Inside-Outside-In

Shae

A week had passed since finally accomplishing her goal. It had changed since her arrival in Tamyre, from “I need to get back to Earth,” to “I need to rescue Victoria”.

With it finally done, Shae felt truly relaxed, no longer having to worry about someone out of her reach. The final hurdle was Victoria’s reshaping, which they were still waiting on.

Merrin is a space mage, so who even knows just how hard it is to get a letter to them? They might’ve teleported someplace far away.

Shae that about other places on Earth she could go to, but genuinely couldn’t think of anywhere she really wanted to be in that world. Not all her memories there were bad; it just felt like a different life that she was no longer interested in.

She also made sure to test out teleportation magic while aboard a carriage, and found that, in order to teleport to a different spot on the carriage, she had to picture its movement in relation to the ground as part of her teleportation.

So I really might’ve died had I attempted it on the skyship. That’s scary to think about.

She went to visit Leanor one night, and once again thanked her for all the help she had given her a year ago. The old woman was bewildered by Shae’s mental changes, but felt happy that she was doing okay now.

She teased Shae about wrecking her in another spar, but it had just been a joke. She had no interest in fighting, but had found that it helped keep Shae’s mind off her situation back then, so that’s why she did it.

Victoria had been having lots of fun, far more than she had ever had on Earth. She could dress how she wanted—though she didn’t have much she actually liked wearing yet—draw without her parents coming to yell at her and demand she do something more worthwhile with her time, she had plant magic, her sister was back, she had a new place to explore, and she had made a new friend in Tria, even if her Tiirve was still rough.

It was quite literally the happiest she had ever been, and she hadn’t even gotten her reshaping yet.

Shae also changed her Main sub-skill from [Space] to [Plant], as she no longer needed to desperately learn it. It would still be an invaluable tool, especially for returning from missions, but she could finally just pick whichever sub-skill she felt like.

She had done a little testing before changing it, and found that if her mana was full, then she could teleport everyone just once. Back in Gortrand, she had been practicing a lot already when she teleported the whole group.

Shae did have to get back to doing missions, though. Her debt was also close to being paid off, likely to happen within the next few weeks. And even in this world, things weren’t free.

Shae had been worried that it might be many months before Elna finally received her letter, but it was only a single week before the clawed woman was waiting for them in their inn one day. Victoria had actually been drawing at the table next to her, having no idea who she was sitting next to.

“Elna, hi!”

“Hello, Shae. I’m here as promised. Is your sister around right now?”

Shae laughed. “She’s to your left.”

Victoria had been wondering who her sister was talking to, and now that the attention focused on her, which made her uncomfortable.

{Vicky, she’s Elna, the flesh mage I told you about.}

{What!? She’s been right next to me!?}

{Yeah. Come on, let’s go to your room to do this in private.}

{Yes!}

Elna wondered, “I’m curious about how this will work. This requires communication, and it’s only been a week since you brought her to this world? If even that?”

“Will several detailed drawings from the person herself help?”

“That would be a first for me, but it will be far more than I usually get from my clients. It generally requires several meetings of discussing highly-specific details. People often have an idea of what they want, but don’t know how to describe it.”

Victoria had run through the inn, and Shae and Elna only just now caught up. Her sister had already cleared the table of anything irrelevant, leaving only the reshaping-related drawings remaining.

Elna sat down and began to look at them. “Oh my, these are rather incredible, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, she’s great, isn’t she?”

Victoria impatiently asked, {What’s she saying?}

{That you’re a good artist. You should sit down, since we apparently have to go through every detail to make sure she gets it all right.}

The drawings ended up expediting the process to such a degree that Elna had everything she needed after only an hour. She had filled a notebook with everything she needed to keep track of.

Elna had Victoria lie on the bed and placed one of the chairs next to it for herself.

Shae sat down on the other side, and her sister grabbed her hand.

{Thank you so much, Shae. I can’t believe this is happening.}

{You can thank me when you find out what the gift I have for you after this is. It’s not quite your 18th birthday, but it’s close enough.}

She chuckled, {You never stop with this, do you?}

{I will literally come back from the dead, wreck your house, and throw you into another world to make you happy.}

She laughed.

Elna interrupted, “If you are done, I’m going to begin. Please keep silent unless I ask something.”

Shae relayed Elna’s message to Victoria. Though they had just spent an hour discussing all the changes in detail, things sometimes came up mid-process during the reshaping that the flesh mage would need to clarify as much as they could.

With her notes in front of her and several reference images placed all around, Elna placed her hands on Victoria’s abdomen and began.

Victoria gasped slightly at the sensation of magic spreading through her body, different from the feeling she had experienced only a week ago.

Her body began to shrink. Everywhere, her body mass decreased, and her height decreased to 160 cm¹5'3". All the mass that had only just been there had become waste mana to be reabsorbed by magic itself.

As a result of gaining magic a week ago, her skin color had become pastel green with swirling, lavender line tattoos throughout, and could only be changed a small amount; either darker or lighter. Victoria had chosen to leave it as it was.

Her hair was dark green, but had been cut short, and Victoria nearly cried in happiness at finally being allowed to have long hair. It was awkwardly bunching up around her head as it grew out because she was laying down, so Shae moved it aside, being careful of the lavender flowers in her hair.

