Chapter VI: Exposed

There were a few brief moments, early the next morning, I thought that my adventures in Selene had been but a dream. Those moments ended when I, in my half-asleep state, firmly grabbed my left breast. Huh. Looking around, I discovered, somewhat to my confusion, that I had not only been changed into a loose frilly thing that I assumed was pajamas in this world, but that I was also sharing a bed with one of the servants, a girl named Sitara whom I had never seen before. A little while later, Anna arrived to cart me off to my schedule for the day, and what was apparently going to be my life now.

First was breakfast, which was when I realized that I hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before, in another dimension and with a different body. I really couldn’t have cared less about what they put in front of me, but the piles of some kind of cured meat and eggs and bread weren’t half bad. From there it was on to learning how to dress myself. Anna measured me, which is how I found out that I was now five feet zero inches tall. That handily explained why all of the doors were so big all of a sudden. Then she showed me the proper way to pick out clothes, as well as keeping my girls in check, if you know what I mean. I’m talking about boobs, to be clear.

What I rapidly began to realize was that being the ward of Lady Halflance was a sort of an education, with the subject being the skills required to survive in the upper echelons of Bluerose society. The problem was that the upper echelons of society in the Republic of Bluerose resembled a cross between a reality TV show and a cockfighting pit in a scrapyard. After learning how to wear clothes good, it was on to what I like to call “How Not to Get Challenged to a Duel 101”. Aisha, the head of staff who had last seen me running half-naked through the manor convinced that she was a hallucination, was to teach me the proper etiquette for high society. It didn’t work out. After about an hour and a half of trying and failing to impress upon me the correct time when it is appropriate to shake hands with a stranger versus merely prostrating yourself before them, I was handed back off to Anna.

“How were your lessons?” asked Anna.

“I would rather be used as a test subject for new forms of hammer. Do I have to learn how to be humble at people?” I grumbled.

“Yes, you do,” said Anna, sounding surprisingly angry. “You don’t know this place, but I do, and I can tell you that manners matter here. You are Lady Halflance’s ward, which means that you need to be able to represent her household well at parties, and meetings, and demonstrations, and even in Parliament!”

“So what!” I said, throwing up my arms. “Do I have to know the order coffee is served in to represent my household well? Is being a decent person not enough for these people?”

“I suppose the idea is that having manners makes you a good person, because it means you care about others. Besides, if being a decent person was necessary to forge alliances and all that, then nobody in the upper classes would ever get anything done.”

She started walking down the hallway, and I followed. I was silent, thinking about what she had said. I suppose it made sense, using manners as a substitute for care and morality to establish who you were. It didn’t make learning all the freaking rules any easier. Then, a particularly pernicious thought came into my head, and I stopped dead. Anna continued for a few more steps before realizing that I wasn’t moving.

“What is it, Marcus?”

“You can call me Emma, actually. I figure that’s a more appropriate name, less likely to draw attention. I was just wondering why everyone seems to hate Lady Halflance so much?” Anna suddenly became very interested in the wallpaper, pursing her lips.

“If you ever get the chance, ask Lady Halflance about her children. Just don’t be surprised if you get an unpleasant reaction.” Anna glanced back at me, then back down the hallway. “Now come, you have an appointment with Miss Rook.” She said, beckoning me onwards. 

“Miss Rook? The head of the guard? What do I have to learn from her?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I just follow the orders, I don’t make them.” From there, Anna lead me through the halls of the manor, and out into the huge lawn that surrounded the back and sides of the manor, away from the street. Across the lawn, towards the back of the estate, was a large and ornate building, bedecked in white marble. This, I learned, was the gymnasium, complete with a pool, track, and even warm showers. It suddenly came to my attention that I had not had a shower since arriving on Selene either, which possibly explained why Aisha disliked me so much. Anna lead me to the changing room.

“Well, I can’t exactly in good conscience go further. Lady Halflance said that Miss Rook would be waiting for you here.” 

I nodded. 

“See you later.” I tested the doorknob to the changing room, and found it unlocked. So, I opened up and stepped in.

