It took a hot second of time for the drink's effects to hit him. DeMain was getting impatient, but Ethel insisted he would know when they did and that drinking more than he had was a very bad idea for beginners. DeMain asked if the tea was dangerous, and Ethel was very sure to let it be known that he wasn't going to do this again.
"The tea contains a lot of things that are toxic and very, very unsafe to drink in high doses, but it's part of an eye-opening ritual. I'm not going to tell you what's in it just in case you get any funny ideas, but like with all things, you shouldn't do this on your own. You can trust me because I've done it before many times and I know what amounts are safe."
"This isn't exactly reassuring." DeMain said, wincing as a strange coldness came over his gut.
"It's not supposed to be. Nobody ever encourages people to do things like this because of how much reliving certain experiences can suck, but in order for you to understand… you're going to have to face parts of yourself you don't like. This can come in a lot of forms, so I can't really narrow it down for you."
"I can only imagine… will I have to do this again?"
"No. Usually when the tea sinks in you're elevated and you don't have to drink it again to see things for how they truly are."
"How will I know when it 'sinks in'?"
"You'll know, trust me."
He sensed she was correct, because the sensations came in a wave of thousands at a time. Tears began to flow from his eyes, and he couldn't decipher why through the tidal wave of emotions. Literally. DeMain felt so calm, and the environment swirled around him like a great wave a surfer might conquer. It was as if he were in the curling folds of reality, flowing through a beautiful tunnel of light and water. So free of the burdens of his body.
His grip on reality came back to him, but only slightly. His mind felt stronger, more receptive. DeMain's eyes saw too much and yet he knew it was still only a fraction of what he could know. The universe wasn't taunting him for his inexperience, it was merely inviting him to plumb its secrets. He hadn't realized his eyes were closed, but they were.
DeMain looked up, seeing his compatriots had changed—no, this was how they truly were, he just hadn't been able to comprehend it before.
His haze drifted first to Ethel, who was uncountably beautiful in a nude, alabaster white feminine form. Like a marble statue. Her most bare parts were concealed by snakes, which coiled around her in endless, mesmerizing patterns. A sound alerted him to what lay beneath her, where an ugly lump of flesh was acting as the pedestal upon which she stood. A man, disfigured and broken, with his back split open. From the wound, the beauty rose like a sprout from the ground. He understood somewhere in his revelations that Ethel had undergone much change in her life, too much to go back. Too much to want to.
But DeMain shifted his probing eyes to Avery, and he saw Hell. A figure, tormented by spears that gutted every part of his being. Bare skin and muscle showed against cracked, scabbed skin. Where once might have been angelic wings instead of arms were poor remnants of themselves, skeletal and stripped of any feathers save for gray tufts. They clung meekly to the creature's shoulders, resembling claws more than graceful pinions. Avery's head was worse. It appeared as though it had been blown away, with everything above his mouth missing. The skin and bone stretched irregularly into quasi-horns, Avery's long blond hair flowing from the remains as if submerged in water.
The acceptance of this truth came to DeMain with no trouble. Previously, he might have argued, or spat, or refused to believe it could be real. But he knew it wasn't just the tea. His eyes really had been opened, his body… maybe his soul shifted to a higher state of being. With a flex of his hand he focused, the feeling of power over himself returned. It felt like a sharp stab to his consciousness to remember, to harness the feeling of helplessness he so wished to avoid. But the tea, in all its strangeness, made the weight just a little easier to bear.
From his arm, a blade appeared. Hardly visible, but strong and solid. More a needle than an implement of cutting, but impossibly sharp all the same. The others saw it too, studying how it emerged from his forearm over his hand. DeMain could see their own manifestations too, though Ethel's was significantly more faint and hard to make out. In Avery's case, it appeared as small, dense clouds that flowed around him. If one vanished, another would appear with an exhale of the twisted creature's lungs.
DeMain also realized among everything else that he was not alone. A figure stood in the corner of the room behind the other two, silently judging.
