Riven wasn’t known as Riven back then.

The Constellation Academy was built on a hilltop far from any major cities. Apparently at one point it had been a place of strategic importance, because the academy had been converted from a ruined fortress. Most of the buildings were a mixture of old and new, so that a classroom might have three walls made of modern plaster and one of ancient stone. As a result, even the most meticulous architect would have found it impossible to grant most of the buildings any sense of symmetry, and rooms built for the same purpose were often completely different shapes and sizes. To make things worse, at some point, someone had decided to haphazardly connect each of the buildings, sealing off most of the entrances and making the entire school look like a twisted serpent from the outside, and making the inside endlessly frustrating to navigate. For example, to reach Professor Mince’s class on magical ethics from the men’s dorms, one had to either walk through the cafeteria, the administrative offices and the library or go outside and walk around the entire school to the women’s dorms and pass through them, which was likely to earn unwanted attention. The only other paths were longer and would converge with one of these at some point.

For Riven, however, the school’s design provided one advantage, a one-person dorm room. Tucked in a corner on the top floor of the men’s dorm was a room barely large enough for a bed. The ceiling was angled with the building’s roof, at one end just high enough for Riven to stand at her full height, and at the other end it met the floor. With no windows, Riven kept it lit with light potions. The only furniture was a bed, a trunk, and a desk paired with a chair. The desk was usually covered in various books, school supplies, and copies of Boys Turning Into Girls Magazine (Articles included: “It’s Totally Just a Fetish! 14 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Even Worry About It,” and “Wouldn’t it be Amazing if it Actually Worked Like That in Real Life? Haha, Not That You’d Actually Want That.”) It was a restrictive, uncomfortable room and Riven constantly hit her head on the ceiling, but she considered it far preferable to having to share a room with men. She had always found the presence of men disagreeable with very few exceptions and the thought of sharing a room with them seemed downright nightmarish. She would have considered sharing a room with women much more preferable, but such a suggestion would have been received with disgust by the administration.

At the time, Riven was not known as a treacherous pervert. Instead she was known for being quiet, moony, and odd. She was a talented student, if not the most studious. Although she had some friends, she was not known for being social. And while demons and fairies were far from uncommon areas of interest, the questions Riven asked her teachers about them were strange. While she had the expected interest in their unique types of magic, Riven displayed an unusual fascination with their customs and cultures.

In fact, she was obsessed with both fairies and demons. She read every book she could find on the subject, including several lengthy tomes on how to contact demons. She also spent many days wandering the woods near the school, looking for signs of fairies, perhaps even a path to their realm. Eventually, however, she was forced to conclude that they had no presence in that particular forest.

Although she had several friends, there were two of particular note. The first was Copernicus, a portly young man who Riven had decided was more tolerable than the other men. The two shared an interest in cheap fiction magazines and ate lunch together on most days. The other was Isandra, a young woman with whom Riven was enamored. As one of the few members of the Academy’s sports club, she was tall, fit, and had a commanding presence that made Riven swoon.

On one particular day, Riven was in the library, reading up on transformation spells. Technically, such magic was illegal, but the Academy’s isolated location and the insular nature of the mage community in general meant that the use of such magic was largely ignored as long as it wasn’t openly flaunted. In fact, no area of study was considered forbidden to the Academy, just mildly discouraged. Riven could research curses far more terrifying than simple transformations and no one would bat an eye unless she actually performed one.

Riven had been studying transformation since her arrival at the Academy and she was almost confident enough in it to actually attempt a spell on herself. Right now, she was carefully taking notes as she read, making sure she had everything absolutely correct.

Riven’s downfall occurred so fast that she had to later piece together exactly what had happened. Copernicus was in the stacks, just one row away from where Riven was sitting. Another group of students stood somewhere behind her, quietly chatting. Riven was so engrossed in her reading, however, that she was unaware of both of these facts. She also failed to notice Isandra walking past, chatting with a friend.

That is, until Isandra shouted, “Who the Hell grabbed my ass?”

Riven looked up, seeing Isandra standing there, looking furious. One of the students from the chatting group was pointing at Riven. Riven, not registering what was happening, smiled nervously.

