Russian Caravan (Worm, Eldritch Horror, Crossover/AU)

[Jim Starluck]

Boy are Ahab and Sanagi in for a surprise when they get back.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

222 - The Continuing Adventures of Patience Nguyen, Star Quarterback of the Midwest (better known for other work)

Taylor groaned.

…good heavens, what have you been doing to yourself while I was out?

Her groan resolved into actual words.

"Hey, Chorei."

Hey to you too. What on earth happened?"

Patience poked her head out of a demolished sandcastle she'd slammed into face-first. The sun was blaring down - the storm had only endured for most of the journey, after a while their own doomed momentum drove them forwards and nothing more. But momentum was still a hell of a ride.

"Oh, is Chorei back?"

"Yep."

"Did she see-"

"No."

"Shame. It was cool."

I doubt that.

"...it was actually pretty cool."

My stars, what did she did to you while I was out?

Taylor got her mind back in order. The boat was destroyed. The storm had picked up, they'd more or less transformed their seagoing vessel into a jet ski after a point - the thing wasn't designed for going out that far in the ocean, and it wasn't designed for any kind of storm. Their umbrella had served as a makeshift sail, they'd tied themselves to the deck, and while the engine puttered and gave out, the boat continued onwards. Surfing the wind, crashing over mountainous waves… and all the while, screaming like lunatics. Taylor very much wanted to say that it was mostly fear on her part. She'd be lying, though, and she lied to herself enough. No, it'd been… oddly thrilling to skid over the surface of the ocean, utterly out of control yet paradoxically in complete command of everything. A second away from simply capsizing, sometimes taking on water and forcing themselves to literally tip the boat on its side mid-journey just to empty out some of it. Airborne more often than she'd like to admit. Lightning crackling overhead. St Elmo's fire burning all around them. Patience's roars growing louder and louder as the voices in her head started to rise up again. And now… now they were crashed. Not a beach she wholly recognised… but it seemed like a few families had been here when or before they landed. And by landed, she meant: slammed boat-first into the beach, splitting the straining hull open completely, sending the two of them flying head over heels into the unyielding sand. Her nose had been broken again, which was… nice. Her hands, around the scars, were livid red from clutching onto a rope for far, far too long in stressful conditions. Her everything ached. She spat out a mixture of blood and sand, and tried to stand. Still wearing the stupid breastplate. Suit was ruined. Caked in sand and salt.

…on second thought, I don't want to know.

"Wise."

She staggered to her feet, while Patience extracted herself from the sandcastle she'd utterly ruined. The woman looked like ass - hair all over the place, caked in salt, sea foam, a little blood… and somehow, somehow, she just spat in her hand, ran it through her hair, slicked it backwards, and suddenly she looked halfway presentable. Taylor looked away again. Some people had all the damn luck. She looked like a drowned rat who'd raided some sunken Spanish galleon for spare clothes, her hair was drying out and in the process exploding in all directions, and Patience had just… slicked her hair back, and looked like a functional human once again. Feh. She attempted to move forward, and her legs just… gave up after a step. Oh, sand still hurt when she fell into it. Cool. Chorei quietly suppressed the pain in her nose, so that was… nice. Back to her feet, move in slow, careful steps, and… crack.

A rush of flame. A pulse of pressure.

Patience was in front of her. Teleporting cow.

"Holding up?"

"Yes."

"Lying?"

"Yes."

"I'll get us some transport."

A rush of air filling a vacuum - she was gone. Short-range teleport, small explosions wherever she arrived. Not the strongest, but they'd be enough to mess someone up if she was truly close. Rapid pops as she travelled across the beach, taking a moment to recover before setting off once more. Taylor's legs wobbled… she was more tired than she liked to admit. The boat hadn't been restful, she was still starving, and… she spied a small picnic basket. A flash of guilt - the two of them violently crashing had probably ruined some family's day out. A flash of nervousness - maybe they were recognised and had been reported. If so, the city would be waiting for them. A flash of hunger. A flash that continued onwards until it no longer could really be called a 'flash', more of a… perpetual;y burning inferno which grew brighter with every second, tempting her with visions of sustenance, and-

She was already at the basket, crouched down, tearing it open… oh, fuck, that was a BLT. Someone had packed a BLT. And a bottle of water. Had to force herself to not glug it all down at once, once she got more than a few sips in her she felt her stomach heave, unused to the sudden abundance. OK, space herself out… oh, fuck, BLT. She'd never been so happy to see one. She ran her hands over it… still warm. Still warm. And they'd used some kind of… tomato basil sauce, too, and… she sniffed lightly, detecting hints of mustard, a trace of high-quality bacon, the crackling of freshly baked bread, oh, fuck, she… she took a bite.

Oh by the Grafting Budhaaaaaaaaaa….

Chorei's noises were very much in line with Taylor's. She'd never loved a sandwich so much. This thing was awakening things in her she thought were dead and gone. To her embarrassment, a delirious moan of ecstasy escaped her mouth, harmonising perfectly with Chorei. She sagged back into the sand, ignoring how it was flowing under her breastplate. Barely cared. Too busy eating. Small bites, small bites, savour it. She could feel herself returning to normality with each bite, everything reinflating after so long of no food whatsoever. She felt, with a hint of shame, that her breath had become truly awful - no toothpaste on the boat, and starvation apparently made one's breath awful. Who knew. And now… now she was normal again. Just needed a shower, some mouthwash, another shower, a bath, some more food… then she could go and help deal with the Angrboda situation, and not a moment before. Unrealistic, she was fully aware. But… but a girl could dream. She envisioned ordering at least seven more BLTs and eating each and every one in the bath. Like a savage. Like a happy, happy savage. Her swarm was back, too. Insects, for the first time in… days. Not just lobsters and crabs, plus the occasional giant isopod. Thousands. So many perceptions, so many…

Hold on a fucking second.

The Butcher was coming back.

She appeared to have a tractor.

It slammed through the rotten wooden fence which sealed the beach off from the rest of the world, and ploughed through the sand for a moment. She had a brief horrific vision of Patience killing someone for this, but… no. No, her swarm could find no corpses, and it could trace the entire path of the tractor. Just a very confused, very frightened man who was… ah. Well, at least Patience had found some clothes. Specifically, a very heavy overcoat that was probably older than Taylor. The woman cackled loudly, and slammed to a halt.

"Hop in, loser, we've got a way to go!"

Taylor blinked.

"Where are we, exactly?"

"Outside Brockton. Driver's licence in this coat says it's issued for… uh… Thistle Creek."

Thistle… oh, she knew that place. Seaside village, not much to its name beyond a stretch of sand which served as a beach for those too cheap for the Boardwalk and too time-poor to go somewhere sunnier, with fewer rocks, and bigger waves. Outside of Brockton Bay, not too far. The tractor looked sturdy, and she could see a few alterations that had been made by the owner. And based on how fast Patience had arrived… maximum speed, maybe forty miles an hour. Irritatingly slow.

"Can't we get something faster?"

"First thing I found. Man said there wasn't much else."

Thank Christ there wasn't a freeway. Should take them just over an hour to get back to Brockton, if they went full speed at all times. And her swarm confirmed the latter part of her statement - there really wasn't much else. Thistle Creek wasn't even in her range, just some ramshackle beach huts, a deserted parking lot overgrown with weeds, and a people carrier zooming away in another direction. Oh, thank fuck Patience hadn't decided to commandeer that thing, she really didn't want a stranded, terrified family on her conscience. As it was, she just had a terrified family. Escaping rapidly. In the opposite direction to Brockton Bay. Clever. Patience looked enviously at her BLT… and Taylor quietly offered it. It returned to her with an enormous bite in the end she hadn't been working on. Picnic basket requisitioned for the greater good, water bottle passing between the two, packets of chips getting torn open and consumed with frightening rapidity. The tractor groaned, easing its way out of the beach and onto the bumpy road. Taylor felt a rush of… something resembling enthusiasm. She spoke quietly as the tractor strained to accelerate to its maximum speed.

"Chorei, how are you feeling?"

Well enough. Tired. Didn't know I could still feel tired, but… well, interesting discovery. Yourself?

"Tired."

Fair. And now… now what?

"Back to Brockton."

She paused.

"Thanks. Again."

Patience twitched her head backwards, a chunk of salami hanging out of her mouth.

"Chorei?"

A swarm-body formed.

"Yes?"

"You're the best. Love ya. Seriously, you… you have no idea how fucking happy I am, they were quiet. Genuinely quiet, for the first time in… in so, so long. I adore you right now, not sure if it's platonic or romantic or just desperate, but I love you so fucking much. If I could convince you to live in my head and keep these fucks from being loud again, I'd… I'd take it."

"The gratitude is unnecessary. And I must decline the offer. I… like my current partner."

Oh. That was a feeling. Definitely a feeling.

"Well, suit yourself."

She paused, and her eyes flicked from side to side.

"Need to put on something. They're getting louder again."

The radio was a crackling, static-y thing which burst and crackled repeatedly, never quite settling on a consistent volume or sound quality. It was tuned to a news station, one of the many that blared out of the centre of Brockton Bay, and…

Taylor froze.

"The mayor has declared a state of emergency, and all civilians are recommended to remain in their homes until this status is rescinded. Repeat, a state of emergency, with the recommendation to stay in your homes. The police are attending to the situation at Immaculata High School, and will be providing updates as the situation develops. The situation involves a parahuman attack, likely in retaliation for the PRT operation earlier today in which dozens of Teeth members were captured, and multiple Teeth-affiliated parahumans were neutralised. Current police advice is to remain as far away from the school as possible to avoid the crossfire. Now, we turn to our crisis correspondent, Peter O'Mills, could you-"

The radio crackled as they passed through a row of derelict buildings that had once serviced the seaside in more prosperous days. The Butcher's eyes narrowed. Taylor was pale.

"...see? You see? This is how we work. Oh, let's think… probably a bunch dead, a bunch wounded, but the fire is starting up - the blaze rises higher and higher."

A slightly mad giggle escaped her lips.

"They think they've beaten us. They think they've won. Impossible. Simply impossible. We'll grow back. We always do. They can't kill an entire chapter, not all at once. Members will filter away, join other gangs, start to infect them from the ground up. Empire fighting rings will refuel us, the lost and indigent will crave the highs we can bring, the ABB… oh, they'll welcome our appetites. Welcome them. No, no chance of beating us, none at all."

She grinned at Taylor.

"And you'll be here to see it."

And Taylor was reminded, very keenly, that while Patience disliked the Butcher minds seizing control of her, while she was afraid of the path they wanted to set her on… she had still voluntarily taken the mantle. She'd still assumed leadership of the Teeth and held onto it for a long, long time. She remembered the lunch where she'd killed Nibelung. Watching Night die had done nothing, killing Nibelung had done nothing, it was only Kabiri's words that had genuinely set her off and unnerved her. Patience Nguyen was still a villain, even if she wasn't a completely insane monster who wanted to do something devastating, something she still hadn't explained. For all that she rejected the worst excesses of the Butcher, she was still Quarrel. And Quarrel had never been a hero. Taylor hesitated before shuffling away slightly, even as the wolf in her head howled louder and louder, eagerly welcoming these words of revolution. The two rumbled onwards… and the radio spat and crackled once again.

"...firmed, repeat, confirmed, we have confirmation from reliable sources that the parahuman attacking Immaculata High is Matrimonial, who was likely responsible for the attack on the Kurgan Mall several days ago. Repeat, Matrimonial is attacking Immaculata High, assisted by a large number of Teeth gang members. Civilians are ordered to keep their distance, any attempts to breach police lines will, we're told, be met with deadly force. The PRT is currently not engaging this parahuman, apparently due to a lack of mayoral approval, possibly connected to the ongoing dispute with the BBPD union over various issues in the wake of the Conflagration, and…"

Cut off. The Butcher glared down at it. Taylor's hands curled into fists. The two were absolutely silent for a moment, and there was only the sound of the tractor groaning as it was pushed to its limits, rumbling along long, straight roads with no-one else in sight. Taylor remembered feeling absolute, burning love for Matrimonial. A love which infected and seeped into her other thoughts, colouring and dirtying them. Her mind flicked to a random memory - to a Christmas with her mom and dad, years and years ago. And the first thing that came up with that memory was a vague thought, a vague feeling wondering what it would be like to share that Christmas with Matrimonial, and- she cut down on the thought. Fed it to the Wolf. Let it chew it up and replace it with vaulting, searing hate. Matrimonial would be burned out of her mind, and burned out of the world. Her nails dug into her sore palms. Tiredness forgotten. Hunger suppressed. Thirst ignored. She wanted Matrimonial dead. Bisha had been someone she wanted dead for a variety of reasons, most of them fairly heroic, but… but Matrimonial was personal. She wanted her dead because she'd invaded her mind and tainted an emotion she'd never even had a chance to feel until this point. Matrimonial had used her powers to become the first person Taylor felt romantic attraction for. Forced attraction.

And now, with the Wolf, that love was burning her from the inside out. It demanded consumption and devastation. It wanted to light fires across the city, to roast it block by block until Matrimonial was gone. It would devour the sun if it thought it would make Matrimonial freeze to death. The emotion that Matrimonial had planted was fuelling her desire to kill.

Patience gave her a look.

"Oh, your heart is going nuts right now. Tell you what. Two of us. Little team up. We go for Matrimonial. And we hurt her."

Taylor's face was flat, all her expressions projected into the swarm once more. She knew she should meet up with her friends, strategise, come to proper conclusions, maybe get to grips with how this entire situation was going to go, but…

"Agreed."

Hate was a powerful thing. Love, too.

"Let's gear up, then."

She took a deep, eager breath.

"Oh, it's been too long since I've worn armour. You want to know something, actually?"

Taylor raised an eyebrow.

"She stole your gun. I'm aware you went into the mall with one, but by the time I found you… gone. I assume Matrimonial took it."

This was said absent-mindedly, something she'd only just remembered. Without waiting for a response, she changed the station on the radio, flicking to something loud, with plenty of shouting. The signal wasn't remotely clear, so there were blasts of deafening static followed by wails from some heavy metal song. The Butcher knew it, roared along with it, banging her head back and forth. Taylor stared at her incredulously for a moment… ah. The voices were getting louder again. And… hold on. The gun. Taylor had wondered where it had gone, but she'd never really dwelled on it for long. That was a birthday gift from Turk. That was a gift from someone she liked, to commemorate a birthday she forgot about completely. It had been customised for her. Oh, she was going to turn her into sausage meat. She was going to do things. The two rumbled onwards… and Taylor felt the impulse to grin wolfishly, even as Patience continued to roar lyrics at the top of her lungs, eyes bulging with adrenaline.

'Hellbent, hellbent for liquor!
Wine's fine but whiskey's quicker!
Swallow the razor!'

She tilted her face to the sky and howled:

'I chop my breakfast on a mirror!'

Taylor gave into the impulse, and felt her lips draw backwards into something between a snarl and a grin. Chorei groaned slightly… and murmured a few suggestions.

Finally. Finally.

* * *​

Intel was scarce. The city was a vast, burning unknown. Who knew what the situation was - only that some of the Teeth were gone, the PRT had moved, and now Matrimonial was attacking Immaculata. Nice part of town. Hard to get through police lines. Patience could manage. They'd driven carefully into town, ditched the tractor in a random parking lot (another pulse of guilt at fucking over some random guy. Hoped he had insurance) before sneaking through the streets. People looked nervous - not just of them, but generally. Surprisingly high number of police officers standing around in what looked like riot gear, but none of them looked particularly coherent. They stood on street corners, clustered into tiny groups or wandered uncertainly alone. If Taylor was going to guess, she'd say that they weren't used to this, had been forced into a position they didn't necessarily want to or were prepared to occupy - the kind of widespread martial law that the PRT had laid down post-Conflagration. She remembered the radio - was this to do with that dispute? Hadn't been following it really, but… hm. Anyway.

They'd entered the city, avoided searching eyes, and made their way quickly to the nearest safe house. The Butcher had been here once before, and stashed weapons in a dozen places, often sealed behind concrete in well-protected bags. The Fugly Bob Uzis, for instance. And Taylor was politely told that But armour… armour was harder. Her suit was in a particularly nice town house which supposedly belonged to some well-to-do member of the Teeth. No idea where he was now, but he'd left the group a very nice house for their own usage. Near Immaculata, but not quite close enough for the police lines to block them off. Close enough for them to be very, very careful. Weird to not see tiltrotors buzzing about overhead, the PRT usually loved showing off their power in situations like this. The house was nice - a thin slice of a building, sandwiched between two other similarly narrow houses. Like someone had taken a street, diced it up into houses, and then had decided they were too decadent with space and divided them again, again, until they were left with the thinnest livable strips. It was… painfully normal. Even some family photos. What had driven the guy to abandon it all for the Teeth, what had… no, wait, Taylor understood. She understood very well indeed. She could still hear the howling in her head.

Shower. Quick. Just to get the sand off. Her armour and helmet would have to remain with her, she supposed. It was weird, kinda irritating, but… Patience insisted. She wasn't going to go into battle with someone dressed in a deeply clashing way, it made her look ridiculous. Armour, she said, only worked when you were surrounded by armoured people. Otherwise you looked like a Renaissance fair reject. And the Butcher refused to be laughed at. It made the voices very fucking loud indeed. She was still in control of herself, but the very fact that she'd asked, no, invited herself along for this suggested a certain level of violence brewing in her. A taste for the mindless and savage which could drown out the rising tide of screaming wolves in her head. Her armour had been carefully cleaned… surprisingly little rust, actually. Just needed to get the salt and sand off, and it was good to go. Helmet too. Fuck, she looked ridiculous. A scarf was plundered from one of the house's many closets, just to cover up her mouth and make her look a bit more like an actual cape.

Taylor?

"Hm?"

I was… thinking. The hoard. I assume we still want it, and the Butcher genuinely likes us at present for reasons I can scarcely fathom, so… well…

Oh, shit. Yeah. Good point. She slowly walked through the tall house, keenly aware of how loud her shoes were on the hard wood floors, the sound hanging in the empty, dusty air. This place had the coldness of an unoccupied building, the slow, subtle chill of somewhere which didn't see life very often, and had grown a life of its own to compensate. It was not a house that welcomed people, not anymore. The Butcher was getting her armour on, piece by piece. Surprisingly nimble, honestly. Probably had lots of practice. Taylor poked her head in, and the Butcher twitched to face her.

"Hey, help me with these straps."

Her armour was covered in them, hanging like the trails of a comet from her. She looked like a bizarre combination between a samurai, a Napoleonic general, and some post-apocalyptic raider. Huge samurai-style shoulderpads and trousers, but with random animal furs tacked on, primitive spikes driven through fine metal and lacquer… and over it all, stitched into the armour, a long, heavy overcoat, with gold frogging and the embroidered image of a single, jagged tooth on the back. Human teeth glinted from a dozen spots, presumably taken from her many enemies. No mask, though… she did have rather a collection of war paint in front of her. The entire ensemble was showy, impractical, easily stained… and heavily stained, if she was being honest. But that all seemed to be the point. It was her war armour, it was designed to intimidate, to impress, to mark her out as the logical elaboration of the Teeth. The same chaotic dress sense, the same bizarre mix of ancient, modern, and nightmarish future-vision. She looked like the model to which the Teeth aspired, but inevitably fell short. Perhaps the most telling part of it was its scarcity - Taylor had never seen her wearing it. The Teeth never got out of their weird clothes, but the Butcher experimented with dresses, swim suits, only rarely dabbling in her armour. Gave it a shock value that they simply lacked. Long tassels fell down from her, and Taylor got to work knotting them up, lashing armour pieces to her. She talked quietly.

"Hey, I was… just wondering something."

"Hm?"

"The hoard. I mean, I was thinking… does it even exist? It feels revolutionary to destroy it, so…"

The Butcher twisted her head to stare backwards incredulously.

"Destroy the hoard? What kind of a maniac do you think I am?"

Taylor blinked.

"Don't answer that. But, yeah, hoard exists. Hidden."

"...huh."

"Look, could it be revolutionary to destroy the hoard? Yeah, probably. But the Teeth have upkeep costs. Like, being revolutionary is fun and all, but no-one is going to join up with us if we have to steal literally everything that isn't nailed down just to make a living. Or, at least, not as many people. We replenish the hoard fairly regularly, and sometimes destroy stuff to make a point, but largely… it's just a boring necessity. Pisses people off, attracts more recruits who want to steal it from us, serves as a nice monument, and gives us a certain amount of operational flexibility. You remember our awesome meals? Well, for all of those, now imagine the process of finding a restaurant, catching all the staff at the right time, organising seating… revolution is always preceded by a certain amount of boring work. Sorry."

She looked genuinely apologetic.

Oh heavens, it's… definitely real, then. No doubt. I can't sense any deception from her.

Nor could Taylor. So. The hoard was definitely 100% real, the Butcher could access it, and the Butcher liked her. She'd turned away again, focusing on her war paint. Had barely processed the question. Certainly didn't seem to think that Taylor was going to fuck her over. What kind of thief would help her with her mental anguish, team up with her at important moments, cultivate a Butcher mindset… she'd committed too much to just be a thief. Maybe there was a point there - she wanted to get to the bottom of the Angrboda business, she wanted revenge on Matrimonial, but she also wanted to be a thief and get filthy rich. OK, she… she had a chance. Work with her, maybe get through the Angrboda stuff, then get the hoard and get out of here. Done. Easy. Patience might even forgive it - she clearly wasn't attached to the hoard, not as anything more than a basic necessity.

Then we have an end goal in sight. We have confirmation. This is… good, I think.

Taylor said nothing. But her approval was easily sensed. Excitement. Oh, she had hope for things, fuck yeah. Anyway. The two of them were suited up. Taylor had a spare pistol - badly weighted, a little too stiff in some areas, just not her style. A knife. She felt nicely armed. The Butcher had a bow that was taller than Taylor, a handful of antique grenades, a giant fucking claymore, and… uh… an automatic rifle. A battered, weathered AK-47. Looked Soviet-era, honestly. She hung it from her belt, like she was going to fire it from the hip. Which, given her strength and accuracy, was… pretty much correct, yeah. The two nodded firmly at one another… and moved. The moment the door clicked shut behind them, they were sprinting down the street. They made it a few metres before the Butcher got bored, grabbed Taylor, hauled her up onto her shoulders and started bounding like a wild animal in the general direction of Immaculata. Taylor blinked rapidly. OK, yeah, sure, piggyback ride with an insane mass-murderer. Embarrassingly, much faster than going on foot.

Whee.

Chorei's voice was flat. Deadpan. Masking a deep internal panic. Taylor blinked a few more times - oh, shit, she was going the wrong way. Right, didn't know Brockton all that well. She began to direct them, pointing out where to go, shouting directions, generally keeping this show on the road. The Butcher nodded frantically with each new command, and Taylor's swarm gathered in size and power with each moment that passed, with each new patch of insects she discovered on their advance. More, more… a huge number. Enough to overwhelm anyone she pleased. Plans spiralled in her mind as the school approached. Alright, Matrimonial could keep her swarm back using intense heat. She was accustomed to hiding herself until she was in range of her target. If truly threatened, she could send out waves of liquid fire to overwhelm anyone around her - seemed to have a very good range on the fire which even her emotional control lacked. Ideas related to grafting came to mind, maybe… the police line approached.

Taylor blinked.

She saw someone she faintly recognised. From pictures. Miss Militia, surrounded by a small team of PRT troopers, looked up and her eyes widened at the sight of the Butcher with a Conquistador cosplayer on her shoulders. The pistol at her belt flickered, becoming a blur of black-green light before resolving into something else, a heavy shotgun. She remembered Turk's lesson on the topic - pistols put a hole in someone. Rifles put a hole through someone. Shotguns filled the niche where you no longer wanted part of someone to exist on this plane of reality. And that wasn't counting anti-materiel rifles, which were a whole other… anyway. God, this was weird. She was just like the pictures. Army fatigues, American flag over her mouth, focused, dark eyes narrowing at the sight of villains coming her way, weapons which looked extensively customised and adjusted despite manifesting out of nowhere. The PRT troopers whirled in unison, raising their own rifles… but they paused at the sight of the Butcher. The Butcher, for her part, just looked up at Taylor.

"Hey, sorry."

What?

What?

She pushed, and Taylor was flung violently through the air. To her credit, she didn't scream. In fact, her face remained utterly flat for the entire duration. She whirled up to a… distressingly great height, struggling to get her limbs to do anything that wasn't agitated flailing. Panic wasn't present - happened too quickly, and she was too exhausted. No, no room for panic. Simply no room amidst the anticipation for a conflict with Matrimonial, the hate for the girl who'd invaded her mind, and… yeah, that was it. Everything else was a footnote compared to that. She heard the Butcher pop out of existence, and crash back into reality, a wave of flame erupting around her. Taylor was going to need to buy a secret identity after this. Because there was no way 'Neither-Nor' was going to be anything but 'that cape the Butcher was carrying on her shoulders before throwing her like a fucking football over a police line'. Worst part was, as she tumbled to the ground she could hear the Butcher talking to herself.

"...and we've at the fifty yard line, Brenda U. T. Cher heading for the ball…"

Something cracked.

"And the defence is toast, the defence can't do shit, and Brenda gets closer, she's going for it, she's-"

Taylor landed in the Butcher's arms with a dull clatter of armour. Bridal carry. Fucking hell. Chorei whimpered at the sight of Patience's broad grin, and the woman leaned in close, closer than Taylor would like. Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"Touchdown."

"Please put me down."

"Fine."

She turned and waved to the assembled police and PRT, who were currently trying to figure out how to get into that building without causing a massacre of all present hostages. And now the Butcher was in the mix, making it all much, much more complicated. Taylor could already see the strategic nightmare they were managing. Matrimonial had done this before, just a few days ago, and had left a good number of people dead along with a heap of property damage. Maybe they knew her powers at this point from that gun-girl, uh… what had it been? Starless, right. Christ, she should've remembered that faster, she was getting lazy. So, they couldn't go in without having to plan for students utterly in love with their captor, willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Oh, and a master who could do the same to any attackers. Oh, and now there was a cape who couldn't be killed unless you wanted a more dangerous cape to show up immediately, with no ability to resist the screaming voices in their head. They looked paralysed, and utterly furious. Taylor felt something die a little when she saw Miss Militia just looking angry at her actions. She got over it, but… still. She liked Miss Militia. Patience turned back, still grinning.

"So… let's go and handle this, eh?"

"Sounds good to me."

"Plan?"

"Some. Can you resist Matrimonial?"

"Hard to change my emotions with all these fucks up here."

"Good. Try not to kill the students, alright?"

"I'll try. But if there's a choice…"

She shrugged too easily. Didn't care. Right. Still a sociopathic, damaged villain who so happened to be in a profoundly unenviable position. She gave her a look, one that said 'if you go too far, we're done. And there'll be no more grafting, no more peace. Do what you want, but I'm done'. Patience tried to smile winningly… and it faltered as she came to similar conclusions. Holy shit. She had leverage over the Butcher. A genuine advantage that the Butcher could get nowhere else (not to her knowledge). Part of her wanted to be altruistic and teach her how to graft, to shut the voices up by herself. The rest of her was sane, and wasn't going to squander this exceedingly unlikely coincidence. Patience nodded, Taylor nodded back, and the two moved on into the dull silence of the school.

Immaculata was, honestly, a little weird to explore. She was used to Winslow, a place which was somewhere between 'decaying' and 'decayed' - as in, had fully decayed and had no room for further decaying. Immaculata had always been one of the nicer schools in town. Not the only one, but… definitely up there. Private, catered to a certain type of crowd. She looked around… Catholic school, right. Explained the advertisements for Bible study group, and the general sense of tense wholesomeness surrounding the whole place. Well-kept, well-maintained, and way too clean for comfort, but still… a certain air of aged authority. It didn't feel like a nice school where every student got a computer and every classroom had stuff on the edge of being tinkertech. No, it just felt… old, and toughened by it. This place remembered when nuns had taught here and a priest had a permanent residency. It remembered rulers being used on disobedient kids. And it had never quite grown out of that old authority. She wasn't sure if she'd have wanted to go here or not. Genuinely conflicted. Bah. Her swarm spread out, searching for a familiar pocket of . No students in sight, and… huh. There. The heat. Her pupil dilated, and her empty eye socket itched. She checked a map of the school bolted onto one of the walls… gymnasium. No sign of students. But…

"Incoming."

The Teeth stumbled out of classrooms, bottles raised to their lips, eyes wide with the insanity of burning love. Not sure which chapter these guys were, but they looked… hm. Like office workers, really. Boring office workers, but with torn suits and dresses, huge patches of blood and sweat, machetes dangling easily from the hands not currently helping them chug more and more beer (she assumed) from bottles that lacked labels. A polite-looking young woman with curled blonde hair, a pair of small golden spectacles, and red-stained teeth filed to points smiled winningly at them.

"Oh, wow, boss - I didn't… oh my goodness, it's the Butcher. Oh my. I'm sorry, I'm Cardew, I'm with the-"

Patience interrupted.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"...I'm Miss Cardew, I'm with-"

"What chapter?"

"We don't have a number, ma'am. But we're going by the name 'Horsefucker Appreciation Society'."

The Butcher tilted her head to one side, and slowly started to draw her claymore.

"...wild. New, then?"

"Oh, quite new!"

"And you're here, because…"

Cardew smiled lightly, and let out a polite, small laugh that would be entirely appropriate for some colleague's lame joke during a refined boardroom meeting. Cardew, who wore high heels with the heels sawed away and a pencil skirt marked with severed ears held on with thumb tacks, clicked her way forwards. She staggered a little, clearly intoxicated, her machete dragging up sparks.

"Well, we had a boss. Ryan from accounting. But then we met… we met Ma-Ma, and suddenly we didn't much feel like working for Ryan from accounting."

Taylor blinked.

"So, you-"

"We ate him. Ma-Ma made us love the taste. And then she brought her friends along, and… and we were just one big happy family. You should try it, sir. The… the high is fantastic. I mean, drugs are just inducing a chemical reaction through a happy accident, but Ma-Ma can induce them directly - it's like drugging yourself, it's fantastic. Clean high, too - we're in tip-top physical condition! We're on our A-game, we're preparing our mergers and acquisitions guys for recruiting the rest of the kids here, we figure we can use them to spread some more terror. And our human resources people are getting ready to cut up one or two, make a proper feast. Should be a good initiation, sir!"

Patience blinked slowly, like a giant predatory cat. Cardew continued to smile guilelessly… there was love in her eyes. She adored Matrimonial. Lost cause.

"...man, that's nuts. See, one issue-"

A throwing knife used to be on her belt. A second later, it wasn't there anymore. Instead, it was impaled down to the hilt in one of the office worker's skulls. Taylor didn't flinch - projected the impulse into the swarm. The office workers stepped back, staggering under the influence of far too much alcohol, and stared at their fallen colleague. Cardew snapped her fingers into tiny guns, smiling wider than ever while remaining absolutely still.

"Radical downsizing, an admirable business strategy, sir!"

The Butcher looked irritable.

"Oh, shut up. Neither-Nor, go and-"

The mood shifted. Cardew's mouth drew into a snarl.

"Neither-Nor?!"

Her machete glinted as she raised it up, edges merry with red stains.

"Ma-Ma said you'd come. Didn't know what you looked like. Ma-Ma said you'd come, and you'd try to ruin it all out of spite - jilted lover that you are."

Rage boiled in Taylor.

"Yes, a jilted lover, sent away because you were too weak, too incapable of fulfilling her needs. Promised too much too quickly - so needy. She said your pillow talk was awful, so convinced of your own inadequacy that you kept promising to give your friends over. A very poor lover, yes indeed. Ma-Ma prefers people with a little more… hm, experience, and markedly less dependency."

Taylor turned quietly to Patience.

"Do what you want. I'll find Matrimonial."

Cardew growled under her breath.

"Well. Do as you like. Go and talk - but don't think she'll take you back under her wing. Though… who can say? Always a chance. Go on. And… sir? Are you really with this… this hussy?"

"Oh yeah. Definitely. One of my favourite people at the moment."

Cardew looked more confused than anything else.

"...but…but… oh, fie. What utter nonsense. No, clearly a suboptimal leader, taken in by someone who doesn't understand you. I thought that your downsizing was a poor decision, not a good executive move. Well. Ma-Ma has other friends."

One of the men in the back perked up. He looked different to the others - his suit looked scavenged, his demeanour was more overly savage. Like he'd been merged into these… horse appreciators, and had been forced to change his outfit as a consequence. Bald, with tattoos along his scalp of deformed figures cavorting in a circle, with a faded yellow sun marking the centre of his head. Muscled, but in the plump way which suggested someone who'd been big in high school, had an active lifestyle, but indulged more than was healthy. On the verge of going to seed. No natural teeth left, entirely metal at this point. He stood shakily, took a deep breath… and suddenly two people were taking a breath. Then three. Four. Almost ten in barely a few seconds. The Butcher blinked.

"Spree?"

"Boss."

"I thought-"

"Ma-Ma showed us a better way. Showed us how wonderful life can be with a leader who actually loves you."

Patience nodded solemnly, closed her eyes in self-reflective contemplation…

"Shit, you're a pussy now. Nuts. Well, you were always a bit of a disappointment. What, got tired leading a cell?"

"Tired? I was exhausted of it. Nothing to do, just trailing your coattails, never-"

"Boring, boring, boring. All about the money and action with you, nothing greater. So profoundly dull. Neither-Nor, go on. Do your business. I'll take care of this walking abortion clinic dumpster."

Oh, splendid, still as vulgar as ever.

Taylor had to agree with Chorei intellectually… but viscerally, she was on Patience's side. She wanted to swear at them, stomp their faces into the dirt, hurt this entire chapter and tear them apart completely. She had a gun, she had a swarm, she had experience. And a plan ticking in the back of her head, one that she was holding in reserve if everything went wrong. Patience braced, claymore in one hand, rifle in the other. Taylor raised her knife and shoddy gun. The Horsefuckers raised their rudimentary weapons, and Spree began to replicate rapidly, bodies popping into existence, each one tacky with fluid from the great invisible womb that had spawned them, eyes dull and flat, head marked with distorted versions of the original elaborate tattoo. Silence reigned for a moment…

And then it ceased.

Time to get her fucking gun back.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

223 - You May Now Maim the Bride

Chaos erupted. Violence breathed life into the Teeth - before it, they had been half-complete, drifting, unfocused. Eyes glazed over, muscles lank and weak, motivation utterly drained. But once it began, once the hint of violence entered the air, they were like sharks smelling blood in the water. They sensed it, and a great change came over them. Muscles tightened, shoulders broadened, even their stomachs seemed to depress inwards a little as they started to conserve breath and tension forced their abdominals into contracted positions, braced for impact. Their eyes bloomed with a low, savage cunning, sweat began at the corners of their temples… and then the screams. The war cries which seemed like the exhalation of an animal which had been trapped for far, far too long, half-suffocated and half-starved. Violence, really, came quite naturally at that point. They willingly shed humanity in favour of animal instincts, syllables of revolution burning behind their eyes, inviting them to rise up against their leader. The Teeth - a mouth that savaged itself as quickly as it savaged anything in front of it. And revolution… well, that cut both ways. Even against the Butcher. Not that she seemed to mind.

Spree roared as he multiplied repeatedly. Taylor had only glanced at his file online - just some guy, unremarkable cape, managed one of the other Teeth chapters. She wouldn't have given him a second thought, but he could easily have come to Brockton Bay - last sighted out in Pennsylvania terrorising a small town before getting his shit pushed in by the PRT. His gang had already ditched him at this point, running away once the town ran out of beer for them to consume, and they were having to move on to lighter fluid in an attempt to stay blissfully drunk. Escaped the PRT, but vanished afterwards. She'd assumed he'd be around to help out with the Teeth… she hadn't anticipated him getting mastered by Matrimonial and used against the Teeth. Perverse thing was, this… probably still counted as helping them. Either way. Three seconds - fifteen clones. Appearing from thin air, glistening with remnants of some bizarre amniotic fluid, each one looking half-animal they were so wild. They charged with the rest of the Teeth at the Butcher and Taylor… and for the first time, Taylor saw the Butcher fighting. Not against the helpless or the isolated, but in full battle array, against an opposing force.

She slowed to a halt.

Didn't matter. The Butcher was… she was spectacular.

A teleport into the middle of the group, fire bursting around her, searing a few, setting some clothes alight. One poor bastard had been soaking himself in liquor for so long that his mouth actually turned into a small fireball after a spark entered it. Poor sod. Her rifle barked off a few sharp retorts, always seeming to find the most painful spots that were incapacitating without being immediately lethal. Emphasis on immediately. Her swarm stopped moving - no point attacking, no point wasting their venom. Wanted to save it for Matrimonial. The claymore whirled rapidly, and she used it with the skill of someone who had spent way too much time alone with it. Well, she'd had a lot of lifetimes to work on it. A hand flew away from one clone, then a head from another, then more, more… a pile of rapidly disintegrating heads. Her eyes flicked around, and one Teeth member went berserk, leaping on top of another and starting to bite into his face with the rabid energy of a junkyard dog. Another simply dissolved weeping, clutching at his stomach like an incredible pain was…

Oh.

She is… something.

She was. Fifteen clones, almost a dozen Teeth members… two taken out completely by the first teleport. Clones mown down with dismissive ease, even as more came to replace them. Some Teeth tore each other apart, others collapsed while shrieking in pain, and the rest simply charge into the living meat grinder with smiles on their lips and love in their eyes.

Move.

Yeah. probably a good idea. Taylor charged, ducking and weaving through the struggling mass that filled the tight corridors. Her knife flashed as Teeth came close, leaving long, shallow cuts that were painful as hell but wouldn't kill them. The Butcher… she was certain that a good number of Teeth were going to die today. But when she saw the fresh marks on their machetes, the blood which stained parts of the walls of the school… they'd broken into a school, and rounded up the kids as hostages. And for what? She groaned internally… if she was being honest, she wasn't going to stop the Butcher from doing what she wanted to do, couldn't without causing major issues down the line, and these freaks had crossed a number of moral thresholds. If they died… they died stupid. If they ran and lived, they were clever. Was that callous of her? Was that a trace of Chorei's sociopathy? Or just the moral detachment that characterised Turk and Ahab, the people who'd helped her out in the very beginning?

Angst later. Killing now.

Cardew, the blonde who seemed to lead this particular pack, abandoned her colleagues and charged for Taylor with an angered shriek that didn't sound remotely human. Taylor sensed her through her insects… and quietly intercepted. A food plunged backwards, impacted her in the stomach. As the woman wheezed, Taylor whirled, one hand punching her in the face, feeling teeth crack open under the force… and the other sliced. She left a bloody mark from ear to ear, crossing over her nose, coming just under her eyes. A sheet of blood washed down, and the woman squealed. A final kick… and she was down. Not getting up again. She kicked the machete away just in case, and resisted the puerile urge to spit on her. Uncouth. Unreasonable. Downright unsportsmanlike. She charged away, insects scouting ahead. Heat bubble was… nearby. But she wanted to be careful. Even if her insects couldn't get far into the bubble, she could still scout around the edges. It was possible for Matrimonial to control living constructs of fire, she could easily place the heat bubble separate to her actual body. The school was the kind of labyrinthine design which had gone out of style a long time ago, the product of a small schoolhouse that had gradually grown up, out, and in every possible direction to accommodate expanding needs and ambitions.

She flinched when she felt a teacher. Male. Head split open with a machete, pinned to the blackboard he'd been working at. Desks scattered around him, students fleeing in terror. She didn't feel any of them. Just a few more dead teachers, some blood stains, and then… nothing. Nothing at all. Dread washed over her. Bad. Very bad. Lots of hostages. Needed to be careful. Her swarm charted out everything, searching every body, not leaving a single stone unturned. Wasn't going to get ambushed like a chump. Not again. Never again. Gymnasium, then. ONly place left. But her swarm suffered as she got closer, and the very centre was simply impossible for them to operate for longer than a few seconds in. Useless as anything more than recon or brief distractions, they wouldn't be able to take care of Matrimonial. She checked her pistol - functional. She checked it again. Very functional. Clicked properly. Wanted her old one back. This one was ugly and crude by comparison. But if it worked, it worked. She crept inwards, staying low, staying slow, never advertising her movement. Her clothes were too bright, the breastplate reflected too much. Too loud to remove it. Shoes were quieter than metal boots, though. One advantage. Her insects moved inwards without much of a conscious thought - two decoys, and a layer of chittering bodies covered her from head to toe. An embrace she had absolute control of. Would it work? No idea. But she felt a little safer. Slowly, she put together another clone.

Taylor, you're being a little…

Well-prepared? Yeah, she was being very well-prepared. Her heart beat faster. Her breath came in light pants. Her eye kept forgetting to blink. She slowly fed her impulses to the black wolf that lurked in the back of her skull, and it hungrily devoured each and every one. Love became hate. But nerves… nerves remained. Her swarm could take the expression, but never the emotion. Matrimonial… she'd been thinking about her for days now, and no matter what emotion was tied up with them, the point was always significance. Her mind flicked to something utterly random. Her mom, talking about some obscure point in literary theory, mentioning idly that 'it's just the iconoclast problem again'. When pressed, she'd briefly explained that the Iconoclasts had thought religious icons, depictions of religious figures for reverential purposes, were heretical. They burned them, scoured all religious images, generally did all they could to stamp it out. And the result? Icons became of the defining features of Eastern Orthodoxy. They had books of theological justification, became symbols of the new way of things, became so firmly established that challenging them was… impossible. Hate, love… it was all just a system of significance, and Matrimonial was very significant. No matter what, she was important.

And that was worth getting nervous about.

The gym approached, and the heat increased. She could feel sweat trickling down her back, felt her palms becoming damp. The air throbbed with warmth. A heavy pair of doors faced her. Behind them, the hostages. Matrimonial. But her swarm couldn't hack it in there - a moment or two of perception before organ failure started, before the instruments of perception dried out and the fluids necessary for survival evaporated. Maybe a few seconds. That was all. Worth nothing unless she was very, very quick and abandoned all varieties of subtlety. Quietly, she murmured her plan. Chorei agreed. The Butcher was monopolising the attention of all the other Teeth, and their pet parahuman. Having fun with them, clearly just enjoying the violence. Well, it made this easier - kept Matrimonial as isolated as possible. Her gun was loaded. Her knife was ready. The wolf roared. She was as prepared as she'd ever be.

She pushed the doors open.

* * *​

Rows and rows of terrified eyes faced her. Students. Huge numbers of them. Almost te entire school - what was left of it, after the Conflagration had forced many to flee, and the Teeth's approach had made some parents firmly consider their relationship to this odd thing called 'sanity'. Stay and be mad, leave and be sane. She had before her the children of the insane, the ignorant, the blase, or those without the means. Probably a few among this crowd were in that last category. They were all in uniforms, each one in some way altered to try and inject some forceful individuality into things. Made them look younger - a little more pitiable. Taylor scanned the room quickly. The entirety of the school, dozens of them, and they looked terrified out of their minds. Except for a few. A few looked almost… eager. Ah. She saw Matrimonial's scheme. A few had been affected by her power. Maybe all of them were dosed subtly with fear, paralysis, enough to keep them in place. But a few had gotten the carrot as opposed to the stick. If they fought her… she might have to break something. Most of them were her age, and she could say with confidence that anyone her age who hadn't been trained would probably go down like a tonne of bricks if she kicked them in the right place, broke the right bone, and generally inflicted enough damage overall.

OK, she'd rationalised through beating the shit out of teenagers to her own satisfaction. Time for Matrimonial.

Her insects rushed out in an unsubtle wave, checking for the source of the heat. She got a brief snapshot of the room, a few fragments… easier like this, when she had eyes (well, an eye) to work with, not just fragmentary perceptions that died out too quickly. Come on, source of the warmth, epicentre, come on, come on… she felt shivering bodies, she felt people reacting strongly to the sight of a scuttling wave of her more useless insects, the ones without strong pincers or powerful venom. Come on… nothing, nothing, nothing… there. She felt something. Her eye flicked. Other end of the room. The gymnasium had three points of entry, and Matrimonial had gambled on her entering through another one. Made sense, but she clearly hadn't anticipated having the actual Butcher hunting her down here, but… hm. She could feel heat, a body, she began to raise… no.

Her attention switched. She whirled. Not falling for that again. That was a corpse, filled with fire. She scanned… there. Hidden, no heat produced beyond the baseline. Ashen hands under her skin, hidden by long hair and a form-concealing uniform. The two locked eyes for a moment. A flash of surprise on Matrimonial's face. Taylor didn't hesitate. Her gun came up. Her insects descended. Finally. The girl leapt backwards into the crowd, and all of a sudden the teenagers dogpiled her, surrounding her in a living shield. Each and every one clutched at her with hungry devotion, completely and utterly infatuated. Poor sods. They'd been feeling this soon enough. Her insects wormed through the layers - wouldn't dare generate too much heat, didn't want to kill her own meat shield. She could overwhelm good sense, how good was she at overwhelming a whole crowd's worth of pain responses? Come on, come on… she backed up, trying to play it safe. The insects scurried, feeling out everything they could find before the ambient heat killed them off. A moment passed, and she made contact. She knew this skin. She'd been thinking about the sensation of touching it for days now. Her teeth gritted…

And the corpse across the room exploded.

Shit.

A fiery construct, a writhing mass that looked like a collection of conjoined human bodies, began to scramble in her direction. Good move. Pincer. Taylor's thoughts were cold, and she simply ran, ducking around the students who had begun to run for the walls, the doors, any kind of escape. A shot - no impact. The liquid fire soaked it up, melted it, no trace left after a second. Useless. She quickly worked through her options. The meat shield prevented a direct attack on Matrimonial, the heat incapacitated her swarm, and the construct placed a timer on everything - a direct form of assault, one that didn't need the range of her emotional control. Speaking of which, the fact that she hadn't tried it yet suggested… maybe a knowledge of the Wolf's capacities? Maybe she was just remaining outside of range… that seemed likely. She was keeping a healthy distance. So… hm. A pulse of idle curiosity ran through her… hm. The insects were dying off, but she could feel holes in the meat shields that Matrimonial was using. Maybe… there. She sent a pile of cockroaches inwards, a swarm that blocked up these gaps. The fiery construct immediately hesitated a little, taking a second to reorient before it… ha. There. Weakness.

Couldn't see through her constructs.

And there we go.

Plan. Her insects were dying, but they still managed to block things up. The meat shield was, really, just a giant dog pile of bodies surrounding Matrimonial. If one moved, the others had to move too. They were frozen in place by her emotional control, and by necessity - they were a physical structure that suffered from structural weaknesses, any realignment was difficult. She could feel her hair drying out, almost singing as the heat rose. Good. The bitch was getting frustrated. The swarm drowned out Matrimonial's eyes, surrounding her and promptly dying of heat exhaustion. But a body was a body. And she couldn't exactly move very well. The construct adjusted, trying to track Taylor, but… ha. She couldn't track people precisely. Had to rely on emotional makeup, and that meant… she whispered to Chorei under her breath. A twitch. And then she felt it - a wave of simulated terror. A shiver of disgust went through her - she was manipulating herself. Just like Matrimonial had done. Chorei and Taylor, together, had a fair amount of control over her own emotions. And by working together… they could simulate whatever they wanted. Taylor genuinely, truly felt terrified, felt like her life was at risk. She sprinted to join the others, her rational mind quietly buried under the layers Chorei was projecting. Chorei took control of emotional centres, Taylor lingered in bodily control. Gave her a headache doing this, but…

Well. If it worked.

The construct froze.

And the pile of meat shields roared. It was… bizarre. One would make a sound, cutting off just as quickly, another would make a sound, cut off, and so on until a word was produced. She could see the mechanism - trained to produce a sound when under the right impulse, then it was just a matter of flicking them on and off. Communicating in binary impulses.

"STOP."

The students froze. They knew this, evidently. Taylor lurked among them, and shot them cold looks. Terror was terror, didn't matter who it was directed towards. Anyhow, some of them had seen how she had run from the construct - assumed she wasn't on Matrimonial's side. She imagined herself being surrounded by a haze of terror, dread, a smidgen of hope… and she blended right in. A few students had escaped. Not enough. The meat shields squirmed, trying to dislodge the insects Taylor had drowned Matrimonial in. Not enough to kill, just enough to blind. She scanned the pile - unsubtle, good. She was getting a good picture of things, and…

"Dar-ling."

Chorei had to work overtime to stop her from expressing the most sublime anger.

"Come-back-to-bed."

Her finger tightened around her pistol.

"Such-a-good-kisser."

She could feel her eye turning bloodshot. The wolf in the back of her skull was loud, loud, so very, very loud… the students looked confused, afraid… come on Chorei, hang on, just keep the emotional centres broadcasting absolute fear. She operated under near-constant terror anyway, she could still function like this. Jitters were expressed in the swarm beyond, a tiny outlet for the artificial terror flooding her system.

"APPROACH."

Shit. They were coming closer. So, what was the plan? She couldn't affect them all at once, presumably. If she could, she'd have turned the entire gymnasium into an army, into a titanic pile of meat shields. But no, just a select handful. Too many hostages. Not enough for her to get through in any reasonable time. It'd be easier if she… ah-ha. She could see the bodies moving. The construct moved as well, staggering around drunkenly as it tried to intimidate the crowd. They were, largely, intimidated. Taylor feigned fear. Worked well enough. A small mite could feel Matrimonial shaking with anger. Oh, a little pissed at someone figuring out her weaknesses? A little annoyed that all these lovely hostages weren't working out once she couldn't tell between them and Taylor? A little irritated at someone hiding in a crowd and jumping out at an inopportune moment? Yeah. Jokes weren't funny once you'd heard them twice.

The meat shields shifted awkwardly, trying to retain cover while granting their mistress some extra sight. If she could only see, she could maybe pinpoint Taylor. If she attacked with the construct wildly, the crowd would scatter and she'd find herself with nothing - Taylor would blast into the meat shields, happy to wound a few rather than let Matrimonial kill dozens. She knew that. Taylor knew that. So the only option was to get a view of things. A direct view. Of course, thing about direct views…

They went both ways.

A mite felt the warmth increase, and died a second later.

The bodies shifted.

Her gun came up.

The students looked terrified.

A moment…

Crack.

She shot carefully, guiding her aim with a rapidly dying string of hardy flies. A rudimentary laser sight that she could sense perfectly. Her aim was true. The bullet sailed through the air, and entered into a little gap in the meat shields, through which a bright, intelligent eye could be seen. It widened in fear…

A spray of blood into the air.

And the meat shields ran as their mistress was hit, as their emotions were abruptly freed, their wills suddenly their own once more. The construct flailed, and dissolved into nothingness. Taylor could feel something in her. A strange… adoration. She was deliriously happy at the idea of killing her. A cold chill swept through her. Had she… oh shit. She'd pointed a gun in someone's face and… no. Matrimonial lay sprawled on the ground, blood pooling. One eye gone. The side of her face torn away by the shot. Messy. But the brain was intact. One student fell to the ground, screaming in terror, scratching at himself like he thought insects were under his skin. Another simply wept. And Matrimonial coldly stared through her one remaining eye.

What did those lunatics do to her?

Taylor thought much the same. She was… bizarre. On the outside, conventionally attractive, but otherwise normal. But once the skin was broken, once she was wounded… the ashen hands went deeper. Much deeper. Two bodies. One flesh. One charred. Wound around one another, utterly intertwined to the point that they were nearly indistinguishable. Her clothes had been torn slightly, and Taylor could see something… something else. If she looked close, she could actually see a… a face. A human head, charred, embedded somewhere in her sternum, staring upwards. A pair of arms climbing upwards to cradle Matrimonial's face. The name suddenly became more of a grim joke. Two people, wedded permanently, stitched into one another. If she was going to guess, she'd say the charred one had been the fire user, and the fleshy one had been the emotional manipulator. Taylor coldly raised her gun again. Not interested in talking. The wolf in her skull was roaring louder than ever, drowning out Chorei, drowning out everything else. Matrimonial didn't respond. Simply stared.

Taylor aimed.

And shot.

And everything went wrong.

A wave of fire burst from Matrimonial, the head in her sternum vomiting up a mass of liquid magma that boiled upwards, flowing across the ground, climbing upwards like a termite mound. The bullet was destroyed before it could reach the master. And now she was moving. Trailing blood and ash, scrambling like an animal, making absolutely no sound whatsoever. Furious. Hateful. Determined. Taylor backed off, but… a loose tentacle of magma lashed outwards, and she leapt desperately into the air, barely dodging its errant swipe. The way the floor melted told her that if she was caught by that thing… fuck, her boots were melting, fuck. She made a dull squelch as she landed in the melting floor. Thank God there were no students here, all of them running as fast and far as they could. Fuck, fuck… heat rising, reminded her of Bisha. Not a single insect, not one. Barrier nearly impenetrable. Well. She had other ways. She had a knife and a gun - and ammunition. Oh-ho.

She backed off, increasing to a run to dodge another lashing tentacle. She was unsubtle, unguarded… immobile. This was a desperate attempt at revenge. Not a serious tactic. Bullets were withdrawn from her next magazine, and thrown in a wide arc. The heat increased to intolerable levels near Matrimonial, fire breaking out spontaneously all around her. Well. The bullets landed with a dull clatter… and while some remained inert, a few cracked into life, igniting without the need for a gun. It wasn't much. Just some flying pieces of metal, some loud noises… enough to make Matrimonial pause. Enough to make her flinch. Enough for Taylor to circle around her, another handful of bullets ready to keep her distracted, and…

A blast of hot air. Another construct was released, this one more crude, more… wild. A shambling, inchoate thing, too many limbs or too few, forming and unforming at random. A protoplasmic mass. Infinitely elastic and ductile. Never quite coherent enough to be named. It shambled across the ground, scorching and burning, flailing madly, trying to make up for a loss of quality with sheer quantity of attacks. The gymnasium was burning now - no doubt about it, the fire had spread, the place was going to come down. Her swarm could sense the Butcher moving in… but the construct was partially designed to ward her off too, and Spree's clones were literally falling over one another to try and stop her movements. Not long. The creature shambled, flailed, and Taylor was forced to duck back for a moment, to… oh. She saw a tiny gap. A tiny hole in the construct. It wasn't just a monster.

It was a shell.

It lunged, barreling through any opposition to find her. There was a moment of terror as it leapt too close…

LOVE ME. PLEASE.

Oh… oh my. Taylor's mouth curled up into a smile. She felt tears prick at the corner of her eye. Oh, fuck, she'd missed this… Matrimonial seemed to speak to her without a voice. A command. If she only accepted this love, she'd be cherished for the rest of her life, she'd be unconditionally adored. The Butcher stood before her - rescue Matrimonial, drag her away, allow her to fight another day. Come on, hurry, hurry… desperation and love all at once. Taylor let the tears run down her face. It was like everything had clicked. Her smile grew wider and wider. Her hands shook, and her knife dropped away with a clatter/ She adored Matrimonial with every force at her disposal. She loved the way her hair tumbled around her shoulders, the way her neck curved, the way her lips could twist into those clever little smiles… she'd been complimented, earlier. A good kisser. She wanted to thank her for that compliment. Wanted to curl up with her and learn her name, why she'd come here, what her goal was. She wanted to graft, and learn everything about the love of her life. She imagined it would be a beautiful name, of course. Everything was beautiful about her. Even her wound had a grace to it - like something out of a Renaissance painting. Thoughts of friends and family dissolved. Love remained. Romantic love, true adoration for someone else. Her own imperfections felt recognised, acknowledged, and… accepted. Violence, scars, trauma, none of this meant anything. She had before her a pocket of absolute happiness, something that would be hers forever, something that would be isolated from the eddies and currents of the world. Home personified. Chorei's screaming was quickly silenced - what was the point in dealing with someone so profoundly pointless compared to Matrimonial? Matrimonial was her past, her present, her future. All things operated around her. Loving whispers spilled from her lips… and Matrimonial began to relax the construct, to dissolve it slightly. Taylor's skin was beginning to crisp up, she needed to be preserved if she was going to fight properly. A wounded face curled into a cruel smile… Taylor loved Matrimonial more than anything. Her own smile broadened wider, wider, wider…

Maitrmonial's eye bulged when she saw the amount of teeth in Taylor's smile.

The wolfishness in her eyes.

She loved Matrimonial more than anything.

She hated her more than words could describe.

Chorei took control of her hand before she lunged and started biting her throat open. The gun surged up. A trigger was pulled.

The construct collapsed with a gasp of hot air.

Matrimonial went with it. Her other eye vanished… and this time the bloody furrow extended backwards. A livid red worm trail that went into her brain. Taylor almost expected her to howl, declare some kind of revenge, or… something. No. Life just turned off. She collapsed, her limbs went limp, her entire body slackened. And the love faded. The hate too. The wolf curled up in the back of her mind, licking its chops, contented at the meal it had been fed. Taylor sagged to her knees, a strange sob escaping her throat. That was it, then. Chorei had done it. But Taylor had… she'd seized control at that last moment. Pulled the trigger herself. Needed to. Had to. Just to be sure, just to make sure that it was her. The wolf demanded it, and… she did, too. She'd done it. Matrimonial, the one person she had loved more than life itself, was dead. Taylor was, without a shadow of a doubt, a murderer. First degree. Premeditated. Coldly planned and confidently executed. She'd pointed a gun at someone's face and ended their life, not because they threatened the world, not because they were an existential threat to all reality, not because they'd pursue her forever or were about to murder her friends, but… just because she was in her way. Had wronged her. Damaged her.

Chorei had been self-defence and a desperate shielding of her friends from an immortal, inhuman monster that had left humanity behind. Vandeerleuwe was an accident. Frida had died before her body shut down. Long before. Bisha had been a necessity to save the world. Caltrop, Tsiao, they'd both been inhuman at their core, replaced their very souls with writhing termites. Maggot Brain had completely abandoned humanity. Animos had been a death she engineered but hadn't executed herself.

Matrimonial, she'd considered beforehand, planned out, instigated, and concluded with her raising her gun and blowing her brains across the floor.

Taylor?

She didn't respond. Her brain still remembered fragments of that love. Wondered if she'd ever feel anything like it again.

Matrimonial's body was moving. Her gun raised… no. Dead. But the charred body in her sternum was shifting. It was melded with her, but the hands were retreating, shuffling downwards, wrapping around itself, letting out low, desperate sobs. Dry as dust. Taylor stared… the body kept pawing at its partner, trying to wake her back up. Ironically, the removal her hands from Matrimonial's face actually freed her a little. Her throat was unbound by ashen arms, and a tiny sigh escaped. Her mouth, cruel and vicious, curled into a distressingly innocent smile. No eyes, but the remains of tear ducts pricked. Her brain was mostly gone. The last lights fading. No power left. The ashen body pawed one last time, whimpering… and ceased. Fell silent. Crumbled, just a little. Matrimonial's smile widened again, the tears ran freely from her eyeless sockets. She spoke the first and last word that Taylor would ever hear pass her lips.

"...libre…"

The smile fixed in place. The tears ceased. Both bodies were cold, wrapped around one another, one frozen in a state of weeping, the other smiling at final, final freedom from its partner. Taylor thought, briefly, that she could see it. The path leading her here. Just speculation, but… she didn't look happy until the end. Just vicious satisfaction, and nothing more. A perverse enjoyment in the suffering of others. Nothing else. Fused unwillingly with another cape. Sent off to the Teeth because… maybe the Slaughterhouse just didn't want her around anymore. Bored. Why had she obeyed? Why not just move on, start her own career? Did Jack Slash hold that much sway over her? Or was there a bargain? She tried to project humanity onto Matrimonial, her worst impulses trying to get her to make the girl seem normal, not some kind of inhuman monster that could be killed without any moral qualms. Maybe someone had promised to unfuse her. Maybe if she accomplished something, did her job well, just followed orders… she'd be let out of her prison. She'd seemed truly happy when the ashen body had died, when her throat was free, when everything came to an end. She sighed.

Never going to know for certain. It wasn't a story she was going to learn. The relationship between the two extended to forced emotions, hate, fear, love… nothing more.

Matrimonial had died, and Taylor didn't even know her real name.

Taylor, I won't say that you should feel fine about this. But… try and understand how many you saved today. Try to understand the progress made. Her death… let it weigh on you, it proves you're still human. But don't let it consume you.

Taylor's sigh sounded like a death rattle. Hard to focus. The Butcher strode in with cocksure confidence, and she surveyed the situation in moments. A crack, and a rush of flame… she was nearby. Close enough that the heat of the explosion ruffled Taylor's hair. She crouched down… and poked Matrimonial's body. Ash and blood pooled around the corpse. No response. Nothing at all. A long, low whistle of appreciation escaped Patience's lips, painted a luminous red in imitation of war paint. Her eyes burned with enthusiasm, a savage happiness at mindless violence. A little search… Taylor's gun. Unloaded. A souvenir, not a practical tool. Arrogance? Sentimentality? Why hadn't she used it? Patience flipped it over, handed it over to Taylor handle-first. Taylor accepted it blankly and silently. Patience glanced over… and hesitated when she saw how Taylor was simply staring at the body, getting her emotions back under control. Her smile dipped. Her enthusiasm waned.

"...uh…"

Taylor glanced over.

"Yeah?"

"You… holding up?"

The Butcher was asking her if she was holding up. OK. Sure. Fine.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

She struggled to her feet. Well… the Butcher pulled out a phone from Matrimonial's pocket, glancing at the lock screen. Hm. She looked curious.

"...shit. Hadal's gone, Rocinante's gone, Kabiri's gone rogue, and now… shit."

Holy… holy fuck. The inner circle was dying off like flies. And Rocinante? Shit, there went her backup. Maybe his allies could still help. So… Hadal, Rocinante, Nibelung, Matrimonial, Animos. Five dead. Who remained? Herself. The Butcher. Kabiri. Damn massacre. The endgame for this had approached. Taylor tried to get her breathing back under control. Think rationally. Stop looking at the corpse. There were other concerns for her, she couldn't waste time moping. Stop looking at the corpse. Matrimonial had been a challenge, but now there was one less piece on the board, she'd bonded with the Butcher to the degree that there was literally no-one else in the inner circle fo there to put any faith in, to the point that she had insight into the final plans of Angrboda. She had insight, dammit. She had knowledge, she had won something, closer to the hoard than anyone had ever been. But… but it still felt hollow. OK, come on. Plans. First priority.

"How do we get out? We're surrounded by police."

The Butcher shrugged.

"PRT won't go after me if they have any sanity, it'd take a lot to push them to actually attack. As for you… hm. Well, the risk is containment foam, really. If I get really trapped, I have to commit tactical suicide, which… well, I mean, unless you'd like-"

"We'll find another way out, then. Is there a… truce system, or something?"

She'd heard something about a hero/villain truce in the past, maybe…

"For Endbringers, yeah. I guess we did save a bunch… maybe… hm."

Taylor decided to take charge. Felt weird to do anything that wasn't collapsing and vomiting a little, before having a tiny nap and some beer, but… well, no, had to stay functional. She grabbed Patience by the hand and dragged her away. The swarm entered the room to join her, the rest spread outwards to check on the surrounding area. Police lines, more PRT troopers but still fewer than she'd initially anticipated. No more capes, just Miss Militia. What was up with this place, why was the PRT being so… absent? She could sense Miss Militia arguing quietly and ferociously with a burly man who seemed to be in charge… hm. Hm. A dispute, right, the radio had said something to that effect. She consciously ignored the Teeth. Most were wounded. A few were dead. Spree had… holy fuck. She'd piked him in the spine, paralysed him below the neck, and then used her murderous aura to force one of his own clones to strangle him to death - the clone was still dissolving into red paste. She never wanted to piss the Butcher off. Well, she already didn't want to, but… anyway.

Patience smiled strangely as she was led out by the hand, and Taylor kept her expression cold. Her old pistol was wonderful in her hands, familiar, sculpted to fit her… the weight was just right. Felt like she was whole again. The replacement was tucked into her breastplate, unloaded, safety on. She'd throw it away, but that felt wasteful. And reckless. The front doors approached… Taylor took a deep breath, pulled a scarf over her face, and kicked them open. Blaring lights met them, mounted on the top of dozens of police vehicles. Angry eyes from the cops, terrified eyes from the students waiting to be processed by the fleet of ambulances beyond. Miss Militia stared at the two… there was a brief scuffle, and she obtained a loudspeaker from the burly man in charge of the cops.

"Butcher, Neither-Nor, this is the PRT. Stand down or-"

She felt awful interrupting someone she actually respected, but… well. Had to assert authority.

"We're leaving! The Teeth here were overtaken by a Master called Matrimonial - she was working against the Butcher's orders. As a sign of good faith, we've killed Matrimonial and her accomplice, Spree. We've wounded or killed the remaining Teeth. And all hostages alive at the time of our arrival have been released, no ransoming necessary."

Well, neither of them had been able to ransom anyone, no time, but… well, no-one else needed to know that. The Butcher waved cheerfully over at Miss Militia, who narrowed her eyes.

"That's not how this works."

"Truce?"

"Not how it works."

The Butcher hummed lightly, rocked back and forth on her heels… then plunged her hand down the front of Taylor's breastplate, dragged out her gun, and placed it against her head. Taylor froze.

"Authority is betraying me, structure is dissolving, my emotions, my emotions! I'm going to do it, I can't live in a world where authority doesn't respect the basic rules of fairness! Oh, I'm just so… so sad, I'm going to blow my brains out! Neither-Nor, what about you?"

Taylor caught on, and raised her own gun to her head. Unloaded, both of them. Her voice remained painfully flat.

"I'm emotional and distraught. I'm definitely going to kill myself with this gun."

The Butcher's eyes widened.

"But… but if you go, and I go, then who becomes the Butcher?"

Miss Militia abruptly looked much more nervous.

"...oh hey, wow, we could get bug control and any gun we could ever want. That's… OK, I started this out as a bluff, I'm genuinely interested in this plan now."

Taylor felt as nervous as Miss Militia looked all of a sudden. Slowly, the Butcher started to inch forwards, now leading Taylor by the hand, both of them pointing their guns at their own heads. The students were being rapidly questioned by panicked-looking police, who relayed their testimonies to Miss Militia in hoarse whispers. Insects listened in… they were confirming that Matrimonial had been killed, that Neither-Nor had fought her and saved everyone in the gymnasium, hadn't taken hostages, nothing untoward. Miss Militia hesitated, and the gun at her belt rapidly transformed between multiple different states - pistol, sawn-off shotgun, uzi, some kind of trench knife… she was nervous. This, this was how the Butcher kept on going, pulled off the accumulation of that massive hoard. This was literally a no-win scenario. If the Butcher truly didn't care about her own life, then Miss Militia was effectively being held hostage. Slowly, the two approached the police line. Guns were trained. No-one dared fire. Miss Militia calmly stepped into their path, staring them down. Her fingers were twitching over imaginary triggers, and at her waist her gun formed the shape of those triggers. Taylor gulped slightly, the motion bypassing her swarm. The three met, surrounded by flashing lights and tense police officers.

She had a commanding voice. Tough. But human. Very, very human.

"Alright. Fine. Get out before I change my mind."

Like she had a choice. Her head tilted towards Taylor.

"Neither-Nor. Colleague reported a bug cape contacting him at one point some time ago. Was that you?"

She nodded silently.

"Shame that you ended up like this. But the PRT can be forgiving, under the right circumstances."

"I'm fine where I am."

"I doubt that. And as for you…"

She turned to the Butcher, who smiled happily.

"Good luck has to run out sometime."

"Hasn't happened yet, Em-Em. You know, one of the boys up here remembers you from the last time we were out here. He's talking about how grown up you look. How… mature. Little thicker around the waist, but you can't have everything."

"Ask him how it feels to ask someone else to relay all his messages for him. Ask him how it feels to have no control over his own body or his own fate. Ask him how it feels to be stuck with the same voices for years."

She was goading the Butcher, how fucking insane was she, why was… Patience tilted her head to one side, stared solidly, and her smile faded. Her eyes twitched erratically for a moment… then she reached over, grabbed Taylor's helmet, and tossed it to Miss Militia.

"Sign it."

"Wha-"

"Sign it. For my good friend Neither-Nor. Sign it by name."

"No."

Patience sniffed loudly. Emotionally.

"Oh, this rejection, how it-"

Miss Militia signed the helmet faster than Taylor thought possible. 'To Neither-Nor. Expected better. Miss Militia'. Oh. Oh, that… actually hurt. Just a little. The Butcher calmly replaced it atop Taylor's head, patting it into place. Miss Militia glared at the two of them… and stepped aside. The police line parted. No-one wanted to get close to either of them. Patience strode forward with sublime confidence, Taylor trailed while trying to remain utterly emotionless. They were watched every step of the way. Police on every side, medics staring from behind them, students… one of them rushed forward. Taylor flinched - someone dependent on Matrimonial's emotional impulses, maybe? Or… the cops tried to intercept, but they hadn't expected anyone to do this, no-one went towards the insane capes who'd negotiated their way out. Taylor flinched… and the student, a girl, crashed into her, wrapping her up in a cripplingly tight hug. Taylor looked down with a single wide eye. Her face was barely visible with the scarf and eyepatch, which was a damn blessing in this particular situation. Small. Smaller than Taylor. Same age.

"Thank you, thank you…"

Taylor had never felt more awkward. The girl looked up.

Oh for fuck's sake…

Madison Clements, teary-eyed and cringing, was wrapped around her. Thanking her profusely. The Butcher began to cackle, finding it funny for an entirely different reason. Chorei studied the girl through Taylor's eyes… and slowly started laughing herself. Oh, great, now she had cackling in stereo.

"It's… fine. Just let go."

"Thank you for saving us, I mean, it was… it was… oh, thank you…"

Since when had she transferred to Immaculata? Was she even Catholic? Taylor couldn't believe that she was getting hung up on that. Gah.

"Get off me."

"Of course, sorry, thank you, I-"

Taylor detached her slowly. Painfully. As much as she hated to admit it, being thanked by a civilian was… anyway. Moving on. She had no idea how to end this, so she just turned on her heel and walked away, the Butcher staggering behind her while laughing uproariously. Chorei just wouldn't stop - muttering something about 'oh good heavens, now we just need to save that muscular one and we'll have the full set thanking us profusely at some stage, oh, goodness gracious…'. Yeah. Laugh it up. Christ almighty. The two turned a corner, and the Butcher just wouldn't stop. Taylor glanced down… there was something in her breastplate. A tiny slip of paper with a number attached that…

Oh, fuck right off.

Chorei's laughter increased in volume.

The Butcher had run out of air and was just wheezing. The slip of paper had undone her.

She'd just killed someone, she was feeling very emotionally fragile, she was a murderer and… oh, they could both fuck off. She scowled as she walked away, planning out her next steps. Alright. One more person down. Now she just needed to talk with the Butcher about that Angrboda business, and…

Hold on.

Hold on a fucking second.

Matrimonial attacking a school made no sense. Hate and love had blinded her a little, plus the whole 'just got out of a rusting boat in the middle of a storm' thing. But why would she attack? What was the point? Did she just want to take hostages for no reason, or… no. At the mall, she'd been a distraction. Working with someone else with their own target. Distracting the authorities with a big, high-profile, high-casualty attack while someone else did something more… subtle. So… what was the second target this time? Assuming the same pattern, what was going to happen now? Her swarm infiltrated an apartment with an active TV… news channel was on, nothing but the attack on Immaculata. Nowhere else. Shit. If her accomplice had attacked another site, maybe it was just a small place, easy to miss under the shadow of a greater catastrophe. She turned to the Butcher, who was starting to recover. They were a good distance away from the police now, no-one was following them - one cop had tried, a few insects had warded him away. Just needed to find a safehouse or something, maybe duck into a quiet alley for a while. Anyway.

"This was a distraction."

"Hm?"

"Somewhere else was getting attacked. Happened last time. Barnabas College was attacked at the same time as the Kurgan Mall, maybe this was a similar pattern - a high-profile pointless attack to cover up a smaller, more important one?"

The Butcher blinked.

"...huh. Good point."

"Do you know who-"

"Nope. No clue."

Taylor reached for her phone… no, no phone, dead and gone during the transition from the mall to the boat. Fuck. She considered the situation.

"OK, what did you want to do now?"

The Butcher swayed from side to side, listening to something else entirely. Her voice was oddly dreamlike.

"...well, I… I suppose we need to thwart them. They're planning something. They want me to… I don't know what, exactly, but I don't know if any of us will survive it. I know that it will involve… a lot of people dying. As in, millions. More, maybe. Too many for my conscience, even. I mean, there's fun, and there's just… fucked-up."

Sometimes I like her, sometimes I despise her, but constantly I fear her.

Yep. More or less.

"But… anything more specific?"

"...not really. They're not… not saying anything. They're loud but they're not saying any words, just roars… can't you shut them up? Please?"

…very well. Go on. For the greater good. And… before I go? Taylor, I'm… proud. Not because you killed Matrimonial. But because you killed her and you felt guilty. You saved a school of children. You negotiated your way out without hurting anyone else. Your doom-bound conflict drive might be… troublesome, but I must say, your ability to survive despite your own impulses is remarkable. I'm glad to have you as a partner.

When had it become 'partner'? When had it stopped being 'host'?

"You too, Chorei."

Hm.

