Pop.
A bag of bright, neon-colored lollipops and sugar-coated candies appeared in my hand. I unwrapped a strawberry one and handed it to Elsa. I gave a lemon one to Barnaby and a blue-raspberry one to Herbert.
"It's a 'Lollipop,'" I explained. "You suck on it. Don't bite it, or you'll break a tooth. It's concentrated joy."
Elsa took a tentative lick. Her eyes widened. Her pupils dilated until her eyes were almost entirely black. She made a sound like a dying flute—"Eeeee…"—and then her knees buckled. She hit the grass, out cold, with a look of pure, sugary ecstasy on her face.
THUD. THUD. I turned around. Barnaby and Herbert were flat on their backs, lollipops still stuck in their mouths, staring at the sky with glazed eyes. They hadn't just fainted; they had suffered a complete sensory system crash from the sheer amount of high-fructose corn syrup hitting their medieval palates.
"WHAT THE HELL?" I yelled, looking at my three companions scattered across the riverbank like casualties of a candy war. "It's just sugar! It's literally 90% corn syrup and red dye number forty! Get up! We have a schedule to keep!"
I sighed, looking at the majestic waterfall, then at my three "elite guards" who were currently defeated by a 10-cent candy.
"Great," I muttered, sitting on a rock and unwrapping my own lollipop. "I'm being guarded by a diabetic-coma squad. I guess we're staying here for another hour."
I took a bite of my own candy, the familiar tartness of Earth's junk food hitting my tongue. "Stupid Isekai," I whispered, though I couldn't help the smirk growing on my face. "At least I'm the only one left conscious."
*****
I sat under the shade of a gnarled oak tree, leaning my head back against the bark and rolling my strawberry lollipop around in my mouth. For an hour, I just watched the waterfall and enjoyed the peace, occasionally glancing over at the three "heroic legends" sprawled out on the grass like they'd just lost a fight with a juice box.
When they finally started to stir, it wasn't a graceful awakening. It was a chaotic, dizzying scramble.
They sat up, clutching their heads, and slowly pulled the lollipops from their mouths. They stared at the sticks like they were holding a fragment of the sun. Then, all at once, the realization hit them.
"By the heavens..." Herbert grumbled, but his voice wasn't gravelly anymore—it was a resonant, powerful baritone. He stood up, and I watched in slow motion as he slowly flexed his right hand—the cursed one. The hand that had been a dead weight for years suddenly clenched into a fist so tight the knuckles cracked like a whip. "My hand... the shadow rot is gone! It's alive! I can feel the pulse of the forge in my veins again!"
Before I could process that, Barnaby was screaming at the clouds. "I can see! I can see the veins in the leaves! I can see the ants on the ground!" He turned to me, his once-milky eye now as sharp and clear as a hawk's. "Art, I could count the hairs on your head from a mile away! This isn't just sight; this is vision!"
But it was Elsa who truly broke the reality meter. She stood up, and I nearly choked on my candy. Her hair, which had been a wild, shimmering rainbow of green and pink, had shifted. It was now a blinding, ethereal silver—the color of moonlight on a glacier.
"What the hell does that mean?" I barked, standing up and pointing at her head. "Why are you a different color? Did the red dye number forty react with your DNA?"
Elsa didn't answer. She just fell to her knees, the silver locks spilling over her shoulders as she began to sob. She bowed so low her forehead hit the dirt.
"The curse is broken," she choked out between heaving sobs. "Art... you didn't know? My family... the High Elders of the North... they banished me. They called me 'The Tainted One' because my hair turned the color of the forbidden spectrum. I couldn't use pure Elven magic—I was forced to use the distorted, dark energies just to survive. But now..."
She stood up, her face tear-stained but radiant. She held out both hands. In her left, a swirl of pure, crystal-clear water materialized; in her right, a tongue of roaring, golden-white fire danced. She combined them, and instead of steam, they turned into a shimmering orb of pure, harmonious energy.
"The silver hair... it's the mark of the High Elven Lineage," she whispered. "The curse that suppressed my core is dissolved."
I looked at the half-eaten lollipop in my hand, then at the crinkly plastic bag of assorted lollipops.
"Wait, wait, wait," I said, my sass returning as a defense mechanism against the sheer insanity of the situation. "You're telling me that a five-point bag of 'Jumbo Lollipops' from a 24-hour convenience store just cured a magical curse, fixed a blind man's eyes, and restored a mercenary's dead arm?"
"That is no mere sweet, Arthur," Herbert said, his voice trembling with a new level of loyalty. "That is a Treasure of the Heavens. A Divine Healing Relic."
"It's literally corn syrup and artificial flavoring!" I yelled at the sky. "It's not even organic! If I'd known it was going to do this, I would've charged you guys at least fifty gold a pop!"
I looked at the bag again. To me, it was junk food. To them, it was the Holy Grail in candy form. My merchant brain, which had been taking a nap, suddenly sat bolt upright and started screaming. If a lollipop can cure a blood-curse, what would a Snickers bar do? Resurrect the dead?
"Art," Elsa said, walking toward me with a grace that was now genuinely intimidating. She took my hand—I didn't even faint this time, I was too shocked—and kissed my knuckles. "You have given us back our lives. Our swords, our magic, our very souls belong to you."
"Okay, great, fantastic," I said, gently pulling my hand back and tucking the 'Divine Candy' into my bag like it was a nuclear detonator. "But since you're all 'cured' and powered up, maybe you can use that new magic and those working hands to get the carriage moving? We're behind schedule, and I'm pretty sure the Queen's 'Hounds' aren't going to stop for a snack break."
Okay… I thought I was done with the phobia but I was wrong. I thought I was doing so well. I was being the cool, mysterious merchant-king. I was being the guy who fixes lives with a flick of his wrist. But then Elsa, with her new silver-haired, high-elven radiance, had to go and touch my hand. Worse, she kissed it. My brain hit the emergency shut-off valve before I could even say "Wait."
One second I was a genius, the next I was a bag of wet laundry. I didn't even feel my head hit the grass; I just faded into the familiar, blissful darkness of a total social-anxiety-induced system crash.