The Seal Breaks

"Why would the Divine have done this?" Horace demanded.

"Your hair," another voice interrupted, higher and more feminine than all the others. It took Perrin a moment to realize that it was his own, and he cursed the sound of it even before he cursed his sudden loss of self-control.

Merritt, of all people, was the one to figure out what he meant. "Astra, your hair's all white! And Horace, yours went brown! . . . No one else's is any different, right?"

From the looks of it, Astra was putting two and two together, followed by putting four with six and ten with the square root of negative one. "I think the Divine just changed its paradigm."

"In simple words?" Sahe asked.

"You've seen the old drawings, haven't you?" Astra replied. "Energy priests with phoenix feathers in their hair, Cessation priests with thick white beards like yetis . . . Before the Blasphemy, magic was a part of nature, and it bound priests to nature. Maybe that wasn't the only way it could have worked. Maybe all it needed to do was change priests' bodies, and it just found a different way to change them." He swallowed. "I think we're the new High Priests. I just performed a blessing ritual on Horace. Once I bless the rest of us, we'll be able to use magic, and we'll be able to bless others with it, too--"

Sahe interrupted with a profane exclamation that only Perrin recognized. You're too late, my friend, Perrin thought. Horace already did.

"Please, calm down," Astra told her. "I don't think this ritual would have worked if you didn't love the Divine as much as I do--"

"I'll be back here tomorrow morning. If I'm not back to normal by then, we'll talk again."

As she vanished amongst the trees, another figure followed her, and Perrin realized too late whom he'd neglected to pay attention to. "Alban, where are you going?" Merritt asked. "Get back here!" Failing to receive a response, she addressed her next sentence to no one in particular. "He'll be fine, right? Should I go after him?"

"Talk fast," Perrin told Astra, "before you lose anyone else."

He looked him over. "Have you noticed that you're shivering? Get dressed, and we'll discuss this at The Boar's Head."

For better or for worse, no one paid any attention to them. Bleached white hair was far from the strangest thing to be found among the patrons of The Boar's Head--if anything, they were at most risk of being noticed for Horace's ill-fitting robes. A small corner table was fortunately unoccupied, and the four determined that their pooled funds were enough to cover everyone's meal.

After about half a plate of roast chicken, Merritt felt ready to talk again. "Doesn't this feel right to anyone else?" she asked.

Perrin made a show of checking for eavesdroppers. "What in the world do you mean?"

"Horace, I found those books you hide under your bed, the ones with the drawings of girls having sex with each other. Now that you look like a girl, you can get girls like that to go to bed with you." Horace stayed silent, though his face reddened. "And Astra, you like to say 'It's not a woman's place to take power.' Now you can boss guys around without it being sinful!" Before he could interject, "Perrin, I'm sure there's something you get from this, too."

"What do you get from it?" Perrin asked, his tone a little too eager. Clearly, he was getting back to his normal self.

"I don't know. It just feels . . . You know when you wake up some days and you feel like you just don't fit in your own body? I feel like the opposite of that now. Like I'm starting to really understand how bad I was at being a guy."

"Show of hands," Horace asked. "Who else saw this coming?" Astra and Perrin both stared at him, clearly not catching his meaning.

Hung for a sheep, hung for a goat, she thought. "I'm not a guy who likes guys. I like guys--" One guy, she thought, as a picture of Alban flashed through her head-- "But I'm not a guy who likes guys." A very long pause followed. "Why don't we make this a double date?"

Astra was the first to choke something out. "What in the world . . ."

"Sure, it's not serious--none of us are in love with each other--but it'll help us understand how we feel. Horace, you were chanting Matter in the ritual, right? They say Matter goes with Shadow, and you're enough of a guy for me to give you one date, even if you look like a girl now. I'll even be a girl for you. Astra, you can work it out with Perrin which of you is the girl."

"And what will we do on this . . . date?" Horace pronounced the word like it was the name of an exotic poison.

"We're already having a nice romantic dinner, even if it is a little greasy," Merritt explained "When we leave, we can go for a walk under the stars--maybe share a kiss or two--and by the end of the night, we'll know whether we really want to bless each other. If it doesn't feel right, we'll forget all about it, and we'll try to figure out how to get back to normal."

