Selph
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Mixed Up Mixology
🕑 Added 2021-09-19 22:01:22 +0000 UTC(Disclaimer: Any acts of transformation, expansion, or mental altercation have been consented to by the owners of the characters affected. Any acts depicted are meant as explorations of the fetishistic psyche, hold artistic merit, and are compliant with the TOS of Patreon).
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Speedwrite commission for Dee!
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Today marked the one year anniversary of Dee’s hiring at the Violet Streams. This time last September they worked at a low-grade apothecary, selling watered down tinctures to a sleepy town in the Southwest of Britain. The magical side of it, where people used glamours to hide the stores that sold eye of dragon right next to the local Tesco. Dee was ambivalent to it at the time, but the Kentucky fried phoenix, hidden in a subspace behind the regular KFC, was pretty tasty.
Dee’s job was easy, but they never liked the way they were forced to short-change their customers. Every time Mrs.Willowhorn, the kindly old Minotaur who occasionally gave Dee a piece of chocolate during their shift, came in to complain her medicine wasn’t working like it did last month, their heart sank.
Everything changed when a purple bear Dee had never seen before, with glowing rings in his eyes, came to pick up his order. He asked if he could uncork the mana potion Dee had brought out for him. He wanted to double check its potency before he paid. Dee felt guilty, but saying no would be an admission of fraud, so they allowed it. Dee wasn’t aware of anyone who could tell the difference between mana potion potency by smell.
One whiff later, he spoke. His voice was deep but smooth, a flowing tone you expected from someone who did a lot of speaking in their line of work.
“This is weaker than it should be, it's been mixed with water and food dye.”
Dee froze.
“I only wanted to replenish my mana because I was thirsty. If I had needed it for something more severe, I could get very sick by relying on a low dose like this one. Are you trying to make your customers deliberately unwell to increase your sales?”
Dee had no love for their boss. A salamander with golden teeth, who was using his natural affinity for illusion to hide in the doorway to the stockroom.
“... it’s watered down because we make more money that way,” Dee wasn’t sure ‘why’ they decided to expose their store’s shoddy practices to an absolute stranger, but the image of sickly Mrs.Willowhorn stuck in their mind's eye like a sunspot.
The bear looked down at them. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
Magic flared in the bear’s empty claw. His blue nails burned with arcane power, resonating louder and louder like the sound of an oncoming subway car pushing the air out of the tunnel as it approached. He raised his paw and unleashed a blue wave. It took a bite into whatever magic it could find in its path, and hit the empty doorway. Dee’s boss cried out. His illusion was stripped away, flimsy as wet tissue, and he stared slack-jawed at the bear who had undone his invisibility spell.
“Ah... hi there, you must be uh, mister Selph?”
Selph regarded the salamander with a dispassionate stare. “I asked you a question, don’t make me repeat myself.”
What followed was a stream of unintelligible garbage from Dee’s boss. Excuses upon excuses upon excuses. He kept trying to offer the bear ‘special deals,’ which were just the market prices he should have been selling his potions at, but refused to make room for his cheap watered down mixtures. Selph barely said another word to him, and his last response was a declaration of getting the British Alchemy Standards Association to audit the store.
“You there,” he addressed Dee before he left. “If you ever get tired of working for a sub-par alchemist and a liar like him, the Violet Streams is always looking for honest people.”
A day later Dee quit their job; a week later they found the Violet Streams; a month later they were working as Selph’s assistant; a year later they were given the opportunity to open their own business on resort grounds.
The Violet Streams had no issue when it came to space for new buildings. Selph had created the entire compound from scratch on top of an island he found in the Aetherial Sea. If he needed more space, he formed it out of thin air. When Dee inquired about the exact method, Selph had explained it in detail, but it proved too complex for their badger-brain to handle and they passed out. ‘Knowledge is dangerous,’ Selph quipped before Dee lost consciousness.
Dee had always wanted to bartend. Before they had resolved to live in the magical pockets of Britain they disguised themselves as a human and worked in bars close to the border. They enjoyed the smaller, more intimate settings of quiet pubs. With that in mind they recreated that atmosphere with the blank space Selph bequeathed, using their own magic to fabricate the interior.
Everything was dark wood, with iridescent flowers grown on the island for contrast. In the enclaved tables near the circular windows, Dee had rung the booths with planters filled with dimly glowing frost azalea’s. Their pale blue light looked wonderful at night, when the only other source of illumination came from the lanterns outside and the torches inside.
The only thing Dee had been unable to create for their bar was the alcohol. Selph had been insistent that anything served to guests, at least in the beginning, had to be made by hand. Magic could be used to alter, amplify, or remove certain qualities from the liquid, but it couldn’t be solely conjured from Dee’s mana. That suited the badger shaped mage, they were never much of a brewer anyway. Every attempt they made at summoning alcohol through incantation resulted in a lumpy, sickly sweet mixture that somehow tasted like petrol.
“Alright. This should be enough...” Dee said aloud, their voice echoing in the empty bar.
Dee had been working on a cocktail to impress Selph. It was one part rum, one part ghost lime, and two parts carbonated sweet-water. The last ingredient was a proprietary secret which only Dee knew.
“You decorated the place nicely. I half expected everything to be aggressively pink. I spent the walk over here thinking about how to phrase ‘change it’ in a way that wouldn’t hurt your feelings.”
