True Renaming

Ardat, incubus, took a moment to stretch as the brimstone smoke cleared, savoring every little sensation that came with being incarnated in a physical body - the cool air, the sound of his own heartbeat, the little strains of exertion as he experimentally lifted his arms. It had been too long. Far too long. Ardat had existed for eons, but summonings were becoming rarer and rarer. Now, finally, he was free to roam and corrupt the Earth once more.

Well, not free. Not yet. He had been summoned into a magic circle; a ring of symbols and salt that kept him bound to the spot. But that was merely a minor inconvenience. All Ardat needed to do was convince his summoner to lower their guard a little, and he had plenty of experience with that.

He was, after all, a sex demon.

Now that the smoke had almost cleared, he could just about see them. Ardat stroked his goatee, attended to his short, tufted, black hair, and plastered a winning, charismatic smile on his perfectly formed face. He struggled to keep it there when he noticed the expression his summoner was wearing.

Overwhelming frustration and disappointment.

That was a surprise. Ardat had been greeted in many ways - with awe, lust, shock, self-righteous contempt. But who would be disappointed with a sex demon they'd bound to their will and summoned from the bowels of hell itself?

A woman, for one. A goth, for another. The look of utter, icy disdain on her face looked like it was fixed there permanently, accentuated by her jet-black lipstick and thick, immaculate eyeliner. She had long, silky, black hair - plainly dyed - with layers of deep blue visible underneath, and her clothing was all fishnets, lace, and asymmetrical, flowing folds of black cloth. Her look was - in Ardat's opinion - a little tacky, but she undeniably carried it off well, and her figure was on the softer, rounded, better-endowed side. Aradat certainly liked that. More for him to enjoy.

"Master," Ardat said, his voice a low purr. He offered a low, theatrical bow. "Might I have the pleasure of your name? All the better to serve you, of course. Although I must confess a slight, ulterior motive. I desire to confirm my suspicion that your name is just as lovely as you are."

It was a good line, and one that had made many would-be witches blush throughout history. So, Ardat had been hoping for a better response than an angry, disgusted: "Tch."

He tilted his head, confused. "Excuse me?"

"It's Lenora," she said, with an air of clear reluctance. "I guess."

"Have... I done something to offend you, master?" Ardat asked cautiously.

Lenora groaned and made a gesture like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You're an incubus."

"Of course." Ardat took a moment to refresh his grin. "I am Ardat of the Second Circle. I am accomplished in pleasures far beyond the average mortal ken - and I am at your disposal, body and soul."

Lenora simply rolled her eyes. "You don't get it. I'm a lesbian."

Ardat's smile immediately faltered. "Then... if I may ask... why did you-"

"Because you were meant to be a succubus!" the witch exploded. "I wanted to get my mind blown, and I found an old grimoire talking about this ancient sex demon. 'Ardat of Ur'. A succubus! And now I get... you."

"Ah," Ardat said awkwardly. "Well, gender and grammar in ancient proto-Sumerian can be a little tricky."

Lenora glared daggers at him. "Now what am I supposed to do?"

"Master, I'm sure you know that labels are just words," Ardat attempted, making his voice a thrilling, husky growl and arching his back to present his bare, sculpted chest to the witch. "Whatever you may consider yourself, why not try allowing me to please you? I'm sure I could find a way to change your feelings. Everyone's a little flexible, under the right circumstances. Maybe you just haven't found the right man."

From the look on her face, he immediately knew he'd chosen the wrong tactic. "Gross," Lenora spat, even more disgustedly. "Try that again, and I'll banish you before you can blink."

"Wait!" Ardat said hurriedly. "Don't send me back! Not when I... when I have so much to offer you, that is." He tried to sound simpering and pleasing; maybe she'd like that more. "I could easily help you to summon a demon a little more fitting for your tastes. Now, if you'll just let me out of this magic circle, I'll-"

Lenora snorted a laugh. "Nice try. But no. Part of the reason I'm so pissed is that, as you well know, I can't attempt this ritual again until the next lunar-venusian conjunction. Which is also the reason I can't afford to send you back to Hell."

Hearing that gave Ardat the twinge of hope he needed. "Then, surely there must be some service I can perform for you, master," he purred. "Simply name your heart's desire, and I will happily provide - for the right price, of course."

"I don't think-" Lenora abruptly broke off, and then started thoughtfully at Ardat. Hope swelled in his demonic chest. "Actually," she began thoughtfully, "maybe there is something I can do with you."