The changing room was simple, tile floors and wooden benches, with brass fixtures for hanging clothes and dim gas lighting along the walls. Sitting on one of those benches, completely nude, was one Miss Rook. I… I didn’t look for long, I swear. But when there’s a woman, especially someone as notable as Miss Rook, right there in front of you, and completely naked, it’s really impossible to not absorb some amount of information. She was…buff, for one thing, built like an MMA fighter, with a broad back and shoulders. It made sense that I had mistaken her for a man for a second or two the first time I met her. There were also a series of horrific scars running horizontal across her back, each one deep and red, with obvious cross-stitching running all the way from one side to another. I had a brief moment to wonder what in the hell could have caused such scars before Miss Rook noticed my presence.

“Turn around, please,” she said. I did so, having already started to avert my eyes anyway. But something was off, and after a few seconds I realized what. Her accent was different, sounding almost celtic. I hadn’t heard anything like it since arriving on Selene, and I definitely hadn’t heard it coming from her when we had met earlier.

“Alright, you can turn around,”said Miss Rook. She pronounced “you” closer to “ye”. I did so, and Rook was indeed dressed, with loose white pants and a shirt; something you might associate with a sailor.

“So, uh, now that you’re dressed, there’s something I was wondering. What exactly am I here to do?” I said.

Miss Rook folded her arms. “I’m going to train you how to fight with sword, gun, and fist.” I could not have heard that right. I hadn’t even thrown a punch since elementary school, and now I was being taught how to fight.

“What? Why do I need to know how to fight?”

“Because, Miss Farrier, you’re part of the Halflance household now. The Archopolid from last night was just the beginning. Not to mention that these skills will be very useful with you temperament…” Rook smirked.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re very bad at making people not hate you, including me. Now get changed, we have a lot to work on.” I got changed, using my expert clothes-wearing skills from earlier that morning. Then it was off, with pretty much the same stuff you’d do in a typical PE class. This whole “ward” thing was starting to remind me of high school. The difference was that I honestly felt healthier. Before, I had never really cared for my body in any but the most cursory ways, which lead to me being winded after running for more than about 30 seconds. Evidently this body hadn’t been destroyed yet, meaning I was able to run for what felt like forever. Even then, Rook had me beaten, keeping pace with me without breaking a sweat. After a few laps of the entire estate, several dozen pushups (damn my tiny stick arms, no matter how cute they may look!), and even having to shove around a cart full of gardening supplies that someone had left around, I was finally allowed to stumble back indoors.

“Come now,” said Rook. “We have to get to your actual training!” I wanted to make some snarky comeback, but I was too busy trying to catch my breath. She shoved me ahead of her, leading me to a large open room in the gym, equipped with a series of wooden mannequins. I stopped near the entrance, leaning my back against the wall to take a breath. Then Rook approached me, holding out a dull grey metal saber. It was rather long, maybe two and a half feet plus the grip. The blade was chipped, dull, and blunt, with a gentle curve all along its length. The grip was sized for one hand, an oval cylinder highly wrapped in leather, though given how small I am my hand didn’t take up all the available space. Extending from the crossguard was a thin strip of metal curving around the grip, attaching to the end of the grip at the other end.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” I said, staring at the sword. 

Rook raised an eyebrow at me. “Hold it,” she said. “I’m going to teach you how to use this thing.” I took the saber in my hand, nearly dragging it along the ground with how long it was. Rook lead me out into the middle of the room.

“Now then, first thing’s first, you need to learn how to stand properly,” said Rook. She took up a stance, half-turned away from me. “You want to stand like this, keeping most of your weight on the back foot.” I copied her, poorly. She spent a few minutes correcting my stance before moving on.

“You need to hold up your saber, because it won’t do you any good pointed at the ground. You are right-handed, yes?” I nodded. “Then put your left hand on your hip, or behind your back, or somewhere else out of the way.”

“Wait, why would I fight with only one arm? Wouldn’t it be better to have a secondary hand out to block the person attacking me?” Rook flared her nostrils, before turning on her heel and going to grab another sword. Once she had it, she silently stood in front of me, well away out of sword range. She took a deep breath, in and out. Then she swung the blade three times, grunting with exertion as she whipped the sword with incredible speed, turning the steel into a blur. As her finale, she snapped the sword forward, thrusting across almost a yard of space in a moment.

