Beist was in disbelief. Once he composed himself enough to swim over to where Morrigan had swam off to, he snatched the bottle of sand from them before the Fellblood could unleash the devastation they were about to cause.

"You- Honestly- Ugh!" Beist couldn't even string his words together properly for a moment until he took a deep breath, which didn't help as much as he would have liked with gills, and then looked at Morrigan with obvious anger in his eyes. Beist wasn't typically easy to anger, but this surpassed his patience.

"Do you have any idea what a disaster you were about to cause!?" Beist shouted. He breathed again, trying to calm down. He couldn't assume Morrigan was doing it on purpose. He had to assume they were just ignorant of the ramifications of their actions. Don't assume malice when ignorance would suffice as an explanation.

He looked at Morrigan, less angry, but now with a look of disappointment and a sigh. "Underwater earthquakes cause tsunamis. Didn't you know that? You would have destroyed at least the entire docks of Sol City, if not more, plus the coast of Moonglade." He explained slowly.

Beist looked at the bottle of sand in his hand before slowly handing it back to Morrigan. He'd taken it to stop them from unleashing it, but it wasn't his to keep. He had to at least trust them enough to not use it now that they knew what it would have caused.

"Do you have anything in that bag that won't cause a disaster?"

“What-? Hey!” Morrigan made pathetic little grabby hands in the water as they reached for the bottle that Beist had stolen from their hands, their cheeks puffed out in righteous indignation, like a child who’d had candy taken from their hands. What was Beist’s problem? This was a foolproof idea! If this didn’t please the mega grump then Morrigan wasn’t sure what would.

“What the hell are you talking about? Disaster? It’s just a contained little earth tremor. I’ve done it in the past, it’s fine…” They waved a dismissive hand, spreading even more of the bright sparkly substance that most certainly should not have been in the water. But as Beist explained what would have happened if they’d been allowed to use the golem, their face turned a pale lavender color. Well how the hell were they supposed to know that? They assumed that the spell would just act the same as it would on dry land… and it wasn’t as if they had the experience within the water to back that up. They’d only gone swimming a handful of times, after all, and though they frequented Zeinav City on the coast, most of their time in their mother country was spent in the acrid, dry heat of the White Sand Sea.

They huffed, trying to hide their embarrassment at their own ignorance as they tucked the bottle back into their bag. “Well I didn’t know that…” They mumbled under their breath. “It’s not like I could have known that water would behave differently than air.” Nevertheless, they weren’t keen on trying that anytime soon.

“Well, that’s off the table. Don’t worry your head over it, my fuzzy friend. I’m sure I’ve got something in this bag that will be less… cataclysmic.” They asserted confidently, reaching into the bag of wonders once more.[1]

---

1. Yasaka’s Summer Bag
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Beist leaned back to not breathe in any of the glitter that was slowly contaminating the water around Morrigan. How there was still glitter on them after being underwater for this long, he had no idea. It was like they produced glitter instead of sweat. He just hoped it would diffuse enough to not harm the local sea life.

Just please let there be something useful in that bag so we can get this over with and get out of the water. Beist thought to himself as Morrigan fished around in their bag for something else and pulled out... a sparkler. Beist screamed internally. He put his hands together in front of him and took another deep breath through his gills. With all the gods apparently dead, he didn't know who to pray to, but he hoped someone out there would give him some patience.

"I'm not sure that will be able to light underwater, and even then, I fail to see how a sparkler will help us defeat a giant crab." Beist said calmly.

Like the bottle of sand, perhaps it was a magic sparkler, but he still didn't know how that would help. If Morrigan said this thing would cause it to rain fire or trigger a volcanic eruption, he wouldn't be surprised at this point. It was like the universe was begging for Sol City's destruction, and right now, it was specifically begging Morrigan.

Okay, now Morrigan was fairly certain that the bag of wonders was ducking with them. They held the unlit sparkler in their hand, cursing that they were dealing with an underwater enemy rather than an aboveground one. “Okay, so this is useless, too.” They grumbled, shoving that back in their bag. “Sometimes Miss Fortune smiles down upon us, and sometimes she laughs. It seems that the Bag of Wonders has decided to be fickle about granting me boons today.”

Morrigan clapped their hands together, as if to say, welp! Nothing we can do about that, moving on.