"Yes?" Ardat asked, cautiously optimistic.

"I do have you here, even if you're not quite right," Lenora mused, pacing across the room. "And I do still have an itch I could do with scratching."

Ardat let out a filthy laugh. "I'd be more than happy to assist, master," he purred. "I knew you would prove to be open-minded."

Lenora threw him a dangerous look, but it faded from her face almost immediately, replaced by a wicked, satisfied smirk. Somehow, that worried Ardat much, much more than her anger.

"Open-minded? No," Lenora said. "I'm just going to fix you."

"F-fix?" Ardat's worry was growing.

"Fix," Lenora confirmed, grinning. "Succubus, incubus, how different can they really be? Anyway, that whole thing is way too binary to be real. I'm sure it can't be so hard to turn one into the other."

"Turn into-" Ardat let out a nervous, incredulous laugh. "Very funny, master."

"Oh, I'm not joking." Lenora's grin was steadily taking on a crooked, malevolent quality. "I'm a witch. A damn good one. You wouldn't believe what I can turn people into."

"That's not the problem," Ardat explained, sighing. "Demons aren't like people. Who we are - our bodies, our personalities, our genders - aren't, for want of a better word, malleable. They are unchanging; ontologically fixed to specific lingua-symbolic entities - better known by your kind as our 'true names'."

It was a little surprising that a witch capable of summoning a demon didn't know that much, but Ardat wanted to make sure to nip this absurd notion in the bud. He needed to guide Lenora towards something he could truly tempt her with.

"Your true names, huh?" Lenora laughed and reached for an old, leather-bound book resting on a nearby table. "Like, for example... this?"

She flipped it open to a bookmarked page and held it up for Ardat to see. It sent a cold shiver down his spine. His true name was written in the pages.

Most people wouldn't have recognized it as such, or as a name at all. It wasn't in words - English words least of all. Instead, it was a complex, intricately-interwoven symbol, expanding to fill an entire page of a huge grimoire with headache-inducing artistic and geometric figures. And yet, it was his name. 'Ardat' was the corresponding vocalization, although, from a demon's perspective, it was crude to the point of ugliness in how little information it truly conveyed. The symbol on the page in Lenora's book told and defined everything about the incubus, from beginning to end.

Which was very, very bad.

Knowledge was power, both figuratively and literally. It didn't mean Lenora could pull off the kind of insane transformation she seemed to be set on, but knowing Ardat's true name meant there was plenty she was capable of. He was going to have to tread extremely carefully.

"Where did you get that?" Ardat hissed.

"It's from ancient Sumeria," Lenora answered, throwing him a smug, nasty look. "You see, my ancient proto-Sumerian is actually fucking great. I just misinterpreted one little part of your true name. Don't worry, it won't happen again. I had to pay a pretty penny for this grimoire, though. Time to see if it'll all be worth it."

"That..." Ardat sighed, exasperated. "You still can't turn me into... well, into anything! That isn't how this works. True names might be written in ink, but I can assure you, they're metaphorically set in stone. There are only a handful of artifacts in existence with the power to change them."

"C'mon." Lenora started giggling. "You can't just set me up like that twice in a row."

Ardat's heart sank. "S-surely you don't-"

This time, she reached for a small, wood-carved box and opened it. Inside was a candle that looked ordinary at first, but when Lenora lit it with a well-used lighter, the wax started to glow with an unnatural, purple phosphorescence.

"An ur-candle," Ardat whispered reverently.

Fuck.

"Let's take it for a spin, shall we?" Lenora said. She set the grimoire bearing Ardat's true name down on the table and lifted the ur-candle menacingly towards it.

"Wait!" Ardat called out in alarm. He'd only heard whispers about what was about to happen, but those alone were enough to terrify him. But he fell silent once Lenora tipped the candle, and allowed a little of its wax to drip onto his true name.

Ardat froze. He could feel something; an unnameable sensation that held him in its grip and made his head feel like it was going to split open. It was as if something was touching his very soul, especially when Lenora picked up an iron stylus and used it like a pen to move the molten wax around on the page. Disconcertingly, the ink underneath it, dried for thousands of years, started to bubble up and move with it. And just like that, his reality was rewritten.

