Philliya fought to keep her facial expression from changing as the veil and hat fell away. The lady’s appearance was, in a word, hideous. It was beyond ugly. None of her facial features were in the right location or shape and her skin color ranged from pale to a bloody dark red. The effect extended to her hair as well and great patches of mottled skin could be seen through the sparse clumps of hair. She must have an excellent lady’s maid, for there was some kind of elegant hair piece installed which allowed the lady to have some semblance of a normal hairstyle, but there was no saving her face. No face powder could hide the deformities. 

“Can you fix this?”

“It truly must be a savage and powerful enchantment, your Ladyship,” Philliya replied solemnly. “When did it first afflict you?”

“I have been this way since my third birthday. Due to some circumstances, a jealous woman hired a powerful dark sorcerer to curse me as a punishment to my parents. I have tried every cure and the sorcerer who cast the enchantment has been found and executed along with that woman, but I still remain as you see now.”

“I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if an enchantment outlives the end of the caster’s death, it takes a supremely powerful sorcerer to break it and even that may not work. Those types of enchantments are designed to last for centuries and only break when they finally run out of power. It was quite vicious to apply one to a human child who couldn’t possibly outlive the enchantment’s duration.”

“You can do nothing?” Despair colored her tone and she slumped in her chair.

“I can do nothing to remove or break the curse,” Philliya confirmed. “However…”

“Yes?”

“I wonder if your Ladyship would mind experimenting? I have in my collection a very old enchantment of transformation. It’s quite powerful and is known for being impossible to remove. It just might counter the curse on you. But the catch is that you will never have any chance of recovering your original appearance.”

She breathed deeply. “Therefore I would remain with whatever visage the enchantment resulted in?”

“Yes. With only the one curse, you have a slight possibility of removing it. But once this second enchantment is cast, neither will be reversible for the second draws its power not from the caster, but the person upon whom it is cast. Its nature is that as the person changes, the enchantment changes as well, altering the person’s appearance. It’s this very trait that I think would counter the original curse.”

“Tell me, what is this enchantment?”

“I found it years ago buried in a library while I was a student. It is titled simply “The Spell of True Appearance”. I am sure you are familiar with the expression ‘inner beauty’, correct?” 

The lady nodded.

“This enchantment is designed to reveal a person’s inner self whether that is beauty or monstrosity. It falls into the category of curses because the end result is typically worse than the beginning. It is not an enchantment for gaining beauty. Instead, your outer appearance will match your inner nature. The kindest person in the world would end up with the face of a goddess, but a vicious person would become like a demon or a beast. And this appearance morphs following the changes of the heart. If you are kind one day and cruel the next your face will change to match. Do you dare take the risk?”