They resembled Avery's spiritual manifestation ever slightly, and for a moment DeMain made the mistake of assuming it was a relative of his. As if the creature could hear his thoughts, it laughed aloud. A shrewd and vile laugh which echoed in the swirling environment, souring the colors and draining the light. Its head was torn open, missing features above the smiling, toothy grin. Two horns curved unevenly, one over the other, as they split and fended themselves from the side of the figure's pale face. Rather than full clothing, the unknown occupant was donned finely in a sleek dress of smoke, clawing hands, and what DeMain could only describe as liquid traumas.
As soon as DeMain caught a glimpse of the enigmatic interloper, they melted away into the slowly-steadying scenery around him. Before long, they were gone completely into the solid structure of the shop. The world stopped its rocking, but DeMain still felt… aware. Like an early-morning wake, where all seems cold and clear. Something about him had definitely been changed, enhanced maybe. It didn't stop him from feeling unsure like he had been before, but he felt as though a helping hand had been offered to finally fill in the blanks of his worries and concerns.
Ethel was the first to speak.
"How do you feel? You've been staring off and looking around for a bit. At least… more than usual."
"I'm not sure. You guys both seem so different. Why are you covered in snakes? That's bad symbolism." DeMain said, trying to ignore the horror that was the shape of Avery's soul, he presumed. DeMain wasn't sure where his understanding of these new concepts came from, but he knew it was how things should have been. Rather, how it could have been if he'd been born with a knack for understanding symbolisms in the first place.
"Well, no. Snakes aren't always bad." Avery said, his eyes darting to Ethel's form as she jumped from his point to her own.
"And yet their bite can be venomous." Ethel pursued. "They're often conflated with traitors and liars, such as the Garden of Eden, Satan, even some folk stories that warn of similar things."
DeMain's head was roaring. The similarities between he and Avery were not lost to him. He knew now that Avery must have partaken in the tea or some variant thereof before he did. Words and thoughts were being conveyed between them that required no speaking, and DeMain knew this witches' brew was more than some lowly drug one might use to get their fix. DeMain had ascended to a new state of living, but the tea was only a one-time key to jump-start the process. The words in his mind flowed a hundred-fold. It was impossible to iterate enough how much he had changed in just a few short moments, and just how much more he was due to change in the future.
"I'm not saying snakes don't hurt people, but a good portion won't do that unless you provoke them. Some can't even hurt you if they tried. It's the same thing for witches." Ethel resumed, speaking to DeMain now as if they were more equals than before. There was a poetry to the way the other two had spoken DeMain had not picked up on before now.
"You think I would hurt you?" DeMain said—no, thought. The words echoed around him, conveyed through the purity of the idea rather than literal letters. It seemed this was why Ethel and Avery were so quiet around one another, but not when he was there. He wasn't on their level enough to understand, but now he could.
"No. But you can be coerced to use your fangs."
"Every snake must use its fangs to hunt."
Their clouds of consciousness rubbed against one another, as if their souls had been freed of the bubbles that restricted them and allowed to touch together. Ethel's soul was old, but in more ways than one. She was not only older in age but in experience. Her soul resounded with the gentle pleasantries that came with wisdom and experience, something DeMain couldn't quite match even in his new self. Avery's soul was sheltered and reclused, but cornered in a way a wounded animal might be. DeMain understood from just this that Avery had been a cornered animal once, and extended a gentle gesture of his own soul to the other boy's for just a moment. The tension in the room immediately lessened, and they all audibly sighed in relief.
DeMain could ask a thousand questions, but with the intermingling of their minds and souls, he no longer needed to. Ethel's knowledge flowed through Avery, who in turn reproduced it in a way that DeMain could process more easily.
As a witch, DeMain was destined to live a life of sorrow and cut-short happiness. Their kind had never been welcomed by the world, with it actively seeking to erase any memory of a people that could claim dominion over it. Why would it want to be controlled? It wanted to be free of chains, the same way witches wished to be freed of the burdens that were given unto them from birth. Neither side could simply lay down and die, and their struggle had been a riddle the Witch Gods refused to answer through all time. The Witch Gods…
The connection between them frayed the instant DeMain remembered the figures he'd seen. He could see the faceless, horned figure putting a finger over their lips, taunting him from just outside the realm of his inner mind. DeMain knew then that he'd been given a secret he must take to his grave. It frustrated him that even now, in a new place of change, DeMain still could not know what he wanted to.
