A young elf slowly climbed up the stairs in one of the large towers of the school. There was only one classroom in this part of the school, one that taught some of the most powerful but also dangerous magical arts in existence. After a rather exhausting climb, the young elf reached the summit of the stairs, finding the singular room that existed at the top. A large sign hung above the doorway reading “School of the Arcane Arts”.  This is where she needed to be. With a deep sigh of relief, she opened the door and entered the room.

The classroom didn’t look all too different from some of the other rooms she had been to. There were about 30 other people already in the room, roughly half of the room’s capacity. She let out a sigh of relief, thinking she made it on time. “Ms. Aelorena Oridi!” A very strict and mature feminine voice rang right behind the elf. Aelorena froze, shivers crawling down her spine. “You are late, miss. Would you like to tell the class why you couldn’t be here on time?” The teacher said, her voice rising in volume ever so slightly with every word.

“Well, I, uh…” Aelorena stepped over her own words as she tried to think of an excuse.
“Well if you are a slow thinker, perhaps consider taking a different course~” The teacher hummed. The young elf stood still as the teacher made her way to the front of the class. “What are you doing Ms. Oridi? Take a seat!”
“Ah!” Aelorena quickly dove into the closest chair to her, sitting right next to a rather short but fairly cute human girl. The girl turned her head to face Aelorena and gave out a shrug. Aelorena wasn’t sure what to make of this gesture.

Without a moment’s notice, the teacher began the class.
“Today we will be learning about celestial powers and how to utilize cosmic magic,” she said. As she spoke, the words that she spoke and a few diagrams appeared on the wall behind her. They were considerably more complicated than Aelorena anticipated. She scrambled to write down the notes, but the professor was simply too fast, so she missed out on important information.

“So now we will be doing some exercises to get some hands-on experience,” the teacher said.
“W-wait, I didn’t write everything down!” The elf said.
“Oh, well maybe if you were a bit faster getting to class, maybe you wouldn’t be so slow at taking some notes.” Aelorena gave the teacher a nasty look, but looked away before the teacher could notice.
“Who hires these kinds of people?” She thought to herself.

“As I was saying, you will be grouping up with the person next to you. One of you will be assisting the other in absorbing cosmic energy. Once the person who is accepting the power succeeds, please call me so we can move to the next step.” The class became a bit louder as the students started to converse with one another. Some of the students were quick to take advantage of this activity to simply chat while others jumped right into the assignment.

“So… what’s your name?” Aelorena turned to the girl sitting next to her. The human placed her pen down and looked back at Aelorena with a rather indifferent face.
“Rachel,” she said rather plainly.
“Nice to meet you Rachel!” Aelorena held out her hand for Rachel to shake, but the human girl had her eyes fixated on Aelorena’s face.
“What happened to your eye?”
“My eye? It’s… well, maybe I can tell you after class.”

Aelorena stood up along with Rachel. “So who should be the one absorbing the cosmic energy or whatever?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yes you. Elves are more potent with magic. This should be an easy A.” Rachel spoke incredibly plainly and rather monotone. Something about her annoyed Aelorena, but she couldn’t put a finger on what exactly it was about Rachel that pissed her off. Rachel motioned Aelorena to stand back a bit.

“You read the textbook, right?”
“Uh… no, this is my first time in this class!”
“Great….” Rachel let out a sigh before holding out her arms. “Just close your eyes and try to focus. I am directing the energy to you… now!” Aelorena did as she was instructed, but she didn’t feel any different.
“Is this working?”
“I said focus!”

The elf fell silent and went along with Rachel, closing her eyes again and trying to focus on the incoming energy. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t feel a thing.
“I’m sorry Rachel, but are you sure you are doing this right?”
“How dare you question my talents!” Rachel snapped. This caught Aelorena by surprise; Rachel had been so calm up to that point that her outburst even caused some of the other students to look over at them with concern.

“Hey, look, I’m trying! It’s just… I’m sorry, I don’t know what exactly I should be focusing on.” Aelorena said. Rachel didn’t reply and growled a little. The human girl’s behavior was in truth starting to piss Aelorena off as well. She was trying her best, but everyone around her had been treating her very poorly. Rachel noticed Aelorena’s expression turning sour but paid it no mind.
“We will try it one last time. If you can’t accept the channeled energy then we swap places.”

Once again, Rachel started to emit the cosmic energy to Aelorena. The elf clutched her fists, grasping onto the bit of energy she felt and pulling on it. It started off small, but the power continued to grow and grow inside of her. Rachel’s expression turned jollier as she noticed that their efforts were finally bearing fruit. “Yes, keep going! We are so close now.” Aelorena allowed the power to grow inside her. It was so powerful that she could barely hear anything but the raw energy inside her.