“I suppose it’s back to the drawing board then.” They said, despite the fact that every single one of their plans had blown up in their face, figuratively and almost quite literally. They searched their brain, trying to think of a way to deal with this conundrum, but they were drawing a blank.

“… I don’t suppose you have an idea?” They asked meekly, toying with Kvasir’s ring on their finger. They had a bit of his magic stored in here… perhaps they could block off the crab’s escape route with the wall of magical light spell he was capable of casting. But that would depend on what Beist had in mind. Knowing the currently irritated man, it was something as sentimental as picking flowers for it and asking it to dance in a circle and sing Kumbaya with them.

It looked like Morrigan was out of tricks to pull from their bag of wonders. He'd just have to take care of this.

"Hm. Well, there is one thing I can do, but I generally prefer not to do it. I suppose we don't have much choice though if you're all out of ideas." Beist sighed.

"Alright. If I do this, you have to swear not to tell anyone about it though! This ability is one I don't like to show off, so promise me." He said in a very serious tone, pointing to Morrigan.

For good measure, one hand took a small crystal ball out of a pouch on his waist and held it up. The crystal ball recorded what Beist was seeing to be played back later. He mostly used it while he was making potions so that he could go back and see if he'd made any mistakes or check his measurements if he forgot to write them down properly. But now, he was using it to make sure Morrigan's word was captured as proof in case the dubious Fellblood went back on their word.

The recording also might serve as evidence if anyone wondered where all the damn glitter in the water came from, but that wasn't his main concern right now.

Morrigan was honestly going to promise not to tell anyone about what Beist was about to do - what reason did they have to go around blabbing about what the elderly man could or couldn’t do? But as they opened their mouth, though, Beist pulled a familiar looking orb out of his bag, holding it up to Morrigan’s face. What the hell? Was he seriously about to start recording Morrigan like they were no better than some common criminal and he wanted to extract a confession? They’d been in this exact same spot countless times before in interrogation rooms with mages and scholars alike who recorded everything on those little crystal balls. But they weren’t the only ones who could do that. Morrigan had their own trick up their sleeve.

It was honestly sheer pettiness and spite that drove Morrigan to pull a crystal ball of their own out of their bag, holding it at Beist. “Fine. I consent to being recorded, and all of that other stuff about not saying anything to anyone about what you’re going to do, so long as you promise not to use this footage of my glorious visage for any marketing purposes, advertisements, or other related business ventures without giving me a cut of the profit for use of my countenance and services. Capiche?”

Beist was momentarily taken aback. Morrigan's speech about the use of their likeness almost sounded rehearsed. Did people actually do that? Well, as if Beist would want to use any image of Morrigan in an advertisement. Heck, he didn't even use images of himself in advertisements. Or make advertisements in general actually. Should he have been advertising his potions more? No, well, it was a bit late for that, wasn't it? His name was already out there. The Consortium helped with that sort of thing now. Ah, but his thoughts were getting off track! Focus!

"Hrpm. I promise not to use your image in any of my business." Beist said flatly and entirely honestly. He put his own crystal ball away again and waited for Morrigan to do the same. He didn't want what he was going to do to be recorded. Not after making them promise not to tall anyone about it.

"I will take on the crab. If you have anything that can assist me or keep it from fleeing, that would help, but I can fight it alone."

Beist backed up a little and then started to change. He didn't like showing his beastly side, well, his more beastly side. He found it shameful. It was entirely too large and made him feel like a monster. But, in some cases, it had proven very useful, that he had to admit. Like now.

He'd transformed once before while under the effects of his transmutation tonic, and it seemed, like then, his transformation was altered by it. He remained a merman, but he grew to an even more gargantuan size than he already was. He thought his usual form was already too large, but now, he grew to four time his already ridiculous height, to over sixty feet long from the tip of his tailfin to the top of his head. His face changed to resemble a bear more, his mouth elongating into a short muzzle and his nose becoming black. His ears also changed to more resembles those of a bear, except for their location on the sides of his head. It appeared his Werebear origins were really making themselves known, though only on his head. The rest of him still looked like a whale shark merman except that his legs had unfused with his tail again to become scaled legs completed with webbed, clawed feet like those of a lizard. The small spines on his back grew longer and sprouted webbing between them as well until he had a fin all the way down his back.

