Handbook of Erotic Fantasy: Sexual Dimorphism (Patreon)

Fighter was beautiful. She had to admit that now. No matter how she tried to fight against the idea, there was no denying that she was a stone-cold fox. Full on knockout. Ten out of ten blonde bombshell, complete with the “stacked” template and a side-order of damn. And against all expectations, that had been enough. It had earned her the finest half-orc girlfriend in all of Handbook-World.

The battle against the dragon had been glorious. Fighter had come in astride Lumberjack Explosion like an avenging valkyrie. Mr. Stabby had screamed some complicated battlecry concerning fate, inexorable death, and the will to persist in the face of a hostile cosmos. “““Horsepower””” had lowered his head and speared the dragon straight in the pooper. None of that mattered though. What mattered is what came after the battle.

“You were magnificent!” said Elf Princess.

“⚔️🐉🏆,” said Ranger.

“Blood,” said Mr. Stabby, neatly concluding the latest verse of his ongoing dactylic hexameter battle ballad.

It was every bit as good as the old days. It hadn’t mattered that Fighter’s tits were out. It hadn’t mattered that her princess costume was in tatters, or that she blushed when Ranger called her a 🏆, or that her own battle cry (a much-less poetic “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”) had come out soprano. She had saved the day. She was a gods-damned hero. And all of that was about to be ruined by a lack of AA batteries.

It was a week later. It was Team Bounty Hunter HQ, and the bathroom lights blazed with demented clarity. The artifact lay within her hands. The tiny print of the accompanying booklet tried to explain. And Fighter was near tears.

“What do you mean ‘permanent’ doesn’t mean ‘permanent?’” she wailed. It was shit like this that made her hate magic. But as much as the esoteric arcana eluded her, she had enough INT to recognize its utility. The Shears of the Norel Company had long since rescued her from life as a furry. But now, for literally NO REASON, the magic had faded. And with it, the only thing that made her worth loving.

Fighter could not bear to look in the mirror. She already knew what waited there. She had endured that horror once before. Gone was the svelte human. In her place was a hideous amalgam of hair, tusks, and muscle. Fighter knew exactly what she had become: a goblinoid. A loathsome, ugly creature. A wild thing of flared black and brown fur whose pelt jut out at freakish angles. Her ears were large and floppy, draping shoulder-length, adding to her unnatural shape. It was awful! Inconceivable! Her eyes were too big for her head! They were tremendous milk-white ovals looming on either side of her wheezy pig-like nose. Her panting mouth was filled with bristly needle-teeth spiderwebbed in disgusting strands of yellowish saliva, all vibrating to the tune of her wheezing breath. Fighter needed no mirror to understand what had become of her. It was all there in the flavor text.

Then it got worse. Ranger’s gentle knock came upon the bathroom door (“⚔️,” she asked. “👍❓.”

And what could she say? What could Fighter do? Trapped in a small room, transformed into something fundamentally wrong, and with a voice on the other side of the door asking concerned questions, Fighter felt a strange sense of deja vu. It was as if she’d been here before, though she could not recall the circumstance or context. Her miind was wandering, she relized. She was in a panic. Fighter imagined climbing out a window, joining a different party, and starting a new life in disguise under the false name, “Fighter.” But then, that was the coward’s way out. Fighter was a hero. And only a CR ¼ bitch would opt for the easy way out.

“Hon?” said Fighter. “I think I need some help.”