Naja opens the door to a rather large private one-room bathroom in a very expensive-looking area of the conference center and yanks you both inside, where your heart almost shatters to see Cora, your mistress, sitting, cut and bruised, on the toilet. She needs you, and you’re still a wobbly mess from Naja’s paralytic venom. This is all your fault and you never should have tried to run away. You try to start somewhere with “M— Mistress—”

She gazes into your eyes and reads all of this from you. “I’m sorry I was gone so long,” she says softly.

“Cora, what the fuck happened?” Brina demands.

“Paladin,” Cora says, suddenly all business again. “Jumped me in the garage while I was on the way back from triple-checking my speaker notes. How she got in here is beyond me, and she got me pretty good before something scared her off, but,” she flicks her tongue out in what seems like anger, “I didn’t let her leave without giving a little back. I have a plan, but, Brina, I need your help.”

“Anything,” Brina says.

“First off, do not tell conference security. I’ve got one chance to do this presentation and I pulled enough strings getting the clan in here this time that I don’t have many left I can pull again.”

“Are you mental?”

“Are you questioning me?” she asks mildly.

Brina casts her eyes down. “No, but… no, Cora.”

“Second, my arm’s broken and I’m all kinds of beat up at the moment. So the second thing I need is for you to make her,” she indicates you, “look like me.” Three sets of gemlike reptilian eyes turn to you in unison.

The idea seems both tantalizing and blasphemous. You know you aren’t worthy of such an honor, but picturing yourself remade in your mistress’s image… it has you weak at the knees and wet between the legs.

“For how long?”

“Long enough for her to do the presentation,” Cora says.

“Yes, I think so. You’re pretty similar in build and that helps. It never holds the first time, we’d need repeated doses for any respectable length, but it’ll hold for long enough.”

“I knew I could depend on you, Brina.”

You’d give anything to hear her say something like that to you. Her tone definitely has an effect on Brina, who blushes instantly.

“Neat,” Naja says, cheerful as anything despite the situation, “you know, I’ve never actually seen you do this before. But why not me?”

Cora reaches up to stroke you under the chin, wincing as she does so. “Because I don’t have a lot of venom left at the moment, given how much of it I left in that paladin, and I need someone who can do exactly as they’ve been told.”

She tells you, “You’re going to be me for a while,” and brushes your hair back from your neck. You feel Brina’s fangs break your skin, and then the forceful flow of unfamiliar venom into your blood. You’re lightheaded, anticipating a drop, but that doesn’t come: instead, it’s as if water is gently flowing over and through your whole body. You watch as best you can, fascinated, as Brina reshapes you.

She starts with the gross differences of scale, by grabbing you under the armpits and tugging upward, because Cora is taller than you. Your whole body tingles with that. Squeezing your the bones of your hips and then the soft globes of your ass slightly inward to match Cora’s narrower frame, a sort of localized burning sensation that soon fades. Unfastening your dress at the neck and letting it drop to the bathroom floor; deftly removing your bra, which follows it; cupping your breasts in her hands from behind and forcing them to grow until they match your mistress’s ample chest. The process leaves you panting, nipples hard, skin flushed with arousal which only amplifies as your mistress’s gaze briefly hooks yours.

Her tongue flicks out, briefly, tastes the air, retracts. She grins, just a little bit.

Apparently satisifed with the bulk changes, Brina moves to fine detail. She tugs at your fingers, lengthening them slightly. She strokes your nose into a new shape. She traces a complicated glowing sigil on your bare stomach above your navel, and you don’t quite understand what it’s doing until your long brown hair lightens and then shortens itself. Your skin’s hue changes slightly, a wave of repigmentation rippling out from the sigil. Green flashes across your eyes; you can’t see what changed, but you can guess. Finally, she reaches into your mouth, gently pulls your tongue into a longer, flatter, forked version, does something indescribable to your teeth.

“Almost done. Washed out the last of N—ever mind.”

“Her fangs… they won’t be functional, will they?”

“Purely cosmetic, I’m afraid,” then Brina adds an aside, “with this lead time, anyway.”

“If you had more time?”

“I think so. Never tried. Done similar sculpts, though.”

“She’s human!”

Brina shrugs. “For now.”

“We should talk about that later. What’s next?”

“Voice check. Cora, would you mind repeating after me? ‘When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it.’”

“‘When the sunlight…’”

“Okay, I think the sculpt sigil got that. Now you… Cora, what do you call her?”

“Theta.”

“Still using that sequence?”

“Yes,” Cora says. “When I start using something, I use it until it’s done, or needs to be augmented to further serve its purpose, or I no longer require it. You should certainly remember that.” There’s an edge to her voice, of frustration at a lesson not learned, or perhaps a fixed law of the universe carelessly forgotten.

“Right… Theta, repeat after me—”

Cora snorts. “She’s mine.”

“Right. Right. I… I just got carried away. Sorry. I’ve done this a lot. Usually there’s… Never mind. Please ask her to…”

Cora says, “Repeat after me. ‘When the sunlight…’”

The words spill from your mouth as you’d normally speak them.

“Sigil’s good to go. Vocal transform in place.”

Cora says again, “Repeat after me. ‘When the sunlight…’” but this time the words that come out are in your mistress’s own voice.

“Right. That’s eerie even for me,” Brina says. “All correct, though. Anything look off before I finalize this?”

Cora and Brina study your mostly naked body. Cora’s naked too. You’re not sure when that happened. Aside from the wounds inflicted by the paladin, you look alike.

“Brina, you’re truly an artist,” Cora says. “She looks exactly like me.”

“Artist? Hmph. More like a copy machine, when the original’s right here.”

“Brina, please don’t sell yourself short. I wouldn’t have allowed that thought when you were mine.”

“I wasn’t anywhere this capable when I was yours!”

Naja’s doing something complicated to Cora’s clothes in the sink, a sigil of her own flaring unlight into them. “Can you two stop? Please? I don’t want to puke on Cora’s clothes before they’re repaired.”

“Let me stop on a hopeful note, then: Brina, thank you. I couldn’t do this without you.”

Without acknowledging Cora, Brina says, “Finalize,” and the sigil pulses three times and fades. The sensation of flowing water vanishes. She continues, a bit wearily, “Let’s just get this done.”

“Put on my clothes and await instructions.” You carefully put them on. They’re laundry-fresh, dry, and slightly warm from whatever Naja did to them.

“I thought you said you were low on venom?” Naja asks.

“With the right kind of subject, after a while, I barely need it. The two of you, please go find seats. I believe I’m supposed to be on stage in not even ten minutes. I’ll take Theta’s clothes, and I can deal with one broken arm for what’s going to happen, but I need to get her ready and I need quiet.”

“By your command,” Naja says, winking, and slips out of the bathroom. Brina follows a minute later.

Cora slides up a sleeve of the pantsuit that you’re wearing to find an area she can bite without giving the plan away. This time, it hurts a bit, but it’s okay. Not only do you crave her venom’s obliteration of your will, you know you could never do what she’s telling you to do with a shred of your own mind left. There’s just not going to be room.

“Here are your instructions, in addition to your standing orders…”