"I'm for it," Perrin said, to Merritt's surprise. "I feel very strange right now, and I'd like to figure out if it's the good kind of strange or the bad kind."

"I'll do it too," Astra added.

"I guess I've got nothing to lose," Horace said.

"All right!" Merritt told them. "Let's begin the date!" She adopted the most seductive voice she could manage. "Horace, you're uh, looking quite handsome today . . ."

"You know, I'm genuinely curious whether I can do this," Perrin said.

"It's strange," Astra replied, "but I think it's what the Divine wants. "

Astra had led them back to the clearing where they'd performed the ritual. They all knew they couldn't spend the night in the school dorms. What they hadn't discussed, but were all thinking of, was what they'd spend the night doing.

"I don't really care one way or the other about the Divine," Perrin told him. "I'm just thinking about me. I never thought about . . . you know . . . before. Not even with a girl. It just wasn't something that occurred to me. Now I'm trying not to talk about whether I'm about to do it with a guy, and . . ." Out with it. They'd seen him naked in the literal sense; why not the metaphorical? "I think part of me actually wants it. In the ritual, I felt something new to me, and I'd like to feel it again."

"Perrin . . ." Astra began, then trailed off, at a loss for words.

Perrin turned his gaze. "Merritt, I'd like to ask you to go first, and let me watch. I think it'll help me understand."

Merritt was already removing her robes, no longer bothered by the cold. "Hey, Horace, you know the picture on page twelve of Corrupted Crystal? Let's do that with Astra in place of the hermaphrodite. I'll be the girl in the middle."

Apparently, the picture in Corrupted Crystal involved a girl sucking cock while having her cunt licked. Much more apparently, the exact position was only possible in fiction. Whatever Perrin was looking for, he couldn't find it in this swirl of tongues and other parts, nor in the struggling mass of arms and legs the three collapsed into as they lost their balance.

No, he found it in Merritt's laugh as she emerged from the heap. "Okay, maybe page twelve was a bit much," she said. "How about sixteen?"

In retrospect, Perrin couldn't have found a better group of people to have his first orgy with. Astra looked appropriately beatific as he lay on his back with his robe hitched up, unashamed to do anything for the Divine. Horace was embarrassed at first to sit on Astra's face and let herself be licked, but no doubt she was rationalizing it as some manner of girl-on-girl. Merritt simply smiled as she took Astra's cock in hand, and it was because of her smile that Perrin moved closer when she gestured to him with her free hand. "Sixteen is when the maid joins in on the fun," she told him. "She kneels at the hermaphrodite's side, and he squeezes her breast."

Perrin said nothing as he knelt and lifted Astra's hand, placing it against the front of his robe. For tonight, at least, there were worse things he could be than a she. At least she wasn't the one who had to bear Horace's weight on her head!

The time passed quickly in touching and licking, marked only by the rhythm of heartbeats and the sound of Horace's moans. One moment, Merritt's tongue was playing with the tip of Astra's cock; the next, she was drenched in a glowing white liquid that could have been anything but semen. Perrin watched as it soaked into her, blackening hair and reshaping bone. When it was done, she could have passed for Sahe's more beautiful cousin.

Perrin found herself laughing, and Merritt joined in. "He cums magic!" Perrin said. "He actually cums magic! Can you cast any spells now?"

Merritt stared intently at a low-hanging tree branch. "I guess not," she eventually said.

Perrin turned her attention lower. "Horace, you can get off of Astra now."

"Never again!" Astra told them, once his mouth was no longer obstructed. "I was afraid I might suffocate!" His tone was utterly serious, and Perrin couldn't help laughing again. "Uh, I don't mean that I'm not ready to go again," Astra continued. "A Grand Priest never runs out of energy when blessing disciples."

This was when Perrin finally began to undress herself. "Go on, stick it in," she said. "I think I've found what I'm looking for."

"I knew you'd come around. The Divine wouldn't have chosen us if any of us weren't meant to be priests."

"I don't care about this priest thing. I just want to see the look on your face when we do it!" In response to his expression of utter incomprehension, she continued, "I'm not as cold as people think I am. I guess sex doesn't make me happy the same way it makes you happy, but if it makes you happy, it makes me happy to see you happy, you know?"

