Cassie held out her hand palm up over top of the counter. A collection of colorful motes appeared in the air over her hand and slowly drifted around. Elizabeth was entranced by the display, and she noticed with a quick glance that it also held Devianne's attention.
The motes accelerated as they spun faster and faster in orbits, moving into a pattern resembling protons orbiting an atom. A small black dot grew out of nothing in the center of the orbit. The ambient light of the shop dimmed and eventually ceased completely. The only light in the shop came from the motes spinning rapidly around the black dot. Even the heads at Elizabeth's far end, almost 200' away, were unable to see her own hands in the supernatural darkness.
Off in the distance she heard Gina loudly asking what was going on, followed by a bang and several objects falling to the ground. Gina's swearing voice faded into the distance as though obscured by the darkness. The only things that Elizabeth could see or hear were the motes swirling around the growing black dot. It had grown to a point that it started to envelope and seemingly absorb the orbiting motes of light.
As slowly as the light had faded from the shop, the black dot grew and consumed all the motes. When the last mote vanished, Elizabeth suddenly found herself disoriented. She knew she should be seeing and hearing. But... there was nothing. No vision - she couldn't see anything, only blackness. The normal ambience of being in the mall was gone. There was no sound. Not even the sound of blood pumping through her veins.
Elizabeth felt her pulse quicken and her hearts beat faster and faster. Anxiety crept into her minds, gnawing relentlessly and efficiently at her sanity and forcing her deepest fears to the surface. Scared, she turned to look between her heads, to confirm that she still existed. But there was only blackness.
She didn't know how long she waited in that black void. She lost all sense of time, and touch with reality. Even the feeling of her hearts beating seemed to fade until she couldn't sense it any more. Desperately she held her hands together and slapped herself on the cheek. The feeling of touch was distant and fading fast.
She waited....
And waited...
And waited...
At one point she was aware that she had cried. She didn't know how she was aware of that; she had not felt it while it was happening.
Still she waited.
An instinct kicked in. She felt the need to coil herself up. Consciously she knew that was a terrible idea. She would collide with shelves and be unable to feel that. But the instinct grew greater and greater and greater until finally she couldn't control herself. Her body moved, tail stacked on tail, and her torsos elevated and rested upon her coils.
Even without her senses, she still could she had coiled up. But had no idea what damage she had caused in the meantime.
She waited...
And cried... And waited...
And waited... And cried...
And waited....
Then suddenly all of her senses returned. She was momentarily stunned by the blinding flash of sight, the deafening roar of quiet whispers off in the distance, the intense pressure of tail resting on tail, the acidic taste of spit, and the overwhelming wash of sterile aromas.
All 8 of Elizabeth's heads rapidly looked around. She was no longer in the shop: that much was instantly obvious. She seemed to be in a... courtroom, perhaps.
An elderly woman with sat atop a throne grown from a tree, nearly 10 feet above the floor. Below the throne and to the side the tree's branches grew out and formed a series of sitting boxes with benches layered in tree leaves and flat surfaces at a writing height. A number of unusual people sat in those boxes - a man with deer legs, a woman who appeared to be formed entirely out of leaves and branches, and an enormous stereotypical big-brimmed wizard's hat floated midair and seemed to bounce and turn of its own accord.
The floor appeared to be smoothed dirt with silky grass growing out of it. A perfect lawn formed of a grass she'd never seen before. Even through her scales, Elizabeth was able to feel just how soft the grass was. It maintained a consistent height of a half an inch across the entire floor. In front of Elizabeth, rising from the floor to a height of about 3 feet were a series of brambles and rosebushes, both beautiful and filled with vicious thorns. They formed an extraordinary waist-height wall.
The waist-high wall circled Elizabeth. She had plenty of room to move in each direction, but the way the wall of thorns moved and waved towards her, she got the impression that she was trapped within it.
In the area before her stood Cassie, looking up to the woman on the throne. To each side of that were 2 more trees, each off to the side. Both of the trees faded off into the darkness at around the 8 foot mark, and below they each formed a large sitting box. The right sitting box was empty, and Devianne sat alone in the left box.
There was nothing else. The ground faded into darkness at a radius of about 80 feet. Beyond that 80 foot radius, there was only darkness. There were no walls or ground, only darkness.
Elizabeth herself was coiled into a number of 6 foot tall coils. Her torsos "stood" upright from the top of 4 of her coils. The rest of her massive tail rested in many identically tall coils behind her. From her elevated vantage she could look down on the courtroom, but was not elevated enough to see behind the table grown in front of the elevated throne.
"....unable to detect anything with my own scry magic. Nothing, not even a blip. I believe she has been forthright and honest in our conversations and has spoken of deep seated compulsions related to her transformation that she obeyed, your honor."
Cassie finished speaking and glanced back to where Elizabeth lay. Concern and worry were clearly visible on her face. She let out a gasp when she met eye contact with Elizabeth.
