Though he’d seen it many times before, it was still unnerving, watching the room clean itself up, after the mess that it was in merely minutes earlier. The wooden chalices flew across the air of their own volition, landing on a table that cleaned itself up, the spilled wine lifting itself off the latter and floating out the window. Wax unstuck itself from the wooden floor and rejoined candles that lit themselves while the ashes in the fireplace regained the color and shape of logs and burst into a raging hot flame.

Two chairs materialized behind Emony and Aylard. Tiphaine, obviously, did not need one, as she was already warming herself on the floor by the fire.

While he and the human sat down, Lenah sat down on the edge of the table in front of them, rolling up a leaf and setting a drop of black liquid on it lightly aflame.

“Where did the guy from before go?” Emony asked Tiphaine.

“Look up,” answered the witch, watching the smoke waft from the leaf she was holding.

Emony did as she said – and there, on the ceiling, was the human, sleeping soundly on a straw bed for which gravity had reversed.

“That’s new,” he said.

“We need the space. Here,” Lenah said, offering him the leaf she was holding. “This is new, too. Breathe in the smoke.”

Obviously, he didn’t take it.

“Oh, come on, don’t trust me? This is nothing like the love potion, I promise. It’ll be fun. In fact, it will be really fun. And if you don’t do it, I won’t tell you about Garrick.”

Emony squinted at his shameless blackmailer before glancing over at his companions for a moment. “Fine, but just me. You leave them out of this.”

“Hahaha! No, that’s not how this works, doggy. We’re all going to do it. Here, if it will soothe your fears, I’ll be the first. Look, this is how you do it. Just breathe in, breathe out.”

She exhaled smoke from between her blue lips and offered him the leaf again. Sighing, Emony hesitantly took it, knowing full well something unbelievably stupid and unpleasant would happen.

He breathed in the horribly smelling air.

Instantly, a wire of magic slipped past his mental barriers and forced him to close his eyes. A strange feeling of wooziness fell over him.

Upon opening his eyes again, which he could only do with difficulty, he saw that the world had changed.

The colors were… accentuated. More vibrant than he had ever seen, even far more than when he’d been a wolf. And his hand, the one he was holding up in front of himself, holding the leaf… it was a liquid. No, he was wrong, actually, everything was a liquid. Everything in the world. His fingers melted away from his palm without pain. Seeing that, he wondered, curiously, if he was about to die. It felt like there was water in his head.

Am I drowning? This is so weird!

From seemingly far away, he heard the sound of laughter. He looked around the unfamiliar room, which had somehow expanded. Tiphaine, beside him, was staring at him, a mixture of worry and curiosity on her face. And Aylard was refusing something from Lenah – actually, her hair was even more blue than he’d thought. But he was still there, in the weird liquid room. His body was, at any rate. His mind, on the other hand, felt so far away…

He heard that laughter again. He was starting to feel giddy himself, though he couldn’t tell why. Suddenly, he felt tingling all over his hands, neck, and the back of his head.

“Strange,” he tried to say, but realized he couldn’t. His mouth was already speaking something without his knowledge, and now he’d ruined it. He’d…

Then he figured it out. That laughter. It wasn’t Tiphaine, Aylard or Lenah. It was him.

“What’s so funny?” Tiphaine asked him as he snapped back to reality for a brief moment.

You wouldn’t get it, he realized as he drifted off again. It’d be pointless to try to explain with words. But Lenah was smiling at him knowingly with those blue lips.

Do you feel the same thing? he mused, daring her to answer his unvoiced thoughts.

She gave him a small nod without a word and turned back to his companions. She could keep her composure, feeling this way? He really couldn’t understand how.

“It will be okay, I’ll give you a little less than I did him,” the witch told Tiphaine, her voice just as much a liquid as the flames of the candles. He could see her voice. Reality was so distorted. He closed his eyes, trying to center himself – and that was a mistake. All around him was darkness, endless expanses of space…

He opened his eyes again. The whole world around him was breathing. He felt numb, but his hands were tingling like they were hot and cold at the same time. The subtle colors shifting through the air… were beautiful.

Looking around, he saw Aylard and Tiphaine share a leaf by the fireplace. He hoped to the divines that she would be okay.

Lenah got up from the table. The world seemed to stretch behind her as she walked over. Then she laid down on the ground in front of him, a pile of cushions appearing under her. Suddenly, Emony’s chair disappeared out from under him and he was falling, falling, falling, until finally he too landed on a mass of cushions. Curious, he looked over at Lenah, who just smiled, then at the snakes atop Tiphaine’s head. They were as calm as… Strange. Those things never stopped hissing. But it seemed like they did.

“Hey,” Lenah said, lying in front of him, thoroughly careless about her revealing neckline. “Do you trust me yet?”

I’ve never trusted you for a day in my life, he thought happily before watching the thought fly away into the fireplace.