In lieu of untangling that statement, Astra made a downwards gesture. Perrin lay back, on top of her robes, spreading her legs in an invitation to enter.

In the brief time before their shared joy overwhelmed her, she wondered if she should remind the others about Sahe and Alban. Nah, probably not, she thought. They should both be fine.

You who follow Energy have a constant drive to improve yourselves and eliminate your weaknesses, but you are at risk of developing contempt for those less determined than you. Void will make your resolve even stronger, but Light will feed your feelings of superiority.

All who are of Light understand their own wants and needs very well. That's why you have such trouble compromising with other people. Cessation's understanding of the outside world mixes well with your understanding of your inner world, but avoid Energy, lest it provide false justification for your inflexibility.

--The Primer of Talents

Not long after sunrise, two figures met at the edge of the woods. "I hope you had a better night than I did," Alban said.

Sahe considered that. "I saved a boy at a protest. I think he wants to date me. He's handsome, for a . . . Blessed, so I guess my night was good." (He'd stopped himself in time before he would have used the slur "piss-hair." That would have been bad, no matter how Blessed yellow hair looked to his people.)

Alban seemed to have been caught off-guard. "You're into boys now?"

"Always have been--and girls, too. Scorned have two rules. Don't do it with kids, and don't do it with animals. We have many rules about marriage, but that's just for raising kids . . ." Sahe swore in his native tongue. "Just realized something. Two things may be true. Maybe I can't have kids like this. Maybe I can. Not sure which is worse."

"Children are the least of my worries at the moment," Alban told him. "Listen, let's take a moment to talk, before we go speak to the others."

"I can hear you, you know!" someone called from amongst the trees--Merritt, most likely. "I'm supposed to check and see if you're coming. I can go away if you really want me to."

"No need," Alban said. "It wasn't really important."

Is Alban in love with someone? Sahe wondered. It was certainly a possibility--she might be wondering whether a sudden shift in sexes would change her feelings. The question, of course, was who she might be in love with . . .

The second thing Alban noticed when he walked into the clearing was that there was a Scorned already present. The third was that there was also a girl with blue hair, shorter and slighter than the bulky Horace and even the ethereal Astra. Apparently, Merritt and Perrin had changed quite a bit in becoming High Priests.

He noticed Astra first, of course. He'd always noticed Astra first.

"I'm sorry I ran off last night," he heard himself saying. "I was confused. Actually, I'm still confused. Can anyone tell me what's going on?"

"We've been arguing about that ourselves," Astra said. "I think we've found the source of the problem, at least. We need to rephrase our initial question."

"Our initial question . . ." Sahe repeated. "You mean 'Why did this happen?'"

"Correct, Sahe! I brought up the converse--why did this not happen before? We've done this ritual several times, with Lucius and Curtis instead of you and Perrin. Merritt, can you repeat what you said?"

"Can you imagine Lucius with breasts?"

"It sounds a bit flippant at first, but I don't think Lucius would have accepted this. Horace very nearly didn't--"

Sahe advanced a step closer. "Did I accept this?" he asked.

"You're worried that Jovan was right, aren't you?" Astra said. "I think that's the other half of the equation. Most other groups that perform the ritual don't have any women or Scorned. The Divine wanted to make certain that this time around, not only Blessed men would become priests--"

A step closer. "Then who won't be priests?"

Astra seemed confused. "The unwise, I assume. The weak-willed. Those who don't deserve the power."

A step closer, and he was almost in her face. "As determined by whom?"

"Well, the Divine will have final say--"

"I have listened for a month to your preaching about worth. You amused me. I thought you harmless. That was a mistake--"

"Shut up!" Alban screamed.

Sahe turned to face him, his smile thin. "Your people have a saying. The truth hurts. My people served yours for centuries. I will not let the Divine be free again--"

"Shut the fuck up! How dare you talk to her that way!" Just a few minutes ago, he'd been talking like Alban's friend, and now . . .

"Her," Sahe repeated, as if savoring the word. "It makes sense now."

"What are you--"

This time, it was Merritt who shouted. "Stop it! All of you, stop it!"

Sahe addressed himself to Astra, slightly louder than was necessary. "I assume we will all skip school today. Tomorrow, during prayer, I will go to my room and get my staff. I expect you to get yours as well. I will meet you in this clearing."