When the transformation was finished, Beist swam over toward the crab mostly buried in the sand, ready to attack. He swam quicker than before thanks to his size, and having legs again actually helped. He was much more used to swimming with legs than with a fish tail.

---

Giant Size

Morrigan huffed out a satisfied nod and tucked their own crystal ball back into their bag with the promise they wouldn’t be losing any profits in the event Beist decided to use their visage to sell his own tonics. The thought might seem like a paranoid one, but you’d be surprised how many people have attempted to use the fake title of the Wizard of the Wastes when it was Morrigan’s fake title first! Only when their ball was tucked away did Beist explain what he was planning, which… seemed like a bit of an overreaction to the charlatan. What was with this vow of secrecy stuff? Morrigan was great at secrecy, they’d kept their entire true identity secret for the better part of sixteen years! But whatever helped him sleep at night, they supposed.

The idea that such a gentle giant, despite his stature, could take on a giant crab alone was almost laughable. But any skepticism Morrigan might have had died in their throat when Beist grew bigger than the size of a whale, quite literally. He dwarfed them in size, becoming truly monstrous. He almost seemed to resemble a big old fuzzy bear with scaly legs and spines on his back. It didn’t resemble any beast Morrigan had ever seen in their lifetime. They swallowed, unused to being the one who took to the sidelines like this, but hey, if Beist wanted to fight that thing, they wouldn’t interfere!

“I’ll watch your back.” They promised, which honestly wasn't all that reassuring given who was delivering said promise, swimming behind Beist with considerably less speed. As Beist got closer to the crab, ready to take it on, the crab began to scuttle away, panicked by the hulking giant approaching it.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Morrigan cried, raising their hand as the ring on their finger crackled to life, last vestiges of Kvasir’s magical reserve illuminating the darkened water. A wall of pure light formed in front of the crab, the beast running into it - effectively trapping the crab between a rock and a hard place.^[1] Or in this case, a Beist and a wall of pure, magical light.

Morrigan wore a wicked smirk on their face as they dashed after Beist, ready to support with their menagerie of tricks.

---

1. Kvasir's Eternity Ring - Wall of Light

The crab crashed into the wall of light that suddenly appeared before it, its body rising up in the water from the force of the impact before falling back down to the sand slowly. It turned around, looking for a new escape route, but the giant was already upon it. The cornered crab made a last ditch attempt to defend itself by striking out at its attacker with its huge claws.

Beist caught each claw in one hand and held them, lifting the crab off the sand. Normally, he'd be afraid to confront the giant crab on his own, but it was much less scary looking when it was much smaller than him. Still, he wanted to put an end to this fight quickly. He couldn't remain in this giant for for that long and he didn't want to subject the poor creature to a prolonged, painful death.

"My apologies." Beist said to the crab as, with his other two arms, he brought a fist down on top of the crab and up into its underside at the same time. He flinched and closed his eyes as they impacted and he heard the sickening crunch. The struggling claws in his grasp went still and he peaked to see the crab was definitely dead, most of its body crushed and blue blood starting to cloud the water around him.

Beist grabbed as many pieces of broken shell as he could before swimming backward, away from the remains, only to realize he still had both whole claws in his hands.

Oh, oh. Well, that hadn’t been what Morrigan expected at all. They stopped in their tracks, unable to stop themselves from watching the carnage like one might watch a carriage wreck. Blood drifted lazily through the water, a scent that might attract bigger and more dangerous predators to their location the longer they lingered. Then again, Morrigan doubted that there was much at this depth level that could take on the veritable megalodon that was Beistmild. As they watched the display, this gentle giant ripping legs and carapace off of the crustacean beast, the fragile-boned little charlatan only had one thought.

Thank Ginma I’m not on his bad side.

Well, they’d certainly think better of trying to scam him in the future.

When Beist returned, Morrigan held their hand in the air with a jovial, nonchalant grin that only looked a tiny bit afraid. If they were being entirely honest, the big vicious monsters didn’t scare them as much as they used to. When everything was more powerful than you, the fear part of your brain kind of got messed up somewhere along the line. “Well, I think that’s a job well done, wouldn’t you say, partner?” They asked, like they’d done anything at all to really help here besides being annoying and a hindrance. “Here, let me help you with that.” They gently pried one of the crab claws from Beist’s hand, knocking on the shell.

