entire torso, the wolf beastess said, “Get on.”
“What.”
“Climb. On. Pup.”
Oh.
Syd was crazy enough, apparently.
Lexi squeaked and wrapped her arms around Syd’s neck, clinging to the beastess’ spiked collar with her hands and hooking her legs into Syd’s armpits. The gigantic woman stood up, and over her shoulder Lexi marveled at the new much higher vantage point she now had. She giggled—she had never been this tall before!
Soon enough she might be, Lexi thought.
This close up to Syd, Lexi felt like she was clinging to a giant warm boulder of muscle. She could feel Syd’s mighty pulse, the surprising softness of her skin, and the way her chest expanded and contracted like a giant pair of bellows. She somehow smelled earthy, musky, and floral at the same time. Lexi couldn’t quite place the scent, but it reminded her of a zoo and botanical garden she had visited a few times as a kid. It was a scent intimately, deeply connected to nature.
First with the food at brunch, and now with Syd—Lexi’s sense of smell had developed nuance and color. Within the things she smelled, she was finding notes and scents she couldn’t even name. She wasn’t used to engaging with her senses this intensely before. Was this what most people who didn’t numb themselves from their bodies felt like when they used their senses? Or was this part of her new and improved physiology as a beastess?
Speaking of beastess physiology, Lexi could feel her legs widening slightly as Syd’s already prodigious muscles grew even larger. Between her fingers while holding onto the tough leather of the collar, she could feel the texture of coarse yet soft gray fur sprouting on the back of Syd’s neck, a mane the same color as the long pointed ears growing past her purple hair.
Looking left and right, Lexi could see Roxy and Sabrina were shifting too, both of them growing taller and stronger by the second before her eyes. Roxy’s black-and-red striped mohawk extended down her neck and upper back as she sharpened her claws on the concrete edge of the roof with long scraping noises, laughing with glee as her hyena instincts took over. Meanwhile, Sabrina’s long ears grew little tufts that would have looked adorable had they not been accompanied by her monstrous half-feline face.
A loud rip of fabric came from Sabrina’s tight jeans, and as everyone else turned to her in surprise, she looked down in horror, then relief.
“No worries!” the lynx beastess said. “They just tore along the knee! Hm. Looks kinda badass, actually.” Sabrina brandished a claw and with another rip tore a matching hole in the other knee. She proudly purred, clearly pleased with her improvised alterations.
Lexi never got tired of watching beastesses shift their forms up-close like this. Granted, it was only a half-shift—any more and they would burst out of more clothes than just their jeans—but it would give them enough strength for … for …
Oh, right. In her amazement, Lexi had forgotten what they were about to do.
“Hang on tight!” Syd yelled.
Fuck!
In one swift motion, all three beastesses took off, dropping to all fours, digging their claws into the rooftop for added propulsion. Roxy and Sabrina were closest to the edge, and without breaking momentum, both of them crouched and leaped into the air. Wind whistled behind them as the arc of their jump catapulted them to the next rooftop, far higher and farther than any human athlete Lexi had ever seen, where they landed skillfully on all fours and kept running.
Now it was Syd’s turn. Lexi could feel her knuckles turning white and her stomach churning as they quickly approached the edge of the rooftop.
Goddess help me, she thought.
Syd’s powerful muscles tensed, then released. Lexi felt like she was shot out of a cannon, but somehow the G-forces didn’t wrench her grip free from Syd.
Then …
… They were weightless.
They were … they were soaring! Soaring through the air! The people below looked like ants from up here!
Lexi laughed. She laughed uproariously.
They hit the top of the next roof, but Lexi barely felt the impact, with Syd acting like a giant shock absorber as she kept running on all fours.
Despite her terror and shock, Lexi had been strong enough to hold on. A giddy feeling arose in her stomach as she realized, in her gut, that she was getting stronger. That she would be able to shift her form and jump high too, like the other three beastesses just now.
This must be the power of wild magic, Lexi thought.
