"You got a problem with that, buddy?" I growled.

Throckmorton blanched, then squirmed.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous!" he squeaked. "This is Albion, not Earth Prime. We don't have stupid sexuality taboos. Now would you MIND putting me down please?"

I dropped him, then folded my arms across my herculean chest, realizing as I did that my arms were now bigger than Throckmorton's 30 inch thighs and that "herculean" was really quite a puny word.

"No, Rex, the fact that you are gay is not at all a problem," Throckmorton continued, straightening his luxurious purple cravat. "WHY I didn't noticed it is what's confusing, probably because of all those gender blinds you silly Earth Prime folks construct."

I glared at him.

"NOT that you have any control over the idiocies of the society into which you were born," he added hastily. "It's just that..."

"It's just what?" I bellowed.

As I did I noticed that my pleasant baritone had been transformed into a basso profundo that put James Earl Jones to shame.

"Take a look in the mirror, Rex. Tell me what ELSE you notice, besides all the muscles."

I looked. And I looked. And I looked some more. Then I looked down at my rippling arms.

My mouth gaped open.

"Well, I'll be goddamned," I exclaimed.

"I'm blue!"

A nice baby blue, I might add, perfect shading, perfect consistency, perfectly natural looking. Even though the bronze mirror distorted the color now that I knew I could see that my hair and eyes and fur, all of which had been various shades of brown, were now corresponding shades of blue.

I grinned at my reflection.

Then I saw my fangs.

My huge hand and thick powerful fingers flew to my mouth - they were real, alright, and they were - OUCH! - sharp.

And for some reason I felt like there was something I really wanted and needed to do with them.

Something sexual.

"Uh...??"

"It's quite simple, Rex," Throckmorton continued.

"You KNOW Albion has a hundred varieties of hominids. This is one of them. You're an OGRE now. Fully human, fully capable of breeding with all other hominids."

He explained further that the transformation spell worked with fundamentals.

"If you're gay on the inside, you'll be gay on the outside by the time the transformation spell is completed."

I gazed at him in disbelief.

"An ogre? You mean the huge hulking ugly guys who carry clubs and steal princesses and get routed by heroes? Why would I turn into an ogre?"

Huxtable coughed and looked away.

Throckmorton glanced at the ceiling, the mirror, the table, the bookcase full of a thousand moldering leatherbound texts, everywhere but at me.

"Throckmorton?" I lowered the volume of my query, making it no more ponderous than the deep-throated roar of an idling Dodge Viper.

"You know those sexual taboos I said we don't have?" he said finally. "Well, that wasn't altogether true. You see..."

Throckmorton explained to me that in Albion ogres were exclusively male and exclusively gay - they were the product of two other hominid types and didn't normally breed themselves, inasmuch as they were too busy having sex with each other.

"They're also the envy of almost all heterosexual hominid males," Throckmorton added. "You see, they're big, they're built, they're gorgeous, they're hairy, they're hung. ALL of them!

"They are, in Albion, the literal embodiment of masculine physical perfection. Even the biggest and best heterosexual hominid males tend to pale in comparison."

Huxtable chortled once again.

"You got THAT right, boss. Pale is as pale does, y'know!"

He danced a little jig.

"And YOU," Throckmorton bellowed, grabbing Huxtable by his mighty tool. "YOU knew all along, didn't you, you little monster!"

"Eeyow!" Huxtable shrieked, vanishing in a puff of saffron smoke and reappearing at the other end of the library table.

"Yes, of course I knew, you dumbshit mofo, and you shoulda known, too. How could you NOT know? The boy's aura is so lavender I could smell the lilacs in the next county."

"And I ain't no damned monster, I'm a demon, and you know it."

Throckmorton spluttered.

"And don't give me no grief about not doing MY job," Huxtable continued. "I know that look on your face, you durnfuckingfool coot. Ain't nothing in all the laws of magic says an ogre can't be a hero."

Throckmorton stood stock still.

"That's right, Mr. Smartyfuck, you just look it up. Book one hunnerd and twelve, chapter forty-eleven. Three pages of what a hero HAS to be and not one line about what he can't be. This ogre boy will do just fine!"

"But, but, but!"

"Don't you 'but' me, Wiz. Just cuz no ogre's ever been a hero doesn't mean no ogre can never ever BE one. Ain't nobody ever asked, if you ask me, and you KNOW what the prophecy says!"

Throckmorton's shoulders slumped.

"I suppose."

"I'll send you the bill," Huxtable concluded, then vanished.

"Now what?" I asked.

Throckmorton sat heavily in the carved chair, staring into the fire.

"Off to bed with you, laddie," he muttered.

"It's been a long day." •