Ch.1 Marianne the Succubus [FE3H CYOA]

[This story begins in the Crimson Flower route of Fire Emblem 3 Houses and will contain spoilers for the entire game.]

Marianne rapidly tapped her foot as she bit down on her lower lip. The timid woman thrummed her fingers against her legs, occasionally even squeezing a tight fistful of her dress. Her comrades sitting around her at the war council meeting thankfully hadn’t seemed to notice her uncharacteristic fidgeting, but Marianne couldn’t be certain.

Though her gaze was usually downcast, Marianne had noticed that her eyes couldn’t stop wandering between her friends and fellow members of the Black Eagle Strike Force. Edelgard, Bernadetta, Dorothea, Linhardt, Petra, Shamir, Leonie, Sylvain, Felix, Mercedes, Ingrid, and Ashe, just to name a few… Hell, even Lorenz, despite his abrasive personality and dubious motives, caught her eye.

They all commanded her attention in ways they never had before, simply by existing. It was as if she could gaze past everyone around her: no, it was as if she could faintly sense what lied in the deepest recesses of their beings, even if all she could feel were hazy strands of identity she couldn’t make heads or tails of.

But then there was the professor. Even now, as she struggled with these confusing and scary new sensations, Marianne couldn’t sense Byleth’s presence the way she could for all the others. She supposed that, if she really had inherited the Goddess’ power, it would make sense that Byleth was an exception.

Suddenly dredged out from her thoughts, Marianne realised she had been staring at her former teacher as they briefly made eye contact. She felt her cheeks get warm and dropped her gaze.

Much to her relief, it wasn’t much longer before they were dismissed. Marianne was the first to leave the war room, hurrying away as quickly as she could while maintaining composure.

When she reached her bedroom a few minutes later, she rushed inside, hastily locked the door, and threw aside her clothes. Wasting no time, Marianne leapt into bed and began to desperately finger herself.

“Nnng! M-mmm…” Marianne moaned breathlessly.

It felt as though the blood in her veins was searing her from the inside out. Marianne’s crest reached its boiling point, rising to the surface and overwhelming her mortal form: the woman’s body gained a faint yellow glow as the symbol of her nightmares, the Crest of the Beast, appeared above her head.

Marianne’s soft pussy sputtered all over her bedsheets as a fresh wave of energy coursed through her. Her fingers pressed harder and faster than ever before, trying to satisfy the seemingly bottomless thirst within her. It wasn’t long before her back arched, her sturdy muscles tensed, and her empty lungs inflated with one deep breath.

“Ah! Ah! Aaaahh!!” She cried.

Heavily panting, Marianne relaxed her body and slumped back on her soft mattress. The yellow glow around her gently faded to a faint lilac colour, as did the Crest of the Beast that remained above her head.

Once she had caught her breath, she slowly got to her feet and shuffled over to her desk. After pulling out a roll of parchment from a drawer, she scribbled another entry in her list of unusual occurrences, then hid it away once more.

Slowly raising her head, she looked into the mirror hanging over her desk. Looming above her was her crest, still present minutes after it had appeared. However, it was barely recognisable as the Crest of the Beast in its current form: the symbol’s shape was flickering as if it were being viewed from behind the distorting effect of a raging flame - but it was more than that. The shape itself was gradually changing over time, Marianne was certain of it.

Back in her academy days, her crest and its related abilities behaved just about as they would for any other type of crest. Recently, however, it had been acting in ways she had never imagined a crest could act - and not just because of the odd lightshow. Marianne’s libido had skyrocketed in both frequency and intensity over the past few months, accompanied by the consistent activation of her crest when she stopped to pleasure herself. And of course, there was the matter of her new sixth sense for seeing into the people around her.

“Dear Goddess… Why is this happening to me? P-please, tell me! I… I’m scared…” She waited, but got no reply. “Ohhh… Hilda, what would you do? …I wish you were still here with me. I miss you.”

With a lilac hued glow still emanating from her body, Marianne decided the best she could do was rest. Sliding under the covers, she curled up and shut her eyes.

—

Colours were swirling. Everything was hazy. The world was just a bubble and Marianne was at its center.