Yep, this was the good quality stuff. The guild would be quite pleased with their find.

They tucked the claw under their armpit, holding a hand out to Beist. “Color me impressed, my friend! I dare say we make a good team together!” Which probably couldn’t be further from the truth given how much bickering they’d been done to get to this point, but who was counting? All was well that ended well and Morrigan really didn’t have to do much, so they considered this a positive! “So, what do you say we get these claws back to the guild hall-Ack!”

They choked as a little blood-water got in their gills.

Beist let Morrigan take one of the crab claws from him. The claw was much larger than Morrigan and he doubted they'd be able to lift it had they not been underwater. It was comical to see them holding such a giant claw. They'd undoubtedly require Beist's assistance getting it into their wagon once they headed back. There was, however, one problem with heading back. They were still Merfolk, and Beist was a giant monster that he was sure would cause an uproar if he emerged from the water. They'd have to stay in the water until Beist shrank back to relatively normal size and the effects of the tonic wore off for both of them.

"Yes, well, good job with that wall of light. It was well timed and placed. It certainly helped keep the crab from running off." Beist offered Morrigan a sincere compliment. He hoped it wouldn't go to Morrigan's head too much, but it had been a big help in his catching of the crab.

"We'll have to wait before we can return to the guild hall. There's more crabs around that need to be driven farther away from the shore. It'd be easiest to do that while I'm still like this. We also can't exactly go back onto shore while we're still under the effects of the tonic anyways. Let's go." Beist said and started to swim off toward the next crab he could see before having a fun idea.

With one hand, he just grabbed Morrigan. His hand was more than large enough to encompass the Fellblood entirely and he enjoyed any opportunity to give them a little humility. With how large he was, it would have been quite difficult for them to keep up with him anyways, so there was a good reason to just carry them along with him anyways. It wasn't just to mess with them at all. With Morrigan in his hand, he swam around scaring off as many of the giant crabs as he could find before his even more giant than normal size reverted back to his normal giant size.

When he felt the changes start, he released Morrigan from his grasp and started to shrink down. It was easy to scare the crabs away in his gigantic form, they would flee just at his approach, but he was a lot more hesitant to try it now. Well, they'd probably scared off enough of them anyways. And they'd gotten the materials from one of them. This should be fine. Now they just needed to have legs again.

Oh, yeah - the complement was definitely getting to Morrigan’s head. They twirled a piece of their hair in mock-humility, their sparkly tail swishing back and forth in almost a catlike way. “Why thank you, friend. It was… a bit of a challenge, not being able to use my potions, but I think I managed quite well.” They said, falsely putting themselves down in the way people did when they wanted to receive further complements. Their attempts at fishing, however, were dashed when Beist suddenly reached out and just… grabbed them, like Morrigan was some chew toy and he was a large Doberman.

Morrigan blinked.

“Wait, we? What are you talking about- WAHHHHH!”

They could not stop themselves from getting dragged through the water, pulled every which way through the ocean by Beist in his gigantic form. What ensued was a very long diatribe and panicked swearing in infernal that will not be translated for the sake of keeping things family friendly.

But here is an excerpt, so you get the idea.

“Beist what the fuck are you doing put me down don’t you dare feed me to the crabs or I’ll haunt your ass so hard your grandchildren’s children’s children will feel it, I’ll find the corpses of the gods in the afterlife and sic them on you, I swear you’ll rue the day you decided to treat me like a chew toy!”

And similar things like that.

Their suffering was, thankfully, brought to an end when they finally chased all the crabs away from the shore and deeper into the ocean, and they made their way closer to the docks, with Morrigan miraculously unharmed. And finally, Beist shrunk down to his regular size, which was still leagues taller than Morrigan - over twice their own height and them some - which prompted him to release the charlatan.

Morrigan huffed, readjusting their own hair, a ridiculous endeavor to try underwater. They held tight to their crab leg, trying to put this humiliation out of their mind in favor of figuring out something that honestly hadn’t occurred to them - how they were going to carry this back to the Wagon of Wonders to cart it back to the guild. Their tail was starting to feel a bit tingly and numb, their chest beginning to ache as it became harder and harder to breathe where their gills were closing up. Morrigan glanced at Beist, gesturing towards the surface. They only had a few minutes before the transmutation tonic wore off.

