"I'm where I'm meant to be."

The thought came into Nikola's head as she skulked and weltered through the chthonian catacombs of Castle Vesh, her wicked vampire boyfriend's wicked vampire lair.

It was not a thought Nikola had expected to have.  

"I'm where I'm meant to be."

On the most literal, factual level it was just untrue. She had meant to be with her incestuous sister-mommy Tatiana and Joanna Bolliger, the ginger tomboy whore. Three hot teens off on their first adventure together into the unbeating heart of darkness, to confront the casual cruelty of the undead and the berserk savagery of Minotaurs, and to mediate them with the power of love, kindness, and the burning eroticism of youthful passion.  

She was meant to be with her horny little polycule.

But she was alone.

The Delivery Door had placed each of the three teenage adventurers somewhere different in the Castle. For Nikola that had been in the vampires' opulent Recital Lounge, next to a cruel torture instrument called a 'harpsicord.'

The air was thick and slow. That night the Castle fell under the shadow of chaos and prophecy. Any fool could feel it. Minds and Bodies moved differently, responding to the pressure of inevitable and cataclysmic change. To walk through the corridors of Vesh that night was to feel destiny around you, syrupy against the skin.

Nikola herself was a child of prophecy.  

Years before Nikola's birth, the third Madame Sausages had told the latest Madame Sausages that Nikola would be a non-binary boy who used she/her pronouns. But the latest Madame Sausages was a lazy fucking bitch who couldn't be bothered to explain that to anyone. So Nikola had never known and had to work it out for herself. Which was pretty complicated for a kid in a medieval village, even a medieval village with as thriving and supportive an LGBT scene as Spetlamu.

Putting as much distance as she could between herself and the harpsicord, which should be anyone's first priority in any situation involving a harpsicord, Nikola searched the castle for... for what? 

Her polycule, with whom she was meant to be adventuring?

Her vampire boyfriend, or his wives, who she'd come here to warn?

The way out?

Rutt the Minotaur, who she'd come here to help Tatiana reason with? Well, maybe not "reason" exactly, more like "wank until he stopped murdering people."

As she slipped from room to room, what did Nikola hope to find? Where did she want to be?

"I'm where I'm meant to be."

That strange thought again. 

Maybe Nikola just thought she was meant to be in the Castle itself. The home of her lover. The Burgrave Chevoy Vesh had groomed her since she was ten years old and been a selfish and exploitative sexual partner since she passed the age of consent, but Nikola loved him. There was a lot to work out there. A lot of difficult feelings to resolve, face up to, and come to terms with. And that resolution could never come while the Burgrave kept up his walls and boundaries, while he kept Nikola at arms length. For any sort of accountability and healing to begin, the Burgrave Chevoy Vesh had to open up to Nikola once in a while, instead of Nikola always just opening up her besthole for the vampire.

It wasn't just strange that Nikola had never been in Vesh's home before. It was strange that she'd never even thought about it. 

"Godfolk, I'm so fucked up," Nikola said to herself. Sometimes she wondered if it was even possible to have a happy healthy relationship with an immortal predator who'd groomed and exploited you since childhood, but she was determined to try. She was no quitter!

 Rutt the Minotaur walked round the corner, his body dripping with blood and gore and his massive cock fully engorged and dripping with precum. 

Mounted on his left horn was the severed head of Evangelina the Lesbian Vampire. 

Mounted on his right horn were the severed tits of Evangelina the Lesbian Vampire. 

Nikola didn't recognise any of these body parts as having belonged to her lover's wife, who she'd never met, but she did recognise the severed head as being a severed head and the severed tits as being severed tits. Just about. They were a bit of a mess from having been hacked off with an axe and skewered on the horn, but if you looked at the two and squinted you could puzzle it out.

"Fucking hell!" shrieked Nikola.

"I'm where I'm meant to be" said Rutt the Minotaur.

Nikola felt her own lips moving, felt the breath that carried the words leaving her mouth.

Rutt hadn't said it alone. Rutt and Nikola had said it together, the same words, in perfect unison. 

"What the fuck!" shrieked Nikola. 

"Damned if I know, bitchboy," said the Minotaur, "What're you even doing here?"

"Did... did we both just say the same thing, like together?"

"Yeah. You heard us."

Nikola was freaking out. Of all the possible things she could have run into - her adventuring party, the vampires, the way out, the minotaur - then the Minotaur was her least preferred possibility.

She hadn't known what would happen if that possibility had come to pass - something grotesque, violent and rapey would have been her guess - but she would never have guessed that they'd both just look at each other and simultaneously repeat a vague affirming mantra.

 "We're where we're meant to be? What made us say that? Why are we where we meant to be?"

"I'm massacring vampires," said Rutt, "So I guess I'm where I'm meant to be 'cos this is where they live. Doing pretty well so far. Killed all the cunts. Amputated three of their teats and one of their arms. Just your bf left to get now. Hey, kid... you want me to chop his dick off for you? In case you ever feel like shoving it up your tight teen ass for old times' sake?" 

"No thank you."

"Whatever, bitchboy. So... that's why I'm where I'm meant to be, why are you where you're meant to be?"

Nikola looked Rutt in the eyes. 

"I think maybe I mean, like, as a person?"

"Yeah?"

Nikola realised she wasn't looking Rutt in the eyes after all, she was looking in the eyes of Evangelina's severed and horn-mounted head.

She looked Rutt in the eyes.

"Yeah... I guess in terms of working out that I'm a non-binary boy. That's not been an easy concept for someone my age to get their head around, especially while growing up in a medieval village and being groomed and sexually exploited by an important sexual predator who just wants to see you as a twink."

Rutt put his hand on Nikola's shoulder.

