It’s amazing how much junk accumulates in the adventuring lifestyle. Sometimes, you need a little help organizing it all. Fortunately, Virmir had the ability to split a female clone from himself for times such as these. It did mean his clone sometimes split off when he didn’t need her, but on the whole, the benefits outweighed the drawbacks.
“Looks like we’ll be selling most of this,” Lucile said, looking over an ornate dagger with a sharpening enchantment placed on the blade.
“Probably,” replied Virmir, only paying Lucile enough attention to give one-word answers.
The treasure in Durkon’s Dungeon turned out to be mostly in coins. He was examining the haul drudged up for any signs they might be worth more as collector’s items than currency. It required careful attention to detail. Legends about dungeons always exaggerated the value of their wealth and it seemed this was no different. He sighed and swept the current piles of the coins back into the bag. At least they turned a profit on the expedition, or would once the magic trinkets were sold. He turned his attention to the next batch.
Lucile sheathed the dagger and dropped it into the box marked “EtherBay” and began rummaging through the other trinkets to find something more interesting. Her hand closed on something smooth and cold – an amulet of some kind. Pretty standard looking, too: gold base inlayed with a large ruby. It had a hook for attaching it to a necklace, but no sign of the actual necklace itself. Had they picked that up? Lucile couldn’t remember seeing it before, but then again, she was pretty indiscriminate when it came to scooping up treasure. It didn’t look like it would really stand out in the frenzy to fill the loot bags.
Something moved inside the ruby. A trick of the light? Lucile leaned in closer, rubbing some dust off the gem to get a better look. Deep within, an inner light flickered, not quite like a flame. Almost like something alive.
The tingling in her tail made her her look back over her shoulder. Its tip was turning from black to white and beyond that, a purplish tint was creeping up towards her body.
“Uh . . . Male Clone?”
“What?” asked Virmir, not looking up from the pile.
“I think we might have picked up a cursed amulet.”
“EtherBay.”
The lavender color was now crawling up her belly, leaving the white fur on her chest untouched. Her legs stretched as it inched down them, making her taller. Lucile tried tossing the amulet into the box, but it clung to her hand.
“I can’t,” she said, not yet too concerned. These things happened, after all. “Might need the curse breaking wand.”
“Top shelf. Unless you used it recently.”
The changes crept up her neck and down her arms, stretching them to match the proportions of her legs. It affected her clothes, as well. Her robe shifted into a grey thong – not at all her style! – while scraps of it broke off from the rest to become matching knee-high boots and shoulder length gloves. Her hat melted, running down her neck to become a black collar. She was still a fox, so aside from the height, clothing, and color change, the spell didn’t seem to be doing too much.
Halfway to the shelves, a sudden dizziness came over her, the kind you feel after you’ve had maybe one drink too many at the tavern. Lucile’s antenna hair, a feature that normally remained consistent no matter what form she took, withdrew into her scalp, replaced by bobbing bangs and shoulder length locks.
“What?” Lucile said out loud.
Why did her head feel so . . . bubbly? She giggled a bit as a giddiness stole over her. The giggle ended in a snort.
“Something wrong?” Virmir asked, still not looking up.
Boy, did she feel excited! She’d never been so itching to have fun in her life. A distinctly non-Virmirish attitude, no doubt about it. Distantly, the thought of mind-control occurred to her. She mustered up her ego to resist and–
Virmir looked up from the coins when a sudden flash of green light filled the room. Probably not a good sign. He turned around. Lucile, now fully finished changing, hung the amulet from the collar around her neck, then took a moment to look herself over.
“As curses go, that doesn’t look too problematic,” he commented.
Lucile ignored him, turning her attention to the room around her.
“Well, this place is a mess,” she said. “It’s gonna take some real cleaning up to make it cozy.”
“Lucile?”
Lucile tsked. “This decor is so drab. I’m gonna be real pissed if there isn’t a city with some good shops nearby.”
Some kind of possessing spirit using an amulet to capture victims. A dime-a-dozen cursed object if ever Virmir saw one. He hated when this happened. Folding his arms, he tapped his foot impatiently.
“Alright, Lucile, enough games. Your ego should be strong enough to fight off any possessing spirit.”
Lucile turned to Virmir, as if noticing him for the first time. A sly grin crossed her face. “Oh, I’m not a possessing spirit. I used my amulet to transform your female clone into an exact copy of myself, including my memories and personality.”
She ended this explanation with a honking laugh she obviously thought sounded menacing and evil. Virmir rolled his eyes. One of those days.
“Lucile, stop playing games and take control again.”
“Sorry,” said not-currently-Lucile. “I don’t want to. I may technically still be Lucile, but at the moment, I’ve got the personality of Jinx. All that ego just reinforces the spell now.”
Virmir cocked an eyebrow. “That’s not how that’s supposed to work.”
Jinx giggle-snorted. “I’m sure it’s not, but this,” she rubbed the ruby in her amulet, “is an artifact of chaos. It’s not bound by the rules, and neither am I. Now . . .”
Jinx drew her hand away from the amulet, a ribbon of green light unfurling behind, and snapped her fingers. Virmir’s cape fluttered as green sparkles flew around it, then closed tightly around him, binding his arms and legs. Gritting his teeth, Virmir wriggled, trying to get his arms loose. With a lurch, he came free, but now his cape had changed into a maid’s outfit. Instead of his favorite feather quill, he held a feather duster.