[Of course it is, pup. Hunters like us need to be fast and strong, to catch our prey.]
… What?
Wait, what?
Okay, that definitely wasn’t a coincidence this time. Where did that come from? It was like when the Goddess of the Hunt spoke to her last night, but that voice …
Lexi looked at Syd, who was fully concentrating on running.
She shook her head. Must be her imagination, coming up with what Syd might say in response.
As she clung to Syd, Lexi marveled at the moves the beastesses were pulling off. They would jump to a skyscraper, digging their claws into the metal like it was tin foil, and scale it until they reached a massive skylight where the glass slanted at a forty-five degree angle, illuminating them with a dazzling inferno of orange sunlight. Then, running to the other side, they would slide down it and use their momentum to fly over several rooftops at once. They bounced off of walls like pinballs, they ran along steel girders with perfect balance, and Roxy even did a back-flip at one point to show off. It was absolutely exhilarating.
In the concrete jungle of Abraxas, they were the queens.
After only a few minutes at that breakneck pace, they eventually came to a slowdown and then a complete stop on a much dirtier and more grimy rooftop than where they had started. Syd lowered herself so that Lexi could climb down off of her back. All three of the other beastesses were panting heavily as they shifted back into their human forms.
Wiping sweat off of her brow, Syd nudged Lexi and said, “Welcome to Shadow Town.”
Sprawled before the four women was what appeared to be the interlocked scales of the skin of an absolutely titanic dragon, if said dragon scales had been laid out over several city blocks, and had been made entirely of corrugated sheet metal, tattered fabric awnings, brick-and-mortar outcroppings, and other cobbled-together materials and textiles. At multiple layers and elevations, every single gap, street, alleyway, fire escape, and balcony was covered by something. Lexi peered the best she could, but there was simply no way to see any people or streets down below.
Shadow Town got its name from not only the way it was completely shielded from sunlight, but also from its notoriety as Abraxas’ seedy underbelly. Day or night, it was always dark in Shadow Town.
The four of them descended the fire escape attached to the rooftop, landing in an alleyway which deposited them onto the main thoroughfare of Shadow Town. Sabrina quickly pulled Lexi by the arm to one of her favorite stores in the district—“Their selection is just as good as the stores downtown, but like way cheaper”—and before she knew it, she was handed a pile of women’s clothing and deposited into the cramped changing room at the back of the store.
Dresses … skirts … blouses … She looked like a man in all of them.
Lexi sighed. She knew she was a girl, but she didn’t have the confidence to wear any of these, even in private, if they were just going to look silly on her boyish frame. If it weren’t for the certainty that her body would be changing soon, she would have given up right there.
Instead, she poked her head out and explained to Sabrina that she needed something more … what was the word?
“Butch!” the bubbly woman said. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”
Tight women’s jeans … flannel button-downs … a nice pair of leather boots …
Oh.
Well then.
Despite bearing a passing resemblance to her previous male clothes at first glance, for some reason this outfit made her feel more like a woman. She kinda looked like Syd, actually! A shrunken-down version of the wolf woman, but still.
Unlike her black hoodie or the dresses Sabrina had picked out, these women’s clothes didn’t feel like she was wearing a disguise or a costume. They were more like a suit of armor. Like what her paladin armor should have made her feel—powerful, protected, strong.
When she stepped out of changing room to show the others, she tried her best to cross her arms and pop her hips to project a semblance of confidence.
Syd’s jaw dropped.
“Holy shit, Lexi.”
Lexi immediately broke the power stance and felt her knees buckle at Syd’s admiration, giving her a bashful grin.
Roxy wolf-whistled and added, “Yeah, that’s your fuckin’ style. I told you, Sabrina!”
The lynx beastess scoffed and said, “Can’t blame a girl for trying! We can get those clothes, but I’m going to teach you makeup basics when we get back. You’re a woman now—you don’t have to use makeup, but you have no excuse for not learning how to do it.”