It only took hold slowly, with the first changes beginning after the wax on the grimoire's pages had already set, but its pace quickened rapidly after Lenora held up the book for Ardat to inspect. His true name, the sigil that was the incubus's very being, was different now. The changes were slight and subtle, and to most people they would have meant nothing. But to Ardat, it was everything.

Only, that was no longer his name. The sigil now sounded out as something different. It would be-

"Aridat," Lenora pronounced, in a strong, clear, commanding voice. "Your name is Aridat."

Aridat's head sheared, and they shook their head in futile denial. "N-no."

"Your name is Aridat," Lenora insisted.

"My name," Aridat grunted through gritted teeth, straining to hold on to at least this, to at least the word, "is Ard... Ar... Ari..."

"Your name," Lenora repeated patiently, "is Aridat."

"My name is Ari... dat," Aridat found themself agreeing, a pained look on their face. "No, it's... my name is Aridat... Ard... Aridat."

The new sound was such a small thing, like a breath, and that made it so poisonously easy for it to slip in between the consonants, making its presence felt only in how much softer their name suddenly sounded as it left the incubus's lips.

"Aridat," Lenora nodded. The grin on her face was now one of lurid, sadistic fascination. "Good."

"My name is... Aridat?" Aridat was losing their conviction. It was hard to remain defiant when reality itself had turned against them. They could feel an immense pull toward acceptance like a lead weight on their shoulders.

"Aridat," Lenora repeated again. The witch tilted her head, amused. "You're even starting to look like an Aridat."

Her comment drew attention to something Aridat had been trying to convince themself wasn't real: the way their body suddenly seemed just as molten and pliable as the wax of the ur-candle, ready to be changed, reshaped, remolded. The sensation was almost imperciptible, though. So subtle it was almost like nothing was changing at all. Aridat had to force themself to truly notice what was happening to them. Their face was softening and rounding out, and their goatee fell from their face in wisps as it disintegrated into nothing. Aridat's hair had grown inches in seconds, and their body lost its overbearingly masculine silhouette as their shoulders narrowed and their hips widened. They even became shorter.

Ardat had been manly. Strong. A straight woman's fantasy brought to life. Aridat, it turned out, was androgynous. Even elfin.

It just went with the name, somehow.

"My name... is Aridat," they said slowly. This time, Aridat's voice was heavy with acceptance. It felt good to embrace it, just like it felt good to breathe after forcing yourself to stay underwater.

Their name was Aridat. It just was. And they were a them, apparently.

"Fuck," Lenora breathed. "That was so hot."

Aridat, still recovering from having their identity rewritten on a spiritual level, was shaking with rage. Reality had changed but, crucially, history hadn't. They still remembered what they'd lost. They'd been Ardat. They'd been manly and strong. Now, just looking down at their body was accompanied by a hot lick of bitter humiliation. And it was all because of this accursed witch. If not for the magic circle marked on the ground, Aridat would have had their hands around her throat.

"Aridat," Lenora said, "how do you feel?"

The worst part, the very worst, was the way their new name being called felt. It made their ears prick up and instinctively caught their attention. Aridat was their name now, and like it or not, they answered to it.

"I... feel..." Aridat replied slowly. How did they feel? It was impossible to say. Their head was a swirling mass of contradictions. Memories that didn't match reality. Old instincts that didn't match their new personality, which seemed somehow more passive. More pliant. "I... don't know."

"That makes sense." Lenora nodded thoughtfully. "It looked wild. I'm sure feeling it is even crazier, even though I was trying not to scramble you too badly. Although..." She looked Aridat up and down pointedly. "Maybe I wasn't ambitious enough."

Hearing that made Aridat's blood run cold. "W-what?"

"Don't get me wrong!" Lenora held up her hands in mock sincerity. "You look great, really. Normally I wouldn't be so picky. I can roll with androgynous. But tonight I was really looking for something more on the 'succubus' end of the spectrum."

"Fuck you," Aridat hissed.

"I'm sorry!" Lenora's grin was already breaking through her face. "This isn't an exact science, you know. But now that I've tested it out, I think it's safe to say that we can push this just a little bit further."

"Wait!" Aridat begged as she lifted up the ur-candle again. They couldn't let her change them any further. This was bad enough, but at least their old identity, their old name, was still within sight. "Stop, you can't-"

Lenora ignored them, and tipped more enchanted wax onto their true name.