“Start cleaning up this mess. This place is a pigsty,” Jinx said with another giggle-snort.
Despite his reputation, Virmir didn’t make a habit of getting angry, but insults like this provoked a certain level of grumpiness. He took a step towards Jinx.
“If you think you can just–”
The amulet’s inner light danced.
----
“That’s very good,” Jinx said, inspecting the table. “Now, just finish dusting everything else in here. Then you can go find a broom and start sweeping up.”
“Yes, Mistress,” Virmir said, curtsying.
As Jinx left the room with a bag of coins under each arm, Virmir started dusting the shelf. He loved serving Mistress Jinx, especially when she praised him. Even though it was his tower . . . and Jinx was an invader taking over his female clone’s body . . .
“Wait a minute!”
Now it was time to get angry. Throwing the feather duster on the ground, Virmir stormed out of the room, kicking the door open. Jinx turned, startled.
“You!” Virmir shouted.
“Get back to cleaning, please.”
Prepared this time, Virmir shrugged off the attempts to get into his head with ease. “No.”
“Wow,” Jinx said. “That didn’t last long at all. It should have been weeks before you realized what was going on.”
“I want you out of Lucile’s body, right now!”
Jinx honked with laughter. “Don’t you get it? I’m not in Lucile, I am Lucile. You can’t make me . . .” Jinx’s expression shifted to one of confusion, then sharp realization. “It’s the amulet. I have to take it off.”
She reached for the amulet, but the second her fingers touched it, her jaw went slack. She stared blankly, then violently shook her head.
“Oh, pardon me,” she said, putting her hand to her chin in an insincerely dainty manner and giggle-snorting. “Must have been the baked beans I had for lunch this afternoon.”
Virmir’s eyes narrowed. So, Jinx wasn’t fully in control of Lucile after all. And she lost control of him only moments after she left the room. The amulet’s power must have some kind of proximity based effect, then. The closer someone got to it, the more powerful it became. The problem was Lucile was wearing the amulet now. Troublesome, but not beyond him to deal with.
“Alright, Jinx,” he said, conjuring a ball of flame into his hand. “I don’t know what you’re after, and I don’t care. I’m going to give you one chance to let Lucile go before I start blasting you.”
“What, and hurt your clone? This is her body, after all.”
“I know how much she can take,” Virmir said, unconcerned. “And we’ve got a stockpile of healing potions. How much punishment do you think you can take?”
Jinx turned up her nose at the threat, sniffing with disdain. “Well, if that’s your attitude, you’re fired. I want you out of my tower right now.”
Virmir growled. “This is my tower!”
The fireball exploded into a cloud of purple and green butterflies before it reached Jinx. She sneered back at him and rubbed her amulet. “Not anymore.”
With a fwip! a circle of ground beneath Virmir’s feet took on a glassy transparency. He looked down and saw a window onto a multi-colored void full of floating rocks, streaks of green and pink lightning, and constantly shifting geometric figures made of volcanic glass and cotton candy. Wait . . . was this a hole?
He fell through.
Jinx looked through it after him and waved as he shrank into the distance. “Have a nice trip!”
----
Virmir’s trajectory kept shifting as he fell. The objects floating aimlessly around him had no bearing on gravity. For several flailing, panicked minutes, he hurtled through the iridescent emptiness at random before crashing onto a giant marshmallow. It would have been a softer landing if it hadn’t been stale.
“Oy!” it shouted. “Watch where you’re going!”
Virmir groaned as he sat up. He looked around. He might as well not have; one direction was much the same as another. Everything defied sense. Mere words failed to describe the sights because whatever he saw became something else by the time he could find words to describe it.
“Where am I?”
“, welcome to the maelstrom, supplicanT” said a voice behind him.
In his head, a thousand smaller voices whispered a fervent argument about the stock price of cheese in Switzerland and its entertainment value compared to penguins wearing neckties. Somehow, the cheese proved more compelling.
“Oh, no, not this guy again,” said the grassy knoll Virmir sat on. “I’m outta here.”
With a wet slurping noise, the asteroid curled inward like a snail’s shell sucking itself into itself and was gone, leaving Virmir standing on nothing. Nothing felt strangely like wet sand between his toes. Beside him, a strange creature floated in the air. Like everything else in this maddening place, it never held its specific shape for more than a few moments, yet it kept to a basic outline. A long, serpentine tail treaded the air to keep the humanoid torso in place, while a bird-like head cocked one glassy black eye towards him to stare.
Rejoice! it shrieked.
The word turned into a cluster of tiny worms as soon as Virmir understood them, crawling out of his ear to escape. He lept away with a startled cry, swatting at them. They sprouted feathery wings and fluttered away.
“i SAy UNTo YOu AGAIn, REJOICe!” The creature continued. “FOr YOu STANd In THe PRESENCe Of L’SHI’UYRIk, IMMENTESh Of THe ROILINg SYMPOSIUm!”
“That’s nice,” said Virmir, sticking his finger in his ear to clean it out. “Where did you say this was?”
“The Maelstrom,” said the creature conversationally. “The void of chaos at the center of reality.” It clicked its tongue against the roof of its beak (which was at that moment full of long crocodilian teeth). “Would you like to know a secret?”
“Maybe later. “Right now, I want to get home. My tower’s been invaded.”
“oH!” said the creature with a sparkly-eyed smile. It slithered up to him and rested its clawed fingers on his shoulders, putting its face uncomfortably close to his own. “i just love entertaining guests, except when I don’T.”