They paid for the clothes—“We’ll figure out your bra size when your boobs grow in,” Sabrina had said—and started walking down the street, with Lexi having decided to wear the ‘butch’ outfit out for the night and keep her original clothes in the shopping bag instead. Now she at least looked like she fit in a bit more with her fellow beastesses, even if she felt like the runt of the litter.
They were jostled to and fro by people on the crowded sidewalks, some of whom gawked at Syd’s large stature but who mostly just kept to themselves, busy trying to get to Goddess knows what in this district. Almost everyone in this part of town had magitech augmentations, a way higher percentage than in Club Demiurge. Lexi learned very quickly not to stare at their implants when she got a nasty death glare from a couple of chromed-out punks smoking cigarettes on a stoop.
It was difficult to tell what time of day it was here. It was sunset when they entered Shadow Town, but from the moment they had reached ground level it felt like night. When they had emerged from the store and Lexi looked up, it was as if the sky was nothing but various awnings and covers receding from view into an inky black void where the sky used to be. It felt unnatural, like being outside and inside at the same time. Like the shadows could close in around her at any moment.
It gave her the creeps.
To get her mind off of being in probably the most dangerous neighborhood in Abraxas, she made small talk with the other beastesses as they wandered. The topic of conversation eventually turned to Syd’s transition, and how the Pack of Abraxas West had helped alleviate her gender dysphoria (a good term, one that Lexi had to ask Syd to define).
“Hey Syd,” Lexi said, “can I ask you a personal question?”
“Shoot.”
“Why did you decide to keep your ... erm …” Lexi gestured to her crotch awkwardly. Syd gave a single barking laugh.
“Ha! Here’s a little secret for ya.” The wolf beastess leaned down and whispered to Lexi, “I didn’t keep it.”
“… What?! But you had … last night, you …” Lexi trailed off, unable to find the words in her flustered state.
“That was a magitech strap-on. Neat, eh? From Gnosis, of course. It slots right into my junk and it’s indistinguishable from the real thing. Fully functional!” Syd mimed going from limp to erect with a flick of her index finger. “I had Meg tinker with it too, so when I shift into my beast form, it shifts along with me. Kinda like what she did for her arm and for Audrey’s eye implants.”
“That girl can do pretty much anything with magitech, I swear to Goddess,” Sabrina said, placing a hand over her chest and fluttering her eyelashes dreamily.
Syd nodded and continued, “I don’t wear it for ceremonial fights, obviously, but since it was just you and my pack last night, I wanted to show it off a little.”
So that’s where Syd was hiding that monster member at Club Demiurge, Lexi thought—she just wasn’t wearing it!
“So you didn’t want to keep your … original equipment?”
“Yup. Wasn’t much to brag about anyway—the strap looks so much better! I love the magitech pussy I have now, and with the strap-on, I get the best of both worlds.”
Lexi’s mind lingered on what Syd had just said.
It had never occurred to her that you could even do that.
… Huh.
After staring off into space for a few seconds, Lexi turned back to Syd.
“So wait, why go through all of that? If you prefer having a … a vagina, then why do you like wearing a strap-on?”
Syd raised one eyebrow and scoffed.
“Pup, do I look like a fuckin’ pillow princess to you?”
“W-what does that mean?”
“Oh, Goddess above, you have so much to learn. Let me spell it out for you—I’m a top.” Syd grinned. Her fangs were shiny, gleaming under the neon light of a nearby storefront. “I like to fuck, Lexi.”
“… Oh.” Lexi’s face felt red-hot.
“That doesn’t mean she always likes to domme, though!” Roxy said with a snicker.
“Shut up, Rox!” Syd snapped at the hyena beastess, still smirking, which only caused Roxy to giggle more, with Sabrina joining in. “It takes a special kind of woman to tame this beast.” She idly fidgeted with the crescent moon tag of her collar.
As they passed by various shops on the winding streets, most of them with bars and cages covering their windows (with some still cracked anyway), one store in particular caught their attention. All four women came to a standstill, transfixed by what was playing simultaneously on all of the buzzing CRT TV screens behind the bars.
