"That medallion--it turned me into you!" Max exclaimed.
"Uh..." Billy stammered. "It must have. I..." He took it out of his pocket. "This is very old." He squinted at it. "It's got an inscription too. Looks like Greek, but I can't read it in this light. I've got a magnifying glass back in my apartment."
"I'm Max," Max mentioned.
"The fat dude?"
"Not anymore," Max said. "Anyway, I wasn't that fat."
"Whatever," Billy said and led the way back to the apartment. He took the medallion over to a table covered with old books and set it down, examining it with a large magnifying glass. "Yep, it's Greek all right, and...good god!"
"What?" Max asked.
"If the inscription is correct, this was made by Circe."
"Who's she?"
Billy rolled his eyes. "Famous sorceress from the Odyssey. Great at transformations. I'm a classics major, so let me translate this." He studied the amulet, turning it over and reading the Greek letters set into the labyrinth of Greek key design.
"What's it say?"
"Um... this is a loose translation, but something like 'Let this, my amulet, transform the wearer to fit the garment or jewel this amulet touches, losing the old shape and gaining the new, and let this spell be wrought anew for each when Hyperion's ride passes halfway round the earth but not before.'"
"Huh?"
"Once it transforms you, you can't be transformed again until half a day has passed." Billy looked back at the amulet, studying it closely, and while he did this, he touched it with the magnifying glass.
At once, he doubled over in pain, grimacing as his eyes moved closer and closer together, merging into one huge eye in the center of his forehead as he grew and grew, ripping out of his clothes, his shoulders tearing through his shirt, his feet splitting out through his shoes until at last a giant cyclops stood there hunched over in the apartment, naked, his single eye the exact right size for him to use the magnifying glass as a monocle.
Billy looked down at himself, his body massively enlarged but otherwise still the same, still blond, still skinny, but blinking at the room through his one eye until he held up the magnifying glass and looked through it. "Damn Circe," the said, his voice low and rumbling. "The Cyclops had notoriously poor vision. Now I'm not only a cyclops, but one that needs a magnifying glass to see properly." He squinched his brow down under his new huge central browridge and held the magnifying glass in place, then took one enormous hand to pull a blanket off the couch and used it to fashion a makeshift loincloth.
"What are we going to do?" Max asked.
"Well," rumbled Billy the Cyclops. "I guess we've got a few hours to wait before we can try to use some clothes to turn ourselves back into ourselves."