They set off through the water, darting towards the surface with the intention of elegantly throwing themselves out of the water.

What happened instead, as they made their way to the surface, was that the crab leg was too heavy and they ended up only half-hitting the deck, knocking the air out of their lungs. Morrigan wheezed, scrabbling at the deck in an attempt to gain purchase. They spat out a mouthful of water, their nails gripping to wood long enough to give them an opportunity to pull themselves fully onto the deck. Morrigan wheezed, flopping onto their back like a dead fish.

But they’d made it back to the surface with their prize, no matter how inelegantly.

Gods, they hoped Beist wasn’t loitering around with that crystal ball of his.

Beist really wished he'd had his crystal ball out to record Morrigan's graceful flop onto the docks, but sadly, it was still in his bag. He also felt the effects of the potion wearing off, his gills slowly disappearing and his tail splitting back into legs. He quickly swam up to the surface and heaved himself up onto the docks before his breathing transitioned back to his lungs and they filled with water. His ascent also wasn't exactly graceful, but his did at least manage not to hurt himself as he flopped onto the wooden boards and flipped over into a sitting position, his legs hanging over the side so his feet were still in the water.

His clothing had changed back into a swimsuit and his regrown fur was absolutely soaked and looked practically glued to his skin, gallons of water pooling around him on the docks and flowing over the sides back into the sea below. He tapped the side of his head to get some water out of his ear and tried to wring as much of the water out of his fur as he could, shaking his arms to try and fling some of it off without noticing how much he was flinging Morrigan's way.

"Ah, one of the pains of having so much fur. Getting wet..." Beist sighed to himself. He wished he had a towel, but even if he'd had one on him, it would also be completely soaked already along with everything else in his bags. He tipped his bag over to let the water inside drain out, careful to hold it closed so water was the only thing coming out of his bag.

"Well, mission accomplished. Did you enjoy the ride?" He asked jokingly as he looked down at Morrigan lying on their back next to him. He'd chosen to just pretend he hadn't heard all of Morrigan's constant complaining the entire time he'd had the Fellblood in his hand.

Morrigan was silently grateful that no one was on the docks to witness this rather pathetic display, the charlatan soaking wet and looking very much like a bedraggled kitten as they laid on their back, catching their breath. They pathetically grabbed their already sipping silk brocade, going through the motions of drying themselves off. “Indeed…” They agreed. “I’ll have to stop at my wagon for a towel and a fresh change of clothes BLARGHSSHFKWBXJABWAH.” They gasped as Beist suddenly moved to tip out the water from his bag, unknowingly pouring it all over their face and open mouth.

Truly, they would not be spared any humiliation today.

Morrigan pulled themselves to their feet, spitting out more water and looking rather sipping wet and pathetic as they wrung the water out of their braid, trying to keep their expression neutral and avoid giving Beist a withering look for splashing them with even more salty sea water. “Why, of course I enjoyed my joy ride!” They said, like a liar. “Nothing like a jaunty swim to get the adrenaline pumping, and I daresay we did some good work while doing so! Now what do you say we return to the consortium?”

Once again, this was a successful job well done for the guild - and once again, Morrigan Moonweaver had contributed virtually nothing.

Beist chuckled lightly at Morrigan's blatant lie, but he found it more amusing than anything. Of course they hadn't enjoyed being quite literally in the palm of Beist's hand, judging by the sheer amount of swearing and threats they'd spouted the entire time. He couldn't actually understand them, since he didn't speak Infernal, but he could get the gist of them from Morrigan's tone. It was funny to see them now acting like it had just been a jaunty swim.

"Indeed, some very good work. Those crabs should hopefully be much less of a problem, and we acquired the materials. It all went swimmingly." Beist smiled expectantly, waiting to see if Morrigan found his joke funny. He knew if he'd used that joke while Dora was here, she would have been internally groaning and rolling her eyes at him.

"I have some other business to finish here in the city before I head back to the Consortium, but you feel free to go ahead. First, I think I need somewhere to wash all this saltwater off. Just toweling off won't be enough for me, I'm afraid. Oh, say hello to Bubbles for me and give him this."

Beist handed a piece of candy to Morrigan. Where he'd pulled it out of, with everything on him soaked in seawater, was unclear. The piece of candy was perfectly dry and fresh, wrapped in strawberry-patterned paper.