Dee poured the last drop of sweet-water into a long champagne flute, and hummed. “You should know by now that I have some semblance of taste.”
Dee paused. Who were they talking to?
Staring back at Dee when they looked up was a pair of glowing eyes, purple and blue, with azure rings spinning in their irises. Dee screamed and fell backwards, they and their barstool hitting the floor with a clatter.
“AH!”
The owner of the Violet Streams chuckled. He ran his claw along the rim of the glass. It produced a long, crystal note. “Sorry, should I have knocked?”
Dee gripped the edge of the bar and pulled themselves to their feet. They adjusted the pink and fluffy cloud-like mass that stuck to their neck like a scarf. “I would have appreciated it. Yes.”
“Where would the fun be in that?” Selph studied the drink laid out on the counter while he spoke.
Dee grumbled. Selph had an awful habit of not looking at people when he was speaking. He was already thinking of something to say about the drink, Dee would bet good money on it. “Not many people ENJOY being jump-scared like a haunting film from the 2000s, Selph.”
“You know I don’t understand that reference.”
Dee bent over to pick up the barstool. “Or how to use a door. Anyway, that’s the drink. I call it the Azure Starstream. I even added edible glitter that melts with body heat, so you don’t get it stuck in your throat when you drink the cocktail.”
“... take a sip.”
Dee raised a brow. “Why? It’s perfectly mixed. I spent all day on it.”
Selph slid the Azure Starstream to Dee. It made the badger’s fur bristle to see their masterpiece dismissed so frivolously. Their cloud puffed up, turning from baby pink to an angry, manly magenta.
“Fine!” Dee snatched it from the table and downed the whole thing in one gulp. “See! There’s nothing wrong with it. You know what? You can be a real d--”
Selph pointed at Dee’s nose. “Your nose is turning blue.”
“What?”
“Your nose. It’s turning blue,” Selph conjured a mirror. Dee’s nose was, as established, blue. The same shade as the drink actually.
“Ah no no no, I mixed it perfectly, how is this happening!?” Dee tried to reach for their nose, only to smack themselves in the face with puffy, shiny, transparent blue badger paws. “What’s going on!?”
“What’s in the drink?” Selph asked.
Dee scrambled for a magical first aid kit. Then remembered there wasn’t one. They had been so preoccupied with getting the interior of the building set up, they forgot to stock up on anything that wasn’t at least 30 proof. That included the would-have-been-very-helpful emergency disenchantment device that came with every Violet Streams first aid kit.
“No time. Help me get this stuff out of me before something bad happens!” Dee winced. They felt their stomach, which was usually only a grey furred pot belly, expand to the size of a basketball in the time it took them to speak. “Selph! Help!”
“What’s. In. The. Drink?”
Dee let out a lime scented belch. Their entire body had been painted a shade of light blue. Light from the torches ensconced behind them peeked through their transparent skin. They were embarrassingly familiar with what it felt like to be turned into a balloon.
“So that’s lime. Ghost lime, I’m wagering?” Selph sniffed the air. “Hints of rum. What’s that sweetness though? I can’t quite place it.”
Dee reached out to try and strangle him. Their paws inflated drastically, like a pair of rubber gloves for a giant strapped to the end of two flailing tubes. Their foot paws followed the example. The pressure was immense and it was making it hard to form rational thought, but they still wanted to hit Selph for being so damned calm while one of his workers was in crisis.
Selph wasn’t by the round paws bapping him in the face. “If you tell me what’s in the drink, then I can cast a counterspell. That’s basic spell theory.”
Dee stopped, mortified. “Oh right, you weren’t making fun of me. You were... trying to hel-uuuwaaaaarp!”
Dee’s torso exploded outwards into a sphere. A huge transparent bubble that was set on swallowing up their limbs, up to the nub indented orbs that used to be their paws. “Mmmmph!” Dee tried to call for help, but their mouth was sealed shut by the rise of their ballooning body pressing into their jaw. Their head sunk into a divot, and they felt light headed from the pressure.
“Well I was making fun of you a little, actually. Not that it matters. I recognize the sweetness. You used Goblin confectioners sugar, I recognize it, because I made the same mistake when I was starting out.”
Selph took a tentative step back as Dee took up the entire space behind the bar. Their eyes rolled in different directions, their mind destroyed by pressure. They hiccuped, and creaked like a balloon trapped in a drawer. They were going to pop, there was no way to stop it.
Dee tried to say something foul to Selph, but it was drowned out by the pressure leaking out from their ears. Hot air jetted out, it whistled like a boiling kettle. Higher, and higher. While the creaking of their elastic body got deeper, and deeper.
“When you mix Goblin confectioners sugar with lime, it aerates. By that I mean it literally sublimates into elemental air. As for the blue colouring? Whatever dye you put in it must have seeped into the reaction, and well. Voila~”
Selph stepped forward, arching an index claw. “And sorry to say this, but I can’t have you destroying the building.”
Dee tried to tell him to stop. All that came out was the panicked creak of a balloon.
“You’re going to have an awful hangover in the morning, I’m sorry about that.” They jabbed the Dee-balloon, and popped it like a soap bubble.
Dee’s consciousness fluttered about the bar, in limbo, until they felt themselves coalescing some time later on the hardwood floor. When they finally regained consciousness it was morning, and their head thumped. “I’m going to strangle that bear.”
