On the deck of the Second Shank...
Scott makes another request of the Artiste.
"But flagellate ampersand other squirrels away in ululating hamsters. Horse ottoman trouble handily fornicates with iron pepper and slaying chipmunks off piercing summit chalets!"
"You see, Scott, I'm sure you're telling me something important here, but you'll have to speak clearer. It's a little difficult to discern what your metaphors mean, exactly."
What a thick lout his master is, Scott thinks. There literally isn't any way he could make this clearer. Did he lose the fellow at the boiled vegetables bit, he wonders?
Before he can contemplate the matter, Sigmund appears from out of nowhere.
"I did it! I have a focus now, and I managed to influence reality!"
The Artiste applauds. Justine joins in, making an ethereally clapping her hands even while she looks contemptuously at Sigmund. Sigmund turns to the fellow who's taken him this far.
"Thanks for your help, Master! But if you had said that creating a focus was like rearranging the terms of a contract, I would have been achieved this faster, I think. Anyway, I think I have have learned the basics of written foci."
"Wait, rearranging terms? That's not how making foci is supposed to work. At least, not as far as I know. It's all bizarre waveforms to me."
"You say you rearranged terms? How? And what terms?"
At the site of Niklas' melting...
Kevin, ever the perceptive one, offers his observations on Niklas' woeful situation and its solution.
"Just... turn him into a ball or something and roll him back to the ship. I don't think we have a lot of time."
"Anything that can hopefully get itself out of the heat, and withstand it for long enough to escape." Morton adds. "I thank you for helping us, good mage Erin, and I apologize that we must get hurt so often. I truly wish that wasn't that wasn't the case however, almost every day someone gets horribly maimed, terribly dreadful..." he continues.
"You guys do always find new and exciting ways to get in trouble, that much is true."
"I know that everything will go alright, however, soon we'll all be back on the ship. This shouldn't be anything but a trivial problem in the end, I have utmost faith in you, good mage Erin."
"Thanks, I guess," Erin says, concentrating. Kevin, meanwhile, looks over the surroundings. He thinks he sees a very suspicious-looking individual in very bulky-looking clothes watching over the crowd from a window - the clothes, he thinks, hide a suit of armor beneath them. Man, that must be uncomfortable.
Erin eyes Niklas' body with skepticism.
"Not sure what to do. I suppose I could turn him into something that doesn't melt easily, like tungsten or something. But then I'd have to give him legs, which would require some kind of brain to move them with, which is another buncha problems entirely. It'll take extensive work is what I'm sayin'."
She looks unsurely at Morton.
"I think we better just move him outta here before tryin' anything. Maybe get the captain guy to help out."