"Oh thank god."
The elderly woman sitting atop the far tree nodded and spoke, "I'm glad you were able to join us, Elizabeth. While we waited for you, we have been discussing your situation. Before we continue with anything else, I would like to first explain what is going on here, and then give you a chance to speak. Do you know what the VPA is?"
She sat forward and looked between Elizabeth's heads, as if waiting for a response.
"Uhh, I think. Veil Protection Agency, right? Ssorry if I got that wrong."
"That is correct, young lady. To compare us to a more mundane group, we are the magic world's equivalent of MI6, or the CIA. We protect the public, ideally without the public's knowledge. It is our responsibility to identify and deal with magical and occult threats and situations for the betterment of the entire world, both magical and mundane. With me so far?"
Elizabeth nodded across several heads.
"Good. You are in one of the courtrooms of the Court of Knowledge. Don't worry, you are not in trouble or on trial here. Neither is Devianne, or Cassie. No-one here is on trial, and no-one is in trouble. I want to stress that point. Please be as honest with us as you can. This meeting is happening here only because of the manner in which it was requested and the uncertainty surrounding your last 48 hours. Consider this a secure location."
The woman stopped and slowly made eye contact with each of Elizabeth's 8 sets of eyes. Once she had looked into each pair of eyes she continued, apparently satisfied.
"You may call me Judge Ironlore. I preside over this courtroom. Assisting this inquiry today are Judge Agnosis, Judge Whisperfoot, and Judge Tender."
The 2 figures and the floating hat seated below the speaking judge nodded as their names were called - the hat apparently being named Agnosis, the faun named Whisperfoot, and the dryad named Tender.
"Now that introductions are out of the way, let's get down to it. Would you please tell us about your last couple of days?" Ironlore smiled, a motion that appeared contrary to her otherwise stonelike and cold demeanor.
Elizabeth took a breath and moved one of her torsos forward to speak. It took her a couple of minutes to recount the last few days. She paused when she reached the parts where she masturbated or had self sex, but a piercing shine in Ironlore's eyes peeked through her smiling exterior and prompted her to include even those slightly embarrassing scenes in her retelling. Devianne grinned each time Elizabeth mentioned her sexual explorations, only to return to a more solemn expression when one of the Judges looked over her way.
After Elizabeth finished explaining no-one spoke for nearly a minute. Finally Judge Ironlore broke the silence,
"Elizabeth, do you regret any of these choices or changes?"
Elizabeth shook all of her heads.
"Are there any changes you would continue to make to yourself?"
Elizabeth thought for a minute before responding.
"I... think sso. I don't know what the change would be. I feel like there'ss ssomething more."
Agnosis, the floating hat, had turned upside down and filled with an odd opaque liquid that rapidly shifted through all the colors of the rainbow. A masculine voice rang out and the liquid rippled, "Suppose we gave you a choice, a chance to roll back time so that you had never entered Devianne's shop and were never changed and never have the opportunity to change, or to stay as you are but live the rest of your life in a cell the size of the holding area you are currently in. What would you choose?"
Elizabeth stared at the hat in disbelief. Several of her mouths opened as she tried to respond, but she couldn't find the words. Eventually she managed to stammer out, "I... would sstay as I am."
The hat spun in place and the liquid inside of it quickly formed into a small waterspout. It spun faster and faster and the waterspout grew in size. Then abruptly it stopped and the waterspout collapsed, splashing liquid everywhere. The hat floated over the bramble-fences to Elizabeth's leftmost torso. The completely still liquid in it slowly cycled between all the colors of the rainbow.
Again, a voice emitted from the location of the hat. "Ironlore would nail me to the wall if I didn't stress that you aren't in trouble. Now please... Drink from me."
Elizabeth stared in disbelief at the hat floating in front of her. Another head looked up at Ironlore only to see the elevated Judge slowly nodded. She reached forward and took hold of the brim of the hat and lined it up with one mouth, then tilted a little and drank some of the liquid. It had no taste but completely numbed her mouth. She pulled the hat away from her hat and released her hold. To her surprise it shifted back towards her again.
"All of it, please."
Too scared to refuse, she grabbed the hat's brim and finished drinking the liquid from it. Rapidly her entire body went numb. Then a second later, the numbness was gone.
"Good. Now, same question. Given the choice between rewinding time and never being exposed to magic and continuing to live your mundane life, or living a life aware of magic as you are now but trapped eternally in a cell, what is your preference? STOP! Do not answer yet. Think about it. Mull it over."
Elizabeth glared at the hat with a couple of heads while all of her minds carefully thought over its proposition. She knew immediately what her answer was, but gave some time in case she felt any urge to change her mind. Finally she felt enough time had passed and responded.
"It'ss sstill the ssame. A sserpentine cell for me."