Virmir leaned away. “Yeah, me too. Look, do you know how I can get out of here?”
“of course i do,” it replied, sneezing in excitement.
“Can you tell me?”
No.
Virmir blinked. He swore he hadn’t heard it speak, but he remembered it speaking. “Did you just say, ‘no’?”
No. I said, no.
“Whatever. Look, if you can’t tell me,” Virmir began.
“But I can show you!”
Virmir shot upward, a comet trailing fire and ice. His ethereal screams echoed soundlessly across the walls of space and time. Dimensions shattered as he plowed through them, until he emerged from the clouds, hurtling towards an upper window of his tower. With a rubbery plunk! he smacked into an invisible barrier surrounding it. After a moment, his flattened body peeled off and fluttered slowly to the ground, then inflated back into the third dimension with an audible pop.
Virmir lay on the ground for a long time, considering everything he’d just experienced with all the diligence his vast and hyper-focused intellect could manage.
“I hate when this happens,” he concluded.
----
Throwing open the door, Virmir stomped angrily into his tower, his teeth grinding as he passed . . .
He stomped a few paces backward to look at it.
It was a life-sized golden statue of some . . . thing. It looked like an ape, though except for the long, curly hair on its head, it was mostly bald. Dressed in an ostentatious outfit, it lounged on a bed of flowers, putting one arm around the equally absurdly dressed chimpanzee in its lap. Red paint accentuated the uncomfortably large lips.
A tribal lizard dusted the statue, humming a jaunty tune. It was wearing a maid’s outfit.
“What are you doing?”
The tribal lizard stopped dusting and grinned at him. “Izkh va gash zen dustystuff,” it replied, pointing to the feather duster.
Of course. He should have known.
Virmir continued stomping down the hall, trying to ignore the other tribal lizard maids as they went about their business. He also tried to ignore the many, many objects that now filled his tower. Row after row of paintings of psychedelic soup cans and quizzically staring dachshund puppies hung over displays of gaudy ornaments. Porcelain statues of smiling lambs and baby-faced angels were displayed alongside faberge eggs and priceless, ancient vases. Kitsch and Koons held equal weight with artistry and artisanship in Jinx’s mind.
Actually, the scales tipped quite a bit in favor of tastelessness when you gave it a second glance.
He found Jinx in his bedroom. He burst in on her, ready to explode with righteous indignation, but stopped short.
“Huh!” Jinx scoffed. “Rude!”
Virmir gaped in horror. Where was all his furniture? His desk? His precious research!? The room was mostly emptied out, save for a few chests of drawers covered in bottles of perfume. A mural of the sky covered the ceiling, where a dozen winged Jinxes fluttered, sang, and fired arrows with heart-shaped heads at each other – more specifically each other’s butts. At the center of this display was Jinx again, dressed in red, surrounded by a shining halo and holding up a planet in her right hand. The fingers of her left casually rubbed the amulet around her neck as she sneered at the room below
Beneath the window where his desk would have been, the real Jinx lounged on a pile of velvet throw pillows. At her left a tribal lizard with a huge palm frond fanned her, while on her right another fed her grapes by dangling the whole bunch over her head so she could bite one off as she pleased. Nearby was a full-sized mirror set in a golden frame, with the top carved into the face of a terrified, screaming tribal lizard. A silver platter sat next to her, holding a goblet of wine, a saucy romance novel, and a package of cookies labeled “Oreo: Milk’s Favorite Cookie!” How good it went with wine was anybody’s guess.
Virmir considered the situation. A lot of issues needed addressing, best to start with the important things.
“Why are a bunch of lizards crawling around my tower?”
Jinx shrugged. “I couldn’t find any goblins to enslave. This was the next best thing.”
Virmir hesitated. “What are goblins?”
“Well, they’re a bit like these lizard people, but smaller and more prone to toadying behavior. Better for slaves, honestly, but you gotta work with what you find when you go dimension hopping.”
Virmir opened his mouth, then shut it again. More pressing matters were at hand.
“What have you done to my tower?”
Jinx giggle-snorted. “Oh, I just redecorated. The previous owner left a bunch of junk lying around. I didn’t need it, so I got rid of it.”
Virmir’s anger rumbled like a beat from a very heavy drum. The tribal lizards backed away, all too familiar with the sound of impending doom. Jinx snatched the grapes and laid them on the tray, casually plucking one and plopping it into her mouth first.
“Oh, don’t worry. Your research is all filed away. I know useful stuff when I see it. It’s just all the boring furniture I sold off.”
The rumbling intensified.
“Well, I had to pay for redecorating the place, didn’t I? I mean, I could have just conjured up a bunch of new stuff, but doing business with the locals is a good way to build up a good reputation.”
Virmir took a step forward. One of the tribal lizards stepped into his path.
“Hallawae!”
Virmir looked at the broom being jabbed at him, then back to the tribal lizard wielding it. The end of the handle caught fire at Virmir’s touch. Shrieking in surprise, the tribal lizard threw it aside and darted away, diving into a corner and curling up in terror.
“That’s the problem with these lizards,” Jinx complained. “They have a sense of self-preservation. If it was goblins, thirty of them would have dived on you all at once.”
“And been incinerated.”
“Well, yeah, but you gotta appreciate the dedication, right? It’s not every race you conquer that throws itself headlong into its own destruction for you.”