The witch’s blue lips curved into that smile again. “Ha, that’s probably wise. But give me your hand anyway. No, not that one. The broken one.”

After a couple of moments, he decided to do so, for the sake of the mission, whatever that was, and began struggling with his sling. Eventually, he finally managed to stretch his arm out towards her. It seemed he was immune to pain in that moment. The next, he could feel the witch’s light touch on his skin. Blue sparks sizzled out of her fingertips onto his arm. She caressed it gently before letting it go.

“There,” she said. “You know how bad I am at healing magic, but I think I’ve done it right this time. You know, I think I’m actually somewhat better when I’m using this stuff.”

He lifted his hand, curious, and made a fist a couple of times before turning his wrist and cracking his fingers a bit. It seemed like the arm really wasn’t broken anymore. Then he felt something else. A liquid, sitting right in the middle of the palm of his other hand. He glanced over at it for a moment, stupidly curious, before looking up and seeing Lenah spill a chalice of water onto it. His skin started to tingle far more intensely than it did before. Rapidly panicking, he jumped up to his feet in an instant, nearly losing balance while doing so. He was about to transform.

He heard a squeak of laughter – Lenah’s. He really did hate her. She glanced over at him and pointed in the direction of the bedroom. He ran towards it, falling over himself in the process and getting up again so he could trip his way through the door that opened itself for him. As soon as Emony made it into the room, he collapsed onto the floor in front of the bed, his boots and pants ripped apart and his legs combined into a scaly golden tail. At least her tunic held, so her tits weren’t out.

The witch followed, closing the door after herself with a wave of her hand and smiling at her.

“That’s what I wanted to see. My handiwork… I designed that new face of yours, you know. And all the rest. And I really did do well – you’re so cute! Are you sure you want to turn back? I made you the first male, surface-walking mermaid in existence. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it, Emony? Oh, but you’re not using my enchanted clothing. That didn’t hold up? Don’t worry, I’ll make more.”

“Lenah… Stop it. I’ll admit it, this smoke thing you made is pretty cool, but please make it stop and help me get dry,” Emony said, lacing magic into her voice. She was incredibly surprised that she had managed to string the words together into a sentence. “We’ve got a job to do.”

Blue sparks flew off the witch in all directions, catching the magic.

“Nah!” she laughed. “Don’t worry, Aylard won’t see anything, he’s pretty far gone himself… By the way, how do you like this new shield of mine? You can’t sing me into obeying you, Emony. As much as you might want to, what with such things crossing your vulgar mind…”

Emony gulped, trying to think about anything else, but she quickly found herself unable to think clearly enough to remember even what she was trying not to think about. Her mouth was dry and the world was spinning. That was as far as she got.

“Damned hedonistic witch. Stop smiling like that, it’s not attractive on a woman your age.”

“Evidently, it is,” Lenah shrugged, crouching in front of her and floating a chalice full of water right beside her head. Emony took it, gratefully, and drank from it.

Lenah twirled her fingers and a wind picked up, suddenly lifting her off the wooden floor, moving her backwards and dropping her on the bed. The witch walked over and sat down next to her.

“So, what do you want me to tell you about first? About Garrick? About how he adores me? Or about how Tiphaine, and how she feels about you? It’s the same story, really.”

She heard Tiphaine laughing hysterically in the other room. That was a nice sound.

“Garrick is dead,” Emony replied to Lenah, wondering why her face looked like a gently breathing… she lost the thought.

“Oh. That’s too bad. Hey, you’re pretty far gone, Emony. You can’t even string two thoughts together. Normally, I’d let the party continue, but I suppose we do have a few errands to run, don’t we? The king of the lake wants to destroy Palehome, hm? And you were counting on me... I’m sorry, Emony. I’ve been sensing the black magic all the way from here, it’s stronger than anything I’ve ever seen. This is going to be bigger than a few little villages. Those people are goners. Oh, and I’m sorry I dropped you and Tiphaine right in the middle of it all. The ley lines only showed me Verena. I’m glad you’re still alive. I was just about to go over and rescue you two.”

“It’s fine. As it turns out, Verena introduced us to someone that can help me with my little mermaid problem. Maybe even with Tiphaine’s Eyes – apparently, he’s just that powerful. It’s a shame he’s a mass murderer, but nobody’s perfect.”

Lenah took a deep breath and sighed, flicking her wrist. The water that kept Emony a fish flew away from her, and she regained her/his human form. A nearby closet burst open and a pair of pants launched themselves at him.

“Yes, I can see what you’ve been up to. Look, I’m going to help you, Emony, it’s time I started doing my job. But I have to try to minimize the human death toll. If you really mean to take the side of the king… I hope we don’t end up on opposite sides of this. Anyway, we haven’t yet, so let’s play nice and rejoin those two. I’ll help you get sober. By the way, it’s been four hours. Your sense of time is way off. Don’t try running anywhere, okay? It won’t end well.”