After several hours - or a few seconds - Marianne's dream came into focus. She found herself standing alone in a sunny clearing deep in the woods. There were birds and squirrels about, but none of them paid her any mind. There was even a deer drinking from a little pond at the edge of the clearing. She knew it was a dream, yet it still felt so immersive.

Something glimmered in a ray of sunshine that caught her eye: a small, gold-and-white object simply hovered about a metre above the ground. It almost looked like…

"A wedding ring?" Her soft voice echoed through the forest.

At that, the ring glided over to the lucid dreamer and slid onto her left hand’s ring finger.

"Huh?"

Raising her hand to her face, she got a good look at the golden band adorned with a familiar diamond that refracted a kaleidoscopic pattern all across the forest floor.

“No… No, I know this diamond! No, please!” She frantically yanked the ring from her finger and threw it as far as she could. “Please don’t marry me off! E-especially not to him!”

But the ring persisted. Rising from the pile of leaves it had landed in, its lustre began to fade as a cloud slowly blocked off the sun’s rays. It once again floated over to Marianne, who was clenching her fists in a futile attempt to ward off everything the engagement ring stood for.

“Wh-what is happening!? I want to wake up!”

The ring faded out of sight, only to materialise back around Marianne’s finger.

“EEEK!!”

Once again she tore the ring away, but this time noticed she’d scratched her skin raw with her now-sharp fingernails. In that fraction of a second where her attention was divided, the ring slid from her grasp and once again adorned itself on her body.

“G-get off me!!” She pleaded, throwing the ring away again.

The whole sky had suddenly darkened, filled with storm clouds that weren’t there moments prior. The birds and other woodland creatures vanished as a thick fog rolled in.

As her heart thumped anxiously, Marianne could feel her crest stirring. She began to glow lilac and her insides felt as though they were ablaze. She didn’t need a mirror to know her unholy crest was flickering above her head.

The ring now emanated a dark aura akin to a miasma spell, flinging itself at its target with the speed of a miasma spell, too. But Marianne wasn’t about to surrender: the lucid dreamer summoned Blutgang in her grasp and swung ferociously at the approaching threat.

“rrrrrrRRRAAAGHH!!”

A piercing CLANK shot through the trees as the hero’s relic struck the ring’s metal band, sending it flying straight through the trunk of a sturdy oak tree. Marianne panted heavily, awaiting the ring’s next attempt to charge, but the ring simply materialised on her finger once more.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!!” She wailed.

Marianne dropped Blutgang and pulled with all her might to rip away the ring once and for all. Clasping it as tightly as she could, she summoned all her magical strength to cast a devastating Fimbulvetr spell. The air around her fist momentarily liquefied as shards of ice formed on her hand and spread up her forearm.

Then, a frigid explosion.

Marianne released her grasp as the temperature approached absolute zero and the ring burst in a barrage of shards.

After a moment of catching her breath, a beam of sunshine cut through the thinning clouds and began to warm her frozen arm. The ice quickly melted away, revealing an unfamiliar and somehow-unscathed hand - which had gained a lilac hue. At first, she thought it must be an optical illusion from her glowing crest, but her body had ceased radiating light. Beyond the colour, her fingers were now tipped in razor-sharp black claws.

“Huh!? Wh-what!? I- EEEK!!”

Startled by movement behind her, Marianne spun to see a violet blur spin in sync with her. Reaching behind her, she discovered a long, thin tail swaying gently as if it had a mind of its own.

“A… tail!?”

Marianne pulled the tail around in front of her so she could get a better look: it was the same lilac hued skin as her arms, and ended in a tip the shape of a heart. And what’s more, she could actually feel through it as if it were a part of her! It really was a part of her!

“What?”

Marianne held her head in confusion, only to discover horns protruding from her skull!

“Wh-what!?”

But before she could investigate further, panic set in and the world around her lost its definition. A spiral of colour whisked her out of the land of dreams, returning her to a bright dawn in the waking world.

- - -

[What would you like Marianne to do?]

-VOTING FINISHED! WINNER: OPTION B-

Option A: Look for an ally she particularly trusts to confide in and ask for help.
Option B: Leave the monastery to find and recruit Hilda.
Option C: Wander into the woods because she "only belongs among beasts".
Option D: Lock herself up in her room all day.
Option E: Talk to Dorte the horse.