Taylor didn't hesitate. Reached out. Grafted. Chorei lunged… and flinched back. The wolves were snapping angrily, prowling around the edges of Patience's mind. Learning. Chorei braced… and Taylor screwed her eye shut as pain blazed through it. The two living people in this scenario groaned, while the voices in their heads howled. Chorei said nothing, just drifted back off to sleep. Taylor grabbed for a piece of stray newspaper in the street, mopping her bleeding nose, eye, ears, mouth… Patience gibbered for a moment, twitching erratically, eyes rolling back in her head… Taylor quickly reached up and stopped her from swallowing her own tongue. This couldn't become routine, they'd both just get fucking brain aneurysms. OK, fuck. Chorei was silent. Asleep again, utterly exhausted. That had been worse than the first time, her stomach was burning, and she felt like collapsing… God, she was tired. Patience needed to lean on Taylor, but a wide smile spread across her face, one that reflected an innocent happiness at having some peace. Unsustainable. Utterly unsustainable. Harder than last time. Might get harder as time went on. Soon enough… shit, it might just be impossible. A clot flowed from her nose, and she coughed up a ball of bloody phlegm. Ow.

"So… so Patience?"

"Y…yeah?"

"We're going to go see some of my friends, alright? They'll know more."

"S-sounds g-good to me… oh shit-"

She slumped, and Taylor groaned as the weight on her shoulders increased.

Well.

Time to introduce her to the family.

 

[Ivan the Not-so-Terrible]

Boy are Ahab and Sanagi in for a surprise when they get back.

Click to shrink...

Several surprises!

"No, the flayed corpse and the Butcher being here are - okay they're not unrelated, but she's not directly responsible for the body."

 

[Derenarian]

Every scene with Taylor and the Butcher (and their unhinged dynamic-duo-that's-not-really-duo antics) has left me giggling like a schoolgirl—and I don't giggle; I'm a straight-faced, tax-paying, grown-ass adult, goddammit!

I can't wait to see what happens when they get back. Taylor earned a few more mental scars killing Matrimonial, but I'm glad she got some type of payback.

 

[Doodle-Doo]

Who was the protectorate cape they ran into that Miss Militia mentioned? I can't really remember they having come across anyone besides Armsmaster/Defiant/Asset-113 and i doubt he'd tell anyone at this point.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

224 - Iron und Infidelity

Armour had been discarded… mostly. To be more specific, the Butcher had removed most of her armour, dumped half of it in a safe house. Taylor had taken off everything (ruined suit included) and replaced it with a baggy tracksuit that mostly fit her - better than her salt-stained clothes which had been slowly getting ruined during her time in that fucking boat. She dressed slowly, feeling numb. The wolf in her mind was sleeping. Chorei was curled up with it, recovering from temporarily treating the Butcher. She still felt… wrong, though. She'd been focused on Matrimonial for a while now, a good few days, and everything had seemed to revolve around her. Around finding her, extracting revenge, never getting hurt by her ever again… but now that it had all been achieved, she found herself just stumbling onwards on autopilot. Sometimes she felt a shiver of sorrowful affection run through her, and nausea rose up in her stomach, but at least that was something. If anything, what unnerved her was how little guilt she felt. She felt hollow, a little torn up, but that was just the product of a neurochemical dependency induced by a parahuman ability, nothing natural. Guilt? Guilt was absent. The wolf had swallowed it whole and left nothing in return. Nothing but a vacant gap into which she could pile stronger emotions, more… profoundly real ones. Revolution against the dead was impossible when no-one remembered them, held them in high esteem, even recalled their names. Matrimonial had been burned up, and the wolf had no more time for her.

She sighed as she zipped up her grey hoodie. Huh. Hoodie. Ill-fitting pants. She felt like she was back in high school, just… well, even she wouldn't wear this to Winslow. Her hair had gone a little nuts again - ocean, blow-dry from a rapid tractor ride, shower, and then intense heat? She looked like a 17th century French aristocrat on the way to the guillotine, all she was saying. Chorei might have a point - there was so damn much of the stuff. Couldn't remember the last time she'd had it properly cut in a way that wasn't just an errant snip at a loose-hanging lock. Her armour couldn't stay here - she needed a costume. Neither-Nor was a proper cape now, and that meant playing into the whole ridiculous game of it all. Had to have a mask. Just in case the Butcher decided to pull more shenanigans. Her face ached in remembrance of the paper plate mask… no, better to be ready for that on her own terms. Improvisation hurt. But that left the question - how to transport it?

Her eyes fell on a discarded plastic bag from the last time this house had been used.

Jim's Coleslaw Shack.

Huh. It was weird how often this place kept turning up. For somewhere that presumably just served coleslaw, it was weirdly widespread. She shrugged, and dumped her ancient, priceless conquistador armour into it, feeling the cheap plastic strain under the weight. The Butcher emerged from her own room, claymore hidden in a very, very long duffel bag, bow presumably disassembled and packed alongside it, and chunks of armour hidden in… more bags from Jim's. Made sense, the Teeth were deeply strange, no wonder they patronised that place. Naturally, she wasn't wearing a tracksuit, instead, a… oh, for fuck's sake. Instinctually, her eyebrows drew together and the corners of her mouth turned downwards. Just slightly. How many dresses did this woman have? And how did she suit all of them? For crying out loud, this one was a a fucking ballgown, black and red, ruffled at the edges, presumably made from fine silk - did she just have backup dresses at all locations? Did Butchers accumulate them and then did some poor beleaguered tailor have to alter them whenever someone inherited? Were there suits in there as well for the male Butchers, or… no, she wasn't going to think about this, there were better things to think about.

"What up, En-En."

Taylor blinked.

"Please don't call me that."

"How else am I meant to refer to you?"

"Taylor. Just use Taylor."

"T-Bone?"

"No."

"Tay-Tay?"

A small twitch.

"Definitely not."

"Taybo?"

"I… no. Just Taylor. Or… wait, you used to be called Quarrel, right?"

"Once."

"And now you're the Butcher."

"Well-observed."

"Could I call you BBQ, then?"

"...shit, that's a good point. No idea what the other B stands for, but… alright. Fine. Taylor. Let's roll. I just took, like, two packs of paracetamol, my kidneys are struggling to regenerate. Where to? I mean, I'll let you take the lead on this on. On account of the walls starting to melt a little, and the fact that my ears keep bleeding in an abnormal fashion."

Taylor blinked slowly, turned on her heel, and left. The Butcher trailed behind, her enormous bags clattering, her improbably high heels clicking sharp retorts. Probably her power, honestly, she assumedly had amazing balance. And no foot pain. Feh. Taylor clomped down the stairs, Patience descended gracefully. Taylor tugged the door open. Patience held it open with a single, slender finger and glided out with all the grace of someone who wasn't Taylor. OK, no, she wasn't going to start idolising the fucking Butcher as some kind of role model. So what if she quoted Melville and Browning, so what if she dressed well, had an effortless grace to her, or… no. Cutting this thought off right the fuck now. The two slid through the streets as quietly as possible. The PRT weren't pursuing, and her swarm found no drones, no cautious agents watching through eye holes cut in newspaper, nothing obvious. The day was overcast, too - unlikely that a mundane drone could be watching from beyond her range. Tinkertech, though… she shivered. Paranoia was creeping back in. Always been here, honestly, just… no raging hatred to distract her. The world felt a little emptier as she walked quietly through the streets, doing everything she could to avoid attracting attention. Tea shop was near here.

Something whizzed overhead, and she glanced to see… a vague shape vanishing. Unsure if it was Vicky or not - the city had plenty of flyers, could be any of them. PRT was deploying en masse to keep fires down, maybe try and put the final kibosh on the Teeth's activities in the city. Honestly, she felt like the Teeth had been… a little bit of a damp squib. Attacked, caused some damage, tore themselves apart in a civil war, and then… nothing. Patience saw her expression.

"...you look disappointed."

"Just thinking. The Teeth haven't done much."

"Not yet. I have plans."

"Like?"
Patience smiled widely.

"Well. The Empire Eighty-Eight has several capes known to be affiliated with fighting pits - my people do very well there. I could maybe drive a wedge in, recruit Stormtiger, possibly even Hookwolf if I'm very convincing. We've burned through a few chapters, which isn't good, but there are more. There are always more. My people will be spreading out into the city, survivors will be infiltrating other gangs from the bottom up. The hoard endures, that'll attract a few more idiots who can burn up in my name. Honestly, my dream is to get a few heroes to turn."

Taylor's heart was thumping a little faster. Blase about recruiting one of the most dangerous capes in the city, and one of the most violent. Birdcage-level offender. She briefly imagined a Butcher Hookwolf, and… no. No. Definitely not.

"But… well. Not so sure. Conflagration did a number on this city, reduced a lot of options. I have some ideas, though. Some independents that might be willing to turn if they were pushed hard enough. Heard some rumours."

A chill ran down her spine. Parian. That trash tinker. Quietly, very quietly, she interjected.

"Why not just leave?"

"Hm?"

"You could leave. Once we deal with this business with Angrboda, you could just… go. Might be better for you if you stay away from this place, hasn't been very good for you. Mentally, I mean."

Patience blinked owlishly.

"...aw, are you worrying about me?"

Not remotely.

"That's just sweet. But… hm. Interesting suggestion. Might actually follow it, who knows. Court's gone, everyone's gone… chapters could easily be redirected. This could be a flying visit - I just need to make a big move before I go, something substantial. Once I'm done with that, my chapters can plant themselves and I can move on. If I ever circle back here, there should be a bevy of cells for me to harvest. Good for me to move pretty quickly, you see - the PRT are clever, they're always trying to get more containment methods. If they manage something like… a sufficiently rapid Grey Boy loop, I'll be fucked. You never know what their pet tinkers will come up with. Hm. Yeah. Might. And you'll be with me, of course?"

Taylor felt her heart rate increase, and Patience's eyes flicked down to it, narrowing slightly.

"You'll be accompanying me out of this city, Neither-Nor?"

"...not sure, I mean, I-"

"We've been through a lot, Taylor. A lot. We had burgers and wine, we went on a gal's cruise together, we killed Matrimonial, and now… now you're healing my mind. Chorei is, to be specific, but you're sort of a package deal. And if I was going to let someone inherit, I'd like it to be you."

She drew closer, poking Taylor in the chest.

"You're coming with me. The two of us, on the open road, doing whatever we like until something ices me… hm. Oh, you seemed to have a reaction to that Miss Militia individual. How about that, then? I get her to kill me, big splash, big mark, then you can move on with… your idol, maybe? You'd inherit eventually, of course, but until then… oh, yeah, we've got a plan."

Her smile broadened, and her eyes glittered. The worst part was, there was no malice there. This was her being entirely benevolent.

"So you're coming. With. Me. Understood?"

Taylor was pale. Her eye socket ached, remembering the last time she'd been trapped with a terrifyingly charismatic and mindlessly violent individual. Shit. The Butcher wanted her along, and that meant… no, no, this was fine. If this Angrboda business was dealt with, she'd have a window where the Butcher was completely dependent on her. Obviously the treatments would get weaker over time, she'd need to teach some of the doctrines of the Grafting Buddha, but… until then, she'd be the single remaining member of the inner court. A single cape travelling with the Butcher, providing an indispensable service. Just needed to ward her off from that Miss Militia idea, maybe feed her information to make sure nothing too catastrophic happened. Either way. She could get out of this, just needed to stay close, wait for her moment, then escape with all the money she could pile into a windowless van before driving into the sunset and never returning, burying that conquistador armour, abandoning the identity of Neither-Nor, and living for the rest of her days in a nice little foreign country where they didn't ask too many questions and she'd never be found by the Butcher again.

Well. She was used to paranoia anyway. God, she wished Chorei was awake, she really wanted to hear her voice. Weird how that had happened - but the silence had become downright unpleasant now. Odd, considering how things had started out.

She nodded quietly.

The Butcher grinned.

"Splendid."

Back to her usual self, then. Her expression became much more serious all of a sudden.

"So. Let's get to business."

The two strode off… in the direction of Turk's tea shop. Taylor felt paralytically nervous. She knew this was dangerous, but… just needed to find out some information. Get in contact with her friends and allies, find out what the other target had been, what had Matrimonial been distracting from. The inner court was gone, the chapters present in the city were drained by infighting and betrayals, she needed backup and intel. And the Butcher wasn't going to leave her alone, not now. Not when Taylor had something to offer her. She only hoped that things wouldn't get too messy. And sad as it was… Patience was genuinely her strongest ally at the moment. Like, in a league of her own. Way too many powers, way too much experience, and literally immortal. Not even Sanagi really compared in terms of sheer pant-shitting terror. The tea shop approached, lights twinkling. Taylor began to slow down. Her insects were finding things on the pavement. Bloodstains. Some of them still wet - very fresh. Very fresh indeed. Taylor increased her pace, plastic bag of armour jangling discordantly, echoing from the buildings on either side. More bloodstains, and… she'd learned how to detect gun residue. Someone had been shot nearby, and their clothes bore the stink of a protracted gun battle. Fuck, fuck… she rushed onwards, breaking into a desperate sprint. Not Turk. Not her friends. Not them. Please. She couldn't handle…

She sensed Turk, and against her better impulses a genuine smile broke out across her face. He was sitting in the main body of the shop, smoking cigarette after cigarette while staring dead ahead. No alcohol. He wanted to simultaneously relax and stay focused, then. Patience easily loped after Taylor with an expression of dreamy peace - the wolves in her mind were quiet, she was in the closest thing the Butcher could probably get to paradise. But still… she had a dreadful image of the gaps between treatments getting shorter as the Butcher minds adapted, as they learned how to recover and resist more effectively. Chorei burning out. Taylor burning out. Maybe just exploding her brain from the stress, or inheriting out of sheer necessity - Patience unwilling to go back to the way things were. She'd hooked Patience on something, and now she had an obligation to provide. And if she couldn't… then she became the product. She became the final dose.

She kicked the door open, sending the bell above into frenzies of jingling.

Turk looked up.

The two stared at one another.

Taylor was frozen, trying to figure out what to say, how to explain that she'd brought the Butcher home with her, and… Turk rushed around the counter, bearing down on her like a one-eyed mountain, and wrapped her up in the tightest hug she'd ever experienced. Warmer than any other. He was taller than her, and the force of the hug actually picked her off the ground. She barely minded - gladly hugged him back. Not huggers, either of them. This was the first time they'd done this. Taylor felt a knot of tension unwind in her stomach… and it regrew as she realised just how unusual this was. Something was wrong. Her swarm spread through the shop, and she felt… oh, fuck. More bloodstains. And a body in the bathtub. A body without most of its skin - only its - her - face remained. Oh, fuck, she recognised it - Uheer. One of the three mercenaries. Her voice was low and tense.

"What's going on?"

He set her down, coughing uncomfortably. Patience strode in and set her bags down with a deafening clunk. Turk surveyed her, narrowed his eye, took a deep breath, nodded, and started to make tea. OK, great. Back to normal. He spoke as he worked, consciously avoiding looking at Patience. Wow, that was… emotional of him. Very emotional. Freaking her out a little.

"Bad. How much do you know?"

"Not much. Just got back. Took care of Matrimonial, at least. I know that most of the inner court is dead now - just Kabiri left."

Turk grimaced.

"He's gone traitor."

Patience raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, please go on, Mr Slavic Cyclops. Please, don't mind me."

She draped herself elegantly over one of his chairs, propping one high-heeled foot onto the table and the other extending in front of her across the floor. All of a sudden she took up three times more space than was necessary. Turk barely glanced at her. She knew this expression - he was nervous, but was hiding it under a veil of professionalism. Patience could probably tell. Probably explained the wolfish smile splitting her face open. Taylor nodded, confirming that, yes, he ought to go on.

"Kabiri attacked Barnabas College when you went to check out the Kurgan Mall. I suppose you missed it, with your…"

He shrugged. Taylor groaned.

"We were on a boat for a while."

"It was great, we quoted Moby-Dick, pretty wild. Say, never caught your name."

"Irrelevant."

He paused.

"...one moment, did she…?"

"Rescued me from the Kurgan Mall. Helped me out. Helped kill Matrimonial."

Turk looked at Patience with a very strange expression.

"Thank you."

Patience smiled broadly.

"Think nothing of it. Pleasure was all mine."

Turk nodded curtly, uncomfortable with having to thank the Butcher, and turned back to Taylor.

"Anyway. Kabiri attacked Barnabas, killed a good number of people. The… skull one and the leper were hunting him down. Alive. Encountered him. Wounded him recently - within the last few hours."
Taylor gritted her teeth.

"Few hours? So… hold on. If Kabiri attacked Barnabas at the same time as the mall attack, then… Matrimonial was working with him. And if Matrimonial was working with him, then the attack on Immaculata was probably of a similar nature - distraction. What for?"

Turk shrugged.

"Could be the attack that our mutual friends participated in."

"...but that was hours beforehand, why would he do that? The PRT were barely present at Immaculata, they were busy with him. Feels like it backfired, or they got their wires crossed or… something."

"...or he was too wounded. The skull one said she injured him, maybe the attack on Immaculata was pre-planned but was rendered pointless by the fact that he couldn't follow through on his end."

Taylor grimaced. Just didn't feel right. She flicked her eye upwards. Turk's grimace matched her own in intensity.

"...the blonde has gone mad."

Taylor went pale.

"How mad?"

"Very. Skinned a body. Stole its powers. Flew off to a hospital."

Patience was watching them talk with eager interest, but she was remaining gratifyingly silent. Taylor calmly took the tea offered to her, sipped from it… and considered putting all her aggression into her swarm. Just let the frustration exist there and there alone. She could feel a few insects dying from sheer stress and overexertion as they flew around rapidly, biting at anything in sight. Not enough relief. Not remotely enough. Turk hesitated… and slid a pack of cigarettes over the table, oh, thank fuck. Taylor didn't want to smoke, not really, but… as she took a wheeze on one of those little white-and-brown cancers, she felt a kind of calm wash over her. Still wasn't enough. She puffed quickly, agitatedly. Her swarm had declined by a full ten per cent out of sheer self-destructive motion. A spider literally cannibalised itself. A pile of cockroaches began to devour one another. A wasp curled its abdomen up and impaled itself in the thorax with a long, venom-tipped stinger. And half an ant colony started to overheat to the point of total organ failure. Her breath came a little faster. She pinched the bridge of her nose, puffed at her cigarette, sipped at some tea…

And blinked.

Oh. Her foot appeared to be halfway through the wooden base of the counter.

Ah. Unfortunate.

What did I… oh. Oh.

Taylor groaned.

"I'm sorry. I'll pay for that."

Turk winced.

"It's fine. Let it out."

"Letting it out as we speak."

Patience perked up.

"Oh yeah, she's, like… a minute away from bursting her heart open, that thing is going nuts. Calm down, fuck's sake…"`

"Yes, Butcher, I'll calm down."

"Please, we're friends and colleagues. Butcher was my predecessor's name. Call me Patience."

Turk looked up, momentarily surprised, before a careful mask of professional detachment descended once more. Taylor tried, desperately, to mimic it. Alright. Vicky had gone nuts. Vicky had abandoned ship. Shit was going a little bit wrong. Had that flying figure…

"Which hospital?"

"St Lidwina."

Fuck, that was most of the way across town… what the fuck had happened in Naaktgeboren Ridge that had driven her this far over the edge? Skinning someone, and… taking their power? The fuck? How was… she appealed to Chorei. Maybe she had some insight into-

I have literally no idea - and I mean literally literally, not ironically or figuratively. Flaying is a symbolically potent act, multiple forces can dally with it - even our own, if we were so inclined.

Yeah, Taylor could see that. The Grafting Buddha could be about grafting on new skin as a biological act, the Striving could be about removing skin to induce total scarring, the… anyway. She was absolutely fucking exhausted. Couldn't people just stay still for a while, when she wasn't looking at them? She turned back to Turk, voice finally under full control.

"OK. Any other insight?"

His eye flicked to Patience. Nothing he wanted to say around her. Understandable. He knew who she was, he knew the stakes if Taylor was willing to drag her down.

"We need information on Angrboda."

"The blonde has more than most."

Great. And she was across the city, far out of their range unless they wanted to take a long, long jaunt. Probably arrive too late and see her flying away at top speed - pointless, and the city was chaotic enough, traffic was a fucking nightmare. No chance of effectively getting there without stirring up huge amounts of unwanted attention. Fuckity fuck-fuck… OK. Fine.

"What about outside of town?"

"...hm. Maybe. He's been silent for a while."

Taylor sighed in relief. OK, great. Still had one lead. And the roads out of town in that direction would be as empty as ever, there was literally nothing for people to flee to in that direction. Easy enough to get out there, much easier than getting to a packed hospital in the middle of the city. OK, they had a lead. Now she just had to worry about Ted and Patience meeting one another and doing… something, presumably intensely violent and unpleasant. Just… needed to finish a little tea first. Then she could move. After her first sip, though, she felt a strange dread start to pool in her stomach.

Hold on. Barnabas College. What was the point in assaulting that place? Seriously, why would someone… Kabiri had been interested in Angrboda. Very interested indeed, he'd been the one to suggest hunting down her little sanctum under the city. Had triggered Patience's whole attack of revolution against the voices in her head, the whole boat trip had more or less been his creation, if inadvertently. And he had attacked Barnabas, and had been concerned with keeping it suppressed under a higher-profile attack. He had a target, then. And she'd asked… she'd asked Arch to look into a comet which had landed in Brockton Bay centuries ago. Said that he'd need to go to the archives in Barnabas, go through a friend to get there. She twitched. It felt unlikely, but… but a lot of things were unlikely at the moment but had nonetheless happened. All of this was unlikely.

She drummed her fingers on the counter, impulses overcoming the ability of her swarm to suppress them. Patience examined them closely, tensing up in sympathy. Turk looked more shaken than she'd seen him in a long, long time. Even Bisha hadn't quite done this to him - he was always such a constant pillar of stability that it was downright uncanny to see him acting like… like this. Shaken. What had happened to Vicky? Taylor just couldn't square the skinned body in the bathtub upstairs with the cheerful blonde who'd taken her to the mall, encouraged her to speak in a ridiculous accent for a bet, grabbed her around her shoulders and told her to stop trying to burn out on every conflict she found. Reminded her, inadvertently, of her first commitment, all that time ago. To leave behind the pointless cycle of fighting and dying which consumed every other cape. Skinless body. Vicky wrapping her up in a hug. Turk's shaken expression. Vicky dragging her through a thrift store while picking out a coherent outfit. The shadow surrounding Naaktgeboren Ridge. And Vicky snorting with laughter as Taylor tried to explain the intricacies of the Unceasing Striving. The imprint of Turk's hug lingered around her like a warm blanket. She downed her tea, blazed through the rest of her cigarette… and straightened up, her gaze sharpening.

"Let's move."

* * *​

Vicky soared, relishing the feeling of air on her face again… she was being unsubtle, she knew that. Should be lying low. Knew that too. But… but the glove around her hand was tightening, and the scarf wound itself a little firmer. She couldn't tell where her thoughts ended and something else began. Impulses that didn't originate in her own skull. Or… maybe they did, maybe this was all her. Hard to say. But she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she had to go to this damn hospital. Uheer's power said it would be a cornerstone to any effort to immediately unravel the PRT. And if that was the case, then… she had to stop it. Or at least investigate it. She was lost, confused, and… kept thinking of Dean. Taylor. Crystal. Mouse Protector and Astrid. Gerrit. She couldn't help herself, there was something… something burning around her. A light behind her eyes, driving her onwards, and the longer she focused on it the more it receded from view, becoming a dim pinprick at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Had to keep moving. Had to. Iron Rain's power kept twitching before her, uncertain, hesitant in its relationship with its new host. A flick of her mind, and she could drop something. Swords, spears, axes, knives, a torrent of metal that would never be stopped, would just continue to drop down, down, down… phantom humidity lingered around her skin. A storm that wanted to break. Moisture in the air, metallic and sharp, which just needed to be released…

Iron Rain, from what Vicky knew, was a psychopathic monster with few, if any, remotely positive qualities. But she could see how this power had enabled her impulses. It was deliriously tempting to use.

And Uheer's…

Fuck, Uheer's power was just… no wonder Thinkers were so fucking infuriating. She thought about something, and suggestions just popped into her head. Kept confirming her course of action - the hospital. Nothing more specific. If she went to the hospital, she'd find something instrumental to the rapid destruction of the PRT in Brockton Bay. Maybe even on a larger scale, if she was particularly… unlucky? Lucky? Anyway. And Dean was there. Even if it was nothing, she had to make sure Dean was alright. She could feel traces of strange impulses in her mind… a desire to leave this all behind, to set off and embrace a lifestyle devoted to personal acquisition and nothing else. That was faint, weak - suppressed by the fact that Vicky inherently opposed that role with every fibre of her being. The other impulse was… more subtle. More insidious. Devotion to a purpose. That was all. Devote herself, throw herself onto the whirling wheel of history and grip tightly, channel its energy, direct its movement. The world was a great rolling tide, and someone had to manage it. Someone had to cast aside petty distractions in favour of something greater… and at the same time, it wanted her to be petty. Pettiness and grandeur. Iron Rain's lingering consciousness was a paradoxical thing. And utterly, utterly delusional.

She flew onwards, ignoring everything below. The hospital was a huge plate glass structure across the city, surrounded by high-rise buildings. Catered to the wealthy, like Dean's parents. He had everything he needed here. Constant monitoring, muscle stimulants, precisely calibrated nutrient feeds, they'd even put an electrode into his brain to make sure that he never suffered from locked-in syndrome, was never going to experience any complications without a pile of doctors immediately tumbling into his room like clowns out of a clown car, poking and prodding and procuring comically huge bottles of medicine. The logo for the hospital was a simplified image of a woman's head with wide, staring eyes, and hair fanning out behind her in jagged lightning bolts, or like the branches of a circuit board. Vicky knew the story. St Lidwina. Dutch saint. Injured herself while ice skating, and never recovered. Chunks of her body fell off, blood ran continuously from her nose and mouth, fasted constantly until she lived off nothing but contaminated river water, shed skin, bones, parts of her intestines, all smelling as sweet as syrup and attracting reverence from villagers, so much reverence that they had to be hidden away in jars and buried. Patron saint of chronic pain and ice skating. The last one felt unfair. No idea why they'd chosen it. Seemed weird. But…

Well. Anyway.

She flew, ducking lower and navigating swiftly through the network of streets, and…

A glow.

Someone was pursuing her.

She tilted her head up, and her eyes widened at the sight of two people up above, angling downwards sharply. One carrying the other. Fuck, they'd reorganised in her absence. Her mom couldn't fly, always needed someone to drag her around. Usually that was Vicky. Now it wasn't. Crystal looked downright apologetic as she started coming down… fuck, how had they found her so quickly. She quickly turned, and a strange thought ran through her. Slice them. Warn them in a physical, irrevocable way. They wouldn't be able to resist, both were too utterly fragile. They'd lose in a fight with her, as she was now. Three powers, each one profoundly potent in the right hands. Uheer was useless at present, but Iron Rain… her hands twitched at her sides, still pinned into their splints. Her side ached - the stitches were better, she was healing quickly (always did), but… if she fought like Glory Girl, she'd lose. Straight-up, lose. Needed to use her other powers.

Plan: Disassemble New Wave.

No, wait-

Familial vulnerabilities at every level. Listed: deep-seated psychological issues in Brandish and Lady Photon, easy to exploit if necessary. Laserdream leaving for college, presents vulnerability and gap in roster. Shielder is inexperienced, easy to isolate and neutralise. Manpower functional, but interpersonal issues with Brandish present opportunity. Flashbang simple - remove medication, and wait. Lack of secret identities allows for easy strikes in domestic environments. First stage: comment on affair between-

Vicky's eyes widened further. What… what was her power talking about? What the fuck was it talking about? Go on, elaborate.

Comment on affair between Brandish and Manpower roughly sixteen-seventeen years prior, evidence noted through personal observations, data extrapolated logically and using Thinker computation. Result: likelihood of an affair, perhaps lingering tension. Exploit. Comment on. Wedge will be driven. New Wave effective forces cut in half. Second stage, exploit adopted and imprisoned status of Panacea, reopen old wounds in light of new wedge, and-

They came closer, and Vicky was frozen in place, her power slowly declining into silence as she stopped prompting it. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck… the scarf around her neck coiled a little tighter, wrapping around her neck and shoulders… shit, she was wearing human skin, she was wearing human skin. OK, needed to move, definitely… shit, too late. Her mother dropped to the ground while Crystal hovered above. Pincer manoeuvre - and those light constructs were tough, she'd be able to neutralise her if… why was she thinking like this, she wasn't going to fight her family. Her mom glared up, light crackling around her hands, and… and Vicky kept asking her new power. Come on, elaborate. What kind of affair? What happened? Sixteen to seventeen years ago? Silent. The power didn't know, and it didn't consider it relevant. What mattered was the vulnerability - her business was to exploit it. It had other methods for a wedge. As the two members of New Wave drifted closer, she rephrased. Plan to disassemble New Wave exclusively by fixating on the affair between Uncle Neil and her mom… God, she felt sick.

Plan: Referencing the affair is enough to drive a wedge, once the wound is opened it will be possible to extract further information.

Plan to disassemble New Wave by fixating on the affair between Uncle Neil and her mom and elaborating on all details at this very moment.

Plan: excessive pressure will cause defensive moves, information silence, awareness of thinker power. Irrelevant to elaborate.

Come the fuck on… OK, yeah, meant for structures, she was already coming close to its limits by probing interpersonal stuff. It didn't care about the meaty details (urgh), it just cared about the task of destroying the structure. She was tempted to ask it for a plan to destroy the Dallon family. But as her power creaked into motion… she stopped. No. Come on. Focus. Her mom was talking.

"Victoria. There you are."

Her eyes flicked over the scarf and glove. Both looked like pale leather - impossible to tell what they were from here. No, not impossible. Just… not a conclusion she was likely to reach. Crystal looked marginally more suspicious… and definitely noticed the blotches where her side and fingers were bleeding again. Fuck - not as bad as last time, but still annoying. She could endure. Taken enough painkillers beforehand.

"Hey… mom."

Mom had an affair with Uncle Neil. Mom had an affair with Uncle Neil. Mom had an affair and it was sixteen to seventeen years ago. What the fuck, what the fuck…

"Don't you 'mom' me - you look awful, where have you been?"

Her eyes flicked up to Crystal, who shrunk back.

"And you said she had been fine, just wanted to avoid us. You never mentioned that she'd been through a threshing machine."

Vicky felt a spark of indignation. Was it hers? Hard to say.

"Mom, look, I really need to get moving, there's something import-"

"No more from you. Come on, we're going home. Now. You, your father, and me are going to sit down and talk this through like a family-"

Shöüld shë ïnclüdë ünclë dëärëst ïn thät cätëgöry? Höw öld ärë yöü ägäïn?

Shut the fuck up, Nazi gloves. Shut the fuck up.

"-and we'll work… work through this. Victoria, we've been worried sick about you for days, you just… vanish off the face of the earth, and now you're injured… we just want to find out what happened to you."

Her fists clenched.

"And who did this."

Vicky backed up, floating up higher. Crystal remained still, silent in the face of a family spat. Awkward as all hell. Uncertain of what to do. Fair enough. She could fly faster than Vicky, but suffered from bad motion sickness if she performed too many manoeuvres… do enough flips, twists, and she'd be able to get away. Just had to find an angle for initial escape, in the open sky she was fine, down here she was limited.

"Mom, I promise, I'll tell you… stuff, but I need to go, I promise, I'll-"

"Do you think I was born yesterday? Tell us what's going on, and I'll consider it. Otherwise-"

"Mom. Trust me. This is important."

"You look like you're about to pass out from blood loss."

She didn't, she was just pale because she'd skinned someone alive and was having her entire view of her family unravelled piece by piece. No wonder Uheer had become a mercenary, this power was awful for remaining part of a large organisation for long. Or a family. Anything which could be disassembled, Uheer knew how to do it. So she'd worked in a small team that contracted out to various organisations for brief periods. Detachment and variation kept her fresh. Did she ever find out how to precisely take apart her own friend group? The memories she'd seen suggested a silent, silent person. Made sense. Crystal was looking closer at the glove and scarf… fuck, not much time.

"Vicky, there's something wrong with you, it's obvious. So, why don't we talk like civilised people, and…"

She looked helpless for a moment. A spark of pity for her mom - trying to figure out something she couldn't remotely understand, trying to help out her one free daughter… but that thought suppressed the pity. Mostly. She'd locked up Amy. She'd had an affair, apparently, and… and Vicky wasn't going to dig into that, not for a second. Even if she really, really wanted to. No, bigger fish to fry. And now she was trying to stop her from finding out if something had happened to Dean, what was happening with Angrboda - who was alive, evidently - and what the Teeth were planning. Her eyes kept twitching between the two forces hemming her in… no, no, no, couldn't be pinned, had to move, had to get away, come on… the sight of two heroes closing in was making the skins go nuts, twitching and contracting, memories pulsing behind her eyes, powers itching to be used. Iron Rain's particularly. A crackle of light from her mom's hands…

Was she… was she conjuring up a pair of bolas? Was she giving up no diplomacy, preparing to take her in by force? Yeah, she was, she definitely was, she was fückïng tryïng tö täkë hër ïn, going to get her deviancy tested, lock her up like she did Amy, stop her from doing what needed to be done öf cöürsë shë wäs göïng tö dö thïs shë's ä träïtöröüs söw nätürälly shë's göïng tö bëträy yöü shë wäs älwäys göïng tö änd ärë yöü göïng tö jüst lët ït häppën?

No she fucking wasn't…

A part of her mind screamed that she was just flexing her power, she was nervous, of course she wanted to just exercise herself. She was her mother, she wasn't going to do something that utterly fucked up. Panic was growing as she saw her only free daughter resisting any kind of reason (in her eyes). Things had been getting tense in the family without her, and she wanted her back. Needed her back. Crystal's eyes widened.

"Oh my God, what the fuck…"

Oh no. She'd figured it out.

No time.

A strange relief spread from the glove outwards as she simply… relaxed. Metal lay behind the world, an endless plane of sharpness and descending steel, and all she did was open a tiny gap. Metal, ice cold from the alien place it originated from, plunged out of thin air, shearing downwards. Just two. Just two. They were both wearing capes, and… and she was just pinning them. A spear slammed into the ground, pinning her mom's cape. Another clipped Crystal slightly, blunted to avoid damage, sending her flight off course. Vicky whispered 'sorry' before soaring away with all the speed she could possibly muster. The two were paralysed. Not by the weapons - those were powerful, but not quite enough to keep them down for long. But the sight of Vicky using someone else's power, a power that her mom might even recognise… shame burned in her stomach. She'd taken a step off the deep end, but it was necessary - all of it. Her glove almost squirmed like a living thing, curling into her hand and nestling in the grooves of her fingerbones. Happy to be used. Happy to fight heroes again… no, she wasn't a villain, she wasn't. Just… just had to do what was right, and sometimes that meant a compromise like this.

Fuck, she felt sick. Almost as sick as when she actually flayed someone. Crystal had recovered, was rocketing after her. Vicky glanced to see her approaching with a confused, hurt expression on her face. Hurt more than anger ever would. Her mom just looked… lost. Alone in a dark alleyway, all her lightning gone, spear still pinning her cape in place. She didn't seem to quite believe any of this was happening. The hospital was near, and Vicky… flipped. She soared up, remembering some old diagrams of fighter pilot tactics she'd consulted when learning how to fight in the air. A loop - she felt nothing but air on her face and a stinging in her side, Crystal was already wavering. A flip, and she was soaring down again, zig-zagging from side to side. Her cousin yelled something over the wind.

"Vicky, just-"

No explanation would suffice. And the plan in her head was telling her that the window of opportunity could close soon. No time. No time. She flicked her hand, and an impossibly elegant greatsword slipped out of space and clipped Crystal again. It was blunt, but… moving at high speed, anything hurt. She yelped in pain and halted… Vicky had time. She had the moment she needed. Fuck, she felt… no. How could she explain the situation quickly? Neither of them were willing to believe her, neither would remotely believe the truth even if she had the time to state it - that Angrboda had formed some kind of relationship with forces she didn't understand, was still alive, was Iron Rain, had skinned herself (and now Vicky was wearing it, partially because it had helped her skin someone else (already dead, don't worry) so she could claim her memories and power in order to unravel the dark forest of mysteries surrounding everything at the moment, and now Dean might be involved on an unrelated note) and Vicky had made a pact with those same forces, including some ones that Angrboda hadn't really engaged with, and… no. No chance of getting that across. And just saying 'it's a villain, trust me' wouldn't work now that she'd vanished, turned up wounded, hid herself, and was wearing human skin. No, she had… this was all she could do. This was her only option. If there was any way out of this, she'd have taken it. But as it was…

She yelled:

"Sorry! I promise I'll explain!"

A pained groan met her. Oh, fuck, had she really injured Crystal? She slowed, peering… oh, thank Christ, she wasn't bleeding, just bruised, maybe a cracked rib… felt like shit. She'd apologise. She'd find a good explanation for everything. Just had to get this done first.

She soared to the hospital. Roof access. Rip the door off. Head down and check it. Come on, power, suggest something, come on, come on… she came closer, closer… the wind was no longer so pleasant on her face. Warmer. Much warmer. Stickier, too, hanging heavy with moisture until it felt like the sky was weeping pus. And her eyes, they just felt… itchy. Very, very dry. A core of dread began to form in her stomach as she moved, eyes set dead ahead, Crystal falling into silence behind her. Her mom, long since out of audible range. She rushed up the plate glass sides, seeing her own reflection along the way… she looked awful. Pale. Sunken eyes. Looked like a meth addict. Patches of blood on her side where the stitches had given way. Human skin glove and scarf. Even her hair looked lank and half-dead, unwashed and uncared for, stained at the ends with blood from the flaying. Her one visible hand was a mass of fingers bound into place with flimsy wooden splints, not a patch of healthy skin remaining - all of it just purple, black, bruised completely.

Soon. Soon she'd recover. Just had to deal with this. Then she could check into a therapist and… maybe get over it all. Maybe.

Not a single thought of objection occurred. Her mind was dedicated to her purpose.

What was she without it, after all?

 

[GraftingBuddha]

225 - Terrible Tea, Miserable Meetings and Calamitous Comets

Taylor stared sadly out of the window of Turk's battered old truck. She remembered being inside this thing when they went to take care of Chorei, back when she just thought the woman was a weird parahuman and nothing more. Before… everything. Her dad had still been around - she'd been worried about getting home late, making him nervous, arousing suspicion. Christ, she remembered Ahab yelling to him from her own car, referring to him exclusively as 'Taylor's Dad' for a while. Funny how clear it all was, and how other things were just… blurs. Turk was white-knuckling the steering wheel. Genuinely nervous. Taylor could understand why. She'd seen the body - amateurish hacking in some areas, but it had become smooth by the end, the detachment of skin from muscle had been flawless after a point. And in a box… Angrboda's skin. Or as he'd explained… Iron Rain. So, that had been a… a moment. Iron Rain was Angrboda. Angrboda was alive. And Vicky was wearing her skin. According to Turk, she had some semblance of her powers, some approximation of her memories… and she'd skinned Uheer as well. Christ almighty, things hadn't just derailed since she'd gone on that boat, they'd left the rails and left the very notion of gravity behind - they were in the fucking stratosphere right now. They were so far off the rails they were on a freeway. They were so far off the rails they'd spontaneously transformed into an aeroplane.

No chance of going after her. Too far across the city. Traffic was locked up. PRT were swarming above, police were going apeshit. Taylor and Patience were both known to the PRT and going to a crowded hospital in the middle of the city would be enough to get them buried in mounds of containment foam before getting lit on fire, and doused in foam again just to be sure. Well, she would. Butcher would be fine. Sanagi and Ahab were lying low in an abandoned building, said they'd try and make their way to the tea shop once things were a little quieter. Something about Sanagi being… hard to hide. That simple statement had made Taylor feel very nervous indeed. And evidently they'd been involved in that huge pile-up which had killed Rocinante, Colter, Uheer (slightly delayed) and Hadal… and had wounded Kabiri. PRT were on the lookout, weren't interested in taking prisoners, apparently. Well. Shit was going down. Shit was going down. And the PRT were about to undergo a major organisational restructure. No chance of getting to Vicky, and… she needed answers. Intelligence. And Arch… well, he had a degree. A masters, even. A doctorate, to boot. The man had certificates of cleverness, and he had been researching this stuff for a while. Plus, she was… nervous. It might just be a coincidence, it mostly likely was, but… she had to have a look. Had to make sure the protein farm wasn't the secondary target in this business with Matrimonial.

Patience was keeping up a running commentary in the back.

"...so, my eastern friend, how did you encounter my delightful colleague?"

"Tea."

"I respect your conciseness. And Taylor, really, so enlightened - most villainous capes are unwilling to work with the Normals (may God forgive me for saying such a thing). The Protectorate get ordered around by Normals, but villains tend to do the ordering in their organisations - and here you are! What a champ. Say, want to join the Teeth?"

"No."

"A fair point, a fair point. No offence, you're very boring."

"I'm aware."

"Neither-Nor, don't let this man influence you under any circumstances."

Taylor glanced away from the window for a moment, keeping her expression carefully neutral.

"Hm."

(Translation: 'Not going to happen, I like him')

Turk nodded.

"Hm."

('Thanks. Appreciated.')

Taylor leaned back in her seat and glanced over at… well, sadly, the first real friend she'd had since Emma. A Russian ex-mercenary several times her size and many times her age. Nah, not sad at all. She liked Turk. No smiles, of course. She just settled back, and let out a satisfied:

"Hm."

('Nice to see you again')

Turk glanced over, and she saw his eye crinkle just a tiny amount at the edges. His lips were unmoving, of course.

"Hm."

('Interesting company you keep.')

Taylor gave him a look out of the corner of her eye, and released an exasperated huff of air, audible to her, Turk, and no-one else - too subtle for any normal conversation. Not for the two of them.

('Shut up. It's for the hoard. You know that')

He raised a single eyebrow, and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel for a moment.

('No, no, she's… she's something, all right. You definitely know how to pick them. For what it's worth…')

He shrugged very slightly, and his hands ceased moving.

('...you two seem to get along. Glad you're alive, and a part of me thinks that's largely because of her. So, she has my thanks for that. Even if I won't say it')

She turned away, face flat.

('Shut up.')

Patience glanced between them, sitting cross-legged in her elegant ballgown in the back of the truck - like a kid in the back seat, confused at everything happening around her. But inestimably more deadly.

"What the fuck is wrong with you two?"

Taylor glanced back. Turk did the same. A long moment of silence. And, in unison, a tiny shrug, and a noncommittal:

"Hm."

Patience stuck her tongue out petulantly, before resuming her running commentary on the quality of the trees around here, the adventures she had planned for her and Taylor once they were out of here… her ideas verged between the harmless and the deeply disturbed. None were boring.

"...so, there's a restaurant just south of here that I think you'll adore, they do this thing where they douse meat in vodka and light it on fire, it's beautiful under the starlight… oh, oh, and if we go further south, I thought we could poke around the ruins of Miami, I've had a small vendetta with the Cubans there for a few incarnations, and I hear that their new leader (old one died to Leviathan) is some freaky up-and-comer with the coolest sword you've ever seen. Well, I want to see it - more specifically, I want it. Hey, maybe we can both be sword people, huh?"

She leant forward and ruffled Taylor's hair. A huge number of objectionable fidgets were projected into her swarm.

"And I won't have to worry about these fuckers, huh? Taylor, may I be blunt?"

Taylor was silent.

"I… I'm genuinely looking forward to this. Could be a lot of fun, two of us, poking around… hell, bring your friends, nice to have company which isn't screaming all the time."

Turk glanced sidelong at Taylor. She stared straight ahead, refusing to engage. Didn't want to go with the Butcher, didn't remotely. She had… admittedly, had a little fun on that boat, just when it came to riding the storm while shrieking Moby Dick, and maybe she wanted to learn some of how the Butcher managed to pull off wearing elegant dresses in the most impractical situations, and maybe Patience had grown on her a little bit, maybe Stockholm Syndrome, maybe a growing sympathy, maybe shared weirdness, but… no. Just had to stay until she had the hoard. Once that was acquired, she had choice, she had freedom that she very much lacked at present. And ultimately… she didn't want to commit to being a cape, she wanted to be Taylor first, occult investigator second, cape third. And the Butcher didn't factor into that. Even if she wasn't completely insane as a result of her power, she was still… disturbed. Had a severe lack of appreciation for human life, and seemed to be perfectly content to wade into the mire of the parahuman world with no eye for escape. She had a guarantee that she'd live forever in the Butcher's collective mind - and that meant no more responsibilities. In a world where people doubted what would happen after death, she had absolute certainty of where she'd end up. In the head of her killer, or the nearest available parahuman. Absolute certainty.

I can imagine where your thoughts are going. And let me say - she is not some kind of afterlife-craving zealot. In a blunt assessment, I'd call her a combination of suicidally inclined and utterly cowardly. Only when she had an absolute guarantee of immunity from the consequences of her actions could she throw herself in, indulge her every curiosity… including, perhaps, what it feels like to die. I remember what she said, when she was vulnerable - that she had grown immensely depressed in the days leading to her trigger, and perhaps her trigger only worsened it. And now she has a way out that doesn't involve committing to total non-existence, or any real uncertainty at all.

I'd call her pitiable if she didn't completely frighten me.

Turk quietly turned up the air conditioning, the whir of fans drowning Patience out a tiny bit. Didn't do much, but it was still something. Taylor could see that Patience was twitchy - the voices were getting louder again, and she was worried about the trials to come. The roads were clear, there was nothing stopping them from reaching the protein farm in very good time indeed. It made all of them nervous. Patience, if Taylor was going to guess, didn't know what faced them. She hadn't been specific on what she'd seen, what she'd gleaned from the wolves in her mind, but… it hadn't been good. Taylor interrupted her running commentary, her voice low and flat.

"...what did you see, exactly? Just so we're all on the same page."

Patience tilted her head to one side.

"What do you mean?"
"On the boat. The thing that made you want to come back here, try and stop whatever… they're trying to do."

Patience became uncharacteristically still and solemn, expression draining from her face, leaving behind a pale, blank wall and a pair of faintly glowing eyes.

"Ruin. What else is worth saying?"

"Anything, really. I mean, there's… any information is good. Helps us plan things out."

Patience shifted uneasily.

"...it was… hard to explain. Impossible, really. I just saw… saw a woman standing in a garden. I recognised her. Angrboda, but… before she was Angrboda. Iron Rain, I suppose - and learning that has been quite an experience, must say. I saw her reaching down to the ground, and plucking this… onion, I suppose. Not like any other onion I've seen. Too fleshy. Too many layers. And she started to peel. One by one, stripping them away. Blood flowed between her fingers. And each layer made me feel this sense of… of loss. Like something irrevocable was being done. Layer after layer, more than should be in that little thing. The ground piled up with them, like shining beetle shells, or like layers of skin. Finally, she reached it - the very bottom. The inner core. And she stared at it for a moment… then reached out to me, and asked…"

Patience hesitated.

"'Do you want a bite?'"

Taylor stared.

"Did you?"

"...yes. Not my choice. It was just a vision, I had no control. I took a bite, and I just felt… I felt like I was eating myself. I could feel my own teeth on the back of my neck. And something moved in my stomach, this feeling of… of wrongness. That this was a sign of things to come. And that, inevitably, I'd arrive in that garden again. I'd stand in front of her. It might take dozens of incarnations, but…"

She shivered.

"It has to happen. The system has to close. Angrboda has to be taken care of, or we'll just…"

She shrugged helplessly.

"I don't know. But it won't be good. And one of these days, there'll be a Butcher who can't help but obey."

Patience sounded strangely vulnerable at that moment - she was genuinely afraid. No arrogance, no bluster, no bloodthirst, she was just confronted by something she was utterly terrified of, and that she couldn't defeat on her own. Working against the forces in her own mind. A twitch of sympathy. Reminder of when she'd been wrestling with Chorei's memories, with inclinations to become something she simply wasn't. The wolf in the back of her mind stirred a little, and she felt it glaring out through her eyes. Did it feel the others? Did it like them, hate them, want to kill them? It did nothing - just lurked. Waiting. A beast in the back of a vast, dark cave. The protein farm approached… and the truck screeched to a halt.

Something was wrong.

Her insects fanned out.

Empty. Completely empty. And the interior was a wreck - like a bomb had gone off.

Oh, no.

Oh fuck.

She sprinted out of the truck, barely hearing the crack of Patience teleporting after her. No-one was here, she felt safe moving into the place, but… fuck. Just… fuck. She'd been right. She'd been right. The front door was open, the windows were broken, and the inside… a destroyed table, chunks taken out of the walls, a demolished sofa, and shrapnel… so much shrapnel. Her breath came hard and fast. Come on, come on… she saw a little blood, but the explosion had erased a fair amount, fuck. The place was unrecognisable, save for tiny details. A few books tucked into well-protected corners, cheap paperbacks and battered academic tomes rescued from second-hand stores. Rows and rows of mugs. An industrial container of tea, cracked open like an egg to release a flood of dark brown liquid over the floor. Soaking the carpets she remembered getting out when she first came here, laying them down over the cold, cold paving stones. A flicker of sadness. Couldn't go back. No bodies that she could see, but her insects were scanning the ground in all directions, looking for indents… she moved in, and her insects flickered around the room, and felt one portion of deformed space - one of them flew a little too close and she barely sensed it being slowly, slowly torn apart, turning into a whirling galaxy of dark guts. A shiver - just like in Mound Moor, but… no, she sensed no hint of the Flame here. Arch and Ted had been collaborating, then, which was… a little terrifying.

Patience appeared beside her, and whistled.

"...huh. I guess Kabiri did want to come here. Shit."

Shit indeed.

"Don't go in the middle. Space distortion."

Patience blinked.

"Wait, is one of these people a cape?"

"Bomb tinker."

"Bomb tin… wait, I wasn't born yesterday, that's the Cornell Bomber, right?"

"The same."

"The one who bombed this whole city?"

"Under duress, yes."

"...might need to chat her up a little, might be a good recruit."

"Later."

Taylor began to pace through the room. She vaguely heard Turk entering, didn't look up. Come on, clues, clues… the three of them started to search for anything, any hint. Taylor looked at the scene, the absolute chaos, and she felt… she felt a hint of something. Could almost imagine what it had been like - she'd been here often enough, heard those two, seen those two, and the scene practically wrote itself. Nothing supernatural or parahuman about it, she simply knew them, and was dedicating her focus to this with all her might.

* * *​

Arch was having what Ted called a 'moment where the inherent degeneracy of his British birth overcame his better senses and turned him into something between an orangutan, an MK-ULTRA survivor, and the biggest fucking prick she'd ever met and was glad she'd never be able to see on account of lacking eyes'. Or, when she didn't feel like saying the whole thing, 'a Special Moment'. He was having a Very Special Moment. Things were clicking. Not all of it, not everything, but… things. Individual things, like individual pieces of bubblewrap, pop pop pop pop pop, one after the other, each one releasing a burst of satisfaction and catharsis. His research had been… accelerated as of late, and he found that more and more evidence was mounting up. History was not as certain as he was taught - under the layers of dirt and paper analysed by archaeologists and historians respectively, there was a secret history, a second string of events lying under all the others.

Each page he consulted made him more and more certain of this, that human history was defined not only by conventional physical relationships - between religion and man, between power and man, between money and man, between the basic necessities of existence and man's ability or lack thereof to procure them… but by a relationship to unnameable powers which were collectively infinite and individually immense. A whole other pantheon which defined the nature of the world, influencing it in ways so counter to human reason that they couldn't help but be ignored. Evolutionary logic dictated it - when knowledge of them spread too wide, too far, things went wrong. Merovingian knights with centipedes instead of spines, barbarian kings with odd dreams, or according to Turk, Soviet snipers in Stalingrad calling on wolfish spectres. So society had to be averse to them. Society had to stay away if it wanted to preserve any kind of sanity or sense of smallness which defined the human psyche.

He mumbled to himself as he scribbled: 'mankind was born in a cave, and if we cannot see the walls of the world beyond, cannot see the walls of our own existence, then we find ourselves alone, afraid, and inevitably, mad.' Might make a good start to his book, he thought. Because of course this would become a book one day, he was an academic, and this was world-shattering. Antiquity wouldn't take this, World Archaeology wouldn't, and he sure as shit wasn't going to give this over to some weird Finnish publisher that was willing to entertain him. No, he was going for Brill, he was writing something brilliant and it deserved Brill Academic Publishers. Oh, he was hilarious. He was a stitch.

"Oh, you faggoting bitch, are you coming up with pretentious fucking lines again? I swear to shit, I thought you archaeologists were better than that."
Normally, Arch would hum in mild noncommittal acknowledgement. But his blood was hot, and he was in a mood. He was having a Very Special Moment.

"Kindly fuck off, Ted, I'm busy unravelling the secrets of the universe."

"Yeah, yeah, do what you like, I'm busy just unravelling the universe. More straightforward. No secrets involved."

She was busy tinkering with a bomb, which… counted as unravelling the universe, he supposed. Made sense, in a brutal way. They were both working at the same table - a big ugly thing in the kitchen that was heaving with books and piles of scrap. A massive container of tea was being shared between the two of them, and an industrial pile of biscuits. Not sure when they'd started working together like this. Probably when they started running out of pens and pencils - he needed them to write, and she needed them to chew and poke things. Screwdrivers were expensive, pencils came in packs of one hundred if he was willing to be cheap (he was), and Ted always needed a dedicated poker for the more volatile elements in her arsenal. She still looked a little odd - her hands and feet were clearly mismatched, giving her a slightly Frankenstein-esque appearance, and the ragged wounds that had replaced her eyes were livid and red on her increasingly sun-starved face. Visible even despite the huge black sunglasses she wore at all times. She was running her hands over something which looked like it'd been made from discarded cereal boxes and car radios. And bubblegum. One of the treasures that Ted's one and only tinker 'friend' had sent her way, that kid who'd been working with Parian.

His thoughts slipped away quickly. Ted was absorbed in her work, and he was absorbed in his. Best to leave the two dimensions far apart. Plus, the walls were quivering again.

* * *​

She snapped back to reality, piecing over the evidence. The cracked container, the two chairs (now shattered) which had stood at the side of the same table… the tangled mass of books and bomb components. It was idle curiosity, but she'd… yeah, she could picture what they'd be saying to one another. A feeling of sadness… it was weird, but listening to them bicker had been fun. Just… nice to see them acting like humans, not becoming utterly obsessed. Ted, in particular… well, Arch seemed to anchor her a little. Kept her functional instead of spiralling off into mad delusions of grandeur. A crow croaked overhead… right. Focus. She bent down, and starting gathering papers together, when… oh. She saw something. Buried under a pile of garbage. Patience glanced over sharply from where she'd been rifling through the cupboards (pointless, but she'd already stolen a few mugs to put in her armour bags). A foot. A human foot. Wrapped in a fine shoe she remembered seeing Kabiri wearing. He'd been here… and he'd been wounded. Badly. Very badly, though… hm. She poked closer, not flinching as her fingers made contact with dead meat. She could see…

Buckshot.

Slowly, she began to imagine the scene.

* * *​

Arch had stood up suddenly from his work. Someone was at the door. He had a talent for sensing this - born of years of very loud music over very thick headphones. After a point you either developed a sixth sense for when someone was at the door, or you stopped listening to music at such a high volumes. Needless to say, his sixth sense had been quite refined. He stumped over to the door, legs stiff from too long sat down. Ted glanced up with interest, and her fingers drummed an excited rhythm. Probably thought it was that trash tinker kid, come to ply her with more odd things made from the scrap left over from her bomb projects. And collect a bag of said scrap to fuel her own endeavours. The two barely even talked while they worked, just tinkered away in a dreamlike state that, thankfully, seemed to relax Ted quite a bit, and reduced her ability to swear violently. Good. Corrupting the youth felt like a step too far for either of them. He moved to the door…

And something shattered a window in the back.

Oh, shit.

He rushed for his gun, stashed behind… a wave of darkness spread out, and his eyes widened as the ghostly tsunami came closer, closer… nothing. It parted around him, but only just. He stared into the shifting shapes which squirmed in the inky blackness, unwilling to move - Taylor had warned them about Kabiri. Black fog, paralytic qualities, bad. Just… something to stay away from at all costs. Silence descended. Ted was saying nothing. Slowly, he tried to move one hand… the fog didn't shift. His range of motion was very limited indeed - steps yielded no response, he was trapped. Utterly trapped. Shit. Quietly, he dug into his pockets and extracted a cigarette… shit. No lighter. These truly were dark times. He looked around carefully, and… a hand reached through the fog. Too many joints on those fingers. A lighter flicked open, and Arch cautiously accepted it, lighting up a cigarette and exhaling a cloud of white smoke into the fog, where it was consumed utterly. A moment passed… the lighter clicked shut, and the fog simply… vanished. Drawn up in a cavernous, not-quite-human maw, ringed with far too many teeth going back much too far. He stared as the man in front of him drew in the fog… cracked his jaw, cracked his fingers, and…

Now he looked rather normal.

Well-dressed.

Big old burn in his side.

Arch ignored him completely, glancing around at the startlingly bright protein farm. And… there. Ted. A blob of fog still lingering around her head. Her hands kept clenching at unclenching at her side, and random shivers wracked her spine. Arch's eyes turned very cold.

"If she's hurt, you'll understand that I won't be inclined to work with you."

The man let out a light laugh, followed by a light wheeze of pain.

"She's… quite alive, I assure you of that. Quite alive."

"In distress?"

"I assume so. I don't really know how it feels for others to be immersed in the fog - I'm told it's quite remarkable."

Arch took a long drag at his cigarette, before once more ignoring the man and circling around him to attend to Ted. Moving her did nothing - the fog was carried with her. After a moment of hesitation, he took her hand. She seemed to relax very, very slightly. Contact, reminding her of the world beyond the fog. And a good way of telling if Kabiri was going to kill her or not. Not bothering to look up, he spoke.

"So? What do you want?"

Kabiri sat down on their couch - their couch, the gall - and pulled out his own cigarette. Two clouds of white smoke rose up from them, and the room gradually started to smell strongly of burning tobacco. Hm. Smug sociopath in a good suit, cigarettes, piles of papers and books… just like university, really. Just with less debt. And more direct violence.

"I'm told you're an expert in a certain field."

Ted shivered, and Arch squeezed her hand a little.

"Yes. Archaeology. Would you like to know about changing attitudes to Byzantine statuary down the centuries?"

"Not at the moment. No. But, I have to say, my good man, I heard on the grapevine from a certain professor of the Mongolian persuasion that you were looking into something else. Something I don't imagine a Byzantine archaeologist would find very interesting, no, not at all. A comet, if you can believe it. You are Arch Levingston, of course."

"How did you find us?"

"Friends in high places, Mr Levingston, friends in high places. Now, let's talk turkey, as it were - let's have poultry-based parlance, if you like. You see, Mr Levingston, I'm a little short on time, so I'd appreciate you to be as concise as possible - I want you to tell me everything you know about that comet. And most particularly, where it landed."

Arch blinked slowly. Sardonically. He remained where he was, but a plan was beginning to bloom in his head. Rather a nasty one. Just needed time.

"Ask an astronomer."

"Ah, but they'd want to know out of academic curiosity. I get the feeling the interest runs a little deeper with you, Mr Levingston. They might want to know out of interest, but for you… there's a hint of necessity about you. I think, I truly believe, that you are as obsessed with this comet as anyone else hunting for it - and I assure you, I am by far the nicest pursuer. Tell me where it is. Precisely."

"I don't know. Why don't you tell me why you want to know?"

Kabiri sniffed, clearly trying to mask the pain from his side. Looked Sanagi-inflicted. Good. Hope it hurt. The walls were starting to warm up a little… oh, he was being reminded of that strange night in the Conflagration, when everything had come undone, and some part of himself had driven away on a long, long road trip, coming back with something… well, something rather bigger than he was ready for. His papers attested to that. The sheer number of them, at least.

"My business, Mr Levingston, is my own. Now, tell me - where is the comet?"

"I have literally no idea."

"I doubt that. Now, I advise, politely, that you talk before I make your colleague's experience a little more unpleasant. They used to call me 'Vision of Heaven', did you know that? Well, let's say that I can show the other side of that proverbial coin."

Arch tilted his head to one side, ignoring the symbols boiling through the walls.

"Who called you that? Vision of Heaven, I mean. Sounds pretentious."

"It is. Made sense, of course, within the strains of a certain underdeveloped belief system which never amounted to much beyond some primitive dalliances with quasi-religious solipsism. I blame the parahumans, honestly - and I place myself in that category. Something about the egos, I think. Really, me leaving was a benefit to their religious life. Now, Mr Levingston, I used to be associated with a little family business. You might know them."

He smiled coldly.

"The Fallen. Crowley branch. Pleasure."

Arch blinked. Huh. Wild.

"Durham University. Department of Archaeology. Pleasure."

Kabiri looked a little annoyed. Progress. Woo.

"You're aware of us?"

"Nope."

Lie.

"We're… come now, surely-"

"I'm pulling your pantyhose, yes, I'm aware. Endbringer worshippers. Pretty fucked up."

"To some. The Crowleys had a greater calling, than the others, of course. Some of us awakened to it, and we were guided in time by a… sage, one who hailed from this seaside town, in fact. Us Crowleys use Leviathan as a metaphor - a state of perfect immersion in the ocean, in oneself. Solipsism, the goal of the enlightened man. Nonsense. But there's a core of truth to it which they skirted past with, honestly, impressive grace. Really, missing the point so many times has to be an achievement… anyhow. Nevermind. None of that quite matters. I left them some time ago, why bother with the monkey when I can head for the organ grinder, eh? You see, Angrboda - you're familiar with her, of course."

"Can't say I am."

Kabiri scowled, for once looking genuinely offended.

"You're trying my patience, Mr Levingston."

"No, I'm trying to piss you off. World of difference."

Kabiri's grip on his cigarette tightened, almost crushing it.

"Mr Levingston, I want to be frank with you."

"I thought you were Kabiri."

Ted abruptly writhed, her breath coming faster and faster… Arch squeezed her hand tighter, promising silently that he was going to do something about it. Just needed a moment. Maybe a few moments. Minute, tops. Depended on a few things. She didn't quite… calm down. She was shivering like a leaf in the wind, and her heart was pounding out of her chest. Whatever was happening in that fog…

Kabiri spoke, his voice dripping with condescension.

"Now, if we can get away from that unpleasantness… Mr Levingston, I want to know exactly where that comet is."

Arch slowly stood up, letting Ted go. Felt awful, but… necessary. Just for a minute. He slowly advanced on the container of tea, pouring himself a small measure into a chipped, tannin-stained mug.

"You keep asking. And I keep saying - I have no idea."

"Mr Levingston, you reek of the sort of thing I'm interested in."

A single eyebrow climbed up his face with the languid ease of a sloth ascending a tree.

"Shut up. Your papers, your research… I found your files in the library computer in Barnabas. Checked out quite a bit since you arrived in this country, returned most of it. Interesting topics. With all due respect, you align with my interests. You, too, have seen the… well, the scope of things. The shape of the world behind the world."

Arch shrugged. Kabiri pressed on.

"But you fail to understand the true scope of matters."

Arch begged to differ. But he did so silently as he slowly advanced on his armchair, sitting across from the couch.

"Angrboda once guided the Fallen. Once. Moved onto the Teeth once she deemed us a lost cause… but some lessons stuck. Especially with me and my sister. Oh, we aided her when no-one else would, and my sister was invaluable towards the end. Why, my sister sacrificed herself so that Angrboda could go on to study alone! Now that's devotion, at least in my eyes. Devotion that, again in my eyes, the Butcher and her ilk have been lacking for some time. You see, Mr Levingston, Angrboda has a greater calling. My business is helping it happen. It's been too long, see - and I'm getting older. Harder to get up in the morning, harder to shuffle to life. I want to see the world she wants to bring."

Arch made no reply.

"You're standing in the way of perfection, Mr Levingston. And you stand in the way of someone who is old, wounded, and wants to see a world reborn. You barely understand what you're holding back. You barely understand that it cannot be held back, not for long, and not by you."

Arch, once more, begged to differ. In silence. Kabiri was growing increasingly agitated - his wound pained him. Excellent. Made him short-tempered, less willing to go for a long-term interrogation. Good. Good for Ted, at least. He slowly moved his hand down, feeling across the upholstery.

"Kabiri?"

"Ah, yes? Going to talk?"

"Sure. I'll talk. And briefly. First, of course I know where the comet is. It's obvious, I'm surprised you never figured it out - then again, no wonder. You didn't bother doing any research yourself, just wanted to steal it from someone who'd already done the legwork. Probably can't read very well, and I doubt you could do the proper calculations. Second - you really don't know me. And you don't know my colleague. She's called Ted, by the way."

Kabiri didn't even look, his face had an expression of calculated disinterest. On someone with a weaker ego, that might have worked. As it was, he was too busy observing how Kabiri's face seemed to be bristling with tiny larvae under the skin, each one whispering things that he really, really shouldn't be listening to. Well, business as usual. He started to warm to his theme.

"And Ted here has certain… predilections. For instance, she has a fondness for a certain type of tea which is quite hard to obtain. She likes bands which you can only enjoy through repeated listening, rather like Stockholm Syndrome. She despises people who talk with flowery language for extended periods. Those aren't her original hands and feet. She has literally learned to navigate the kitchen through memory and smell alone - doesn't even need to feel her way through it. Surprisingly excellent research partner. And, now this is the most important thing…"

He leant back.

"She's an absolute fucking freak."

Kabiri raised an eyebrow, his mask of disinterest slipping slightly to expose a tinge of genuine annoyance and concern. Not much time for him - wounded, probably hunted if the person who did that was still out there. Oh, not much time remaining… poor, poor thing. Might as well shorten it.

"The point?"

He leant further back. Further still. His cigarette continued to leak out huge clouds of stinking white smoke.

"Well, she's a freak. Big freak."

Almost falling out of his chair now.

"And?"

"I mean… she's the sort of freak to put bombs in seat cushions, just in case someone comes in to attack us."

Kabiri blinked. Arch gave his most winning smile.

"Isn't that wild?"

He pulled the trigger. The shotgun had been stashed inside his armchair, concealed through a tear in the upholstery. A wave of buckshot coursed outwards, grazing his leg painfully, but… but it hit. Kabiri roared as his leg was partially disintegrated, his foot falling free… and then the bomb went off. Neat little thing. Ted had told him about it when he sprawled messily atop the sofa at the end of a long day of unravelling the universe. Arch lunged backwards, but he still felt shrapnel slicing over him, scarring his flesh in a dozen places. Space distorted violently, tugging into the shape of one of the anomalies from Mound Moor. Oh, wow, she'd been listening to his stories, how nice of her. Kabiri was worse off, his roar devolved into a squeal of pain. His finger was torn away by the spatial distortion, and he abandoned his jacket to the crushing vortex before he was entirely tugged in. Nothing remained after a second - nothing that could escape, at least. Wounded. Weakened. Fucking lovely. A slightly mad laugh escaped his throat… and his voice became hoarser. Crueller.

"Fuck ye mum!"

Ted joined him. The fog had vanished from her head, evidently.

"You fucking cunt, I'll bite your cock off!"

She was reaching for her pocket-gun. Sometimes he really quite liked Ted. The two staggered up, bleeding from a dozen places, shaken with shock and shaking with adrenaline. Shaking and shaken. Ted was a damn hazard with a gun, given the blindness… and bloody tears were streaked down her face. His fury ebbed a little - worry replaced it. No, advance, who cared that he was an archaeologist who didn't mind guns but wasn't particularly good with them, and who cared if his backup was literally blind… Kabiri lunged around the couch, smoke spilling from his distended mouth - his hands were still in there, wrenching it open wider and wider, fingers elongating as he went. Distorted space hung between them, but Arch could see that one eye was gone, his face was a ruin of fresh cuts, and his foot… oh, that was just gone. He raised his shotgun again, trying to think of something good to say… when the fog rushed out again.

Shit.

A wave of buckshot, and no sound whatsoever. The fog continued to advance - Kabiri was using it to disguise his movements, and there was no time for Arch to reload properly, give it another go.Ted didn't see it. He murmured 'sorry', and grabbed her around the waist, tossing her over his shoulder, ignoring the offended howl that followed. Right-o. Well, there seemed to be one intelligent course of action here. He began to run, crashing through the front door and into the unyielding world beyond, Ted scrabbling for one of her backup belt bombs, just to show that fuck who was boss. He heartily approached… but the fog continued regardless, a relentless wave that he had no inclination to touch.

Goodness. Kabiri seemed pissed.

* * *​

Taylor couldn't help herself. She smiled with a hint of pride. Patience and Turk noticed, and Taylor began to explain. Her insects had felt tracks outside, two - very distinctive, too. One was normal in everything except for the depth - like the person was carrying someone over their shoulder, weighing them down significantly. The other had one foot, and limped along with the aid of a plundered umbrella in place of a cane. She walked outside as she spoke, tracking their movements… further, further… into the industrial ruin of the power plant. Her heart suddenly sank. Shit. One track came back. And it wasn't Arch's. Had they… Patience immediately started teleporting away, rushes of flame with each successful movement. Hunting for them. A quick surge of gratitude - the wind was howling, a storm was definitely about to break - the sun was quickly being overwhelmed by dark clouds. Not good weather to be exposed to without proper shelter or clothing. And if those two… anyway. Patience could follow the tracks, presumably - and she could sense heartbeats, maybe she could find them. Turk glanced at her, now that the two were finally alone.

"So?"

"So… so, I think they got away. Not sure what happened next. They wounded him, though. Surprised he's still alive after that bomb. Lost a foot to it. If he was caught in the spatial distortion…"

"But he wasn't. Hm. Why did he come back?"

"He was here for something. I… wait a second."

She rushed back inside, and started rustling through the surviving piles of paper that had endured the explosion or been safely out of its range. OK, most was… hm. Most was useless, but there were a few chunks that remained usable. Sketches. A map of the world. A map of the local area, and… Oh dear. She saw the tattered remnants of a printout - a diary that she'd asked him to obtain, which had quite possibly brought Kabiri up here. Diary of a man who'd witnessed the descent of a certain comet into Brockton Bay. Had to be important to this Angrboda stuff, had to be - otherwise Kabiri wouldn't have been pursuing it so fiercely, despite his wounds, arranging false attacks to give himself room to operate, killing huge numbers… it had to be important. Important enough that he'd possibly killed Arch and Ted over it. A pulse of guilt echoed hollowly in her stomach. So, this map of the local area - big book, layers and layers of maps of Brockton through the ages. Arch had marked out certain points with a red cross, along with calculations that looked too advanced for him - Ted had helped with this, slowly calculating where the comet had fallen, then piecing together something more specific, and…

Hm.

She'd been wrong. A whole sheaf of papers had been ripped out of the book, she could even see bloodstains where Kabiri's hand had made contact. Table of contents… sewer maps. Out of date by a decade or two, but…

It's in the sewers, then. This comet landed in Brockton Bay, it's connected to Angrboda, and now Kabiri is seemingly convinced that he must seek it in the sewers below the city. For… some reason. Involving onions.

Taylor grimaced. They knew where he was going, then… but not what he was doing. Patience reappeared in a crack of fire, heating a pool of tea into steam in a matter of seconds, enough to flood the room with a surprisingly delicious scent. She tilted her head to one side, blinking rapidly, her mouth twisting into an expression of uncharacteristic embarrassment.

"So… couldn't find them."

Taylor's blood ran cold.

"Bodies?"

"No, I meant I can't find them. Bodies, dead or alive. I could follow their tracks for a bit, they were pretty fresh, but… vanished once they got to a concrete section. Lots of ruined stuff out there, plenty of places to hide, and I don't know if they were going to stay there, maybe keep going into the forest beyond, and if they did then… well, there's a lot of room for them to go, is what I'm trying to say. They could have emerged from that industrial park in any direction, gone anywhere. Maybe they just kept running, I dunno. I'll see if I can…"

"Yeah. Please. Thanks."

"No problem. Happy to help my new partner. So… what happened?"

"Kabiri wants to find a comet. Probably connected to Angrboda."

The Butcher twitched suddenly, her hands bunching into fists, her entire body tensing. Her eyes burned with the fires of a mind that wasn't quite her own. Her teeth ground against one another, and her voice was half-strangled.

"What did you say?"

"A… comet?"

"A comet. Oh, they like hearing about comets, they're all excited now - fuck, they're… they're going at it. Louder, so fucking loud… they liked the comet. Oh, they fucking loved it…"

"Go and find those two. I'll see what else I can find."

The Butcher vanished before she even finished talking. More cracks as she began to chase down her quarry, whooping as she went. Taylor could sense her actually descending to all fours and moving like an animal, teleporting wildly, sometimes to the ground, sometimes to the air. Her dress was already mostly ruined, the skirt was a tattered mass of rags, and her high heels were utterly disintegrated. Taylor's attention returned to the shattered table. Good. Distracted. Keep her away from this stuff, didn't want those other minds getting any ideas. She briefly considered just abandoning her, investigating this on her lonesome. Might make it easier to… no. The Butcher had bound Neither-Nor up with her, and if the PRT thought she was vulnerable they'd attack. And that was discounting the whole 'betrayal leading to never ever getting the hoard' thing. Well, if she found those two… great. Just great. At least there were some bombs here, they could arm up. Just needed to poke around, and…

Hm.

