We dropped off Queen Anastasia in the field outside the castle. While I felt someone like her ought to be staying in Whitehallow, I did understand why she wouldn’t be comfortable staying in the castle of the Demon Queen (or her lich servant). Both the Wizard and the Archeress -- whose names I still hadn’t picked up -- also got out, but Tybalt and Lillian insisted they come with us to keep an eye on the Hero. I understood where they were coming from, honestly. I wouldn’t have trusted me either.

As the carriage was parked in Whitehallow’s courtyard, I carried Sally’s unconscious body inside, Tybalt and Lillian on either side of me like a couple of bodyguards, Sabine walking directly behind her bald friend in case he tried anything stupid, though he seemed to be more ‘grumpy’ than ‘angry’ at this point. Kazumi had hurried ahead. Watching her slither fast was, in my opinion, a fascinating and frankly adorable sight. I looked over at Sabine to see if she was paying attention to it as well, but she just looked up at me. Had she had the same thought I had? But she was the one developing a relationship with Kazumi, so that didn’t make sense.

When we made our way into the main hall, a table had already been cleared to put the Hero’s body on, and I did so carefully. Everyone gathered around the table and looked at me expectantly. I froze up, and Sabine came to the rescue. She looked around at the others, and then took me by the hand and dragged me off with a quick “‘Scuze us”. We walked over to one of the marble pillars, and I kneeled so I could talk to her more easily. Whispering over a distance of five feet was a bit of a hassle.

“What are you going to do, Liz?” she asked me. “You look uncomfortable.”

I took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I really don’t… but like… you know when I brought you back and gave you like, your essence back?”

She nodded, urging me to continue.

“So, when I do magic like that, there’s something inside me, and I think it’s the magic itself, that tells me ‘I can do this’. And it happened when I looked at them. I know I can help.”

She scratched the back of her head and looked over. “So… what do you think you want to do?”

We both looked at the still body on the slab, the gruff masculine features with a young woman trapped inside. I couldn’t help but feel the need to fix this. Nobody deserved to be stuck in the wrong body. I could only imagine the intense discomfort someone would feel if they were trapped that way, especially if they’d already been in the right one before. I considered myself lucky in that regard, that I seemed to be immune to that kind of feeling, since the shift to inhabiting the Demon Queen’s body hadn’t actually caused me any real discomfort.

“I think I’m going to try to… fix the body. I think her like, essence, who she is… I don’t think there’s anything wrong there. It’s her shape that’s wrong, right?”

Sabine chewed her tongue thoughtfully. “What you’re saying makes sense, Liz. The problem is that, as far as I know, there’s no way to permanently change a body. The soul resists. Maybe it won’t in this case?”

I looked at her. “You literally became an immortal undead lich, Sabine. Doesn’t that count as a significant and pretty permanent change?”

She rolled her eyes with a smile. “Death is the only real permanent change we can undergo. You kinda changed my… uh… How to put this… My soul wasn’t inside my body when the latter underwent the changes required.”

This was a lot of technical magical stuff, but I liked to think I’d paid attention during her classes earlier that month. “So you’re saying the body can’t change with the soul inside it?” I got up with determination.

“I-- Yes… But…” She looked at me with panic as I made my way back to the table. “Liz, no!”

“Liz yes!” I said happily. I knew what had to be done. The snarling energy in my chest agreed, and I knew I could do this. I could help Sally, and save her. Everything was going to be okay. The others around the table looked at me curiously. I let my intention to help Sally slowly take over and I felt the warmth of the magic soak into my limbs. I could do this. As I got to the table, the magic was largely in control, and I was in an almost euphoric haze. It had almost never been this strong before. The only thing that had come close was trying to heal Sabine, and back then I’d been in a state of pure panic and fear. This was something else entirely. I was going to do some big magic.

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I picked up Sally’s body with one hand, holding it by the collar. It hung limply and I saw Tybalt already rearing up to stop me. No time to lose then, I thought, as I slammed my fist into Sally’s chest and ripped her soul out in one swift movement.

There was some screaming, but I barely registered. The soft haze made it really hard to figure out why everyone seemed to be so upset. I’d only separated body from soul. I tossed the empty husk back onto the table. It was only going to be useful again in a minute. I held the golden shape of the soul in my hand. It was pretty. I couldn’t help but wonder if the others could see what I did, or if they’d just seen me gruesomely murder their friend. No time to worry about that, I thought, and I held the soul up to the light. It flickered and shimmered in the afternoon light streaming through the large windows of Whitehallow. It was barely conscious, only stirring. It was a lot smaller than the original hero’s body. This was Sally. So now all I had to do…

I decided that sometimes, flair mattered. I walked up to the body and put my hand on it. Without a soul, there was no desire to remain anchored or unchanging. It was a vessel, alive but not living, with no soul to give it guidance. I could mold this like clay, but it wasn’t my clay to mold. Not alone. The soul in my other hand gave off a feeling, a desire to be a certain way. But with how hurt it was, the feeling was too vague. The snarling energy in my chest let me know that I could fill in the blanks, no problem.