“Alright Aelorena, or Aelo, whatever they call you, you can stop now,” Rachel said. But Aelorena didn’t stop, in fact Rachel noticed that the elf’s skin was looking rather… odd. Aelo’s skin started to morph and changed in strange ways. The first thing Rachel noticed was that Aelorena’s skin was a strange collage on varying blues, purples, pinks, and blacks. It looked oddly beautiful, but Rachel knew something was wrong.

“Hey Aelorena, you can stop now! This is going too far!” Aelo couldn’t hear her pleas. She couldn’t hear the static like sounds from the energy she was absorbing anymore either. All she could hear was the strange, haunting, but also beautiful sounds of deep space. “Professor help! Something is wrong with Aelorena!” Rachel said, finally grabbing her teacher’s attention.
“What could possibly be- huh?” The teacher noticed Aelo and her strange changing body.

She now had the appearance of a misty night sky, with small galaxies and solar systems now dotting around her body. Aelo’s skin both looked flat but also had a strange hint of depth to it at the same time. “What in the world, Ms. Oridi, I demand you to stop at once!” The teacher tried to touch Aelorena, but instead reached into her… space. “What is this-” The teacher’s words were cut short as her clothes fell to the floor, now appearing to be covering up… something.

The students collectively gasped and took a step back. A tail sprung out from under the robes and a cute fluffy snout appeared on the other end. “Woof, woof, woof!” The former teacher, now a dog, barked. The dog walked around the room aimlessly, acting as it didn’t know how it got there or what it was even doing. A strange sound ringed through the air as Aelorena released herself, having absorbed all the energy she needed. The rest of the students glared in awe and horror, not sure if they should try talking to her or begin running away.

Aelo tried to speak, but all the other students could hear was an ungodly shriek. The dog started to bark and panic. Aelorena had no idea where the dog came from, but she let out another shriek/gasp as she recognized the robes on it. She looked down, seeing a literally alien body and began to freak out, letting out yet another shriek.
“Aelo stop!” Rachel called out, her ears just about at their limit.

Aelorena tried to speak again, but stopped as Rachel held out her arm. “Aelo please! I don’t know if you are trying to speak but you are making a horridly loud noise! You’re going to drive us mad!” Aelorena stared at Rachel, the once monotone girl now acting quite confident. She noticed that the human girl’s voice sounded quite friendlier and more concerned than before. “Try… whispering?” Rachel suggested.

There was a moment of silence before Aelo let out another shriek. But this time, it was not ear bleeding and the students including Rachel could make out what she was saying.
“I’m… sorry. I don’t know what happened to me or what I’ve done…” She managed to say.
“It’s alright… we just…” Rachel fell silent. She tried to think of what to say or even what they should do. Before she could say anything, Aelorena let out another whisper.
“Rachel… thank you~”

“I- uh…” Rachel’s face turned red. “Er, we aren’t quite out of the woods yet! I mean, I don’t know exactly what we should do….” Aelorena looked at the cowering dog in the corner of the room and floated over to it. The dog didn’t look back as it continued to cover its face with its paws. Aelo touched the dog again, giving it a few strokes and in an instant, the dog transformed back into the teacher.

“Bark bark- bark? Wha- what happened?” The teacher stood up, turning to face Aelorena and gasped. “You… uh… wait here while I get help.” She ran out of the room as fast as a bullet. It was quite a comedic sight causing the students to laugh.
“Hey Aelo….” Rachel said, grabbing Aelorena’s attention. “I’m sorry for mistreating you. I shouldn’t have pushed you as hard as I did.” Aelorena didn’t respond right away, but gave a nod.
“This feels so strange… this power, this energy…. Is it strange I don’t hate it?”

“What do you mean? You like being… that?”
“I’m not quite sure. If you don’t mind, would you like to reach inside me? I want to test something.”
“What!? It’s not that I don’t trust you, but after what happened to the professor-”
“Trust me on this, it won’t hurt at all.”
“I… sure.”

Rachel reached into the celestial girl and felt a strange wave of energy flow inside her. Her body felt different but it didn’t look all too different from what she could notice. “What did you do to me?” Aelo pointed at a nearby mirror, allowing Rachel to see what had changed. Her ears were long and pointed, her skin was lighter toned, and her eyes seemed to glow ever so slightly. “I’m… an elf?”
“Indeed, I have control of my powers. I thought I should grant you some better magic potency.” 

“This is… this amazing!” Rachel giggled and looked back at Aelorena. “I think this was an easy A for us~” The two transformed girls shared a laugh as their new friendship began to bloom.