An extremely wrinkled elderly man with long wispy white hair and an equally long white beard was seated at a table with two microphones attached to it. He was dressed in flowing white robes that seems far too large for him, draped atop his skeletal frame as they were, and his spindly thin fingers drummed the surface of the table.
His shoulders were exposed, with various thick cables plugged into magitech panels on his upper back. The cables connected to the custom wheelchair he was seated in, and pulsated with green magical energy into and out of his body like a heartbeat. On the left side of his chest was a gold pin with the unmistakeable red symbol of the Almighty Sun, with a smaller red sun superimposed inside of it.
A ribbon of text scrolled at the bottom of the broadcast: His Holiness Patriarch Ozias.
Even through the TV screens, the leader of the Supreme Church sent shivers up Lexi’s spine. As the head of both church and state, he haunted the country like a ghost, and looked like one too. All of those magitech augmentations on his body had artificially prolonged his lifespan for over two hundred years. He wasn’t chronically ill, nor did he have a disability. He simply wanted to hold onto his reign for as long as physically possible. The position of Patriarch was held for life, after all. It was God’s plan to keep him on this earth as long as He needed Patriarch Ozias there to execute His will, he claimed.
With a quavering voice like he was gargling broken glass, Patriarch Ozias muttered into the microphones, “The Church has redoubled our efforts to cleanse this country of sin, despite the best efforts of our enemies both within and abroad. We cannot allow pagans and blasphemers to continue to threaten the sanctity of the family. In the name of the Lord, we will find them, we will get them to confess, and we shall punish them accordingly until they are redeemed. Praise the Almighty Sun.”
What a load of bullshit, Lexi thought. How had she swallowed that crap for so many years? In hindsight it all seemed so … reductive. The Patriarch’s words, which before seemed so reasonable and morally correct, now seemed to be petty and vindictive. He sounded less like a divine messenger and more like an angel of death. Who was he to cast judgment?
He was no one, that’s who. Nothing but a living ghost.
She scowled at the TVs. She could feel her nails dig deeper into her palms as her fists clenched. As she lifted her arm to punch the caged window out of frustration, Syd grabbed her arm and smiled at her. Lexi smiled back. Yeah. She wasn’t the only one frustrated with the Church here.
It's funny how much you can hate someone when you finally give yourself permission to do so. The veil over her mind had been pierced, and like she had been tempted with an apple, all it had taken was a single bite for her to know what good and evil truly were.
Lexi chuckled dryly. The only difference is that she wasn’t the one doing the biting.
The broadcast cut back to a male news anchor wearing a too-tight suit, sitting in the studio of Abraxas News Network.
“Moving on to local news: Kurtis ‘Snake’ Mandrake was found dead in his mansion home earlier this morning. As the suspected boss of the legacy organized crime group known as the Mandrake crime family, Mandrake had developed his nickname from his supposedly ‘slippery’ reputation for evading paladin arrest. The autopsy report from the coroner’s office concluded that the cause of death was multiple incisions and puncture wounds to the neck, as well as several avulsions where the flesh had been torn away. The Abraxas Paladin Department has confirmed that the investigation is still on-going, but in their statement to the press the APD said they, quote, ‘will most likely not be releasing further information, as the nature of the victim’s crimes and possible suspects are classified at this time’.”
“Huh,” said Syd.
“What's up?” said Lexi.
Syd jerked a thumb at the stack of TVs and said, “Snake is—was—a key point of contact for all four packs in the megacity. He was a sleazeball, but he had connections. Must have double-crossed the wrong psycho and gotten himself offed.”
“Neck wounds and torn flesh, huh …” Lexi was getting flashbacks to her research. “Maybe it was a beastess?”
“If it was, she wasn't from our pack. I would have ordered it myself.”
After they walked away from the storefront with the TV screens, Roxy and Sabrina chatted in front while Syd and Lexi brought up the rear as they walked. Lexi smiled up at Syd, who returned it with a big grin before looking away, grabbing and squeezing Lexi’s hand as she did so.