“Okay!” I said out loud, to nobody in particular, and I chokeslammed the soul back into the body. The flesh was already swirling to fit the soul as I felt the immense energy pour from my being into the muscle and sinew. I had no idea how this looked to anyone around the table, because my eyes were filled with golden light and my head with pink mist. When I dropped the body on the table I knew it was done.

Tybalt had his sword drawn but Sabine stood between us. I knew she wasn’t going to let him harm me, but she did look at me with absolute confusion. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was slightly agape.

“What?” I said. “I did what I could.”

“I… believe you, Eliza…” She looked at the body on the table. “I just wasn’t expecting, uh…”

I looked over. Sally was making soft noises and she sat up. She looked like herself, a young woman in clothes much too large for her. But she was most definitely a Sally now. I was quite proud of my work, honestly. Though, now that the haze of the magic was withdrawing from my vision, I did wonder if I did the wings right.

Hold on.

Wait.

Humans usually don’t have wings. Or red skin. Or wings.

Oops.

“Sally?” I tried.

She looked up at me with beautiful black eyes. All the way black. It was doing things for me it probably shouldn’t.

“Yeah?” Her voice was soft, like she just woke up from a long slumber.

“How do you feel?”

She shifted around, and her eyes grew wide. She felt her body, grabbed her breasts, and the smile that appeared on her face was wide and full of pointy teeth. She looked really happy.

“I’m… I’m me! Holy crap! Fuck! Shit! Yes!”

It was really hard not to laugh at the succubus spouting filth like a sailor. Tybalt’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head. He couldn’t stop staring at Sally, who now didn’t resemble his old friend even remotely anymore. This was going to be a doozy to explain.

“Are you sure about that?” Lillian asked softly.

Sally nodded vigorously and seemed to notice the fact that her head felt weirdly heavy, and reached up to remove what was surely a hat. When her fingers touched the black horns coming out of her scalp she froze for a second, and shifted her weight. She flapped her wings. She flicked her tail back and forth, then looked at me like a muppet looking into the camera.

“Wh-- What the fuck?”

I grinned sheepishly and rubbed the back of my neck. “My bad. I can probably fix it…”

“No!” Sabine said quickly. However, her voice had been in stereo. The other ‘No’ had come from Sally herself. She sat cross legged on the table and was looking at one of her wings closely.

“No, this is fiiine,” she said, her tail swishing back and forth lazily, grinning. “This is so much better.”

I looked at her with a little bit of worry. “Are you… sure? You still feel like yourself?”

“Heck yeah!” she said loudly, and Kazumi gasped at the expletive. “Who wouldn’t want to be a hot demon chick? My body feels…” She touched her face. “This is me. This is my face. I’m me again. I thought I was going crazy. But now I’m me again. Fuck. And I really don’t mind the additions.” She laughed. “This is awesome.”

Tybalt stepped forward, and Sabine shot him a glance that could easily be translated as ‘Try anything and I will mess you up so bad your grandparents will feel it.’

“What in the hells did you do to him?!” he yelled.

I frowned unhappily. “Please don’t yell.”

“I’m not a him, Tybalt,” Sally said as she turned to him, folding and unfurling her wings experimentally. “This is how I’ve been for a long time. This is who I’ve been. My name is Sally Stone. And apparently I’m a sexy demon lady.”

“Succubus,” Kazumi corrected her meekly. Sally just laughed, a high, pleasant sound that was infectious and took my mind off the yelling man.

“Then who was… Where is Daniel?” Tybalt said, his voice cracking. It was getting to me that Tybalt was still scared for his friend. Sally looked at me with a questioning look. She didn’t have an answer. The one I had wasn’t… was not going to be pleasant.

“Tybalt…” I began, and got down on my knees. I found that sitting like that made me less intimidating, and people were more willing to listen to me that way. Well, they listened either way, but I preferred people to listen rather than obey. He looked at me with his usual mixture of rage, fear and insecurity. Sabine stepped aside. She knew this was going to be a hard blow regardless.

“Tybalt, I’m afraid Daniel hasn’t been… in this world for some time.”

He looked at me and tears were forming in his eyes, and I couldn’t help but feel them welling up in mine. I could tell he was in pain.

“You -- you’re lying… This is another one of your tricks, isn’t it…” he said, without much conviction. He was trying to convince himself. Lillian looked at him sadly. I got the feeling she’d been grieving for some time, instead of spending that time in denial. “What… did you kill him? What did you do to him? Who is this?”

“I… one question at a time.” I took a deep breath, but my voice was cracking and tears ran down my face. “The woman here is Sally. She’s not your friend. She’s… new, to this world.”

Lily looked at Sally, who just kicked her feet off the edge of the table and waved.

“I… I didn’t do anything to Daniel, Tybalt. Daniel was killed the first time he entered the castle.”

“By you!”

I shook my head. Deep breath. Count to five.

“Daniel was killed by the old Demon Queen Eliza.”