Ethel shook her head as she recoiled. She had no negative conceptions of why the dream ended, and neither did Avery.
"Such… 'gifts' should not be shared with others so openly, DeMain. The gods are fickle, and take their presences with witches very seriously. Perhaps you'll meet them all someday, if you're lucky…"
She paused, sitting up from the table and bringing their now empty teacups to the sink in the back before returning.
"You both have the money I gave you. There's a motel around the corner and I'm… exhausted. Sorry. I don't want to drive you home, I'd rather not fall asleep at the wheel. We can talk more tomorrow, these rituals take a lot out of me."
"We only drank tea?" DeMain inquired, confused.
"Yes. But you only gave me five minutes to convince you, so I didn't really bother setting up anything proper. There are ways to go about it to extend the effects, to make deeper connections, to see things outside of just your own scope. It's especially straining to use telepathic connections. I… it's not generally a good idea to do any of it without prep. Who knows how exhausted you'll get or what else will join in if it gets the chance."
Ominous. DeMain looked to Avery, wondering for a split second if it was his efforts to make her tired. One glance at his even sleepier expression threw that theory out the window.
Ethel waved them off after giving directions, yawning and stepping back inside their shop. It'd been many hours since they'd arrived, though DeMain couldn't tell exactly how many. The moon was out and it was extremely dark even with it, that was all he knew. The motel, thankfully, wasn't hard to locate. Maybe it was Ethel's directions or the glaring neon sign reading 'Two-Stop Motel', but they were miraculously able to find it. Avery seemed so tired from all that had gone on he was practically leaning his head on DeMain's back while they walked.
The place wasn't shabby, but it wasn't really what DeMain had imagined. The inside was a bit cool even for the hour, and it looked more like a gift shop than a check-in. DeMain could see a glass door leading to the outside, which connected to the other rooms on a sidewalk and connected stairs for the upper levels.
The man at the counter seemed friendly, but a little miffed he'd been interrupted right before closing. The bell on the door nearly made him jump from his newspaper. When he saw the two of them, with Avery nearly collapsing onto the floor, his expression softened.
He was an older man, maybe in his forties or fifties. He had aged remarkably well despite the major balding of his head. Wrinkles from thousands of smiles shone across his face as he set his daily news on the oaken counter, pulling out a drawer that nearly connected with his jolly gut before he shifted in his chair."
"What can I do you two'fer?" He asked, prepping a guest log. DeMain couldn't blame him for assuming they'd stay, they were going to need to if Avery slipped down any further.
"Hi. We'd like two rooms. Just… uh… one bed each? That's how this works right? Sorry, I've never stayed at one of these."
"Yeah, of course, yeah. We have plenty a' one bedrooms for you both. How long do you plan to stay?"
"Just one night, hopefully."
"Ah. Well if you won't be staying long I'll cut you a deal and halve the price of the rooms. Let's just say 30 and call it even for tonight, I can tell you're both about to fall over."
The motel owner was quick to stand up and grab keys for them both, but as DeMain reached for his Avery nearly slumped and hit the ground. It took a second for him to regain his bearings after DeMain and the older man managed to snatch him from impact with the floor. Kindly, the motel owner made an offer DeMain couldn't really refuse. Even he was exhausted, normally he'd have been in bed by who knows how long ago.
"I'll… just take your friend there to his room. You can follow the number on your key, yeah?"
DeMain nodded.
"Good."
The motel owner trailed off with Avery towards a different side of rooms, DeMain already hurrying to flop into a comfy bed and pass out.
It took some figuring out to find his room. The numbers of each door were normal going forward, then reversed at the next level before becoming normal again. Confusion briefly overtook him by the third floor of rooms, but he managed to find his and get in without a problem. The inside was well furnished with a couch, a TV, and a bed. DeMain didn't care to explore the backend of the room, already flopping in the comfy, cozy sheets and nearly suffocating himself in the fluffy pillows.