Disgusted, Jinx rubbed her amulet and snapped her fingers. The cowering tribal lizard gurgled as it melted into a puddle, reforming into a doormat with the sad creature’s face staring from it. The doormat wriggled across the floor and stretched itself out just outside the entrance to the room.
“Now if I could just teach them how to wipe their feet before they enter,” she muttered.
Jinx suddenly seemed to realize Virmir was still there. “Oh, where are my manners?” she asked, giggle-snorting. “Would you like some cookies? They’re Virmir, what are you doing!? Don’t just–”
Jinx grasped the amulet again, fighting to reassert power over her stolen body. Seeing a chance, Virmir conjured a fireball and hurled it. At the last moment, Jinx regained control, throwing up her hand and catching the fireball in mid air. For a moment, her dumb bimbo facade fell away completely and she focused all her attention on keeping the heat from burning her up. A single blood vessel stood out from her forehead as the effort taxed her concentration to the breaking point.
“NO!”
The fireball burst into a cloud of smoke. With a second wave of her hand, she conjured a blast of air to clear it away, turning a furious glare on Virmir . . .
Who stood only a foot away, a tremendous wooden mallet in his hands drawn back for a swing.
“Oh!”
The mallet connected with Jinx’s face, hurtling her from her pillows. Sliding across the floor, she struck the chests of drawers, which promptly toppled onto her. Bottles of perfume shattered, filling the air with a mix of pungent odors. When the dust settled, only Jinx’s boots were visible under the mess. They deflated with a flatulent hiss, rolled up, and vanished under the wreckage.
The tribal lizards crowded around the mess, curious. Seeing Virmir approach, they quickly moved aside.
Muffled by the rubble, Jinx’s trembling voice sounded supremely offended. “I’ll have you know those were some very expensive perfumes.”
“No more games, Jinx,” he returned. “Get out here now.”
“If you insist.”
The furniture blew aside as Jinx popped up from beneath it like a jack-in-the-box. Startled, Virmir drew back his hammer to strike, but before he could swing, Jinx raised a small bottle of perfume and squeezed the atomizer. Coughing, Virmir staggered backward. For a moment, he saw Jinx’s evil grin through the foul-smelling cloud enveloping him, then a dizzying sense of falling overcame him and he sank into the vapors.
When the perfume finally dissipated, the first thing he saw was Jinx’s giant foot. He looked up to see her girlish, excited grin looming over him. Not a good sign. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw his own body covered in black fur with a white stripe running down the middle to the tip of his large, fluffy tail.
“It’s my own personal fragrance,” Jinx said. “Eau de Moufette. What do you think?”
“It stinks.”
Jinx snorted. “Well, that’s okay. So do you!”
Jinx fell into a fit of obnoxious laughter for five seconds before she realized no one else joined her. She gave the tribal lizards a very insistent look. After a moment, the room filled with their nervous chuckling, punctuated by Jinx’s own goosey guffaws.
“You can’t keep this up forever!” Virmir shouted. “You keep loosing control! Sooner or later, Lucile’s going to break through!”
Jinx stopped laughing. Uncharacteristically serious, she said, “True, but by the time she does, I’ll have this world ready to be conquered when the real me arrives. Now, get out of my tower.”
Before Virmir could protest, Jinx snapped her fingers and he disappeared with a comically small poof.
----
Okay, time to take stock of the situation. Lucile? Transformed into a duplicate of a dimension-hopping sorceress to prepare for her bid of world conquest. His tower? Invaded and overrun. The tribal lizards? Enslaved and serving her. The nearby towns? Unknown, but most likely already accepting her as the new master magic-user in the area. Himself? Turned into a skunk and teleported out into the forest.
All things consider, it could be going worse.
“Hey!”
Hearing the voice, Virmir reassessed the situation: things were getting worse.
An orangutan dropped out of the tree above him, sending up a cloud of leaves and dirt on impact. The tall, pointed hat it wore looked familiar, but the gigantic pauldrons really gave it away. Only one person he knew wore an outfit that impractical.
“What do you want, Mara? I’m busy right now.”
“Plotting revenge?” she asked, absently scratching her armpit.
“Plotting to get my tower and my female clone back. I’m too busy for revenge.”
Mara smiled coyly. “Need any help?”
Virmir cocked an eyebrow.
“You’re not the only one Jinx is making trouble for, you know.”
----
Two weeks ago, the fantastic, bombastic Tree Witch, Mara, sat in her potion shop in her freshly finished Magical Mire of Doom
(“You’re still trespassing on my land,” Virmir interrupted.
“Shut up and let me explain!” Mara shot back)
brewing mushroom potions when the door creaked open.
A customer, thought the beautiful witch, excited to do business. “Good afternoon, ma’am!”
The lavender fox glanced around the room with haughty disdain. Mara thought, I just bet she’s looking for a potion to keep that fur looking silky smooth! Brushing her fingers through her own lustrous pelt, the fabulous potions genius
(“It’d be faster if you’d stop praising yourself.”
“It’d be faster if you stopped interrupting me!”)
stepped around her workbench and approached her new customer.
“What’s your pleasure? If you’re looking for some wondrous potions, the likes of which you won’t find anywhere this far south of the great glaciers, you’ve come to the right place!”
“Don’t try to show up a showman, kitty,” said the customer. “I know when someone’s exaggerating.”
Mara’s smile froze on her face. “I’m sorry? I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“Of course not. It’s not important. I’m not here as a customer today.”
“Oh? You have no money. I understand. Happens to me all the time.”