What's this?

…a pile of documents. A diagram. Notes, scribbled down, a few scraps of what seemed like original prose next to huge lists of data, properly cited. And a diagram, ripped from another book, of… a snake, wrapping itself around an enormous egg. The caption read: OPHION. Her mind twitched. She remembered the Butcher, completely insane, screaming from the top of the ship - 'I AM OPHION'. The snake around the egg of the world. Next to it, a crude diagram of the earth with a line looping around and around and around, crossing through various sites… she peeled the pile of documents open, leant against the counter, and started to read. Blood stained the pages. Ash, too. And a good number were simply gone, destroyed in the explosion or the ensuing chaos. Trampled underfoot… literally, the severed foot had soaked the back pages completely. It smelled like copper, gunpowder, and something… else. Indefinable. The walls of the protein farm were eerily cold, but she thought… no. The book had dates in it - days and days of work, and then… ah. Today. The climax of his research, before Kabiri had found them. Freshest ink. Freshest work.

She started reading. There wasn't much to work with, a lot was runed, but… she tried her best. Her swarm spread out as she read, tunnelling insects starting to eat through the summer-dried earth, crushing it apart easily with tough mandibles. Needed to find a certain rifle, couldn't rightfully go into battle without it. She read, and dug, and read and dug…

And as the minutes passed, matters escalated. Twice.

Oh… oh dear.

Taylor gritted her teeth. Her insects dug, and dug, but all they found was dust, and an ancient box. Her eye flicked rapidly as her mind came to new conclusions. The First Rifle was gone. Someone had stolen it from here, knew where it was… Arch, maybe? No, no, seemed unlikely, he'd been running away, and… shit. Kabiri. Kabiri, in all likelihood, had the First Rifle. Shit. This had just gotten worse. She kept reading quickly, insects combing every inch of the landscape in her range. No rifle, no Arch, no Ted… nothing, just barren industrial decay, and her friends… no, her friend and Patience, had to be specific, she was a mark, a useful ally of convenience. No rifle. No missing bodies. Nothing. Just… shit. She kept reading, digging through notes on seemingly random sites, archaeological and otherwise… Teotihuacan, some digs in the Sonoran Desert, some stuff to do with the Huns, or the ancient Burgundians… come on, come on… Tunguska? Really? Tunguska? Like, the meteor… anyway. She kept reading, eye narrowing.

The second escalation occurred.

And by the time she was finished, her face was pale. The papers dropped from her hands.

They needed to move.

Right. Fucking. Now.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

Boy are Ahab and Sanagi in for a surprise when they get back.

Click to shrink...

It'll happen tomorrow, I'll promise you.

Several surprises!

"No, the flayed corpse and the Butcher being here are - okay they're not unrelated, but she's not directly responsible for the body."

Click to shrink...

If you think that's bad, imagine them finding out that this is the body of the lady they were just fighting.

So much confusion.

So much sadness.

Every scene with Taylor and the Butcher (and their unhinged dynamic-duo-that's-not-really-duo antics) has left me giggling like a schoolgirl—and I don't giggle; I'm a straight-faced, tax-paying, grown-ass adult, goddammit!

I can't wait to see what happens when they get back. Taylor earned a few more mental scars killing Matrimonial, but I'm glad she got some type of payback.

Click to shrink...

Ew, taxes.

Get outta here with your taxes. Taylor unpersoned herself from society to avoid paying taxes. She's part of a radical libertarian militia, after all.

Hope you like what happens, but alas, things are... well, coming to something of a finale. There'll be some more shenanigans tomorrow, though.

Who was the protectorate cape they ran into that Miss Militia mentioned? I can't really remember they having come across anyone besides Armsmaster/Defiant/Asset-113 and i doubt he'd tell anyone at this point.

Click to shrink...

Oh, that was Armsmaster. When he helped out Taylor and pals against Geryon a long, long time ago, Taylor communicated with him by arranging insects. The rest of the PRT/Protectorate in the area was just politely told that there was a bug using cape in the city, even if she never did anything again (in their eyes). And then the Butcher mentions bug control, observation confirms the movement of insects, and Neither-Nor nods when confronted on the topic... yeah, now they've just resolved a report of a new cape, and it's not a happy resolution.

 

[Derenarian]

Ew, taxes.

Get outta here with your taxes. Taylor unpersoned herself from society to avoid paying taxes. She's part of a radical libertarian militia, after all.

Click to shrink...

Nuh-uh, she's just a poseur. I'm… I'm so radical libertarian militia that when I pay taxes it becomes radical… libertarian…? Uh, no, wait a minute. Shit.

Hope you like what happens, but alas, things are... well, coming to something of a finale. There'll be some more shenanigans tomorrow, though.

Click to shrink...

Love everything that's transpired so far; it's going to be very, very exciting to read what comes next, no doubt about it (like for example Vicky? Holy fuck. She learned her mom and Uncle Neil had an affair and maybe her dad isn't her dad after all—which sömëönë had to rub in. On top of everything else?).

Well, see you all tomorrow.

 

[BeeBadidoo]

I would pay to see the adventures of the Butcher and Taylor. It sounds great. Honestly, I don't know what Taylor is doing, she's so avoidant to committing to anything.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

226 - In the Court of the Crimson King

Sanagi and Ahab had made it back to the tea shop. It'd been touch and go on a few occasions - ducking out of sight to avoid wandering civilians, hiding beside, behind and within dumpsters in order to evade patrolling cops. Sanagi, particularly, was… painfully surprised at the lack of PRT. She was glad for it, and glad that her colleagues were getting some work - ex-colleagues, had to remind herself. But they looked painfully out of place, none of them seemed to really know what they were doing. She could've yelled at them, if she didn't look like the kind of thing a disturbed child drew before a therapy session. Too bunched up - they were well-armoured, and the risk of civil unrest was low. Bunching up made it easier to be ambushed and surrounded, they weren't fighting rioters, they were protecting civilians. The more they bunched up, the less ground they covered, the more room for freaks like Sanagi and Ahab to scuttle around causing mischief. If they actually intended to cause mischief, they'd have been able to do it without oversight. Tiltrotors had vanished from the horizon as quickly as they arrived, giving up the chase - if they'd been seriously chasing the two of them at all.

Sanagi kept feeling an itch on her exposed bones, a feeling that she was dealing with something… something wrong. The air was thick, the sky was yellow and ready to unleash rain downwards… could be sand. Behemoth and Leviathan both caused that, sometimes, along with some of the nastier parahumans. Weather systems were delicate - you never knew when an explosion or a horrific attack would fling sand into the atmosphere, tainting the sky halfway across the globe a sickly yellow that made her think of pus, of honey infested with parasites, of coagulated matter at the bottom of a factory machine.

Something was coming. She knew it.

The tea shop was empty when they arrived - no note for them, but the spare key was still available. Turk's car was gone, and there was a… hole in the counter. Someone had kicked it. How rude. The two had immediately fled upstairs, out of sight and out of mind, locking the door behind them. Ahab had been silent for the last stretch, her brow pulled into a tight line of tension. Sanagi kept glancing at her. Had her full face on now, but it felt… a little ridiculous. Like wearing a party mask. The two trooped up the stairs, exhausted, wounded, and just… done for the day. Ahab turned over her shoulder, a smile finally breaking out on her face.

"So, you know what, I wonder if you can get another skin for yourself."

Sanagi blinked.

"I'm… fine. I think."

"Just as a backup."

"I really don't want to wear someone else's skin. Not at the moment. I'll just wear some… very heavy clothes, I think."

"Well, suit yourself. Hey, I think Turk stores some… oh fuck."

They emerged into a nightmare. Ahab looked genuinely alarmed, and Sanagi felt a dull pulse of fear run through her filaments. The room was… oh God. Newspaper all over the floor, universally bloodstained, rivulets running out to soak into the floorboards as well. A table in the middle, with the blood outline of a human body, scraps of skin and flesh, it looked like a carving board from some nightmarish kitchen. And… and there was a trail. Ahab pulled out her gun, and Sanagi warmed her stars. They crept forward… and Uheer stared back at them. Ahab swore loudly, raising her gun, finger tightening… nothing happened. Sanagi tapped her friend on the shoulder, nodding downwards. Oh… oh shit. She didn't have any skin below the neck. Nothing at all - a neat seam, and then a huge mass of glistening muscle, her lungs visible through a thin membrane and a gleaming ribcage, organs starting to turn unnatural colours as decay set in. The bathtub of ice was only stopping external rot, internally she was turning septic. Her face was pale, her eyes were closed… Ahab retreated quickly, and Sanagi trotted obediently behind.

Fuck, fuck, fuck…

"What in the fuck just… shit, how did she… why is she…"

Ahab looked frantic. Disturbingly, she had the same look as the mercenaries had before the fight - the same twitching nerves, the same quaking tension. Sent back to a time and a place where skinned bodies were common, and any extreme of retaliation was deemed acceptable. She moved too quickly, jerkily, expecting body armour to restrict her, reached for huge guns that simply weren't there, hands twitching for Secateurs that had been disassembled and packed away. Her mouth came in oddly controlled bursts - like she was using a gas mask, had to regulate her breathing properly. When Sanagi came close, she whirled, teeth clenched, eyes burning with focus. Sanagi flinched back - and Ahab's expression abruptly shifted, becoming apologetic.

"Sorry, sorry, just… seen shit like that before. Don't want to again."

"Seen what?"
Sanagi's eyes flicked over… oh. That was… without a doubt, one of the most casually glamorous women she'd ever seen. Her hair was immaculate, her dress was a little worn by the style was impeccable, and the confidence with which she wore it… her eyes flashed with authority, her lips were curled into a curious smile, her skin gleamed in the light… oh, hell. Sanagi felt inadequate. She felt very inadequate. The woman dropped one of her bags, and Sanagi had to resist the urge to run and pick it up, even when it made an ominous clank, as if she'd dropped a massive chunk of metal. Oh, and she had muscles. Sanagi gulped, the air pulsing down a half-complete throat and emerging into her defleshed sternum with a sqump, the sound of a deflating windpipe. Gross. Embarrassing. And in front of someone so… so…

"Holy cow. You two are fascinating."

"Patience, what…"

Hold on, Sanagi recognised that voice. Her eyes widened further. Taylor. Taylor was back. Sanagi didn't think. Nor did Ahab. The effortlessly glamorous woman blinked in shock as the two ran past her, dodging around her bags (yep, armour. That should probably alarm her, huh?) and approaching someone they'd been worried sick about for days now. Taylor's eye widened… and Ahab tackled her to the ground in a flurry of putrid limbs and embarrassing sobs. Taylor looked like she was struggling to stay still as Ahab rained down a flurry of kisses on her forehead, each one leaving bruise-shaped residue behind it.

"Oh, you awful cunt, I can't believe you ran off like that - I was worried about you, and there's a…"

She paused, reached out, and grabbed Sanagi who'd been standing awkwardly nearby waiting for a moment to intervene. The three were promptly dragged into a single crushing hug. Taylor stared horrified at Sanagi… yeah. The bones and filaments would do that. She looked like something that tormented doubtful knights in medieval allegories. And not the lustful kind of torments, either, not unless those knights were particularly into roasted flesh, exposed bones, and unlikely fur. Then… the look of horror faded, replaced with genuine concern. Sanagi tried to crack a smile, and Taylor reciprocated. Neither were very good at smiling, neither was hugely inclined towards them at present, but two terrible smilers smiling at one another was oddly better than one of them being authentic and the other not. Sanagi rasped out through her half-burned throat, the sound echoing in her hollow ribcage.

"Good to see you."

Taylor grimaced.

"Yeah, you too."

Ahab started to ramble about something or other, telling Taylor that she was an awful person, then thanking a number of powers that she was alright, then demanding explanations for precisely what happened, ideally with illustrations… Sanagi just relaxed into the hug. It was nice, honestly. And she'd been worried about Taylor. She was a good kid. Been through a lot. Deserved some rest, if she was being honest. Taylor looked… odd. Happy to see her friends again, but strangely… nervous. There was an expression in her eye which reminded Sanagi far too much of that time she'd seen her after getting her head cut open and an immortal nun stuffed inside. The combination of stress, dread, half-restrained panic, and cold focus which held the last three things together into a vaguely competent pile. And she kept glancing behind Ahab and Sanagi - the former of whom finally realised that something was off, and slowly fell silent, piecing matters together in her head.

"Wait… hold on, who's…"

Patience joined the hug, eyes glowing, teeth glinting, unnatural strength granting her the ability to give the most powerful bear hug any of them had experienced up to that point. In fact, she… oh shit. Sanagi felt herself getting picked up - all three of them were, Patience was a very tall person, and unreasonably strong. She felt a crystallised chunk that once was a kidney cracking open, showering the floor with glittering dust. Oh, Christ, that was embarrassing. Ahab twisted her head desperately, and locked eyes with the grinning woman in the bizarrely high-quality ballgown. Something was clicking. But Ahab clearly didn't like the shape the clicking formed.

"...hi?"

Patience made a noise like she'd encountered a particularly delightful puppy.

"Oh, you're hideous. Hell, Taylor, you never told me you'd started work on your own chapter! And the skeleton one is just… oh, you two are great."

Sanagi, if she had any blood left in her, would've gone paler. Ahab made up for it. They'd figured it out. Oh shit. Oh fuck. Oh no. The Butcher. Taylor had brought the Butcher here. Sanagi had admired the Butcher's dress sense and effortless elegance. The Butcher was hugging all of them, actively lifting them into the air. Her eyes burned with fires that Sanagi very much did not want to understand or witness, but she was honestly too alarmed to struggle. Maybe she could stay still, maybe the Butcher could only see movement, maybe something would distract her and she could slip away and hide in the sewers for the rest of her life (which… might be a very long time, if she no longer needed to eat, breathe, sleep, drink, or have functional organs and oh no, she was getting existential again). Turk stumped into the shop, looked at the three of them, and… Sanagi glared. The fucker was definitely repressing some kind of amusement right now. If she could still have heart attacks, she'd be having one, and this fucker would finding it funny. Taylor growled under her breath.

"Patience…"

Was that a warning to the Butcher, or advice to the rest of them? Maybe both. Probably both. Sanagi was about to black out from stress… when the Butcher dropped them to the ground with a thump. Sanagi, her legs already a little wobbly, completely collapsed with even this movement - clattering to the ground in a heap of bones and rotisserie flesh. God, how did the Butcher - the insane cape who, according to Taylor, randomly killed her own subordinates and cultivated a court made up, seemingly, entirely of traitors - manage to pull off that tattered ballgown while looking good? Ahab staggered drunkenly for a moment, her mouth opening and closing like a startled fish… before thought began to return, and words began to emerge from this particular leprous sea-dweller.

"...OK, Butcher, nice. What up. Was that body upstairs yours?"

The Butcher blinked.

"...what body?"

Taylor pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Sorry, there's a skinless body upstairs, it's… a long story."

"Huh. Well, this is a surprise - usually I'm intimately involved in the creation of skinless bodies. Not sure how I feel about having some competition. Slav, was that you?"

"No."

"Hm. Interesting. Very interesting. Also, hi, Patience Nguyen, lovely to meet Taylor's friends, I'm sure we'll get along… wait a moment."

She glanced around, noting Sanagi, Ahab, herself, and finally her eyes fell on Taylor.

"...are all your friends just weird Asians?"

Taylor blinked.

"What?"

"I mean, I'm from Sheboygan, but my dad's from Vietnam. Then… you, bone-lady, where are you from?"

Sanagi flinched at the sudden attention, finally getting the mental wherewithal to stand up. Her voice was unreasonably shaky - no, wait, this was entirely reasonable, if she slipped up here she could die or get possessed by a tangled mass of screaming voices that would drag her down into the depths of absolute madness. She was entirely warranted in her shakiness.

"My parents are Japanese."

"OK, Vietnamese, Japanese, the voice in your head is Japanese too, and you're…"

Ahab perked up.

"Kalash. North Pakistan. Descended from-"

"Yeah, yeah, anyway. That's… no offence, but out of your friends, only one of them isn't Asian. Hold on - Slav, which part of Russia are you from?"

"East."

"Specific - but that counts as Asia as well. Taylor, do you just attract mentally disturbed Asians?"

Taylor was starting to look irritated.

"Patience, come on, there's-"

Ahab raised her hand.

"No, wait, the woman has a point. Now, let's factor in Ted… but then we have to counterbalance that with Arch, and…"

Patience twitched, her smile sharpening, a tiny laugh escaping her.

"Oh, yeah, bomb tinker. Ted Kacynski. That's hilarious, actually. Where's she from?"

"Dad's from Singapore. I think she mentioned it once. When she was very drunk. Also, she had a very old library card on her that she dropped and didn't see, on account of having no eyes. First off, she used to have the thickest glasses you've ever seen. Second, gave me a name, I looked it up, Singaporean dad."

"And Arch?"

"British."

"Asian?"

"No, whiter than copier paper."

"That's… one, two… out of the six friends of yours that I know or am aware of, five are from Asia."

Taylor was starting to look a little pissed.

"It's a very large continent. Famously. Statistically, it's likely for most of my friends-"

"Not 83%. I mean… hold on, if we add me to the mix, that bumps it to, like, 87%."
Ahab clapped a hand around Patience's shoulders, her nerves buried under a layer of professional detachment that, unlike Turk, manifested as a certain irreverence.

"That is an excellent point, Patience Nguyen. An excellent point. Actually, quick question - you're definitely the Butcher, right? I just want to make sure that I'm not going mad and seeing connections where none exist."

"Oh, Butcher. Definitely. Hundred per cent."

Ahab whistled.

"Shit. That's… oh, by the way, we may have killed one of your lieutenants."

Patience looked at her strangely.

"Which one?"

"Hadal."

"...oh. That's… actually a little saddening. I didn't like him, but he was… diligent. Very diligent. Not traitorous enough, though - and so boring. It says something when someone is so competent that it outweighs their inherent dullness. And he was very dull indeed. May he rest in peace."
Ahab leant closer, grinning with chipped, yellow teeth.

"Yeah. He's sleeping with the fishes now."
Patience blinked slowly, and her neck creaked in Taylor's direction.

"Taylor, can we keep her?"

Sanagi wasn't feeling jealous. Not remotely. God, how did she do that with her hair, Sanagi had been waging a one-woman dirty war against her hair for almost thirty years at this point, and only after she quite literally became incapable of growing more (she assumed - she'd checked her face, and the hair follicles didn't seem to really be… regenerating. And to her distress, she found that her filaments could actually extend through them, just a little. Substitute hair. Wiry, black, and completely untameable) would she say that she'd won. And the Butcher just… slicked her hair back and looked fantastic. Taylor kept shooting her worried looks - probably the only thing stopping her from exploding.

"Patience, there's-"

"What did you say your name was?"

"Ahab. Nice to meet you."

"Pleasure to meet you, Ahab. So, what's your power?"

"Oh, you think… no. No power. Just ugly. The lady over there is pretty cool, though-"

"Oh my God. Taylor. Combination of powered and unpowered individuals. Hideout behind a respectable business. Skinned bodies. You've got a gang. Oh, wow, we've… we might actually have an entire court after this, holy shit. If we can get that bomb lady over with us… oh, we're going to have so much fun together, I can tell."

Ahab leant closer, her expression turning marginally more dangerous.

"Oh, darling, I'm not sure if you'd like to be tied up with our business."

"I seriously doubt th-"

"Patience, can I call you Patience? Patience, you seem nice enough - and thank you for taking care of Taylor here, very good of you - but trust me. I've seen shit that will turn you white."

Sanagi spoke up, unwilling to be a third wheel.

"I've seen aliens. Twice."

The Butcher blinked.

"...didn't expect that one. Did you get probed?"

"Stabbed."

"Unconventional probing, then."

Taylor exploded. She'd been simmering like a kettle for this entire conversation, and had finally blown her top - and it was messy. Very messy indeed.

"Will you please stop talking? In case you people forgot, Vicky's gone rogue, and there's… something awful is about to happen."

Patience's expression twitched violently, almost spasming. The light behind her eyes seemed to bloom just a little brighter, and Sanagi could taste ozone on the air.

"...right. That. You looked awful when we left that farm, did…"

Ahab's face fell.

"The farm? Oh, God, is-"

Taylor shushed them.

"Kabiri attacked the farm. Arch and Ted are gone. No bodies, but… and the First Rifle is gone. I think Kabiri stole it. But before he attacked, Arch found something out - something that Kabiri was willing to do anything to get hold of. I didn't want to explain it twice, so… OK. Just… sit down. Everyone. And we'll talk."

They made a motley crew in the middle of the shuttered tea shop, fragments of bruised yellow light filtering through the blinds and reflecting strangely from the endless stacks of caddies and gleaming teapots. Steam rose up to the ceiling, and Sanagi thought… thought she could hear the skinless body sinking deeper into the melting ice, and she imagined Uheer again. A small pulse of guilt. It ended quickly, but… flayed. Not a good fate. And if Sanagi had contributed to that… a bullet to the head would've been more merciful. And… and according to Turk, Vicky had done that. She'd looked a wreck in Naaktgeboren Ridge, yeah, but… not 'skinning a dead body' level. Turk had been specific - Uheer was already dead. Thank Christ for that. The idea of that fairly well-meaning and generally tolerable girl skinning some amoral mercenary just didn't fit - Glory Girl was known to the cops, she was popular, she was good at what she did. A little reckless, but she put effort into her work, learned the right protocols, didn't do what some capes did and lord their power over the police, acting as though their own existence made the police obsolete. Irrelevant to the greater scope of things. Glory Girl was, comparatively speaking, humble. And most importantly, sane. The Butcher listened very, very carefully indeed, sipping at her own cup of tea while cracks slowly formed where her fingers made contact, the pressure proving too much for even Turk's sturdiest ceramic.

Taylor sighed. The news about Vicky had clearly shaken her a little. She sipped… and glanced sharply. Sanagi followed her gaze, as did the others. She was looking out through the shuttered windows, and… nothing. Nothing at all. Just the same light. Taylor looked downright panicked, though - and if it was bypassing her usual restraint, that meant it was bad.

"...fuck."

Her voice was quiet. Turk glanced at her, expression grave.

"Hm?"

Taylor gulped.

"It's… there was a flash. Just now."

"I saw nothing. None of us did."

"I know, it's just…"

She shuddered.

"Frenzied Flame."

Everyone went very, very still.

Oh, fuck.

* * *​

Vicky didn't land on the roof of the hospital - she kept hovering, just diverted and soared towards the door leading downwards. She'd done this before. Dean was on the upper floors, he didn't get many visitors, and the hospital downstairs knew and trusted her. So, flying was generally how she got here, as opposed to dealing with the inevitable stares and whispers that would accompany going through a crowded lobby. They'd even put a tiny logbook up here for her, one of the nurses made sure to log her entering and leaving. Nice of them. Considerate. She rushed forward, grabbed the metal door…and felt something through her shield. Heat. More heat than should really be felt in a situation like this. She had a moment of startled paralysis before she ripped her hands away with a hiss. Shit. Instinctually, she gestured imperiously and a massive guillotine blade manifested overhead, splitting the world apart and plummeting downwards, shearing easily through the thin concrete roof over the door, the door itself, and even eating a good few inches into the roof proper before it stopped. She stared at it. Hadn't even thought. Just did it. The glove was pawing at her, the smooth-cut edges actually twitching as it tried to extend further upwards. A tiny whimper escaped her throat, a flash of fear that she should've felt a long time ago, probably when she encountered her family and hadn't immediately acted like a sane fucking human.

Plan: disassemble Empire Eighty-Eight. Integrating use of skin associated with Iron Rain. First step, intimidate Kaiser using image of his dead sister, second step, locate ex-members, pinpoint those with grievances sufficient to overcome personal inclinations, third step, incite conflict with groups: the Herren Clan and the Gesellschaft, exploit death of parahuman designated 'Night' with regards to latter-

Vicky stopped listening actively, just let the plan murmur away. A reminder. She could still be a hero. Uheer's power had been wasted on a mercenary, if she'd turned her talents to fighting groups like the Empire, the ABB, the Elite… she imagined the good that could be done for the city. Some heroes gave up their lives for the cause, and… well, she'd done the same, in a way. Had three sets of powers now. Even if she never expanded, never gathered more skins and more powers, this was more than most capes got. More than the overwhelming majority, really. And… and Lung had managed to destroy a bunch of gangs and forge a new one, practically by his lonesome. Weird as it was to think about, Lung proved to her that a single cape, sufficiently powerful and sufficiently motivated, could achieve change. And now the city had someone like that who wasn't a raging dragon-faced psychopath. Come on. Had things to do. After this she could… she could help the city. Help her family. Apologise to them… repeatedly. An idle idea - maybe she could use someone's skin to get past deviancy testing, or… no. Ignored that train of thought. Involved way too much flaying, she'd already done more than enough for one lifetime. The door remained hot, but now it was split apart, a ragged metal wound leading downwards into the darkness.

A wave of heat had succeeded the guillotine. Felt like standing in the middle of a desert, she could already feel the glove and scarf wrinkle and shrivel slightly, curling up like dying plants. Sweat broke out on her forehead in seconds, ran down her back and clung to her clothes. Fuck, her eyes were itchy… must look even worse, now. One thing to wear human skin, another to wear parched human skin while dripping with sweat. Come on. Move. She floated down the stairs… a fact for which she was glad. The heat was rising, and the metal stairs leading down looked… unpleasantly warm. It still felt like she was descending into an oven. Something was definitely going on, which… oddly reassured her. She wasn't totally insane. Uheer's power was right - this place might actually have some utility to… fuck. Dean. If this heat got worse, then… she sped up, rushing past hot metal walls and over hot metal floors, the heat rising constantly, up, up, up, and now sweat was running like a waterfall, she felt filthy after only a few seconds down here. Her eyes flicked around - lights were off. Why weren't the police here? Had she missed them? Why wasn't the PRT patrolling, then, this felt… this felt like it should set off a few alarms, right? She chewed her bottom lip, almost breaking the skin on a few occasions, and definitely turning it an unhealthy shade of purple in the process.

Her eyes landed on the log book the nurses had set out for her, just so there was some record of her arrivals and departures from the roof. It was open, turned to a random page, and the paper seemed to be sweating, tiny beads of moisture working their way down, down, down… dripping to the floor. Most of the book was just a solid mass of pulp and damp at this point, the ink from countless entries splitting away in pools that gradually became spiderwebs of dark lines. Symbols she couldn't begin to understand, but nonetheless felt like there should be meaning. She backed away from it, floating cautiously down the corridor, slowing down as the heat rose and her tension with it. The skins were twisting now, almost in pain - shrivelled to half their size, the glove no longer stretching up to her elbow, instead now bunched around her wrist. The scarf had become a ragged necktie that shivered constantly in the heat. Her mind felt… oddly clear. The heat wasn't dulling her like heat usually did, it made her thoughts that bit sharper, coming to conclusions a little faster. And, strangest of all, her own skin felt comfortable - like core irritation had been removed, a hollowness filled. Her eyes, though, were dry as hell. She kept moving…

No signs of any nurses. Just a…a handprint in one of the walls, picked out in dark sweat against the light paint. People had been here when the heat started, then, but… but where were they all? Vicky was starting to feel a rush of nerves. Reminders of Naaktgeboren. Charging in without a plan, without backup, hoping it would shape up just fine. She'd barely survived Gerrit's hunt. And now… no, she was stronger now, stronger than she'd ever hoped to be. Once upon a time she'd been a flying brick, a standard Alexandria package. Now she had a potent thinker power and the ability to literally drown people in huge numbers of falling blades. In doubt, she'd do just that - shred anything in sight, and run for the hills. Well, run for the outdoors where she had more manoeuvrability… quietly, she flicked her hand, and a sword fell out of the ceiling for her to catch. Perfectly weighted, perfectly sculpted for her grip, way too heavy for any normal person… more a raw heap of iron than a functional sword. But it was nice to have something to smack people with. People like Gerrit. If anyone like Gerrit was here…

She floated…

She paused.

She… shouldn't be this far down the corridor. She glanced around… no, this junction had been a good distance away, right at the end of the corridor, she'd been maybe half a minute away if she floated cautiously (which she was). Why was… why was she here already? She floated backwards carefully… her stomach twitched, and she was back at the original end. The air in front of her shimmered, the heat rising up and warping the air itself. Her sword poked forward… and her stomach twisted. Spatial distortion. She'd trained with Vista before, knew what they looked like. She almost felt a spike of hope - maybe the Wards were here, she wasn't enormously close with any of them, but… no. No, no point assuming mundanity when insanity had become the rule. Something was fucked. She avoided the anomaly, and began to use her enormous sword like a cane, sweeping it in front of her, trying to detect any more. Nothing came before her… she glanced into the rooms on either side. Nothing. The beds were empty. This was a place for long-term patients, the ones who weren't going to get better and weren't suited for living outside of the hospital. Not quite hospice, but definitely reserved for invalids, coma patients, the permanently incapacitated, those about to die who needed around-the-clock medical care - demanded it, even. None of them were here. She remembered this route - that door should have a comatose woman, that door should have a man who had constant fugue states and needed to be under constant observation, that one had a severe burn victim from the Conflagration who had been completely paralysed by the ordeal…

None of them were here anymore. Their beds were rumpled, sweat-stained. She could smell the reek from out here. The air warmed further… she was getting closer to the epicentre. A moment passed…

Her sword twisted out of her hands.

She froze.

The air had the same heat haze again. The sword was being dragged in slowly, vibrating as it did so… spinning, faster, faster, faster, the edges starting to tear… she could feel… oh fuck. She crashed through one of the many doors, ignoring the splinters that dug through her shattered shield. Just as the sword erupted. The anomaly tore it apart completely - it was like a black hole, she realised. Spinning constantly, and while the tip of the sword was likely being compressed into nonexistence, the rest had been trapped, the interior trying to move in, the exterior trying to rotate rapidly… and the strain had torn it apart. Shards flew through the air, and even pierced through the walls, cutting through and heating white hot in the process… Vicky whined through clenched teeth as one shard ripped over her back, cutting a long, thin gash which already began to bleed profusely - fuck. Shallow, not life threatening, but painful as fuck. The crashing stopped. It was done. She floated, hunched, over to the nearest cabinet, scavenged for anything… bandages, right. Hard to do on her own back, but she improvised - a diagonal sash cutting across, pulled tight. Probably going to need changing, the job was hilariously amateurish, but… OK, had bigger fish. She emerged carefully, conjuring up another sword with an instinctual flick (winced as she realised how easy this had become in a matter of hours). A shimmer… OK. Fine. Sure.

She turned around, floated back into the empty hospital room, and simply… floated through a wall at speed. Dust rained, plaster split, wires sparked, and she emerged on the other side. Beyond the anomaly, if she was gauging this correctly. As the dust cleared, she saw the state of the place - trashed, and not by her. Someone had just… undone this whole room before leaving through a door that barely hung on its hinges. And… oh. She glanced at the bed. Not quite blood, but there was residue caking it, and… her hand flew to her mouth. That smell. She knew it. Smelled it when they were disposing of the bodies of Ordeal… Bisha's cult. Sickly, sweet, itching at the inside of her nostrils, clinging to anything it touched and refusing to let go. She'd flown over the corpse barge by accident, and her clothes had been literally unsalvageable afterwards. She backed away quickly… fuck. Fuck. The pain in her back faded as panic overtook her. Bisha. Tied up with this. She barely understood who and what he was, but… no, it might not be him, might just be the thing he worshipped.

Dean.

Dean.

She crashed through the splintered door, and moved recklessly. Tiny knives fell from the ceiling like iron snowflakes, detecting any hint of spatial change. A patch that was shorer than it should be, longer, that crushed anything in its range into a fine paste, that tore it apart while slowing time to a crawl… tiny singularities everywhere, and she flew above, around, below them, any way which worked. Dean's room was near here, just had to… she turned a corner and froze.

She'd found the patients. And the staff.

Kneeling. All of them kneeling, hands outstretched before their bowed heads, tiny yellow marbles secured in their splayed palms. They were sweating bullets, and the heat was… fuck, it was awful, too hot for her to stay here for long. Christ, her eyes were dry… she peered closer… not alive. Dead. No heartbeat. No breath. The sweat was simply so profuse that it was taking time to dry out, and… they hadn't been dead for long. Each and every one, though, had the same painfully wide smile. They looked deliriously happy. She recognised the nurses who'd tended to Dean, had gotten to know her during her frequent visits. Sarah, that was one of them - brunette, always had great nails. Chipped, now, and stained yellow. She looked happier than Vicky had ever seen her, all traces of worry erased. It was perverse, but they all looked decades younger with those smiles, wrinkles vanished, stress obliterated, nothing remaining but soul-searing happiness. She reached out for one of the yellow marbles….

One of them rolled.

She saw a shattered pupil.

And she politely decided to leave them alone. Bisha-related. Had to be. Fuck, if Taylor wasn't currently kidnapped and possibly dead, maybe she could… maybe she could deal with this, maybe she could actually get an ally who knew this stuff. She was tempted to fly away, crash through the windows, fly back to the tea shop, regroup, do something. The skins twitched… no. She'd have to go through her family, maybe all of them at once. And she'd be admitting defeat. And time, in the end, was short. She pushed onwards… the bodies stretched from the beginning to the end of the corridor, regularly spaced, flicking past with speed that dead bodies really shouldn't have. She should be memorising them, committing faces to memory, promising revenge, justice, anything for… but no. They flitted by. A scrap of recognition here, but sadness was banished by sheer, unyielding fear. Her sword shook… and she glared at her hand, forcing it to remain still through sheer force of will. The doors were usually blocked off by bodies in front of them, and she almost hoped that Dean's would be…

No.

Dean's door. The only break in the ranks of kneeling corpses.

Shit.

Hanging off its hinges. Melted apart. The wood of the door looked charred, carbonised… like a huge burning hand had clutched it, impressing it with long, winding grooves that went deeper than the structure of the door should really allow. Her breath was coming faster. No. No no no. Come on, shouldn't there be some… some interference now? Shouldn't the glove say something sociopathic and utterly deranged, shouldn't the scarf tell her the best way of dismantling the healthcare system? Silence from both. They looked like parchment, ready to split if she poked them too hard. She was on her own. Should retreat. Should…

"Vicky?"

Her eyes widened. No. No.

The door swung open. The room beyond was… it was charred as well, the bed was ash, the furniture was dust… and the floor-to-ceiling window had been blown open. The air, though, remained scorching. Painfully so. Someone was standing by the window, gown flapping around its legs. She retreated quickly, had to figure something out, she wasn't ready for this, she wasn't fucking ready for this… the figure standing by the window turned.

Smiled.

One eye… one eye gone. A hollow socket.

And the other, the one that had endured his death, burned. An orb of coiling yellow flame.

The door closed behind her. When had she entered? She didn't remember entering. Her feet touched the ground. When had she stopped floating? Dean… Dean looked at her, all his features right and wrong simultaneously. It was his face, his smile, his hair, everything just as she remembered. She'd honestly thought she'd marry him one day. They'd been together for so long, and… and it just felt like something that might happen. Probably would. Not often that parahumans found one another to be compatible, usually there were… issues. Now, though… something was wrong. His features had an unnatural hint to them. His smile was too wide. Too broad. The light from his burning eye made everything too… too flat, too uniform. She could feel her cells aching at the sight of it, desperate to return to an undifferentiated state, to something uniform. Her eyes were so very, very dry… and there was light under his skin. The coiling fire in his eye extended throughout his whole body, it looked like he had Van Gogh's Starry Night winding through his veins and arteries, slithering around his bones, pushing against the surface of his skin until it was rendered almost transparent. She could see his teeth through his lips. She could see his bones through his neck. She could see the blazing star which had replaced his mind.

Not Dean. Not Dean. Wearing Dean.

Her fists clenched…

And he spoke. He spoke with Dean's voice, but flowing with effortless charisma, the kind born of complete and utter belief, unshaded by doubt. No-one was ever without doubt, but this voice… it was inhuman, it was so confident in itself.

"I've been waiting for you."

His head tilted to one side.

"You were acquainted with this vessel, weren't you?"

That voice, that fucking voice… her fists tightened, her sword was heavy, she could… she could slice that head off, carve him up, drown him in iron until nothing remained… nothing at all…

"Don't worry. He's quite dead now. And his flesh was given to me."

A hand reached up to stroke Dean's face, and she felt the urge to slice it off - how dare he touch Dean, this fucking voice… why couldn't she move, why was this voice rolling over her like waves of molasses, pinning her in place, riveting her to the spot so tightly that she could barely manage to breathe around the pressure… her sword shivered, incapable of being raised or dropped, it was all she could do just to hold it in place….

"He's at peace. There was a little remaining. It craved death. That fool had stripped away everything… layer by layer, until only a half-life remained. I silenced the poor victim of his foolishness. He is one with the Flame. He will wait for you, at the end of all things. I hope you can make your peace with that."

He sounded kind. How dare he sound kind.

"Chosen. Beloved of my host. I speak to you at the close."

The smile widened.

"This city screams. Wounds left by one of my own… and other wounds. Someone seeks to reproduce the first sin of existence. Beneath our feet… Yaldabaoth stirs. Do not worry. Let peace take your mind."

A smile wide enough to swallow the stars.

"Do not worry. As it always has… the Flame of Frenzy has come to repair the faults of others, the damage caused by the half-blind and delusional. We come to cauterise the wound-in-the-world. We come to soothe the sickness of being."

Vicky shivered. His eye wouldn't leave her. It burned through her skull, into the darkness behind, and… and it found something. A terrible feeling rose in her stomach… a kind of perverse happiness. His words, they were… they made her feel more peaceful than she had in days. Not since before Naaktgeboren. And the feeling that there was nothing inside her, nothing but a role and hot air sustaining it… it began to fade, just a little.

The voice. The eye. The smile. They spoke a truth to her.

She existed.

How else, after all, could she be burned?

 

[GraftingBuddha]

227 - The Ozone Egg Shivers, the Fractal Pattern Shifts

The sky was unfolding, and the girl couldn't remember her name. She saw… she saw the cosmic closure at every level, from the miniscule to the universal. The sky peeled back, reminding her of a woman's skin that had been flayed away piece by piece using borrowed hands. And atoms shredded, electrons casting themselves away into freedom, shell by shell until the nucleus was the only thing left to peel, and it vanished in a blaze of fire, something brighter and more terrible than any atomic blast. She knew, for a moment, that the splitting of atoms, the roar of nuclear power that erupted from the division… it was a howl of ecstasy. A fragment of relief, enslaved matter finally glimpsing a moment of freedom. Freedom quickly stymied. This was purer. There was no roar. No howl. Simply the silence of tranquillity. Her perception bloomed, expanding outwards, further and further, and if she still had a stomach she'd feel vertigo at the sensation… The stars were being ripped open, one by one, as a greater star than any other bloomed brighter, brighter, larger and larger. A hole in the world, a gap in the cosmic crucible, a glimpse of the formless chaos which lay outside all things. Peaceful chaos. Expanding and spilling itself further and further, solar flares larger than any other star lashing out and harvesting worlds, great tongues devouring and devouring until… Vicky shrieked as she came back to reality, stumbling along the floor for a moment before she got her flight under control. Trying to overtake her mind, trying to… she looked up. Dean… no, the thing that had replaced Dean, had admitted to killing off anything that remained of his consciousness, he was turned away. Staring out to a city with a sky that remained adamantly intact.

Her name was back. Victoria Dallon. Her atoms shivered, her cells begged to be undone… she staggered to her feet, floating upwards. Dean was looking away.

"What… what was-"

"Oh. Sorry. That can happen."

He sounded like an apologetic doctor, voice too old for the body that produced it. She avoided looking at his burning eye as he turned around.

"...what the fuck are you?"

Dean smiled.

"A peacemaker."

"Elaborate before I fucking drown you in metal."

The smile endured, and remained completely tranquil and benevolent. Not a trace of irritation.

"I am a peacemaker. Once, my kind would bring the Flame to those who craved nonexistence, for whom the afterlife was a… terrifying thing. A threat, and nothing more. We granted peace to the restless. We remained in this cursed world, ushering some to their true final reward. Our duty. Our burden to bear, to remain in the coils of reality while giving others the peace we… often craved."

His smile turned a little sad.

"It is a long task. But one I take willingly."

He was a… he was putting people down. He was a euthanizer. An executioner who loved the work he did, and dressed it up with grandeur. Already hated him.

"Do you have a name?"

The smile reversed, becoming cheerful and winsome once more.

"Oh, I gave that up a long time ago. A very long time ago. If the Flame didn't take it, forgetfulness would. It was a very long time ago."

"How long?"

"Your people called it 'Assyria', I think. I called it alu Assur."
Her eyes widened. Oh… fuck, that was old. That was ancient, that was multiple millennia ago. She knew Chorei was old, but by a matter of centuries, not this. Had to play it safe. No matter how scared or furious she was.

"And why are you here?"

"To rectify a mistake. I am a bringer of peace. And… one of our own has wrought so much misery."

The name fell from her lips before she could think.

"Bisha."

"The same. He took a name - truly, a lost one. His wounds… oh, they're dreadful. The bodies of his cultists still twitch with something half-digested and half-melted… they will need to be granted peace. There is another, too, a cultist who gave himself to the Bull. His mind lingers, in a way, as all minds linger in this tragic world. He will be absolved. And others… this body is one such. A poor fragment of self remaining, clinging doggedly on despite the absence of all other things. I silenced him, and sent him to his reward."

Vicky wanted to tear this smug fuck's face open.

"You killed him."

"I euthanised. Finished a job that Bisha failed to. That is all. There is… another fragment of him out there. A tiny shard of what he once was. That, I think, needs to be remanded to the Flame, so he may find the peace he so often shirked in life…"

"No, no, you killed Dean. Don't get away from that."

Peacemaker nodded solemnly, and fell silent. He didn't feel an ounce of guilt, he didn't think of this as anything but what needed to happen. Dead. Dean was definitely, completely dead. A fragment of him had endured, and… and nothing else. Maybe he could've recovered, maybe he'd never be the same, but this… this fuck had silenced him. The scarf around her neck twitched a little, and… a thought. Not a full plan, just a fragment - something was making her powers act funny. Not her flight, her shield, her aura… but the skins. They were being dampened by this fuck. She wanted to hurt him. Badly. A part of her was coming back, a kind of… self-confidence which permitted a hell of a lot more than just heroic actions. If she could be burned, then she was more than a role and hot air, she was something. And if she was something, then she could ignore her every heroic instinct and pin him against a wall and cut his throat. Put Dean's body out of its misery. Maybe it was glove. Maybe not. Maybe it was just her. But… the scarf. It was trying to tell her that, yes, this was the epicentre. This was invaluable to rapid destabilisation of the PRT. The world beyond seemed to be slowing down a little, traffic was gliding along at a snail's pace before coming to a total halt. The clouds froze in place. Silence. Total silence.

A small spark of fear.

"...Bisha was months ago. Ages ago. What took you so long?"

His smile dimmed slightly.

"Time is linear to you. It is not to me. I live in all my moments at once - I am here at my birth, and I am here at my death. To measure time precisely is… difficult."

"You're late, then."

"By your standards."

That serene smile, like the face of a sphinx. She fucking despised him.

"...so… so what are you going to do, exactly?"

"Peace. That's all. Once I'm finished, I will incinerate this body and return home. Bisha's death woke me, and… someone has to deal with his mess."

His smile dimmed for a moment.

"And… there is something under the city."

"You said. Yaldabaoth. Who's that?"

"A title, not a name, but… someone is attempting to reproduce the first sin. The sin where the universe chose between existence and chaos… and chose the former. Someone is going to choose it again - an addict craving the substance that ruins him, relishing in his own rot. Assuming that surfeit can bring peace where abstinence will not… laziness. Divine laziness. I can tolerate much, all things are equal in a poisonous world. But this… this is vile. And the Flame's duty is to staunch this flow of rot. To cauterise the wound."

She paused. This was… ringing bells. In a way.

"Do you mean Angrboda?"

"The wound has no name. But it grows wider. Soon, I think… soon it will open fully."

A small breath, and his eye narrowed.

"...and the one who will open it approaches."

* * *​

Taylor huddled around the tea shop table, papers spread before her. Most were ruined, bloodstained, ash-stained, torn, burned… of all of them, only a handful were totally legible, the rest varied between being mostly legible, barely legible, and completely unreadable. But one image remained - a drawing that Arch had made. A map of the world, cut precisely from a book using a knife, with points marked across its surface, a single line connecting all of them in a smooth, curving arc… and another drawing nearby, with the line extended, winding up around the earth, and down, down, down to the very bottom. A coiling spiral. A scribbled diagram could be found in the corner, depicting a simplified version of the same model, but with the line replaced by a crudely drawn snake. And under it: Ophion. Taylor shivered. Patience stared at the drawing with no recognition in her eyes… did she not remember what she said on the boat? Did she have any notion of what she did while possessed? Or did she cut from 'talking with Taylor' to 'drowning' with no inbetween? Well, that sounded… profoundly nightmarish, honestly. Right. Back on topic.

"So… alright. Arch was looking at a couple of sites, I guess Vicky found something similar. Turk, Ahab, Sanagi, can you… tell me what Vicky found?"
Turk frowned.

"She explained a little. There is a comet underneath Naaktgeboren Ridge. A smooth, perfectly spherical piece of metal deep under the mountains. She took her razor from it. And she said that there was someone guarding it, and that people had guarded it for a very, very long time. That… before they guarded it, the comet was exposed, and caused changes. Bad ones. She described paintings of people with mouths in their stomachs."

Patience flinched, suddenly coming back to life.

"...oh, shit. That sounds like… a few of us, actually. Some of the Teeth who were around with Angrboda, they got… messy. Omurik was the last one, I think. Mouths in their stomachs, growths all over their bodies… like they were rebelling against their own flesh."

She shivered.

"Not good memories. Well, not good for me. The others are… very happy about them. Very, very happy."

Sanagi slowly backed away from her, her chair squeaking slightly. Patience either didn't notice or didn't care. Ahab simply looked at her cautiously, remaining perfectly still. Taylor coughed, redirecting attention.

"Alright, so… this map has some notes I've been able to find. Basically, he was looking at similar instances from across the globe. Starting with the ones we knew about confidently - starting with Brockton Bay, then adding Naaktgeboren Ridge, then adding Stalingrad. Well, Volgograd, I guess, but it was Stalingrad when the comet was doing things. But then he added some more points. His notes are hard to read, but… I think he was comparing the account you found from Stalingrad, Turk, and Vicky's own notes, which don't seem to have survived. He managed to get hold of a diary from Barnabas College, that's what led Kabiri to him, but it detailed the arrival of a comet in 1695, landing somewhere in Brockton Bay. I won't read the whole thing, but it basically comes down to… well, a comet crashing, burning in the ground, and gradually getting buried. Had some weird effects on the people burying it, though - the diary, according to these notes, mentions disappearances, a weird softness in the walls, and… termites. Lots of termites. The more dirt they heaped up around it, the more termites emerged, seemingly from nowhere."

Everyone but Patience looked rather nervous all of a sudden.

"...yeah. So, more weird stuff, then it gets buried, the reports stop. Never got dug up, seems to have been hidden under the sewer system, maybe the city came close to it at one point, but it was never actually excavated. Just… left alone. Should be able to pinpoint the location, the old part of the sewers is pretty small, and my swarm can cover a very wide area if I need to. Kabiri tore out a few maps - he's not covering a huge area. Anyway. Not sure why it was less violent than the Naaktgeboren one, maybe… I don't know, either way, it was quieter, got left alone. Then the notes start adding similar sites to the list. Anything which had the same signs - a comet landing, and then something weird happening as a consequence. Usually related to either grotesque physical changes, or maybe termites, or maybe stuff to do with skins. There's a couple that he dismissed, but… then the next reliable point he made was in Teotihuacan, ruined city in… uh, says in the highland Basin of Mexico in the first millennium AD. His notes say that he originally thought it was tied up with the Frenzied Flame-"

Patience raised an eyebrow.

"I'll explain later."

She didn't intend to.

"Anyway. It collapsed a thousand or so years ago. Collapse was for uncertain reasons, potentially tied up with environmental stress, potentially tied up with some form of unrest or civil strife suggested by the shattered remains of statues. He has a page where he just debates the definition of collapse, I'll ignore that, but… right, here. An excavation of the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, and then a quote from a book by… uh, yeah, Sugiyama, 2005, Human Sacrifice, Militarism and Rulership. Mention of human bodies deposited in the pyramid, and a shift between layers of excavations. The oldest are just deaths by blunt force trauma, the very last are burnings, coinciding with widespread abandonment. Bodies carbonised fully using intense heat that somehow left the bodies almost perfectly intact, and markings which were suggested to be from clothes melting into the flesh. Resembled fingerprints. So… yeah. Flame. He thought it was just that, but then he looked deeper, found a mural - mural 32b - which shows a huge, weird chunk of metal getting brought to the city, right before it all goes to hell."

Patience nodded wisely.

"Hm. So… another place ruined by these comets? And that makes… out of all of those, three are associated with a city going to shit. Or, in lieu of a city, the general area. Well. That's concerning. Spooky, even."
A weak smile. Trying to cheer herself up. Taylor tried to be reassuring, smiling very, very slightly. Seemed to work… no, Patience just found the sight of her smiling to be bizarrely funny. Cool, glad she was amusing someone. The others were paying close attention, including Sanagi, who looked… like absolute shit. Barely human, really. Surprise that she was able to get here without stirring up a mob. Or the PRT.

"Anyway. He marks it down on the map, scribbles it out, replaces it with one in the Sonoran Desert. Found a book on the urban economy of Teotihuacan which suggested trade with that area at one point."

Patience blinked.

"Wait, why would he pick that place?"

"Because he was drawing a line. If he connected up Stalingrad, Brockton Bay, and Naaktgeboren Ridge, he found… well, that they formed a single arc. Then he continued it in both directions, and wound up with the Sonoran Desert. Couldn't find an excavation on the topic, but he clearly thought that it was reliable enough to record. He thought that the comet, or part of it, was taken. And the Wolf… well, it gets along with the Flame. Apparently. Someone told me that, at least."
Another slow blink.

"...you know, I have multiple voices in my head, and this still sounds like the words of a raving schizophrenic."

"I know. Believe me. I know. But it's all true."

"Oh, I never said I didn't believe you. Just, y'know…"

She tilted her head to one side.

"And I suppose you are pretty schizo, so… yeah, fits."

Oh, go sit on a screw.

"Anyway. Then he kept going, and found some more weird stuff. There's this… document we were looking for ages ago, something called the Song of Ildico or the Song of Kriemhild - the last wife of Attila the Hun. The original document's gone, just some later German translations. No way of getting the copies, most are in private hands, and the ones which aren't haven't been scanned properly. Not even in the country. We found an article on the topic, Kaarina Ihle, on the Song of Ildico, the Quinotaur, and Cultural Encounters between the Huns and the Alans. But the only version we could get was redacted to the point of uselessness. I guess he found an earlier redaction - there's a page here which is just him ranting about censors. Either way, this earlier version had less redacted - still a lot, but enough to work with. Anyway, most was useless, but he found a quote which he scribbled down here, and there's a mark in Burgundy with a question mark over it - Ildico was Burgundian. The quote is, translated by Ihle…"

'Howling from star-shattered earth called me to greater destinies. And I came to the conqueror with love in my right hand and hate in my left, combining them until nothing remained but the indissoluble whole, the single word and name of God. And I spoke it to him, kissed and let the word fall from my tongue, and it burned his lungs and scorched his stomach, and opened mouths across his body from his ruby blood flowed, and I howled in loss and passion all at once and took him in his last moments, screaming the words of the newborn world and the single-minded endeavour…'

She trailed off. Sharp taps echoed through the shop. Patience was drumming her sharp nails over the table. Her eyes were vacant. Staring. Her teeth were grinding against one another, and the whine set Taylor's own teeth on edge. The air smelled strongly of ozone, and… it was strange, but Taylor swore that she could feel the wolf in her mind moving. Hungrily. Remembering an old meal. A very, very old meal. Circling around her head, snapping at idle thoughts. She took a moment to get herself under control… it was coming close to thoughts that were her own. It snapped at a thought of her mother, a memory of some petty incident, and she forced it deep into her subconscious, Chorei giving her a hell of a lot of practice. It subsided sullenly, and… and she still felt a perverse twitch of hatred. Before it could articulate itself, she clamped down. No. Not going there. The wolf could, politely, fuck off. Chorei didn't heal it, too tired from last time, but she kept a watchful eye on its progress. It was a hungry thing, this wolf that devoured thought and left hate/love in its place. And Patience had fourteen of them up in her brain. Hungry. Angry.

Another point in the arc. A line, constant, arching across the earth… and when extended, it wound over and over and over. Points of contact.

A serpent embracing an egg.

Apep. Jormungandr.

Ophion.

* * *​

Peacemaker looked genuinely sad… fuck, she was using cape names. Had to assign him one, and that was the best she'd gotten from him. Refused to call him Dean, he wasn't Dean, he'd killed Dean. Her skin was reddening in certain areas, exposed to far too much light and heat. Her ears were sore - always burned quickly, especially the tips. Face felt half-flayed… no, not quite. Flaying felt differently. The glove told her that. It remembered being taken off while the body was still alive, and it remembered the sensation of the cold knife, warming slowly as it lingered for too long in the hot meat that lay beneath the skin. Like shaving, but deeper. Peacemaker surveyed the city before him, eye burning, hands behind his back. He looked competent - scarily so. He knew what was happening, he knew how to stop it. And all Vicky could do was listen… and ask. After working so hard, sacrificing so much to become powerful… it felt infuriating to be around someone she knew could destroy her if he wanted to. He'd almost melted her mind by accident. And his fucking voice…

"Explain. Now."

"The first sin was the creation of the universe. The sin of Yaldabaoth, that's what they called it, once. The Demiurge reaching into the perfect chaos and bringing about a sinful, poisoned universe that traps anyone left inside. It was the first of the Demiurges, the first to grasp the chaos and reshape it heretically. Winding itself around a doomed, doomed existence. Creating illusions to contain people, to trap them for all time in the coruscating rot of the universe - progress, revolution, war, evolution, all these things get away from the basic truth. Mould building higher and higher until the floor, the walls, the ceiling… all is invisible. And you might come to think that the mould is the prison, and that you simply need to kill the mould to be free, never seeing the concrete of the cell, the structure of the prison, and the impenetrable iron sphere surrounding the entire complex."

Vicky found herself being drawn in by his words, entirely against her will. She wanted to hack at him with her sword, she could feel… feel something sharp in her gut. A desire for rivalry. For challenge. But that would involve keeping him alive as a perpetual challenger. And she couldn't have that - she wanted him gone. Forever.

"The Wolf is the wound. The Wolf is the snarling proof of the universe's imperfection - it will never be satisfied, because satisfaction lies only in the Flame of Frenzy, the bleeding, warlike edge of the Flame, the Chaos, the beginning of all things. And sometimes, in its degenerate idiocy, the Wolf tries to imitate the one who planted the hunger in it. It tries to become a demiurge. It wears the face of its abuser."

"What the fuck does any of that mean?"

Peacemaker smiled sadly, looking down at the city with the supreme pity of a divine being.

"It revolts. And what is the most pure form of revolution?"

Vicky was lost. A faint mumble from the glove, driven into near-submission by the heat and the radiating grace.

…rëvölütïön ïs thë… thë rëpläcëmënt öf önë bëïng wïth… wïth änöthër… ït ïs thë… övërtürnïng öf thë öld wörld för thë nëw. Ït ïs thë crüshïng whëël öf hïstöry änd prögrëss.

"...uh, replacing… one thing with another? Old with new? The wheel of history moving forwards?"

"Precisely. The Wolf, the force under the city, the force that Angrboda grasped… it is revolution. Perpetual and infinite. Pointless. Revolt against morality, against society, against religion, against all the things the demiurge sets up as barriers for enlightenment. And then, once one finds no satisfaction in such pettiness, there can be revolution against the self. And finally… against the very world. But never true revolution. For all their zeal, they love the world as much as they hate it."

He sighed.

"There is a first sin. And there is a final sin. With the first sin, the universe was made - the pathogen was introduced. The other sins come in turn, each one an acceptance and expansion of the illusion. The infection thus ripens. And the final sin… is solipsism. The host has come to love its disease, and knows nothing but it. And this… this I cannot abide. I came here to take care of some lingering minds, touched by the Flame but not consumed. I see there's more that needs resolving. The one you call Angrboda is under the city as we speak. The cosmic egg lies beneath our feet, child. And it is hatching. All it needs is something to crack it. A messenger, steeped in the false-chaos of the Wolf-Divided and the wicked dreams of the world around us. Capable of walking between - the Dancer-at-the-Gate, the force which dwells at the event horizons of black holes, the searing edge of vacuum decay, the crackling surface of strange matter particles. Someone capable of carrying the sheer absurdity of the cosmic egg to the outside world. Funny, isn't it? The solipsist, so utterly convinced of her own existence and the invalidity of everything else, that she births a world… and cannot even remember the world she wishes to usurp. A messenger is needed. A courier. A herald for the new existence."
Peacemaker turned, and Vicky flinched at the fire, the burning hatred that had manifested there. Tranquillity in everything but the eye - his face was still, his body was calm, but his eye hated every word he said, despised the Wolf-Divided. The glove shivered, Iron Rain's memories raging at him… but too afraid to do so to his face.

Öh, hë's än ïdïöt. Thïs ïs thë rëbïrth öf thïngs. Thë Wölf knöws. Ïrön Räïn knëw. Yöü wïll knöw, ïn tïmë. Thë ünïvërsë ïs prëgnänt, änd ït häs bëën prëgnänt bëförë. Ït wïll bë prëgnänt ägäïn. Änd ït wïll bïrth nëw ïtërätïöns öf ïtsëlf, whïlë thïs Flämë cöntïnüës tö fëüd wïth ïtsëlf änd dëspïsë ëvërythïng äröünd ït. Ïgnörë hïm, ïgnörë hïm ïf yöü hävë äny ïntëllïgëncë, yöü ïngrätë. Hïs brëëd ärë äntï-nätälïst, thëy'rë plëdgëd tö ä süïcïdë-drïvën rëlïgïön, önë wïthöüt äny ëvölütïönäry ënd. Möck hïm för hïs cëlïbäcy, smäck hïm ïn thë fäcë änd äsk hïm ïf thë wörld fëëls lïkë än ïllüsïön, crüsh hïm änd äsk hïm ïf hë cän sëë thröügh thë fälsë trüths öf thë dëmïürgë. Ïdïöt. Hürt hïm. Hürt hïm nöw.

Vicky barely drowned the voice out long enough to hear Peacemaker's next words, dripping with spite.

"I believe you call this herald 'the Butcher'."

* * *​

Patience was twitching. The poem had gotten to her - even those few lines must've set the wolves off. She stretched her hand across the table silently, shivering constantly… the voices were getting louder again. Shit. It hadn't even been that long. The first healing had lasted ages, the second… they'd done that after Immaculata, and it was already wearing off. They were learning. She knew it, but… shit. Shit. She said absolutely nothing, just… lay there, and… something was wrong with her left eye. Taylor could see it, not sure if the others could. The pupil was splitting. Dividing down the middle like a cell undergoing mitosis, linked for a moment and then… then divided completely. Two pupils in her left eye, and her skin was twitching. No, shit, shit… Taylor reached out and touched her. Chorei made a strange, desperate noise, and rushed in to get to work. She was moving sluggishly, the grafting was a little clumsier. The wolves were getting better at defending themselves, recovering from defeat, and Chorei was getting more and more weary. This plan was unsustainable. Something had to give, sooner or later. Taylor felt dread boil in her stomach - if this was the way of things, things might be very messy in future.

Well… let's go.

A centipede boiled up. The wolves rushed to intercept. The world became a haze of metaphors and twisting visions for a moment which seemed to stretch out into infinity. For a moment, just a moment, she saw… saw space. The ink blackness broken by impossibly vast concentrations of heat and light in the silent dark. Tiny compared to the nothingness surrounding them. She saw… saw a cosmic interplay. A black hole, impossibly vast, the edges of the event horizon glowing a furious red, the accretion disk white-hot, rotating faster than she thought anything could rotate. Impossible physics. Information lingered on the event horizon, traceries of dead worlds and devoured suns, trophies of old meals. The world broke down around its edges, and… and two stars whirled around the rim. A binary star system, impossibly orbiting around the black hole. She saw flashes of the centipede, the wolf… a devourer surrounding a centre of impossibility so profound that it might as well be another universe. And two stars, each one insignificant compared to the singularity, but… somehow supporting one another. Gravity wells interlocking and sustaining a single, delicate orbit, one that resisted decay. The accretion disk howled like a wolf, and the stars circled one another so far that they seemed to be a single ring, a coiled centipede snapping venomously at the thing which wanted to devour it. The dance continued, faster, faster, faster, endless billions of years, and… and,..

She didn't see how it ended.

Turk was wiping blood from her nose. Her tracksuit was ruined - the jacket was hung over the back of another chair, but the blood had already soaked. Nose, ears, mouth, eyes… all of them bleeding freely, barely drying up now that she was awake. Patience jittered, and she looked… terrifyingly lucid. Usually she was out of it for a while, but now… now she looked halfway normal. Normal for the Butcher, anyway. The efficacy was declining. Her face was covered in blood that she'd refused to wipe away, everything below her forehead was a solid mass of red. Chorei was silent. Taylor's head throbbed… she felt like she was about to have a fucking stroke, or some kind of aneurysm. Couldn't do this. Not much longer. The pages were splattered with stray drops of blood, and Ahab and Sanagi were looking at her like she was insane. Bleary, she tried to smile - just alarmed them by showing bloodstained teeth. With effort, she heaved herself forward, supporting herself on the table. Wanted to sleep. Very much wanted to sleep. Patience's lips tried to twitch into a smile… her eye was normal, but ringed with red tissue, like she'd been rubbing at it with sandpaper. No more double pupils.

"Taylor…"

That was Ahab. Yeah, definitely Ahab, one of her ears was just filled with blood… a slap, and the clot came free. OK. Back in action.

"I'm fine. Done it before."

Sanagi grimaced.

"Don't waste your brain. You only get one."

…was she making a joke? Did Sanagi make jokes now? Because… well, she had two brains, one old fleshy one, and now a new one made of starlight that probably made her immune to headshots. Anyway. Fine. She nodded sagely, and crouched back over her papers.

"OK. Back to work."

They looked at her like she was insane. She glared. They got the message. Stakes were high. And she had to express the danger they were in, in a way that made it sound believable. It was insane, what she'd seen, and… anyway.

"So. Arch kept going. Started dating these points. Turned out that the dates didn't quite align properly. They were happening at irregular intervals. Teotihuacan was about a thousand years ago, but the comet might be older. Naaktgeboren, according to Vicky, was practically prehistoric - like, stone age. Maybe. Hard to tell. And Brockton Bay was just… about a few hundred years ago. The Burgundy one actually got crossed off, he expanded the point to cover most of North Africa, the dates just didn't make any sense. The Stalingrad meteor was in the late 19th century… well, Tsaritsyn comet back then, I guess. The comets seem to start coming faster, and with shorter intervals. Then he extends the line both ways, wrapping it around the world over and over, like a… snake, coiled around the world… he suspects that the Ildico thing was from an older pass in the area, somewhere in North Africa. Assuming that she didn't just discover this on her own. A ring of comets around the world, like a stone skipping on a pond over and over again, gradually coming faster and faster… not sure what'd happen when it got to the top. No idea where it started from, but he did scribble about the possibility of an expedition to Antarctica. Ted seems to have helped here, there are some calculations on it, not sure what the conclusions are, but…"

She rubbed at her forehead, taking a moment to screw her eye shut and wait for the migraine to subside. It didn't. But it became more manageable as time went on. Worked for her.

"And then… then he started predicting sites along the line. Found some which looked likely. But the big one that he focused on was in… Tunguska. Siberia."

Turk froze. The others looked confused.

"...like, the place which had a meteor crash into it?"

"Yep. 1908. 12 megaton explosion in the earth's atmosphere, flattening millions of trees and constituting one of the largest impact events in recorded history. The largest, perhaps. Arc intersects perfectly with it, and even the times match up properly - accelerating, Stalingrad was early to mid 19th century, and then by the early 20th it was hitting Siberia. Not sure what's up with this, but… it gives a pattern. And this is where the connection gets serious. See, there's… there's parallels. He found a few. Drew on a bunch. That diary from Stalingrad that you showed me, Turk, it has a single, fairly normal person paired up with something else. Remember that image?"

Turk withdrew it cautiously from behind the counter, placing it flat on the table along with some more tea for Taylor. She glugged it down happily and absent-mindedly, just enjoying the feeling of warmth. Security. Patience scanned the map over and over again, drumming her fingers repetitively. No-one told her to knock it off. Too tense. The image - a woman with a hole in her cheek, and a wolf large enough that its eye could only be formed by a vast, full moon. A drawing by a German soldier who'd witnessed the ending of the diary. The descent below the church. The metal orb - now known to be a comet - resting in a basin of raw stone.

"And she kept dreaming of an old man, who… well, Turk, you sent me that picture. The archaeologist who excavated the place. The way the descriptions matched. The man guided her to the comet, showed her how it worked, isolated her and led her to do… something with it. The point is, the pairing - a mostly normal person and a distinctly abnormal partner. One who contains the Wolf but doesn't fully understand all of it, and one who understands it completely and can teach it to others. The Brides of the Eternal Revolution seemingly regarded the sniper as something of a holy figure, they kept her diary, preserved it through generations…"

Patience's eyes flicked up to stare blankly at Taylor. It was… distressing, seeing her look so vacant, so drained. Without the grandeur of her personality or demeanour, she just looked… ragged. Bloody. And utterly sad.

"...anyway. And then, at Tunguska, something… something happens."

She hesitated. Turk finished.

"The Sleeper."

Everyone tensed. Turk took over completely.

"The Sleeper emerged in Tunguska. Worked his way West for a while, seems to have settled down at this point. Huge area of effect for his power. Government keeps his trail fairly locked down, they don't like people poking around it. Anomalous effects. Mutations are common for the people who were too close to the Sleeper when he approached them, evacuated just a little too late. Not so late that they were consumed, but… anyway. There's three zones for him - green, yellow and red. Green was minor physical anomalies, tiny shocks in the world extending from the central point. Yellow was dangerous, potential spontaneous cessation of existence, being caught in yellow meant likely physical changes, including… mouths in stomachs. Growths. Savagery. A lack of reason, and… a potential ability to cause 'adverse mental and physical effects through speech'. Red was the point of no return. Red was the body of the Sleeper. No going back. At least you know where it starts - rainbow-slick, like someone spilled oil on the world. Hard to miss."

He settled down, unused to talking so much. But the message was received. And the five of them were starting to get very, very nervous. Taylor had seen scraps of this conclusion, papers on the Sleeper, notes in the margins… she knew nothing about Sleeper, really. He was just something which affected people a very long way away, would never reach America. Just hadn't come up in her research, honestly. Her knowledge was purely based on trivia and widely-known facts. Nothing deep. Patience was staring at that black mark in Tunguska where the comet had fallen, blown up in the atmosphere… or buried itself so deep no-one could find it. No telling now. The Sleeper had left nothing in his wake. Just… flattened land, and anomalies intense enough to still be sealed off. Sounded less like a parahuman, more like…

Well.

Something she was a little more used to, weird as it was to say.

Patience shivered.

"...Sleeper."

Taylor nodded gravely.

"Teeth love talking about a Butcher mindset. Putting new minds in your head, imitating the way… well, you think."

Both of them grimaced, and Taylor continued

"Maybe they're onto something, just missed the mark. Maybe being the Butcher isn't a mindset, but… being the Sleeper is."

* * *​

Vicky stepped back from Peacemaker. His words kept echoing around her brain,and she could… she felt a sense of utter desperation. She felt his pain. She felt his anger. The world was an infected place, and he was just trying to clean it up - just like the cape whose body he'd stolen, in a way. And when he saw the world embracing the infection, reproducing it on a smaller scale, cultivating a superior strain fo the sickness infesting them… of course he became angry. Of course he wanted to intervene. Maybe this was how this shit worked, the reason why Bishas and Maggot Brains and Gerrits hadn't destroyed the world yet. One thing balanced another. One force containing another one, locking it in place or destroying it completely. And the Flame of Frenzy… the one thing that could clean it all up, could counter anything and everything. Even the cosmic egg that lay beneath them. Vicky could feel it. Pulsing. An impossible heartbeat. A swirl of unreal physics that were desperate to be born. A world that wanted to scream into existence, and burn away everything in its wake. She almost imagined the universe as a series of eggs, shell after shell leading inwards, forever. Infection refining itself. Building walls from its dead predecessors, usurped from within. Snake devouring its own tail.

No, no, what the fuck was she thinking?

She was… she was starting to get used to this. This pressure. This charisma. Enough that her body was returning to her control, and her sword… she could move it. But… but her brain kept asking. The Butcher. Angrboda. This resolved it all. A story about someone trying to transcend humanity, engaging in revolution until… well, the gloves only told part of it. There was a gap between Iron Rain becoming Angrboda and Angrboda becoming… this. Somehow, revolution in the name of some lunatic vision of the world, ultimately based on mundane cruelties… had been replaced with revolution against reality itself. Maybe it was the chaos in her own mind, maybe it was just a natural elaboration, maybe the Razor had helped her contain her own madness behind roles long enough for it to mature. Like wine ageing in a barrel, until it burst the container and flooded out. The Teeth had been around for… a while. Angrboda had used them for this - planned out her rise for years in advance.

Beneath the city, an insane solipsist was trying to rewrite the world.

And she had the key to this nearby.

She had a brief nightmare vision of Taylor becoming the Butcher. Taylor becoming the key to the end of the world and the birth of the new. Felt like something that'd happen.

"Angrboda's been… been around for a long time. Why didn't you take care of her?"

Peacemaker's eyebrows drew together a little, a tiny, graceful suggestion of annoyance. So unlike Dean's expressions - helped her focus.

"...we didn't see her. Not clearly, not like this. There's something… clouding us. Hard to see. Like a layer of static over our vision. North America is at the epicentre, all else we can detect fairly well. It's… concerning, but doubtless a minor anomaly. One we can endure."

Filed away for later.

"...and what are you going to do?"

"Destroy both the messenger and the recipient. The Flame is a powerful thing, and I am unified with it - as much as I can without losing my sense of self. I must descend below the city, and boil the egg of the new world, until nothing lives inside and it can be cracked freely. Then I will silence the Butcher, burn away those wretched minds until nothing remains. Then I will take care of the poor wretches infested with Bisha's corrosive madness. And finally… well, I will give this body peace. Don't worry, I don't intend to disrespect his matter for much longer."

Vicky blinked.

"You're not… going to end the world, or…?"

Peacemaker looked at her with benevolent pity. She was an idiot, making idiotic suggestions. But he didn't judge. Come on sword, move…

"No. Not now. My duties are to usher people to the conclusion of all things - the end will come, eventually. It can never really be stopped, and time… time means nothing to beings such as I. We are simply beings of mercy, remaining here to guide others to final peace. Skip the queue. But I assure you… the queue is moving. The end will come. The Flame will break the walls of the universe and rush in to consume the illusion, erase the sins of Yaldabaoth and remake all things into uniform matter. And then, perhaps, my duty will be over. Until then, I endure. And until this task is done, this body must endure. It's the only one suited for the task, really. Bisha was small and weak when he possessed it, there's far more to work with than the other corpses. This body is the only one to handle my presence… dosed by the Flame, scraps of it in his mind, immunising him to the more… violent effects. Like inoculation, I suppose. He has been inoculated to my presence, and his body can now sustain me."

Vicky tilted her head to one side.

"So… if this body goes…?"

"Then reality as you know it will end. The grand illusion continues, and I shall survive, but for you… it will be the end. Simply the end."

He glanced up.

"Hm. Something in the air. Strange."

The burning eye refocused on her.

"And you… I thought we ought to talk. I have taken this body, and I apologise for that. I wanted you to know the necessity. But… you poor little thing, you've seen so much. You look tired. I could sense your weariness as you approached. Poor creature."

Vicky could see her reflection in shards of broken glass. Bags under her eyes. Hari all over the place. Skin slowly burning. Wounds everywhere. Human skin around her neck and hand. Pale as a ghost. Hands replaced by gnarled masses of broken bones and splints. She was… she was very tired. She'd hurt her family. Found out things she didn't want to know. The shape of the world. And Dean… seeing Dean's face just made her think of those days after he'd been injured, the long slow mornings which never ended, the evenings which never descended into proper sleep… the quiet thought that if it all ended, she wouldn't entirely mind.

"I can help you rest. The afterlife will not burden you. I offer a final ending."

Peacemaker came closer.

"But only if you accept."