The flowers were foci for her spells, though she couldn’t use them very well yet. Laying on them wasn’t an issue, and she had even experimentally plucked one just to test the feeling. She did feel it, but it hadn’t hurt like they expected it would. A new flower slowly grew where the plucked one had been.

Other, smaller changes began taking place. Her body hair vanished, leaving only a faint, near-invisible sort of peach fuzz remaining. Victoria had wanted to get rid of it entirely, but after hearing Elna’s explanation of all the things it did and demonstrating just how invisible it was, she was fine with it.

Her eyebrows and nose changed shape, becoming smaller, and more and more tiny changes finalized.

Finally, Elna was done, and collapsed backward on her chair, head hanging forward as she breathed heavily.

Victoria stared down at her body in disbelief, then slowly raised her hands to her face to look at them.

Shae let her be, happy for her sister.

Victoria bolted up and rushed to the mirror on the wall. Her pants fell off along the way, leaving her in only a large shirt.

Shae told the flesh mage, “Thank you so much for doing this, Elna.”

She nodded and replied, “Of course. And I didn’t burn myself out this time like I accidentally did with you.”

Right, the first time I saw her, she was laying on the ground, barely even able to move.

Shae and Elna remained quiet. Victoria continued to examine the changes and was crying happily. Finally, she tackled Shae in a hug.

{Thank you so much, Shae! For everything. This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me and-ow-my-new-boobs-hurt-because-I-ran-into-you-really-hard!}

The older sibling laughed, {Yeah, I know the pain of running into things with your new boobs.}

{What am I going to do about clothes, though…? I’ll have to tie things super tight, I think. And maybe keep a big shirt or something? I don’t know yet.}

{That’s actually the gift I mentioned. I was saving up all this time for your reshaping. But since that ended up being done for free…}

{You bought me a bunch of clothes?}

{No no, I only have a vague idea of what you like, and there was no way I could know what your sizes would be after being reshaped. It’s just money right now. To spend on whatever you want and start your new life.
|
{It’s not a huge amount, but it should be enough to help you get started.}

 

———

 

Victoria

How do I literally have the best sister in the world? No, two worlds. No, all the worlds!

Victoria had worked with Tria and Zena for this moment. She let go of Shae and turned toward Elna, raised her palm, and said, “Thank you so much for everything, and thank you for saving Shae’s life last year.”

She wasn’t completely sure what the woman said in response, but the words and tone that she did understand meant she was welcome.

Turning back to her sister, she excitedly yelled, {Shae! Clothes! Let’s go!}

{Alright. Let’s find something to fit you, first. You’re still half-naked.}

{O-Oh, right.}

They looked through her Earth clothes and found something that she could keep on for long enough to get something that fit her new frame.

Shae commented, {You’re so tiny, now. Just a little nugget.}

{I’m not tiny, you’re just big! You’re probably the tallest person I’ve ever seen in real life! Two meters²6'7" is too much!}

She shrugged. {Anyway, I have to stop by the Center. I don’t carry that money around on my person. Have you been there yet? I know you’ve wandered around on your own a lot.}

{Yeah. I saw bodies there. The reality of this world hit me then…}

{Are you okay?}

{I am. I actually wanted to sign up after I understood Tiirve better so I could travel with you. I still want to, but I understand that it’s not just adventuring around and having fun all the time.}

{Well, it’s your choice. My graduation test was to kill a person. One of the reasons it was chosen for my team was so I could do it under more controlled conditions rather than out somewhere else. I had explained how I had never been in a real fight before, so they knew the kind of mentality I had.
|
{If you want to, they’ll train you and teach you lots of stuff. Just don’t sign up half-heartedly. I would help you learn, too, of course.}

{How did you get around the other world issue?}

{What do you mean?}

{I mean, how did you keep it a secret from people? Your friends and Elna know, but what about everyone else?}

{Oh, I just tell them if it comes up. People don’t care. If anything, it makes things easier, because then they know why I might be lacking knowledge on something and other things like that.}

{R-Really? Just like that?}

{Yep. People from other worlds aren’t common, but it’s happened enough times throughout history that it’s more of a novelty than some kind of big existential reveal that there are more worlds out there.}

{That’s incredible… What other options are there for learning about the world in case I want to do something else?}

{Not that much, really… There are schools for the kids growing up in this world, but you’re already considered an adult here. For uneducated adults, the Mercenary Center is really good. They pack in a bunch of knowledge, and the debt isn’t something that takes an entire lifetime to pay off.
|
{It only provides a foundation, but it’s a solid one. And you can use the library there any time, even after graduating.
|
{Also, they have language classes there. If you want to learn Tiirve faster, then that’s the place to go. I was actually pretty lucky to show up in this part of the world, because it’s a language that’s known throughout this whole half of the continent. And there are worse countries than this one out there.}

{Like what?}

{The Gortrand Empire. That place is a nightmare. Anyway, are you ready?}

{Yeah, I think these are kept on about as well as they can be for now. I’ll probably have to hold them up.}

{It'll only be a few minutes before we can get you into something that fits you and that you actually like.}

When they reached the Mercenary Center so Shae could withdraw her money, Victoria also decided to sign up.

I'm so excited! Finally, I can actually start living!

 

End of Book One.