The visitor giggle-snorted. “I’m sure it does. No, I have money, I’m just not spending today. Today, I’m checking out what’s on my land.”
“Um . . . you’re land?” Mara felt herself getting nervous. She knew who owned this land and it wasn’t . . . this person. She also knew the real owner didn’t like people making claims to his land.
(“From experience,” Virmir commented under his breath.)
“Yes,” said the visitor. “My land. Now. The tower and all its domains has changed hands.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yup. My name is Jinx and I’m now the ruler of everything I see. And that includes this shop.”
Mara stared, her mouth agape. “But what about . . .”
“Virmir? I sent him packing. He won’t be back for a while. At all, if he knows what’s good for him. That means I’m in charge now.”
Mara nodded. That was usually how these things worked in her experience.
“That means this shop is on my land and you’re doing business without my permission.”
Mara glanced to her left, quickly looking over the potions stocked on the shelf. How useful would they be if she had to defend herself? She took a step back towards the workbench where her mushroom potions waited.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Jinx. “I’m probably going to give you my permission.”
“Yeah?”
“I think so. I took a little walk through this bog and I gotta say, this is some fine curse work. Real fun stuff.”
“Really?”
Mara’s heart leapt at the compliment. It was so nice to have her hard work appreciated by someone!
(“Ahem!” Mara gave Virmir a meaningful look. Virmir rolled his eyes.)
“Thank you! I worked very hard on it.”
“I can tell,” Jinx said. “It’ll be good for amusing myself with any intruders that try to bother me. So, I’ve decided to let you stay here and do business.”
“That’s so nice of you!”
“On one condition,” Jinx grinned.
“Oh? What’s that?”
Jinx snapped her fingers. In a shower of green sparkles, Mara tumbled to the ground, changed into a mouse.
“You entertain me when I come to visit.”
Mara squeaked nervously. “And, uh . . . what if I don’t?”
Jinx’s grin grew wider, letting the light glint off her fangs.
----
Mara shuddered. “Do you have any idea how horrifying it is to be eaten alive?”
Virmir hated when that sort of thing happened. “How did you survive?”
Mara shrugged, her long arms flopping. “I woke up in my bed the next morning, back to normal and completely unharmed. I think Jinx is keeping me alive so she can have fun turning me into whatever she wants for a laugh.”
“Sounds annoying,” Virmir said.
“Well, yeah. I mean, I turn back on my own after a few hours, so I could deal with it, but she usually drops by once a day. The worst was when she turned me into a pair of shoes to wear to a ball. My feet were sore for days!”
“I’ll bet.”
Virmir started walking away.
“Wait!” Mara shouted, shuffling after him.
“I have some serious planning to do,” he said. “You can go away now.”
Mara hopped in front of him. “Look, you want Jinx gone, right? So do I. We could help each other.”
Virmir took two steps to the side and continued walking.
“Oh, come on! You can’t do this alone and you know it! Jinx is really powerful!”
“No, I don’t think so,” Virmir answered. “Her amulet is really powerful. Without it, I’m not sure she has any power at all.”
“You’re ‘not sure,’ you say?”
“If I can get the amulet away from her, Lucile will reassert control of herself and that’s the end of that.”
Mara ooked excitedly. “That sounds like a good plan. How will you do it?”
“Without you.”
Hooting indignantly, Mara reached out and snatched Virmir’s tail, lifting him up off the ground and turning him to face her.
“You’re just going to trot up to her like this?” she asked.
“I’ll think of something.”
Mara shook her head. “All she has to do is rub that amulet of hers and poof! you’re a snail. Then it’s escargot for dinner.”
“Not if I can distract her,” Virmir said, thinking back on his last encounter. “It can take a lot of focus to use that amulet.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to distract her with two people?”
Virmir considered this. She had a point. If the amulet required Jinx’s focus to use it, splitting her attention between more than one person might make it easier to get the better of her. The idea of working with Mara galled him . . . but he lacked options.
“Fair enough.”
Mara jumped, clapping her feet in her excitement. Her childish glee gave Virmir pause for second thoughts. He decided to continue with the team-up, though; at least Jinx might find Mara annoying enough to focus on her and give him an opening.
“Can you change me back?” he asked.
Mara set him down. “No, sorry. There’s something about her magic that mixes badly with mine. All my spells get mixed up when I try to undo hers. The last time I tried to change myself back, I ended up as a bottle of Coca-Cola.”
“What’s Coca-Cola?”
Mara shrugged. “No idea, that’s just what was printed on my side. Some kind of champagne, I think. It was really fizzy. Really tickled.”
Virmir sighed. Seating himself on a rock, he folded his arms to think about what he knew. Jinx liked to talk about herself, fortunately, so he wasn’t completely blind. Her spells could break the rules of magic, but they needed the amulet nearby to do it. The amulet was an artifact of chaos, she’d told him, which would explain why Mara’s counter spells did unpredictable things. The chaos energies infused in Jinx’s magic must make other kinds of magic unstable.
Hmmm. Jinx was playing with chaos. Chaos couldn’t be fully controlled. By definition, chaos must be unpredictable. Virmir had a hunch that if . . .
“Um, hello?” Mara asked.
“I’m thinking. Don’t interrupt!”
“Oh, right.”
Mara chuckled, making a gesture of zipping her lips.