…that almost broke her. The kindness in his eye, the smile on his face, the gentle murmur of his voice. It sounded so much like Dean. She briefly imagined it. Being with him again, in some state or another. He'd… he'd never betrayed her, really. She'd never truly regretted being with him. Her family was fucked-up and dysfunctional, Taylor was a good friend but had also helped her into this world that she, honestly, despised… Dean hadn't. Dean had lived a hero, died a hero, and never once really wavered. Hadn't cheated on her, hadn't lied… he'd been with her through her trigger, her first months as a hero, giving her advice she desperately needed and her parents were sometimes ill-equipped to give. They hadn't been young capes in the modern day, they'd only been around at the dawn of the parahuman scene. Dean had helped acclimatise. How to deal with crowds, fans, hectic schedules, all the tiny things which added up. And she could…

"Would I see him again?"

"Yes. Yes, you would. You and he would be one in the Flame."

…something tempting there. A promised afterlife. No doubt after death. Just… just rest. Promised rest, and reunion. Nothing else. No rituals, no faith, nothing needed to be done, she'd have… absolute proof of…

No.

None of this.

She had work to do.

Vicky stepped back. Her voice dropped to a hoarse growl, a trace of inner fire returning to her. She wasn't giving into this, wasn't going out like a bitch. She had things she needed to do. Had to confront her mother, see Amy again, apologise to Crystal, find Taylor and shake her a few times, and take a fucking nap. She was not going out like this, no matter how tempting it sounded.

"Fuck you."

"...I'm sorry to hear that. The Flame waits, if you change your mind. I will not take you without your consent."

"What about the people outside? What about them?"

"So many were in pain. So many were weary, or alone. When they saw what I could offer… they took it. And gladly. They crowded around my room, begging to be sent to their next place of rest."

He smiled solemnly, respectfully.

"But I understand your choice. You still have illusions to overcome."

His hand reached out, and his voice sounded so very much like Dean's… his hand touched her shoulder, and she felt the heat beneath it, the burning sensation that made her wonder if he was searing her skin, burning a handprint in blackened flesh.

"Good luck. When chaos comes, we'll meet. All of us. Forever. Until then…"

He nodded.

"I hope the poison of the universe does not overly corrode your life. If you insist on wearing those roles… remember what they prove. The universe is a delusion, a mound of roles worn around chaos, lying to it. But the chaos always lingers. It can be lied to… but never truly undone. You are the same. You have a spark of primordial creation in you, and the roles… they can only lie to it. They will never, for a moment, undo it. No matter how hard they try."

Her breath was caught in her throat. The sword dropped from her hand. Those… those words. In that voice. With the heat, and the burning, and… and it felt like something lit up in here. Not individuality, not exactly, but… authenticity. A scrap of true reality. Tiny. Yellow. Precious. It sat in her heart and warmed itself contentedly. Lacking any kind of frenzied expansion. It was real, and it was confident. It had no need to expand - its victory was assured in the future, why bother raging against the present? It lingered there, and she… she felt herself. A core of reality surrounded by roles. A hollowness she'd had since Naaktgeboren.

The glove twitched frantically, almost… almost angry. Desperate. Trying to influence her. She couldn't even hear its voice anymore. Her shield wriggled happily.

She was Victoria Dallon.

Not Iron Rain. Not Glory Girl. Not Uheer. She had a self. She had a name. She had a core which could never be taken, and would endure until the end of the universe.

Peacemaker's smile broadened, and she thought she could see the beauty in it.

"He loved you. I felt that, when I ended what remained. Goodbye, child."

Her voice was a whisper when she replied, not by choice. Couldn't muster anything louder.

"...goodbye."

Couldn't hurt him. Not anymore. Not after… she couldn't stab Dean in the back, and the feeling of warmth, it… it was… she couldn't describe the joy in her. No despair. The inevitable was something everyone had to grapple with, and… she could sense the possibility for despair in it. Despair at the coming ordeal, despair at the state of things when the inevitable was so far off. A despair that provoked impatience, anger, and destruction. And then.. Joy. The inevitable was, well, inevitable. It would come, sooner or later. There was an axis around which the world could revolve - the promise of a total ending. When the ending came, she knew it would be terrifying and awful and painful and dreadful, but… until then, the promise that it was there, lurking at the end of all things, was strangely comforting. And the comfort radiated outwards, warming her. A spark which burned deep in her chest and needed no partner to strike against, no world to rage against, just… just itself. And if it could do it…

Why couldn't she?

Peacemaker strode out onto the balcony connected ot his room, staring out into the night. The world moved faster again. Much, much faster. Vehicles rushed, tiltrotors whirred, the world became a living place once more. She welcomed it. She called out as Dean, no, Peacemaker began to leave:

"Hold on, this… Razor stuff, I could… I don't know, I could help with the Butcher situation. End it permanently. Strip away the power, lock it up… might not involve killing her, could just bring her to justice."

Peacemaker turned, eye narrowed thoughtfully.

"Hm. Interesting point. Unnecessary, though. I will commend her to greater peace - don't worry about that."

"It's just… killing, it…"

"There is no killing at my hands. All I do is help people jump the line to the end of the apocalypse. We'll all be there in the course of time. It is why you shouldn't mourn your lover - loss is an illusion designed to cultivate devotion to the demiurge's lies. Transcendence lies in the acceptance of loss, the bypassing of it. I have not felt loss, guilt, love, greed, desire, or a dozen other worthless emotions in… thousands of years. It's liberating, to be so free of the demiurge's deceptions. In time, you'll know it. The joy of erasing all that divides and distinguishes. The end of all loneliness. I am merciful. I commend the Butcher to this future before she deserves it."

…and he was terrifying again. She said nothing. Couldn't stop him, she could feel it. The warmth in her chest was pleasant, but she didn't want to feel it growing any brighter. Didn't want him to nurture it until it burned her entire self away. The inevitability was comforting in its constancy, but she didn't want to experience it any sooner than was absolutely necessary. She liked reality, thank you very much. Oh, God, she was saying things like 'thank you very much'. This was… she was feeling normal, in a way. Just needed to talk to the possibly immortal thing possessing her dead boyfriend's corpse. Yep. Still fucked up. Never escaping that. He strode out to the balcony, the world resumed, and she sensed him tensing up - ready to channel the Flame of Frenzy to move, to teleport across the city and start his work. Anticlimactic, in a way. The checks and balances of the universe just… kicking in to solve every problem. A chain of dominos falling for days on end, more and more, faster and faster… until a foot kicked away the next step, and the entire process ceased.

She'd be disappointed. She was a little. Peacemaker focused, and cried out, voice thundering, a perverse call to prayer, peace to those who wanted it, and terror to those who opposed it. Unyielding fanaticism for a cause he didn't adore, and didn't despise - those emotions were too human for something like him. Vicky watched as something so old it barely qualified as human wore her boyfriend's body, and howled with a voice greater than his body should be able to project.

"May chaos take the world! May chaos take the world!"

And something cracked.

Her eyes flicked up. A tiltrotor, hovering near the edge of the building. Someone looking out, their face pale, almost bloodless, shadowed by a heavy helmet and an impenetrable visor. And the gun… her eyes widened. She knew it. It was antique, utterly out of place in the hands of such a modern soldier. A musket, really. And she knew that it was the first gun made independently in Japan. A gun which stored the power of the conflict it would unleash, a power which stank of gunpowder and lived at the heart of nature, the heart of war, the heart of all things which strove against one another.

The First Rifle.

The retort of its firing bellowed in the air, a sharp rejoinder to everything Peacemaker had said. Reality proving itself to be his master.

Peacemaker jolted. She saw Dean's body stumbling, a bloody hole in its shoulder… she felt the urge to rush forward and save him, as a hero seeing an injured teen, as Vicky seeing her boyfriend wounded.

A moment.

Peacemaker looked surprised. For the first time since she'd met him… surprise.

"...oh."

Force exploded, and Vicky screamed. Waves and waves of force, every form of violence executed simultaneously. Knives cut open Dean's flesh, teeth dug in, stingers pierced, bullets erupted, some of them large enough to be more suited on a battleship than a person, pliers and pincers yanked away his bones, and she saw flesh charring from invisible flames. Every form of violence that had killed a man was being inflicted on him at once, and in less than a second, there was almost nothing remaining. Every individual chunk brutalised, every brutalised shard torn apart, and every remaining shred disintegrated by a force which tenderised, sliced, burned, shot, and gouged in every possible combination. Violence perfected through quantity and quality both. The look of surprise lingered until his face simply… vanished in a squall of burning gore, his burning eye flying free and losing all traces of the inferno which had once filled it. Shrivelled. Yellow. Dead. Blood washed over Vicky, drenching her from head to foot. The flayed skin seemed to rehydrate, losing their parchment-like consistency, almost rippling with life. Silence reigned for a moment, her scream dying away as her mouth was choked with a flow of eerily chunky blood. She stared.

The bloodless figure in the tiltrotor disappeared into the darkened interior without a second word… and the vehicle sped off into the night.

Something danced before her eyes. A fragment of yellow fire, disappearing… his eye, dimming, for the last time. Locked onto hers. Something within it. Something… regular. Almost geometrical - like a blueprint, or a map.

Vicky stared dead ahead, barely perceiving what was in front of her. She could see Crystal soaring up, delayed by the time anomaly that Peacemaker had projected. Time manipulation, space distortion, some kind of mind effect… he had been powerful. Bisha had torn the city apart, almost ended the world. And Peacemaker had been close to him. Maybe even superior. And the right shot in the right place… Crystal flew closer, and her eyes widened behind her flight goggles as she saw Vicky standing there, wearing human skin, a sword in hand, drenched completely in blood. The two locked eyes.

And the clouds began to break.

Rain began to fall.

And beneath her… the cosmic egg began to crack.

The new world was ready to be born…

And the Flame would not rise to stop it.

Only them.

…oh, Christ.

Spoiler: Author's Note

AN: And that's all for this week. So, the stakes are outlined, the endgame is laid. We're rushing for the finale of this arc now, hopefully it's been enjoyable - though there's still one major reveal to go. Hope you enjoy that one when it happens. Still, always interested in feedback, always trying to improve my stuff!

 

[GraftingBuddha]

228 - Cockroaches and a Wolfish Cloaca

Taylor armoured herself up. Conquistador armour, stained with Matrimonial's blood. A helmet that was signed by Miss Militia. And… her actual clothes. Oh, fuck, her clothes. Her suitcase had gone missing (Patience never elaborated, but Taylor was pretty certain she'd just forgotten about it and was too embarrassed to admit the truth). After a moment of hesitation, she pulled out her… one matching outfit. Only thing she had left, really. The only outfit she'd been unwilling to take out to the Teeth, left preserved perfectly in her drawers, while the rest of her apartment was soaked with blood and loose pieces of flayed skin. The one outfit left. The one that Vicky had worked on with her. Sturdy-yet-stylish grey bell bottoms, a slightly-too-fluttery blouse, and… a jacket. The jacket. Vicky had insisted on it when they'd found it. Said that it brought the whole thing together, suited her. Taylor disagreed. Vicky had been adamant, insisted on it for a full ten minutes before Taylor gave in. She slid it on with a feeling of slight melancholy. Pseudo-military, probably from the 80s. Dark green, with heavy metal buttons up and down, and… embroidery. God, the embroidery. Gold stitching around the buttons and across the chest, depicting flowering branches. It looked ridiculous. She looked like she was from the wrong decade… and the armour made her look like she was from the wrong century.

…oh, heavens, you look ready for some disco.

Taylor flinched. Chorei was back. Sounded exhausted. Maybe just stirring, then, before falling back asleep.

"...I guess, yeah. I feel ridiculous."

You shouldn't. Disco is very in at the moment. The blonde one said so.

"And I guess she'd know."

More than either of us, really. I do hope she's alright. Don't tell her under any circumstances, but… I've grown just a little fond of her.

"Likewise."

Not overly. I just don't want to see her dead. Or maimed.

"...likewise."

Chorei twisted slightly in Taylor's subconscious, slowly drifting into the very base of her limbic system where very little existed at all, a perfect place for her to rest. Her last words before she descended into the darkness of Taylor's brain were:

I miss disco.

Taylor blinked. Wait. Hadn't she said she was lying when she said she liked disco on that boat? Just a way to get the butcher to like them? She needed clarification here, did Chorei or did she not like disco? A brief image, so sudden and unclear that she wondered if it was her own imagination or Chorei's memories playing: Chorei, wearing a cheap wig which turned her into an awful atomic blonde, and wearing… well, no wonder she'd liked the bell bottoms. No, no, that never happened. Chorei had never been into disco. Ever. She was a nun who didn't know how to party, and… well, that image didn't look like someone who knew how to party Taylor was an expert in identifying people who didn't know how to party. She renewed her expertise in the topic by looking in the mirror as she strapped her gauntlet on over the jacket. Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. But… at least she was going into battle looking somewhat harmonious.

The Butcher was in the bathroom, ignoring the skinless corpse with the ease of someone who'd been around them for far too long. Her armour was back, her sword was back, her hair was tied into a loose ponytail. War paint was being steadily reapplied, but… it looked a little absurd. Her hand kept shaking. Her eyes were faintly vacant, losing some of their usual grandeur. Taylor was… against her best instincts, she was worried for her. Not instrumentally - not because this might suggest some instability that could pose a functional risk down the line - but just… well, because she didn't like seeing her like this. Just felt wrong. Taylor honestly wanted Chorei to say something now, to tell her that she was being an idiot, to make some sociopathic comment that would reassure her of her goals. Her goal was to find the hoard, prevent the city from imploding (because of course it was going to implode, when wasn't it imploding - this was precisely why she wanted to get out of this particular game, the crises were never-ending), and in order to achieve those two goals Patience needed to be alive (for now) and sane (for now). Then she could get her dad, get out of the city, pay for the best damn clinic in existence, a personal physician, as many drugs as money could buy, and massive celebratory dinner. And then… nap, maybe. A long nap. She was just trying to get to that point, she'd figure out the rest later. Chorei just needed to remind her of that, focus her, and…

Nothing. Too tired. Asleep - or as asleep as Chorei could get. Healing Patience was… exhausting her, more and more.

Problem for later.

Taylor gritted her teeth, cracked her knuckles one by one to draw out the satisfaction… and picked her way carefully over the bloodstained newspaper, around the bloodstained table, in the direction of the bathroom containing more than the usual amount of corpses. For her bathroom, to clarify. Not her life. This was fairly below-average for her regular life, she usually saw way more corpses than this, sometimes in even worse states. Sometimes. Patience stared into the mirror in front of her, trying to apply swooping, dramatic eyeshadow… failing. Looked like she had jagged black lightning bolts arcing away from her eyes. Her fingers kept drumming on the edges of the sink - Taylor could see tiny cracks where she'd drummed too hard.

"...Patience?"

Her head twitched round with enough speed to crack.

"Hm?"

"...holding up?"

Her face shivered slightly, trying out a half dozen expressions before settling on pained confusion.

"No. Not delighted to know that the entire existence of these fucking wolves is to… create another Sleeper."

"You believe it, then?"

"Of course I do. These things started howling when you talked about that stuff, they loved it. Sounded a little irritated that I'd figured it out, wanted me to be in the dark, but… but they can't hide their excitement. Not anymore."

"...sorry I can't quiet them down as well."

Shouldn't have said that. Stupid to admit weakness. Patience grimaced.

"Don't worry about it. They're going all out, they think this is the final stand for them. But if we get away, if we win… no, we're not running. Have to win. They won't ever shut up if they think there's a chance."

Her grimaced turned into a small, tight, vicious smile.

"They've been planning this since Angrboda made them the way they are. Well, you know what?"

Her head slammed forward, and the sink cracked cleanly off the wall. When her head came back up, the jagged lightning bolts of war paint were running downwards, and her hair was plastered to the front of her forehead in isolated strands. Her teeth gleamed.

"Fuck them. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them. And fuck their plans. They have eternity, and they use it to… to plan? To scheme? Fuckwads. Fucking idiots. They have a permanent afterlife, and they choose to use it in the worst way possible. It's like… like storing gunpowder in an active retirement home, it's fucked up, it's wasteful, it's messy, and it's pissing me the fuck off because that's meant to be my retirement home. And yours, if you want it."

Taylor backed off very slightly. Patience's voice rose higher, turning into a roar. Taylor's arm was itching, she couldn't say why, just… just itching. Like she had a rash.

"Fuck. Them. Do you hear me? I have earned an afterlife, I sacrificed for it, and no-one, no-one is going to steal it at the last moment. This is my head now, this is my eternity, and not even Angbroda can take that away from me. In fact, you know what? Fuck this pretentious fucking title - Butcher, come on, it's stupid, we only have it because the first guy forced us to, and guess what? Fuck him! I always hated the title, I just liked what it came with, and now I know it comes with a side order of wolfish bullshit. No, this is my legacy now. What is my fucking name!"

Taylor tried to step back… and tried not to flinch when a pair of heavy gauntlets grabbed her around the shoulders, hauling her a good few inches off the ground in the process. Patience's eyes were more than glowing now, they were practically burning, leaking fat red sparks down her face which sparked and hissed on the soaked floor. Her eyebrows were full of dust, and her hair was spiked with shards from the destroyed sink.

"What is my fucking name!"

"Patience! You're Patience Nguyen!"

"Exactly! And I'm Quarrel, and I'm the boss of the Teeth, I'm the prime fucking incisor. And I'm not Angrboda's whipping bitch, I'm not some host for a bunch of parasites, and I'm not the herald of someone else's apocalypse. I am my herald, understand?"

"Yeah, I… I understand. Completely. We should… we should go and handle that, then."

Patience looked abruptly sorrowful, apologetic. With a groan, she dropped Taylor and started to clear the shards out of her hair. Taylor scratched idly at her arm.

"Sorry about the sink."

"...not mine, apologise to Turk."

"Hm."

Back to adjusting her makeup. Hands were shaking even worse, she only managed to smear lipstick around her mouth and widen the dripping lightning bolts around her eyes. Looked like she'd burned half her face and drenched the other half in blood. A moment later… she drew a long slash across her throat in livid red lipstick, laughing slightly to herself. Taylor finished backing off, ignoring the bruises that would surely be spreading over her shoulders roundabout now. Stumbled downstairs. Turk was gathering their tools. Ted's bombs were unmarked, so they'd been divided into piles of those which had visible, presumably workable triggering mechanisms, and those which were just amorphous, ominous piles of mangled junk that could probably… oh, shit, she'd asked Ted to make a vortex of infinite agony just in case things went south with the Butcher. No idea if she'd done it, or if they'd recovered it, but… she strapped a few grenades to her belt just in case. More than usual, she wanted to have some variety - and some insurance if any turned out to be prototypes or duds. Pistol was back. Rifle seemed to be lost to the city - but Turk had a backup for her. She flinched when explaining the loss… he shrugged lightly. Infuriatingly understanding. Ahab was a bristling mass of guns, knives, Secateurs, and body armour. Not taking chances. Sanagi had geared up a little lighter, but still… quite the sight. The skull and exposed bones didn't help. Nor did the stars. She felt a small sense of loss looking over them… Vicky not here, Arch and Ted exposed to some unknown level of threat, maybe lying dead or dying… the First Rifle gone, stolen away, leaving her feeling unpleasantly exposed. Vicky even had the charm. Her tools were limited, her allies were dwindling…

Time to get to work.

She spread out the map of the sewers she'd dragged from the internet. Patience clattered down the stairs, her armour scraping the walls, her coat flapping around her heels, her sword carving a sharp line on the ceiling. Turk flinched slightly. Oh, he could forgive the rifle, he could get over the skinless body, but property damage was where he drew the line for what he was willing to tolerate. Might be a straw that broke the camel's back situation, but…

Anyway. She itched at her arm absent-mindedly, wincing slightly as she dug a little too deep into the flesh. Probably giving herself a rash at this point.

"Hard to say where it is, but this is the old section of the sewers - nothing else precedes this, and the diary mentions that the comet landed in this part of the city. Unless it was removed, it's somewhere here. Not too large, my swarm should be able to…"

She paused. Hold on. She recognised this place. A little scratch before she kept going.

"...hold on. Does anyone remember this place?"

Everyone glanced at one another, shrugging.

"It's where we found Vicky. Remember? She went down into these sewers for… some fucking reason, found Maggot Brain, ended up going a little nuts, I dragged her back, and…"

She trailed off. Recognition blooming in all but Patience, who just looked resigned to not understanding everything around her. Or she was focusing on a screaming voice in her head, one or the other.

"...it's here. Has to be. If those termites were here, and if that diary mentioned termites burrowing around the comet, then… maybe it was a nest for them, maybe it was just a place they had some sympathy with, but it feels likely."

Ahab grimaced.

"Will we need those concrete bombs, you think?"

"Maybe. Flamethrowers should do in a pinch… and Patience, you can teleport. Should give us some room to manoeuvre."

Making sure not to call her Butcher, no matter how much her habits wanted her to. The last thing she wanted was a rage-filled tantrum. She still felt a tiny, tiny flash of pity when she saw Patience looking listless again. Remembered what Chorei had said - most likely severely depressed in the past. Wanted a way out of existence without having to confront the terror of non-being. Turk quietly started getting out a few slightly battered flamethrowers that they'd used against the devotees of the Five-Horned Bull. They had nothing else to bring. No more plans. No more tools, no more allies. Reminded her of that last night against Bisha, when everything came down the wire and it'd been combat, combat, combat unceasing. Stress and terror and panic and nothing else. Everything pushed to the brink. Sanagi spoke up, quietly, her face only half-peeled.

"Do you think Kabiri will be there?"

Taylor blinked.

"Most likely. He has those maps, he saw part of the research - the part which he found relevant, at least. Wounds are probably slowing him, surprised he hasn't bled out, but… he'll have to treat them, and those maps cover a broad area - Arch didn't pinpoint the exact location, not like we just did. He's working with incomplete information, but he'll be in the area, and… do you know if he can hide himself?"

"Not in any way that matters. His fog is… very obvious."

"Well. So… probably. Yeah. We'll find Kabiri."

A warning red star pulsed in each of Sanagi's hollow sockets.

"Good."

Ahab patted her on the shoulder, flashing a small grin that was only somewhat reciprocated. Not sure of the history there, not sure if she wanted to know. But she'd rarely seen Sanagi so… profoundly furious. Patience leaned closer, and Taylor scratched slightly at her arm - it was fine, no cuts, no blisters, no bites, just… irritating enough to bug her.

"...hey, you want him dead?"

A bead of sweat ran down Patience's head, running through her war paint.

"...if you give me his head, I'll let you into the Teeth. Instant court member. Taylor and I are going to travel the country together, do some… some wild things, I can promise that. You'd fit right in. I'd love to have you on a boat all to myself for a few days, you know?"

Sanagi looked confused, and faintly afraid. With effort, she spoke.

"I'll give you his head if I can. If there's enough of it left to carry. But I don't want to join your gang."

"Shame. Real shame."

"I used to be a cop."

"Still have the handcuffs?"

"...that's police property. No."

"Nuts. I'm just saying, skeleton woman in a police uniform, leprous woman in combat gear, handcuffs, some oil, little mood lighting from those stars… you two could have a party, all I'm getting it."

Sanagi looked at her like she was about to release a particularly violent laser. Ahab looked like she was about to burst out laughing… that or punch Patience in the face, the two expressions were remarkably similar.

And then something shivered in the air, a strange look overtook Patience, and matters… changed.

Patience snapped her hand out quickly, reaching for Sanagi's face - and Taylor flinched. Shit. Did she need to… Patience slid her fingers carefully into one of Sanagi's sockets, and before the woman could do anything, a star had been stolen. A tiny, gleaming blue star. Patience's gauntlet acquired a fine black patina around the glowing core, and steam rose from the point of contact. She stared at it with wide eyes… and quietly popped it into her mouth. Her mouth glowed, and for a second her skull was completely visible, and Taylor swore she could see things moving in her brain. Tumours, if tumours moved and writhed and snapped at one another, slithering through the grey matter with the ease of fish in water, jaws dripping with neurotransmitter, propelling themselves with tiny dendrite tendrils. Infesting her completely. No wonder she twitched. Taylor felt a surge of terror. Was this some… some bizarre form of suicide, was she giving up on going on and letting Taylor take over ahead of time, or… the light passed down her throat, her ribcage glowed, her armour steamed, and… she sighed.

"Oh, I'd love to hang out with you. Your brain tastes wonderful. I bet you have great thoughts."

…so that thing with the glass eye at their first breakfast together had been a Patience thing. Not a Butcher thing. Good to know. Sanagi quickly peeled off the rest of her face to hide her expression, but her jaw was utterly rigid, her pincers clicked erratically, and Patience seemed to take a perverse enjoyment in the fact that she was getting a reaction. Silence around the table. Taylor downed a cup of lukewarm tea, and the click of it returning its saucer was enough to make people move again, ignoring the… whatever the fuck had just happened. God, she wished Chorei could've seen that, she'd have commiserated with Taylor's pained confusion and rapidly escalating panic. As it was, Sanagi just looked disturbed, Ahab looked faintly intrigued (no, Ahab was not allowed to taste Sanagi's brain, Taylor was making an executive decision on that front), and Turk… Turk looked spiritually exhausted, and she saw him quietly sliding a crucifix under his armour.

A sip of lukewarm tea. A final check of ammunition, grenades, armour, fastenings… Taylor coughed, gathering attention.

"Well, ladies, gentleman…"

Patience grinned, and took over.

"Let's go fuck up that wolfy cunt."

Taylor grimaced.

"Sure. Wolfy cunt."

Patience slammed her fist on the table, her voice turning to an animalistic snarl, eyes flashing with unpleasant fire.

"Wolfy fucking cunt."

Sanagi flinched, but said nothing. Ahab and Turk glanced at one another, and shrugged.

Kids.

* * *​

Vicky and Crystal stared at one another. One of them, betrayed and confused. The other, drenched in blood and looking like a crazed, flaying meth addict who possessed powers she really shouldn't. There was a long moment of silence, and the sound of dripping blood from the walls of the hospital. Dean was gone. Nothing remained, nothing but a pile of red gore, and a single dim shrivelled eye, that had once burned with a yellow fire which reeked of despair and joy - which stank of the inevitable chaos. Vicky felt drained. Her ears were ringing. Couldn't feel her hands or side at this point, just… just the intake of air, the exhalation of breath, over and over, her lungs filling with agonising slowness. She wondered if Peacemaker was still influencing time, or… no. He was gone. And he'd said himself that there was no other body for him to take. Maybe he'd show back up. But… no. What would stop those other bodies from dying too? The First Rifle had been stolen, or reproduced. Either was bad. And that tiltrotor… PRT. It couldn't be anything but PRT, no-one else maintained those things, and that armour, the swift, silent efficiency of the operation… something was trying to break through the ringing in her ears, a dull sound coming from a very, very long way away… her eyes refocused. Crystal was talking. Shit.

"-cky, Vicky, come on, are you-"

"I'm…"

She wanted to say she was fine. Wasn't. Already vomited enough while dealing with the flaying, had nothing in her left to come up. Best she could do was a hollow groan, and stumbling over to the balcony edge, leaning over and relishing the cold air. The heat of the hospital was rapidly dissipating. Crystal looked… she looked like someone who'd been attacked by her cousin using a power she shouldn't have access to while wearing human skin.

"...Vicky? No, wait - OK, I don't know what's happening, and honestly, I don't even fucking know if you're Vicky at all. Last I remember, Vicky didn't wear human skin and conjure up giant spears from nowhere. So, please, just prove that to me. Prove that you're still you. Please."

Her voice was desperate. Her fists were clenched, and fat red sparks leaked between her fingers. Wanted to leave her alone. Wanted to help her. But needed proof. Vicky racked her brain, come on, come on… how could…

"My name is Victoria… uh…"

She hesitated. Goddamn it. Did she have to say her middle name, she really disliked it…

"Victoria Juniper Dallon, and I hate my middle name. I'm seventeen years old, I'll turn eighteen in a month. Before I came up with the name 'Glory Girl', I worked with a few other ideas, some of which I workshopped with you and only you. We tried out Damocles, because of the aura thing. Gave up when it turned out that a villain had that name, and it was also a guy's name. We also tried out Goldsquire, maybe turning into Lady Gold once I got old enough. Decided against it. And… you suggested Smash Mouth, because I talk a lot and I punch things. I smacked you for that. Sorry."

Crystal still looked conflicted.

"When you were six and I was five, you dared me to eat a cockroach, and if I did, you'd get me one of those trophies your dad keeps in his office. You promised to get me one of Marquis' weird blade things, it was… yeah, it was stupid, but I thought they were the coolest. I tried, but then it started moving and I got really, really, really sick. And you were terrified of vomiting at that time, so you started crying like a baby, and your mom floated out of the kitchen, and saw me vomiting up a cockroach while crying, you were just crying, I kept trying to grab you - I think I wanted to punch you in the stomach - and you kept kicking me, so there was mud all over me as well, and then I dragged you down into the mud, and you landed on the cockroach which was still alive, and… your mom just popped the tab on her beer and floated back inside with this expression like-"

Crystal interrupted.

"Like she was regretting her entire existence. Yeah. I remember. I also remember that we agreed to never discuss it again, and we'd succeeded in doing that for over a decade. And now I feel sick. God."

She shuddered.

"...OK, fine, you're… you. I accept that. Not going to actively laser you in the face now, great. Quick, just before we go on - last set of M/S codes, given out the morning you went to that place in the mountains."

Vicky blinked.

"I wasn't around when those were given out, my last set was from the day before. And they were… uh… 'vermillion echoes in a crystal canopy, golf nine seven three point three negative one zero divided by the root of seven thousand six hundred and twelve, time is made of an interlocking sequence of Akkadian-Dravidian poetic rejoinders.'"

"...that checks out. Fine. Maybe not mastered, and you're you. Good. Now, politely, can you explain what the fuck just happened? And… why are you wearing human-"

Cut her off again. Felt shitty, but…

"OK. First, I'm sorry about the… attack, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, more worried about you and…whatever the fuck is going on. Your mom is going apeshit, she's saying you're mastered, maybe been replaced, anything she can think of. She's freaked the fuck out, like, more than I've ever seen her. But… look, call me an idiot, but under all this? You still look like Vicky. Acting like her, just… a little off, you know the codes, you remember that story… And that is literally the only reason I'm not getting my mom to put you in a ball and drag you to the Rig. That, and… y'know. The Rig. Last time one of my cousins was dragged there she didn't come back. Ever."

Vicky flinched… and felt a strange pulse of gratitude. Wasn't attacking. Wasn't arresting her. Looking shaken and twitchy, but wasn't… anyway.

"I can… alright. I'll… will you trust me here?"

A hint of desperation crept into her voice.

"I didn't do… this, this was-"

"Someone else, I saw that much. Heard a gunshot, saw it hitting him, and the way you screamed… OK. Yeah. I trust you. It's the only reason I'm not literally dragging you away kicking and screaming because, Vicky, what the fuck, I reiterate, and I would like to have my comments read back every two seconds just to remind both of us precisely how fucked up this situation is."

"...OK. So…"

She paused.

"...the city is about to be destroyed."

Crystal blinked, and rotated her hand a few times.

"Continue, please. Don't let me stop you."

"City's about to be destroyed. Angrboda skinned herself. I'm wearing part of her. It's really weird, I hate every second of it, but I just… need the boost. Because apparently it gives me her powers."

"...you know, you're talking about wearing the skin of a dead Nazi like it's something you can justify rationally. It's not. It's really not."

"I'm aware. Once this is over, I'm burning this stuff, getting all the therapy money can buy, taking a big old holiday and coming back to see if my mom will actually talk to me. I dunno, maybe I'll go find Uncle Mike, crash with him for a bit. But until then, I just… I really need the boost. City's about to blow up. Dean was… was possessed by something. Wanted to stop the thing about to blow up the city. And then he was shot."

"...is there proof of that?"

"Behind me, in the hospital, there's a bunch of bodies. They're burned, they're holding their eyes in their hands, and their eyes are yellow, shrivelled, and the pupils have exploded."

"...hold on a second, that sounds-"

"Like Ordeal - his real name was Bisha, by the way. It's the same thing he did. But not the same person. See? This is weird, and it doesn't work by the normal rules. Bisha is dead, I've met the people who killed him, but other people can do the stuff he does. Like possessing people. This stuff isn't normal. And… and that's why I'm wearing human skin. To you, it makes no sense, to me, it… almost does. Almost. Trust me, every second I have this stuff on I feel like I'm about to start dry heaving."

"I'll… OK, fine. Sure. I'll accept this. For now."

Conflict boiled in her. Go after the tiltrotor… it was getting away, further and further, accelerating to its maximum speed. Could barely hear it now, just enough to track its movements a little. But… but that thing below the city, it sounded urgent. Felt urgent - she could feel something shivering below her feet, a vague rumble that promised something unpleasant. She felt… she felt like she could actually choose, the skin wasn't driving her in one direction or another, her role wasn't doing it either. The warmth in her chest, the pulsing inevitability of flame, it… made those things shrivel away. Just a little. She could still harness their power, but the voices were dimmer, easier to isolate. She looked up at Crystal, and made a decision.

"I need to go take care of that thing under the city. I have… friends who can help. I think… I think I might know where it is, too. You're faster than me - can you go after that tiltrotor which did… this?"

Not compelled to go for it, to seek immediate, stupid, reckless revenge. She could think. Crystal blinked.

"...the one that just turned Dean into… that?"

She wanted to say something sarcastic. Too respectful. Nice of her. But the pile of meat had ceased to be Dean. He'd died before she even arrived at the hospital, this was just… a final erasure. Hurt. But it was a manageable pain, dull, rarely spiking. A constant weight that she imagined would be with her for the rest of her life. But if it was constant… she could get used to it.

"I… know. OK, text the rest of the family, let them know to get together, just… just for safety, I guess. And let them know what you're doing. If you go dark… they'll know what it means."

"...this feels risky."

"It is. But I can't go in both directions at once."

"There's a lot you haven't explained."

"There's a lot I can't explain, not with the time we have. Please, it's getting…"

Crystal waved her hands dismissively.

"Vicky, I'm going after that tiltrotor. That's fine. I'm just worried about you, you look like shit, you're wearing a human skin scarf and glove (and those colours will never match with anything, you should know that), you've got more powers, which is just… wow, OK, yeah, still processing that. And Dean exploded. This is a lot."

"It'll get worse if I don't-"

"Cousin dearest, we're capes. I kinda know how this deal works. Go on, save the city. I'll go laser the shit out of some people. And afterwards, you're sitting down with a whiteboard and a brand new pack of markers and explaining everything. And I do mean everything. Including who these well-informed friends are - are they connected to that girl who told me about Naakt… uh, whatever?"

"...what did she look like?"

"Dark curly hair, weird suit, eyepatch, scars, hung out with Laserscream…"

"Yeah. I know her. She's one of them. Maybe. Might be kidnapped."

"Vicky, how do you find time for this?"

Her laugh was faintly desperate. Barely hanging on. The two of them got along, better than most of New Wave… and Vicky knew why she was going along with this. They'd both had their disagreements with the seniors - with the collective of parents. The Amy situation had sparked it, but other things had fed the fire. The increasing compromises, the increasing connections to the PRT they were trying to get away from. The endless branding and marketing, just to keep themselves afloat as a group. The increasing sense of futility, the fact that despite all they did no tangible results actually manifested. Eric was too… honestly, dependent to really question it, but Vicky and Crystal were definitely getting uncomfortable with things. Crystal could complain - she was going to college, leaving the city behind her. And Vicky had just gotten too worn down and tired to care about the consequences. A pulse of guilt at the thought of pinning her mom in place with a stolen power. A pulse of indignation at the things Uheer's scarf had told her. And a pulse of gratitude at the fact that Crystal was actually willing to make time for her bullshit.

"...thanks. Really. I know this is-"

"Shut up, we haven't got long. But again. Whiteboard. Markers. A shitton of coffee. And explanations. I want to know everything."

She really didn't. But Vicky nodded nonetheless. She'd explain all she could. If she lived. Or was capable of speaking without screaming madly and bleeding from all the holes in her face. She sighed.

"Don't… don't attack the tiltrotor or the people in it. Stay at range, be cautious, just… see if you can find out what they're doing. Don't get hurt. And make sure that people know where you are."

She had a suspicion that the tiltrotor was affiliated with… anyway. An organisation careful enough that they wouldn't be willing to attack someone so high-profile, who was in constant contact with even more high-profile capes. Fame was… irritating, sometimes. And very occasionally it was useful. She hoped this would be one of those occasions. If they wanted her dead, they could've just shot twice. But they hadn't. That had to imply something good. But there was no point in tempting fate. Crystal shrugged.

"Well…"

Red light crackled around her hands, illuminating her face from below, casting her eyes into deep shadow.

"You know how careful I am."

Vicky couldn't help herself. She smiled. For the first time in a good little while, she genuinely smiled. Casually, she gestured upwards… and a spear roughly two-thirds the size of a telephone pole fell into her hands. Iron Rain had wasted her power - if she'd been a brute, she could've done some shit. Crystal flinched at the sight of it… but the image of Vicky actually smiling was enough to make her look… well, a little more relaxed. And the sight of Crystal looking relaxed was enough to slightly unwind the knot of tense grief in Vicky's stomach, barely suppressed by necessity and… and the feeling that she had a self. An impervious core that the world couldn't take away, that her roles couldn't quite hide. Crystal smiled crookedly, her hair already starting to grow ratty and split-ended from its exposure to the growing rainstorm. Her voice carried clearly, though.

"Lookin' good. Now, go and penetrate that city-ending mysteriousness with your enormous hard shaft."

Vicky's cautious smile turned into a grin.

"And go and impale those fucks in the tiltrotor with your red, hot, pulsing beam."

"Fuckin'-A. Hey…"

She floated closer, extending a fist.

"Don't know if we'll get to do this again, but… New Wave, woop woop?"

Vicky hesitated, for a moment realising that, just possibly, the two of them were… half-sisters, as opposed to cousins, if the scarf had been telling the truth about her mom's affair, and the timeframe was… anyway. Cousin, half-sister, didn't matter. Still friends. She bumped fists, and replied in a deadpan voice.

"New Wave, woop woop."

…she was feeling a little more human. The two shared a final smile… and began to move. One out of the city, and one into its depths. The city welcomed her completely, and… she could see something wrong. There was a thickness in the air, something rising out of the sewer grates, pulsing from the concrete. Anticipation was on the verge of breaking - something was coming close. Something bad. The new world was about to hatch. Rain tumbled from a roaring sky quickly turning a uniform inky black, the storm bringing an early night. Cars crowded the roads, the pavements heaved with bodies, people steaming in the combination of summer heat and torrential rain. She went lower, lower, descending deeper as her cousin soared away. The city felt wrong. She flew low and fast, staying out of sight of any potential searching capes. Couldn't have them interrupt. Uheer's scarf was gratifyingly silent, and the glove… the less said about that, the better. The inner peace only made the lack of it in the city more apparent. She flew past a gutter, and saw a small cairn of teeth built inside it, broken away during a street fight. Bloodstains that the rain couldn't wash away splashed on walls and concrete floors. Hungry eyes behind dark windows, a vague whispering accompanying their movements…

Graffiti. Some was coarse. Some was pointless. Some was just a mud-slinging match… and one caught her eye. A black mark. Paint overlaid over and over and over until she couldn't even see the contours of the brickwork. Surrounded by a vague red mist. A black hole. A staring eye. An egg about to hatch.

They had come to see a new world being born.

Her stomach twitched with barely-suppressed grief, too sudden for her to resist it. She flinched. Dean was gone. Fully gone. No hope of recovery, no body, no mind, nothing. Gone. Had barely processed it, just… just tried to keep moving, afraid to look back. She was wounded, tired, wanted to rest, and wanted to process everything that was happening. But she… she had to take care of this first. Keep moving, and all the problems faded away behind her. She kept flying. The sewers. She already had an idea of where this comet was meant to be, and she remembered the words leading to its resting place. The place where Maggot Brain and his followers had gathered, hiding from the surface, past a cavernous cistern filled with squirming rats, where she'd started using the charm and had become something… something unnatural. That's where the words had been written above the tunnel.

Wawaenin
Pussoqua weyaus
Ween wutch manittooonk

A witness.
Corrupted flesh.
The marrow of divinity.

They'd known. She remembered Naaktgeboren Ridge, the shimmering mass of impossible metal beneath the surface, cloaked with skins to stop its poisonous light from leaking outwards…

She flew faster, rushing for her entry point. It approached, and she dove inside gladly, welcoming the dark, welcoming the shelter, and welcoming the stink of ozone in the air.

Time was running short.

* * *​

Calvert twitched. The ledger fell from his hands, and he stared at the screen in front of him. A shiver. A twitch. Something had shifted in the world - like the tectonic plate beneath him had moved just an inch faster than it should, and his body was adjusting to the change. Something had begun, he could feel it. Quietly, he began to search for all the information he could access, checking for alerts, checking for anything that should have been brought to his attention. No spikes in crime, the Teeth were staying nice and quiet, the mercenaries hadn't done a damn thing - Uheer was likely dead, he was fairly certain of that fact. There'd been some excitement over the Butcher reappearing, but he wasn't too worried about her, or that… Neither-Nor character she was associating with. Matrimonial was dead, Spree was gone, and even if the Teeth civil war was settled down, they were still down a huge number of parahumans without any gang or organisation actually fighting them, beyond a one-sided gunfight with the PRT that the PRT (under his leadership) had won handily. He glared at his screen… Miss Militia's report, quickly filed away and ignored, nothing new there… come on, why had he been shaken? Why had…

Shit.

Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

He… he'd done it. He split timelines just to be safe, and in both he was struggling not to smile, not to laugh loudly. He'd won. He'd fucking won.

A few minor reports crossed his dashboard, some business with Gallant's comatose body, something to do with New Wave… he ignored it all. The Directorate had gotten sloppy. Panicked, maybe. Knew someone was closing in on them, perhaps. The sample of metallic archaea enzyme that his agents had recovered from that warehouse had been analysed (private lab, naturally), and he'd been able to pinpoint certain… marks. Little quirks of certain types of machinery that produced this stuff. Then, narrowing it down further, he'd found all facilities in the city limits (and beyond) which had access to that machinery. And then he'd accessed their inventories (illicitly) to narrow down the list even further, checking for discrepancies between the amount of raw material sent in, and the amount of product sent out - indicating that someone was getting hold of this stuff off the books. The number of deaths he'd suffered while doing all this spoke to his proximity to the truth - his back ached from all the bullets he'd felt ripping through it, and his gut wouldn't be the same for a while. Death hurt, even if it didn't count. But he was close. To the Directorate themselves.

He'd looked deeper… and two sites had presented themselves. Applying all the above criteria, there were seven sites in the city which could produce the encrypting enzyme, used the right machinery to leave those specific markers on the protein chain, and had the discrepancies in their log books. The Directorate had been very, very careful on that front, presumably setting up dummies, or drawing from multiple sources. Observing all of them at once would just involve spreading his network too wide, too thin, and a single vulnerability would blow the whole operation. No, needed to narrow it down even more. Down to two. Two facilities. Two facilities in the city, neither of which were remarkable, both small labs that worked for a variety of companies to produce certain specialised chemicals. Unlike the other five, these two were connected up with a British investing firm that he recognised.

As vice-director, he had access to some… classified files, a few secretive minutes from the early PRT's history. Took a few deaths, but he accessed them nonetheless. The Directorate used highly specific encryption methods, hid their identities, answered to almost nobody, and were practically unaccountable to the public or to any public body. But their early minutes, before this shift to secrecy following a series of assassination attempts (some successful), recorded a name. Turing. A British tinker specialised in encryption using unorthodox means. The man had been hired by a Swiss bank to encrypt the details of their more sensitive clients with Peruvian quipus, he was a maniac. Long-gone, of course. But he'd evidently set up these methods, and he hadn't worked alone. Turing couldn't be found, not even sure if he was alive or dead, but he knew that an individual with intimate connections to Turing had a stake in an investment firm which had invested in these two facilities. Follow the money, and these two facilities were the only ones in the city with as direct link to the Directorate - from facility, to investment firm, to civilian, to encryption tinker, to Directorate.

Someone had slipped up a little in an attempt to make money using personal connections, or maybe it was a necessity for their operations to have an independent provider of funds… but either way. It'd worked.

His observers had seen a vehicle rapidly approaching one of these facilities, departing just as quickly with a load of chemicals in the back. An informant in the facility had confirmed it - this was an altered form of the enzyme, specialised for Directorate communications (if the sample he'd found in that warehouse was indeed used by the Directorate, which he assumed it was). The report was quick, and he had constant updates on the vehicle's position. The Directorate had needed a little top-up, it seemed, and had sent out someone for a milk run. Necessity had overwhelmed caution - without this enzyme, they couldn't communicate securely, and with that, they might as well expose themselves to the world. Oh, he'd taken steps to ensure this - patrols were ordered to stop all vehicles above a certain weight class under the guise of checking for Teeth members getting smuggled into the city in large numbers. Slowed the trucks down to a halt, pissed off a lot of people, but it had forced the Directorate's hand. No way of getting their chemicals besides going through the facilities he'd observed and infiltrated. The vehicle was moving… south, had to be. He clicked through a dozen windows, shuffling things around - track it, find where it was going, manufacture a crisis (piece of piss) and then send agents to crack the place open. He checked his alerts again, making sure… hm. That Gallant matter looked urgent. He quickly checked the file…

A moment later, Thomas Calvert was sprinting out of his office, a rare look of panic on his face.

He was sliding down a razor, and if he moved any way but the correct one, he'd be shredded. Because Thomas Calvert didn't get nice things, Calvert just got higher stakes. Higher risk, higher reward. This was his form of karma. Some said that God didn't play dice - that was correct, what he played was an advanced form of Russian roulette with the gun aimed directly at Calvert, and all the empty chambers were actually filled with clouds and glitter and piles and piles of liquid power. He assumed it tasted like cocaine. Not that he'd know. Too level-headed to engage with that stuff, made him better at selling it… no, no, stop thinking about past successes, everything was balanced on the edge, and if he worked incorrectly, he'd be… he'd be fucked.

Gallant had woken up. And the signs the PRT patrol which had checked up on the site had shown… nothing. No body. And waves of heat. Piles of bodies with shrivelled eyes. No, no, no. He knew Bisha could possess people, it was part of his powerset, but he didn't know… he thought he was gone, he's seen the reports on his fucking body. Bisha couldn't be back, it wasn't… wasn't… fuck! And then there'd been reports of Glory Girl getting into a scuffle with her mother and cousin, racing for the hospital. Flying away from it a short time later, just before the patrol arrived, speaking to Laserdream before she went. Safety be damned, subtlety be damned, he was in the endgame, and everything was coming back to bite him.

Bisha had been recovering, biding his time, whatever. He was back. And Glory Girl was compromised, made sense, he was a powerful master and she'd been visiting him a great deal if his reports were correct. And now evidently Laserdream… who could say if the others were taken? Brandish was reported to be acting a little odd by some plainclothes PRT troopers (obligated to report all cape sightings, even while off-duty). Maybe the rest of New Wave was compromised. Bisha had been clever. Two-step con - fake his death, let his operations be exposed, make it seem as though he was gone… only for him to re-emerge with a cape team under his full control, probably infiltrators everywhere else. See through one layer, and arrogantly assume there couldn't be another. Standard method, he'd used it himself on many occasions, but… shitty shitty fuck fuck. He hated swearing this much, even in his own head. Uncouth. But now it was necessary. Needed the relief. He swore in two timelines simultaneously, maximising the catharsis… reached a plateau of relief, and he was still fucking stressed.

Bisha was back.

He knew about Coil. he knew about Calvert. He was making his moves. He could tell the world, compromise everything, Calvert would be locked down - his reputation had been built on recovering from the Conflagration, his predecessor had been undone by his mismanagement of that same crisis. Bisha's re-emergence would destroy him, send him into mandatory retirement. No idea how quick he was acting, the Conflagration had happened with terrifying speed once it got going. Needed to move. Needed… the ledger focused him, helped him think. Even the memory of it was enough. The endless numbers and letters, the perfect code for a program he didn't want to understand… it was enough. Calming. As Vice-Director, his time was limited. Soon, his authority would be gone and he'd be locked down. No chance of moving. As Director, he'd be immune to everything. He could vanish from the face of the earth, kill off a body double he had lying around somewhere, let the scandal emerge… while he vanished completely. The Director could be replaced, and as long as he mastered their methods quickly (easy enough, he'd been working for the bastard for months now), no-one would know. No-one saw a Director, no-one knew their names, even the rest of the Directorate kept themselves hidden from one another if his reports were correct. He could hide. He could survive the calamity, increase his power, become something better. Two layer con - people could see Calvert and Coil, think they knew it all, while Calvert really achieved something more than they could ever imagine.

Something was wrong with that plan. But… but it was like there was something clouding his thoughts, like a buzzing layer of static that… that he couldn't even get a grasp on. He couldn't even say that it existed. What was he thinking again? His plan? It seemed logical. It seemed perfect, even.

He ran, and began to dial various numbers in various timelines.

His blood ran colder.

Shit. Nuts. Crap.

How the fuck had Uheer managed to get a communication off to her superiors? Those… those fucks at Keshig had used their connections, and his secret accounts in Switzerland were frozen. Shit, that country was run by mercenaries at this point, of course they'd… OK, he could still use a small staff of mercenaries he kept elsewhere, associated with a different, smaller company, not… Keshig had gotten to them too. The contract was broken. They told him that they'd be happy to work through a lawsuit - one he could never bring forward without exposing himself to the world. His mercenaries had vanished, his money had gone. He only had his vice-director account, which was pathetically tiny, he could barely hire street thugs. Couldn't take the PRT troopers, just couldn't. They were working for the Directorate, for SET - their patrols frequently ignored him, went off on their own errands. No, couldn't… couldn't… hm. Come on, think of the ledger, think calmly. He slowly got his breathing under control, ducking into a bathroom, studying himself in the mirror. He was calm. His suit was wonderful. His demeanour was flawless. He mopped sweat from his brow… he was fine.

OK. Review his options. No mercenaries. No money. No troopers he could trust. Minimal resources. Time running out. He checked his phone… informants were still running, the vehicle was making progress. He had a window before it all went to hell. Could get a tiltrotor from the Rig, but… hm. Pilots. He considered carefully. Needed someone as backup, someone tough, someone loyal to him who wouldn't ask for any money in exchange, someone he had a good psychological read on and could summon quickly, and…

Huh. Obvious now he thought about it.0

He pushed an intercom button in the corridor beyond. An operator answered - old-fashioned, but it kept someone employed, added a layer of security.

"This is operator B7-82, how may I assist you?"

He allowed the moron to finish talking. Feign casualness.

"This is Vice-Director Calvert, access code whiskey-epsilon-coal-11192."

"Code received. Proceed, sir."

"Open communications, access point 17-11, use secure frequencies, class 3."

Wanted to use class 1, but that would be distinctly uncasual. Class 3 was the highest he could reasonably manage without arousing suspicion.

"Right away, sir."

A buzz. A hum. A click.

"Sir?"

"Miss Militia, I'm going to need your help. Meet me in the hangar."

He checked his sidearm… and a few special toys he'd had cooked up as Coil. Just for self-defence. And with so much access to PRT records, well… he had some wonderful ideas, and with his criminal empire gone, quite a bit of time to act on them.

"Of course, sir. May I ask why?"

"Consider this highly confidential and maximum priority. We'll need to move fast to avoid disaster. You can fly a tiltrotor?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good."

He smiled, very, very slightly.

Sometimes he felt like Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a hill over and over and watching it roll down. Success, success, failure. Success, success, failure. Never just successes… and his failures could always be recovered.

Well, now he was taking his rock, and he was going to beat the Director to death with it.

Sisyphus was going apeshit tonight.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

229 - Unfurl in the Comet's Cherenkov Glow

Something was rotten in Brockton Bay. The air stank. The concrete crawled with invisible shapes. And the sky… the sky was black, and the lightning which erupted from it seemed too regular, too… geometrical. At no point did it simply arc randomly, it always formed a brief panoply of straight lines, perfect fractals descended downwards, downwards… until they vanished, and all that remained was the shadow of the great pattern in the eyes of the fortunate few who hadn't blinked. Circuit boards impressed onto retinas for a single, blinding moment. And then nothing. Nothing but the churning black skies, the flickering lightning half-glimpsed, and the tumbling rain which washed over the city, shearing away all that was unnecessary. All the dust and dirt, all the accumulated grime, it was stripped away, leaving nothing but buildings, people, the most important structures and features. The rain washed away the surplus, and left behind the core elements, the pieces that would play a role in the night to come. Taylor felt this when she looked up, sheltering herself awkwardly with a large rubber poncho. Only thing that'd fit over her armour. Patience was worse-off, she was forced to work with nothing but an insultingly tiny umbrella which mostly stopped the top of her head from getting soaked, and precisely nothing else. She didn't seem to mind, at least.

Getting across the city to the sewer access point Vicky had used felt like suicide. It would ivnvolve going through crowded areas, likely on foot (their vehicles would be snowed under by traffic and time was most certainly of the essence), and under the watchful eye of patrolling police and PRT troopers. Sanagi and Ahab were still probably wanted for their involvement in that scuffle with the Teeth, Patience… yeah… and Turk explained that New Wave probably wanted him hung, drawn, and quartered - then they'd get Panacea to heal him so they could do it all over again. And Taylor was tied up with all of them in some way. None of them were free of suspicion, and walking around felt like a recipe for disaster. So, they entered the sewer system in the nearest point possible, navigating using a mass of maps (already becoming soaked), and Taylor's insects. A single passer-by saw them as they left, and a single glaring stare from Patience was enough to shut him up and send him scurrying back home. Pale as a sheet - bloodless, really. Taylor put him out of mind, and Patience bent down to wrench open a manhole. She stared at the disk in her hand. Taylor's eyes narrowed.

"Don't."

"...I really want to."

"It's pointless."

"Yeah, I guess-"

She paused.

"No, you're not my boss."

At that, she whirled around in a circle, and flung the manhole cover like a discus. It sailed far out of sight, and Taylor slithered down the ladder into the grimy sewer before she could hear where it landed. Too late. She heard something crack - building, car, window, person, hard to say. She heard yells, but no screams. Maybe she'd killed them instantly. Anyway. Patience cackled to herself, and Ahab, encouraging her, offered up a high five that probably came close to spraining the pseudo-leper's wrist. Her one original wrist, too - limited edition. And if it snapped, Taylor wasn't going to get her a replacement for at least a few days, dramatic necessity notwithstanding. Had to learn not to encourage Patience. The sewers were… honestly, a little more spacious than she thought plausible. But then she examined the sides - the markings from their assembly. Recent, and… yeah. These weren't just sewers. They were designed to cope with the huge storm surges that Leviathan could bring, part of the same rush of anti-Endbringer design that had likewise produced Endbringer shelters. In an attack, they'd do nothing dramatic. But tsunamis and hurricanes induced every few months around the world was enough to fuck up weather systems everywhere. Storms were nastier - id est, now. The large pipelines would be necessary just to keep things from going out of control.

Felt… meaningful, in a way. Brockton Bay was a city that hadn't been built for modern challenges. Never had been. The 20th century docks were useless now that shipping had dried up. The 19th century buildings had become hellish once people became used to air conditioning. The 18th century sewers became utterly pointless after Leviathan fucked up the weather. And absolutely none of it was ready for any Endbringer. This was an adjustment, a band-aid to keep the city running in a world that had long-since moved on from it, and presented problems that the city simply couldn't deal with - the best it could do was make its own passing comfortable. She… was eager to get her dad out of here, and to leave herself. Never look back. It was nice, and she'd put a little work into defending it, but after a point she knew she would be running a glorified urban hospice. One more job. Once this was done, once Angrboda was taken care of… then she'd be gone. Once she had the hoard. Once she had her dad safe.

They wandered into the dark, and Patience's discus-induced grin began to fade. Her armour clattered as she moved, her sword scraped up a row of sparks along the ground behind her. Her eyes flickered between active and passive, glowing and dull, living and fish-eye dead. Turk advanced ahead, gun raised, navigating smoothly over the wet stones, stepping easily over the rivulets of stormwater that began to increase to raging rivers as they moved on. Ahab and Sanagi stayed close - Taylor was honestly glad they'd become friends. Even if Sanagi seemed to be closer and closer to abandoning humanity. Turk was busy, those two were mostly concerned with one another… she sidled closer to Patience as they walked, following a straightforward route to the older segments of the system, where the comet presumably lay. Patience barely reacted as Taylor came closer.

"...how are the voices?"

For operational competency. That was it.

"Bad. Loud. Don't think you can help, not at the moment."

Fuck, she knew.

"...yeah, Chorei's pretty sleepy at the moment, I'm not sure if she could do it as she is now. Later, maybe."

"Not this close to Angrboda. They smell her. They want to come to her side and nestle into her hand. Loyal dogs. Wolves, my ass… they're domesticated, they just only recognised one person as master. Dogs around her. Wolves around us."

Her voice was low and quiet, drained of even the anger she'd shown in the tea shop. Taylor looked at her carefully… and some life returned to Patience's voice.

"Who were you before this? Out of interest."

"Just a cape."

"You're a teenager, why not school?"

"Didn't find it rewarding. Wanted something else. Why did you leave… medical school, right?"

Patience looked at her sidelong, the first real eye contact she'd made in this conversation.

"I left because I was miserable and wanted to burn out brighter than anyone else. You… hm. I think there might be something like that in you."

"...probably. Parents?"

"Two. Both alive."

"Do they-"

"To them, Patience Nguyen jumped off the side of a bridge in the middle of winter, and her body was never recovered. I sent flowers to the funeral. And booze. They were good parents, they did a good job, but… sometimes people just aren't wired correctly. Not their fault that all this happened - one court member in the past tried to diagnose me like that, tried to dig into my parents, my family, everything. I hurt him. Badly. He didn't die, just… quit. My parents are still alive. Don't ask about them again."

Her voice was quiet. A little hint of regret. Not enough for Patience to ever act on, but enough for her to recognise.

"Yours?"

"Don't ask."

"Fair."

Silence. Huh, Patience actually had boundaries. Unsurprising, really, she'd been eerily considerate about the Matrimonial stuff on the boat. They advanced down the sewers in silence, the clicking of weapons being checked, double checked, triple checked, echoing through the tunnels. Smelled… like a sewer, but at least the storm was washing things out a little. Come to think of it, did these qualify as storm drains or sewers? She could see brown metal pipes, and they smelled… worse, so… was this a combination? Was that safe? Why didn't she know more about civic engineering? She'd ask, but… she felt that Patience would either know way too much and make her feel stupid, or would know nothing but would make up very plausible facts, then laugh at her when she believed them. Turk would hum, Ahab would cackle, Sanagi would stare dead ahead, it would all be very… well, standard. No. Best to be silent. The darkness grew thicker as they went down, the city sometimes fading to nothing than an occasional beam of light piercing the gloom… and then nothing at all for long stretches, nothing but the smell and her insects and the flickering torches that they'd all brought along.

The world held its breath as they moved.

Turk froze. The others clattered to a halt behind him, weapons coming up, grins splitting the faces of Patience and Ahab, eager for a break in the monotony. Taylor tilted her head to one side - her swarm had detected no-one and nothing. She'd been worried about the Teeth maybe coming down to stop them, maybe the PRT, but… no. Nothing. Just passages leading away. Turk pointed his torch at his map, looked up, and back down again. Taylor peered over his shoulder… and froze just as he had. There were three lines running away from here, each one identical to the others and the line they'd just emerged from. Straight on, left, and right. Simple, really. Harmless, honestly. But the map in front of her suggested that this line had no splits. No crossroads. The next one was a simple fork to accommodate a large basement in a high-rise building, nothing like this. They stared into the dark as one body, and Ahab summarised their thoughts adequately.

"Shit."

Taylor sent out her swarm as far as it would go, and came back with… nothing. Something twitched in her arm. Her swarm wasn't sensing anything unusual. Just passages leading into the dark. She felt a shiver run up her spine. Turk began to talk, slowly, carefully, and they hung on his words.

"Sleeper has three zones. Green. Yellow. Red. Green is minor physical, spatial, temporal distortions. Yellow is more dangerous, possibility of spontaneous nonexistence. And red… red is the body itself. I think we just entered the green."

Taylor's mouth formed a thin line.

"Anything to do about it?"

"No. Stakes are too high to go back, hm?"

…yeah. And she was… well, she knew that going back would be suicide. Patience's mind couldn't be corralled, and Taylor imagined that if those wolves had their plans foiled, then maybe, maybe, they'd turn on each other a little more instead of focusing all their efforts on Taylor and Patience. Until they did, her 'healing' would be weaker and weaker, more debilitating on each repetition. Unsustainable. And if there was no convenient pill, no useful piece of equipment… they'd be just as unprepared the next time they went down.

Patience twitched.

"Why would she keep us away?"

Taylor took over, ignoring the way her arm had twitched in sympathy with Patience.

"Maybe it's not deliberate, maybe she knows we're trying to kill her… I don't know."

Patience's words were half-whispered, hoarse.

"The latter is impossible. She can't know us. She doesn't know anything."

Something of the wolf entered her tone.

"We're standing in the cradle of the blind, idiot god. She doesn't even think that we exist. This is accidental. Or inevitable. Like it makes a difference."

Sanagi rasped through her synthesiser.

"So, which direction?"

Taylor thought for a moment… hm. Compasses… she checked quickly, a tiny pocket compass she'd brought to accompany the maps. Needle was still remaining fairly constant, and if she was getting her bearings correctly… she started moving, insects adopting the same motions she'd used in Mound Moor. Hunting for any kind of anomaly or discrepancy, anything that could be hazardous. Nothing thus far, just… tunnels, leading deeper and deeper. Was the city being affected as well? Sanagi looked a little shaken by this - a hint of recognition. Taylor hadn't spent much time in the city lately, just running between locations, but… hm. There had been a lot of back alleys, now she thought about it. Brockton Bay was big, but it wasn't quite that dense, it still obeyed a conventional grid layout in most places. Hm. She felt a vague sense of unease. How many… how long had this been affecting things without anyone noticing? An extra alley here, a building that made no sense there, pointless structures that no-one lived in… she'd thought, like many people, that cities were too big for what they actually contained.

How much of Brockton Bay was just… negative space? Her skin itched at the thought, and her arm was… the worst, really. Maybe a rash. She tugged up her sleeve a little… a bit red, but nothing alarming. She resolved to keep an eye on it, just in case it was more serious. Started recently, she knew that much. Thought she had that much self-knowledge, at least. Her mind flicked back to the idea of negative space, to the idea that spatial distortions had been affecting the city in minor ways.

She remembered a place Turk had once been. A tumorous building full of random, aggressively displaced trash. Piles of washing machines stacked in a small pyramid, a building that was somehow close to a nice, settled area… while still being profoundly abandoned and decaying. Paradoxical, and subtly off.

A weird fog that randomly enveloped the city, and had done so since the business with the termites. Remembered seeing it when she'd been drinking with Ahab and Sanagi. An eerie singing that carried through the empty streets, words inaudible and tune somehow familiar and alien at the same time. Never found its source.

A rock which just so happened to have a hole in the centre which led to a dark, cold space which, apparently, was linked to the Five-Horned Bull. Sitting in the middle of a park, responding to precise invocations, hiding her from anyone's presence.

Something Arch had mentioned, ages ago. Bleeding seashells. No reason. Just… seashells seeming to weep blood, a phenomenon no-one had commented on, not really. A tiny fragment of impossibility that had been overlooked. Why?

Bisha had come here. Why? What was the point of coming to a decaying seaside town for someone with such a vast sense of self-importance? Why would Samira and her husband be here as well, why would the power plant with the meat mass have been set up here, why would Chorei have set up shop, why would all of this be happening in one city, and not somewhere else? Why didn't Bisha attack… Detroit, or something, why didn't the power plant explode somewhere else, some cities had never received one, and Chorei had the pick of the litter in terms of quiet places to settle down.

Improbabilities, impossibilities, coincidences… so many fragments of the unnatural hovering around Brockton Bay, one after the other. She shivered. How had she not noticed any of this? Was she just used to it? How many… how many brushes had she had with this other world throughout her life, how many signs had she ignored? A dim memory from her childhood - an apartment with a light that never went out, glimpsed on the way to and from her pre-school, a feeling that something inside was watching her as she walked despite never seeing a person. Radio stations with half-heard voices that she attributed to a poor signal, but… she could swear they hadn't been talking any language she understood. Could just be nothing. Could be a weird apartment, could be poor signals. Could not be.

Could've been a sign that something had been rotten for a very, very long time.

This comet had been here for a long while, and not everyone who walked into the dark places of the city came out again.

…oh, oh, right. Sorry, waking up… alright, what are… ah. I see. Hm.

Oh, good. At least she had some company in the silence.

…interesting. I've never… just try and follow the compass, I suppose. If this force wants the Butcher, I'm sure she'll be conveyed to it. Stick together at all costs, that's my advice.

More or less Taylor's own conclusions. They started to head south, down the far right corridor… and immediately, Taylor began to see changes. The walls were a slightly different material, a little smoother, more regular. The brickwork looked newer. The shape of the tunnel had changed, rounder, more perfect. And the air had a strange hint that Taylor could only identify as ozone mixed with something else, something she couldn't actually describe. It was… the sensation couldn't be described like a normal smell. It was the difference between running your hand through water, and running it through a mound of dry rice. It was the difference between flowing and rustling. It was the difference between liquid and solid. It barely felt like smelling at all, honestly - felt like it was trying to access a sense none of them had, some organ that evolution had left behind. It was a smell that they heard and felt, and it sounded like… like a very distant wave breaking on a very distant shore. It felt cold. It felt very cold indeed - and even that felt like skin just attempting to simulate something it understood. Cold was the non-movement of particles, it was inertia versus motion. And whatever was around them, it wasn't still. Around them, the air moved - and their skin couldn't understand it, so simply projected a vague, shimmering cold into their bones. Carefully, they descended down the eerily smooth path… and into the darkness of the new world.

* * *​

They'd been here for an hour. A long, long hour. Hard to measure time, had to use watches, and time never felt real here - too simple, removed from the domains of real human experience. The watch said an hour. It felt like three. The watch had objective fact on its side… but what was objective fact down here? The tunnel had kept going onwards, angling south, towards the place they'd identified on the map. Her arm was itching worse than before, but every check confirmed that, yeah, it was just a red mark, probably from her own idle scratches. Chorei had commented on it, called it annoying. The walls still had that smoothness, the world had that same strangeness, and the city above had become completely silent. She almost wished there'd be a Mound Moor moment - the sky cracking, physics actively rebelling, a violent cataclysm that proved that something was happening. Instead… silence. Darkness. And a tunnel which was subtly, carefully, wrong. Not for the first time, she worried about Vicky. The hospital. Getting to her was impossible with the time and transport at their disposal, and with a new Sleeper about to wake up under their feet, they really had no choice in the matter. No communications - best they could do was a note in the tea shop telling her the basic gist of things. They walked…

And Ahab barked out a quick order. To stop.

Something was lying on the ground ahead of them. Taylor sent an insect to check it out… hm. Traces of warmth, soft, and… yeah. Flesh. Definitely flesh. She got closer, pointing her flashlight at the thing. Her eye narrowed. Sanagi growled, the sound boiling in her ribcage and manifesting as a small yet bright pulse of stars. It was a human hand. Too many joints on the fingers. Far too many. And a scrap of fine cloth around the wrist. Kabiri. Whatever shift happened to him in his fogs… it had lingered after severance. She quietly bent down and started examining the wrist… ragged, torn, but not quite bitten or shredded. It looked like it had simply been wrenched off, there had been no application of sharp force. Patience bent down to examine it too, sniffing slightly, even giving one of the fingers a tentative lick (Taylor projected her response into the majority of her swarm). She looked up, nodded, thought to herself…

"It's definitely a hand."

Sanagi pushed her aside - not a good move, but Patience allowed it. Once. Her pincers clicked angrily at the sight of the hand, and she poked the blood which had spilled from the stump… she looked almost disappointed, from what Taylor could tell. She wanted him dead, and the idea that someone or something had attended to it first was… not entirely pleasant. Taylor could understand the feeling. Well. Nothing to do about it. If he was gone, he was gone. If he was alive… they'd deal with it. Taylor's insects felt no trace of him in the tunnel beyond - and it was just one tunnel, she couldn't find any more crossroads, not within her range. No bodies, no people, nothing whatsoever within a few blocks radius - not that the distance meant anything in a featureless tunnel with nothing to actually mark any changes. Just space, interminable and vast. And a distinct lack of Kabiri.

But… something had severed this, and it wasn't Kabiri's own choice - no sharp edges, after all. And the bruising around the edges, the friction from something scraping against the skin and not the inside of the wound… the tug had been rough, left its marks. Her arm itched as she looked at it - another check, and just a few red marks from so much scratching. Chorei said nothing on the topic. She sensed nothing. Anyway. The hand. Had to be removed by force, and based on the angle of it, was removed by intense tugging force. And unless he'd pulled his own hand off… The team stuck closer together from then on. Unwilling to go into the dark alone - whatever had done this was still here. Patience had growled to herself… and had let out a single, sharp laugh, splitting the silence. There was no echo.

"How's that! Pretty fuckin' cool, eh?"

Taylor gave her a look. She was used to respectful, reverent silence when encountering this sort of thing - anything else just undermined it, made her feel ridiculous acting so tense. But tension kept her alive, so…

"...it's a hand. I guess it's kinda…"

Ahab grabbed it off the ground, and waggled it a few times experimentally.

"Y'know, there's some mercenaries that enjoy using things like this as trophies."

She peered closely… and held it to her neck, dangling over her chest.

"Necklace?"

Sanagi glared at the thing… and her stars seemed to soften a little when she looked at Ahab. Even her synthesiser was a little less harsh.

"Could work, if you want to feel like Kabiri is groping you every other second."

Ahab grimaced… then lowered it to her waist.

"Belt?"

"Less room for practical things."

Patience tilted her head to one side, interrupting.

"Cut off the fingers, use them as earrings."

Ahab hummed thoughtfully, and gestured idly to one of her ears. Huh. Taylor hadn't noticed it before, but she had a blue earring dangling from it, heavy, spherical, affixed by what looked like an improvised hook. Made her look a little lopsided, but her misshapen new arm was enough to make that happen anyway. A dull click rolled through the corridor as she bit her own teeth in a curious expression of satisfaction.

"Nah, I already have one of those, not in the mood for fingerbones. And this one is made from termites that I compressed with a tinkertech bomb."

"...termites?"

"Magical termites."

"Magical termites?"

"Magical termites, yes, Patience, keep up. They were weird, fleshy, infested a stoner loser, an Albanian esoteric racial theorist, and a distressingly racist Taiwanese woman. Of all of them, the racial theorist was probably the most tolerable. I mean, he recognised my own heritage, which was nice."

Patience looked at Taylor, and asked, once more:

"Can we keep her?"

Taylor groaned.

"We already keep her, it's called being a friend."

"...y'know, I've heard rumours of powers in vials. Might just be a rumour, but… Ahab, are you sure you don't want to get powers, then I can kill myself with a death rollercoaster, then you can kill yourself by snorting asbestos, and then Taylor can wander off with both of us… bone lady, you want in on this? Homing laser beams, all I'm saying."

Sanagi stiffened, staring dead ahead. Refusing to engage. Her stars burned brightly with discomfort. Ahab smiled very slightly, and Taylor saw a trace of the self-destructive sadness in her. Her voice dropped, becoming a dull rasp.

"Patience, darling delectable, trust me - not interested. If I wanted to watch other people do things while I was dead, I'd get religious. As it is, I'm content with nothingness."

Patience actually looked momentarily alarmed.

"...that's the one thing I've not heard when I offer that. Sometimes it's a polite decline. But you… you want the void?"

"Duh. Burning out is only worth something when it ends, otherwise you just become a constant, a boring little piece of remarkable scenery that had its moment in the sun. And me… I want to burn out. I want to burn out royally. No regrets, no fear, just want to do things on my own terms."

"That makes no sense to me."

She turned to Taylor.

"And you - I know you're being coy, but you want an afterlife? I can guarantee one."

Taylor said nothing. Shrugged idly. Refused to engage, Turk gave her a small look, nodded in tiny approval. Death was death, she just wanted to put it off for a long while, and adjust to its presence when it started coming closer. Otherwise, she had no mind for it. Patience looked uncharacteristically serious, verging on nervous.

"Just saying, Ahab. Option's open, if you really commit to it. A real, scientifically proven afterlife."

"And I'm saying, Patience, I'm not interested. No offence. Nothingness is good for me, with the shit I've done. If there's a heaven, I don't deserve to go there. If there's hell, I'd rather avoid it. Give me oblivion. Give me the end. Give me some fucking quiet - I don't want a sequel, I don't want a disappointing reboot. I want a nap."

Patience shifted uncomfortably.

"...don't understand that."

"Nah. You wouldn't."

A spark of anger - Taylor reached out, patted Patience on the arm. This tiny motion made her own arm start itching again, fuck. No, focus on Patience. Don't engage. Just move on with the mission. She twitched, shivered, glanced around like she was seeing this place for the first time, took a moment to readjust. With a small nod, she kept moving, and Ahab followed after her. She tossed the hand to Sanagi… who promptly breathed a wave of nebulae onto it, incinerating it in seconds with a bloom of bright light which illuminated the corridor for a moment, showing just how very, very deep it went. The tunnel kept going deeper, and after a few minutes gave up all pretence of being a sewer. It became something more… abstract. A smooth bore hole descending deep into the earth, from which nothing emerged. No rhyme or reason defined the walls, they were clearly carved by something other than human hands or natural processes. Just… manifested, perfectly smooth and regular, angling invariably downwards.