Most mages in Isandra’s situation would retaliate in some magical way. Magic offers nearly infinite possibilities when it comes to crafting revenge, but Isandra preferred a more physical approach. In a flash, she had hurled Riven to the ground, face down, and in another moment she was on top of her, wrenching her arm behind her back.

(When Riven later told this story to her teammates and she described what she did next, Kaylen, smirk on her face, replied “Seriously?”

Riven explained as best she could. “Imagine if someone you were secretly in love with came up and kissed you out of nowhere. This is like that for me.”)

Riven moaned with delight and said “Harder! Please!”

Isandra sprang up off of Riven and backed away in horror. “You’re disgusting. What is wrong with you?”

Riven rolled over and looked around. She saw the disgusted looks of her fellow students, including Copernicus, who had appeared from around the stacks when he heard the commotion. She felt her face grow red as she finally realized what had just happened. She attempted to stammer out a response, but quickly realized that her initial reaction had already rendered her reputation unsalvageable. She stood, and walked off without another word, leaving behind her notes.

Over the course of the next few days, Riven tried to curb the rumors that spread about her, but with so many witnesses, including her closest friend, who could attest to the fact that she was in love with Isandra, there was no way to prevent herself from being branded a pervert. Worse, she knew that it was true. She was a pervert. True, she hadn’t been the one to grope Isandra, but she had reacted in a way that no normal person would. No normal person was obsessed with being controlled. No normal person obsessed over becoming the opposite sex. And no normal person moaned with delight when she was in pain. She couldn’t even get the memory of it out of her head. The feeling of Isandra’s weight on her. The sensation of pain from her arm being wrenched behind her. The fact that she had liked it was just as bad as groping her, since she had engaged sexually with Isandra without her permission. She could no longer look Isandra in the eyes or speak a word to her. Isandra deserved a world free of her.

Riven resigned herself to spending the rest of her education in isolation. To have no friends and to avoid drawing attention to herself at all costs. To spend as much time as possible in her room, doing all of her eating and studying there. It wasn’t, she convinced herself, so different from how she had lived before. She had never been terribly social, so the loss of her friends wasn’t the end of the world, as much as she missed her conversations with Copernicus. And she had hardly been able to work up the nerve to talk to Isandra in the best of times. Not talking to her at all was hardly any different when it came down to it.

She lived like this for around six months. Eventually, the humiliation of the event in the library had faded slightly, and the most embarrassing aspect of the whole ordeal was knowing that she was seen as a pervert. One morning before class, while reading the latest issue of Boys Turning Into Girls Magazine (articles included: “It’s Not Like You Think About It All the Time So It’s Not Even a Big Deal,” and “There Would Probably be Horrible Side Effects if You Attempted It Anyway, so it’s Better to Just Let It Stay a Fantasy”) something occurred to her. She was going to be seen as a pervert no matter what she did. At this point, she might as well be open about the fact that she was one. As long as she wasn’t actually creeping on anyone it wasn’t really a bad thing, was it? She took out her rewritten notes on the transformation spell. She had put off attempting it for so long, maybe now was finally the time to try.

When she went to class in her newly-altered body, she was told by the teacher to remove the spell. She politely refused. In the end she was told to leave the class. This led to an uncomfortable conversation between Riven and the school’s administration. Eventually, it was determined that as long as she wasn’t casting the spell on someone else, she wasn’t stepping outside of what the Academy considered an acceptable breaking of the law, and she was allowed to continue enchanting herself.

When other students asked about her change in appearance and insistence on a new name, Riven simply explained that she was a pervert. She told them that she was living out a sexual fantasy and that she had grown tired of pretending that she didn’t want this. They would usually follow up with other questions and she would go on to describe her other kinks. To her surprise, they would not react with disgust. Eventually someone asked about the library incident and she explained what had actually happened and, finally, she was believed.

Of course, that’s not to say everything was resolved and the rest of her time at school was pleasant. She spent the rest of her school days treated as a humorous novelty, never taken seriously by anyone, but she found a certain comfort in being seen as a harmless freak.

Eventually, she would work out that her desire to be a woman was not, in fact, a kink and that she was not the first person to come up with that particular spell. Afterwards, she would look back on this time with some embarrassment. Though considering her behavior in the Adventurers Guild, it seems as if she’d changed very little.