Where was he? Hunch, yes. If Jinx was playing with chaos magic, then all she was really doing was concentrating on an outcome to suggest a direction for it to follow. The amount of focus that would take to work reliably! If she wasn’t so obnoxious (and currently occupying his tower) he could seriously respect that. On the other hand, if she lost focus at the wrong moment – say, when she was trying to use her magic – it would probably go out of control. Create enough confusion and he just might have a chance to snatch that amulet off of her. He only needed a moment. Still, the risks were high.
He glanced at Mara, who smiled blankly back at him, waiting for him to finish thinking. Maybe having her along was a good idea.
“You said she’s been to your place every day for two weeks?”
Mara nodded. “She says she likes me. I don’t want to think about what she’d do if she didn’t like me.”
“What do you know about her?”
Mara scratched her chin in thought, found a flea in her hair and, after a second’s consideration, ate it.
“She’s really self-centered.”
“She’s a magic-user. It comes with the territory.”
“Oh, come on. I’m a magic-user and I’m not self-centered!”
Virmir stared at her, unsure if she was serious. Her smile was so innocent, so . . . empty-headed. He let it go. “What else do you know?”
“She really likes attention. She throws big parties. Usually ends up transforming a few of the guests to amuse herself. Some of her guests bring gifts to try and get on her good side. Of course, her good side is sometimes worse than her bad side, as she usually ends up spending more time around you. She likes the gifts though.”
Mara paused. “She really likes the gifts. Gets really excited about them. I bet she’d let someone into her tower if they were offering her one.”
She grinned. A plan was developing in what passed for her brain. Virmir thought he could see the shape of it, too. No doubt, it would need a bit of refining to give it even the most remote chance of success, if his previous experiences with her were anything to go by. Then again, if there was one thing Virmir knew how to do, it was refine a plan.
“I have an idea,” Mara said.
“I know. I’m already working on it.”
“But I don’t know where to find any whipped cream,” Mara added, deep in thought.
“I’m sure the . . . what?”
----
One of the lizard maids entered Jinx’s room without knocking, as usual. In a flash of green, it turned into a cubist painting. Jinx snapped her fingers at one of the other tribal lizards in her company and pointed. The lizard fetched the painting for her.
“You don’t knock, you don’t wipe your feet . . .”
“Nek va shen, nek gash,” the painting pleaded.
“And you don’t speak intelligibly,” Jinx added, annoyed. “You’re frankly more trouble than you’re worth. What is so important that you had to interrupt me in the middle of being fanned and fed grapes? Don’t you understand how vitally important this activity is?”
The painting’s eyes glanced around the room.
“Nevermind. Just tell me what you want.”
“Va ken gah nak witchysnep,” it said.
“Oh, Mara. What does she want?”
“Witchysnep nesh gan va bringypresent.”
“A present?” Jinx’s eyes sparkled with surprise. “For me?”
“Bringypresent.”
Jinx set the painting down and, with a snap of her fingers, turned it back to its original form.
“Send her up!”
Jinx hopped up from her pillows and looked herself over in the mirror. Conjuring a comb, she ran it through her hair a couple of times. The comb became a tube of purple lipstick, which she applied, then kissed her reflexion.
“Ish ka prettyface,” the tribal lizard face carved into the mirror-frame said, blushing.
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Jinx said with a giggle-snort, wiping the stain off the mirror. “But please don’t stop trying.”
At the sound of a knock, Jinx jumped back onto her pillows, took a moment to dust herself off and get into a proper casual-lounging pose, then cleared her throat.
“Come in.”
Mara entered the room carrying a large box.
“Oh, for me?” Jinx feigned surprise. “You shouldn’t have.”
Setting the box down carefully, Mara opened it up and pulled out a large pie, topped with an inordinate amount of whipped cream.
“I baked you a pie,” Mara said.
Jinx sat up, clapping in excitement. “I love pie! What flavor is it!”
The pie splattered into her face, splashing sticky sweetness all over the pillows and nearby tribal lizards. They gasped in shock.
“Banana cream,” Mara answered.
Jinx remained completely motionless, the pie tin sticking to her face. The lizards backed away in horror.
“Ha!” Jinx honked. “Classic.”
The tension in the room eased a bit. Jinx pulled the tin off her face and began wiping the splattered pie into it.
“I do hope, Mara, that this was just a friendly practical joke,” Jinx said slowly. The lizards backed a little further away, hearing the knife-edge in her voice. “Because if you’re trying to challenge me . . .”
Then she saw the skunk standing in front of her, taking careful aim.
“Oh, no.”
Stinking musk sprayed into her face. Screaming, Jinx threw herself backward, rolling behind her bed and scrambling to shield herself with the pillows. Through the retching and gagging she managed to shriek, “Get them!”
The lizards grabbed their spears and followed Mara and Virmir out into the hall.
“Okay, step one complete,” Mara said. “Jinx is really angry now.”
“Is that step one to all of your plans?”
“Well, yeah. Angry people make mistakes, right?”
A spear thudded into the wall directly in front of Mara’s face, clotheslining her with its shaft and sending her tumbling down the tower’s long flight of stairs.
“They aren’t the only ones,” Virmir remarked as he followed after.
He found Mara in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the steps, dazed, bruised, but – somewhat disappointingly – still alive.
“Okay, time for step two,” he told her.
“We have a step two?”
“What’s the point of step one if you don’t have step two?”
Mara shook her head clear. “Dunno. I usually just kinda make it up as I go.”
This came as no surprise at all to Virmir. Before he could express his disdain, the tribal lizards reached the bottom of the steps. Shouts of “angrystab!” intermittently rose above the babbling nonsense as they poked the air with their spears.