The hat flipped right-side up and bobbed appreciatively in front of Elizabeth.
"I see. Thank you, Elizabeth. I appreciate your honesty and trust."
The hat zoomed back over to its seating box. It spun a few times then spoke again,
"She is destined. The elixir does not lie. The divine force is so strong I cannot measure it."
Ironlore spoke again, "Well now.. this is interesting. Generally speaking, Humans don't have a specific destiny - an arrogant mage in the early 600s made sure of that when he severed the connection between the divine and mortal realms. But every now and then, someone will spontaneously develop a destiny. We only see this happen every 20 or 30 years. The results... vary wildly.
Your destiny could be anything. You may be destined to reach a certain form. Or you may be destined to perform some specific action while in a specific form. I could spend an eternity listing possible destinies. The things to know about having a destiny are:
1) Your destiny is a singular moment. Once that moment has been achieved, you will again have complete and total free will.
2) Your destiny is unknowable until it is achieved.
3) You will achieve your destiny. It is not a choice you can make, or a task you can fail."
Elizabeth was stunned by this information. It all seemed so arbitrary and sudden. Why should she be special?
"Why... Why would it be me? There issn't any reasson I can think of why I would be chossen for ssomething like thiss."
Ironlore shook her head, "There might not be a reason. It may just be random chance. We still don't know how destinies manifest. Whether there is some cosmic deity managing to pick someone in a realm it cannot perceive or act within, or something as crazy and random as a tiny tear in the field between the 2 realms randomly flooding 1 single individual with enough divine energy to force a destiny to form, or something else entirely. But Agnosis is correct - the elixir does not lie. You have a destiny, and you will have to live it through. Even death will not provide you with an escape until your destiny is fulfilled."
"But don't think too much about it. What you should take away from today is pretty simple: There's nothing wrong with you, and you should obey your intuition and those deep-seated compulsions. Does that help?"
Elizabeth slowly nodded. Cassie and Devianne both appeared speechless at what they had just heard.
Ironlore smiled again and slowly motioned across the court, "Good. We will inform the school of temporal learning so they can account for the change in timestream. Before I dismiss court, there is one last thing to do. Whisperfoot, would you please do the honors?"
The faun leapt over the bramble wall in front of him and danced across the court. Most of his movement was spent in the air, leaping from one spot to another. With ease he leapt across the bramble wall surrounding Elizabeth and stopped just in front of her coils. She towered over him and looked down at him with curiosity. He slowly looked up and across her body.
"Lass, yer a big uhn. Ahh tink yer gonna be a wee bit biggah befah yer thru. Ahm sorrah for ta ouch ye be about ta feel."
Elizabeth could scarcely understand the faun through his ridiculous accent. Without warning (or perhaps with it, and she simply hadn't been able to understand it), the faun leapt once more into the air and slammed his hooves into one of Elizabeth's coils.
She screamed in utter pain with all 8 mouths. Her entire body felt like it had been set on fire and seared for hours in a volcano. But a moment later, the pain was gone. She wiped several tiny tears from her eyes and looked down at the faun.
"Tat werent tah bad were it, eh lass?"
He bowed to Elizabeth and leapt once more into the air. She braced herself to be magically kicked once more, but instead he did a backflip and started back across the court to his seat. As he danced across the court, Ironlore explained,
"Whisperfoot has bestowed on you the strongest normalization magic known to world. It has changed you at a core level; your essence has adapted and is now permanently normalized. In short, you don't ever need to worry about disrupting the veil again. Everyone will see and accept your form, even if it would normally be impossible for them to comprehend. This is a gift bestowed on very few people - consider yourself lucky."
Elizabeth hopefully asked, "Doess thiss mean I don't have to worry about doing thingss like sslithering on roadss?"
"That is correct. Feel free to pose for as many pictures as you want, or go on television. You are permanently normalized. Both magic and mundane people will be aware of your shape, and both will fully accept it. I trust that you will not abuse this freedom in a harmful way. And with that, our business is concluded. Cassie, you acted exemplary and will receive a promotion for your superior work in this case. Devianne, we will be sending you a small token of our respect and thanks. Expect it by way of courier imp later today."
Devianne and Cassie bowed as Ironlore stood up. She grinned and called out, "Court dismissed!"
Suddenly darkness took Elizabeth again, eliminating all of her senses instantly.
A moment later she was back in Spellcast Magic Supplies. The placement of her coils shifted a bit during travel so she fit within the confines of the store, but it felt completely normal. She looked down and saw Cassie and Devianne at the counter, Cassie still holding her arm out and tiny motes of light flying around a black speck. In a swift motion, Cassie closed her hand into a fist and the spell vanished. In the distance, Elizabeth could hear Gina cursing as she picked up knocked over merchandise off the floor.
Cassie looked up to Elizabeth and grinned, "Well, now at least we know. What do you want to do now? You're the one with a destiny."