Alban yelled after him as he walked away. "Apologize to Astra, you bastard! I refuse to let you say this rubbish!"

He looked back just long enough for a few words. "I'm sorry for this. You're faithful, but I don't think you're like Astra. Some day, you'll see through her."

"Don't bother being mad at her," Perrin said once he was gone. "Sometimes she just latches onto things. I guess she's latched onto the idea that Astra's a jackass, and it'll be tricky to get her off it."

Alban turned back to Astra. "From the looks of it, only him and me aren't priests yet. I'd like to talk to you alone. If you're up for a meal at The Boar's Head--"

Astra laughed. "I'm sorry," she said, "but I was there just last night." At his expression, "But if you want to talk, we can go for a walk. The rest of you can, er, get fitted for some new robes or something. Just be sure to be back here in the evening--we need to talk about Sahe."

Sahe and Kyrie found each other just outside The Boar's Head. "I hope you haven't waited long," Sahe said.

"A while, but not too long," Kyrie replied.

"I've never dated before," Sahe admitted. "I don't know all the rules."

"Love follows no rules, my dear," Kyrie said in an alarmingly smooth tone. Then, in his normal voice, "By the Divine, I almost gagged when I said that."

As they waited to order, the first topic of conversation was Kyrie's work. "So, what was that protest about, anyways? I heard something about 'equal rights' . . ."

"Marriage rights for homosexuals. We've managed to secure them in Freeport, but no other city recognizes the licenses."

Sahe was nonplussed. "Homosexuals can't have children together. Why would they need to marry?"

"Things work a bit differently here than in Scorned lands. Marriage provides all sorts of legal benefits--even tax breaks. Besides, legal recognition means societal recognition, which means societal acceptance."

"So, how do you fit into this? You're not a homosexual."

"I've learned it's a bad idea to explain that on the first date. Let's just say I'm an ally."

Sahe took a closer look at Kyrie's face--small nose, flat forehead, rounded cheeks (as close to rounded as Blessed got, anyways. . .) Figures, he thought. Not like I care too much what he's really got in his pants. Aloud, he said, "I'd be happy to talk about something else. I'm sure you're wondering about that crystal."

Kyrie grasped eagerly at the proffered lifeline. "Are you a crystal-worker? Why'd you decide to come to Blessed lands?"

"I'm a merchant by birth. My father bought a time crystal to sell on the black market, but he found that I had a talent for using it. I came here because licensing is easier--I just need to get through a few classes . . ."

Astra and Alban returned in the afternoon, when the others were gone from the clearing. That was good. Alban couldn't have done this with them watching.

He couldn't remember a time when they hadn't been together, Alban and Astra, the front of the alphabet. She'd been the only girl in the order more devout than him, and she'd strengthened his resolve to follow the will of the Divine, even as he'd grounded her, kept her mind on the most practical ways of carrying out that will. He'd planned this for years--even had the ring picked out, though he'd never managed to save enough to buy it. Yet, now . . .

"You're afraid," Astra said. It wasn't a question.

"You know me too well." He cringed inwardly, but what else could he have said?

"The Divine trusts us to do this. I know that means as much to you as it does to me. So let's . . ."

"Let's go slow." He lifted his hand to her cheek. "We'll start with touch."

It wasn't Astra's body--not in more than the loosest of terms. Even the bones in her face had changed shape, from harsh Blessed angles to a curved wispiness, like she would blow away in the wind if her surface area wasn't so small. If there was anything of Astra to be seen in this curiously womanly man, it was in the way she moved, turning her cheek against his hand, trying and failing to hide her own eagerness to be touched.

There was only so much to be done with hands, of course. Lips took their place, his meeting hers, then traveling down her chin and resting in the hollow of her neck. (He thanked the Divine that she hadn't grown a beard. There was only so much he could handle.) When he broke away, she wordlessly stripped, and this time, only eyes were used. His gaze traced down her flat, hairless chest, past nipples and belly button to the thing between her legs, the thing his mind just couldn't process--

That was a lie. He ran his fingers down her abdomen, past the soft white hair at the base of the organ, and along it to the tip. It was strange, but it was hers, and he could accept it as part of her. He stroked and petted it, cautiously at first, and the sound of her moan was like a hymn to the Divine as it grew under his fingers.