“What was step two again?” Mara asked.
“We’ve got to make Jinx come at us,” he answered, running past her down the hall. “You get rid of the lizards, I’ll go set up step three.”
Mara took a potion from her pouch. “Okay.”
The lizards raised their spears, filling the hall with their war cry . . . then disappeared in a puff of yellowish spores as the bottle shattered at their feet. Amidst the coughing and struggling, Virmir caught a shriek of “smellybog!” and then silence. The spore cloud settled, revealing a clump of mushrooms growing on the carpet.
“Oh, great, the carpet’s gone moldy,” said Jinx, standing over them. “Now I’m gonna have to throw it out. Thanks for that.”
Another pie splatted into her face.
“This bit is suffering from diminishing returns.”
Jinx tapped her amulet, causing the mess to float away from her face and reconstitute into a whole pie once again. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped as she caught sight of Mara’s tail disappearing around the corner. Jinx set the pie aside (she fully intended to eat it later) and followed after.
“I’m a little disappointed in the two of you,” she said. “I expected more from you than just a pie in the face. Especially you, Vir . . .”
Mara stood in the middle of the room, a huge smile stretched across her face. Without turning her head, the witch glanced down at the floor, then back up. Jinx looked down. A hastily, but very accurately drawn circle of runes surrounded her feet. Virmir pressed his paws against them, concentrating.
“Something like this?” Mara asked.
Flaring to life, the runes channeled their magic through Jinx. She stumbled backward, tripping as her feet changed from their familiar shape. She hit the ground hard. Momentarily confused, she looked down at herself, taking in her trotters, her plump, pink body and, glancing over her shoulder, the short, curly tail.
“Well, okay, that’s more like it,” Jinx snorted. “I was beginning to think you weren’t trying.” She reached up and began rubbing her amulet. Deep within, the ruby’s glow shimmered. “But you’ll have to try harder if you want to-”
Virmir leapt directly onto Jinx’s face. Knocked back by the force of his full body crashing into her, her grip on the amulet slipped just as its energy reached its peak. Without any directing will, the chaos energies exploded, hurling Virmir away. He struck the far wall next to Mara, slid down with a squeegee squeal, and landed on his . . . fluffy cotton tail?
“Why is it always a bunny!” he groaned. “I hate being a bunny!”
A split-toed foot stomped down in front of him. Jinx, now in the form of a lavender-colored camel, glared daggers at him.
“There’s a lot worse things you could be,” she said. “As you’re about to find out.”
Mara laughed out loud. “Look, Virmir! You were right! We can-”
A bolt of green lightning cut her off. A slimy frog hit the ground with a wet slap amidst a cloud of green sparkles.
“I like you Mara,” Jinx said, clearly struggling to keep her tone even. “I really do. That’s why I’m gonna give you a chance to go back to your bog right now. If you do, I’ll only leave you like that for a week instead of the rest of your life. Sound fair?”
Mara croaked.
“Good.” Turning to Virmir, she spoke through clenched teeth. “Now, you, I’ve had just about enough of. You’ve got me so peeved. You are just . . . no fun at all! You won’t play along, you keep interrupting my me-time, and you have no sense of humor.”
“I never got the hang of it,” he replied.
“I don’t play games with people who can’t appreciate a bit of fun.”
Virmir leapt at Jinx again, but this time she moved faster. Her foot caught him in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. Before he could recover, it came down again, pinning him to the ground.
“Not this time, mage,” she growled. “The game is over. So now, I have just one question.”
Virmir said nothing, watching as the amulet’s inner glow started to build.
“Would you rather be cream-filled, or cherry cordial?”
Calling up all of the magic he could muster, Virmir hurled a fireball directly at Jinx’s face. She inhaled it, held it for a moment, tiny streams of smoke leaking from her nostrils, then playfully blew out a rainbow-colored ring of smoke. It drifted gently out the window and blew away on a breeze. Grinning, she turned back to Virmir.
“Cherry cordial it is.”
The amulet’s glow grew more intense. Virmir felt his innards twisting into a lump as a cherry formed from them. Trees! She was slowing the transformation down on purpose to make it as uncomfortable as possible. Struggling helplessly, he watched as his fur turned brown and waxy. His body began to shrivel and melt, condensing into a lump of chocolate. Jinx licked her lips in anticipation of a delicious treat.
Mara’s frog-tongue shot directly into Jinx’s eye. Recoiling in surprise and pain, Jinx stumbled backwards. With the last of his will and strength, Virmir jumped upward moments before his feet melded into his body. His rapidly diminishing fingers closed around the latch on Jinx’s collar, flipping the switch as his head disappeared into the chocolaty mass.
Angry green light bathed the room, distorting everything it touched. The walls flowed like hot wax, warping and bending. Furniture mushed together like putty in a child’s hands, then reformed into new shapes. Mara had a moment to call out to Virmir before her body bloated, twisted, and finally settled into the smiling shape of a tanuki lawn ornament. Jinx shrieked as the force of the explosion blew her back. She hit the floor and instantly became a patch of daisies and crab grass.
When the light finally faded, Virmir sat up and blinked. A bit disoriented, he blinked again, only realizing then that he had a second set of eyes. His two heads turned to look at each other.
“Moo?” said one head.
“Oh, that’s just great,” said the other.
He’d become a two-headed, anthropomorphic cow.
“I hate when this happens,” both heads said at once.