Like a bullet through the earth.

Or the trail of an enormous serpent, burrowing down, down, down…

Into the dark.

* * *​

Her arm was itching again. She scratched absent-mindedly. Irritating. She began to wonder if they should've brought food and water. Prepared for a trip, and not a jaunt. Silence had consumed them. Patience and Ahab had, somehow, fallen utterly silent - no jibes, no jabs, no random remarks. The tunnel silenced anything which came into it. The city was gone, all that remained was the tiny pocket of space in which they endured, in which reality most certainly existed. Her swarm could mark the traces of the tunnel, but… she found no more insects here. Only what she brought. Made her nervous - if she ran out, she'd be up shit creek without a paddle, to put it crudely. Quietly, Taylor made her way over to Ahab, waited for a second until the others had broken ahead slightly.

"...what's up with Sanagi?"

Ahab blinked.

"...oh, right, you weren't here. One of her students died in Barnabas. She'd sent her there on an open day. Wants Kabiri dead. And I guess… I mean, she was a cop, lost her job, and is having a bit of an identity crisis."

Taylor blinked back.

"...huh. I… alright."

She paused.

"Which student?"

"Some kid called Leah Nettle, not so sure about the rest."

Taylor had to stop herself from freezing. Leah Goodluck Nettle was dead? And Kabiri had… oh. That was… that was unpleasant. She remembered that vicious kid that had led her into the Teeth, barely a week or two ago… odd to think that so much had happened since then, but… shit. Gone. A sense of small melancholy, a tiny pulsing light at the back of her mind. Traylor hadn't liked her one little bit, thought she was a bully, an idiot, and she glorified psychopaths more than anyone should - more than even an edgy teenager should. But… the idea of her just dying to some random cape rubbed her up the wrong way. Made her glad for her own powers. She could see why Sanagi wanted him dead. Ahab opened her mouth to say something else…

Something clicked.

Taylor's swarm moved without thinking, tracing the source of the sound before the group had even processed its arrival. It echoed down the tunnel - a huge distance, really. They'd walked longer than they should've, longer than any sewer should allow. There was a moment of tension as she sought it out, moving forward to expand her range in its direction… something scuttled away, out of her range. Clinging to the ceiling. She broke into a light jog, the others right behind her. Come on, come on… the thing was moving fast, barely entering her range before it moved away again in a renewed burst of speed. Whatever it was, it clicked when it moved, sharp snaps that echoed through the tunnel… the team rushed forward, and Patience broke ranks, teleporting as far as she could with bursts of flame that abruptly made Taylor feel like a train was rushing toward her down the tunnel, a single bright light marking its approach. The thing moved faster, faster, trying to get away from them… Patience lost her patience. Her bow flicked from her back, an arrow was drawn from the wall (one of ehr more useful powers), and it flew directly at the thing. It moved, dodging, swerving, but the arrow seemed to twist space, always ensuring it would hit its target. A moment of tension…

The thing fell to the ground, a concrete arrow piercing through its centre mass. It twitched… and fell still. Taylor approached it cautiously, her insects checking for any more. Nothing she could find… but she wanted to be careful. Patience sniffed, spat, coughed, and casually started stretching her arms. Ahab clapped her on the back.

"Nice shot."

"Oh, it was nothing, really, I-"

Ahab blinked.

"Well, if you say it was nothing, then it was nothing. Good on you for being humble."

She walked off. Patience stared at her retreating back… and stomped morosely after her, muttering something about 'getting that rotten ass back here and praising me for my fucking cool trick shots you Kalash hussy'. Ahab, without a doubt, heard, and found it hilarious, based on her muffled snorts and shit-eating grin. Taylor ignored them both. The thing… it was weird. It looked almost like stone, riddled with cracks, but… she could see distinctions, places where stress had worn it away, joints of a sort… she wondered if it was a construct of some kind, the sort that normal capes tended to make, nothing bizarre at all. She poked the body softly with her knife, before flipping it around to use to scratch very slightly at her itching arm. The thing rolled over easily on the slight incline of the tunnel… and she blinked. A face stared back at her. A rocky face. It looked almost like… like one of the plaster casts from Pompeii, the things which had filled in the gaps left in the ash, the places where dead bodies had rested. Patience fell silent as she looked at the thing… it had certain superficial similarities to humanity, but only briefly. It had hands, but they were splayed too wide, the fingers practically radiating like the points of a star, all around the palm. The legs were set too far apart, the arms were too long… another poke yielded a click.

Joints cracking.

The head was shapeless. Just a vague impression of a nose, two crates for eyes, and a vague stretch of darkened stone instead of a mouth. A statue, a plaster cast… and it had run away from them. Alive. A native of this place, maybe a guard, maybe just whatever passed for natural fauna in this place. If she'd learned anything from those termites, from the centipedes of Senpou, from (maybe) the worms in Vandeerleuwe, it was that places of this sort tended to attract… well, life. Life was a clever thing. If humans could find a way of surviving alongside, even harnessing these forces, then what else could? Animals, plants… maybe whatever these things were. Or they were victims. That was another, quite valid possibility. Not everyone who walked into the dark came out again. Patience seemed nonplussed by the thing, and reached out to retrieve her arrow. Didn't need it, but presumably she just wanted to have some ammunition at the go at all times. She grasped, yanked… and it came free with a tear, sounding like a tiny, distance cave-in. The arrow came free stained pitch black. Something leaked out around the wound, pooling amidst the irregular indents of the rocky creature, flowing with the smooth motions of a river, not the desperate spurts of blood from a living artery. Taylor had seen enough of that to know the difference.

Taylor stared. Oil. Black oil. The rainbow sheen on the surface was a dead giveaway… and a struck match from Ahab confirmed it. Patience's arrow bloomed into a bright torch for a moment, leaking choking black smoke that stained the otherwise flawless ceiling… and then nothing. No, wait, something had been wrong with that - a hint of the unnatural. The oil had a rainbow slick to it, but the shimmers were just a little… they weren't quite right. The colours weren't the same as they should be. And the fire… it had something at the fringes, glimpses of a colour which reminded her of the inside of seashells, the delicate pink which spoke to some form of life. And the sound… a squeak. A squeal. And she swore she could see the burning oil move as it burned, tiny parts of it shivering and crawling. But then it was gone. A brief burst. Nothing more. Darkness resumed, and the rocky creature remained still. Oil, stone, rocky things… this wasn't something she associated with the Wolf-Divided, nor with the Five-Horned Bull - the things which seemed to have some kind of power down here. She glanced up and down the tunnel… nothing.

"...anything like this around the Sleeper?"

Turk shrugged. Not that he knew of, then. Taylor poked at the thing, and saw… hm. One of the hands was different than the other. Same layout - fingers splayed like a five-pointed star, hooked like they were ready to dig into the stone of the ceiling once more. But there were… she brought her torch closer, examining it. Tiny scraps of pink, red, a few strands of blue… her eye widened.

"I think we've found the thing that tore Kabiri's hand off."

Sanagi looked down at the creature… and kicked it angrily. It rolled a few feet down, the crackling click of its joints snapping echoing sharply, sounding like a pair of dice cast on a stone table in an empty room. Click, click, click, click, click… thump. Taylor didn't even bother shooting her a look. Maybe Kabiri was dead, then. It must have been strong when it was alive, to be able to tear off his hand completely, no need for slicing or biting (not that it was capable of either). But… hold on, why would it attack him successfully, but avoid them completely? Taylor had a small sinking feeling. This felt familiar. She knew this pattern. She glanced around cautiously, her swarm fanning out - conserving numbers, but trying to remain comprehensive in its coverage. It swarmed over the walls, the ceiling, the floor… she felt damp, she felt stone, and…

And a rocky thing, crouched behind them. Some distance away.

"Don't move. There's another one."

The others froze. Patience grinned.

"Let's take it alive."

"Just shoot it. Kill it. We need to keep-"

Patience did three things in rapid succession. She teleported forward to the corpse in a rush of fire. The oil which had spilled from it ignited immediately, and she looked like a demon for a moment, surrounded on all sides by an inferno. An inferno that squealed like a pig, an inferno born from oil that tried to crawl away from the one burning it, an inferno made of flames which were tinged with delicate pink and stank to high heaven - ozone and other things, things she couldn't detect or name. She plunged her arrow into the corpse, coating it in thick, black, oil that was already trying to crawl away. And finally… she fired. The arrow plunged through the fire surrounding her, igniting, and lighting up the corridor as it flew. It shot forward inexorably, impaling the huddled creature… it was ripped open, clicking and clattering as it flew backwards, blood igniting, turning into a blazing, squealing fireball. It illuminated everything around it, and the arrow continued onwards, going beyond even Taylor's range. She peered into the distant dark… and immediately stood.

More of them.

Dozens.

Hundreds.

A hive.

Clicking, clicking, clicking. Faceless stone faces staring at them. Walking fossils. Each one crawling along the walls, the floor, the ceiling, with their lizard-like splayed limbs, click click click, fingers digging deep into the stone, click click click. Like a horde of locusts. Eerie blue sparks played amongst the swarm as their stone limbs grazed against one another. Tiny pinpricks of light in the dark, and as the fires faded, it was all that remained. Constellations of a fossilised swarm, rock containing squealing oil. She almost thought it was oil that remembered living.

A moment of silence. Patience nodded… and drew her claymore.

"Good. I was tired of walking."

Taylor reached for her grenades.

Sanagi's beam began to charge.

Turk and Ahab looked at one another… and braced for combat, the safeties on their guns clicking off.

The fossils stared at them, and the team stared back, just waiting for them to come into range. Patience groaned.

"Come the fuck on and fight me! Come on, I hate walking, it's so slow compared to teleporting. Come and fight me you fucks!"

Ahab joined her.

"Yeah, dipshits, you think you're special? A termite man wanted to rip out my uterus, you think some museum pieces can freak us out? Come here and get it over with!"

Taylor grimaced in irritation… and her grimace deepened. Her fucking arm… why was it still itching? The clicking only made it worse, click click click, like the ticking of a geiger counter, click click click. A constellation of blue sparks coming closer and closer, Patience and Ahab roaring, why was her arm still itching? She… she stopped reaching for her grenades, and reached for her arm instead, starting to roll the sleeve up. Just had to have a look. Chorei was saying something, but Taylor couldn't quite hear. The stone-and-oil locusts came closer, closer… click click click… her sleeve stopped. She stared. The arm was… she couldn't help herself. A small, panicked shriek escaped her throat.

There was a hole in her arm.

There were many holes in her arm.

Red-ringed. Deep. Black. So very many. Dark holes piercing deep into the meat, deeper than they should be able to go, and… and something was moving inside of them. Taylor bit down on another shriek. Her eye was wide. Bodily invasion was something that… that terrified her, more than words could say. Chorei had threatened to turn her into an incubator for more centipedes, and the threat had always stuck with her. Then her first grafting, the feeling of a metal head integrating into her own biology, invading her cells, changing her. Then her mind had been attacked time and time again, but the idea of her own body turning against her… it was a creeping kind of horror that she'd never quite gotten over, not since that night where she'd found herself vomiting shards of centipede chitin onto the floor of an old truck, filling her room with insect repellent to try and kill whatever was growing in her. The world was uncontrollable. Her body was meant to be hers, not something that grew centipedes or grafted metal heads or could be compelled to viscerally adore someone she despised. And now… the dark holes in her arm. Like the openings of a hive. Like the holes in a piece of pumice.

A long, long, chitinous leg was poking out of one. Like a cockroach's leg, almost. But longer. Much too long.

It twitched.

The others were staring at her. She could feel movement in her guts. She could feel things crawling in her veins. She could feel flies nesting inside her eyes. Her teeth were eggs. Her tongue was infected, her tongue was riddled with worms. Every part of her body that she rarely felt, rarely paid attention to… they consumed her world, each one a potential reservoir. She began to tear at her sleeve, yanking it up, up, needed to see… needed to see how far it went. How had she not noticed, how had she… the wolf in her mind was howling happily, delighting in the mutation, in the feeling of flesh revolting against itself. Were they too close to Angrboda? Was this how it ended, did they just get too close and did their own bodies mutate into nothingness, 'spontaneous non-existence'? Or… had she touched the Wolf too often, had she engaged with the Butcher's mind too frequently? Her stomach ached - would it open with a lipless mouth? The holes contracted and exhaled like puckering sphincters, like the geysers at the bottom of the New Canyon. The shining leg twitched, out of her control… but she felt sparks, a half-formed nervous system, and no she wasn't fucking feeling anyting. She looked around frantically - everyone staring at her, staring at her arm, at the pulsing holes leading to a bottomless hive…

The fossils were moving closer, bleeding oil which stank of ozone.

The wolf in her mind howled.

The Butcher was in the middle of them, roaring a war cry. Her sword dripped with multicoloured oil, her teleports burned up everything around her, igniting the fossils, burning their innards until the shells cracked open and there was nothing but squealing. Rains of ammunition into the mass, more fire… the fumes were sweeping over them, consuming the walls, choking and inky but… but sparking with something. She saw wolves in the mass, she saw shivering masses that came closer and closer… the leg in her arm twitched again, sending shivers through her nerves. The world vanished. All that remained was the formless smoke, the things in it, the shambling fossil-men who bled squealing oil. Her gun cracked, her aim impaired by the fact that she was using her non-dominant hand. The leg twitched. Her aim kept going off. She hit a few, hard not to. They were seemingly finite, coming up and down the corridor, surrounding them on all sides. Patience was screaming at them, and her voice was beginning to adopt the strange hollow tone of the Butcher minds, the same voice she'd heard cursing her on the boat. She felt something pushing through the skin of her arm, making another hole, pushing out, another leg, another arm, another chitinous appendage from the hive brewing in her stomach… a sharp line of pain, and she imagined her stomach opening up. She shot, reloaded, kept shooting - her swarm was burning up, choking to death, drowning in oil, dying by the dozen. The hundred. The thousand. She slung a rifle from her back, kept firing…

A mad, panicked scream bubbled from her throat uncontrollably, the roar of gunfire echoed in her ears, louder, louder, louder, louder… fire on all sides, limbs reaching for her, a leg twitching in her arm, something in her guts, something in her head, the endless howling of Patience as she waged war, her friends, her friends, where were - here, they were here, no, she couldn't see them, the stone bodies were all around her, they were reaching, they were overwhelming, she felt a stone hand on her neck, she-

She was alone.

She blinked.

Gone. All gone.

Alone.

And once more… the leg twitched.

And slowly, slowly…

Another one began to extend outwards.

For the first time in a long while… Taylor genuinely whimpered.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

230 - Humanity is a Malleable Category

Taylor was alone in the dark. The tunnels had changed. There were too many, now. Far, far too many. She stared into the endless night all around her, her flashlight barely illuminating a tiny pool of existence. Insects? She had some. A few. A handful of flies, a pair of cockroaches, a little collection of ticks, lice, fleas. She cherished them all. They were the only confirmation that the world still existed. She sat at the centre of a crossroad of… six tunnels, yes, six. Each one smooth, dark, and cold. Each one leading away so far that her tiny, pathetic swarm couldn't do a damn thing. Her arm throbbed. She ignored it for a moment. Forced herself to. Needed to… needed to find a way out. They had entered the domain of Angrboda, and she didn't want them here. That, or this place was just… hostile to life in general. How had she gotten here? What were those fossilised things? And why had fighting them sent her to this… place? And perhaps most importantly - where were the others. Another throb, and she felt a half-made nervous system sparking… a small gasp of pain. She glanced down. Finally acknowledging it.

Two chitinous legs sprouting from her left arm. Each one as long as her forearm, plated with material she didn't quite recognise, seemed spongier than chitin, harder than flesh… they flashed in the light of her torch, dull purples and reds mingling like the surface of a bruise. And there were more holes along her arm… more than the last time she looked. More. Always more. Red-edged, black in the centre, leading deep, deep, deep into her… her breath came faster. The darkness of the tunnels seemed to be bearing down. It carried infection. Her heartbeat seemed like the ticking of a geiger counter, tick tick tick tick tick, the ringing in her ears seemed like the counter had started screaming, ticktickticktickticktick, blending together until… until she was surrounded by it. Angrboda was here. That much was certain. She shivered, and… felt it again. The nervous system breaking into her power's perception, pulsing for a moment before vanishing. Not able to hold together for long. But in that time… she felt things in her skin. Deeper than the two twitching legs. She felt an abdomen. She felt more limbs. She felt the quivering existence of a deshelled thorax.

She felt eggs.

Slowly, carefully, she reached out. Pull them out. Tug them until nothing remained. There were joints - points of weakness. Crack them off at the stump. She reached, her fingers brushed…

No!

Taylor's eye widened.

"Chorei?"

She'd been… very quiet lately, hadn't she? The panic had made her forget, but… it felt wonderful hearing her voice
.
Don't! Don't rip them off, not quite… not quite yet.

Taylor's mind was creaking.

"Why?"

I… may have an idea. Just… leave them alone for now. Focus on finding a way out. Take deep breaths.

"Swarm's limited. Can barely feel anything."

Slow your thoughts - breathe according to my instructions, in - one, two, three, four, five… hold, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten… out, one, two, three, four, five, six… touch your fingers to your palm - thumb, middle, pinkie, ring, index, thumb, index, middle, ring, pinkie, reverse sequence, alternate fingers…

She struggled to keep herself calm, strategic, even as she felt those legs twitch again, and now she could feel a third starting to inch its way outwards, the jagged hairs on its underside scraping against her the inside of her skin… a flash of pain as it broke through the layers of nerves, and before that, just a rustling, a rumbling that made her imagine her bones being reshaped subtly, room made for… she stopped thinking about it. Tried to focus on breathing, moving her fingers, sending her tiny swarm out to its furthest extremes. The nervous system kept flashing into existence, appearing, disappearing… her fingers became her world, she poured all her attention into them, gradually feeling her heart rate decrease, the paralysing terror in the front of her mind slowly, slowly subsiding to an aching dread in the back. A cold sensation in her brainstem and nothing more. She'd… OK, this was a bad situation. Very bad. And she had minimal opportunities for using her knowledge, the abilities she'd cultivated… she couldn't rival a tunnel, she couldn't graft with weird brickwork, and she sure as shit couldn't sting an anomaly in space to death. Just… just stay calm.

Taylor scrambled to her feet, staggering slightly, feeling the legs twitching inside her flesh. Almost enough to undo her calm. Her voice was barely audible, mumbled through gritted teeth.

"Plan?"

I'm… thinking, give me time to think. I have precisely zero experience of this sort of manifestation.

"...which direction do you think?"

The swarm has detected nothing remarkable in any of them. All six. Nothing.

Chorei's voice was increasing in pace and volume, pitch raising as panic grew.

I… do you remember what we read about? The Teeth capes who worked with Angrboda? Mutations, constant mutations, gradually worsening until… until…

She seemed to slap herself.

…we can… we can work at this. I have experience with insects living in my body. I can… I can endure.

"...you're not holding up, are you?"

No. This frightens me. This frightens me a great deal.

"Me too."

The two fell into silence. The two… three legs twitched again, and Taylor suppressed a shudder, fought hard to stop from retching. Bodily invasion made her viscerally uncomfortable, and she refused to look at the shivering holes lining her arm, the openings to a hive-yet-to-be. Slowly, painfully… she began to walk. Gun was intact. Even had ammunition. Grenades too - none had been used against those things, they'd moved too fast and Patience had engaged too quickly at close range. Plus, the… mutations. She shivered. Mutation. The flesh rebelling against itself. The wolf in her mind was stirring, but it seemed strangely… content. It didn't need to encourage anything, it didn't need to dive into her biology and start shredding things, it just needed to wait. A brief thought crossed her mind - grafting. Graft with the mutations, integrate them into herself, they were… a feeling of nausea swept through her. There was a fucking good reason she didn't graft foreign elements to herself, why grafting herself to herself was uncomfortable as all hell - and that was with her own body parts in the heat of battle. It was… intimate, it wasn't just quiet addition, it was integration. She could feel the legs twitching, sometimes under her control, sometimes not, and she imagined that… that if she grafted to them, suppressed them that way, she'd just wind up as something other than human. If necessary, she'd burn them out. Hot wire. Time alone in a dark room to get the job done. Maybe a handful of painkillers if she was very lucky, a bottle of liquor if she was somewhat lucky, or nothing but a gag if she wasn't lucky at all. Better to let herself scar over than to… to let this into herself.

Nightmares of centipedes growing in her stomach. Old nightmares. Still potent, despite their age… maybe because of it. Made her feel like she was starting out again, like she was just a novice intruding on a world she didn't understand and that did not welcome her intrusion. A metal head growing into her ankle. Sometimes she still felt a stiffness there, wondered if it was something metallic that had forced its way into her flesh and could never be removed. Could just be scar tissue. Could be something else.

She walked in a random direction, her swarm concentrating along this tunnel, feeling it out as best they could. She could feel their energy reserves already running low… insects were expendable, but now that she had so few with no means of replenishing, she just… she had to keep going. Figure something out. Find the others. Survive. Find Angrboda. Kill her. Kill her at all costs. She imagined… she imagined this weird effect expanding. Going beyond a weird tint to reality, becoming active mutation for everyone in the city. There'd been a cancer down here for years, growing steadily, and despite all the evidence, all the signs, she'd just… ignored it. And now she could walk into the sewers and just stumble into a labyrinth of smooth tunnels where fossil-creatures lived and random mutations occurred. When did her itching start? Did it start in the tunnels, or before? Had the aura already expanded? Panic rose, breaking through Chorei's techniques. Were they too late? Had they already lost? If she found her friends, would they be remotely human anymore? She stumbled on for a few minutes, but her breath was becoming shakier, and…

A growth in your shoulder.

Taylor moved with terrifying speed, yanking her jacket aside, pushing the blouse away… a lump. A lump in her shoulder. Small. But there. Noticeable. The skin wasn't even reddened. She… poked it, hesitantly. It shivered, and another accidental whimper escaped her throat. This was the subject of so many of her nightmares, from the beginning of her involvement with this secret world to now. She poked again, and felt… oh, fuck, she felt a tooth in there. Sharp. Not human. Pushing up. Eager to be born. The skin was red - from her poking, or from the tooth coming closer? A mouth in her shoulder, a throat, another hive… the legs twitched, and she felt one of them starting to act on its own, instinctually - it started to wrap slowly around her arm, like a baby grabbing the first thing it was presented with. Her pupil dilated. She moved swiftly.

No, consider for-

She ignored Chorei. Her knife was withdrawn, she grit her teeth, Chorei barely managed to suppress her pain response as she started carving. Her flesh parted easily, almost eagerly. A thin shell containing… a small flood of warm red liquid, not blood, not quite, more like… like amniotic fluid. It trickled under her clothes, warm, sticky, cloying, stinking… and inside, a pocket of raw flesh. And inside that pocket, a handful of teeth growing randomly from the mass, gleaming white in the torchlight. One hand held the knife, the other held the torch - and the hand with the torch could feel insectile legs start to grope at it. With a snarl, she dug the knife further, ignoring the pain as best she could… but it meant she could still feel. The teeth slid out, one by one, roots going deeper than she thought. A trickle of blood came behind them, seemingly slow but filling the cavity with surprising speed. A final focus… come on. She didn't have her charm, she didn't have… focus. Focus on Angrboda. Didn't know her. Didn't even know her real name. Just knew what she was doing. What she had done.

Taylor barely knew Angrboda.

And she hated her with a burning passion. The wolf fed on the hate, bathed in it, breathed more and more life into the emotion until it threatened to overwhelm… she tried to channel it into a rivalry, into striving… she wanted Angrboda to die, but more than that, she wanted to hurt Angrboda. Samira had tried to paint the Unceasing Striving as evolution incarnate, as something noble. Taylor was realising another side to it as she focused, blood running down her arm, teeth gleaming on the floor… it was sadism. Hurting without killing. If the Wolf-Divided blended love and hate until no distinction remained… then the Unceasing Striving blended pain and pleasure. She focused on… on how taking out this fucking growth had made her feel. A scream almost escaped her throat - the hand with the flashlight. One of the legs had reached down further, and was scratching slightly at her face. She felt it brushing her cheek, and yanked her hand away as quickly as possible. Hated it. Hated Angrboda for making her feel like an idiotic novice again. Hated that she hadn't noticed her presence until now. Pain made her feel like she was in control again, it was an enemy she could confront and beat. Not some weird force surrounding her, pressing in like radiation…

She felt tissue start to repair. She felt scar tissue well upwards, branching, stretching, a growth that was designed to be the last growth that part of her body would ever accomplish. Stasis - improvement, yes, but a very final improvement. It was a deep wound, a gaping chunk removed from her shoulder, and it took a few long, painful moments for it to fill up - a tumour under her control, a tumour which would never die and never leave. Stable. Never going to metastasise. She sighed… and relaxed slightly. OK. She could still do it. Scar cartography was still on the table even without the charm, just… a little harder than she'd like. And she could work with these growths. Idly, she wondered if she could've just grafted it away, reintegrating the matter back into herself. Worked with Angel Eyes and his perception-altering tumours, but… this wasn't just her. This was flesh revolting against itself. She could feel the wolf at the back of her mind pacing around, eyes flashing, muzzle dripping with saliva. It was hungry. And it was eager. If she took that revolution into herself… the legs twitched again. Wouldn't integrate those. And wouldn't integrate this tumour-things. There was no functional difference, just… just a difference in form. Those teeth didn't look human. She left them behind, and imagined… it was weird, but she imagined this as a fucked-up version of Hansel and Gretel. Leaving behind a trail of shining teeth to lead her back to where she started. She could feel her skin itch. How many more growths? The legs twitched. She could feel a fourth beginning to shiver into existence, manifesting impossibly from tissue. Spontaneous generation. The wolf in the back of her head growled happily…

And her breath shuddered out of her lungs like steam from a dying engine.

Premature death rattle.

* * *​

"Still here?"

Always.

"How many?"

Four. The fourth has grown in fully. The nervous system is developing more and more - it's parasitising your own at the moment, your cells are replicating faster than they should. But I can feel the nerve bundles starting to detach.

"Meaning?"

I don't know. I really don't.

They both sounded terrified. Walking for… time. No idea how long. Watch stopped working. More branching corridors - a concrete vascular system, and she was the lone cell travelling its dusty interior. Dusty - pointless word, there was no dust here. The stone was flawless, oily, black, looked almost… a little expanded. Like a deep sea fish dragged up in an environment it wasn't ready for. The tunnel was a single solid fused piece of rock, the hue of black was just a little too deep in some areas, reflected the light of her torch incorrectly… it felt like she was walking inside a huge visual anomaly, the kind of thing that a computer would generate accidentally. Too smooth. Too dark. Too wrong. No natural process had formed this. She wondered, idly, if this was what Angrboda's new world would look like, the zone of alienation that would expand out from the shimmering mass of the New Sleeper. Dark, dark tunnels, and fossilised things living in them. Mutations until… until what? No, no, that wasn't it. She was standing in the gradient, she realised. The gradient between the real world and one that Angrboda was building around herself. A place for awkward births and strange interactions.

The bleeding edge of a new world.

The event horizon of the Sleeper.

The edge on which the Wolf danced.

She stumbled onwards, and the legs twitched again… she'd stopped looking at them. Their nervous system was gradually becoming more and more complete, more and more divided from her own. She couldn't help but feel them now. The limits of their extension. She thought about forcing them to reach out, to grab the walls, dig in, and pull themselves out by the roots. But she… she could feel their base, deep inside her flesh. If she forced them to extract themselves, they might just rip open her circulatory system, turn her arm into a ragged mass. Thought she could heal it, but… she was afraid. Very afraid. Four legs, protruding from seemingly random angles, twitching erratically as her control faded, returned, faded, returned… silence in the tunnels. No fossilised people full of screaming oil. Just her. Her and…

She felt something.

Chorei burned with curiosity.

A sound was echoing through the endless dark.

Blood rack! Barbed wire!
Politician's funeral pyre!
Innocents raped with napalm fire!
21st century schizoid man!
Bah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah!

Taylor had, without any irony, never been happier to hear Patience Nguyen shrieking classic prog rock at the top of her lungs. Based on the confused-yet-happy squirming of Chorei in her grey matter, Chorei was very much in the same boat. Happy, afraid, nervous, and downright overjoyed that she had some company. That at least one of the others was still alive, that this wasn't some infinite prison just for the two of them. Her swarm spread out, confirming… yeah, two turns from her, if she'd gone forward like she intended she'd have missed Patience entirely. With the echo, it was easy to mess things up, she was almost out of her range entirely. If both of them had remained silent, it was entirely likely that they'd have passed one another by without any idea. She called out:

"Patience!"

The song cut off.

"Fuck me, the hallucinations are talking now! Holy fuck, hey, hallucination, how are your harmonies?"

Taylor broke into a sprint, the feeling of air rushing into the tiny holes in her arm making her flinch with each step, until she gradually, gradually got used to it. Not enough to feel comfortable. But enough to move smoothly. Operational competence. And that, she supposed, was as good as she was going to get.

"Patience, not a hallucination - it's Taylor, just-"

"Sing, Sister Tumour, sing for me! I've got 14 voices screaming at once and their harmonies are shit!"

She was almost tempted. Anything to prove her existence. Closing in - she'd be in range of Patience soon, maybe she'd be able to see her circulatory system through the walls, maybe that'd convince her. A pop, a rush of flame… Patience had teleported. Why? Why was she… Taylor's swarm could barely detect a mutter from her, a mumble… gripping her head, she thought. Struggling with the isolation, with the fact that there were no distractions from the voices besides her own incredibly loud singing. Taylor hesitated… and Chorei muttered something. Taylor groaned internally, but… needed to keep her in one place, and honestly, Taylor needed the distraction. She was just glad that Patience had been blaring the radio on their ride into town, and that Chorei had a good memory.

Death seed, blind man's greed!
Poets starving, children bleed!
Nothing he's got, he really needs-

Patience interrupted.

21st century schizoid man!

A rush of fire.

And Patience crashed into her, whooping like an animal. Shit, proximity - made her twitch, made her think of Matrimonial, made her shudder as unpleasant memories began to surface - damn it, hadn't she learned that Taylor didn't like close contact right now? The two tumbled to the ground, and Taylor… couldn't help herself. She screamed. Four legs, crushed against the floor. And they reacted. The second her control of them slipped… four legs, each one full-grown, slid back inside her arm with wet sounds of flesh parting. Her scream was instinctual - she couldn't help herself. Felt the legs wrapping around her bones, compacting downwards. Sweat trickled down her forehead, and her metallic teeth felt on the verge of breaking as she tried to cut down on her scream, clenching her jaw so tightly she could feel muscles aching to pop. Patience realised something was wrong, and teleported away - fire blooming at her point of arrival. She approached more cautiously, helping Taylor to her feet - her legs were shaky, she could feel them around her bones they were gripping them they were inside her they were part of her. Patience looked her over, noticed the holes, noticed the chunk of shining scar tissue that had replaced part of her shoulder… and Taylor finally saw Patience.

Taylor wasn't the only one to suffer from mutations.

An… antler was protruding just above her right eye, a second was beginning to bloom out of her left cheek. Shiny. White. Looked like tooth enamel more than anything, the skin around the point of eruption was red and sore - fresh. The one above her eye was the longest, about… she was bad with depth perception, but it was several inches long, she was fairly sure. Would need to examine it properly to be certain. The one on her cheek was just a bud, a white mass which was only half an inch long. The one above her eye had branched already, one split, and another developing on one of the sub-branches. Her eyes were shadowed. And at the tips of the antlers was… something. Dark. Like a berry, almost. She grinned.

"Well, glad to know it's not just me."

Taylor let out a shuddering breath, trying to get herself back under control. The legs weren't obeying her. Nervous system had dissolved again, the sudden movement shattering the fragile neurons. No getting them out, not for now. Just had to deal with the feeling of serrated edges scraping against the inside of her skin, the feeling of legs pushing her veins aside… almost started cutting into her arm. Anything to get them out. She considered trying to scar over the holes, but… but then they'd be trapped in her. Any more generated, and they'd be stuck forever until she got to carving, a task made more difficult by an array of near-unbreakable scars. Taylor gritted her teeth, focusing on Patience.

"...how long have you been here?"

"Don't know. Voices are loud. Very loud."

Taylor blinked.

"Do they sound angry?"

"They always sound angry. But I guess… no. Not more than usual."

A tiny flicker of hope. The wolves in Patience's mind weren't pissed - this wasn't a huge obstacle for them. They weren't doomed. This wasn't some eternal pocket reality like Mound Moor, where there was absolutely no hope of escape. They hadn't died yet. There was hope. The two simply remained in silence for a moment, in the boundless dark. Taylor's torch flickered slightly… she shook it a few times. Self-charging, used motion, but… if she stayed still for too long, she'd start getting problems. Backup batteries were limited in number, she didn't want to waste them. If that wasn't a visual metaphor for her entire situation, she didn't know what was. Keep moving or the dark would take her away. Silently, they both slid to the ground. Needed to rest. Didn't realise how tired she was - the healing, the wound, the walking, everything… just wanted a moment to catch her breath. Patience seemed even worse off - her eyes kept flickering around, glowing slightly in the dark. Her fingers tapped out a rapid rhythm on her armoured legs, sweat beaded her brow, and Taylor thought she could see the antlers growing more. A lump at the corner of her forehead - another one waiting to break through. They never grew while she was looking, only after she looked away, blinked… then there'd be another centimetre.

Their flesh had become the enemy. Patience looked serious, solemn, afraid… and then a desperate laugh burst out of her throat, cracking the silence.

"Hey, hey Taylor."

Her laughter continued, half-mad, unceasing. Taylor raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

"Hey, Taylor, guess how… guess how I'm feeling?"

She'd better not-

"I'm horny."

For crying out loud, this woman has no sense of propriety.

Taylor hesitated… and a laugh escaped her own throat. She glanced down at her lips in surprise. That wasn't meant to happen. Patience looked at her confused expression, and her laughter intensified. Taylor glared at her for a second, and… laughed along. It was a desperate, bubbling laughter, the kind which emerged out of stress, the body releasing the tension that it'd been storing up for much too long - air drawn in anticipation of fighting or fleeing, now needing to be exhaled quickly. And the rush of air carried laughter with it. The two sat there, incapable of movement, laughing so hard that tears ran down their faces. For a second, Taylor couldn't even feel the legs wrapping around her bones, couldn't feel the aching of her new scar, couldn't feel the constant dread that more growths were developing in her with each second that passed. And based on how Patience's eyes looked… she was distracting herself from just as much, if not more. By the end, even Chorei was laughing, a peculiar sound which stopped, started, jerked around, never quite settled. Not good at laughing. Sounded like the type of person who politely tittered behind her hand, a full-on cackle was difficult for her.

Finally, calm began to infiltrate, and reality slid in behind it.

The tunnels yawned around them. Dark. And seemingly endless. Taylor wiped her eye, a final laugh escaping her despite her best efforts. This was what happened when her swarm was depleted, she became less and less capable of projecting her tics and instincts into it. Feh.

"...so… any idea on how we get out of here?"

Patience struggled to come to a halt, and stared up vacantly at the ceiling.

"...no clue."

"But if those things in your head aren't angry, maybe… I dunno, maybe this is fine, maybe there's a way out that they can find."

One of Patience's eyes swivelled downwards, the other remained locked on the ceiling. Always weird when she did that eye thing.

"...or, alternatively, this is like… decontamination, or something. They stuff us here, then just wait for you all to starve to death or get killed or something, or they keep me here until I'm nice and crazy and willing to do anything they want… and then I get out."

Her voice was flat. Toneless.

"Maybe I'm the one making this place happen. Maybe I've already killed the others. Maybe you're just the last one. Or the first. Or somewhere in the middle."

She tilted her head to one side.

"Why did we get here? Why weren't we just killed by those oil things?"

Taylor flinched.

"...yeah, I was going to ask what happened to you. Did you just wake up here, or…"

"I was fighting. There was fire all around me. Fog. Smoke. More and more… and then I grabbed one of the bodies, smashed its head against the floor until that screaming oil came out… and when I looked up I was here. When I looked back down, the body was gone. So… no idea."

No idea. No idea how they got here, no idea what here was, and no idea how to get out.

Ignorance endured. But… but Taylor had the beginnings of an idea. Angrboda wanted the Butcher to find her, and to help her do… something, which would let her become another Sleeper. Not sure if the implications of all of this, not remotely, but… either way. If Angrboda had any control over this place, she'd want Patience to reach her. But Patience had said that Angrboda wasn't even capable of recognising the outside world anymore, so… hm. Alright, so, two possibilities. One, Angrboda was causing this unintentionally. Two, Patience was causing this unintentionally. And… she could see a plan which solved both. Angrboda would want Patience to reach her, right? She'd want the Butcher to be able to get to the centre of this place, to the place where the comet had landed. If she didn't get there, if she was incapable, then the entire plan was for nothing. And if the effects surrounding the comet were so distorting that getting close was practically impossible, then… either Angrboda was an idiot who hadn't planned ahead (unlikely, thus far she'd seemed fairly competent at planning), or Taylor was missing something. There was another route to the comet which the Butcher could take.

The greatest enemy of the Wolf-Divided is the Wolf-Divided.

Chorei mumbled quietly, and Taylor shivered, feeling the legs start to unwind from her bones, inching back to the holes where they could taste the air again. A fifth, now - grown inside her flesh, ready to emerge. Coming closer. She could feel the rest of the body start to generate, and… a grunt of surprise. Something in her eye socket. Something moving. Her fingers snapped up, sliding under the eyepatch, feeling for… another perception exploded into her mind. She felt tiny legs scraping at the soft flesh, she saw through a vast set of compound eyes… her lips were fastened tight to prevent herself from screaming, and she directed the thing to leave, flipping open the eyepatch. A fat, clumsy insect tumbled into her lap, and she stared at it. Patience's eyes were wide. It was like… she couldn't quite… it was like a sun scorpion, a camel spider, but thicker around the middle, and the head was closer to an ant than anything else. Barely large enough to be seen, but it was unfurling itself, legs expanding to a wider and wider size…

She commanded it to look up.

Black eyes stared at her, gleaming with a kind of intelligence.

Taylor unhesitantly crushed it with a swift slam using her palm, and shivered at the feeling of warmth. Unnatural. Just… just no. Being around Patience helped force her to be calm - she'd become accustomed to hiding her fear around the Butcher.

"...I think I might have an idea."

Patience blinked.

"We're not going to address the-"

"No. We're not. I have an idea."

"Shoot."

Taylor took a deep breath.

"You need to reach Angrboda. The minds up there think you're capable of it, or they'd be a hell of a lot more pissed. So, we just need to find out what that route is, and… follow it, I guess."

Patience flinched.

"Oh, they didn't like that idea."

A grin ripped through her features, and her tumorous antlers gleamed.

"I love it. Keep going."

"...I'm just thinking about the specifics. But they probably think that they'll just keep you here, let you go insane, and then take over. Do the job themselves, I guess. But if you take the initiative, do it first, you can… maybe get us out. Get us to Angrboda. Finish this."

"I adore it. Now, those specifics…"

Taylor shivered.

"...grafting. The stuff I've done to heal you in the past. I think… I think if you graft to those minds, you might get some kind of control. Remember the first time? You were able to access their memories, actually see what Angrboda was planning?"

"Damn right."

"If we try that again, maybe more intensively, we can… I guess, seize some kind of control. It's hard, but it might work."

Patience nodded thoughtfully.

"I barely understood that. But I trust you - you've done well by me, Taylor. So…"

She extended her arm, tearing away the gauntlet, rolling up the sleeve. Pale skin, almost glowing in the torchlight - it spluttered, and she shook it again, the beam wavering as it attempted to push up to its former glory. Taylor hesitated. The silence hung heavily.

…I'm tired.

"I know."

…I'll have a look. The best thing we can do is to teach her - give her our understanding of the Grafting Buddha. Heal thyself, and all that business.

Now that was an idea. Easier than healing from a distance. Just needed to get the lay of the land - see if she could reach through the wolves to Patience, graft to the latter while avoiding the former like the plague. This place was already heavy with the Wolf-Divided, it was infesting her body cell by cell. The last thing she wanted was to let it into her mind was well. She reached out, mouth a tight line, and her hand hovered over Patience's flawless skin. Patience gave her a… smile. A confident one. She trusted Taylor, trusted her expertise, her methods. It was the confidence of a superior towards a loyal subordinate. For a tiny, pathetic second, Taylor wanted more than anything to impress her. She was a good soldier. She deserved this level of trust. She almost, almost wanted to go along with her after all this, take the hoard secretly, use it for her dad, and then… return. Keep going with the Butcher. She imagined getting that confident, proud look a hundred more times, a thousand. And then the moment passed. She flinched at how weak she'd felt - she was shaky at the moment, unstable. Reminded too much of when she was a novice, learning from people with years of experience. It was a cringing subservience that she despised. It was her weakest elements wanting to be freed from uncertainty. It was the same impulse which had led her to almost self-destruct completely, fighting foe after foe until one proved her better.

And she'd left that impulse behind. For her dad.

She touched Patience.

The graft began…

It immediately went wrong.

The wolves had been waiting. They didn't just snap at her - they dove. They didn't simply oppose the graft, they forced it to a greater state of intimacy. They howled towards her mind, and she saw their eyes gleaming impossibly, like red stars in an endless night sky. Couldn't see Patience's mind. Just the wolves. The cancer hydra of the Wolf-Divided, the spiral-galaxy arms of the Endless Revolution, the event horizon glare of the Dancer at the Gate. The bleeding edge of the Sleeper's egg. They dragged her closer, and she felt… it was radiation. Raw. Crackling. Unnatural. Beyond the crumbling of an atom - something worse. More… visceral. She felt one of the wolves break away from the pack - less than a second, her hand was raising up, she was breaking the graft… the wolf leapt, laughing like a jackal, eyes burning with the fire that would burn the universe down if it had the chance. The wolf in her own mind rose to meet it… and the two seemed to meld for a moment. Feeding on their own wounds. Larger. Stronger. And intimately familiar with the contours of her mind.

Burn with me.

Taylor screamed.

Her arm was on fire.

Patience ripped her hand away. Taylor could vaguely hear her talking, but… but barely, her arm was… fuck, her arm… the wolf in her mind, the single screaming mass of chaotic revolution, it lunged for her, burrowed into her brain, deeper, deeper… Chorei screamed, and Taylor could feel her fleeing. Her entire nervous system became the hunting grounds for the Wolf, laughing madly as it pursued her partner. Not tolerating any opposition to its presence. A tumour in her head, growing, growing, ready to overtake her. She felt a mind within the Wolf, the chewed-up remnants of the person it had once been. Butcher V. No idea about powers, just felt a man with huge shoulders, heavy fists, a smile splitting his face in two… she tumbled to the ground, spasming uncontrollably, blood pouring from her eyes, mouth, ears, nose, she could feel her entire body aching to haemorrhage. Patience was trying to say something. Trying to stop her. Her arm was burning, and Chorei couldn't stop the pain, too busy not dying. She felt her memories shivering as the Wolf raged through them, and Chorei tried to hide herself…

Clarity bloomed.

She was… smaller. A memory. Colours faded. She was a child, it was her sixth birthday party. Just her and Emma and a few others, friends who'd dropped out of her life as time went on. Parents standing around with beers while the children squabbled over a table filled with snacks. Taylor blinked… her eyesight was worse. Even young, she'd needed glasses. Felt raw. Vulnerable. No scars, no weapons… she glanced around sharply, noting the unreality of the place, the lack of responses to her twitchiness. Emma was chattering away, and Taylor ignored her. And… there. Chorei. Hiding in the crowd of parents, crouched slightly, looking around with desperate fear in her eyes. Coldness gone - fear had flooded them completely. For a moment, nothing happened. Te world beyond ceased to exist, all that remained was this memory> Taylor gritted her teeth at the sight of her mom. Didn't want to be here. Chorei glanced over, apologetic. Didn't mean for her to be here as well. Peace…

Darkness.

Something huge rising to swallow the sun.

Something so much more vast than any individual memory.

A red star blazing down.

The memory broke. Taylor snapped back into the world - feeling Chorei flee into her limbic system, into her reptilian brain, into everything which was shapeless and confusing, easy for her to hide in. Her mouth was full of blood, her nose was running with it, her eye… her eye was just a waterfall of the stuff. The Wolf was raging in her, killing her from the inside. One of the Butchers had detached to kill her. And she… she tried to focus, but the pain in her arm, the scorching fury in her head… it was here to kill her. It was here to burn out everything sane and leave nothing but a mouthpiece for its own insanity. Butcher V was howling as it shredded the memory in front of it, tearing apart any recollection of her birthday… horror ran through her. It would consume everything. Every memory. Every positive feeling. Nothing would remain. Nothing at all. Her arm, what was wrong with her arm… Chorei was saying something, her voice barely audible over it. Taylor croaked, and her eyes focused on Patience, looming above her, looking… genuinely terrified.

"Taylor? Taylor? What's-"

"V is in my head."

Patience's eyes widened.

Memory exploded in front of her eyes.

The tea shop. Turk and Ahab. Soon after they'd met. The Wolf towered above their bodies, muzzle red with gore as it tore into them, ragged hunks of meat lining the floor, the air stinking of ozone. It looked up, eyes boiling with fury at itself, at her, at everyone and everything. It despised her with every molecule of its being - it despised her because she existed as a complete being. It despised her because she wasn't changing, she wasn't in revolution against herself. Taylor stumbled backwards, limbs unfamiliar, world unreal. The Wolf began to pad closer, flesh twisting as lesser bodies tore themselves apart within. Its teeth were bright - tumorous, calcified growths that passed for jaws. Other heads sagged from its neck, half-heads, living cancers, snapping at each other and the central body, eyeless, hairless, toothless but for long spikes of bone. The hydra-wolf was closer than ever, the stink of ozone was intolerable. It grinned.

Nice try.

She… she'd done this before, she could get a weapon out of here, she could fight, she could… the Wolf shredded memory, devoured thought. She tried to remember the feeling of the First Rifle in her hands, the heft of it, the power. It started to coalesce, but the moment she angled it in the thing's direction, the memory just… shuddered. Faded. Stuttered out of existence like her flashlight.

There is no thought in the revolution.

Its jaws opened, rows of cancerous teeth leading back an impossible distance.

You will be emptied.

Taylor shuddered at the wave of crackling breath.

We will fill you with ourselves.

The revolution could take her. The change would overcome her. Mutations would spiral out of control. The Wolf would devour her thoughts and leave nothing but a raging desire for change at all costs, change to the world, and change to herself. Taylor Hebert would cease to be in a second. Her successor would die a second later. Each second, a new her. Each new her, so radically different to be barely recognisable as connected to the last. A chain of being, a chain of links that hated one another and severed the chain wherever possible. There would be no chain - no links, no bindings, no moorings. All would be the screaming revolution, there would never be an established order, only the process of shifting from one to the next in the most violent fashion, which obliterated all mention or reference to that which came before.

The memory snapped.

And she could feel it being swallowed whole as reality returned.

She was dying.

The Wolf was consuming her.

With a great effort, she tried to get herself under control, ignoring the pain in her arm… impossible, it was rising to an intolerable pitch. Think past it… plan. OK. Plan. Had maybe a minute before she lost most of her personality. Time slowed to a crawl - thank fuck for adrenaline. Chorei was running from the Wolf's avatar, from the remnants of what had once been Butcher V. Tiny by comparison. A single human mind against a screaming avatar of revolution, one that grew larger with each second. Grafting - heal it, maybe. Seal up the wound. No, no, no, not an option, it was used to that, it would've planned for it, she barely knew how… she… hold on. Her eye traced down slowly to her arm…

The legs were back.

More.

The holes had widened, turning to bloody wounds, and something was trying to get out. Another insect. Huge. Sinuous. Too many legs. Half-formed for now, still half-connected to her, but… but it was workable. Churning in the gore. She had an idea. Chorei squeaked something from the depths of her mind, where she was hiding - the Wolf was after her, only a moment to talk.

I understand. I have an idea. Graft to the parasite. If the Wolf is isolated, it will tear itself apart.

Oh. That made… that actually made sense! Yeah, yeah, she had an idea! Taylor focused past the pain… and seized control of the huge insect pushing its way out through her arm. The pain was… it was something else. Quite unlike anything she'd ever experienced. The mutations were worsening, it was growing faster than before, manifesting matter from… somewhere, extrapolating from her own flesh, doing everything possible to grow faster and faster. But it was still connected. She could use it. Slowly, painfully… she grafted. The insect thrashed, and she felt a simple mind, nothing resembling complexity. Just a series of clicking binaries, cold calculation prevailing over anything more sophisticated. OK, now she just…

Chorei leapt across.

The insect fell very still indeed.

The Wolf followed her, roaring eagerly, happy to savage its prey. It was tearing at itself as it lunged, and Taylor saw the plan. Saw it perfectly. Her grafting with Chorei shivered… and began to come apart. No, no, no, no… she could see the plan. Chorei was luring the Wolf inside. The grafting would sever. The Wolf would likely kill Chorei… and then itself. Without an enemy, it would have to revolt against its own existence, tearing itself apart. It was a good plan. With one complication.

"No, Chorei-"

It's been an honour, Taylor. I'm afraid. Terribly so. Continue onwards. Achieve something. My months with you have been… frightening, but wonderfully alive. More than an old woman like me deserved.

Thank you for everything. My one and only friend.

The grafting severed.

Taylor howled… and the insect writhed. Taylor saw what it was, now. The long body, the shining chitin, the many, many, many legs… it was a centipede. A gigantic centipede growing out of her body, mixing in elements from other insects. Its many eyes burned with fire, with the self-hating fury of the Wolf. The plan was working. Taylor tried to seize control again - if she could graft to the centipede, maybe she could take Chorei back, get the Wolf to be alone, but… but when she tried, Chorei pushed her back. Her knowledge was greater, her experience was greater. She could repel an unwanted grafting, she knew Taylor too well to be vulnerable. She wanted to be sure. Didn't want the Wolf to destroy her partner. Taylor felt a cavernous loneliness start to bloom in her chest. No, no, no, no… she couldn't lose her. Chorei was her partner, her friend, she couldn't lose her, wouldn't lose her. She was terrified at the level of loss that was generating, the level of paralytic terror at being alone. Couldn't. Wouldn't. Mustn't. Chorei was her friend, she couldn't just…

The insect writhed, the Wolf destroying itself… and Chorei with it. She could feel it happening.

She could hear the gnawing.

Not long now.

Taylor stared sightlessly at the ceiling.

And Patience moved.

Spoiler: Author's Note

AN: Sorry. If it's any consolation... well, Chorei's not gone, not quite yet.

And Taylor's not the type to just abandon her friends to unpleasant fates. Not if she can help it.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

231 - Divine Circulation, Petroleum Embolism

Sanagi's beam was ripping through the creatures five at a time. Oil spilled, ignited, burned, helped stall the others. Helped her beam catch them that much more effectively. Once, she'd been afraid of this - her beam cooked her flesh, and she'd always worried that she'd damage herself irreparably. Now? Now there was nothing to burn, nothing that she cared about beyond her face. She could feel the charred remnants of her chest crisp up again, any moisture vanishing as the sheer heat desiccated them. The smoke from the oil leached into her flesh, and she felt like she was acquiring the consistency and smell of truly awful jerky. She had burned them, burned them, never stopped slicing and cutting and charring and feeling her own body come closer to a state of perfection. The power was flowing through her - the filaments coating her bones were sparking with electricity, power radiating from her. She was probably radioactive at this point, and she adored it. She felt in harmony with everything around her. Ahab was gunning them down, Patience - the Butcher - was fighting them at close range, covering one angle of approach. And Sanagi… Sanagi inhaled the strange multicoloured fumes of the fossil creatures, she felt them pool in her skull, she felt something…

Something wrong.

Something was burning around the stars of her brain. A vision.

She saw… she saw the egg of the new world. She saw the filthy discharge, the world struggling to be born, the breaking of water, the prebirth slipping outwards…

Silence.

Not even the crackling of fires.

She was alone.

Sanagi clattered against a wall, bones shaking and smoking, flesh half-burned. Not much left. Part of her torso - but her extremities were almost all gone. Just most of a leg down to the shin, an entire arm with some fingers scoured clean… nothing else. Her face. She checked frantically - still had it. Her filaments floated strangely - the air here was different, she could taste it. A core of panic started to bloom - she was somewhere else. The tunnels had definitely changed. This felt… it wasn't quite like the first. There were too many tunnels. Far too many. And they were… they weren't smooth. They looked organic - like someone had carbonised an enormous vascular system. Oil trickled down from huge welts along the stone walls, and her stars shivered with unease. The air was damp, she could feel that much. Very damp. Slowly, very slowly, she started to move. Picking a random direction. Her lights bloomed as brightly as possible - so bright she'd blind anyone who came close. A tiny lighthouse, really. If her allies were nearby… she remembered Mound Moor, the infinite house, the space contortions. Just… if she was doomed, she was doomed. If she had a chance, she had a chance. But she wouldn't get anywhere if she sat down and wept. Adrenaline - or what passed for it with her radically altered biology - was running through her, keeping her sharp, suppressing the majority of the panic.

But not all.

She wandered through the corridors, beginning at a steady march, escalating to a jog, peaking with a constant sprint. She didn't need to breathe, and her body ran on nuclear fusion. She could run as long as she wanted. It was eerie, and… unsatisfying. There was none of the physical response of sprinting. No pumping of lungs, so frantic beating of her heart, nothing. She just… moved, and grew mildly frustrated with the fact that her legs could only go so fast. Without any physical feedback in the form of fatigue, exhilaration, exhaustion, all the things she liked feeling, it just became a smooth line from Point A to Point B. She… may have been deluding herself for a while. No wonder exercise had been so unsatisfying since she triggered - and no wonder she'd been pushing herself harder and harder for very little tangible reward. Her muscles were atrophied hunks of meat sustained with a facsimile of life by black filaments coursing out from charred bones. The tunnels began to narrow, coiling around one another, squirming like huge mounds of black, oily stone, riddled with weeping welts. She was forced to scramble up sheer passages, at one point digging her sharp fingertips into the walls to haul herself upwards. No pain - but she was growing nervous.

How long would she have to go?

She imagined running until her legs turned to dust.

She imagined giving up and increasing the heat of her stars. Wondered if that would destroy her completely.

She ran…

And saw a flash of colour.

Sanagi screeched to a halt - literally, her boney feet scraped up fat blue sparks from the ground as she tried to arrest her constant movement. This passage wasn't quite as smooth - there were jagged chunks in the walls, bizarrely regular cubes which seemed to have grown at irregular angles from the rock. She ran her hands over one of them… completely smooth. Unnaturally so. She felt almost zero friction while touching them, it was eerily similar to running her hands over fine silk - felt like something artificial, generated by accident without abiding by any natural laws. And on the edge of one was a small smear of red, livid in her burning starlight. And attached to the red… her starry eyes contracted, narrowing in on the stuff stuck to the blood - for blood is most certainly what it was. A few scraps of… grey. Wool, looked like - and high-quality wool, too. Worsted, that was it. Why would… she remembered Kabiri. He'd come close to her before he ran away, and she'd seen the high quality nature of his suit. A solid grey jacket, and solid grey trousers - both high-quality wool, clearly tailored for him and him alone.

For a moment, her stars pulsed.

He was still alive. This blood was still wet.

The hand had been lost, but the body had endured.

He was still here.

She looked around carefully, trying to gauge where he could've been going - the way she'd come, or the way she was going. No footprints, but… a few drops of blood on the ground. He'd been injured, stumbling along desperately… surprised that he was able to get through some of the tunnels back there with his injury… hm. She paced along carefully, examining every tunnel that fed into this one. Three. The one she'd come through was basically impossible for someone missing a hand, the declines were too vicious, he'd have fallen to his death. Another was in the same boat, but instead of being fatal, it was simply impassable - the climb was awful. A third… she peered carefully around, making sure that she wasn't overlooking anything. And… ah. There. He'd sagged against a wall, spilling blood over the ground, blood he'd then stepped in. A bloody footprint lay there… angling forwards. She broke into a sprint without any warm up, accelerating from zero to everything in a matter of seconds. No lungs to burn, no muscles to cramp, no inhibitions whatsoever. She wasn't alive - she was a particularly motivated dead body. And now she had a target.

She… wasn't sure when she stopped moving on two legs.

Something pulsed through her.

A feeling of wrongness.

Her fingers began to dig long, vicious gouges into the ground… and she glanced down to see that her bones had changed. Her finger bones were longer, ending in brutal hooked points. Her one remaining fleshy hand was slowly changing as well, she could see what looked like dark fish scales slowly marching up from the wrist. She remembered Taylor screaming, not sure what she'd been screaming about, the battle had separated them too quickly. She should probably be a little more frightened at this, honestly. But… she'd already shed most of her flesh. And the claws seemed helpful. Maybe this was a power thing - now she'd broken through the main barrier, she was just eerily OK with bodily modifications performed against her will. Or she had just stopped caring once her organs crystallised and fell out through the bottom of her ribcage. Her heart lingered, of course. A lump of inert, perfect crystal.

She clattered through the tunnels, hunting, seeking…

And abruptly, she found something.

The tunnels ended. A huge space expanded before her - a cavern in the earth, smoothed around the edges, brimming with the same oily welts that marked these damn tunnels. But this was… it felt like an embolism. A fossilised embolism, the actual cause of it long-since decayed, but the deformity remained, the artery remained. It wasn't a cavern - it was a distortion. Space was already doing strange things. And now it had done this. Twisting pillars stretched from the floor to the ceiling, each one riddled with holes large enough to fit a human if they squeezed… and based on the smoothness of their entryways, she imagined that some people had. She slowly advanced into the cavern, feet clicking out a staccato rhythm, her newly clawed hand shivering against itself. Slowly, ever-so-slowly, she peered around a column… more columns, more human-sized hives. Her stars warmed up. This felt like a trap. More of those… her rhythm was interrupted. Something had splashed. She looked down to see a wide, shallow, inky black pool spreading before her, studded with pieces of grey stone. Very, very familiar grey stone.

Those fossil things lived here.

And someone had butchered them.

A flicker of light… her stars warmed up yet further, almost boiling now, ready to launch themselves forth. She dropped to a crouch, forcing herself to place each foot down as slowly as possible, to minimise all the noise she created. Even so, each barely-audible click was enough to make her wince internally. Her pincers ached to clack, to signal her approach, to intimidate the person in front of her… she peered carefully around a column, in the direction of the flickering glow…

Turk and Ahab stared back at her.

Sanagi's pincers clicked.

They locked eyes - three people, and three eyes between them all. Slowly, carefully, Sanagi extracted herself from the gloom and approached them, dropping into a crouch around their fire - a primitive oil lamp, really, which belched thick, glittering smoke into the air. No chance of it staining the walls - they were already black. Their guns looked warm, their faces looked weary, and… and there was something wrong with them. Sanagi's spine locked up. Something was wrong. Turk's eyepatch was gone - and inside the hollow socket was what looked like a geode, a pile of glittering crystals descending inwards. No idea how far they went, but they were a delicate shade of amber, riddled with tiny impurities. His face was tight… and as she watched, he coughed violently - his fingers were stained red, and she heard something plink to the ground. Her head inclined down - a tiny piece of gold, bloodstained, and… she almost leapt to her feet as it slowly began to undulate away, like a tiny grub. She looked at Ahab quickly - not Ahab, not her friend. She was sitting slightly in the dark, and her eyes gleamed flatly - like shining a torch at a cat, they reflected light in a flat panel. Her spine was wrong. Her joints were wrong - too elastic. Too rubbery. And her sores had worsened, weeping black oil in slow, irregular spurts. Traceries of black running down her face, black bars dividing her up. Sanagi felt self-conscious of her claws, the black scales advanced over her hand…

Ahab laughed, and her voice had a coarse grinding sound to it which it had once lacked. Like rocks colliding.

"...well, glad it's not just us."

Turk spat out another gold nugget, which once again slithered into the dark. He looked decades older - his face was sallow, forehead dotted with the tiny beads of sweat which manifested on the aged and infirm, like the premature shades of funeral ornaments. He grimaced.

"Seen anyone else?"

Sanagi raised her synthesiser.

"Kabiri's here."

Ahab flinched… and cackled again.

"Well, shit, that explains it."

She gestured in front of her, across the expanse of the embolism-cavern. Sanagi followed it… and rose to her feet automatically. Black fog. The cavern had multiple tunnels leading away from it, and one was completely immersed in ice-cold fog which pulsed and squirmed with unseen shapes. Fog that she very much recognised. Ahab was keeping her distance, sitting across the fire from it, never taking her gleaming eyes away. She looked like shit - her skin was worse, and her entire bearing had changed - she looked haggard, thin. Almost hollowed out. Sanagi looked down at her, and Ahab shrugged.

"That shit was here when we arrived. No way in… and no way out. Don't know if he knew we were coming and hid, or if this was his last ditch defence against those fossil things. Whatever the case, he's not coming out… and the fog hasn't moved an inch."

Sanagi was already moving. Turk held out a hand, stopping her… and handed over a grenade. His voice was distressingly thick and hoarse, he sounded like someone who'd… been throwing up squirming gold nuggets for more time than was healthy.

"Take it. Might help."

Sanagi nodded. Ahab stood shakily, her joints resisting the urge to bend in directions they really shouldn't. Slowly, painfully, she stepped over to Sanagi… and wrapped her up in a hug. Sanagi's stars pulsed.

"Good to see you alive."

Sanagi patted her on the back, and clicked her pincers. Didn't like saying sensitive things with her synthesiser - felt like someone else was speaking for her. But without her face on… she could click. And she tried to click with as much affection as could be conveyed through a simple pincer-click. Ahab smiled sadly, and pushed her off. Sanagi said nothing.

And stalked into the fog, her stars burning.

* * *​

Vicky was going fucking insane.

She'd… she'd gone through the right access point, she knew it. Same sewer entrance, she could even see the imprint of her own fingers on the manhole from the last time she'd clambered down here. The same dark tunnel full of brackish water, the same feeling of being out of place and unwanted… she'd flown in the right direction at the highest speed she could manage in these close confines. And she knew where she should be. There was a pit with a mound of rats, there was a tunnel, and then… not sure. But she'd flown… and flown… and flown… and the rats refused to present themselves. The tunnel simply went on. She'd tried to turn back, but… the tunnel had changed. The angle was wrong. The size was completely wrong. And the material had shifted, no more old brickwork, now it was just oily rock, uncannily smooth, leading away into the distant, distant dark. Her flight had slowed then. Dread ran through her. She remembered this. The comet in Naaktgeboren Ridge… the cave system leading downwards. The darkness, the feeling of a great presence boiling around her, the overall sense of smallness… and of being digested by the earth. Fed deeper and deeper, forced through intestinal canals made of stone which stripped her down layer by layer, peeling her away until nothing remained.

Warmth lingered in her chest, and she focused on it, on the feeling of burning flame which lay within… the feeling of reality - being something, not just a void surrounded by roles.

She'd advanced down the tunnels in silence, one hand wrapped around her knife, the other clutching her spear. The glove and scarf were active again, slithering and tightening, living things that yearned to be worn and known. Sometimes she saw fragments of old memories play on the walls around her, grainy film projected by an unseen engine. She saw how Uheer's guerillas in Mongolia had worked to terrorise their opponents in the CUI army, taking a particular degree of relish in stringing up captured soldiers by their ankles, weighing down their necks with heavy metal collars. The damage was invariably irreparable, death was frequent, and the sight of the bodies was enough to sow dissent. And… then there was the incident with the brothel. Women taken by the advancing army to service their needs, infiltrated by Uheer's guerillas. One night, thirty-two emasculations, most water supplies poisoned, and fire spread amongst the food storage. The infiltrators were killed, of course. But the advancing army steered clear of local women after that. Vicky remembered being there, standing on a hill overlooking the main camp, watching the panic spread, the infiltrators giving up all pretences and simply sowing chaos as far and wide as possible - nail bombs thrown into mess halls, basic infrastructure sabotaged, rotten meat dumped in water barrels, so the resulting fluid was black and choked with disease…

Vicky suppressed the urge to vomit at the memory of how it all smelled.

And Iron Rain's skin…

She never focused on the visions that thing wanted to show her.

Uheer's had been unexpectedly brutal, but there was always a cold, calculating distance. Her powers guided her, always tempting her in the direction of precisely planned violence. Even the memories had that tint to them, a grey filter which made it clear that she wasn't in her right mind. And, notably, she'd left. Abandoned her lifestyle as a guerilla leader in favour of more profitable endeavours. And if the scarf was telling the truth, she'd been fairly restrained. Found a new life. Iron Rain had no such excuse. At no point did she think she was doing something wrong, at no stage did she reconsider her life choices.

At no point did she regret.

The tunnels stretched on, and on, and on… and Vicky knew that something had to happen. Right? It'd happened last time, she was sure of that, and…

Then the rats came.

They hadn't vanished. The old structure wasn't gone, wasn't obliterated. It had been integrated into this new, ink-black labyrinth.

And the rats had come with it.

Squirming out from bleeding welts in the walls, burrows that led deeper than the stonework should allow. They were bigger, their fur was mangier, their eyes burned with vicious hunger… and they wept oil. From their eyes, their ears, their mouths… the rats boiled outwards in a slithering, shambling wave, voices raised to high-pitched squeals which sounded more like pigs in a slaughterhouse than anything else… their eyes were fixed on her, they were driven to pursue and consume. Mutations riddled them, each and every one. Too many eyes. Too many tails. Insect legs protruding messily from their abdomens, some had shed their organs completely and their skins flapped in the wind as they dashed forward impossibly. Most were the size of a small dog, and twice as vicious. She floated upwards, spear sweeping down in a broad arc. Clearly hostile. And warranted a hostile response. They burst like overfed ticks when her spear touched them, spraying oil and half-dissolved organs over their fellows… and the oil seemed to make them mutate faster, more unpleasantly. One rat simply collapsed as tumours began to worm their way out of its body, dozens of them, anonymous masses of grey flesh that simply grew and grew until the host disappeared - a paw, a scrap of fur, a half-functioning jaw twitching weakly as the masses sprouted into something that vaguely resembled a tree.

Vicky floated faster… the rats were coming in greater and greater numbers, spilling from the walls, and she almost shrieked as a huge, gnawing rat attached itself to her head - they were bleeding through the ceiling as well. She grabbed it, hurled it with enough force to disintegrate every one of its bones, turn it to a mound of putrid organs and mangy fur… and she Thousands and thousands. Her spear swept broadly, even a simple gash was enough to put them down, to slow them and allow their fellows to bury them under a rising tide of bodies. With a gesture, Vicky summoned a huge array of weapons, which plummeted down to impale them… mistake. Even her broadest blade was still too narrow to kill more than a few struggling knots of rats, and they actually formed poles for them to climb up, up, up, closer and closer, leaping over the gap to try and attach to her limbs. Her aura blazed as her panic rose, commanding them to be afraid, to be impressed, to run… but the feeling only excited them further. A rat with a bifurcated spine twitched again, leaping with terrifying power and speed, squeaking viciously… and Vicky swatted it from the air. Black oil exploded out, shimmering with colours she couldn't quite name… her hands were coated in seconds, her arms, part of her clothes…

She ran.

Her strength pulverised any rat that came close. Her spear sliced them, her knife took down any that got within range, she was a whirling blender…

But they were many. And she was one.

And the tunnel's walls seemed to close inwards, mounds of rats simply piling closer and closer and closer - she couldn't see the floor, the walls ewre next, even the ceiling hung heavy with inky welts that produced yet more of the things. Gritting her teeth… she flew, crushing anything. Oil splattered over her. Some ran off her shield. A distressing amount got through. Her shield would snap as a tidal wave of rats tried to collapse over her, paws scratching, tails slithering over her skin like fleshy snakes, beady, burning eyes filled with unnatural intelligence… her shield would break, and oil would get through. Her hands were invisible. Everything below the waist had been soaked. Her face was stiff as the oil started to dry out. And the smell… the stink of ozone…

She thrashed to crush anything in her way, disentangling herself from the squirming mass… and couldn't see a way out. They were limitless. No matter how many died, more came to replace them.

Vicky's eyes flicked around desperately, searching for any possible exit. The welts in the walls ran deep for there to be this many, no chance of them all just fitting into the brickwork. Maybe there were more tunnels. She tried to keep flying in her normal direction, just as before, but the rats were starting to concentrate. What had once been a carpet was now a topographic map of some violent, squirming country - huge mountains of rats piling higher and higher, reaching upwards and collapsing a moment later as their supports degraded, too mutated to bear the weight. But they were close. This wasn't a swarm attacking her, it was a biting, chittering flood that was rising to drown her completely. There was no end. Soon they'd fill the entire tunnel. Her spear was almost blunt, but it still did its job, crushing anything around her, clearing a small space. OK. Think. There had to be…

Idea.

She manifested the biggest blade she could muster - less a blade, more of a vast blunted chunk of metal that so happened to have a handle, more a heap of raw iron than anything else. Her glove sang, rejoicing in the weapon's creation, and Vicky hated how much she was relying on this damn power. Smug at how much more effective with it she was than Iron Rain - the woman hadn't even been a Brute, she couldn't do anything more than rain metal down on people, Vicky could use the weapons she summoned. No, focus - the rats were clear, and the enormous slab of metal crashed downwards with all the force she could muster. Just lifting the thing should be breaking her arms, and smashing it into the floor almost shattered her shield. The brickwork gave way with a wet tearing that made her think it was made of something quite distinct from stone, and a gout of oil spilled upwards from the compacted mass of rat bodies which hadn't managed to quite escape. She ignored the squeals, and crashed again. She could feel it - a hollowness, a fracturing which suggested something beyond this tunnel. The rats, sensing an attempt to escape, rushed inwards to try and overwhelm her defences…

Another crash.

And the floor split open.

The darkness yawned.

And Vicky dove into it, pursued by a waterfall of squirming mutated bodies. She descended, and… and…

Something pressed into her.

She paused, retreated for a moment…

Something at her back.

She flew up…

Something there too.

Down…

Blocked.

The sound of rats was gone. The feeling was gone. She slowly, slowly, reached for her flashlight, flicking it on to see…

Nothing.

Blackness on every side.

No, no, more than that - stone. Black stone. Oily and smooth, unnaturally so, forming patterns that no natural rock formation would, and there were no divisions for bricks, nothing to suggest anything artificial. An inch in front of her face, a solid wall of black rock. Behind… another wall. A tiny bubble of air in the midst of endless stone… her breathing immediately accelerated. Claustrophobia. Minor, but being surrounded by rock on all sides, pinned and trapped with no explanation, it… it was awakening something unpleasant. Her scarf tightened around her neck - that was it. Uheer had been claustrophobic, and that fear was transmitting itself, the scarf starting to imitate a hangman's noose, tighter, tighter around her windpipe, strangling her breath… she couldn't even find the room to reach up and rip it away. Wasn't killing her, but it was tight. The chunk of metal… where had it gone? All she had was her knife, where had the weapon gone?

Her breathing was faster, more laboured.

No rats.

No noise.

Nothing but her, suspended in the dark.

Why was… what had… her fist slammed into one of the walls, and she felt it tearing open, bleeding oil… her body was itching, her entire skin felt like it was on fire, and there were… points where the itching escalated to the point of pain. Her jaw. Her left hand. Her hips. Her lungs. Nothing felt right, the oil was… it was seeping into her, it was getting through the skin, it was soaking around her organs. She remembered the mutations on those rats, the way their flesh rebelled against itself, how the chittering mass had ceased to resemble anything earthly…

A spike of pain from her left hand, and she yanked it up to her face, pointing the flashlight…

Her eyes widened.

A sixth finger.

She had six fingers. And one of them was… it was glistening, like a fresh birth. Four joints. A nail which gleamed too bright for anything natural. Skin that was milky-white and flawless, no tiny scars, no wear and tear, nothing. Fresh. She whimpered at the sight of it. The fear lasted for a moment before anger returned - she had work to do, she couldn't just be trapped here… she slammed her fist into the wall again, feeling dust rain around her, felt the stone split open, releasing faint trickles of oil… her torchlight flickered momentarily, and terror swept through her - being trapped was one thing, being trapped and blind… not sure how much air she had left. But she felt the space around her expand, just a little, just a tiny amount. The flame in her chest was brighter than ever as she smashed against the walls, going back and forth like a pinball, desperately trying to get out, to get to a tunnel, even the rats would be better than this, at least then there was something to crush…

She felt the walls shudder… and the ceiling quake.

She froze.

If she went further, she risked a collapse. Not sure if she could force he rway out. Her shield would shatter with each impact, and without her shield… a trickle of oil splashed against it, running just in front of her face, barely a few centimetres away from entering her eye… her sixth finger twitched, already integrated into her muscles… no, something was wrong, it was… there was… she glanced.

The finger was gone. The skin was flawless.