“That is how fast your opponent’s sword will be moving. Furthermore, in a real fight, the sword will be sharp enough to cut the hair off of your head without pushing it aside. Do you believe that you can block or deflect that with your hand?” I put my hand on my hip. Then I made a terrible decision. The decision was to open my big fat mouth.

“What’s the deal with your accent? You sound different than when we first met.” Rook’s eyes went wide. Then, she took a quick step forwards, cutting in with her sword. I panicked, attempting to knock her blade out of the way with my own, but she was much too fast for me. The sword swing brought her to my upper arm, but she didn’t carry through. Instead, she brought the saber momentarily to a halt before flicking the flat of the blade into my skin. It stung like hell, but didn’t cut or break.

“If this were a real duel, your arm would have been severed and you would be bleeding out,” said Miss Rook in her more refined accent from earlier. “Now then, let us go over the basics.”

The rest of the lesson was fairly technical, going over the basic forms of strike and defense with a saber, with promises to go over each one at a later time. Given that by that point I was exhausted, Rook let me go to lunch. The rest of the day passed uneventfully. There were no more lessons, thank god, though I was encouraged to wander the manor and become acquainted with the layout of the place. With the sheer size of the thing, that proved difficult. I was also shown to the library, which was impressively huge, spread out across all three floors of the manor. Apparently the Halflances were book enthusiasts. I spent a few hours in there, and planned to return. Then came a late dinner, and not too long after that all of the walking around began to get to me. Anna lead me to my room; it was a small guest room, which the staff had been frantically preparing with all of the ridiculously small clothes available.

As I was getting changed for bed, I realized that there was one other important feature in my room; a full-length mirror. So I did the most reasonable thing: I stripped naked and looked at myself in it. This was the first time I had had real privacy since arriving on Selene and getting transformed; every other second had been surrounded by servants, or else in public. And sure, I had gotten glimpses of myself when I was getting changed or looking down, but nothing serious. If I was going to be living in this body, I had to find out what I looked like at some point.

It was really intimidating at first. I mean, I was looking at a girl naked. But it was also looking at me naked, which I guess made it fine. But that raised a whole other problem, because I was looking at a new me that was different from what I had before. I was worried that I was going to hate it, or that having to really look at my new body would cause me to freak out over it. I ended up standing in the middle of my room, completely exposed, with the mirror angled away from me for at least a couple of minutes. Then, I closed my eyes, running my hands down my sides. It was still my body, and dammit I was going to see what I actually looked like. So I walked in front of the mirror.

The first thing I noticed was that my hips were like, super huge. The second thing I noticed was that I still looked pretty much like me. There were a lot of differences, sure, like the tits and the aforementioned hips and that one other thing that I really didn’t want to think about, but I was still recognizable. My hair was the same, short and brown, just long enough to cover the tops of my ears. I still had dark blue eyes, big and expressive I had been told, and a light smattering of freckles. My face was still rather round, without a prominent chin, though the skin was softer and lighter without the stubble.

As for the rest of me, I wasn’t exactly a model, before or after the change. I was still a bit chubby, though not fat. The breasts threw me off a bit, but I wasn’t exactly busty so they just sort of faded into the rest of my figure. And the rest of me, with one exception, was just the same but with a few extra curves here and there, because baby got back apparently. I kept looking for a few minutes, just to get in all the detail. I felt weirdly okay with this new body, even with all of its quirks. It wasn’t the ideal body or anything like that, but it was nice. I even felt a little bit attractive, which was new. I guess even when I become a woman, women are still hot to me. I paused. Did that make me a lesbian? I mean… I looked down to check. I was definitely still a woman, with all the proper parts. I guess that made me gay, along with basically everyone else on the planet, though I wasn’t sure exactly where that put Lady Alonhall.

I stood in front of the mirror for a bit longer, turning around to get a good view, poking at various bits, and so on. Satisfied with my examination, and suddenly feeling extremely self-conscious, I put some clothes on and tried to fall asleep. At least this night, my dreams were free of spiders.