“You think you hate that?” Jinx asked.
With a rustle of stems and petals, the flowers stretched upward and wound around themselves, forming into the rough outline of Jinx’s normal body.
“I’m sure I can think up something even worse.”
She reached for her amulet, but her fingers only touched her own neck – or what passed for a neck in her current shape. Negative space eyes turned from rage to panic. Her amulet lay on the ground at Virmir’s feet. One of his heads looked at it. The other looked at Mara.
“Well, that ain’t good.”
Virmir picked Mara up and brought her down hard on Jinx’s amulet. It flattened, making a wet whoopee-cushion plarp! as it did. Lifting Mara back up again, he watched the amulet liquify, then evaporate into nothing.
“Oh, well,” Jinx chuckled. “It was fun while it lasted. Good trees, Virmir! What took you so long!”
Jinx’s voice changed to Lucile’s over the course of the last two sentences.
“Good to see you, too,” he answered.
He set Mara down and picked up her pouch, riffling through it while Lucile continued ranting.
“I’ve been stuck as Jinx for two whole weeks. She threw parties every night! You know how much we hate parties! And dancing!”
“It was only a few minutes for me,” Virmir said. “She sent me off to some weird dimension. I think time flowed differently there. Ah!” He drew a wand from the pouch. “I knew Mara would have a dispelling wand on her, as much as her magic backfires.”
He tapped himself with the wand and reverted to his normal form. The process involved an uncomfortable amount of squelching. Lucile came next.
“Just be glad it’s over,” he said. “With her amulet broken, that’s the last we’ll see of her.”
“Don’t count on it,” Lucile told him, patting herself down to make sure everything was back to normal. “I still have some of Jinx’s memories. That amulet is . . . I don’t even think she knows herself, but it’s tied to some extra-dimensional being. I doubt it’s as easy to break as that.”
Virmir sighed. “Well, at least it’s over for now.”
They eyed Mara, sitting in the corner, her big, painted grin and cartoony eyes gazing blankly back at them. Virmir looked at the wand in his hand.
“I should turn her back to normal, too. I couldn’t have beaten Jinx without her.”
“Yeah,” agreed Lucile. “She really saved our tails at the last minute.”
“She did,” Virmir admitted. “It’d be the right thing to do.”
----
In a comfy, high-rise apartment in Southern California, Jinx sat on a beanbag chair, a TV remote control in her hands. On the screen, she watched Virmir and Lucile place Mara out in the garden, next to an ornamental pond beneath a willow tree.
“Aww . . .” she said, casually rubbing her amulet. “That’s mean.”
Cameroo, who knew better by now, declined to comment on Jinx’s lack of self-awareness. Instead, he said, “It looks like they beat you.”
“Yup,” Jinx said. She turned the TV off and lazily stretched. “At least I got a little entertainment out of it.”
“You still gonna go there in person?”
“Nah,” Jinx answered. “It’s a fun little world, but there’s no goblins to enslave. The lizard people just weren’t up to snuff.”
“So, 5/10 on Yelp World Review?”
“Sounds about right.”
She put a finger to her chin in thought, then an evil grin spread across her face. Cameroo took a cautious step backward, pulling up the hood of his blue hoodie as he inched towards the door.
“Although, I suppose I really should repay them for all the fun.”
----
“What should I do with these guys?” Lucile asked, holding up a pot of mushrooms she’d transplanted from the carpet upstairs.
“Eh, put them in the lab for now. I can harvest their spores for research later.”
It had taken Virmir and Lucile two days to clean up the mess. They were still in the process of reacquiring their furniture. The merchants in town claimed to understand his frustration with events, but business was business, after all. Used furniture sold cheap, but all of Jinx’s gaudy trinkets combined still didn’t equal it. With a bit of . . . persuasion . . . they’d convinced the merchants it was in their best interest to give them a discount, but some of it had already been resold.
He hated when this happened.
VirBot entered the room. “You have a guest at the door.”
“Oh, what now?”
The guest turned out to be a kangaroo wearing a blue dress. She was carrying a large bag.
“What do you want?” Virmir demanded. “I’m very busy right now, so if you’re selling something, you’ve got ten seconds before I set you on fire.”
“Not selling,” the kangaroo said quickly. “Mistress Jinx sent me to offer you a token of her gratitude for all the amusement.”
She held out the bag. Virmir eyed it warily. Lucile took it and opened it up.
“Cursed objects, no doubt,” Virmir said.
“Good trees!” Lucile exclaimed. “These gems are huge!”
Virmir peered inside. The gems were, indeed, quite large.
“Mistress Jinx was very amused,” said the kangaroo.
----
Virmir set an emerald the size of his entire palm down on his desk and put the loupe aside. The gem was flawless. More importantly, it was not cursed.
“So?”
“These gems are probably worth more than the entire haul we dragged up from Durkon’s Dungeon.”
Lucile whistled in amazement. “So, she paid us back for all the trouble then.”
Virmir nodded. “And got rid of Mara as a bonus.”
Outside the window, the silence was shattered by a screech.
“HEY!”
They looked out the window and saw Mara riding on her broom. She looked upset, to put it mildly.
“You jerk! How dare you try to leave me as an ugly lawn ornament! I’ll make you pay for this!”
Then she flew off into the night. Virmir and Lucile eyed each other askance. They had no need to say what they were thinking. They knew; after all, they were each other.
“Well,” Lucile began, “At least-”
“Don’t jinx it.”