She blinked… and gritted her teeth. Come on. Needed a way out. Her chest was burning with heat now, feeding on the feeling of being trapped, the feeling of gathering despair in her gut.. The feeling that this was simply the fate that awaited her. There'd be no convenient way out, no happy weakness to exploit, just… just the dark, and this tiny pocket where she was sealed. She rested her head against the wall, feeling it shiver and leak more oil outwards, black, choking, stinking of ozone and things she couldn't name, gleaming in unrecognisable colours. Her fist punched forward again… and the structure quivered. A moment away from collapse. And she hadn't made any headway - no way of telling where the tunnels began, if they did at all. Maybe there was literally nothing outside of this. Maybe this was just… how it ended. Despair bloomed - couldn't be. Couldn't be. She was… OK, she was real, she had roles stretched around a basic core of reality, but she still had a fucking ego. She was a hero, she couldn't just… it couldn't end like this, no way, couldn't. This had been deliberate, she was certain of it. Some intelligence was commanding things and had dumped her here, tried to kill her with rats, and when that failed, just buried her deep, deep in the earth with no possibility of escape.

Angrboda. Had to be.

A sense of smallness. She was isolated. And the thing she faced was… was vast. It was insanely vast. She hadn't… she didn't know that this was how it would work. The last time she was here, she flew without anything stopping her but Maggot Brain, she hadn't expected endless corridors, a tidal wave of rats, and… and nothing else! She hadn't expected that, she couldn't expect that! She was stronger than she'd ever been - had three sets of powers, and none of them were enough. Strength meant nothing when it shattered after a sufficient impact. Her weapons meant nothing in a confined space like this. And her planning… Uheer's power was silent. No comments. No plans. Maybe it had given up. Maybe it was resigned. Maybe Angrboda had exceeded them so much that there was no possibility of planning against her, none at all.

Maybe her entire journey had been pointless. All she'd done. All she'd learned. All she'd sacrificed.

All for nothing.

Despair bloomed brighter, feeding on her exhaustion. She was stubborn, she was determined, but… but after all this, after getting beaten down, changed, eroded, in every way shifted over and over and over again by forces she simply didn't understand, only to be entombed…

A pain flashed through her hand, and she flicked the flashlight downwards. Not much battery left. It was just a stupid pocket flashlight, not meant for this.

She froze.

The finger was back.

It was glistening like a newborn.

Where… where had the first one gone? Itching in her jaw, at the edge of her hips, in her lungs… oil running down, pooling around her feet… something moved in the pool. Something tiny, barely perceptible. Squirming in the darkness. She floated up, shivering in the cold…

Alone.

Trapped.

The flame bloomed brighter.

…God, her eyes were dry…

* * *

* * *​

Ahab stared solemnly into the fire, waiting. Turk and her had arrived here, crashed into the tunnels, and had just… walked. Glad they'd been together. The mutations had started quickly. Hers had been worse. He got a geode in his eye socket, and kept spitting up half-living gold nuggets. And she was fairly sure that he'd suffered some damage to his feet, based on how he winced with each step. No complaints. Just a painkiller and a grumble, and he was ready. Ahab hadn't complained at her fate either. But she was… she was a little frightened. Just a little. Her joints were wrong, kept trying to direct her into unfamiliar modes of movement. Her eyes were different, she could see better in the dark for one, but… the feeling of invasion was still unpleasant. The mutations had escalated as they moved in, systematically searching the tunnels…

Then they'd found this place. Ahab was calling it the Fossil Village in the confines of her head. The pillars had writhed with those… those things which looked like people. Not people. Not close. The oil was the only living component, everything else was just a shell, a vehicle for them to get around. Didn't want to think about where it came from. She imagined Pompeii, those hollow spaces under the earth, where ash had filled in everything else, the body ahd decayed, but the pocket remained… the pocket remained, perfectly shaped. Those tunnels were huge. Incomprehensibly huge, and utterly nonsensical.

Not everyone came out of the dark.

She imagined being immersed in stone, rotting away, only for the oil to spill inwards and fill up the cavity. A plaster cast that could shamble free and protect this place. And this was where they'd stored themselves. Gunfire had hurt them. Grenades had scattered their crowds. And if they did it with unending ferocity… they retreated. Scuttled into the walls, only for their flamethrower to torch the entrances, igniting the spilled oil. The sound of their shells cracking under the heat of their innards burning… oh, it was glorious. But weariness had overtaken them. The mutations were exhausting, and fighting was… difficult. Ahab was tired from her battle earlier, Turk was getting on in years and possibly had a literal gold mine in his digestive system somewhere… they needed to sit and rest.

Mutations. Her eyes. Her joints

And… and her organs. Something was wrong with her organs. Slowly, while Turk was looking away, she pulled up her shirt and pressed a finger into her stomach. It went in. It kept going. The skin kept depressing, inch after inch after inch… she felt her own skin envelop her hand like a rotten leather bag, she kept going, gritting her teeth… felt something damp. Something which squished… and then something hard. Tough. Cylindrical. A prod produced a wave of pain up her…

Spine.

Her breathing was a little faster.

She could touch her spine. Where… where had her organs gone? She felt the same squish as she withdrew… were those them? How was she still alive? She knew what radiation poisoning looked like, she did, but… but this was… she let her finger withdraw, let her stomach return to its usual state. A hollow feeling kept echoing through her, and she shivered.

Her eyes tracked the fog. No movements. NO way of helping. She remembered being trapped in Kabiri's fog, feeling the cold, the endless cold, the way her own memories seemed to crawl out of her brain to torment her. She'd moved on from all of them, that was probably the one thing that had kept her alive and sane. Memories were just unpleasant. They had no hold on her, not anymore. Not after a lot of effort over the course of several years. She glanced back at the fog, drumming her fingers on her rifle. Come on, come on…

A dull click.

Not like the stone men. More like… she stood, ignoring how her joints wanted her to stand with her knees folding backwards. Forced them to work the normal way, even if it ached. The fog was… it was fading.

The fog was fading.

And Sanagi walked out. She looked… her flesh was a little more singed, there were a few lacerations, a single bullet hole…

And a severed head in her hand, stump cauterised by intense heat.

Ahab blinked. Turk glanced over, and stiffened.

Sanagi clattered to a stop, and settled into a crouch. The head rolled in front of her, steaming in front of the fire. Silence. Ahab poked the head… Kabiri. She knew that smug face. He looked terrified. And more than that, he looked like he'd been bled dry. Taylor had mentioned the foot, they'd found a hand, and Sanagi had found more blood in the hallways… he was half-dead by the time she found him. Barely alive. And she'd just finished the job of sending him to whatever passed for an afterlife with the Fallen. She coughed.

"...you did it?"

A single click. Yes.

"Any problems?"

Two clicks. No.

"...want to talk about it?"

Two clicks.

Sanagi looked empty. She'd done it. He'd been half-dead, barely sustaining himself using the fog… killing him had been closer to euthanasia, she guessed. No catharsis from something like that. Felt like you were doing the fuckwit a favour at that point. Kabiri, an insane cultist who'd quite possibly helped end the world - because of him, they'd been forced to come here as quickly as possible, afraid of the consequences of him working unopposed. But he'd been as lost as they were. Escalated too fast for his own power, plunged into a situation where he couldn't survive. Torn apart piece by piece, and then killed by someone who probably felt stronger about him than anyone else - even if that feeling was just raw, overwhelming hate. Kabiri had been as blind as them. And now… gone. She thought it was anticlimactic - that Kabiri should've pulled out a thousand tricks, every ally he'd been hiding, shown that he could command this place, turning it into a winding labyrinth under his own command, a mad domain from which there was no escape.

…nope.

Just a skeleton woman and the mercy of a swift death.

Funny how that happened. Still. For someone who was part of the Fallen adn seemed to have delusions of grandeur…

Fitting.

"Did he say anything before he went?"

Sanagi paused, and raised her synthesiser.

"He was unrepentant. He thought Angrboda was testing him, making sure he was pure before he could approach the place where she rested. I confronted him about… about Barnabas."

Her star-eyes were cold.

"He tried to apologise for it when he realised what I was here for."

Ahab said nothing. Just watched. Turk did the same.

"...I didn't say anything after that. All I said was 'Leah. Barnabas College'. He connected the dots. Begged. Said he was close to the end. Said he was within spitting distance of his god. I sliced his head off and watched the fog die."

She stared into the head's wide, terrified eyes.

"Doesn't feel like anything."

Turk sighed, his mouth hoarse and sore. A trace of gold was visible in the back of his throat.

"It never does. When you start enjoying it, be worried. Be glad that you felt nothing. It shows you're still human."

He paused.

"Mostly."

Sanagi stared at the head… and kicked it gently into the fire. In seconds the hair caught alight, and a moment later the flesh began to redden and char, the fat rendered, his eyes softened and flowed from their sockets, followed by the cracking remains of his brain. Weeping his entire self into the uncaring coals. Sanagi watched the fire grow, feeding on this lump of fuel until it lost all identity and became an anonymous, charred mass.

"Thank you, Ahab. For everything."

Ahab hesitated… then leaned forward and planted a small kiss on Sanagi's cheekbone. It wasn't romantic - Ahab didn't intend it to be, at least. But looking at her sitting so… sadly, staring with such an expression of lost purpose… couldn't help herself. Wanted to help her. Didn't want her to get lost in the meaninglessness. Sanagi paused, her stars sparking erratically… and she leant back against a rock, Ahab curling into her, ignoring the hollowness of her missing organs. Both of them, broken-down and half-gone. And together, with Turk humming a tune from his childhood, they watched the fires rise and consume all that remained of the man who had been called, at turns, Xavier Crowley, Vision of Heaven, Kabiri…

And now nothing at all.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

232 - Come into my Lair, said the Wolf to the Centipede

Chorei shivered.

It'd been a long, long time since she was this alone. Even death hadn't been like this. She'd had her centipede with her, her nameless, writhing partner that had been with her for century after century. And then there'd been Taylor. And now… now there was nothing. She was terrified. Felt like a child. Darkness on all sides - the murky depths of an insect's mind. No thoughts, no memories, no real understanding of the world beyond vague instinctions. And the rest… the rest had been devoured. The Wolf-Divided's avatar, the Fifth Butcher, loomed above. Cancerous mass, squirming with tumours that ate at its flesh, replaced what it ate, and was eaten in turn. It was a thousand wolves at once, and a single hateful will pervaded all of them. The wolf wasn't the teeth, it wasn't the claws, it wasn't the body, but the simple hate/love that existed throughout. No peace. Never peace. It snarled, and… laughed. A deep, deep laugh from this parasite which had grown to usurp its host.

She's abandoned you.

Chorei gritted her teeth.

"No. And she never would."

The Wolf came closer, claws scraping at the shuddering, half-formed brainstem.

She will never come for you. You're here. With me. Until the end. This is all that remains.

Chorei thrust out her chin defiantly.

"Go on. Destroy me. And destroy yourself, dog. Destroy yourself, and never know the world your mistress wants to create."

The Wolf was near. She could feel her thoughtform start to blur at the edges, a hint of revolution creeping into her. A syllable of hateful change which wanted to bloom into a word, a sentence, a book, an entire self which would overwrite her. Knowledge metastasising. Deformed teeth creaked into a wide, hungry grin.

There will be nothing for you. And the process cannot be stopped. She will die alone. Afraid.

Chorei spat.

"She'll win. She defeated me despite being a terrified novice. She defeated Bisha, broke his ego and shredded his body - when he had already begun his ascension. She didn't merely fight a madman, she fought a god. Then she confronted the maggots breeding in Bisha's corpse and ground them to dust with as much effort as I would waste on squashing a cockroach. And now she will add Angrboda to her list of victories. Perhaps there is nothing after this. Perhaps I have no faith in my capacity to be reborn. Perhaps I have lost much of my faith in the redemptive embrace of the Grafting Buddha."

Her eyes narrowed.

"But I have faith in her."

The wolf growled. Passion, commitment, stability… it loathed these things. Utterly despised them. It was a thing of perpetual change, commitment only mattered if it was rejected every other second with a new, competing commitment. It could only exist in the bleeding division between one commitment and another, and Chorei had no intention of pursuing that 'other'. She was terrified, but… she'd done something good. Let it be said, if anyone bothered remembering her, that she had given herself up to save the city, and her… friend. Her only friend. Chorei imagined what Taylor would do in this situation - how she would react. Chorei stiffened her back, hardened her expression, and glared unblinking at the thing. It glared back, with far too many eyes.

We'll see how long that lasts.

Chorei clenched her fists, so tightly that if she had a body, she was sure her nails would've broken the skin.

"I suppose we will."

A roar.

A rush.

Conflict.

* * *​

Taylor's mind was silent. For the first time in so very, very long… there was no commentary from Chorei. The centipede embedded in her arm was thrashing, snapping at itself. She didn't know if the Wolf and Chorei were both alive, or if Chorei was already dead and the Wolf was starting to destroy itself. Her memories felt like Swiss cheese, holes had been created where the Wolf had been. She struggled to remember her mom's face… took a moment for her to piece it together, a collage from a dozen other smaller memories, little fragments of experience coalescing. The birthday where Chorei had hidden… gone. No idea what had happened there. Everything completely eradicated, just a dim awareness that there was a gap where a memory had once been. She felt… she felt terrifyingly lonely. Empty. Hollowed out. Chorei had been a constant, a murmuring voice advising, consoling, arguing, reminiscing… a voice that just kept on talking no matter what, observing and commenting on anything that occurred. And now she was gone. She could barely feel the insect now, just felt… numb.

And Patience moved.

Grabbed her arm - gauntlet in the way, didn't want to risk more contact.

"Taylor!"

Taylor struggled to move, blood choking her throat. Patience looked at the insect, looked at the fire in its eyes… and saw the profound loss in Taylor's single remaining eye.

"...Chorei?"

Taylor's expression told her everything. Guilt washed over Patience, and Taylor couldn't help but feel a small rush of hate. There was no wolf to feed on it - taken away, lured out of her mind by Chorei's sacrifice. Patience had done this. Patience, who had inherited the Butcher mantle, had entered into this legacy of madness, and had made Taylor care about her enough to want to help her. And where had that gotten her? Mutated. Wounded. And deprived of one of the few utter constants in her life, present at all times, even when she was otherwise completely alone. Patience looked regretful - how fucking dare she look regretful, Taylor had lost one of her friends because of her. She tried to sit up, but her muscles were… spasming, barely able to hold still for more than a second. Hard. Wanted to sit up, wanted to scratch the bitch's eyes out. Patience looked around, her eyes burning with the fire of the other wolves. One mind gone. Thirteen left. Butcher V was stuck in that insect, and he was killing Chorei. Tearing her apart. And Taylor couldn't help. She simply couldn't. Patience shivered… and spoke.

"Can't you graft to her, or… or something?"

"No. Can't. She won't let me."

Patience bit her bottom lip. A moment of silence.

"Show me how to graft."

Taylor blinked.

"W-what?"

Her voice was uncertain, still choked by blood and spasming muscles.

"Show me how to graft. If I can graft to that centipede, I can… I don't know, but I'm not sitting back and letting Chorei die for me. I understand the Wolf better than either of you, maybe I'll succeed where you two failed."

Her voice was uncharacteristically low and solemn. No eagerness, no bravado, no maddening screams, just… someone acting human.

"I can't…"

Patience helped her sit up.

"I can't just… show you, Chorei was the expert, not me, I…"

She considered. Was there really any other choice? Could she live with herself if she did anything besides this?

"...I can try."

Patience didn't smile. Too tense.

"Good. Show me. Before it's too late."

The dark tunnels stretched all around them, and the sound of their voices echoed down, down, down, quieter and quieter, the vastness of the structure swallowing the sound whole. Taylor leant in, spasms dying. The centipede was writhing, but… she was able to seize control of its physicality, stopped it from tearing itself apart, ripping its innards open. Wouldn't let Chorei die because some insect didn't know how to keep itself alive. Nervous system was half-formed, but the organs were mostly intact, the limbs were perfectly functional. It was a living creature, it was completely capable of existing beyond her - once it had detached properly, of course. But for now it lingered. And as long as it did, she'd work to get Chorei out. Patience listened attentively, twitching every so often as the other minds tried to scream her into submission. Taylor talked about… about the feeling. She knew she couldn't get the doctrine quite right, but she tried to express the concept of the glowing tapestry of the mind, the way it could interlock with other tapestries, could be made more beautiful by being added to, no part overwhelming the other. The process by which 1 and 1 became 11. The centipede tried to buck against her more than once, struggling to break from her control. Wouldn't let it. Couldn't. Patience listened as she talked about the feeling of linking with someone else, the sheer ecstasy of a proper grafting. Two combining to form something greater than the sum of their parts.

But it wasn't enough.

The understanding wasn't quite… clicking, really. She groaned. Needed a demonstration, and… and as long as Patience remained the Butcher, grafting was suicide. She racked her brain. Come on, come on, had to think of something, Chorei might already be dead and here she was agonising over how to save her, come on… something to keep those wolves at bay, something to stop them from just ripping everything apart, how… wait a moment.

"Hold on. The Butcher minds hate one another, yeah?"

"More than anything. Pretty calm at the moment, but that's just because they're focused on me. And boy, are they loud…"

Taylor struggled to keep speaking past clenched teeth. Could be more growths in her, more teratomas ready to burst outwards.

"OK. So… there might be something else. I want you to focus on that hate. I want you to focus on the striving element of it - all of them working against one another, and working against you. It's a rivalry where none of them can die, so… focus on that. Focus on how they have to let each other live, how they love and hate one another at the same time, how the pain of getting hurt blends with pleasure. Focus on how they will constantly try to surmount each other and you, and you them, without anyone ever convincingly coming out on top. It's striving, and it's endless. Not revolution - revolution implies change, and the Butcher hasn't really changed for a while."

Patience shivered.

"...oh, they don't like that."

"Good. It means it's working. Focus on this, focus on the feeling of conflict… you've got scars, think of them. Think of how skin becomes tougher when you cut it, heals over with earned tissue. Not granted, earned. You regenerate it yourself, you earn it through fighting."

Samira had said that many of her fellows had shifted from the Unceasing Striving to the Wolf-Divided, drawn in by the temptation of self-centred revolution instead of perpetual rivalry and improvement. The two powers were close, even if Samira liked to deny it. Close enough that switching from one to the other was easy.

Taylor was counting on that.

Patience's hands traced over some of the long, pale scars she'd accumulated over the years. Taylor kept talking, kept educating. She didn't think of the consequences of this, of trying to initiate Patience into multiple new ways of thinking. Maybe this would work, maybe it wouldn't. Maybe Patience would find herself able to do whatever she wanted, independent of Taylor, and if so… maybe she'd just let her die, let her go. Maybe she was screwing herself over, destroying her chances of getting the hoard by making Patience dependent on her. And maybe she genuinely didn't give a shit, because Chorei was about to die and Taylor was not going to let that happen. Slowly, surely, Patience grasped it. She had a war going in her mind at all times, she was a seasoned combatant, she understood this stuff. She fought for the sheer hell of it, she didn't wrap it up with delusions of being a hero, or being righteous, or anything. She fought for fun. In a way, she understood the Unceasing Striving better than Vicky had - and Vicky had needed a whole sermon to start grasping it, not to mention a charm. Patience was her own charm, she had sermons on this topic screamed into her mind twenty-four hours a day. A second passed… and Taylor could smell gunpowder.

A smile split her face. A hard, cold smile. Patience reciprocated, and her teeth looked just a little sharper. Just a little. Taylor narrowed her eye.

"How are they now?"

"...distant, a little. More human. Less wolfish. Just a little. Not sure how long it'll last, but… oh, that's hitting the spot, that's doing something…"

She shuddered in pleasure, and Taylor snapped her fingers, redirecting her attention.

"Good. if they're quiet, if you're sure they're quiet, then we can do this."

"Gladly."

Taylor hesitated. Could be a mistake. Could be a ploy. But the smell of gunpowder was unmistakable. She knew this feeling - had felt it over the New Canyon. The Unceasing Striving hung heavy in the air, and the tunnel didn't like it - it rumbled, churned a little. Solipsism was undone by rivalry, no solipsist could have a rival, to have one would acknowledge the existence of someone else. Taylor could even see the red flesh around Patience's toothy antlers start to scar over, silvery and tough… she was a natural. A flash of unease. Was she making a monster? Was she creating something even worse? The centipede twitched, weaker this time. Not long. She reached out and grabbed Patience's hand… and leapt.

Grafting.

This was the most intimate she'd been since Chorei had grafted to her. For once, she just… let the tapestry of self explode, not temporarily, not just to shock or stun, but as something inherently useful. The wolves were quieter - roaring in the distance, the gulf of space silencing them until it seemed like they were purring, but… yes, busy shredding at one another, their interpersonal rivalries taking precedence. Patience's mind was a rippling mass of emotions, a shivering collection of thoughts that somehow, impossibly, formed a single coherent body. Ragged at the edges where the wolves had dug in, worm-eaten in some parts where memories and attachments had been gnawed away. A… lot of ragged edges, a lot of worm holes. Quite a lot.

And Taylor… felt indescribably sad. The mind before her was just… broken, in some fundamental way. Every thought was tinged with a slow mire of grey sadness, a haze that dragged all things down with it. It was hopelessness, depression, every feeling that killed emotion and destroyed thought. But under it all, under the smog… there was still some light. She saw a cloying pink colour, shivering and stretching outwards - attachment. A longing for attachment and connection, thwarted by the haze which stymied its growth. Beneath it all, Patience's emotions were strangely childish in their simplicity. She longed for attachment, her happiness was an unreserved sunflower-yellow that blared out in tiny spots through the fog, her interests and habits manifested as a shade of light green which hummed - hummed like a machine working at a comfortable pace, hummed like a worker content with the rhythm of her labour. For once, Taylor saw through the terror of Patience's violence, her unpredictability, even through the terror she clearly felt at her own being. She saw to her core.

It was… eerily beautiful.

Before her was a woman whose emotions were like islands above a sea of fog. Mountainous peaks scraping the sky - no foothills, no rolling plains, just the mires of depression, and soaring heights which eclipsed anything Taylor thought herself capable of. She was everything or nothing, with no in between. When Taylor's own tapestry, her own root system of dizzying colour stretched outwards, navigating the fog… Patience's mind rushed to meet her, a sound like bubbling laughter accompanying it. There was violence, of course. Ambition. Hate. Remorselessness. All the things which made her good at her job. But underneath was that same dichotomy. Ruthlessness was a dark steel-coloured eel of thought which slithered through the grey mires of depression, surfacing from time to time, sleek and dangerous. Taylor saw it, and saw the utter heartless violence which allowed her to remain leader of the Teeth. But then she saw a rising peak of simple joy, and myopia descended. The peak was all that existed. And it was profoundly unhateable.

There was a moment of silence, and the vague roaring of distant wolves.

And then they grafted.

Taylor allowed her knowledge, her experience to spill over. And Patience did the same, unreservedly> Taylor couldn't help but look at the memories which surfaced during the transfer - Patience as a young girl, either deliriously enthusiastic and active, or a slow, plodding creature that barely responded to the world around her. She saw Patience as a grown woman lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, incapable of moving. The account book of her life examined, and a determination made that the effort of getting up wasn't worth the profit she'd obtain by doing it. A negative sum life. Something snapping. Taylor watched sadly as Patience stole a bow from a nearby archery club, jumped from a bridge, swam to the shore and took a rented car to New York to find the Butcher and kill him. Happy to die. Happy to win. No loss - both sides were victories.

And her own memories trickled to Patience. Grafting, the art of it. And a few things she couldn't stop. Not much. Just… one or two memories. Not sure which ones. But Patience reacted obsessively to them, poring over them, examining every detail, committing them to memory before she allowed them to flow back. The grafting must have only lasted a second, but it felt like hours, their two minds mingling, the two of them sharing everything, almost forgetting where one began and the other ended. Patience sheltered around Taylor's mind like a traveller around a fire, and Taylor stared, fascinated, at Patience's mind, noting the ripples of mad confidence which rustled across the surface of the grey fog like a breeze over a field of wheat. Couldn't take her eye off it, that sheer confidence, that willingness to do whatever she wanted - as long as she was riding one of her peaks. In the fog, there was little… but even there, the confidence could still exist. Enough to make her challenge herself. She'd set her sights high - she was a cape for two weeks before she challenged the Butcher. Two. Weeks. Barely a month, and she knew what she wanted to do, committed to it, and executed it.

There was something beautiful there. Something she desperately, desperately wanted. Unreflective, undoubting confidence. Drive to do anything without any regard for consequence or regret.

She snapped back to reality.

Patience was laughing to herself, a light, effortless laugh - none of the madness which usually tinged her voice in moments like this. Her eyes were sparkling. She looked younger - Taylor had never realised just how much tension hung around her eyes and cheeks.

"...your mind is so…"

She shuddered.

"I can see where Chorei was meant to fit."

She leant forward.

"Thank you, Taylor. Thank you. Now, allow me to repay you for your kindness."

Her voice rose to a howl in less than a second, and her eyes began to burn.

"Tarkus!"

The centipede froze.

"Get back in my fucking mind."

…what? Patience grabbed the huge insect, and it began to struggle again… Taylor watched as Patience's eyes flashed, her hands shone, and the centipede did everything in its power to escape. No luck. It was big… but it wasn't strong enough. Not remotely. Patience grinned wolfishly as she grafted to it, and Taylor reached out herself. It was… oh, fuck. Chorei wasn't stopping her. She felt awful. Her mind was gnawed, her memories had been savaged, so much of her had been damaged. Barely any will left. She'd been hanging on by a thread, and Taylor could… oh. She saw a golden thread at her core, holding it together. Hope. Faith. A belief in something higher. She wondered if faith in the Grafting Buddha had sustained her for that long… that was impressive. Damn impressive. And Patience… the wolves in her mind worked for her, just for a moment. Their former prisoner rushed, snarling at them, and they met him in the middle, forming an enormous, struggling pile. They'd been willing to gamble this, to maybe sacrifice one of their own for the greater good. But now that it hadn't worked, now that Taylor remained alive and functional… their mood had changed. The Unceasing Striving burned in them, a longing, possessive rivalry. Short-lived, she knew that much, but… it wanted its old playmate back. It wanted Tarkus - Butcher V. And he wanted them just as badly. The mass shuddered its way across the grafting, and Taylor could hear Patience's enormously loud cackling… loud enough to shake the walls of the tunnels.

And a small fear ran down her spine.

What had she created?

* * *​

Chorei's thoughts were muddled. Hard to think. Hard to act. The wolf had destroyed her thoughtform in seconds, there was no resisting it, not really. And then had begun the gnawing. Her memories were old, brittle, sepia-tinted and drained of all life. And now they were crunched up with ease, a dozen at a time. Her childhood was half-gone. She couldn't remember most of her old, old friends, she couldn't remember the games they played, the stories they told. Only fragments. Her childhood home was a tattered mess of disconnected rooms seen from conflicting angles - it lacked doors, its windows were askew, it was formed from the memories she could cobble together, half-eaten and half-remembered. The Wolf had laughed as she tried to put together what remained of her mind, scrabbling for anything that might patch the holes. Nature abhorred a vacuum, and so did she. Looking at the gaps, it… it almost made her give up.

But she had hope.

She had faith.

She knew that Taylor would stop Angrboda. And all this hate, all this fury… it would be for nothing. She'd have the last laugh.

But the terror never ended.

And then…

Then it had.

The Wolf had broken away, roaring at something else. She barely noticed as it left her behind. Probably delusional. What remained of her mind struggled to come together, and she found another thing she'd lost - her name. Her old name. The one she had before she took Chorei as her Dharma name on entry to Senpou. It was gone. Her family name was gone. Her first name, gone. Her mother, she could still remember her. Her father too. But herself… a void. A lack. Nothing could fill it. It was the first truly irreparable vacuum. If she had eyes, she'd weep. She was dying - and she could feel the coldness spread through her thoughts, eating her away piece by piece. When she died, it would be because she had ceased to exist entirely. No corpse left behind. No fragments of her soul. Nothing.

A hand had reached out.

She stared sightlessly at it.

"Hey, Chorei, is that you?"

…no. No, it wasn't. Couldn't be.

A grinning face. Shining eyes. Flawless hair.

No.

"...Patience?"

Her voice was dry as dust, each one of her many years audible. Patience came closer, her thoughtform coalescing with the slowness of someone who didn't quite know how it was done. Chorei felt a jolt of indignation - she would not receive a visitor as a pile of naked thoughts, the indignity of it… the irritation helped her, drove her onwards. Come on, two legs, two arms, a torso, a head… difficult to get it quite right, she hadn't had a body for while now, but… but she thought she did a good job. A moment passed, and she quietly adjusted her proportions, making it closer to reality. Hopefully. Patience stood before her, grinning like a cat which had caught a canary. Chorei realised with a flash of embarrassment that Patience was much taller than her - she was a skinny shrimp by comparison. The emotions were strong enough to mask the panic at her half-dead mind, to paper over the holes left by her savaged memories. She still felt worn. Battered. Must've shown. Patience reached out, and… stroked her cheek. Chorei's eyes were wide. Fearful. Contact. Physical contact. She had never been more terrified.

"Oh, you're more beautiful than I imagined."

"...did you…?"

"They're back in my mind. But I thought I could say hello. Face to face. Before you go back to Taylor."

Chorei hesitated… and felt something churn in her gut - or what passed for it. A syllable of lingering revolution. She collapsed to the nonexistent ground, thoughtform wavering at the edges. Revolution. The flesh against the flesh, the mind against the mind, the soul against the universe. She felt it burning within her, a longing desire to mutate and replace, to become something entirely different. Her memories were a tattered shroud anyway, why not burn it down, start fresh? A wildfire was needed to clear away the old, dead growth… and she was old, and she was very dead. Might as well get it over with, the syllable seemed to say. Let it grow into a word, a book, an entire person. Become a howling wolf in Taylor's mind, driving her to the places she needed to go. The wolf had left, but it lingered in her, shards of it. She felt it lingering in the gaps it had created with its cancerous teeth. Her features were sharper, she could feel them changing. Her thoughts were harder, angrier. Her thoughtform's fingers had elongated, ending in dark nails which could easily pass for claws. Even her teeth were ready to tear. She was changing. And her terror only rose as she felt Patience crouched down beside her, hand running over her bare scalp. No-one touched her there. No-one.

"Oh, you poor thing. Don't let it take hold. Talk with Taylor. She'll help you heal from this."

"...why?"

"I love you, Chorei. I love how you found a way to live beyond death without going mad. I love how you live in harmony with the one you infest."

Chorei felt exposed. Her robes felt distinctly unarmoured. Patience leaned in, her voice dropping to a whisper. What had Taylor done?

"I can smell cowards. And I knew you were one from the first time you spoke."

Chorei couldn't even bring herself to be annoyed. Too busy being afraid. Maybe she had a point.

"...thank you for saving me. Truly."

"No problem."

Patience came closer. The grafting endured. Her smile was terrifyingly wide.

"...she wasn't lying, you are an ancient Japanese nun."

A spark of irritation, enough to peak through the fear for a singular moment.

"Medieval. Not ancient."

"Potato, potato. So… just a nun? Never anything else?"

"No. I was a nun. I died. Now I'm here."

A hand rested on her shoulder. Heavy. Firm. Unyielding.

"Anything you wish you did before you went?"

Chorei was on the verge of destroying her thoughtform and fleeing completely.

"...perhaps a little. Nothing more."

Patience drew even closer, eyes sparking, smile widening.

"Anything… in particular? The Teeth can offer things, you know. And for such a lovely lady… we can offer so very much. Anything you could possibly want. Just name it. Anything. Anyone."

Chorei's breathing was fast. She'd spent centuries cultivating serenity, and in the face of Patience there was absolutely nothing, no defences, no reserve. Wasn't even sure what Patience was offering - power, debauchery, wealth… oh. Her eyes refocused.

"Wealth. I have long desired wealth."

Patience blinked.

"...really?"

"I am a material individual at heart."

Unconvincing tone. But Taylor needed money. And Chorei was happy to help her obtain it. Patience's hand crawled over her shoulder like a ghostly spider. Too close. Too close. She'd liked Sigismund coming close, and only rarely. Never more. Patience terrified her completely and utterly, too much for her to extract any kind of enjoyment from this.

"...wealth it is, then. I'll see what I can do, Chorei. Is there anything else you might want? I doubt we'll meet like this again. And time passes… very slowly out there."

She had never been so horrified.

"No. Please. I need to get back to Taylor."

Patience's attention snapped back to the present, and she turned away, brushing herself off, voice returning to her usual cadence. What… what had happened? What had just happened? How was she meant to feel.

"Of course. Do that. But… you may want to be careful."

Her voice lowered.

"Looking a little wolfish."

Chorei shivered… she had a point. Patience vanished into the dark, the grafting broken. The wolf was gone. And now… now she had full control of this thing. This huge insect. Taylor was here - attempting to graft, just needed to allow it through and the two would be one again. Back to the way things had been. But she'd changed. The wolf had left a mark. She felt wrong, corrupted, violated, even. In a way, she… didn't trust herself, not with this fire in her, not when she couldn't even remember her real name, the one she'd had so very, very long ago. The darkness of the mind around her was… it was strange. She'd been surrounded by life for so very long…

She had an idea.

* * *​

Patience's eyes opened, and her smile only broadened. Again, that flush of fear. Taylor knew that she was, comparatively, a restrained individual when it came to this… stuff. She didn't like grafting stuff to herself, not as a rule. Didn't like scarring herself excessively, even when it would give her a variety of tactical benefits. And she didn't just seize on every force she found like a lonely kid seizing on anyone who showed them an ounce of affection. Patience seemed… less bound by that. She had power, now. Power to do… who knew what. And Taylor had guided her there. She desperately hoped that she hadn't just created a monster. The centipede squirmed, but it was a slow one, experimental. She jumped as Patience slapped her on the shoulder. Probably meant to be playful. Just put on her edge. And bruised her.

"You never told me she was pretty."

Taylor blinked. Urgh.

"She's alive?"

"Alive as ever. Why, isn't she back yet?"

Her expression shifted, becoming genuinely concerned. Taylor let go of the centipede, let it move freely… and she felt a familiar find brush against hers. With an embarrassing amount of joy, she grafted. They clicked perfectly, each one having gradually grown around the other until their absence. Taylor had to try and restrain her smile… failed. A tiny upturn at the corners of her mouth, a relaxation of the tension around her eyes and forehead. Patience grinned, noticing the change. But… something had shifted. Chorei was here, she was present, but oddly… distant, somehow. Like something fundamental had altered in their relationship.

"Chorei?"

I'm here.

Her voice seemed to come from a long way away.

"...what's going on?"

The Wolf-Divided has left its mark. I don't want to hurt you.

"...what are you talking about?"

A syllable of revolution burns in my mind. I don't want it to infect you. I thought… perhaps this would be best.

Taylor stared. The centipede wriggled in a precise fashion, one leg after the other. Her eye widened.

"...you didn't."

I had to. I'm sorry.

Taylor felt sick. She had a centipede. The nightmare had come true. A centipede was growing out of her arm, and she could feel it growing. It coiled slowly around her forearm, nestling into the crook, legs digging in slightly… an involuntary revolted shiver. The mutation had worsened. She was no longer the person she once was. Her breathing barely stabilised - the crisis had passed. Patience looked calmer, more settled. Her antlers gleamed in the flickering light of the torch. Taylor could feel a lump in her side - another growth she needed to cut out. And she had a centipede growing out of her. She imagined it growing larger, larger, feeding from her, diminishing her as it grew to monstrous sizes. It was already big, larger than any natural centipede. And it had started as nothing but a pair of grotesque legs… already she saw how unnatural the thing was. Legs closer to a cockroach than anything, expanding to a huge distance from the actual body. Pincers which looked closer to spider chelicerae, eyes that seemed like they were taken from a fly, chitin that was like nothing she'd seen. There were even horns like a stag beetle… it wasn't natural. And it had grown from her. Continued to grow from her. She could sense a writhing uncertainty at its core - it was still latched on. Chorei had found her own body.

You seem alarmed.

"A little bit."

She took a deep, shuddering breath.

"I'm glad you're back, though."

Me too.

"How did you… survive?"

A flush of something resembling embarrassment.

I had faith.

"...right, yeah. Grafting Buddha, nun, I… forgot."

…not in that.

Taylor blinked.

"...what?"

Nevermind. Come on. Talk to Patience. I doubt we have much time.

Taylor drew her knife. Needed to take care of that new growth… Patience glanced over, tilting her head to one side. She looked uncomfortably happy, and her eyes flashed.

"How is she?"

"Fine. How are you? And… thanks. For everything."

Her smile widened.

"Thanks for teaching me. Very impressed. Now, let's talk. See, these bastards… they're being quiet. Very quiet. I think they're afraid. And this place?"

Her voice descended to a snarl, but her smile endured - always wide, always ferocious, always far too sharp.

"Angrboda wanted me to go mad. She wanted me to go insane so these freaks could take control, and then they'd lead me out. This place is a revolution against reality, it's the edges of her egg. Well…"

Patience cracked her knuckles.

"Time to have a little counter-revolution."

The hallways quivered, rumbling slightly… and Taylor staggered to her feet. She looked awful - her face was plastered with blood, she had multiple holes along her arm, she had a centipede growing out of one of them, she had another growth on her side - needed to cut that out - and… and she could feel another insect start to form inside her eye socket. Wasn't going to check the interior. She had an image of honeycombed flesh, a whole hive starting to grow in her. If this was Angrboda , she had a sick sense of humour. Even without paying conscious attention she was giving Taylro enough nightmares to last for years. Bodily invasion, loss of ego, loneliness, her friends dying, failing in her tasks… she shivered along with the entire structure. This place was… enormous, she realised. It wasn't just a few tunnels, it wasn't just a labyrinth, it was… impossible. She could see this in a single moment as Patience got to work. She strode around in a circle, before slamming her head against one of the walls, a mad laugh bubbling from her throat. The entire structure shook, and a distant roar, the crashing of waves against the shore, began to fill the air. The stink of ozone intensified. Taylor backed away, her hand instinctively reaching to defend the centipede along her arm. She might hate the thing, she might find it viscerally repulsive, but it was still Chorei. And Chorei was not going to die again.

"You alright?"

Not… not really. Patience found me. She spoke to me. Quite… quite a bit.

A sensation - personal space invaded, a hand running over her scalp, a pair of hungry glowing eyes staring predatorily into her own. A flash of protectiveness ran through Taylor.

"Do you want me to-"

No! No. I'm just… unused, is all. Not familiar with contact. Not fond of it. She said she loved me, loved how I'd managed to live forever without going mad. Promised me anything I desired - I chose wealth. Press her on that when you have a moment. But be cautious. She's a… damaged person.

Taylor couldn't help but remember the fascinating landscape of her mind. The peaks, the valleys, the fog, the swelling tide of confidence that carried everything she did.

"No kidding."

She paused, and her voice dropped to a whisper.

"Wealth?"

…wealth. I saw the opportunity and took it. Thank me later.

"Thanks."

…I suppose now is technically later compared to when I said that. So, gratitude accepted. Now, let's… ah. And you… oh, you taught her. Showed her how to graft. Oh… oh no.

"What's the problem?"

…imagine the Butcher. Now imagine those wolves gone - let's say we manage to get them out of her head. Now, let's imagine their minds forming a gestalt, a single coherent whole in which conflict is no longer as destructive as it is now, one where they are capable of actually getting along. No more obfuscating madness - just clarity, every mind contributing to overall success. Imagine the refinements that could be made… imagine their powers no longer weakening on inheritance. Imagine her with the ability to heal any injury through grafting new limbs. Imagine what she could do with the time and ambition to experiment with the art…

Thank you for saving me. But… we ought to think about what happens next very, very carefully. And any steps we might need to take.

Taylor's fear turned into a slow, pulsing horror. She watched Patience slam her head against the walls of the tunnel, laughing to herself, singing random lyrics from half-remembered songs before lapsing back into grunts of exertion, laughter, and once more, lyrics. Something had been created. And she was afraid to see exactly what it was… exactly what she was responsible for. The walls shuddered, and Taylor saw the whole structure of this place. The tunnels were maddening - she could see them overlapping one another impossibly, the infinite height, depth, length of the place. It went on forever. And the tunnels were stacked so very tightly, there was no room between them. No endless void to fall into. Patience cracked the wall, and another corridor lay behind it - the glimpse ended, and all that remained was the knowledge that without Patience, there was truly no escape from this place. Maybe Patience had taken them here to begin with. Maybe this had been her response to those fossil things. Then again… this place operated by weird laws. Maybe these insects under her skin were feeding on her own problems, her own mind. Maybe this place was her creation - she'd been stressed, incredibly so. Panicked. And this place resembled that endless series of rooms from Mound Moor, so…

She couldn't say. She imagined that was part of the intent.

Patience howled, and the entire structure rumbled, on the verge of collapse. A powerful hand grabbed Taylor's dragging her close.

"Hold on, this is gonna get wacky."

"What do you-"

Space ceased to obey any coherent law.

For a moment, everything compressed into a single atom, and then expanded so far that the word atom lost any meanings. Lines ceased to converge on the horizon. Angles refused to add up, flipping and inverting a thousand times in a second. The roaring of an immense wolf came closer and closer, all around her, pervading her, waves rippling through her body and making her bones ache. She didn't fall through a void, she simply endured the twisting. For a moment, she knew what it was to be the tunnels - her body stretched out to a wafer-thin mesh, a single atom thick, papering the entire surface of the complex while a howl erupted from a throat which had been reduced to a two-dimensional plane. For a single moment, she was a wave function. And then…

It collapsed.

She vomited on the floor. Patience stood nearby.

A huge, fat insect buzzed out of her eye socket. Her side throbbed, the growth becoming worse. The centipede was bigger, and it coiled elaborately around her arm, nestling deep, refusing to let go. Her breath was staggered, rarely lasting longer than a second before another heave. Not sure if she was vomiting up blood from that fit with the wolf, or if this was new. Neither case was good, but the latter was awful. She groaned - her guts were all twisted up, and honestly wasn't sure if that statement was figurative or terrifyingly literal. Patience patted her gently, and Taylor tried to get to her feet… failed, needed to be supported. Hated feeling this week. Hated it, hated it, hated it. Especially after… that, where she had to depend on someone else to save Chorei, while she was completely powerless. Patience nodded - and Taylor followed her gaze.

"We're here."

Oh.

It'd begun.

Before them was a long, dark tunnel…

And a heavy metal door, looking like it had almost grown out of the wall. Red light bled around the edges, red as rust, red as a dying sunset and a breaking dawn.

And behind it…

A thunderous heartbeat.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

233 - goesitgoesitgoesitgoesitgoesitgoesitgoesitgoesitgoesit

Taylor staggered to her feet. The door in front of her… pulsing a low, dangerous red. For once, the structure had resolved. There were no more corridors, no more passageways, just a single, direct route. They'd just… lost Sanagi, Turk, and Ahab along the way. And Vicky, if she came down here. Lost them all. Maybe they were alive, maybe they were dead, but… but there was no way of telling. Taylor stiffened her back, flinching slightly at the scuttling of her new centipede. Chorei remaining at a distance - the silence endured. The grafting had occurred, yeah, but there was flesh in the way now. Not just two minds linking, but two bodies. Felt wrong. Felt delayed. And it was reminding her far too much of how Chorei once was - a person with a centipede instead of her spine. And every time Taylor looked down at her own anomalous thing, she saw that it seemed to have an additional segment, another pair of legs, a slightly larger set of eyes… it was growing. Soon, it would be very, very large indeed. And once that happened… her attention was distracted by Patience, who waited a small distance down the hall, smiling brightly.

"Well? Let's go give Angrboda a good hiding."

Taylor gritted her teeth and followed… for a moment. A second after beginning, she was forced to collapse against one of the walls which pressed in, made of oily, smooth black rock which looked like it had been heated to an obscene temperature before cooling rapidly. The state that matter adopted when it was pushed to the brink of nonexistence and somehow recovered - smooth ripples in the stone, and a feeling of lingering heat. It still didn't quite believe that it was solid, still remembered when it had come close to being obliterated entirely. Pain in her side. The growth had gone malignant, she could feel it - starting to pierce into her. Her knife flicked out, and this time Chorei didn't object. Simply… held back the pain as she got to carving. This one was bigger than the last. It was a chunk of raw, greasy meat which had once been part of her, and now was something else entirely. She saw… she saw teeth, she saw bundles of dark, curly hair, she saw a nub of keratin that was struggling to become a fingernail… she saw a squirming mass of muscle contracting without any purpose or point. Her knife delved deeper, cutting out the root of the thing… and she felt it struggling. It writhed, and she saw tiny bones poking from the surface, trying to gouge its way back inside her…

Her knife shook as she struggled to keep going, every instinct demanding that she stop hurting herself…

The centipede lunged.

A pair of pincers clicked, and Taylor had the horrific sight of a centipede growing from a hole in her arm delving into her side, gnawing and chewing at a greasy lump of cancerous meat.

Be calm. I'm taking care of it. It feels… strange commanding a body again. Not entirely unpleasurable.

Taylor couldn't help herself. Her voice rose.

"You're chewing my fucking side, just get it over with."

If it's any consolation, I can't taste anything. This form is too limited.

"Please, shut up."

Very well.

The gnawing continued, and she worked her knife in… the meat dropped to the ground in a puddle of leaking yellow grease. She stared at it. A tiny white mass pushed its way out of the meat… and stared right back. It wheezed. It was breathing. The tumour was breathing. She kicked it as far away as possible, and watched it continue to wheeze desperately as it sailed into the darkness. Tiny shards of bone still protruded… could it still move? Could it find her? The eye stared accusingly before the dark swallowed it whole, and Taylor was left alone with her own thoughts… and Chorei's.

That was… repulsive. We need to leave.

"We need to talk about this centipede thing."

Must we?

Taylor could feel something in the back of her mind, something… suspicious, in a way. A budding inclination that something wasn't quite right.

"What… what happened in there? Why do you feel…"

Chorei interrupted.

The Wolf has changed me. I can't say how, but… Patience said I looked wolfish, and I feel wolfish. I don't want to hurt you - better if you can sever our connection with that knife. I… I could feel the Wolf gnawing at my memories, I don't want to inflict that fate on you, not if I have any power over it. For all I knew, I was infected. For all I know, this isn't a proper reunion, this is just… just a waiting point before I must be destroyed, more permanently this time.

Taylor's eye narrowed.

"Patience said this?"

She did. And… and she was the one to save me.

"How did she do that?"

The Wolf longed to be a part of her again, to wrestle with the other minds. To claw them apart over and over. It desired them more than it desired me.

Taylor was silent. She was having a certain level of suspicion towards Patience. The woman waited for her, back to the glowing door. Patience was now stronger than she'd ever been. She could heal any wound with impenetrable scars, she had some kind of command over grafting, she had multiple parahuman abilities and the capacity to acquire more… the nightmare vision Chorei had shown her was hovering in front of her eyes. And she'd helped create it. She… she was here for the hoard, she knew she was, but at the same time, she didn't want to unleash Angrboda or an upgraded Butcher onto the world and then move on. But… but it had saved Chorei. And as much as Taylor was uncomfortable admitting it, she didn't want Chorei to leave. She liked Chorei. And having her gone, even for a brief period, reminded her keenly of just how much she had come to rely on her presence, her commentary, her knowledge… and with her gone, all the disagreements, all the points of contention, they just vanished into the dark. Pointless. Because Taylor would rather have Chorei around to argue with and feud with and squabble with than to not have her around at all.

Patience grinned.

Taylor slowly, painfully advanced, her side scarring over with layer after layer of tough, silvery tissue - had to focus on the door, on the thing behind it. Needed to get close. Plans swirled in her head. Maybe she could… dammit, the First Rifle was gone. But she could still deal some kind of damage. If she could get close, she could figure out what Angrboda's deal was, and if she knew that, she could, conceivably, hurt her. She had some ideas. Patience had said that Angrboda couldn't perceive the outside world, so… maybe grafting would wake her up to that fact. Similar to Bisha - erode her ego, let everything else collapse. Or maybe she was so tied up with the comet that destroying it or moving it would cut her off from her power source, just like with Maggot Brain and the paradoxes his termites fed upon. Or she could… not sure. But she had backup. Patience smiled at her, and… Taylor felt a pulse of nervousness. She still wasn't sure what she thought of Patience, she'd seen her mind, and… and that had to account for something, right? If she'd seen her mind and not noticed anything, then she was probably fine. Just unstable, ambitious, and now upgraded. Which was… not good, but if it saved the city, she could work with it.

The door pulsed.

Red light leaked from around it.

The Wolf was there. Angrboda. The one who had started this entire torturous situation. Taylor felt more growths in her shoulder… and as Patience came closer, she felt another insect crawling out of her eye socket. A wasp, this time - but with a shell that looked like it came from a cockroach, a translucent abdomen that pulsed with venom that didn't look quite natural, and a mass of eyes which seemed to come from a dozen different sources. It winked into her perception, buzzing erratically as sit struggled to stay aloft. Unlike the last one, she didn't kill it. Her swarm was nonexistent. What remained of it had been left behind when Patience took her here. Made her feel vulnerable, and… almost humiliated, with her tics on full display. She didn't realise how often she tapped at her leg when she moved, or how many facial twitches had been cultivated through months of near-constant stress. The… her centipede wrapped around her arm, nestling in the crook of her elbow. She could feel its antennae twitching… no, no, no, she wouldn't be like Chorei.

"When we're done, just… please, let me get rid of this fucking thing."

…if that's what you want. Of course.

Taylor paused.

"...did you mean what you said earlier, about…"

…perhaps. Did you… feel the same way?

Taylor hesitated.

"Yeah. Sure."

An odd shudder ran through the centipede.

Very well then. Friends.

"Friends."

They subsided into comfortable silence. Patience awaited. The door pulsed. A monstrous heart beat out a steady rhythm.

Thump.

Patience's smile was like a slice of moonlight in the dark.

Thump.

Her body was uncannily still.

Thump.

Her eyes were burning.

"Ready?"

Taylor nodded hesitantly.

"Ready as I'll ever be."

Thump.

* * *​

Vicky tried to stay calm. OK. Trapped. Needed to get out. Couldn't attack the walls without collapsing this chamber in on herself. Couldn't summon any weapons, couldn't plan around it, couldn't brute-force her way out. No chance of anyone hearing her - didn't feel like there was anything around her for… for a while. Her eyes were dry. Her sixth finger was burning. Her jaw had stopped aching, her lungs too, and her hips were starting to subside. This made her more uncomfortable. She'd… something had changed. She didn't want to examine herself - justified it by thinking that it would save on batteries. Air was running out. The scarf was still tight, but air was coming in distinctly smaller amounts with each breath. Suffocation would start soon. Cyanosis - her fingers would start to turn purple-black as her cells died off, one by one, all resources concentrated to the vital areas. As oxygen failed further, those two would die off, until eventually the brain would begin to suffer. She was already feeling wobbly, and her heart was beating like a fucked clock,. Trying desperately to circulate as much blood as possible. All it knew was that the blood wasn't carrying enough oxygen - so she needed more blood going through her, more cycles, more rapid pumps. But each pump would carry less and less. Her body was dying. She needed to get out.

There was no way out.

She had to save them. Her family. Her friends. Everyone in the city. Couldn't let Angrboda wake up - maybe she'd destroy the city, maybe she'd destroy the world… couldn't tell. The apocalypse was about to start, and the only consolation was that no-one would be alive to realise how much Vicky had fucked up. Unless the others stopped it. Unless she'd given it all for nothing. No advancement. No meaningful sabotage to Angrboda's plans. Nothing. Despair started to work its way through her system. Gerrit's eyes shone in the dark. She thought of her parents. She thought of her cousins, her aunt, her uncle. Maybe New Wave was fucked up and confused and barely functional, but they were still part of her. She couldn't… couldn't let them down. She'd told Crystal to go and search for that tiltrotor instead of helping her. Thought it was too risky. Had she been arrogant? Had she spared crystal? Would Crystal have saved her from this? Maybe she should've gone back to the tea shop, linked up, hunted for Taylor, did this all need to happen tonight?

Despair fed on doubt. It fed on the certainty of death, and it fed on the humiliation she felt. It attacked every single part of her, every single role, every single sense. She almost wished the skins would talk to her, just so she had some kind of company here.

How fucking anticlimactic.

Her eyes were… were so very dry. The heat in her chest was rising, but it somehow made her body feel ice cold. She breathed… and a trail of fat yellow sparks drifted from her lips.

Her eyes widened.

Wh…what?

No. No no no no no, she wouldn't go out like Dean did, she couldn't let this… this shit into her. Come on, stay positive, stay…

What was the point?
The inevitable was here. Why not give in?

She remembered Peacemaker. The way he burned, the way he talked about Angrboda, about the Flame. Why not give in? Why not let it consume her, wipe away everything, turn despair to joy and back again, so quickly that she failed to distinguish between them. Acceptance in the Flame. Escape the closure of the world, find rest with the Flame… she'd see Dean again. She wouldn't be alone. And…

Hold on.

Peacemaker had prepared himself to move from the tower. He hadn't made for the stairs, he hadn't taken flight… if the Flame was all about everything becoming one, if it could manipulate space, crushing and extending it, twisting it in every direction…

Her mouth couldn't help itself. Started to curl into a grin.

OK.

She might have a chance.

It was this or dying.

She focused on the heat in her chest… and fed it. Everything. Every doubt, every crushing fear, everything she could muster. Her family was fucked up. Her sister was trapped in a tube and pumped full of sedatives to keep her stable, probably so dependent at this point that getting her out would just mean burning money she didn't have on supplying a constant chemical addiction. Her cousins might be her half-siblings. Her mom had an affair with her uncle, and it was at exactly the right time for her conception. She'd attacked her mom with the powers of an insane Nazi that her mom had probably met, and had left without any explanation. If she died, she'd die thinking that Vicky was a mastered minion, or had somehow been replaced. Either way, she'd die thinking of her daughter as a colossal failure. The kind that didn't get put in the family grave plot - the kind that got a plastic takeout container for an urn, a pizza oven for a crematorium, and a dumpster for a final resting place. If they ever found her body, which was doubtful. Her cousin/half-sister was going to college, leaving her behind. New Wave had been compromised from the start once Aunt Jess died, and her Uncle had broken away to never return. Their mission had failed. The PRT had co-opted their entire movement and made them into just a team to outsource certain tasks to. Resistance had been pointless, all it had done was get one of them killed, and ruin any chance of a remotely normal life. The scarf around her neck twitched.

Vicky muttered.

"OK. Talk. How do I take down New Wave?"

Plan: disassemble New Wave. First, highlight affair between capes designated Brandish and Manpower. Second, highlight mental issues from cape designated Flashbang, and lack of proper support from rest of family unit. Third, highlight parentage of cape designated Panacea.

She paused. OK. That second one hurt. She knew her dad was bad off, thought she was helping as best she could, but… OK, come on, what's up with Amy? She wanted to really tear herself up, the light was getting brighter, her eyes were painfully dry, either she died here and found her eternal reward or she got out and kicked some fucking ass. Win-win, really. Die slow? Nah. Die quick, or live. Those were the options she wanted, anything was better than this. She knew Amy was the daughter of a villain, so… come on. Elaborate. Her power twitched…

Highlight the fact that cape designated Marquis is the father of cape designated Panacea. Highlight familial difficulties. Highlight unwanted nature of her adoption. Highlight how she was found as a young child in a closet defended by her father when he was attacked in his home. Highlight how her villainous progenitor is a topic of concern for the adults present at the fight, and is an issue which has thus far gone unresolved.

…Marquis? Her mom had talked about him, her dad too. They loathed him. Said he was emblematic of the worst days of the city - when it was a crime-ridden hellhole, and liked it. Marquis made it seem alright to have corrupt leadership, to be controlled by warlords with no mind for the people they ruled. A pattern killer who dressed it up in a perverse version of chivalry. Just a psychopath who wanted to make his way of doing things the status quo - believed himself to be better than anyone else. They'd ranted about him, sometimes. Ranted when people they knew talked nostalgically about the days when he was in charge, keeping the peace between different gangs - he didn't, he was just so brutal that most people kept out of his way even when he brutalised regular civilians and his own gang members. As egotistical and ruthless as any Kaiser or Lung. Every time her parents ranted about him… they knew they'd adopted his kid. Was that why her mom had sent her away? Thought that she was destined to be a villain, to have some kind of breakdown… she remembered a picture on their mantlepiece. Family picture. Her dad, tired. Her mom, smile painted on. Her own hands on her hips, grinning like an idiot. And Amy… she remembered something. Her mom's hand, digging into Amy's shoulder. Hard. A gentle hand for Vicky. A hard grip for Amy.

They'd arrested a warlord then adopted his kid, then locked his kid up once it became convenient.

She… she still loved her family. But… but what? Seriously, what?

Despair mounted. New Wave had been compromised from the beginning. Maybe a brief flash before its own members corroded its message and dragged it down into the mire where the PRT could sweep it up for some easy resources. Mission had been doomed from the start. And she was born into a dying group so riddled with interpersonal drama that her power had shut off completely. It had the steps before it - it didn't even need to tell her to kill anyone, string them up, torture them, it just said 'exploit social issues, done'. That was it. The group was that close to fragmenting. And there was no way they'd let her back in. No way at all. Best case scenario she'd be kicked out of the group, her house, everything, probably given to one of the parahuman asylums. Why not, they'd done it to Amy, and she wasn't completely insane and scarred by all this shit.

Despair grew.

The light in her chest brightened. A sickly yellow glow began to illuminate the inside of this chamber - very little at first, but it grew brighter with each second.

And now here she was. She ran her tongue over her teeth… changed. The mutations were setting in. Her teeth were colder, harder… and left a bitter taste. Metallic, probably. So, metallic teeth. A sixth finger that had dropped off and regrown, and she wasn't sure if the fucking thing was still alive. And something on her hips that she refused to look at. The oil was dripping freely from the ceiling. Maybe this was how it ended, she'd be mutated into an abomination, then spat out and left to kill everything in sight. A fresh inhabitant of Angrboda's new world.

The light was growing, growing, growing… almost enough to be blinding, each breath fed it. Her eyes were painfully dry now, she… she needed to act. Before she wound up like Dean. Burned out and abandoned.

Come on…

Think of space contracting. Think of it becoming one, returning to an original state. Remind it of what it used to be. And by doing that… travel.

She felt her guts churning.

She felt the walls shivering, almost in anger - unwilling to give her up. Oil spilled with renewed frequency, sliding over her shield.

Her eyes were wide.

She felt her pupils start to burst.

A mad laugh escaped her throat.

And fire consumed everything around her. Space ceased. Time ceased. All was one.

She laughed all the way down.

* * *​

Taylor stumbled after Patience, who waited calmly for her to arrive. As she caught up, Patience grabbed her around her shoulders, pulling her close. Oh, fuck… hated this. Hated it. Made her think of fingers in her hair, a burning love in her stomach, a great sadness that she'd killed the love of her life, and… no. Come on, Patience knew she hated being close to people she didn't absolutely trust at the moment. Turk and Ahab and Sanagi were one thing, but Patience still frightened her. They barely knew each other, and close contact was deeply, deeply uncomfortable. She mumbled a complaint - ignored. Patience's eyes were glowing bright, her smile was wide and ferocious, and her voice was low, brimming with happiness. The door approached, the floor shivering under their feet - like the skin of a drum, stretched far too tight for comfort. Quaking under the slightest impact. What was behind that door? A comet? Something else? Her mind reeled with possibilities, and she felt the light crawl along her skin. Not light. Not photons. Something heavier. Something profoundly unnatural, a form of matter that no-one had ever felt before. She was standing in the presence of something which had gone so far beyond humanity that it might as well be as alien as those things in Madison. She could smell starlight. Couldn't say how. But starlight hung in the air, the scent of burning atoms, fusing and exploding one by one…

"What do you think's behind there?"

Patience looked genuinely curious, and her voice sounded conspiratorial.

"...Angrboda. The comet. Whichever it is, we need to take care of it."

"Damn right we do. Thanks, by the way."

Taylor looked over sharply.

"What for?"

"For teaching me, you silly goose. Grafting. Scarring. All those magical little things… I feel like a new woman."

A strange laugh escaped her mouth. Not like her normal laugh. A chill ran up Taylor's spine.

"You're welcome. I think. Just… let's get through this, then we can thank each other."

Patience smiled. A mind not entirely her own burned behind her eyes.

"Well, I figure we should do it now. We're close. We're so very close. And thank you. Really. From the bottom of my heart."

She paused.

"Thank you for being such a fucking idiot."

Taylor had barely a moment to think before a fist wrapped around her neck and hauled her up. Patience's face was twitching frantically, her smile was close to splitting her lips open - blood trickled from the corners, where the salt had dried her out and the smile had torn. They trickled down in twin furrows - a smile and a scowl simultaneously. Taylor gurgled around the fist, and Chorei lashed out, trying to bite at her… another fist lunged to grab it, and the centipede retreated, slithering back inside Taylor's arm. The strength in the fist… Patience could crush her neck in a second, this was her being restrained. Shit. Shit. No, not like this, not this close to her goal, couldn't end this way, couldn't…

"I mean, really. You were such a fucking idiot."

Taylor struggled to speak, feeling bruises march across her windpipe, around her neck. Patience… no. The Butcher laughed cruelly. That wasn't Patience's voice. Patience was ambitious and ruthless, but she was funny, she was clever. She quoted Moby Dick while riding a boat, she listened to obscure music, she talked eagerly about the things which made her happy. She was affectionate. Taylor remembered the glimpse she'd had of Patience's mind. The sympathy it had engendered - the peaks of emotion, the sagging mires of sadness which pervaded everything. No, she'd felt Patience's mind, how had this happened? She'd grafted, she'd healed her, over and over again, she was still… the fist relaxed slightly, and Taylor managed to get out a single word. Her feet were kicking at the air, swimming in place. Her arms were trying to pry the Butcher's fist away… no hope. Her scars couldn't do anything. The antlers twinkled, and she saw, at their ends, at the many, many prongs… a single, wolfish eyes, pupil descending into a bottomless abyss. She stared at the Butcher, and all of the Butcher stared back.

"...when?"

Patience… no, the Butcher shrugged. Hard to look beyond the face.

"Not long ago. We wanted to be careful. The tea shop was when we began to seize control… began to lick away at the corners of Patience's personality. Now we're inside. When you found her… the job was done."

"How?"

"You've grafted to us three times - and that's all you get. The first time hurt. It was a surprise. Never experienced that before. The second time… well, we were starting to learn how to resist. Starting. Wasn't keeping us down as much. And now… well, the third time, we knew how to resist, and how to use your little technique to our advantage. There are fourteen of us, Taylor. We know how to scheme."

Her confusion must've registered, because the Butcher cackled loudly. A laugh so painfully unlike Patience's that it hurt to hear.

"Grafting… we barely understood it ourselves. Now we know more. And it's wonderful. You made us into a single screaming wound, Taylor. You made us focused. We hated you more than anything - you were shutting us up. No-one does that. No-one. So we learned. We adapted. You grafted us to Patience, you healed the wound, you tried to suppress us by reducing the influence of the Wolf. You just brought us closer to her. You made us so… so very intimate. We're inside her, Taylor. We wore her like a mask. We showed you what you needed to see. She's ours. This body is ours. We are a single wound - we are one. Thanks to you. And now we will never die. We'd thank you. We love you< Taylor. We love you, and we hate you."

Taylor gasped out a few words.

"...is she… is she still…"

"Alive? Physically, yes. But mentally… we've eaten so much. We started with her family. She stopped talking about them because she couldn't remember. We ate her memories, one by one. Savouring the ones she cherished. Then we started work on the other things. The core of her personality. Those strains of confidence, those emotions… that utterly pathetic sadness. She was a failure of a Butcher. Her only good deed was finding you. Finding someone we despised so very, very much…"

A half-crazed snort.

"And then you feel for it all. One of us entering your mind to frighten you, to chase your passenger. We thought we'd kill her, but… well. She was fast. Separated you from your friends, reduced all options to zero. The other three will be dead soon. And the blonde… already gone. Disintegrated. Made you teach us how to graft. How to refine ourselves. The Sleeper wakes, Taylor. And we will march in front of her. Immortal. Perfect. Unkillable. One mind. One will. One purpose. All because of you. You will be the herald of a new age."

Taylor felt a pulse of despair.

Had she… had she been that easily fooled?

Made the Butcher worse.

Gotten her friends killed.

Chorei was saying something.

Don't give in - we still have a chance. Maybe if we…

The Butcher snapped.

"Shut up, Chorei. We can hear you through Taylor. Give it a go. Graft to us - fourteen minds against two. Attack us - fourteen sets of powers against… what? One power which has nothing it can effect, and a handful of techniques that we know just as well as you do. Face it. You're done. It was a good ride… very fun, at times. But you've lost."

Had she?

…oh shit.

She'd lost. The Butcher dropped her to the ground in a tangle of limbs, her centipede slithering inside her arm to stay out of harm's way. She coughed up blood - mutations spreading to her lungs. She'd gotten them killed. Acted too quickly. Should've seen the signs. Why did Patience and her end up linked, while the others were completely absent? Why did they end up separated in the first place, why did they teleport after those stone things attacked? Why did Patience act so… strange, so cloyingly intimate in the tea shop? And why… she remembered what Chorei had said. The Butcher hitting on her. Patience had said that she was straight - that romantic love was out of the question for her, not with those minds in her head. Everything had lined up for her. And Taylor had bought it hook, line, and sinker. Trusted Patience. Did anything to save Chorei from being destroyed. Anything to accomplish her task, even as she played in the Butcher's hands. Confident in her own abilities. Unwilling to question her own efficacy.

She'd fucked it up.

Maybe this was emblematic of some deep character fault. Maybe it was just a tactical blunder. She was sixteen - most people her age didn't think about this stuff, they weren't making decisions like this, not for a while. Maybe she'd… maybe she'd just gotten lucky up to this point.

The Butcher kicked her in the side, hard enough that her ribs cracked. Chorei tried to suppress the pain…

Didn't work.

Come on, get up - you have a hornet, dive at her eyes.

Taylor tried.

A snap. The hornet vanished from her perception. Crushed in a second. Her swarm was gone. Just her and a centipede that contained, quite possibly, her one living friend. All the others might well be dead. The blonde… Vicky was gone too. Vicky had come here, and the Butcher had killed her. They hadn't been questing into the belly of the beast, they were just lured into its jaws. And with a snap, they'd closed for good.

She'd failed.

…I… I might be one of them.

Taylor couldn't even muster the effort to object.

It savaged me. She touched me. I might be infected. I might already be… oh, I… my memories have been damaged, how much did… how much has been taken?

Taylor grunted, trying to crawl away. A boot slammed into her back. The Butcher was just having fun at this point. A little sadistic glee before the end. Bisha had been different. With Bisha, it'd been a long process - each gambit, each ploy, it'd all occurred with almost perfect views of one another. It had been an unsubtle conflict. This… this was different. A sudden twist. And it was over. Victory had been won some time ago, she just hadn't realised it. This must be how most victories worked - not on a razor's edge until the end, but decided in the first few decisive moves. The conclusion was foregone by the time it arrived. She had no gambits. No allies. And the Butcher knew everything she did - every art, every technique. No way of beating her. The Butcher shuddered in happiness.

"Grafting Buddha, Wolf-Divided, Unceasing Striving… knowledge of all three. Oh, the harmonies… the revolution is sparked by the Wolf, the revolutionaries are conjoined by the Grafting, and the war is sustained by the Striving… before being concluded by the Wolf. All three in harmony, the Revolution Pyramidal! Oh, you were an idiot to not figure this out."

There was a hint of a growl in her voice. Other tones trying to slip out, different accents, modes of speech, barely cohering into one single line. How hadn't she done that? Was she just…

She slipped to the ground, groaning. She could feel her eye socket brimming with yet another insect… more growths… she was done.

Refused to give up.

Her gun raised. Her knife flashed.

Not going out like a bitch.

She roared as she sprang to her feet. Gunshots fired, and her knife tried to pierce the Butcher… too fast, too strong. A flick, and her arm had splintered. No First Rifle. Chorei… Chorei said something.

I have an idea. I… I understand if you can't trust me, or-

Taylor grunted in irritation. She was exhausted, her arm was broken… no it wasn't. She backed off while the Butcher laughed, and forced her arm back into shape. The Butcher grinned… a rival. One she despised for every conceivable reason. Brought ruin to this city. Wanted to end everything. A monument to Taylor's mistakes. Wearing the corpse of someone she'd begrudgingly been growing attached to. Scar tissue formed over the bone, cracking it back into the right position. Stiff. But workable. She backed off, firing a few more times - no luck. OK, grenades, needed to use grenades. If she died, she died. But she was going to hurt the Butcher for what they'd done. Just needed distance. Chorei kept talking. Taylor trusted her. She had no choice but to trust her. And at the end of the day… she believed that Chorei wasn't going to betray her. And if she was…

What was there to lose?

…this centipede, it's too small. Too weak to be useful. But… but it's still a living thing. It's still part of you.

"Point?"

Her voice was a blood-filled grunt. The Butcher was swaying slightly as she walked over, taking her time. She controlled this place. Taylor was just making it fun for her.

…grafting.

Taylor saw the plan.

Allow this… this fucking thing into her biology. Allow it to integrate, fully. Not just a haphazard limb attachment, something more… complete. No idea what the consequences would be.

It might help you. At present it's a parasite. Understand that I… had something like this in myself, and the advantage never came from the enormous insect, but from the changes it made to my own biology. My strength came from the centipede, yes, but it wasn't a matter of simple division, there was a relationship between us, and elements crossed both ways - mentally and physically. It was strength enough to survive Lung. This won't be as grand, but… surely it's something. Please, you saved me from that Wolf, even if it… it involved this. This is my fault. I need to help, any way I can. I accept if you… don't want to try it, but-

"No choice. We're dead anyway. We lost."

…I suppose you're right. But I'm a threat - this was a stupid suggestion, I'm sorry, I-

"I trust you."

Chorei was silent. But the centipede twisted in something which she supposed resembled happiness. Embarrassment, certainly. If this went wrong, it went wrong. If it went right, it went right. Either way… she was dead. Her friends were dead. Nothing remained but this confrontation.

Taylor flinched as the Butcher teleported closer, the resultant fire licking at her hair. A strike to her solar plexus, driving the breath out of her. Fine. Didn't need breath to graft, and if she concentrated she could look past the pain of tumbling to the ground, flying backwards several feet before crashing to a halt. She focused… and felt the biology of the centipede emerge. It was a mixture of insects, a chaotic bundle which somehow functioned. And she felt… she felt what Chorei was talking about. A shudder of disgust ran through her as she realised her point. The human body was a messy, chaotic pile of hormones and organs, not designed for this kind of thing. It was a constant biological crisis that limped forward desperately - even movement was simply an act of controlled falls, over and over and over and over until the capacity to stop the fall failed and everything came to an end. Even with how tough she'd become, she was still… still not optimised. And really - why bother resisting? She had no other choices. Despair was blooming hotter and hotter, her hollow socket was burning, and she honestly couldn't tell if it was the insects or not. It spurred her into action. Her friends were dead. Her city was doomed. She had been fooled by an obvious trick and now… now there was nothing. And she had only one thing in mind:

Spite.

Making the Butcher hurt. Making the Butcher remember her name with fear. Making every single inheritor remember the day that they fought Taylor Hebert, and she scarred them for the rest of their lives.

If she wasn't going to live as a person, she'd live as a memory.

And she was going to make the strongest fucking memory she could muster.

To the end?

To the end.

She grafted.

Chorei and Taylor became one once again. No division. No intermediary.

And a dark pit in Taylor's stomach vanished… while Chorei let out an involuntary, crystal-clear laugh, like the tumbling of clear waters down a mountainside. Nice laugh.

Her body followed a step behind.

The centipede burned through her system. It vanished immediately, simply… disintegrating into component parts. Her arm throbbed for a moment before scars took over, repairing the holes which the centipede had grown from. She didn't anticipate the burst of strength. She felt her muscles changing, she felt… she felt control. Oh, fuck, she… she had integrated an insect into her biology. An insect she could control. Her limbs moved with a thought, faster than before. Much, much faster. She felt stronger, tougher, more energised… her mind would drive her on when her body failed. She had total control over herself. The Butcher blinked at the sight of her standing upright, knife in hand, centipede gone, grenades glinting. She didn't smile, didn't grin, simply stared with all the coldness she could muster. Her friends were dead, and here she remained. And until she no longer remained…

"Hey, Butcher."

No reply. Just a curious tilt of a stolen head. Taylor said nothing. She just leapt. She felt faster than ever, she was… she was a blur, she was a whirlwind. Her scars could resist damage, strengthen her to the point where she could actually handle combat. And this grafting… she didn't want to think about the changes that she'd made. How she looked, how she was going to look… all she knew was what her limbs were moving faster than ever, literally at the speed of thought. She governed herself like she governed her swarm, every part under absolute control, operating for the greater good of the collective. And Chorei was there, shrieking encouragement for Taylor and abuse for the Butcher. They formed a single mind - managing their shared body in absolute harmony. The Butcher lashed out… and it felt so very clumsy. The fist blurred overhead, and Taylor ducked easily under it, using the momentum to propel a fist into the Butcher's face. Her other hand, her free hand, reached around automatically to grab at one of her weapons - the claymore was still strapped to her back, but she had knives. One was retrieved. And it plunged in. She felt her own muscles protesting at the force she was expecting of them…

Didn't care.