Goddess above, they were like two nervous teenagers. For Lexi, shyness came naturally, but she was surprised to see that the big beastess was also bashful about how smitten she was with her. The range of emotion lying just below Syd’s brash confident persona was really sweet to see. Even in the short time they’ve known each other, every moment they spent together brought out a little bit more of the other—Lexi was growing in confidence just as much as Syd was showing her sensitive side.
For a ‘first date’ together, Lexi was having a wonderful time. Any time spent with Syd made her heart flutter.
Eventually they ended up several blocks away, in front of the shittiest and most run-down dive bar Lexi had ever seen. It was called the Careless Angel Bar, and it was housed inside of a graffiti-covered building that smelled like stale beer. The neon sign just said ‘BAR’, only it was more like ‘BA’ because the ‘R’ only flickered on every few seconds.
“Stay here,” Syd said. “We’re gonna go inside. Roxy knows the owner, and they have the underground connections we need to get the magitech for you that we’re looking for.”
“Why can’t I come in?” Lexi asked.
Counting on her fingers, Roxy replied, “One: they know me, and they’ve seen Syd and Sabrina before, but you’re a new face, and it’s gonna be a tough sell to convince them you’re a beastess at the moment. No offense, but you’re still a bit on the scrawny side compared to us. Two: we can’t let them know you’re trans. Not because the owner’s a bigot or anything—I’d be very surprised, considering they’re non-binary—but because we gotta keep the ritual a secret. And three: they won’t just let us bring in a ‘friend’ for a business transaction.”
Crestfallen, Lexi said, “I suppose you’re right. I’d probably just get in the way anyway.”
Roxy tilted her head to the side with a look of concern, her mohawk swaying as she did so.
“Hey, kid, look—we’re not trying to exclude you. It’s just business in this case. You’re already one of us, even if you don’t look like it yet. You’ll grow into it, don’t worry.” Roxy lightly punched her in the arm and gave a friendly smile. “That’s why we’re here in the first place, dummy!”
That cheered Lexi up a bit as she rubbed her arm and laughed. She’ll take ‘kid’ and ‘dummy’ from Roxy over ‘paladin scumbag’ any day of the week.
“Be right back,” Syd said, blowing Lexi a kiss as they entered the dive bar and disappeared behind the door.
Lexi waited. And waited. And waited. She didn’t have a watch to estimate how much time had passed, so as she kicked some debris on the sidewalk with her new boots and looked around, a store display about a block or two away caught her eye.
She looked back at the Careless Angel Bar. Then back at the storefront. Then back at the bar.
Eh, it wasn’t too far away. She’d be back in a moment.
She crossed the street and wandered over to what had grabbed her attention—a sex shop advertising magitech strap-ons. All sorts of models were on display, some glowing green with runic circuitry, and others sporting a more realistic look. Her gaze traveled downwards, and her skin felt tingly as she read the sign at the bottom of the display.
Magitech Vulva Implants: Inquire Within For a Private Consultation.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Maybe she could talk to Syd and ask if she could—
WHOOSH.
One moment Lexi was staring at the storefront, and in the blink of an eye she was muffled with a hand over her mouth in a dark alleyway, pressed up against the torso of someone much taller than her. It had happened so fast that she had dropped her shopping bag full of her old clothes as she was grabbed. If it wasn’t for the sound of wind rushing past her ears, she could have sworn she had been teleported there.
She panicked. She tried to scream into the hand and thrash away, but the sight of the other hand appearing in front of her silenced all noise from her throat.
The hand had long sharp claws where its fingernails should be.
And the forearm had a thin layer of yellow fur with black spots.
Then, she noticed something else.
Her body was vibrating.
No, wait.
… Her kidnapper was purring.
Lexi’s eyes widened in terror.
“My, my, my,” the voice behind her growled, “what's a morsel like you doing hanging out with beastesses in this part of town?”