Aridat immediately felt it again; that terrifying sense of displacement as their true name began to flow like fresh ink. It was ice-cold and shockingly intimate, and made them uncomfortable aware of all the ways they were being changed. It made them feel thin; so thin that they'd fold like paper under their own weight.

The sensation doubled when Lenora took her pen to the molten wax. This time she was more daring and less careful, streaking the wax and ink across the page in huge strokes. Aridat felt each one in their soul, even as they felt that name, newly-given, already beginning to slip away.

Once she was done, Lenora looked up. She was clearly proud of her penmanship, and looked at the incubus thoughtfully.

"Your name," she said, in that slow, deliberate way, "is Aridata."

Aridata's heart skipped a beat. "C-c'mon," she whined. "It's n-not."

"Your name," Lenora said again, more firmly, "is Aridata."

As futile as it might have been, Aridata couldn't help but try to fight it. "My name," she struggled. "Is... Ar... Aridat."

Even that, though, was surrender, and they both knew it. Aridata still remembered the name 'Ardat', but she couldn't bring herself to claim it. Not anymore. It wouldn't feel right. She wouldn't sound sure enough. But hearing her insist she was 'Aridat' now brought a maddening smile to Lenora's face and made the demon feel weak.

And the way it came out of her mouth was just as bad. 'Aridat', but with a new openness at the end; a hint, a wisp, a breath of something yet to be sounded out.

"Your name is Aridata," Lenora insisted simply.

Her words rippled over Aridata, making her shiver with their rhythm. "My name is Ari... Aridat... a... Ari..."

She was on the brink. Both of them knew it.

"Your name is Aridata."

"My name... my name is... A-Aridata."

As before, it was an incredible relief to say it. Aridata. That was her name. A-ri-da-ta. It sounded so different now. So light. That treasonous little 'a' appended to it, a whole syllable of femininity, opened up the entire name, making the harder consonants before it a mere prelude.

Aridata. It was a girl's name.

Aridata knew what that must mean. She reached up and touched her face, and found it different. It was her face, and it wasn't. It wasn't changing; an old, defunct reality was simply washing away, revealing a newer reality that might always have been there. Aridata's face was softer now. Less angular. She had wider eyes, petite brows, and a far less pronounced jawline. But that was absolutely nothing compared to what was happening to the rest of her body. Suddenly, Aridata had wide hips and curved thighs and, most distractingly of all, the distinct swell of breasts on her chest.

"Wow," Lenora commented, wolf-whistling. "Now that's more like it."

"Fuck. You!" Aridata spat, and was shocked at how girlish her voice sounded. She couldn't manage the same level of vitriol and spite as she had earlier.

"Maybe, soon." Lenora giggled. "You know, that outfit suits you much better now."

Aridata looked down at herself and almost choked. She was wearing the same clothing as before - black, tight-fitting, leather pants, and nothing else - but with her appearance it felt very different. She had gone from suave seducer to something much more butch, or perhaps tomboyish. Her hair, now mid-length, fit with that too. The whole thing felt like a pointed mockery, and that should have made Aridata violently angry.

Instead, it made her blush.

It was something about her chest. Having breasts, even small ones, made being topless feel very, very different. It made Aridata feel exposed; she was suddenly conscious of the air on her skin, and even more conscious of Lenora's gaze on her body. Everything about it was undignified. Even succubi preferred tempting, alluring, suggestive clothes to simply going topless! Instinctively, Aridata moved to cover herself and started looking around for a stray item of clothing she could use. Only the look of mirth in Lenora's eyes stopped her.

What was she doing? Aridata wasn't some kind of blushing maiden. She was... a man? That didn't sound right, even in her own head. But she knew she had to try and keep hold of that version of reality.

"What's the matter?" Lenora teased. "You weren't shy like this before. Isn't that interesting?"

"Hey!" Aridata huffed. "That's not-"

She broke off. She'd huffed. Since when did she huff? That wasn't like her at all. Except it was now. Even her mannerisms were suspect. The things Lenora could do with her candle and Aridata's true name went far beyond the superficial. Her mannerisms, her personality, her memories - all of them could be rewritten with no more than a stroke of a pen.

"Don't worry," Lenora said mockingly. "I enjoy you being more ladylike."

"I'm. Not." Aridata had to fight to keep her voice deep and even. "I-I'm a man."

Lenora just looked at him pityingly. They both knew how false it sounded. Aridata's voice was too high, too light, and the inner convictions of her nature were telling her otherwise, robbing her words of their conviction.