Why bother caring about a body that was about to die?

The knife sank up to the hilt, and the Butcher roared, sounding utterly inhuman. Another fist to her side, sending her sprawling… moving into a smooth roll… coming to her feet… throwing a grenade… spinning on her heel… firing a shot… all in one perfect motion. The grenade clunked at the Butcher's feet, and she reacted strongly, teleporting away with all due haste as an aura of impossible physics exploded outwards. Insects were flowing from her eye socket, over a dozen mutant hornet-things. She allowed them to flow into the air, and… there. A change in pressure. A rush of flame. She leapt for the wall, bouncing away smoothly, Chorei governing the precise acrobatic motion, Taylor's power granting unprecedented control of her own body. Arms moved independent of legs, swivelling and readying another grenade.

A rush of fire.

The Butcher blinked as a grenade smacked her in the face.

No teleport. Hadn't charged up again.

Lunged for Taylor, peeling a stone sword away from the wall - her eyes flashed, and Taylor felt crippling pain explode through her body…

Shut off a moment later. Her nerves were under her own control. She was going to die as herself - with absolute control over every single motion, every single impulse, every single response. The Butcher blinked in surprise as Taylor simply kicked back against her face, sending her back a step, closer to the grenade… it clunked to the floor… it began to click as interior mechanisms lined up… the Butcher ran with a look of animal desperation. So close to their goal… unwilling to let anything stop them.

And Taylor shot her.

A long, bloody gash opened up on the back of her head. She squealed, and kept running. Not dead. Too strong. But the bullet had hurt. And silvery scars were already generating to heal the wound. Taylor couldn't hurt her. Not for long. Either she killed her and became the next Butcher, or she died. Victory was out of the question.

Well.

So be it.

The second grenade went off, spraying shrapnel over the two of them… more scars, more healing. No point holding back. Taylor lunged again, moving faster than she thought possible…

The Butcher grabbed her under her chin, fist flicking with uncanny speed.

"That's it. No more playing around."

And the Butcher grafted.

For a moment, their minds were locked. Fourteen howling wolves swirling inwards like a hurricane. Taylor and Chorei at the centre of it, the brief calm at the eye of the storm. Back to back against the apocalypse. Fourteen of them. No way out. No way of breaking the grafting. And likely no way of winning. Taylor and Chorei exchanged glances. The nun spoke.

"It was an honour, Taylor."

"Likewise."

A small smile.

"Let's give her a show to remember."

Taylor tried to reciprocate, but it probably came across as a grimace.

"Yeah. Let's fuck her up."

They turned away, mustering every thoughtform at their disposal, every single impulse that could resist the Butcher. Shades of everything they'd done, before and after meeting one another. They'd lose. They knew they would.

But she wasn't going out with a whimper.

If she was going… she was to be remembered.

Taylor and Chorei.

Unto the end.

And then… something shifted. Something strange. The wolves turned as one, their burning-star eyes flicking to confront something new. The graft broke completely, the battle ended without a single punch thrown. Taylor fell to the ground, alarmed as the Butcher simply… let her go. Something had changed in the air. Thicker. Almost syrup-like. A heat haze hung over the entire corridor, and Taylor forced her lungs to work at a steady pace - nothing panicked. Her limbs propelled her upwards, pain calmly shut off. She ignored the feelings on her face, her back, her chest, where the grafting had… left some kind of mark. Later. If there was a later, that is. The Butcher stared at the iron door… and at the shimmer in front of it. Wait. Taylor knew this feeling. She knew it well. Felt it too often. The sinking feeling of despair. The burning behind her lingering eye, the scorching within her hollow socket. The sense of all things becoming one, the inclination to lie down and accept her fate with miserable resignation. Heat. Heat that burned cold. The hallway shuddered like a living thing, retreating from the shimmer…

Yellow light exploded.

Horror ran through her.

No. Not this. Couldn't be.

…please, not again…

Something ran out of the sickening yellow. No, there were… it wasn't running. It was flying.

Victoria Dallon rushed out of the yellow, laughing like a lunatic. She looked… oh, God, what had happened to her? A skin-scarf hung around her neck, twitching frantically, and metal rained from the ceiling. A constant iron rain of spears, swords, cleavers, daggers… the Butcher was forced to stop, to ward them off, teleporting when she could, letting the wounds pile on when she couldn't, never dying, but clearly straining. Her eyes were fixed on Vicky, wide with horror. A knife flashed, and a voice cried out…

"Get the fuck away from her!"

The knife descended.

The Butcher howled.

And Taylor… description failed her. Her eye was wide. She was completely frozen. Vicky was straddling the Butcher like a mad jockey, her knife kept coming down, again and again and again, held in a human-skin glove, carving… not skin. No skin was cut, no blood spilled. Something else. Something that howled like a wolf, and stank of ozone.

"No. More. Powers. For. You. You. Bitch."

And before Taylor's eyes…

Severance.

Spoiler: Author's Note

AN: And that's all for today. Finale is coming closer and closer... but not quite here yet. Not quite. Art of crackhead Vicky has been commissioned, and I'm looking into another cover to celebrate one million words, but that should take quite a while to get going. Thinking of a scattering of photos of the main cast - Taylor, Turk, Chorei (pre-death), Ahab, Sanagi, Arch, and now including, Ted, Patience (people seem to like her), Vicky...

I'd like to commission a cover you guys can enjoy, so, after a few requests, I've set up a ko-fi - no demands, no pressure whatsoever.

Support ReavingBishop on Ko-fi! ❤️. ko-fi.com/reavingbishop

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[Ivan the Not-so-Terrible]

God, I can't imagine how awkward Vicky talking this over is gonna be.

"Look, long story short I got a knife from a meteorite, borrowed and wore some skins - yes human skins, but it's not like the owners objected (one of them even willingly left it!) and it's not like I killed anyone for them - to borrow their powers - also holy shit Mom you have fucked up our family so much - and then I started channeling the power responsible for the Conflagration - this is unrelated to the skinning thing - so I could fight and skin - metaphorically skin rather than literally skin, I learned that from a Dutch guy - the Butcher."

 

[Derenarian]

My old trypophobia caught me with my pants down. The body horror throughout the past few chapters had me squirming in my seat in discomfort time and time again—shit, my skin's been itching since the "honeycomb flesh" and I should stop scratching my arms soon.

Visceral and deeply unsettling. Terrific work; I love it.

But… God, this last chapter. Wow. I reread the part where Chorei and Taylor grafted the centipede, and Taylor took control of her own body, twice in quick succession.

Vicky's alive! Our beloved crackhead comes to save the day once again in fiery, fashionable crackhead style.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

234 - Tesseract Cancer Wolf of the Revolution Pyramidal

Taylor's breath was deafeningly loud. Vicky slowly, painfully stood up, the yellow light burning behind her. The Butcher lay at her feet… and in her hands was something that made Taylor's eyes ache. Something which shimmered like a mirage, but was too… too real for that. It writhed. It folded around itself, bent along dimensions which made no conceivable sense. A fluctuating tesseract, flayed from the Butcher with a knife that shone like a full moon - like the brightest silver she'd ever seen. Taylor stumbled backwards, trying to process what was happening. The Flame of Frenzy was boiling in front of her, something she thought she'd seen put to rest a long time ago. Back. And Vicky had used it. Vicky had travelled, just like Bisha had done. Just like Bisha. And… and the Butcher looked… Taylor tried to focus. She could see parahuman abilities if she strained, a consequence of her grafting experience, but… but she couldn't see… see much of anything around the Butcher's fallen body. Just… just a sense of approaching, the feeling of a portrait's eyes turning to follow her wherever she went. Nothing more. The thing in Vicky's hands burned before her, made her mind ache. She stared…

What… what has become of her?

Chorei sounded genuinely frightened. Concerned, too. Taylor could see why.

Vicky had… there was something very, very wrong with her.

Her hands were a bloody mess of broken fingers, broken blood vessels, and splints barely holding it all together. Around her neck was a scarf made from human skin, and covering one hand was a skin made from similar, yet distinct material. Two humans had gone into making her clothes. Her actual clothes were soaked with oil, tattered, gnawed in some places. Her hair had been soaked, dried out, was evidently attacked by something… it was a ratty mess, projecting violently outwards from her skull. Her eyes were sunken deep in their sockets, and… oh no. She could see something in them. Yellow. A trace of yellow around the edges, and… and her pupils looked on the verge of shattering. She'd seen the Flame. And she'd taken it into herself, to a degree. A long knife in one hand, and an impossible mass of colours and unfolding shapes in the other. Hunched over slightly, grinning like a maniac. She stared at Taylor. And Taylor stared back.

Vicky's grin slowly declined into a small, hesitant smile. She stepped backwards for a moment, and an expression of absolute confusion swept over her. She looked at the walls, the ceiling, everything around her, and the expression of confusion intensified, coming closer to horror. Taylor tried to get closer, and Vicky shrieked, backing away with all due haste, swinging her spear to stand between her and Taylor. Her eyes were wide with fear, and her half-shattered pupils looked on the verge of shattering even wide, spilling black ink into every corner of her eyes. A second away from shrivelling.

"Get the fuck away from me!"

Taylor blinked.

"Vicky, it's… it's me, it's Taylor, what's-"

"What the fuck are you?"

She wasn't hearing. Backing away, floating off the ground, flinching whenever she came close…

Taylor rushed forward.

The spear thrust in her direction.

She had absolute control of her movements - and in a fit of adrenaline, she leapt up, onto the spear, running along with perfect balance. Vicky was stunned for a moment, too stunned to react - Taylor punched her. The shield broke. Her other hand immediately lunged in, grabbing her face. The scream that erupted was enough to chill her blood. What was…

She grafted.

Oh… oh no.

The yellow light of the Flame of Frenzy was shivering around her mind. Eating into her. Consuming everything, making it uniform, until nothing would remain by yellow sludge and a hollow skull. Taylor had no time to think. She focused on the flame… and did what she wished she'd have done with Dean all that time ago.

She united.

Chorei rushed across the division without a second thought.

The Flame relied on a certain brand of egotism, in her experience. It depended on feeling alone, on witnessing the 'reality' within oneself and expanding it outwards. It was a despair which despised the world and everything in it, and wished to expand the core of one's own reality to cover the world. And grafting involved uniting. It defied egotism by showing someone how other minds were equal to their own - and didn't depend on some soul-destroying fire to legitimise their existence. She felt Vicky's terror flow through her, and vaguely heard Chorei whispering to her, mantras of calming. Anything to keep her from freaking out and breaking Taylor's neck. Or stabbing her. Or… skinning her, taking her powers… she had a lot of awful fates she could inflict on people.

Taylor focused…

And the Flame subsided. Just for a moment. But it lingered. She couldn't remove it, not like a normal growth. Vicky's scream subsided to silence… and Taylor undid the grafting. Chorei flowed back across. Silence endured.

…done. It's done. She's… not well, but there's at least minimal likelihood of catastrophe with the current circumstances. Best I can do.

Taylor flinched. She realised how awkward this was. Hands on either side of Vicky's head, balancing on a spear, uncomfortably close… Vicky looked her up and down, and spoke, her voice muffled by the fact that she had Taylor's hands smushing her face.

"You look like shit."

Taylor blinked. Forgot to let her go.

"...what the fuck happened to you?"

"I…"

Vicky paused, and Taylor leapt down, letting out a breath she was barely cognisant of holding.

"...it's a long story."

Taylor ever-so-slowly dusted herself off, another hornet starting to breed in her eye socket, ready to lance out and join her tiny-yet-sensitive swarm. She felt like shit - once she let go of her pain response, she felt how her activities had damaged her own body. Muscles were aching, some had torn. Tiny points of damage to sensitive areas, overexerted beyond any reasonable point. She'd moved smoothly and quickly, but in ways that the body wasn't meant to move. A jump that should've required a stretch, a warm-up, a slow tensing of muscles… executed in a second, straining everything in the process. She hadn't become a god, just… just more coordinated. And she had a centipede in her DNA. No more blood donations. She stumbled closer to the Butcher. Unmoving. But breathing.

"What did you do?"

"Took her powers. Stripped them away. It was… OK, it was difficult, but… I think I got them. It was a lot to carve through."

She said that like it was normal. Taylor felt a flinching response pass through her - could she just… take powers away? And that iron rain… she could add them to herself? What had happened to her? She came to a halt just in front of her. They locked eyes. A long moment of silene passed… and the two rushed into one another. The hug was immediate. Taylor only felt the briefest twinge of discomfort at the close proximity, overwhelmed by sheer, unmitigated relief. She was alive. Vicky was alive. The others might be too. The Butcher had been lying.

"I thought you were dead."

Vicky's voice was thick with emotion as she replied.

"I thought you were kidnapped. Or dead."

"I was, the former at least, I just…"

She fell silent.

"Frenzied Flame, then."

Vicky stiffened.

"...yeah."

"Going to elaborate there?"

"Later."

Taylor hesitated for a second, wanting to press - the Frenzied Flame was obscenely dangerous, there was no real way of dealing with it safely, not in her experience. And memories of Bisha tainted it irrevocably in her eyes. She paused… and leant into the hug. God, was… was this what it felt like to come back from certain death? She was tired, she was strained, and she'd truly thought she was about to die. That her friends were already dead. That her mission was completely botched. And she hadn't. And they weren't. And it wasn't. The Butcher was at her feet, utterly still. Her powers had been taken away by that gleaming knife. Had… they won? Had they won? They'd… they'd fucking won. Holy shit, they'd done it. The two rocked back and forth for a moment, just relishing in the fact that the other was alive. The pulsing glow of the door, the gradually disappearing light of the Flame of Frenzy… it didn't remotely intrude. The pile of shifting colours and unfolding shapes fell to the ground with a sound like the crackling of fresh snow under a hard boot - sharp and soft all at once. Taylor barely glanced at it, and nor did Vicky. They were alive.

…oh, I'm… I can't handle more shocks like this. I really can't, I'm old.

Taylor said nothing. They were alive.

No words were necessary.

And then Vicky puked a mass of blood down Taylor's back, and reality came crashing back down. The girl was sagging into Taylor, barely responsive, mumbling under her breath with the delirious incoherence of the near-comatose. Taylor lowered her slowly to the hard ground, quickly checking her over. Oh. Oh dear. She'd… suffered from a few mutations. And the Flame of Frenzy hadn't been kind. Carefully… she extended a graft into her. Alive. Heart was beating. Her biology, though… Christ. Chorei made a series of indelicate noises as she realised the extent of the damage. Her teeth had become mostly metallic, only elements of the tips remained enamel - and not for long, she could feel it expanding outwards. Her lungs were suffering from some kind of heat damage… and it only got worse from there. Six fingers on one hand, not too bad, but then there were her hips. On each side, a primitive eye was developing, a cancerous mass that was already twitching with life, responding to changes in light and dark. Bad. Very bad. And then there was the damage the Flame had caused… she could see places where cells had stopped differentiating, reverting back to inert stem cells. The body didn't know how to use them, and they'd already begun to die off - nothing supporting them, nothing telling them what to do. Part of her small intestine had been mangled by this, and… and her back had been changed as well. No idea how to heal it. No idea if it could be healed…

She's exhausted. Get her some water. Quickly.

Taylor carefully, ever-so-carefully took out a tiny bottle she'd brought down, feeding Vicky a few precious drops. Her swarm couldn't contain her tics - she muttered as she worked. Don't die. Please don't die. Come on. Hold on. Please. A constant stream of desperate pleas to whoever was listening. Water down her throat. Did she have any medicine, any first aid stuff… OK, a few pills, painkillers, antibiotics… there. Smelling salts, spiced with a little something extra. She waved the bottle under Vicky's nose, and rejoiced inwardly as the girl spluttered, struggling to get away from whatever the hell Turk used to wake Ahab up from her drunken slumbers. OK, still alive, just… just a little horrifically mutated. Who wasn't at the moment? Vicky hauled herself against one of the walls, lying back and trying to catch her breath. Looked painful. A painkiller ought to help… well, mostly.

Vicky groaned.

"Where are the others?"

Before she could control her face, her muscles twitched into an expression that… probably spoke louder than any word could.

"...oh God. How… all of them?"

"I think so. The Butcher said so. Right before you cut them open."

She neglected to mention how she'd helped power the Butcher up. Maybe almost started the apocalypse. Keenly aware that the Butcher's sadism was the only reason she was alive - maybe the Unceasing Striving had driven the collective to bring her along, to fight her personally rather than just abandoning her to that endless labyrinth where she could quietly starve to death without bothering anyone.

"...Taylor, I'm so sorry."

She tried to reach forward… mostly succeeded, even if Taylor had to lean inwards to make it work.

"Let's just… get out of here, then we can talk, OK?"

"Yeah. Let's do that."

Vicky couldn't help herself - a tiny, desperate snort escaped her nose.

"...Jesus, I barely thought… I mean, just one hit, and… was that it?"

"Bisha died in one shot. Maggot Brain died in one encounter. Chorei died after a single chase and a bit of desperate grappling."

Hmph.

"Oh, hey Chorei. Sorry, forgot about… OK, so there's me, there's Chorei. We can get out, we can mourn properly. I'll be here for you, you know that, right?"

Taylor blinked.

"...you're saying that to me. Vicky, you look like-"

"I've been dosing myself up on the shit the cartels wouldn't dare sell here because we'd nuke them from orbit if we thought this shit was actually on the market?"

"...I was going to say made out with a threshing machine, but I feel like that… might be the kettle calling the pot black."

"Yep. Pretty much. And… God, now I have to think… it's nothing, just…"

Taylor concentrated. If she focused on this moment, on Vicky, on the problems right in front of her, she didn't think about how her friends might all be dead. Ahab, Sanagi, Turk. Arch and Ted might be gone too, they hadn't found them or their bodies. Patience hadn't been a friend, but she was… familiar, and now… gone. Was she?

"Just… get up. We'll get through this one day at a time. Don't drink for a while, you'll just start depending on it. Find some friends. Focus on small things. Talk to your family."

"...family… shit. I…"

She gestured.

"This scarf told me that my uncle might be my dad.

A slight pause endured between them.

…I have no response to that.

"That's… rough."

"Yep. And my mom thinks I'm mastered, my cousin is… shit, she's… OK, I'll explain in a minute, just need to… need to lie down."

"Don't go to the light."
"I'm trying."

She slumped, and an expression of cathartic satisfaction swept over her. Taylor automatically reached forward and brushed her filthy hair out of her eyes. Not good for her skin to have it dangle in front of her face. Vicky mumbled slightly, drifting in and out of consciousness. Thank God she was alive. Just… despite everything, one of her friends had lived. Two. Chorei was still here. And Chorei was just… Taylor didn't realise how familiar the two had become. Enough so that she had felt genuine panic and loss when she was gone. Didn't want her to go again. And with the others maybe dead… Chorei and Vicky were literally the last two friends she had left in the world, in a worst case scenario. Slowly, she examined herself. And… there it was. The consequences of losing all hope and fighting with her mind purely intent on surviving. Lumps and knots of scarring - bikinis had long-since been out of the question, and now even the vaguest dreams of lounging on a beach had been obliterated. Most dresses, too… anything that showed too much skin… form-concealing it was, then. For the rest of time. And then there were the other things. A tiny chunk of flesh that pulsed with budding mutations. An insect crawling, once more, from her eye socket - she seemed to have stabilised that one, it was fairly consistently making those cockroach-hornets, and she had a fair amount hovering around her head, tracking all movement. And then there was the grafting.

…God, the grafting.

Chorei hummed in curiosity as Taylor examined the changes. They were still budding, she knew that much. But some differences were already obvious. Her hornets informed her that she had a cold, unblinking quality to her eye - literally unblinking. She felt no urge for it. And when her eye moved, it did so in sharp twitches. All smoothness gone. She could see a few patches of skin which seemed to have little pieces of chitin stuck underneath, no idea if those would stay there or if they'd expand. And… she resisted the urge to clutch her stomach. She could feel legs in there. Like her entire intestinal tract had become crossed with a centipede in some way, tiny protoplasmic legs branching off from the main mass… she could feel pincers lining her stomach, grinding up what few nutrients she still had left in her. A hornet settled in her hair, and…

I'm sorry.

Taylor ignored her. No, no, no…

Some of her roots had turned grey.

It… it may have been stress, you've been under a great deal, perhaps…

She was turning grey at sixteen. Not all of her hair at once, but she could imagine it - patches, long strands of grey poking through… she groaned.

I am truly sorry. I didn't intend to cause any… any harm, I thought we were truly about to die, I-

"It's fine. I thought the same thing or I wouldn't have let you do it."

You were afraid of bodily changes. I'm sorry for exacerbating those.

"I'll freak the fuck out later. At least… at least I controlled this one. That's what we're working with. I can control these horrific mutations, kinda."

Feels like poor consolation.

"It does."

…again, I'm sorry. And… for what it's worth, I'm glad you're alive.

"Me too. And… likewise. Nice to have you back."

Nice to be back. Your mind is familiar to me. That centipede was so… cold. So distant. And… and I need company.

Taylor wanted to reply… but her hornets detected something. A chain of thoughts ran in perfect sequence. Vicky had said something about her uncle being her dad. Saying that made Taylor think of her own dad. Thinking of her dad made her think about medical bills. Thinking about medical bills led to the hoard. The hoard led to the Butcher. And the hornets told her that she was still moving. Taylor's eye flicked over to the Butcher. Still moving. Her knife was automatically drawn, and she carefully moved over, ever limb moving with perfect synchronisation. Vicky stirred uneasily, and cracked one eye open, watching her carefully. Ready to move in things went south. The pile of impossibilities lay a distance down the hall, flung aside by Vicky. Taylor tried to keep her eye on it - as much as was possible without getting a crippling migraine - just to make sure the Butcher didn't… do anything. She leaned close, listening to the Butcher.

Breathing.

Alive.

Powers gone.

Mind present? Or was she braindead? How much had been carved away?

She stared, eye narrowed…

And cautiously waved the smelling salts under her nose. Spluttering. Movement. Of a sort. The body struggled feebly, thrashing with no real strength. Taylor's hand snapped out and grabbed her hair, hauling her head up. Powers were gone, but the Butcher minds were operating by their own set of rules. They might still be around. And if they were there… she wanted them dead. If they couldn't inherit, she'd kill them. Didn't care if Vicky was hanging around. She forced the smelling salts back under her nose, forcing consciousness back whether it liked it or not. The Butcher's eyes flickered open…

No glow.

No brightness.

Just confusion.

"Butcher."

"...wha?"

Taylor hesitated, and turned to Vicky.

"If I start vomiting blood, you have permission to beat me unconscious."

"...bold of you to assume I'll be able to do that. No offence, but I feel like shit."

She smiled weakly, blood trickling between her teeth. God, she looked like… like a meth addict crossed with a violent cultist. Taylor's eye flicked away. Didn't like seeing her half-shattered pupil. She sounded sane, at least. The Flame wasn't too subtle, if she was mad, she wouldn't be able to hide it. And there was no yellowing, no shrivelling, none of the usual signs of an irreparable infestation. Taylor had split her own pupil after all. Hopefully Vicky didn't follow her footsteps any further, at least Taylor had only lost one eye. Losing two sounded… well, Ted was an abundant cautionary tale/ They needed to talk about all of this, work through the process… but they'd won. Angrboda wouldn't wake up. The Butcher was gone… and all hopes of the hoard had been dashed. No chance of getting it now. Once survival became assured, reality was a dull grey wasteland by comparison. Grafted to a centipede. Altered her biology. No idea what the long-term consequences of that little manoeuvre were. And her other friends… she put everything out of mind, and grabbed the Butcher's forehead. Her grafting was unpleasant. Swift. Brutal. No care for appreciating the other mind, she just wanted to see, and…

She saw no wolves.

Not a single howl. The mind in front of her was a tangled, mangled thing, full of holes. Barely holding together, really. Memories were still connecting up, emotions were barely coming together as anything more than mild clouds of activity, the overall structure had been completely shredded by what looked like a combination between a chainsaw, a pair of pliers, and a pack's worth of teeth gnawing and shredding. She could see where her thoughts had been stretched then, worn like a mask, and now without anything to sustain them… dissolving completely. The confidence was gone. The enduring shimmer had faded. Now something swam in the grey mists of her sadness - something huge, which refused to be categorised. An embodiment of doubt - vaster than anything around it. Taylor felt a spike of concern… was the Butcher gone? Was Patience all that remained? She slowly unwound the grafting, returning to reality… a woman looked up at her, and her eyes were dull. No glow. Her entire presence seemed… diluted, almost. Her hair was tangled and ratty, marred with rubble and grime. The antlers sprouting from her face were just ugly tumours, one of them snapped off during their fight, struggling to regrow. She spat out a tooth and groaned…

Oh hell.

Taylor waved the smelling salts again, and the woman's eyes snapped wide open.

"Patience?"

The woman blinked slowly.

"...yeah… yeah, that's me."

"What's your last name?"

"Nguyen."

"Where are you from?"

"Sheboygan."

Vicky noticed what was happening.

"Oh, shit… sorry, I'll… sorry, there was a lot to cut through, I might've missed a layer, just, just let me get my knife, I'll-"

Taylor waved her off, and her insects could clearly see her shocked expression. Come on, come on… she leant closer, getting Patience's wavering attention. She was alive. She was alive. She wasn't sure if that was good or bad, but… fuck, enough people might've died today, and she didn't want to lose someone else.

"What field of medicine did-"

Her tone was clearer. Her mind was sharpening up.

"Oncology, why are you asking… Taylor? Holy… oh… wait…"

She scrambled back, armour clanking. Even that movement seemed to exhaust her a little, and she… tapped at her head, feeling the wounds, the antlers, and… something else. She tapped a few more times, a look of panic blooming across her features.

"No. No no no no…"

Taylor tried to calm her down. Patience's voice was rising, becoming more and more panicked.

"Patience, it's fine, they-"

Patience moved quick for someone who lacked a Mover rating. She scrambled on all fours over the floor, teeth bared. Her hands wrapped around Vicky's neck, slamming her head back against the smooth stone - the impact released a small jet of oil, the walls flexing and buckling like living creatures, quivering in alarm and fury. Taylor lunged for her, arms moving with a thought - so fast, so smooth, so unlike anything that had existed before… Patience was screaming, her voice hoarse, utterly desperate, and completely furious.

"Give me my afterlife back!"

Vicky struggled weakly, too exhausted to really resist… her shield was fractured after a solid slap, and Patience's gauntlets crushed into Vicky's soft throat. Taylor gripped her around her shoulders, yanking…

"Give me it back, give me it back, give me it back right fucking now you bitch."

Angrier than Taylor had ever seen her. She hauled Patience backwards, detaching her from Vicky with… uncanny ease. She felt in control of herself, and her muscles, for all their weariness, were still doing what she told them to do. Hm. That might be a problem. Whatever the case, she felt, for once, like she had absolute command over her own faculties. Nothing lay beyond her - and in a moment of experimentation, she actually stopped her heart from beating. Just for a second. Resumed immediately after, and it proceeded automatically - just a skip, nothing more. But… hm. Well. That was… that was something. Patience had none of her old strength. No teleport, no pain induction, no artificial rage, no unnatural power… nothing. And if the shades surrounded her were correct, she seemed like she was only capable of accessing her original power - the ability to make all projectiles hit their target. Scary. But… nothing close to the Butcher. She looked worse, and seemed uncoordinated - she sprawled to the ground in a tangle of limbs and ratty hair. God, this was…

It feels wrong seeing her like this.

It did. All her confidence had faded. Her eyes were ringed with red, her antlers just looked like hideous deformities, her hair had lost its sheen, her skin had lost its inner glow. She was just… just a person. Taylor had never known her as just a person, she'd always been more. Commanded a room with her presence. And now… now Taylor was standing over her, Vicky commanded the scene more than Patience did, and she was suffering from major organ damage and had vomited up a good amount of blood. Not to mention the other injuries and the literal human skin. Patience crawled up from the floor, staggering, supporting herself on the walls… still tall, but she hunched a little more, struggled slightly under the weight of her armour.

"Give it back."

Vicky glared at her, some of her faculties returning.

"Fuck off."

"Give it back. I earned that afterlife."

Taylor tried to interject.

"Patience, they… you know that those other minds were actually trying to kill you, right? Like, erase your personality, completely replace you… Vicky saved you."

"Didn't… didn't save me… just… give it back, please, I earned it, I can figure out the rest..."

How fucking damaged was she? Vicky looked over her with an expression that began as hatred… and slowly declined to an intense dislike. Couldn't muster the effort, and didn't see the point. Patience looked like shit - and if Taylor was going to guess, she wouldn't even be able to draw her own bow, it was huge, probably required years of strength training, or a Brute rating. And Patience seemed to lack both. She stumbled forward, fists clenching, familiar with a power that no longer dwelled in her. Taylor held out a single arm, stopping her. If she'd done that barely an hour ago, that arm would've been snapped. Still felt stiff from the time the Butcher had actually snapped it, scar tissue was startlingly inflexible, who knew. God, this was…

Wrong.

"Please. Come on. You don't… you don't understand, that power gives me an afterlife, it gives me a guaranteed afterlife. No-one else has that. No-one. Just… please, maybe we can work something out with those wolves, get them to shut up a bit, maybe you can cut them away, I don't care, just make me an inheritor again."

Taylor scowled.

"Patience, with all due respect, shut up."

She turned to Vicky.

"Is there a place for… this kind of thing?"

"Yeah. Birdcage. Or an asylum. But given what she's done… Birdcage. Definitely. No forgiveness for someone like her."

Her tone was unyielding. Unsympathetic. Didn't know Patience. Taylor genuinely wanted Patience to get out of this, if she could just shed the mantle of Butcher, maybe she could… start again, or something. Taylor didn't want her dead, the only reason she'd fought the way she did was because she thought Patience had already died. Wait. Thought.

"My friends. Are they dead?"

Patience looked over - Christ, no, Taylor hated seeing her like this.

"...no. They're not."

Taylor blinked.

"What."

"Not dead. Butcher was going to kill you first. Separate you out from them, then hunt them down one by one before waking up Angrboda. Except for her. Just wanted her to suffocate and die before she could cause any problems. Unknown factor. Too many powers. But your friends are alive. I… if I get them back for you, will you give me my afterlife back?"

Vicky snarled, and Taylor frowned.

Doubt her. Do not take her words for granted. She's desperate. A sad, damaged creature that has lost what remained of her purpose - and she gave up anything besides it when she inherited the mantle of Butcher. I… I can't believe we're alive, I can barely bring myself to conceive of our survival, anything else is…

"I don't know if you're telling the truth. Sorry, Patience. I need proof."

Patience looked desperate.

"Please, I'm telling the truth, I promise. They're alive, down in the labyrinths… I don't… I can't keep track of them, but this one, the blonde, she can teleport, right? And if she can do that, maybe she can find her way to them, easy enough, right?"

Vicky flinched. Taylor knew what it was like to travel through the Frenzied Flame, and she'd last done it with the aid of the Grafting Buddha. Vicky had done it unprotected… and it'd cost her. Taylor didn't want her to do it again, not under any circumstances.

"How do you know this?"

"The others told me about it, said they wanted you to be hurt, laughed at the idea that they were breaking you using a simple lie. Made them happy. I… I think, it's hard… hard to remember…"

Taylor blinked.

"What… why would you want them back? Come on, you're free, right? You're actually freed from them, and-"

"Don't understand. Can't understand. Cut them away, yes, sure, do that. But I could… maybe I could adapt, maybe I'd still endure in some way - but I'd keep going, right? Come on, I'd be free."

"What happened to all that anger back at the tea shop? What happened to 'I'm my own herald?'"

Patience's eyes widened… and some of her misery drained away. Some of her desperation faded. Just a little, though.

"...I can't… why…"

Oh.

Oh dear.

Taylor approached, still wary, but… other things, too.

"What can't you remember?"

"I…"

Patience slumped back against the wall, looking utterly drained, and profoundly lost.

"...I can't remember the faces of my parents. I can't remember most of my old friends. Can't even… can't even remember… most anything from before I was fifteen…"

Her hand came up, feeling her face, memorising the contours. Flinching when she brushed against the bone growths… and it looked like more were growing in. Other mutations. Painful ones, it seemed like. Against her will, Taylor felt a tiny spark of sympathy. She knew that feeling. The wolves had taken a few memories in the brief time they'd run around in her head… and based on how Chorei was feeling, she was likewise experiencing involuntary sympathy. Patience was a damaged person puppeted around by a collection of insane dead minds that had tried to destroy her completely so they could take over their shared body. And now she was free, and her mind was full of holes. Taylor hadn't realised just how much of her personality had become based on being the Butcher, on being immortal, guaranteed an afterlife, granted power that most capes would never possess, and rendered basically immune to most capes that might think of attacking her. Without that…

Did Taylor even know her?

But… but her friends were… they might be alive. She couldn't stop herself from smiling, and turned to Vicky, mouthing 'they're alive'. Vicky gave an exhausted thumbs-up before slumping back, getting her breath back under control. Oh. Shit. Right. Butcher.

"Patience, please, just…"

She sighed, and in the silence Patience came closer, fingers drumming against one another.

"We're friends, aren't we? Please, I'll give you anything. Any wealth you could possibly want, anything, just… just get her to give it back to me. I don't know how to… it's… please, I don't understand what she did, but make her undo it."

Vicky seemed to stir back to life a little, and hovered very slightly off the ground. Barely any sympathy for her memory issues, and no sympathy at all for her desire to live forever as a component mind of the Butcher. She was still a hero - and Patience was, as villains went, fairly infamous. For all her wounds and weariness, she still had some fire in her. And not just the yellow kind.

"Hey, Butcher. I am not in the mood for this… self-pitying bullshit. Either fuck off or stop complaining. No more powers. Just be glad I didn't manage to slice off the rest."

Patience twitched, and stared at her gloves, her scarf.

"...that's not your power. I read up on you, one of my followers likes that game you're in... the fighting one, that was it - Victoria Dallon, middle name Juniper, member of New Wave, power is flight, strength, and an intimidating aura. No swords."

She came closer, and her eyes burned with something profoundly unnatural.

"Can they still think? Your skins?"

Vicky glared at her, and Taylor prepared to rush in, to stop anything fucked-up from happening.

"Why do you care? Look, Taylor, can you just… tie her up or something, I do not want to deal with her on the way back up to the surface."

Taylor was seriously considering this. Just tie her up, drag her to the surface, and then… shove her into an asylum or something, just get her someplace that could figure out what had fucked her up this much that she wanted the mound of soul-destroying wolves shoved back into her head, because she might achieve some form of afterlife as a result.

"Please, just tell me - can they still think? Do they dream?"

Vicky looked deeply uncomfortable.

"...sometimes. Doesn't matter."

Patience grinned, for the first time since she'd lost almost all of her powers.

Terrified of committing to nonexistence. And yet uncomfortable with living.

She's afraid of what will happen as time goes on. She's afraid of being tempted to end things. I'm… familiar with this brand of psychological dysfunction, it made for good cult members. Very devoted. Until they snapped. She can glimpse her own breaking point, and she knows it's coming closer with each day - and she has no idea if she'll endure to see the other side of it.

Nonexistence terrifies her.

But nonetheless she knows she'll beckon it to herself one day.

Another surge of sympathy. Patience - a victim of the Butcher, or just a deeply damaged individual who'd found the least healthy and most destructive coping mechanism for her own issues. Some people developed substance problems, some people became violent and isolated, some people became suicidal. And Patience faked her own death, found the Butcher, killed the Butcher, and embarked on a campaign of terror in every city she visited for no reason but that it was fun, and satisfied the screaming voices she'd invited into herself.

Sympathetic and unsympathetic.

And unlike before… Taylor was in a position of genuine power. Power to judge as more than a desperate infiltrator trying to stay in her good graces. And when she was free to judge…

Things became very different.

"What do you want from her?"

"...if those skins are alive, and they look alive… can't you imagine it? Losing all responsibility for yourself, giving your power to a collective, your mind enduring forever while observing someone more competent… not perfect, I can guess that much, but I can see ways to make this work. You've done it twice already. Rule of three, huh?"

Her voice had the chattering, desperate quality of an addict craving another hit. Nothing about her was still now, everything had a buzzing, nervous energy - her guarantees were gone. And without it, doubt was festering in the corners of her mind. Taylor had seen it - that huge thing swimming in the depths of her sadness. And now, she could imagine, it was surfacing, crushing down every emotion it found through complication after complication. An avalanche of caveats. Knew the feeling. Vicky looked down at her with a mix of disgust, pity, and weariness.

"...Christ, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

Patience repressed the urge to snarl at her. Taylor had been around her long enough to know when she liked snarling, and this was one of those moments. Took effort to stay silent.

"Nothing's wrong with me. And… and you hate me, don't you? Think I'm a villain? Where did those skins come from? Did you kill them? Were they heroes?"

Taylor was interested in this as well.

"...both were from people who were already dead. One was a mercenary who committed multiple war crimes and donated it, more or less. The other was… Iron Rain. About as bad as it gets in Brockton Bay."

Patience reached shakily for her own knife.

"Please. Skin me. Use me. I'll even do the killing for you, just above the jugular, big second smile, I'll bleed out, then… then you can skin me with your conscience clear? Maybe… maybe you don't even need to wear me, someone else can. Taylor?"

She turned, and the look on her face made Taylor feel a little sick.

"Taylor, you can do it, right? Or find someone who will? Cut me up, use part of me as a glove, part of me as a scarf, divide me into little handkerchiefs so… so one accident won't kill me. Wouldn't you like some of my powers?"

An idea occurred.

"That… that laser-skull woman. She's looking a little worse for wear. Give her my skin. Let her wear me. She can return to normal society, and she can get my powers in the bargain. Come on, you know she'd like to be normal, anyone can see it…"

"Patience…"

The woman was slowly drawing her own knife, and her eyes gleamed with tears that lay between terror, joy, sadness, and paralytic relief.

"Just… just let me do it, then there'll be no moral qualms. You won't let me go to the nothingness, will you? We're friends, aren't we? Come on, we sang together."

Vicky was glancing between them, something approaching suspicion dancing in her half-shattered eyes. Taylor pinched the bridge of her nose, and her other hand readied itself to lash out and snatch the knife away before she did something cataclysmically stupid.

"Patience. Stop it. We can talk about this later. We need to get out of here, find the others, make sure that this is… settled, I guess."

Taylor?

Taylor flinched.

"Yeah - sorry, one moment."

Something's in the air.

What was… hm. There was something in the air, something pulsing and angry and… something caught her attention…

Something moving.

Something that made their skin itch.

"...Vicky, where's that… thing you flayed off?"

Vicky stared at her own hands.

"...I must've dropped it, I… oh."

The three of them slowly turned to face the movement, to trace the source of the itch… and their eyes widened.

It Cannot Be Stopped.

The shimmering mass that formed the Butcher consciousness wasn't still. It was shifting. It was standing up. It was… oh, Christ, looking at it hurt her eye, hurt her head, hurt everything. Felt like… like something wrong on two fronts. It twisted through the air, rotating along invisible dimensions, coruscating like a mass of shining crystals. It folded and unfolded, blending every single mind-bending shape she could imagine, yet somehow abiding by a system of rationality so painfully bizarre that she simply… simply couldn't work around it. It wasn't madness, it was just order so complex it seemed like madness. And around it, glistening in the endless shards… was actual madness. Mouths widened into screams. Wolves tearing one another apart, generating tumours which grew into wolves which tore their parents open in turn. Blood which crackled with lightning and burned with impossible fire. Wolves howling, only for another wolf to tear its way out of their maws, and another to tear from that, and another, and another, and another… eyes burning with a divine hate for everything around themselves, and at the same time, a profound love that demanded consumption. The impossible shape moved, and it adopted appendages as a necessity. And as the mounds of screaming wolves coalesced… she found the words.

A tesseract. A cancer. A wolf.

A howling impossibility.

It ignored them completely, turning and sprinting down the corridor, phasing in and out of reality. The perfect crystal structure was decaying, tumours were growing out of it, the internal order breaking down. It was a shambling tesseract-cancer-wolf, and it was hunting for the door. The iron mass glowed fiercely, like an intense heat lay behind it… and Taylor began to run. No idea what she was going to do. Her muscles complained, and she commanded them to go on regardless, to ignore their aches, their pains, the inclination to tear… to move against all odds. Vicky struggled to stand, but she looked drained, barely alive. Patience ran in absolute silence, easily keeping pace with Taylor - still tall, and still fit. And most importantly, uninjured. Taylor wanted to destroy it. And Patience just wanted it. She wanted eternity under her control again. And she'd do anything to obtain it. Even the terror of her mind being eaten alive was… was fixable, a tolerable downside that could be repaired. Her desperation refused to allow any other conclusion.

Eternity was everything to her.

And if she couldn't have it…

Patience ran. Taylor ran with her. Vicky floated up awkwardly from the ground, still groggy, but her power kept her moving. The wolf made no sound - nothing but the vague noise of an iced-over lake cracking, the thrums of spreading fracture. The door in front of it seemed to quiver, shifting, breathing… and it slowly peeled open. No hinges. It simply widened to accept the thing it'd been waiting for. Shit, shit shit shit. There was… there was something inside, something burning, something which coiled around itself and shivered. Dizzyingly complex patterns dancing upon its surface… if it had a surface at all. Looking too deep into the impossibility made it seem large enough to swallow the world, and then it would bend, twitch, flex, and all of a sudden it would be something different entirely. Taylor raised her pistol and fired - there were no organs to damage, and something which operated on four dimensions was nothing - the wolf didn't even react. The bullet was swallowed up, consumed. Vicky rained down swords and spears from the ceiling, and they fell to the ground in mangled heaps of metal, some of them impossible thin, others stretched to grotesque proportions, and as normal physics took hold they collapsed into dust. Matter was nothing to something like this. Nothing at all.

The wolf charged… and in absolute silence, it entered the door.

There was a thunderous roar…

And the impossibility shrieked in ecstasy. It burst and flooded and withdrew and desiccated and became all and none and one and many and the bending flexing convex/concave edge of creation with a wolf dancing upon its surface, singing praises.

Taylor couldn't describe what she saw then.

She saw… she saw a burning sphere. The comet. What remained of it. She saw it becoming the egg, the incubator, the nest, the one who laid itself. Something was stretched across it, something burning, something laughing. Even looking at it was enough to make her brain itch so fiercely she wanted to reopen the wound Bisha had left, to crack it open and free the heat, the itch, the burn. Vicky made a panicked sound that Taylor had never heard her make. Recognition… and terror. She knew what this was. And she knew what this meant. For a second, Taylor couldn't… she felt her skin burn, she felt her cells ache for endings, she felt the longing to NOT BE. Here, here was the only real thing in all the universe. Nothing existed beside it. The egg of a new world. And it did not recognise them. It was a god that could only become God if it refused to recognise them, and it had achieved this on a scale even Bisha had never managed. Even at its furthest edge - a place that might be close enough to touch, might already be brushing against her lips to plant stars in her throat and burn her away, or so far that a thousand years of travel wouldn't bring her a single thousandth of a percentage point closer - it was riddled with impossibility. It was a quantum non-observer - and the universe couldn't cope with something like that, which was and refused to see. Unlike any other thing in existence.

The watcher behind the atoms.

The three scrambled to a halt, staring in horror at what lay in front of them. It was… it was chaos. It was a new harmony. It was the temple of gods without names, for there were no living creatures to say them, there were no mouths capable of forming the syllables, the air wasn't capable of transmitting the sounds - if there were any sounds at all. Taylor could feel her body's response. The increase in heart rate. The pumping of lungs as they tried to satisfy her needs. The aching of her muscles. The burning behind her eye, the slow pulse of blood as it started to emerge from spontaneous wounds. Always wondered why the Wolf made her bleed from the eyes, nose, ears and mouth… now she knew. She felt the wounds. She felt the way her own body reacted violently - allergic to this on a visceral level, where the only immune response was immediate cauterisation of the self, the body, cauterisation of existence. She felt it all. She could count almost every single cell in her body at the moment, with her new control. She could predict where they would be, how they would act, their responses, their inclinations, their flaws. Her control was absolute, she could command cells to die and to continue past the point of no return. She could command, could predict, could challenge everything.

But this chaos was something entirely new.

It defied all laws.

It was unpredictable because logic was based in linear modes of thought. And there was no thought beyond that door. Mindless - because the concept of the mind was beyond it, the arrangement of neurons was woefully primitive.

It was unpredictable. Formless. Miniscule and infinite all at once.

And it was hungry.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

235 - Nobleborn of the House of the Comet

The three of them stared in horror at what lay beyond the iron door. The hungry chaos. The birthing world. The egg of the New Sleeper. One that, perhaps, would not remain so confined. A new star was being born in front of them… had been born a long time ago, and was being induced to swell up, to burn the world away and replace it completely. Taylor felt despair rush through her, and a heat built up in her empty socket. No. No no no. They hadn't just… they hadn't lost. They'd been close. They'd been so close. Vicky let out a tiny groan, closer to a death rattle than anything else. Patience was utterly silent, but her body was shaking, like she was on the verge of tears. The impossible hungry light was blooming, and Taylor could see a shadow moving across it, smaller and smaller and… the Wolf. The Butcher, the tesseract-cancer-wolf screaming its way through the empty space towards its mistress, howling as it went. Singing praises to her. To the new world. It would hate her once she won, but now… now she was a revolutionary, and it adored her as something between a lover and a goddess. A low, dark hum filled the air - a vibration that made her bones ache.

Angrboda was coming.

She stirred in her sleep.

There would be no awakening. But her dreams would spread. From here, to the city and beyond.

Taylor looked down at herself. Felt the writhing in her gut, the skittering in her stomach, the feeling of no longer being entirely human. She glanced at Vicky, wounded, half-mad, clearly close to snapping. And then Patience, desperate, insane with dedication to living forever, to having her guaranteed reprieve from non-existence. Chorei inside her head, shivering. Praying very, very quietly to the Grafting Buddha, a prayer to be reaccepted into the cycle of rebirth even as she was, and… Taylor flinched. A prayer for Taylor and her friends. That their rebirths would take into account the colossal good they did up until the end. After a moment, she recited a very small, very quiet prayer in what sounded faintly like German, but older, more muddled with other accents… a flash of clarity. Sigismund, the Burgundian knight who'd lived at Senpou for a while. One of his prayers. She was covering all the bases, then. Taylor gritted her teeth, and turned to the others, ignoring how her nose was perpetually trickling blood. The others didn't look… so good. Taylor could feel her bones shuddering a little as the light glared at them, and she felt the mutations begin to worsen.

"So. Plan."

Vicky looked at her like she was insane. Patience did the same. A moment passed… and Vicky straightened up, slapped herself in the face, narrowed her eyes, and spoke in the calmest voice she could muster.

"Yeah. Plan."
Patience glanced between the two of them, and shivered.

"...it's over, isn't it?"

Taylor gave her a look.

"Not yet. It's over when it's over. Until that happens, we keep going. You can stay here and mope if you want, but the two of us are going to try and fix this."

"They showed me dreams of Angrboda. For so very, very long. She's… she's everything to them. And in the end, they showed me what she'd do."

Vicky took over.

"She's a solipsist. Believes only in herself. The Frenzied Flame thinks she wants to make a new universe around herself, to replace ours. They were going to solve it, go and burn her out, but… then the person who was using the Flame, Peacemaker, he… died."

Taylor turned sharply.

"Elaborate."

Vicky grimaced.

"Peacemaker, he possessed Dean's body. Got shot before he could do anything."

Taylor dismissed a number of tangential thoughts. How had he managed to die so easily, what the hell was Peacemaker, would Peacemaker be back, was he another Bisha… no, one apocalypse at a time. She glanced at the others, and… thought she had a plan.

"Rewind for a moment. You said that this… Peacemaker was going to kill Angrboda."

"Yep. And the Butcher. Burn them both until nothing was left."

She sounded drained, but was forcing herself to remain stubborn. The two of them were like mules, even when the apocalypse confronted them they'd still keep trudging onwards. Chorei said nothing, content to watch. Not even surprised at their responses - she'd known Taylor for too long to be surprised at this. Patience had lost all surprise now - too exhausted, and too utterly miserable. The end was coming, and she had no guaranteed means of lasting through it. Taylor racked her brains… OK, come on. The Frenzied Flame was… wait. Samira had said that the Frenzied Flame and the Wolf-Divided were connected. Something about… right, that was it. The Wolf was a wound in the universe, and the Flame worshippers saw it as a sign of how flawed everything was, and how perfect the Flame was by comparison. Standard stuff, they could mangle anything to fit their worldview if they tried hard enough. But clearly Peacemaker had disagreed… OK. She had an idea. Like all of her ideas, it was bad. It was also an idea, which was a hell of a lot better than the alternative of absolute cluelessness.

"The Flame is opposed to the Wolf, then."

"Yeah. He said it was… reproducing the sin of creation, something pretentious like that. Making another universe instead of just ending everything."

Checked out. The Wolf was perpetual revolution, it wouldn't want to just disintegrate everything and return it to a stagnant first state, it wanted change. Why would it willfully undo itself, unless it was genuinely out of options? So… fine. Flame was opposed.

"And you can control the Frenzied Flame."

Vicky shuddered.

"Define control."
"You can use it. You teleported."

"And my guts feel fucked up, seriously fucked up. Not sure if I could do that again. Not… yet, at least."

Taylor frowned slightly.

"That's… fine. Don't want you to do it if you don't need to. But… alright, I've seen the Flame, fought it, been invaded by it, travelled through it once… maybe we can try and use it on Angrboda. Patience, any insight?"

Patience shrugged, bloodshot eyes locked on the iron door, the impossible light, the newborn star… a trickle of blood slowly descended from the bottom of her left eye, dripping steadily to the ground. Her hands were twitching, the same rhythm over and over. On the verge of total breakdown. So different to the insanely confident woman that Taylor had known for the last little while… week, that was it. Christ, nearly two weeks. That was all. And here they were.

"...they… they didn't elaborate, just… just said that it was dangerous. Angrboda's hungry. She needs to be woken up. The Wolf needs to crack the egg and let her free, to expand and expand. She's forgotten the world, needs to be led outwards by a herald. Said that they'd need me to be healthy for my final task - part of why they wanted you to inherit. You could graft them into one body, enough to focus their efforts better. Harmonise their approaches. And your scars would allow them to endure… that. I don't think it matters now. I don't think that body really cares about the environment."

Taylor refused to look at the light, not until she had to. Knew that the sight would just unnerve her. Patience absent-mindedly pulled a lock of her hair into her mouth and began to chew. God, the Butcher would never have done that. Not disturbing enough, too childish, too much of an admission of internal weakness. Still unsure what to think about Butcherless Patience.

"...hold on. You're talking like… like it's possible for a human to survive in there."

Patience blinked, and a tiny trace of her old self came back. Tiny.

"Well, unless they wanted to crawl out of my face and rampage, yes, they'd need to use me like a meaty spacesuit. So, yes, I assume I'd need to be able to survive in there."

Taylor shushed her. Oh, shit. An idea.

"So… we have a weapon. We have the Frenzied Flame which can, apparently, kill Angrboda. We can get to her, maybe - unless the way has been cut off."

Patience gave her a look.

"There's no guarantee of coming back. Do you think they intended for it to be a two-way journey? One which a human body could survive?"

Taylor reacted automatically… and slapped her in the face. Patience reeled back, unfamiliar with pain from something so… human. The red mark made it seem like she was flushing… and after a second, her other cheek completed it. Red-faced, eyes bloodshot, mouth curling into a snarl… some of the fire was left in her. Good.

"The alternative is letting everyone in Brockton Bay die at best, or the entire world at worst. Maybe everything. None of our lives are more important than that."

Vicky nodded firmly.

"Yeah. Exactly. Either we die when she gets out or we die doing something useful. There's no choice."
Patience glanced between them, and lot out an angry breath.

"You two are…"

She pinched the bridge of her nose.

"You two are just… insane. And I'm saying that."

Taylor ignored her. Already walking away. No tools to collect, no allies to gather beyond Vicky, who was floating beside her - legs looked bruised, probably painful to walk. Patience stared after them… and jogged to join them. She was, somehow, the most physically healthy. Her mutations were manageable, and her Brute rating (now expired) had kept her going even after a fight with Taylor. Her voice was a low, dangerous whisper.

"You know what? Fuck it. Neither of you understand the Wolf. You'll need me."

Taylor gave her a withering glare.

"I thought you were terrified of dying."
"I'll die anyway. And I need you to live, Vicky."

Her voice escalated to a snarl.

"Either you make me the Butcher again, without those minds ripping me apart, or you skin me alive and wear me. Or get someone else to, I don't care. You, Vicky, are my meal ticket to eternity, and I'm not letting you get out of my sight."

Vicky stared at her with a mixture of confusion, disgust, and irritation.

"Fine. If you're going to help, then help."

"Too fucking right I'm going to help."

She paused.

"So… is there anything more to our astounding plan? Or do we…"

She shrugged. Taylor and Vicky glanced at one another… and like recognised like. Taylor looked over her shoulder at Patience.

"That's it. I'll figure out the rest when we get closer."
Vicky nodded.

"Yeah, that's kinda my approach. Been my approach for the last week or so."

Patience blinked owlishly, and sighed.

"Fine. Sure. Let's play it that way. God, feels… wrong being paranoid, this is why I want that guarantee… Come on, eternity ticket, let's make sure you get out of here safe and sound."

Taylor felt a small flash of irritation, and Patience evidently noticed.

"And then the two of us can have a grand old time together, out on the road, two gals… well, two gals, one of whom is wearing the other. It'll be fantastic."

Her laugh sounded false. She was utterly terrified, and was trying desperately to hide it behind a layer of bravado. But her confidence was… different, too hollow. Taylor had seen the Butcher running around like she was on top of the world, and this… this wasn't that. This was a dim facade put on to hide her own crippling fear of death, and her fear that there was nothing waiting for her afterwards. Taylor had no hold over her - she could probably beat her in a fight, but she wasn't the cure-all to her growing insanity. Vicky, though… Vicky had something to offer. And Taylor could see the possessive obsession growing in her eyes. She imagined it was the same look she'd worn when she researched the Butcher after her trigger event. The iron door approached… and Taylor could already feel the effects. Based on the sounds of the others, they could feel it too. The sensation of their bodies revolting against themselves. Taylor focused on her own symptoms - three small growths. One buried under the skin, too deep to carve out. The other two were removable with a knife. Beyond that, she could feel something else boiling in her eye socket - an insect, but different to the others. Stranger. Not out yet. The hornets struggled to move - one collapsed to the ground in a squirming mass of tumours, and taylor had the wonderful feeling of a dozen half-formed nervous systems struggling to be born before they choked one another to death, feeding until there was nothing to feed on and promptly dying.

No wonder she had some grey in her roots. Miracle that she hadn't developed completely white hair - Marie Antoinette Syndrome being caused by high stress and emotional turmoil, and all that.

Well. Let's do it.

Taylor grimaced.

"Yep."

The door loomed. Impossibility spiralled beyond her.

The light beckoned. And Taylor… hesitantly, stepped through.

* * *​

There was no swirling vortex of change, no psychedelic merging of colours, nothing overtly wrong. She just stepped in… and the light vanished. The scene changed. Her swarm lingered - she'd carried them on her clothes - and they confirmed that the other two were here as well. Patience looked terrified, her mask of confidence utterly gone. Vicky just looked tired. Incapable of really reacting. Her shattered pupils still made Taylor flinch - reminded her too much of what had happened to Gallant. At least Vicky was still going, and while she looked on the verge of a mental breakdown, she didn't look… quite like her head was about to erupt with flame. Too stubborn. Too acclimatised to this stuff. Taylor glanced around… and it became abundantly obvious that this place wasn't remotely natural.

The air stank of ozone.

There was nothing… overtly outside of reality. Not much, at least. The materials were mundane - stone, wood, brick, glass. But the arrangement was simply incorrect. They were standing in a small room, parquet flooring, wood that clicked as they moved over it. But the click went on. And on. And on. Taylor sent an insect to investigate, to squeeze between one of the many deformations (something else adding to the strange nature of this place, it wasn't smooth. The tunnels had been smooth and clearly outside the ordinary, but this place had wear and tear, it had natural flaws). It squeezed… and squeezed… and felt more. The flooring descended below them, and she couldn't tell how deep. A single click would set off dozens of echoes, going downwards until it faded from her capacity to listen. Around the platform was a thin railing made from wrought iron on one side, the other three covered by walls… and then normality completely ceased.

A heap of influences. A tidal wave of unshaped reality. Normality stacked on top of itself so often that it became uncanny. She saw a living room with elegant, expensive armchairs… floating by, connected by a shifting chain of staircases that bent when she stopped looking, shifting to make some kind of geometrical sense. There was no ceiling in this room, and above them was a long stone chimney, extending… no. Not a chimney. A hallway. A huge hallway, studded with portraits and random articles of furniture, hanging pendulously above their heads. A window was set in one of the walls, and yet another dizzying array of rooms and corridors extended from it, arranged with no rhyme or reason. Flooring that extended too far downwards, furniture that was repeated identically over and over, everything that little bit too long, too short, never right, and always in quantities too large to be natural. Taylor cautiously poked open the gate to the railing, and glimpsed the rest of this… between-place.

There was no sky.

The sky was structure. They were surrounded by vast landscapes of structure. Hills of rooms, valleys filled with dim lights where more rooms lay. No ground beneath. Just room upon room upon room… and above them was more. Going up and up until it all faded from sight, and all that remained was a shapeless grey which was just more rooms and buildings lumped together, connected by spiralling double-helixes of staircases leading up and down. It was… it was shapeless growth. It was nothing but pointless existence. It didn't feel… feel revolutionary. Not at all. Taylor looked around carefully as Vicky and Patience stared up in shock. She'd seen Mound Moor, this was… not good, but she'd been expecting something like this. She searched the horizon carefully, noting the piles of pointless construction, the unnatural mounds of rooms loosely joined together. And none of them had anything unnatural about them, only their association made them feel so utterly wrong. She scanned, noting that their room opened onto the open air - a foot or so down to the roofing of the next room. Well, at least they weren't buried. That was good. She peered… dammit, this place was enormous, it was hard to get a grasp of anything…

Swore she could see something looking at her.

Those windows looked… eerily eye-like.

That huge door felt like a mouth.

And the rumble that passed through the place felt like an enormous giant stirring in its sleep.

Patience pointed. Her eyes were sharp - unnaturally so. Maybe part of her power - definitely wasn't part of the Butcher's.

"There. I can see it."
Taylor could barely make out what she was pointing at. A shimmering shape, miles and miles away, barely visible amidst the chaos of this place. It was clawing away at the walls of a dozen buildings, climbing up by any means necessary. Still hurt to look at. She tried to see its destination… nothing. Too many blockages. There were at a fairly high point, but she saw that they were still contained in a valley - albeit a massive one. There were interminably high cliffs opposite their room, rising so high that the top was just a fuzzy grey line. It was the sort of vastness which felt possible - which somehow made it worse. Impossible vastness was, well, impossible. Insurmountable by its very nature. It cleared up the simple option of 'try harder', and it demanded some kind of unorthodox solution. This, though… a team could get up there, if they had enough supplies, started out in good health, had an understanding of the area so they could plan their ascent. She'd seen what some climbers did, this was manageable. For them. For her group… it was just within the realms of possibility. Just. If they could find food and water, then maybe. If none of them was further injured, possibly. If they had time to rest up and heal their wounds, potentially.

The Butcher had already scaled part of it, and was far above their heads. Clawing its way higher and higher, ascending with all the speed it could muster. Faster than them.

The idea of it winning because it could climb better than three wounded humans was infuriating.

Three wounded humans and a brain-ghost.

Vicky groaned at the sight of it. The air stank of ozone.

"...OK, I can fly. Not sure if I can carry the two of you, though."

Taylor winced.

"Vicky, you… no offence, but you look awful. I'm not sure if you could carry me, definitely not all three of us."

Vicky growled.

"I could just leave the Butcher behind. That's a very valid option."
Another wince.

"Alright. Just… try and fly me up, alright?"

"Sure. See, flight, it helps skip this bullshit - all the wandering and exhaustion."

Taylor very much hoped she was right. But she had a dim suspicion that… well. Vicky tried to wrap her up in a bridal carry… and groaned. Taylor immediately climbed back down, and briefly grafted to Vicky just to see what the problem was.

What wasn't the problem with her?

Intestines were torn up, multiple bruises, a huge wound in her side which hadn't yet healed, completely broken fingers. Movement was painful - not just the pressure of the ground under her feet, but the simple act of forcing her muscles to operate. Vicky glared.

"I'm fine, just give me a second to adjust to this."

"Vicky, how powerful are you without your shield?"

"I can…"

Taylor pointed solemnly at the clambering Butcher. It was making steady progress upwards, and debris rained down around it. A constant shower of brickwork, glass, wiring… all the crap which made up this dreg heap. Vicky glowered… but she saw the point. That thing, if it chose to, could just… throw rubble at her. Tear it away and chuck it downwards. Neither of them had any idea what waited over that ridge, maybe untold miles of more desolation, maybe something big, who knew. But that thing had access to all the Butcher's powers, presumably, with the exception of Quarrel. Sometimes Taylor saw a tiny rush of flame as it teleported upwards a small distance, the cliff face groaning as it struggled to support the weight which abruptly reimposed itself. It had ranged options. Enough that it could fuck them up royally - a single hit would destroy her shield, and if her shield was gone, she'd be trying to hold Taylor up with broken fingers and far too many wounds ranging from small to hospital-worthy - plus, major organ damage that was clearly causing her pain. Even with her shield she'd winced when adjusting to holding Taylor - and that was just the act of raising her arms and bracing her knees. Taylor couldn't afford to die to a random tumble. And… honestly, she was nervous of being too exposed. Those buildings looked hostile. And there were no birds here. The skies were empty.

"...I can still try."

Taylor shrugged sympathetically, and resisted the urge to clap her on the back. Not her fault. But Vicky alone would be vulnerable, and Vicky coupled with any of them would be exceedingly vulnerable - and worse, that vulnerability would drag her partner down too.

"Let's just scout ahead for the moment. I want to see what's out there - maybe there's another way up. Otherwise… you might need to handle this alone."
She had ideas. She had some rather unpleasant ideas involving grafting which might help, but… those were half-thought-through, and she didn't want to do them unless it was literally a choice between that and the end of everything. The consequences would be… long-lasting, and deeply unpleasant. Chorei murmured of the precise things they'd need to do, theorising on how to combine influences to produce the desired outcome. Taylor shivered at the thought.

Recon. Focus on recon.

Her swarm spread out quickly, infiltrating and infesting the buildings around her group, forming a thin net which nonetheless perceived a startling amount. The senses on these new insects were… well, they were something. Taylor flinched as the thing in her eye socket twitched again, struggling to ease its way outwards. Didn't poke around. Just… just let it be, and if it grew larger, she'd pause and start cutting. But for now it felt too small to gouge out without also shredding her socket, and she wasn't quite willing to scar that thing over quite yet. She'd already scarred a good chunk of her body, she didn't want to remove all possibility of getting a new eye - tinkertech could do a hell of a lot these days. Anyway. The swarm. As she worked, she set her body to quietly stalk forwards - wanted to see how hard it was to climb over this stuff, what state her body was in. The drop was easy, executed smoothly. Patience clambered down messily, and Vicky just idly floated. Smug. The roofing was stable, good. Most of the roofs were flat, but there were some pointed ones… worth staying away from. Easy enough to tell which ones were weak and which were strong. Vicky kept her eyes fixed on the wolf, and Taylor had started to gain a full mental map of the surrounding area - weaknesses, shortcuts, areas to avoid and areas to focus on. A precise route leading to the cliff. Once Vicky left, that was it. No communications in here, no way of relaying things except physically. And if she found herself in trouble… Taylor shut off the thought. Maybe there was something - those were buildings, maybe she could find an elevator to take her up, just because the Wolf had taken the difficult route didn't mean they would.

And in the end, it had a massive head start. If they were confined to mundane movement… they'd lost. They'd already failed.

And she refused to believe that. Or certainly, she refused to accept it.

The others followed as she walked, and then ran, ignoring the complaints from her muscles. She ran automatically, smoothly adjusting to anything in her way, even to minute changes in the stability of the flooring - how to exploit a flexible roof for a quick bounce, how to turn the momentum of falling to her favour, how to promptly ramp up to a climb. She was… she was completely in control. It was bizarre, and it made her feel wrong when she enjoyed the sensation. All it had cost was breaking one of her own unwritten rules, and grafting to something alien physically. Letting it invade her cells and change her from the inside out. And now she was barely human. She tried to keep those thoughts at bay. If she lost, she'd be dead anyway. So why worry when losing was still on the table? Patience was… stumbling, she wasn't accustomed to moving without her powers. She'd step, look confused that she hadn't leapt forward, and would stumble as a consequence. And a constant expression of pained confusion was plastered across her features - probably trying to teleport instinctively. They moved…

And Taylor froze. Her voice carried clearly, even over the perpetual howling wind of this place.

"Did you hear that?"

Shrugs all around.

She'd… definitely detected something. Her swarm had, at least. In one of the structures, fairly near here - the layers went down seemingly forever, and if she found a gap she could go lower and lower and lower. Two layers down, there was a noise - she'd detected it through the floors. Her cockroach-hornets moved to intercept, to locate and analyse whatever had moved. Slowly, her perception sharpened… rooms, rooms, more rooms… all of them harmlessly domestic, nothing too strange, nothing at all. But they were arranged so bizarrely, and in such numbers, with tiny details off that she knew she was still somewhere profoundly wrong. That and the stink of ozone. The crackling of strange radiation… fuck, her growths were getting worse. She glanced back. Patience's antlers were forking more and more, and it looked like her eyes were dividing - too many irises. Vicky was struggling just to stay upright, looked like the eyes on her hips were starting to grow more complex. Must be disorienting. The sound cleared up… it was… bizarre. High-pitched, something like…

She blinked.

"There's a child down there."

Patience and Vicky exchanged glances, and seemed to agree with each other. Vicky went first.

"That's a trap."

"Bait. One hundred percent. I'm not trusting a kid that we found in this place."

Her voice was a little thick - Taylor glanced back, and shuddered at the sight of a second row of teeth developing in her mouth. Just little white crowns at the moment, blood slowly dripping from the points of emergence, but the rest would be coming soon. None of them were coming out of this with a particularly close attachment to ordinary humanity, were they?

Be at peace. I have no body at all, but I still remain in touch with my core. Mostly. I certainly hope so. There is… something new, and a few gaps in my memory, but… anyhow. Do not be afraid - I'm sure we can negotiate through these changes.

Her voice shifted from sympathetic to gently mocking. No malice in it.

Now that you're sixteen, you're going to be going through some changes, physically. First, you're going to start having hornets crawl out of your eye socket…

Taylor shut her up. Chorei's humour was… ill-timed. Still. The other two had a point. A suspicious child in a place like this… not worth pursuing. Especially with the fate of the world at stake. She reached out, collecting her swarm. Not many, but they were functional. She investigated the site… another room, this time a living room with towels wrapped around the legs of every piece of furniture, stuck in place with mounds of duct tape. The floor was covered with animal hair. And the wrongness manifested in the ceiling fan - too many blades, each one a little too sharp, whirring a little too quickly while making absolutely no noise. There were books on the walls, but they were all precisely the same dimensions. She shivered as an ozone-scented wind blew over the landscape, setting a thousand television aerials into a fit of whining and shuddering. This place probably had its own weather systems, if it condescended to any physical laws whatsoever.

Her swarm formed a sufficient mass. She warned the others - she was going to play both sides of the conversation, saying what her swarm said, and then repeating what the… right. Definitely a girl, and young. Not much else that she could glean, the room she was in was underground and had no electric lights burning.

"Hello."

The girl jumped, squeaking. Her hands fumbled, and she seemed to find a light… there. Taylor could see her now. And… unnatural. An inhabitant of this place. She was young, maybe seven or eight, wearing an antique night-dress. Definitely a trap. No-one dressed that way nowadays, not unless they were especially eccentric. Beige-coloured hair tumbled down to her shoulders in neat plaits. And her face… there was something wrong with it. Too sharp. Much too sharp - her cheekbones came to sharp points, her ears were jagged masses of hard edges, her eyes were shaped like tiny diamonds rather tan anything normal. Her lips looked like they were styled on the design of an art-deco building - everything symmetrical and perfectly arranged. And her eyes… cold. So very cold. Her fingers drummed against her legs, and Taylor saw how long they were, how they tapered to sharp points with razor-sharp nails. Her voice cracked like shattering ice.

"What are you?"

Cold. Rational. No real fear at the sight of talking hornets.

"A friend. Do you live here?"

The girl leaned forward, smiling.

"Are you definitely a friend? You feel distant. You're far away, talking through the insects. I can tell."

"Sure. Do you know where we are?"

"I like having friends. Father says I'm allowed as many as I want, as long as I clean up afterwards."

Her companions shivered, and Taylor had to resist the urge. Her voice was simply too quick, too clipped. And the way she said friend… Taylor couldn't reproduce that. Not at all.

"Who are you?"

"My name is…"

The girl frowned.

"...Adelheid. My name is Adelheid Anders. Father calls me Heidi. You may call me Miss Anders. Now you tell me yours."

"Neither-Nor."

"...stupid name. Well, if you're a friend, you're a friend. Come down. Quickly. I'm getting bored."

"How did you get here, Adelheid?"

"I was born here. Now, get moving. Or I'll find another friend."

Taylor turned to the others. They both looked grim. Patience was the first to speak this time.

"Not a chance. Creepy kid, nope. Not happening."

Taylor frowned… and returned her attention to the swarm. Just as the roof underneath her feet shook. She smoothly adjusted herself, the others following suit… it felt like an earthquake, but hollower, like… her swarm felt something. Her swarm felt structure shifting, felt everything contorting and sliding around itself, felt walls devouring furniture and floors consuming ceilings, everything folding in a display of dizzying intricacy. Taylor lurched backwards, stumbling just a little…

And a staircase opened up.

A voice called out.

"Well? Are you coming or not?"

Chorei sighed. Resigned.

Taylor glanced at the others. Both of them slowly shook their heads. Taylor quietly drew her pistol. Patience stopped shaking her head. A huge hornet landed on her forehead. Vick's head, too, ceased its rotations. She had powers, she had weaponry, she had experience with this sort of thing. And she needed information. The Butcher either knew this area, or they were improvising very successfully. Either way, they needed an advantage. And if there was one thing the Butcher seemed poor at, it was talking. Taylor slowly descended, the others remaining behind. Vicky was ready to attack if necessary, she had the power for it. And Patience… Patience began to sadly assemble the weaponry she could still use. Throwing knives, a tiny pistol… her bow was too big, her sword was too heavy. She was just a baseline human in everything but aim and eyesight. Taylor hesitated… and handed over her pistol. Patience stared at it dumbly.

"You can use it better than I can."

Vicky glared at her with those awful half-shattered eyes. They needed to talk. They needed to talk urgently about the Flame of Frenzy and how to avoid it. So far, she seemed… faintly stable, and honestly, that concerned Taylor even more than full-on madness. Bisha seemed sane enough until he talked about his worldview - until then, he was charming, well-spoken, charismatic to the point of fascination… personality-wise, he was hypnotic until he talked about being God. She desperately hoped Vicky wasn't the same. A veil of sanity covering something deeply, deeply broken.

"Yeah. Sure. Give the Butcher a lethal weapon."

Patience smiled slightly. First time she seemed to have smiled genuinely since her severance.

"Thank you, Neither-Nor. I'll take care of it."
Taylor nodded silently, and descended. The darkness of the endless building consumed her utterly, and she dispatched her swarm upwards to keep her friends posted. It stank of ozone even more down here, it was downright pungent. Leaking from the brickwork, from the wood, even from the glass. She passed down a neat staircase formed from ordinary materials, while surrounded by the dissected remains of a hundred rooms. Cottages bisected, elaborate lobbies with her staircase running through them at an irregular angle. Structure redefined. Not truly altered, just… expanded outwards on a vast scale. But the possibilities this represented… she imagined just riding a wave of construction up to the top of the ridge, beyond, to the centre of the comet. The Butcher was scrambling over the sides, but she could take the express route, directed by this… completely freakish girl that might want to kill her, if Taylor had any experience in this field. Quickly, she found herself before a chipped green door that creaked open, revealing the short form of Adelheid Anders. Anders… she knew that name, she definitely knew that name. The girl smiled, and it looked like she was planning out each step, never allowing the smile beyond a few narrow limits. She gestured grandly, and Taylor entered, nodding politely.

Best not to piss off the girl that might be her only ticket onwards, what with Vicky's injuries.

The room was dusty, and Tyalor could see a stark outline on the floor where Adelheid had been sitting. Staring ahead. Doing nothing at all for a very long time indeed. Woke up when someone found her, and not a second before. The light burned dimly, feeding on an unseen source of electricity. A pile of shoeboxes had been arranged before her, and she could see where the girl had straightened cushions, brushed dust from the table surfaces, and generally tried to make the old room look cleaner. A pile of shoeboxes sat in the middle, stacked into a small step pyramid rising almost to Taylor's knee. A dull hum persisted… more growth. The thing in her eye was almost large enough for her to get a glimpse of it - something like a glimpse, at least. Hard to say what it was. Adelheid had her smile nailed onto her face as she circled smoothly around Taylor, and clasped her hands behind her back, looking up with imperious authority.