"Yeah, kid. That's some heavy shit to unpack while going through abuse, and yeah I'm gonna call it abuse, that would tend to derail the formation of an identity you feel you can own."

"I guess I always understood that I was outside the gender binary...that I wasn't male or female... but I always thought that meant I had to abandon a concept of myself as a 'boy,' and I didn't want to. Rightly or wrongly, I have had meaningful experiences I associate with being a boy, and I want to express an identity that reflects my lived experience. So it's been kinda hard giving myself permission to call myself a 'non-binary boy.' It sounds kinda self-contradictory and dumb, but..."

"Hey, hey... it ain't dumb at all. And it's only self-contradictory to folks too dumb to listen when people tell them who they are."

The minotaur had knelt down now to bring himself to Nikola's eye-level. Nikola really appreciated this as it meant the bloody body parts of the defiled lesbian weren't dripping on her anymore.

"What's with the she/her pronouns though?" asked the brutal Minotaur hero, "You'd think since you're nb you'd go with they/them, or since you're a boy you'd go with he/him. Where's the lady pronouns coming from?"

Nikola laughed.

"Honestly?"

"Yeah, we're having a fucking moment here, bitch."

"Honestly, it's just that I think it's cool when drag queens do it. The couple at the church's LGBT society are both cis dudes, but they both use she/her and it's just... it's just cool I guess. All the tropes and conventions of drag aren't for me, but I like the space for play and exploration of identity that it creates, so I sort wanted to build a little bit of that into who I am. My she/her pronouns aren't female. They're just queeny." 

"Sounds right to me. About the space for play and exploration for sure." Rutt had served five tours in the Idea Wars. You didn't get through that alive without having done a little drag. 

Rutt looked approvingly at his cumdump's sibling, at his prey's prey. The kid had done pretty well figuring all that shit out about herself. Maybe she was where she needed to be.

Nikola had achieved something amazing by understanding so much about herself, in a quasi-medieval village, at such a young age, while surviving a very unhealthy relationship with a vampire, losing a parent to a medieval shitting disease, and sucking her sisters tits.

Nikola was an amazing person.

It was kind of sad that in less than a minute, Nikola would no longer exist.

All that work into constructing an identity that was about to be lost to the world. 

Lost to the world with a wiggle, wiggle, POP!

Ahegao the Magic Christmastime Kitten had sighted her prey.

Ahegao the Magic Christmastime Kitten loved her vampires and wanted to protect them. Wanted to use her teleporting powers to take their enemies far, far away from the castle. She had already removed a six-inch tall tomboy fairy with big black spectacles and an immaculate tiny coinslot cunt.

Now Ahegao had sighted the enboy and the Minotaur. Nikola and Rutt were in her sights.

All she had to do was do the special wiggles with her naughty magic shoulder-tentacles and POP! them right away to a different biome.

Best to do both at once, she thought.

Her right tentacle elongated as long as it could, as long as when she'd been pushing it into the dryad's womb, and wrapped itself around the ankles of the enboy and the Minotaur.

Her left tentacle started to do the magic wiggles that would teleport them all away.

Wiggle... Wiggle... pop? No. No pop? Why no pop? Why was the magic kitten's kitten magic not teleporting the intruders? Her right tentacle had them in it's grasp. Her left tentacle was doing the magic wiggles real good. Why were they still in the castle?

Because this shit was never gonna work on Rutt the Minotaur.

Rutt had served five tours in the Idea Wars. One in the 'Local Conceptual Space' of the Lands of Lust and Pain, one in an artificial simulacrum of Trump's America, one in the real Britain of the Nineteen-Seventies, one in Narnia, and one in the Land of Oz. He'd seen some shit. 

You don't fight in the Idea Wars and not build up a resistance against hostile dislocation magics.

The Minotaur was immediately aware of the kitten trying to teleport him. His Idea War training kicking in without him even thinking.

An enemy was trying to pull him out of the Material World and relocate him to another part of it.

A will contrary to his own was arguing its case to reality, was asserting with magic wiggles the contention that Rutt the Minotaur should be somewhere other than where he had put himself. 

Fuck that. Rutt knew how to fight that. You made a stronger case to reality.

Wiggle! Wiggle! POP! argued the kitten, trying to teleport Rutt.

"I'm where I'm meant to be," argued the Minotaur, trying not to be teleported.

The kitten pulled.

The Minotaur anchored.

The kitten pulled.

The Minotaur remained unmoved.

And the elastic snapped. The strange, stretchy, wiggly teleporting magic that was at work flew apart, and sent its components flying. 

Except the Minotaur. The Minotaur remained unmoved. But everything else that had been caught within the scope of Ahegao's snapped magic sprung off through reality.

The phrase "I'm where I'm meant to be" didn't go too far. Just back through time a little ways, back into the mind of Nikola and into the mouths of Nikola and Rutt.   

Nikola and Ahegao were sent hurtling some distance. It was the last thing that ever happened to them. That ever happened to them as separate individuals anyway. Spinning chaotically through the space between spaces and arriving at the same space, what arrived was not either.

Nikola's biomass arrived just over the Forfeiture/Ligature border, where Ahegao had teleported Joanna.

Ahegao's biomass arrived just over the Forfeiture/Ligature border, where Ahegao had teleported Joanna.

But neither Nikola nor Ahegao arrived.

Nikola was gone. Ahegao was gone.

What remained was a fusion of the two. Of their minds, of their bodies (both somatically expressed and genetically coded), of their passions.

Nikola the non-binary boy who used she/her pronouns was gone.

Ahegao the magic kitten was gone.

What remained was a purple-skinned futa catgirl.

"Wow, you're cute!" said Joanna the Fairy.