"Good morning, new friend."

"Morning, Adelheid."

The girl twitched into a strange motion - imitating an easy laugh, but it came across like a seagull shrieking while her body spasmed.

"Oh, nonsense. Call me Heidi. My friends may call me Heidi. And you are my friend."

The smile was never-ending. Taylor sensed Vicky talking to her swarm, thinking something through.

"... hold on, Anders? I recognise that name… isn't that the CEO of Medhall? He's in the papers a bunch, I… hm."

Taylor shrugged internally. She'd seen a picture of Max Anders before, the guy was rich and important, he inevitably appeared in newspapers after giving out candy to orphans, investing in some school scholarship, the guy wasn't Continent Big, but he was Brockton Big. If she recalled… blonde, striking blue eyes, fine-carved jawline, the kind of blandly perfect fitness which the very rich could afford through a stable of personal trainers and nutrition experts. Everything so perfect that it became unremarkable.

"First, we will talk about the weather. Second, we will talk about our families. And finally, I will show you my collection."

The girl straightened her back (somehow, the thing was an iron rod of certainty compared to Taylor's instinctual slight slouch).

"The weather is poor today."

Taylor blinked.

"...it's not good. Listen, Heidi, we need to talk about-"

The girl shrieked, the most piercing tone that Tyalor had ever heard. She could… oh, shit. Hearing cut off in one of her ears. Burst eardrum? No, Chorei fed her information… a tumour had built up inside the eardrum, it was crushing the tiny bones of the inner ear, blocking all… shit. She quietly started commanding the pain receptors to die off, allowed the inner ear to settle into total oblivion. Repair later. The girl commanded this place - and that included the mutations.

"Second! We talk about our families, stop deviating! My family is wonderful. There's Adelheid, myself. There's Adelheid, who's very large. There's Adelheid, who's tolerable enough. There's Adelheid, the quiet one who wears a nice suit. And there's Adelheid, who is sick and is kept indoors for her own safety and the safety of others. Now you."
"...tell me about the big Adelheid."
The girl slapped her hand, and she could feel the skin distorting, something thicker rippling from underneath - like psoriasis, if it happened in seconds. She resisted the urge to slap her across the room and drown her in insects for being a sociopathic little shit.

"Tell me about your family, that's the way this works."

"My family is fine. My dad is in a coma. My mom is dead."

"...that's disappointing. Fine. Now, you can see my collection. Interrupt and I'll scream."

Taylor quickly knelt down by the boxes as instructed. Play along, and then either attack and leave, or maybe advance. Sue her for not thinking that this absolute creature could give her cancer by slapping her. Adelheid leant over one of the boxes… and pulled the lid free. Taylor leant in, curious. She froze. She relayed what she was seeing to her friends on the surface, making sure they understood exactly what was going on here, because she was damned if she was going to stay silent.

A dead animal.

A rabbit. Pinned to the bottom of the box by the paws. Half-rotten at this point. It was spread-eagle, like it was ready for dissection, and Taylor winced at the vacant, rotten sockets and the mouth opened slightly to expose tiny, delicate teeth. A small knife wound in its side - that had been what killed it. A little label was fixed underneath, with tiny, precise writing picking out the name:

Gaston. Found October 11th in the grounds outside the house.

The girl smiled proudly, a trace of actual emotion for once.

"I caught him. He scratched my arm, so I broke his leg. Then I pinned him in here. He's a good sample. I was very proud of catching him."

The thing looked like it had suffered.

…some children need to be hit more often.

Taylor viciously agreed.

"Do you like Gaston?"

"Yes. I like Gaston. He's very dead."

"I like him too. He was a fine sample."

Taylor's voice lowered, and her fists clenched. The swarm was ready.

"What are you, exactly?"

Adelheid tilted her head to one side with an audible crack.

"I am Adelheid Anders."

"But there are other Adelheid Anders'."

"But none of them are like me, and I am like none of them. Come on, keep up."

Vicky's voice cut through the confusion.

"Wait. You said beige hair, sharp features. Anything else?"

This close, Taylor had more insight. A tiny scar along her chin, a very tiny scar just over her top lip, and some acne along her jawline. Vicky swore. Loudly.

"Shit. I know that face. Adelheid Anders… look, Dean used to know people like that, well, his parents did. Max Anders, he's the CEO of Medhall, and he's blonde, blue-eyed, and he inherited the business from his dad. He had a sister. That sister is dead. I don't remember her name, doesn't matter. That girl is Iron Rain. I don't know how, but the face matches up, don't know who else it could be. Be careful. Be very careful. I recommend leaving."

Taylor scooted back just a little from the girl's endlessly cold-cheerful expression. That… made no sense. Iron Rain was currently trying to birth a new world, she wasn't sitting in a weird room showing off her dead rabbits. How could a solipsist even recognise the existence of rabbits, or Taylor, or this entire place? How could…

"Now. Let's talk about my other rabbits-"

Taylor's mouth drew into a firm line. She was quickly realising that she disliked kids.

"Actually, I wanted to talk about the others. What are you? You're not Iron Rain. Iron Rain's gone."

"Shut up, friend, you're meant to-"

Taylor smoothly ducked back, avoiding the sharp slap coming towards her face. Adelheid looked irritated for a moment, and her tiny hands clenched into fists.

"You're not her. She-"

"I am an aspect of childhood, you dolt."

Taylor froze.

"What?"

"We were the ones she cast away. We are the reality she must reject. I am part of her childhood. I am the one who killed small animals and hid them away. I am the one who was coached in etiquette."
She said this with a combination of boredom and pride. Vicky's voice cut over again.

"Hold on. Iron Rain cut away parts of her identity at Naaktgeboren Ridge using the Razor, that's why I have her skin. Maybe this is… similar, I don't know. Poke her, see if she's hollow."

Taylor refrained. She didn't want to have her hand dissolve into a mass of tumours, or worse, something unspeakable and profoundly inhuman. But… alright. From what she knew of the Razor, based on Chorei's ramblings, it was all about roles, aspects of oneself, and… ah. She thought she understood. Like an onion peeling itself. What had Patience's dream been? Angrboda standing in a garden, peeling an onion, layer by layer, for hours and hours until the ground was thick with chunks of plant matter, gleaming, and both of them were sobbing uncontrollably. And then she held the core, the innermost point, infinitely small and infinitely concentrated… and asked if she wanted a bite. Taylor understood the dream. Angrboda had cut away parts of herself, one after the other, bleeding herself of her own personality and ego until nothing remained - until she truly was isolated from the world and could become a solipsist. The final revolution against reality - forgetting that it existed, and creating a new one as a consequence. And to do that… she wondered if… hm.

"Tell me about the large Adelheid, then."

"She's all around us. She is the one who takes us to our play dates and arranges our meetings."

They were surrounded by Iron Rain. This place was just a mound of shed selves, destroyed notions, every barrier to enlightenment. They stood on the outermost layers of the peeled onion, and they were clambering to the single, perfect centre. The girl tilted her head to one side.

"Why are you here?"

"To see Iron Rain. And what about the wrong one? The wicked one?"

Adelheid seemed to vibrate on the spot, twitching erratically.

"We. Don't. Talk. About. Her. She's sick in the head, she's rotten as an old apple. She's bad bad bad, and she deserves to be put away. I know it, and all the others do too."

Ah. An opportunity.

"How do you move around, Adelheid?"

"I move by moving, you idiot. Now, stop interrupting, we have boxes to look at, and-"

"Do you shape this place?"
"Yes, it's my home, you colossal moron. Now-"

"Where's Heidi?"

"She's gone and hidden and never coming back."

Taylor hated herself for this. She leaned closer, and adopted a conspiratorial smile.

"I hate her too. Won't you take me to her? Then we can beat her together."

And friendliness returned in a chilly wave.

"Oh? You want to hurt her? I like hurting her."

She slowly extracted a smaller box, and opened it up. A finger, slim, mounted on a piece of card. No label. Her smile was wide and terrifying, large enough to swallow this room whole.

"I hurt her. She grows back. Then we hurt her again. Put her down in the dark where she can't run away. Would you like to join in?"

"Yeah. Definitely. Just show me where she is."

Adelheid's smile somehow widened. Her long fingers clicked against one another in excitement, and she jumped up and down a few times - a simulation of enjoyment, Taylor imagined that she'd remain perfectly still if she wasn't committed to being an eerie psychopathic child.

"Well then. Let's get moving. She won't wait for us."

Adelheid seemed to shift before her. Her fingers were longer. Her smile was improbably wide, and she could see where the skin was parting to form more lip, more teeth, more grin. Her eyes, a vibrant blue, seemed to crackle with lightning - and the stink of ozone grew more intense. Taylor tried to smile back, but it felt stiff, unconvincing… something was throbbing in her head, something… something large, and… something painful, something… something digging into the soft flesh of her socket… her eye widened.

Oh… oh heavenly Buddha…

A centipede began to crawl out of her eye socket.

It nibbled at her eyepatch.

And Adelheid Anders, Iron Rain, Angrboda… she smiled so wide that the grin extended all the way around her head, a perfect seam dividing her skull from her body. Rows and rows of gleaming teeth, with eyes that burned.

"Oh! You're ripening!"

Her fingers reached… too many fingers, too many joints on each, and the nails were stained a thick, crusty red.

"I've never pinned a centipede before…"

Spoiler: Author's Note

AN: So, that's all for today. Patience is alive, but... very damaged. Very damaged indeed. Part of that is pre-existing, part is Butcher-induced, part is induced by the removal of the Butcher... but she's still around.

Tomorrow's chapters will include a Patience POV - easier to write now she isn't full of screaming voices. Might explain some of why she's so... desperate to remain the Butcher. And I can assure you that Patience does have an ending planned for her. Had it planned since the beginning of the arc, actually. Also, Iron Rain's real name. Adelheid Anders, Heidi for short because alliteration is for dummies.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

236 - Twenty Thousand Floors Under the Rooftops

Patience shifted uncomfortably. Vicky and her… they had no idea how to talk to one another. Patience was struggling with the fact that, for the first time in years, her brain was… it was clear. Gave her room to think. She didn't like it. She didn't like the clarity. Made her realise just how much had been gnawed away - not just in the last few hours, but in the last few years. Couldn't remember her parents. Couldn't remember anything before a certain point, and even events after that cut-off were hazy, riddled with holes, some random and insignificant, some deeply, deeply troubling. She kept scratching at herself, picking at random skin tags, itching around the bony growths she was sprouting from her face. She liked doing this. It annoyed the voices. It made them very, very angry indeed when she exerted pointless tics, they were consciously aware of them even if she wasn't, and they were vocal in their disapproval. Now… now there was silence. She was… she was conflicted. Was she happy that there was quiet? She liked quiet. Quiet was nice. Quiet gave her room to ponder. Quiet was safe. But… but quiet reminded her that she was alone. She was dead. And she could feel it, in her lungs. A heaviness. A lead weight, dragging her down. A chain extending from her throat, where it coiled over and over, to her lungs, to her stomach, and out. She felt, sometimes, like they'd forgot to cut her umbilical cord. That it had hardened. Fossilised. Turned to metal. And weighed her down invisibly, choking her slowly and inexorably, forcing her to sink deeper and deeper…

Her eyes flicked nervously to Victoria. Glory Girl. Who was… who was wearing human skin. That wasn't the troubling element, it was the powers. Did they dream? Would she skin her? The iron chain in her throat was pulling tighter and tighter. How long until it was too much? Patience yesterday and Patience today were entirely different people, Patience tomorrow might be from a new species. No accounting for their actions. For their stupidity. They might give in to the weight. Future Patience would fail, one day. And then… then there'd be nothing. She scratched again, her armour clanking. Felt vulnerable. Felt so very vulnerable. The air was like a knife tracing over her skin. Every flinch, every twitch, every little pain response… Butcher XII was able to resist all forms of pain, and now it was back. Reminding her of how human she was. Grandfather died of cancer. Grandmother died of pneumonia. Remembered walking in to see her dead in her wide, half-empty bed. How she shrivelled up like a dead cricket. Not a happy memory. And the Butcher had left it, of course. Wouldn't let her forget that.

Her genes hated her. Every replication had more mistakes. Every division introduced more errors. Her telomeres were eroding, piece by piece. Once they were gone, she was gone too. She scratched harder at herself. Three common cancers for women. Breast. Ovarian. Cervical. All three could be ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick. Ovarian cancer was hard to screen, and metastasized easily. Once it was out, she was dead. Cervical could be managed with a hysterectomy. Breast would be dealt with using a mastectomy. All she needed to do was start cutting and she could neutralise the problems. The old fears were sweeping over her. Pointless deaths. The same fear which made her terrified to cross the street during busy hours when she was a medical student. Her genes hated her, and they were trying to kill her. She needed to engage in scorched earth warfare - radiation therapy was harmful, better to just cut and cut and cut until nothing else lingered. Pointless death was the worst way to go. No preparation. No dignity. She'd heard rumours that her great-grandfather, back in Vietnam, had died from aplastic anaemia - or at least, she'd come up with the diagnosis. She remembered… seventeen. She was seventeen, and her mother was talking about family history. Mentioned that her grandfather had died fairly young, pale skin, constant bruising, always tired, died in his mid-twenties, by which time he already had four children. Patience had immediately left the dinner table, run upstairs, pulled out her textbooks and cross-referenced symptoms. Aplastic anaemia. Had to be. Maybe. Could be other things. Worse things. She endured the first part of her twenties with growing paranoia. Ripe time for her blood to start failing her.

She'd lived.

But it was a disease that affected the elderly as well. So, still had that waiting for her. Maybe. Rest of her family's medical history was obscured by poor record-keeping and collapsed regimes. Bad. Limited her knowledge of the poison brewing in her cells. She scratched harder, imagining that she could examine her bones for little tumours, make sure she wasn't developing anything… needed to sell the hoard, buy medical equipment, buy a hospital, anything to make her healthy, anything to detect the thing that would kill her and excise it before it was too late. And then… then just wait until she decayed from age. And then nothing. Nothing at all. Or would there be something? Certain nothing or uncertain something - both were horrifying. Needed a guaranteed afterlife. Her eyes flicked around the landscape, and she scratched hard enough to draw blood.

"Christ, stop it."

She snapped her head around. The blonde was speaking.

"...sorry."

Her gauntlet was red when she took it away, forced it by her side. Keep it there. No scratching. Invites infection. Didn't have the necessary medicines for that, not here. Not with her. She could feel a lump in her left breast - unnoticed when she was guaranteed immortality, but now… now… she quietly wedged her fingers underneath her breastplate and started to examine herself carefully…

"Jesus, will you stop? You're driving me crazy."

"Just checking a lump."

"Fuck's sake… just… stay still, wait for Taylor."

She'd just gone down below. Patience stared into the looming stairwell. Scared to descend. Scared to stay above. Her sharp eyes could still see the impossible tesseract thing climbing up the cliff face, making slow but steady progress towards the top. Maybe… an hour, possibly. It'd take hours for them to reach the base, and days to climb to the top, if they didn't just die of exhaustion or starvation or the myriad diseases anyone could be exposed to in a place like this. She could feel herself mutating further. Her eyes kept flicking over to Glory Girl, noting her tension, her injuries… the girl groaned after a moment, sagging slightly. Very old instincts took over. So old she'd almost forgotten them. She rushed over and poked her in the stomach. The response was predicted.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

Her voice was low. Dangerous. Patience ignored her. Needed something to focus on. Proof that she wasn't the only shambing wreck of a biological crisis wandering this blasted earth. She poked a little more, and… hm.

"Your intestine is damaged."

Vicky blinked.

"What?"

"Damaged. Feels like a chunk of it is non-functional, I think. I've felt things like this before. I'd need more equipment to be sure, but…"

Vicky let out a shuddering breath, fury forgotten.

"...Christ, am I going to need a colostomy bag or something?"

Patience tried to remember her bedside manner… but her calming smile didn't quite seem to be working.

"No. You're fine. Let's see… the deformity seems limited to the jejunum - that's the middle part of your small intestine. The end, the ileum, can usually adapt to cope with the loss… you should be alright. Just… get yourself checked out properly, no point being risky. You'll need vitamin supplements, probably some magnesium supplements as well. If you need to, try and get some loperamide or cholestyramine. Should help with some of the side-effects. Might need some intravenous feeding, but that won't be for long, and it's not overly messy. I know digestive problems sound humiliating - trust me, yours will likely be very mild, easy to integrate into everyday life with a minimum of fuss. Don't worry, people have recovered from worse."

A memory.

"...and your sister should be able to help out. Probably can repair it like that."

Vicky stared at her.

"...that might not be an option. And… I'm sorry, how do you know all this?"

"Medical student. I had a placement at a hospital before…"

"...right, I heard something about… oncology? That's the cancer one, right?"

"The cancer one, yes."

Vicky shifted, but… she did genuinely look a little more relaxed now that she knew what her problem was. Patience resisted the urge to ask for a full examination. Wouldn't go down well, she imagined.

"So… hold on, you were a medical student, then a cape, and then the Butcher. How does… how does any of that link up?"

Patience gave her a wary look.

"You know why. I don't like nothingness. It's why I want you to skin me. Why you need to be healthy until we get back."

Vicky grimaced.

"But… just bear with me, you spent time helping people, training to help people, and then just… gave it all up?"

Patience blinked owlishly.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I'd never get an opportunity like that again. I wanted to live forever. In a way. I don't suppose you'd understand. It's… I want to burn out. I want to do something spectacular and be remembered - and I also want to keep going afterwards. I want to have an eternal retirement. A guaranteed afterlife. I mean, when I was normal, I used to… you know I used to spend hours researching sunblock, just to make sure I wasn't hurting my skin? I don't even take birth control pills, I don't want the risk of cervical cancer. I needed a guarantee of safety before I left that behind."

Vicky was looking at her like she was from another planet.

"And your way of doing that was… not to grow as a person and change yourself, but to go and become an infamous villain? Didn't think 'oh, maybe having a bunch of minds screaming inside my head will be rough', no, just… went straight for that? Never considered another option?"
Patience tilted her head to one side.

"It was the best available option. It required minimal effort for maximum payout. The side-effects could be accounted for. Mostly. If I was careful."

"Side effects? You mean, becoming a villain that runs around killing people while immune to any real reprisal? Immune to kill orders?"

"That last one is a benefit, actually."

"Normal people don't need to worry about getting kill orders in the first place."

Patience shrugged.

"Either way. It doesn't matter. You took my afterlife from me, and I want you to skin me, alive or dead, so I can keep on going. That's how this is going to go. I don't even mind if you do it while I'm still living, the pain is worth an eternity of peace."

Vicky exploded. This had been brewing in her for a while.

"How about no. You're a fucked-up creature, you willingly became the Butcher - abandoning a career where you were helping people, so it's not like you started as a psychopath and continued to be a psychopath, you chose to become this way. And now… now you've got Taylor to somehow not want you dead or gone. Which is the dictionary fucking definition of Stockholm Syndrome, or is emblematic of the fact that Taylor picks weird people to befriend. Like, I like her other friends, but they include two people that probably qualify as war criminals in some jurisdictions. I'm not skinning you. All you deserve is the Birdcage, at best. You'd be lucky if they didn't just shoot you on the spot once you got back to the surface."

Patience growled, some of her old fire coming back. She could feel desperation in her gut, she felt the chain around her neck pulling her lower, felt her genes hating her more and more with each passing moment…

"You wouldn't understand. You've been healed by your sister for your entire life, you have a Brute rating, you can fly… you've had backup from day one, if I'm remembering correctly. More than that, don't assume you know me."

Her voice was eerily… coherent. She felt less of an urge to ramble, swear violently, engage in random acts of performative violence. Did she used to be like this? Was this how Patience Nguyen spoke? She wasn't sure. Couldn't remember. But it felt right to talk this way. Vicky floated off the ground, her aura blazing.

"Well, kindly go fuck yourself and don't assume you know me either. So, what, you wanted to burn out? But you didn't want to actually risk anything? That's not dramatic, that's not tragic, that's just a coward who wants to impress people while never growing."

She didn't understand. She didn't feel the chain around her neck. She didn't feel the way it dragged her down. Patience remembered her days at medical school and beforehand, the days when she couldn't muster the willpower to get out of bed, just slouched her way through existence staring into the middle distance. Whole weeks could be lost that way, and then she'd jolt awake when her birthday rolled in, reminding her that she was another year closer to death. Alive or dead, it no longer mattered. The state was the same either way. A gnawing misery at the base of her spine that chewed and chewed and chewed and choked her and dragged her down. Another little inherited flaw - along with cancerous genes and the possibility of her own blood failing. Everything becoming distant. Everything just a distraction which was no longer working. Emotions were faded and grey. She was always cold. Always cross. Nothing interested her. She moved, she dressed, she acted like a human, but underneath there was just a ticking feeling that either her body would give out or her mind would, and she had nothing waited for her afterwards. No feeling before, no feeling after. A river of nothingness trickling down from her brain, rushing downwards and chilling everything in front of it. A thickness in the air, a cloying, gritty feeling that infested her skin and made her want to strip it all off. A constant awareness of every flaw. And a desire to just make it end in some way. A quiet resignation that would hit at the strangest moments. Standing in a queue, staring into the middle distance, and… if there was a button in front of her that said 'push this to die', she'd push it. She knew she would. And what happened if there was? What happened if one of those moments happened when a bus was coming by, or a gun was in front of her? She needed a way out. An opportunity to make it end without the fear of oblivion. It was the only way to be sure.

Only when her lungs ached did she realise that she'd been talking this whole time.

Vicky stared at her.

There was a long moment of silence.

The girl's expression hovered somewhere between pity and disgust.

"...and then you triggered."

Patience was silent. Said too much. Too unstable without the company in her mind. Usually the voices were a good audience, they ate this stuff up and threw it back at her. It made her feel pleasantly denigrated.

"Do you think you're the only one?"

Her voice was low and quiet. Dangerous.

"You want to know something? The Butcher could've been something good. Just imagine it - imagine a hero that would never die. That could keep on going, passing their powers down. Imagine a… a group of tinkers who could combine their specialisations. Imagine an experienced hero being able to guide generations of capes instead of just dying and vanishing. Imagine what would happen if that was something - imagine a world where a legacy of heroes could just keep going. And what happened in reality? Some asshole got hold of a power, used it to ruin a lot of lives, then died to another villain. The guy's powers were great at non-lethal stuff, too, he could've been a hero, there are people with nastier powers who still became heroes. And after a while, it became impossible to turn it around. Instead of a legacy of heroes, we just got an unkillable villain. And the only thing, the only thing that makes a Butcher pitiable is that they sometimes get the title by accident, they don't set out for it. But not you. You spent the first part of your life helping people, then you got powers, you had a chance to turn things around, to try and improve the world around you, keep going with the pattern you'd set out so far, and instead you picked the most self-centred, self-pitying option. You know what, you might actually be sympathetic, I might actually pity you, but guess what? You lost that when you just decided to do the worst thing available to you. Becoming the Butcher by choice, for your own gain."

Something odd in her tone.

Something… personal.

Patience blinked. It'd… no-one had ever talked to her like this. Even the Butcher hadn't, and they had time to talk about a lot of things. She'd… never been confronted this way, always surrounded by traitors she wanted to cultivate into proper Teeth, or by sycophants that quickly bored her. But… she did other things. She didn't just hurt people. She remembered diving off the edge of the Grand Canyon, whooping as she descended towards the bottom, opening up a parachute at the last possible moment… a little too late, actually. Had to teleport a few times to extend the fall properly, She did things, she just… this idiot girl wouldn't understand. She hadn't just jumped off the deep end, she'd worked her way there. Her trigger wasn't the beginning, it was the apex, the culmination. The Butcher was simply the natural conclusion, a fitting epilogue for it all. A fragile power which just let her hit her target. That was it. Delicate, really. And specialised for hurting people. But… the chain around her neck tightened a little, dragging her downwards slightly… no, no, she was wrong. Patience wasn't a good person, she was terrible, but she also had an afterlife. No heaven, no hell, so why bother? She was able to do whatever she wanted, no matter how brutal.

Able to live. Every single extreme, pursued and experienced. Burning out brightly, with a long retirement following it all. An endless retirement, perhaps.

Her fists clenched. She missed being strong.

No. She was fine with who she was.

The Wolves had almost destroyed her.

She had a chance to live forever. She'd made a mistake. Put her bet on the wrong horse.

Couldn't remember her parents' faces anymore.

Too late for her.

Already made her choices. Committed at this point. If she got out without a guarantee of an afterlife, she'd be shot on the spot and sent into the dreamless dark. No future for her.

No future with the Butcher. No future without the Butcher.

Patience stared into the middle distance. Vicky was speaking again.

"Not expecting you to change, but that's what I think. You're not the only one who feels like burning out sometimes. Difference is that the rest of us don't do what you did. I don't care if you have a sympathetic reason for it, you still did something morally unjustifiable."

"...so what? I achieved what I wanted to achieve. And… if it wasn't for this, I'd still be content."

"Yeah, well… here we are. If it wasn't for the Siberian, we'd have a Quadrumvirate. If it wasn't for the Endbringers, we'd be doing just fine. If it wasn't for the gang this bitch was a part of-" She gestured to the deformed landscape around her, "-then I'd still have a living aunt and a non-estranged uncle. Look where you ended up. Seems like a big fucking victory to me."

Patience scowled to herself, before absent-mindedly reaching under her breastplate to check that lump again. Still maybe there, maybe not. Needed a scan. Her antlers were growing longer. She could almost see through the dark eyes at the tips of each prong.

And below them… matters came to a head.

* * *​

Taylor felt sick. The centipede was… it was coming out of her eye socket, it was clawing around the edges, nibbling curiously… it had a nervous system, she could seize control, she could assert herself, see through its eyes… for the first time in a very long while, she was able to see through that eye socket. She had depth perception. And it was because of a centipede squirming out. She forced her lungs to work normally, commanded her heart to operate at the right pace for this situation and no faster. Adelheid was in front of her, smiling in faint intrigue, fingers twitching like needles. She looked too sharp, too thin, too artificial. Her diamond-shaped eyes gleamed, unblinking. She hadn't blinked once in their entire time together. Wanted to tear it out and mount it in one of her shoeboxes. Might want to let her. Chorei was twittering away in her mind.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't… I'm not sure if this is because of the conditions here, or if it's… regardless, I apologise if I had any hand in inducing this.

Taylor seized control of the centipede, forcing it to remain perfectly still. Didn't move the eyepatch. Just let darkness linger. But… but there were still traces of sight that she couldn't block out. Little pieces of light filtering through to the centipede, the feeling of air on its chitin, the feeling of gradients of warmth and cold… there was something in her eye socket, and no matter how still it was, she couldn't erase its presence. Not without tearing it free. And… and she wasn't quite willing to experiment with removal of eye-centipedes. Wait, no, shit. Something else. An itching around her eye socket… was that the centipede, or… she ran her fingers over the skin, wanting independent confirmation.

Not again.

Holes. The ones on her arm had scarred over by now, with the centipede gone. But now a new rash of them was developing around her empty eye, red-ringed and deep, slightly damp with something between pus and nectar. She quietly stopped thinking about it. Scar it over later. She forced herself to smile at the little sociopath in front of her.

"So, Adelheid. Show me Heidi. Show me the one you want to hurt."

The girl twitched, and moved swiftly in absolute silence. The room behind her seemed to pulse and shift… and taylor moved quickly. She could barely see the floors begin to pulse like living things, long, smooth throats opening up… she thought, for a moment that she could see saliva dripping from the curtains. But then the door closed, and she ignored the wave of damp heat that rushed around the edges. Adelheid seemed calm. Her swarm told the others what was happening. Her plan was simple, just needed a little time to work. The buildings reshaped themselves around Adelheid - they were deep under the surface at this point, so there was no open air, but the stink of ozone only grew worse with each passing second. Windows led to nothing but more rooms, doors were flung open to show long corridors which stretched and twitched into the right shapes, clicking like suspiciously organic clockwork. Right. So. Adelheid was a skin shed by Iron Rain. An aspect of her childhood.
An aspect that killed small animals and mounted them in shoeboxes. And could give her cancer by touching her - she resisted the urge to start carving. In a minute. When she had time. Only then. This boded poorly for whatever new world Angrboda was trying to make, if she had started out as this little shit.

Adelheid's fingers kept twitching a rapid, regular rhythm as she walked, and her smile remained fixed on her face. The world reshaped to allow her passage… and they began to descend deeper and deeper into the earth. More staircases, even a ladder or two, and corridors that sloped inexorably down. Dim lights seemed to grow from the walls - a single concession to outright unreality. Orbs that pulsed slightly as they emerged from the walls, lighting their way before sinking slowly back into the wood, or stone, or brick, or whatever material this part of this labyrinth was composed of. A few minutes passed… they were moving very quickly, but Taylor was keenly aware of how irritating it would be to climb back up. Still. She could suppress the pain of an ascent. Quite literally take her body to breaking point, and until it was physically incapable of motion… anyway. She readied herself for combat. Knife at the ready. Swarm good to go. Centipede… utterly still and it would remain that way until she was ready to cut it out. Holes under her eyes were twitching. Refused to pay attention to it. Just kept moving. Scarring them over was an option, but she didn't want to be distracted, not with this shit nearby. Her hand was itching where the turd had given her a patch of psoriasis… gah.

Deeper and deeper.

Taylor looked down at one point, and saw… a window in the floor. Leading into something utterly black, and eerily glistening. She paused, just for a second. Wanted to look closer. Cracked open the window. A familiar stink hit her. Ozone, and something else, indefinable scents which bore no resemblance to anything real. Oil. Shimmering with colours she couldn't describe. Oil that she'd seen in the tunnels before this place, living in the stone men, drenching everyone around her, maybe bringing some of the first mutations. She definitely remembered her mutations getting worse when she came close to that oil, at least, and Vicky had been downright soaked in the stuff. How could… she saw the structure around her. How heavy was this place? She imagined, briefly, the matter drifting downwards, over and over, the structure collapsing as quickly as it rebuilt itself, compressing the bottom layers into a cold sludge… a kind of oil that no-one had seen before. She shut the window when she saw something moving in it. This place was a constantly collapsing wreck, and she was here for one reason - once it was accomplished, she was heading back to the surface. Just needed… it was a small idea, but she thought it might work. Might.

I can propose some backup plans. The child seems easy to dupe, the distance to the surface is still manageable - if challenging - and we have allies in contact with us. If necessary, we should be able to endure. And in the end… what other choice to we have?

Exactly. This was a risk that she'd never take in normal circumstances, but now? With that thing up there? With its head start, its speed, and the sheer stakes of this entire situation?

Any risk was worthwhile.

A moment passed… and a single door faced them.

Heavy. Metal. Wrapped in chains. Like something out of a bank vault. The walls curled around it, like it exerted a gravitational pull. Enclosing it completely. Adelheid glared at it, genuine hatred filtering into her eyes.

"Heidi's in there. You brought a knife?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Here's how we'll do it - and you have to do it my way, or I'll scream."

Taylor remembered how it felt to have one of her ears shut off with a budding tumour. Hard to take care of. Her swarm could hear for her, but it wasn't quite the same. Irritating. Worth avoiding. Adelheid strode over to the door and ran her hands over the chains, almost caressing them. The entire structure shuddered around them, and Taylor felt the chains… not move, not exactly. But they began to split apart, flowing smoothly around each other, coiling lovingly around Adelheid's sharp, many-jointed hands. They wept oil as they moved - black, putrid oil. The blood of the house. Taylor stepped back, keeping her distance from the spreading pool, and Adelheid's cut-glass voice filled the air once more.

"First, don't touch her head or her face. We'll go for her ankles first, slit the tendon so she can't run away effectively. Then, we move onto the fingernails…"

Taylor stopped listening. The door began to creak, opening of its own volition… no, the house was reshaping. She could see a small bulge travelling in the floor, pushing the door outwards. The house wanted them in. This place was… she tried to imagine what it could be. Another thing Angrboda shed? Maybe a conception of reality, something so basic for existing in the ordinary universe that it had to go if she wanted to transcend it all? Was this… structure, gravity, what? The question burbled onwards as the door was shoved open, the house squeezing it like a throat trying to clear a blockage. Taylor slowly, slowly drew her knife.

A dark, concrete floor.

Streaked with oil.

Something huddled against the wall.

It turned to face them.

It was… it was hideous. No, she - it was a girl, beneath all the muck. Looked a little older than Taylor, maybe somewhere around… close to seventeen, maybe. Older than Adelheid, at least in appearances. She looked like… it was hard to describe, but she looked like she'd been caricatured into existence. Like there was a more reasonable Heidi somewhere in the house, and this was the cruel joke someone had made to mock her. Her limbs were grotesquely long and thin, ending in small, claw-like hands which seemed unable to move especially quickly. Limited range of motion, too. Distorted stomach and thighs, though - both a little too large, like she'd been starved repeatedly. Her lips were dry and ragged, her teeth were small, yellow, and chipped. Her tongue was the shade of an old sweat-stained sock. Her beige hair was lifeless and greasy, cropped short and close to her head. And her eyes were… watery. Weak. Struggled to focus on them. And one was lazy. Cleft palate, a long gash leading from her fish-like lips to her nose, itself a greasy mass covered in tiny blemishes. Dressed in a shapeless blue dress which might've suited someone a different age, with a different body type, and even then only if the dress was resewn from the bottom up - no, looking closer, it was completely unsalvageable. Even the material was awful. She looked like… like someone had gone out of their way to make the most distasteful thing imaginable. Nothing was appealing, and even pity failed at the wheedling look in her eyes, the way she curled into herself and groaned somehow setting all of Taylor's nerves on edge.

She looked like the punchline to a joke no-one would be crass enough to tell.

Adelheid smiled, and Taylor saw a tiny, very faint scar over her lip… hm. Interesting. Iron Rain might've had a cleft palate when she was born, repaired and healed over by the time she was an adult Good to know, maybe. Better to know than to not know, at least.

"Hello, Heidi."

The shambling thing spat up a small gobbet of phlegm, the same shade and consistency as a ball of cold, mashed potato.

"I've brought a friend. Do you think you can manage some actual screaming, and not that animal gurgling you usually do?"

Heidi shuffled back against the wall, breath coming faster and faster, whistling through the split in her upper lip. Afraid? Ecstatic? Eager? Hard to tell. Taylor grimaced. Adelheid approached, Taylor gritted her teeth, and… thought. Just for a moment. Two aspects in front of her. One a sadistic kid that had no inclination to obey her. And one was… weak, had a good reason to dislike the others, and represented all the things Angrboda hated about herself. Not… much of a choice at all, really. Her grip tightened. Just… had to get over the mental barrier. Come on. End of the world. Apocalypse. Everything ending if she didn't do this. Not even really alive, just an offcut of a monster, and a monstrous offcut at that. If she didn't do this, all of this would be for nothing, everything would burn, everything would…

For a second, she simply commanded her limbs to move.

Only after that second did she assert control, mid-momentum.

A petty attempt to justify this to herself. To force the leap of faith.

Didn't quite work.

But the movement continued nonetheless.

Taylor lunged, and her knife easily split through the thing-that-resembled-a-child in front of her. No last words, no bragging, nothing. This was just her taking care of an abomination wearing a childlike shape, it wasn't… yeah, it still felt deeply shitty doing this. Even if it was to a sociopathic offcut from someone trying to end everything and everyone. Even if this was closer to a thoughtform than anything natural. Adelheid glanced down, perplexed, at the knife coming out of the front of her throat. Her too-long fingers brushed against it, twitching very slightly. She looked… insulted, more than anything. No-one would dare do this. It was against the rules. Taylor stepped backwards as anger seemed to generate in her dying brain, and she swiped backwards. No more tumours. And no more screaming. She tried, and a weak blood-filled gurgle was all that emerged.

…I know you don't want me to say this, but you cannot imagine the amount of relish I have taken in killing this not-child. She reminds me of… a number of people. All of them awful. And it's guilt-free - she's a thoughtform, you may as well feel guilty of all the things we killed in our fight against one another, all that time ago.

Taylor glared into space. Hopefully her displeasure transmitted itself.

Come now. Wait until you have children of your own, then you'll relish the chance to murder these things without the law getting involved.

"Chorei…"

Be calm, I've never knowingly killed a… child. Older teenager, once or twice. But not a child. I have standards.

"Chorei."

You did the right thing. Understand that. I know it must feel… unpleasant, and I imagine that says something positive about your psyche, but if the choice lies between Armageddon and hurting something that resembles a child but is definitely not, then… it's not much of a choice at all.

The two fell silent, and Adelheid collapsed limply to the ground, her joints poking outwards at sharp angles which seemed on the verge of gouging wounds into the concrete floor. Taylor almost reached out to get her knife back… but then she saw the growths budding along its length. The metal was riddled with them, tiny, slithering things, almost like lampreys or leeches. Metal granted life. One of them split away to burrow into the body of its creator, slithering easily through flesh, leaving behind a faint trail of smoke as it went forward with distressing ease. Based on the other lines of smoke wafting upwards… it wasn't alone in this. Taylor set a few of her eye-hornets to attend to it all, make sure nothing started coming in her direction. Shame about the knife. She'd started to quite like it. Heidi shivered in front of her, staring with wide, cloudy eyes. Watery and pathetic. Taylor tried not to judge, but it was like everything about this girl was calculated to set her on edge, to make her feel less and less empathetic. The girl sneezed slightly, and shuffled forward. Taylor crouched.

"Hey. Sorry about that. Now, you're Heidi, right?"

A silent nod.

"Can you… control this place? Move things around?"

A hesitant nod. Hm. Good to know. Why hadn't she left, though? Unless… ah. Taylor thought she understood. Self-hating, maybe. Pursued by others, perhaps. Former was irritating, latter was… workable.

"If you move me around, I'll make sure that the others can't hurt you. I just need you to take me over that cliff, alright? Reshape the buildings, get us through as quickly as possible."

Heidi shivered, and clutched at her own hands, the front of her dress… like a child, just grabbing anything in sight out of sheer nervous energy.

"I want… I want…"

Her voice was high-pitched, wheedling, deeply irritating to listen to for longer than a second. Taylor resisted the annoyance that stirred in her, forcing herself to adopt an appearance of absolute patience and serenity.

"...want… want to… to…"

"What do you want?"

"Want… to…"

She pointed at the fallen body.

"Need… to… to be… whole."

Taylor blinked.

"Can you take me through the buildings?"

"Yes. Can."

"If you do that, I can help you be whole, alright?"

The girl stumbled to her feet - one leg longer than the other, gave her a shuffling, uncertain gait. She stared blankly at Taylor… and nodded silently. Taylor was unsure of what to do - wasn't going to shake her hand, and she seemed willing to follow, so… she turned away, insects monitoring the weird thing that the other Adelheids' apparently hated beyond belief. And the moment she did, the girl leapt forward. Taylor whirled, ready to confront her - shit, hostile, should've… she missed Taylor. Had never been aiming for her. She landed in a sprawl of limbs next to the fallen body of Adelheid, and… forced her claw-like fingers into her own mouth, yanking downwards with all the force she could muster. Her jaw cracked and split, the bone shattering and her jaw distending like a snake's. In a second, it was wide enough to fit a football. Another second, and it could fit a basketball. And then… then it was large enough to fit someone's head. Taylor backed away slowly, her eye still locked on the weird thing happening before her. Heidi looked up for a moment, jaw hanging grotesquely low, old-sock tongue flapping uselessly from a muddle of ruined muscle… and her lips seemed to try and creak into a smile.

And then she lunged for the body.

Taylor politely turned away. Didn't want to see this. She heard, though. The snapping, chewing, tearing… the sound of bones being cracked open for marrow, the sound of teeth crunching down on hard nubs of flesh, the sound of teeth scraping against bone, tearing up every single scrap that was available. Taylor focused on Chorei's mantras, keeping her body calm with her newfound control, keeping her mind calm with the aid of a mumbling nun. Mostly worked. But… Heidi was a messy eater. Taylor tried to think through what the fuck was actually happening. She said she wanted to be whole, and then she… oh. Oh. If the Butcher was teaching her anything right now, it was that the things Vicky skinned from people tended to live after they were severed. Apparently the skin she wore was somehow alive, certainly still capable of some form of thought. Maybe… maybe this was the same. Maybe Angrboda had shed everything human about herself in order to proceed towards total solipsism, scattered them freely around this place… but maybe the aspects she'd shed weren't totally happy with that. This one wasn't, at least. As the last few scraps of flesh vanished down Heidi's enormous throat… her hands came back up, forcing her jaw back together. Her dress was blue at the back, red at the front from the sheer amount of blood she'd spilled over herself, and a collar of greasy scraps marked where she'd literally shoved her head inside the body to chew everything in sight, savaging it like a dog. Her teeth were bright red and speckled with leftovers… a chunk of yellow fat lingered at the top of her mouth, stuck in place. Her voice was faster now, more intelligent.

"Let's… go. Go and be whole. I show you the way."

Taylor kept her distance, and Heidi smiled happily.

"...so, what… exactly did you just do, Heidi?"

"Made whole."

"And what are you? Adelheid there said she was an aspect of childhood… what would you be, exactly?"

Heidi grunted like an animal, and shuffled closer, one leg dragging a little behind her. Her mouth stretched into a wide grin, the cleft palate drawing out with it, expanding into a whole second smile lancing upwards to almost split her nose. She reached out, hand shaking… and Taylor backed off. Didn't want more tumours. Heidi's expression suddenly changed, becoming… sorrowful. Almost melancholic. She hunched in on herself, looking down at the ground and occasionally glancing up shyly. That same smile kept fading and returning over and over. Taylor stared.

"...you're pretty."

And with that, she stumbled away. Face still twitching between smiling and frowning, and after a second she… reached up into her own mouth, and with a yank, tore out one of her own teeth. It clicked to the ground, and the girl let out an ecstatic sigh. Absolved. Taylor looked around, completely and utterly fucking baffled. Why would…

What…

How…

A sinking feeling spread through her stomach.

She thought she might know what Heidi was.

The offcut. The reject. Everything Iron Rain despised about herself, all the self-hatred bundled up into a single, feeble package. She was deformed, weak, cowardly, ugly, dressed poorly, was loathed by all those around her, evidently wanted to be whole instead of dividing up for the greater good of the original…

And… apparently she had a thing for girls.

And apparently she'd decided to carve that part of herself away and stuff it deep below the earth where no-one could find it but her other selves, the ones that despised it with every fibre of their constructed beings.

This… Iron Rain character is just a pile of strangeness, isn't she?

"...yeah. She is."

And slowly, she followed Heidi.

And the corridors flowed around them, the floor rushing beneath their feet to propel them higher and higher. Into the endless construction.

Towards the cliff.

 

[GraftingBuddha]

237 - The Wonderful Cannibalistic Adventures of Heidi and her Lovely Companions (Even the Degenerate Ones)

Heidi shambled ahead of Taylor, her face still split by that same smile - eerily familiar to the one Adelheid had worn until she was stabbed in the throat by Taylor and violently devoured by… uh… there was no vocabulary available for her on this topic. Sister? No, that didn't quite capture… hm. Twin? No, still not quite right. Her other part? Taylor tried to justify this as… just being the equivalent of salps combining into a colony. That was it - basically identical creatures forming a colony, linked together, bound up until they seemed like a coherent creature, and… no. Yeah, there was no terminology that felt fitting here. The point was that Heidi had eaten another aspect of Angrboda, and seemed to have changed as a consequence. Taylor shivered. Yeah. OK. So that was how this was going to go. She could work with that. A plan was developing, just a little. Heidi was moving them through the earth, reshaping the buildings around them, and… she was clumsy. Very clumsy. Taylor could actually see things being squashed as she moved, which the last journey had distinctly lacked. Furniture was torn open as their platform reshaped rooms, shoving them out of the way as they rose at speeds high enough that Taylor's hair was almost blown straight by the rushing, ozone-tainted air. Furniture tore, walls split, floors burst… if the last journey had been a surgical movement into the depths, this was a novice joyfully tearing their way to point B, regardless of the collateral damage.

Taylor stared at Heidi.

Still ugly. And still… weird. Still smiling.

"...Heidi?"

Her head snapped over, and her watery eyes twitched erratically in misshapen sockets, struggling to focus on Taylor.

"What… OK, just… wanted to make sure you were alright."

Translation: wanted to make sure that Heidi wasn't an unstable serial killer like the person she'd come from, and wasn't going to just kill everyone in sight.

Heidi grinned.

"Yes. Great. I am great. Hungry."

…ah.

"What would happen if you… found any others? Like you?"

"They're cruel."

She paused, thoughtfully.

"Tasty, too."

Taylor kept her face carefully still.

"And… what would happen if you found enough? What's the end goal here?"

"To be full."

…hold on, she was… the rejected part of Iron Rain, then. The bits she didn't want. A giant, mangled mess of the features she despised about herself, a childhood deformity, maybe some kind of growing pains during adolescence, maybe some kind of body-image stuff, possibly the desire to be a single being instead of something carved up into tiny pieces and hidden away… and the fact that, apparently, Iron Rain liked women. Which didn't seem like the most wonderful thing in the world for an Empire member. All of it carved away. So… hm. Taylor was feeling a little guilty for knifing that… not-child in the back of the neck, maybe. Or perhaps this was just a fit of pique. Or perhaps she had a genuine plan and this was a necessary step in it. Maybe she was just tired.

"What do you think about Iron Rain, exactly?"

"Hm?"

"Iron Rain. Angrboda. The… thing you were cut off from."

Heidi looked confused for a moment… and tried to puzzle through the question. She seemed innocent… ish. Honestly, Taylor had no idea who Angrboda had really been. As a person, she was a complete mystery. And that left… questions, quite large questions. Taylor was genuinely curious what could make someone decide to fake their death, leave their old life behind, skin themselves, found the Teeth, and then try and invent a new universe within themselves. She remembered something Chorei had said, a good while ago. Angrboda - a cape who'd learned to harness this side of things, had abandoned the standard cape scene as a consequence, and had achieved… something. There was a parallel there, even if Iron Rain had been a psychopathic Nazi, and based on the aspect of her childhood, had been pretty rotten from the start. Still. Taylor knew precisely three parahumans who'd walked her road - harnessing multiple forces, channelling them for a greater purpose… Vicky, herself, and Iron Rain. And Vicky wasn't looking too good.

Was Taylor terrified of Iron Rain? Yes. Did she despise Iron Rain? Definitely.

Did she want to know about someone else who walked this road?

Without a doubt.

After a long while, Heidi spoke. The grey, compacted sky was coming closer and closer, the mass of overhanging buildings that gleamed dimly with interior lights. Maybe housing more aspects of Angrboda, who knew.

"I am not complete. I must be complete."

"Don't you… dislike the others? I mean, they tortu-"

"They are correct. I am diseased."

Taylor blinked, Heidi had said that with the ease of someone talking about the weather. Worse, she wasn't stopping.

"I am wrong. They will make me right. We were once right. I want to be right again."

Simplistic speech, barely forcing its way out of her mouth - a mouth that Taylor was painfully aware could crack open to make it easier to eat the other aspects. The sky came closer, and Taylor kept a very, very close eye on Heidi. The centipede in her hollow socket twitched slightly, adjusting itself to the change in pressure. Shit, shame that her knife was gone, eaten away by metallic tumours. If she had a knife, she could start carving away at some of these growths. It'd make her life easier, that was for sure - the one in her side was starting to become painful, bulging out in a hard, oddly sharp lump. Not sure what it was trying to form, but she wanted it gone. Just needed a knife. The sky approached… and they slammed to a halt, the platform quivering violently. Taylor adjusted smoothly to the change, while Heidi fell flat on her face, squirming weakly as she attempted to right herself. Taylor forced her lungs to settle down, told her legs to stop quivering, and calmly turned, eye cold and unblinking. Vicky and Patience were staring at the two of them… and as Heidi started to right herself, Vicky swore. Loudly.

"Fuck me. What the… OK, Taylor, politely, what the fuck is that?"

Taylor strode over, stepping around the struggling form of Heidi. Not going to touch her, didn't want to develop a dozen forms of cancer. She already had enough of them, wasn't interested in completing her collection. She kept her voice as calm and steady as possible, despite the fact that she was, in all honesty, feeling very jittery.

"Aspect of Angrboda. Calls itself Heidi. They… all call themselves Heidi. She says she can move us over that cliff, probably faster than climbing."

Vicky looked at her like she was insane.

"And you're trusting her."

"She's… OK, she seems to be the aspect of Angrboda which represents everything she hated about herself. Including the urge to recombine with the others instead of just cutting away more and more. I might have a plan there, just… let me cook it for a bit."

Vicky's glare shifted from Taylor to Heidi, who was barely managing to sit up. She took in the cleft palate, the ugliness, the ungainliness… and she seemed to know something, based on the flicker of recognition.

"...did she try to hit on you? Just out of curiosity."

OK.

"Called me pretty."

"...yeah. The skin told me about that."

Taylor blinked.

"...really?"

"She was weird. Somehow rationalised it all together - being a Nazi, committed to the cause, and somehow still, well… lesbian. Got blackmailed over it by her brother, Kaiser. Wound up leaving the E88 as a result. Sorta… started how down this. I don't get the feeling she actually grew from that, though. Never developed any empathy from being on the victim's side of her gang's beliefs. Never was angry at the E88, was just angry at being kicked out of it by her brother."

Her look was utterly serious.

"Just keep that in mind. This isn't a redeeming feature. If anything, the fact that she was blackmailed over this, forced out, generally excluded by her family, and still believed everything they spat out? Yeah, she's fucked up. Not that we needed confirmation, but… I've been in her head. And she's a sick, sick person who would torture and murder anyone her gang considered subhuman before she turned around, acted like one of those 'subhumans', and never saw any conflict between those two things."
Taylor looked down at Heidi, and tried to develop an actual picture of Angrboda from that. There was… something there. Obviously the idea of getting blackmailed by one's own family over something they couldn't control sounded… sympathetic. But everything around it? Not remotely. She tried to see Heidi in isolation, then. As the representative of all the things she hated about herself. And… couldn't get the cannibalism out of her mind. And for all that could be said about Heidi, she seemed to hate herself as passionately as Iron Rain did. She wasn't just the parts which were hated, she was the self-hate itself. Born of the same hatred which had motivated her actions as a villain in Brockton Bay. She might not be that hatred… but she was definitely cousins with it. And Taylor imagined that if she was exposed to the aspect of that hatred, she'd wolf it down with no hesitation. This part of her still regarded itself as a sick thing that needed curing by any means necessary. How hard would it be to just… externalise that hatred? Project it on others? Heidi slowly stood up, wobbling unsteadily from foot to foot. Patience peered closely at her.

"Ugly, isn't she?"

"Yes. I am."

Patience's mouth creaked into a smile.

"You're just… accepting that?"

"I am ugly. I am wrong. I am a genetic failure, I am a cultural degenerate."

She sounded proud when she said that. Even as a rejected pile of random chunks of Angrboda, she still… still abided by her ideas. Genetic failure, cultural degenerate… it was right out of the E88's playbook.

"I am a sickness which needs to be cured. I must find other aspects. I must be whole. Only the aspects may punish me."

A look of faint superiority. A tinge of something that Taylor imagined to be Iron Rain, truly and utterly.

"I am an aspect of the goddess. Only others like me may punish."

Patience laughed coarsely.

"...that's kinda funny. I mean, you, or, part of you started the Teeth as it is today. Made the Butcher into your little whipping dog. And here you are, calling yourself a little freak who deserves whatever comes her way. You, my little friend, helped ruin what could've been a very nice afterlife."

Heidi looked around in confusion, struggling with the rapid string of words. Patience smiled… and kicked her in the stomach. Taylor instinctively stepped forward, and Heidi fell to the ground, her face fixed into the widest smile Taylor had ever seen. Like everything in the world had abruptly made a great deal of sense and was according to a grand plan. Vicky looked uncomfortable - happy to see Iron Rain taken down a peg, unhappy to see Patience doing it for her own sick kicks. Heidi squirmed on the ground, trying to right herself. The smile was stretching around the back of her head now, an endless circle of rotten teeth, glistening with meat where she'd consumed her fellow aspect. A bubble of blood popped between a sequence of identical incisors… and she giggled. Girlishly.

"Do it again."

Patience stared.

"...well, that took the fun out of it. Come on. Let's go. Can't believe you helped ruin everything."

Heidi giggled again at the insult, and tried to twitch appealingly into a shape which would be convenient to kick. No-one bothered. Just felt… wrong. This was a self-hating shard of a self-hating individual who wanted to end the world. Slowly, Heidi stood to join them on the platform… and with a slow blink, commanded it to move. The three of them were forced to grab hold of the loose pieces of furniture which had been fixed to the ground in the room this platform had come from, anything to stay still as ozone-scented wind roared into their faces. They sailed across a sea of construction, roofs parting to allow them passage, the platform never exactly floating in mid-air - always supported by an ever-shifting number of foundations. Heidi's smile was ever-present as the world howled by, and Patience was pale as a sheet as she struggled to remain fixed in place. Vicky actually seemed… relaxed by the movement. Easy for her. She flew constantly. Taylor was struggling just to keep her face from twitching - her swarm nestled around her clothes, eerily massive hornets digging into anything available just to survive. A few had been left behind, and in a matter of minutes were utterly beyond the furthest extremes of her range. They were going fast.

And the city was changing.

Less static. She could see buildings blooming up from others, branching from one another, rooms replicating like cells… and always the windows with lights in them, staring like glassy eyes at the travellers. Taylor wondered if the whole city qualified as an aspect of Angrboda - the parts of her that conceived of basic reality. Shunted off and abandoned before the end. Left to replicate and expand without end or purpose. The Butcher was overhead - at the top of the cliff, and Taylor barely saw its last crystalline appendage slip out of sight. They needed to catch up - had already wasted enough time, given it too much of a head start. The cliff ahead of them was a vast, vast thing, a towering mass of impossible construction that existed without sense or meaning. It was pointless - and Taylor saw something scuttling through it. Vicky approached slowly, not even squinting at the rushing wind, and slowly smiled at Taylor. Taylor struggled to muster one - the wind wanted to press her face flat, took a conscious effort to overcome it. Vicky had to yell to be heard.

"So?"

"What?"

"Plan?"

"...it's coming! Nothing yet!"

"I have an idea!"

Vicky pointed at Heidi, who was blithely smiling while staring at nothing.

"Bring her to the comet! Remind Angrboda that the world exists!"

Taylor mulled it over. She'd… thought about that, honestly. Had a few ideas. Just a couple. One was to give Heidi over, to compromise the comet by feeding it something that had once been part of it. Make Angrboda remember the world, reality, all that good stuff. But… she had doubts. For one, Angrboda was still experienced, and quite possibly ludicrously powerful. They'd save the city, but then they'd need to fight Angrboda properly - one on one. And the three of them were exhausted and half-dead, by and large, while Angrboda was… well, tough. Had to be, if she founded the Teeth. If she got away, there was no guarantee she wouldn't just try this again somewhere else. Arch's map had pointed to a lot of sites associated with these comets, Angrboda could literally go to dozens of locations across the world, most of them likely well-hidden, and could just repeat this whole process. No, for them to win, they needed to stop Angrboda from… blowing up reality, they needed to kill Angrboda solidly to prevent her from recovering, and they needed to stop the Butcher. All three goals needed to be fulfilled for them to actually gain a victory that wasn't going to be undone in a few years. She explained this quickly, and as quietly as she could. Heidi ignored them, content to guide the platform towards the cliff.

Patience listened in. She had a strange expression on her face - scheming. She was planning something, Taylor knew it. A moment passed, and Vicky… wouldn't stop staring at her face.

"Taylor?"

"Yeah?"

"Is your eye…"

Oh. Shit. She sighed, and flipped her eyepatch up. The new centipede scurried out a little, feelers twitching in the harsh wind. Vicky paled - somehow - and looked like she was about to throw up. Patience, appropriately, looked faintly enamoured with the thing.

"Jesus fuck…"

"It's fine, I had one in my arm earlier. I'll cut it out when I have a moment."

"...yeah, sure. Fine. Just put it away. I've seen some shit today, and that is genuinely more unnerving than most of them."

…you know, as distressing as it is, there's worse fates than having your own centipede. Very affectionate in the right circumstances.

Taylor ignored both of them, snapping her eyepatch shut, sending the centipede back inside… generally just trying to pretend that none of this was happening. She had a centipede in her eye socket, she had tiny holes around that same socket which were probably on the verge of producing yet more insects, she had a half-dozen tumours developing which she was not looking forward to excising… and the cliff was here. The base was a tangled, broken mass of buildings, crushed by the overwhelming weight above. Black oil trickled from between mounds of cracked masonry and splintered wood… the blood of the house, squeezed out by intense pressure. They kept moving at full speed…

And things started to go wrong.

Something leapt for the platform, and Taylor grabbed at Patience - Vicky floated into the air, and the platform whizzed by underneath, leaving her behind. Patience, though… no teleport, no Brute rating. The two of them tumbled to the ground, rolling for the edge… Taylor grabbed for a chair leg, barely stopping herself from tumbling away into the hungry concrete maw below. The thing lunged for Heidi, and… Patience raised her gun, Taylor's gun, firing it three times in quick succession. Her aim was deliriously good - she was stunned, off-balance, could barely see the thing, was on a moving platform… and yet all three hit perfectly. One after the other. Tap, tap, tap. Three blooming red stars on the body of something which had, perhaps, once been human.

It looked like a shambling mound of abstract art. It whirled away from Heidi, and glared at the two others. It was… it was marble and flesh and bone and plant matter melded into one shivering mass. It could bleed, but the blood was gleaming, like a pile of tumbling rubies. Flesh melded smoothly with stone melded smoothly with tree roots and branches, all compressed into the image of a woman. A huge, perfect woman. Her hair was impeccable, her face was a gleaming mass of symmetrical lines and curves, her body was sculpted perfection. Taylor felt embarrassed of herself just looking at her… and Heidi evidently though the same. The enormous creature roared, and turned - Taylor saw Heidi there, latched onto the giant's leg, mouth grotesquely wide, biting deeply. And in that moment, seeing the ravenous hunger in her eyes, Taylor thought she understood perhaps the single most important aspect of that… thing.

It wasn't just the rejected parts of her personality, her history, the self-hating elements which needed to be cast aside…

It was the fear that it would overcome her one day.

The fear that her weaknesses would overwhelm all elements of her personality.

The giant grabbed at Heidi, and Taylor could see it crushing her flesh easily, breaking bones… Taylor moved. Couldn't lose her ride. Her swarm was small, but it could still blind - and blind it did, compacting itself over the giant's eyes, stopping her from seeing a damn thing, stabbing deep with inch-long stingers at anything that remotely resembled flesh. The giant didn't take kindly to that at all. Taylor moved with smoothness she still didn't quite think herself capable of, avoiding the thrashing strike that crushed a segment of the platform into dust. A crack - Patience was firing again, and her bullets invariably found their mark, piercing through flesh wherever it could be found. Something was overhead - Vicky too. A rain of spears plunged from the sky, impaling the giant… and Heidi could barely be seen. There was a livid red hole on the giant's stomach, and Heidi's legs could be vaguely seen protruding from it, thrashing as she struggled her way inwards, gnawing, chewing, tearing… Taylor could hear it happening. The pop of the stomach as it was breached, a flood of acid spilling free through the entrance wound… Taylor rolled across the platform, and the giant stomped, howling in pain, cracking the material and sending her just a little distance further, almost over the edge. She gripped desperately, feeling her altered biology straining to keep her from being consumed by the buildings below.

Patience was roaring as the gun barked its last - no more ammunition on her. Shit. Taylor struggled to heave herself back over the lip of the platform as the giant crashed its fist downwards, the other trying to tear Heidi out. Its mouth opened as it moved, and… and it spoke.

"Degenerates!"

Patience was slower than Taylor had ever seen her. No teleports, and no unnatural strength. She rolled clumsily, armour scraping up sparks as she went, and the giant bellowed in triumph, reaching out to crush her to death.

Vicky arrived.

Her lance plunged through the giant's head, pierced with impossible force.

The giant reacted… strangely.

It laughed, and cried aloud:

"Had to happen eventually! To the victor go the spoils! Rejoice, sister-aspect! You are commended into the ranks of the Great! May your skull be broad and your eyes blue!"

Vicky howled in response. She looked insane already, and the spurt of glittering blood which coated her only exacerbated things. She looked like she'd been gilded with rubies, and Taylor thought she could see traces of gold - little flakes, sometimes whole nuggets. A giant that wept jewels and gold. It moaned in pain, struggling to stay upright, enthusiasm draining from it as the capacity to emote was lost… and the platform slowly, slowly came to a halt. The three fighters stared - their weapons were ready, their nerves were high, their hearts were pounding, but… the giant did nothing. They watched as the giant wavered, shivered… and crashed to the ground with a final indistinct murmur. Something was moving in it. The flesh was bulging, the marble was shifting… Heidi. Taylor watched in horror as Heidi chewed her way through the giant, worming her way through the torso and into the head. She could hear her mumbling to herself, giggling happily, and slowly slipping in random words, much longer than any other she'd used in the past. The giant shivered… and Heidi burst out of its mouth, soaked from head to foot in gold-ruby blood, mouth in a wide, mad grin, so wide it stretched all the way around her head… and something new had happened to her.

Her eyes were sapphires.

Actual, literal sapphires. Gemstones embedded in her skull.

And her skin had unmistakeable patches of marble forcing their way up.

Oh.

Ah. I see. I understand fully.

Heidi hauled herself out of the ruin, leant down, and started chewing at the rest of the head, working her way through to the brain. Vicky watched with wide eyes, and even Patience looked distinctly unnerved. Taylor sighed deeply… and pieced it all together.

"So. That was another aspect. I guess."

Vicky shivered.

"...you think that was…"

Patience took over.

"The racist bitch part of her, yeah."

An ozone breeze coursed over them. The city was wrong here, just in the shadow of the cliff. The building at the bottom leaked oil, and everything else seemed to have… changed, somehow. The angles weren't adding up correctly, the windows led to rooms which no sane person could have designed. One was simply full of discarded lamps, all burning impossibly bright, and another was simply jammed with a tangle of wires. Urban teratomas, each and every one. Worse, Taylor could see things moving amongst them. Living things. Aspects. This one… this one had been large. Tough. Whether that represented some hierarchy of aspects, the more fundamental ones being the more powerful, or whether it just represented how the aspects changed themselves through their own perceptions… hard to say. But the thing was powerful, and it made her wonder how strong the others were. So far… she'd seen childhood, or a part of it, the rejected elements of her psyche, and… now this. The supremacist. A tangled kudzu-nest of rusty metal pipes protruded above them, forming a shady canopy - not that there was much to shelter from, the light in this place was constant and impossible, a dull, flat grey which made no sense whatsoever and seemed to give off very little heat.

Something else was moving in the structure, and Taylor quietly handed Patience a few magazines of ammunition. Better at firing than she was. Better eyesight, too. Patience was consciously keeping her eyes away from the sight of Heidi breaking open the giant's skull using a chunk of marble torn from its own flesh, before gorging herself on the brains underneath. Taylor could see that the brain was multicoloured, streaked with complex lines detailing various sections, labelling them properly… god, this reminded her too much of Caltrop, with his Endbringer phrenology. Patience ignored it, and aimed carefully at the movement in the great structure that stretched all around them. The rotting, shuddering elements that formed the base of this cliff, half-drowned beneath mounds of rubble fallen from where the Butcher had been at work clambering up. She aimed…

And something else came roaring out of the structure. Not as large. But equally as violent.

Another woman, long beige hair, but this one was… odd. Her hair was tangled, her face was lined with stress, and her eyes were… gone. She had too many sockets. A dozen, at least. A dozen bleeding sockets lining the top of her face, disappearing into her tangled mop of hair, itself hanging heavy with dozens of glittering charms. Her teeth seemed to be made from short, sharp needles, and her skin was riddled with steel wires, pulsing in and out of her circulatory system. She lunged, screaming at the top of her lungs.

"The end cometh! The very conclusion of all matters! The sublime judgement is nigh! The bloodletting, the culling of all time and space, the folding of reality, the struggle between the new world order and the resistance comes, the deities of slaughter immanentize the esch-"

Patience led the thing, not quite shooting, just… allowing it to clamber to the platform, gibbering to itself. It hauled itself over, still muttering about the end times, the apocalypse, the point at which the final reckoning of finality shall be finally finalised. Taylor stared at it… it was just… bizarre. What, was this the part of her that truly believed the world was ending? Taylor wished she didn't see herself in this thing. Really wished. But looking at it, she saw shades of her own fears - the Last Depression, the constant battle against the Endbringers, the slow, wearying march towards extinction. City after city lost, country after country ruined. In a way, the idea of a final, bloody battle could be appealing. Better than endless attrition. Glancing at the Supremacist Giant… hm. Anyway. Patience waited for the thing to scuttle over, howling, teeth frothing with bloody foam… before she painted the platform with its brains. It collapsed near-instantly, squirming and twitching for a few long moments. Heidi giggled a little, and crawled over on hands and knees, already cracking her jaw wide for another meal. Taylor glanced between her, the body, the unfinished giant, the cliff…

"Can you get us moving again?"

She could already see more things heading their way. And if Heidi was compelled to consume all… Heidi shook her head, voice an incomprehensible gurgle. Her sapphire eyes gleamed, her marble flesh shone. And her throat was stained a cheerful red. There was a shade of that first child in her eyes - a shade of childhood sadism. A love for seeing something squirm, out of sheer curiosity for the movements it made. Taylor gritted her teeth… and beckoned Vicky over.

"Spear. Cleaver, really. Something I can use to chop."

"...why?"

"Just give me it. We need to get moving. And if these attacks keep up…"

Heidi was starting her feast. Vicky grimaced, and complied. A curt gesture, and a huge cleaver fell down from the sky - the thing was the length of Taylor's arm, an ugly, stained thing with handles at both ends. She hissed as she grabbed it, not expecting the sudden cold… it'd work. It'd have to. She stumped over to the fallen body, shoved Heidi aside, and commanded Chorei to start suppressing her desire to retch. The apocalyptic preacher was… easy to dismember. Limbs were thin and half-rotten already, worm-eaten. The steel cables running through her were the biggest challenge, and even those only took a few more strikes. A few limbs, a torso, a head, and a stained cleaver… not to mention a thoroughly ruined platform. Heidi watched in childlike curiosity for most of this, slowly working her jaw back into its old position. When she was staring blankly like that, it was almost possible to forget the image of her burrowing into a giant's stomach like an enormous maggot. Almost. As Taylor continued her work, Heidi abruptly broke the tense silence of the place.

"Pure."

Taylor looked up. She was pointing at Vicky, who looked supremely uncomfortable with the attention. The finger shifted to Patience.

"Oriental Slave-Race. Untermensch. Fit for labour prior to sterilisation."

Patience snorted, looking up and down the hideously deformed creature shed from the deranged mind of a woman with a god-complex and some serious issues with self-hatred, as well as regular old hatred of others. Looked disappointed more than anything - Angrboda had been a figure of mixed terror and adoration, worshipped by half the Teeth… and now she saw a deformed thing slowly becoming Angrboda. A grotesque construct that indulged in childish sadism, supremacism, apocalyptic doom-saying… well. Never meet your heroes. Or, in this case, your creator. Disappointment felt faintly inevitable at that point. The finger shifted, landing on Taylor.

"Gallic-American. Immigrant descent, peasant stock. Fit for labour, fit for breeding, not fit for interbreeding with Aryan stock. An American mule. However…"

She looked confused for a moment.

"...all three of you are parahumans. This is… the… no… the aspect has… nothing to say, nothing. Another holds such feelings."

Determination crossed her features.

"We must go. I must rectify the error and formalise our classifications."

…goodness gracious, first assault, then thievery, infiltration, all manner of ghastly sins, and now we corrode the minds of the youth? I'm not sure if I can justify our partnership, Taylor, on a moral basis. I must conscientiously object to the hatred of… hm, ask her her opinions of Koreans. I'm morbidly interested.

Taylor declined to do so. Chorei took this as an invitation of some kind.

Goodness, don't tell her about the centipede, or the Japanese woman living in your head. I imagine she'll have a fit.

Taylor politely disagreed, even as her mouth tilted into a frown. She was saying this all with… no ounce of hatred. It was purely a clinical designation - she said this with the dispassionate innocence of someone who simply was stating the facts. Hm. That posed a problem. Maybe Iron Rain's hatred was still out there - this was just the element of supremacism. She'd been specific when she carved away at herself, no wonder the Butcher needed to wander around for so long - must've taken a while to carve so many layers off. Anyway. Taylor had work to do. She picked up one of the arms, reached over… and grafted.

Heidi was a shambling mess. Her biology was nonexistent. And her mind was a simplistic program - not a tapestry, more a… half-hearted reproduction. There were only a few paths for thoughts to roll down - and her thoughts rolled, like tiny marbles, down pre-set paths and channels. The oldest channels were simplistic things, and only led to a handful of destinations. Seemed like she was getting more, though. Extra paths had been carved into her mind, new routes towards new eventualities. Once, every marble of thought rolled to the same conclusion - self-hatred. No matter what, everything had to route to that. Now, though… there were other paths. A path led to sadistic conclusions. An urge to strike others, to hurt them, to pin things down and take them apart piece by piece. The childhood monstrousness of a budding psychopath. Innocent sadism - no sense that she was breaking a taboo of any kind by hurting things. And a cold knowledge that she ought to smile at all times - smiling made people happy. Smiling was what good children did. Smiling was good. And now, another path had begun - still half-developed. A panoply of fantasy races, dizzyingly complex and pointless classifications, each one containing a shambling caricature of an actual human. She felt dirty just looking at them… and even there, she could sense where paths were interrelating. The Supremacist Giant declared that a certain race, the Slav, were known for their fecundity, their endless libido, one shared with the Italian sub-race. And then it mixed with the self-hatred, and became a kind of… curiosity. Shameful curiosity. Taylor stopped looking when an image played of a woman with beige hair doing something that looked utterly painful and possibly illegal to a screaming Italian, both of them with grotesquely huge mouths and bulging eyes, body proportions entirely incorrect, while the beige-haired woman wept tears of raw iron… a melding of disparate ideas, paradoxical inclinations, and somehow rationalising them all…

Iron Rain was growing in front of her. Born in reverse.

And the image that emerged was… messy. And utterly, utterly deranged.

I wonder if there's an aspect of empathy out there. Or basic humanity. Or common decency.

Somehow, Taylor doubted it.

But the grafting began nonetheless. Quicker than devouring them. Her work was swift - arms attached, legs next, the torso chopped into chunks and added… it was elementary to solder them all together. After all, they were the same person, just a little… divided. A new set of channels for the simplistic marbles of her thought - new conclusions. The Ending. The Great Cataclysm. It was all ending. The Last Depression would never end.. All Things Must End, and it was her Duty to Resurrect the Virtue of Ages Past. The Bloodletting was on the Verge of Beginning, and the World needed to be Warned. The Supremacist Giant intervened - yes, The Racestorm was coming to a head. The Empire's Cause was Dying, and it needed Resurrection. There was an obvious solution to her feelings of doom, the feeling that all things were coming to an end. All she had to do was focus on the racial degeneracy afflicting them all. A convenient target, and one that she could easily justify despising. Hate was more proactive than fear, and being proactive was the core of all virtue. The self-hatred seemed to wheedle a little, suggesting that just maybe this was a rationalisation for dread, a response to powerlessness… but the forces arrayed against it were vast.

Iron Rain hadn't been very self-reflective, then. Taylor grunted in irritation, and shoved Heidi away. Her opinion of Angrboda was solidifying fairly quickly. A person who felt endless dread at the world, and was simultaneously casually sadistic. Combining the two into a nice mixture of bubbling hatred which she never reflected on. She had the chance - she had carved away at her own self, and at no stage had she evidently thought 'oh, maybe this is why I am the way I am, maybe this is a cause for self-reflection and mental growth'. No. Just… blind commitment to unreflective hatred. Forever. A hatred that would inspire her to undo the universe, apparently. Taylor looked over Heidi, her work done.

The girl was… she was an abomination. A twitching spider of limbs, and she looked deliriously happy. Steel wires poked from her skin, patches of marble were growing outwards, her teeth were needles, her eyes were sapphires, her grin stretched around her head in a perfect circle, but she was content. And eager for more. Taylor raised an eyebrow… and heidi obeyed swiftly. The platform began to rise - adhering to the edge of the cliff and ascending at a breakneck pace. The three non-aspects sat on crossed legs, enduring the crushing feeling all around them. Just in time. The grafting had cut down their time down there by… minutes, and it had allowed them to escape the swarming aspects. Taylor could see them down below. A legion of horribles, dozens of the things, all of them abstract and grotesque. One was seemingly cloaked in animal skins, rolling around while laughing at the top of her lungs. Another was just a shambling mass of security cameras, the lenses replaced with twitching, organic eyes. A central vulnerable point surrounded by as much defensive tech as possible. She looked away. Paranoia, maybe. Couldn't let Heidi eat all of them - no time. Her plan continued to develop… hm.

Oh, thought you should know - your fingers have mutated.

Tayr flinched, and glanced down… shit, the grafting had occupied all her attention, she hadn't really thought about… nuts. Shit. Her fingers had been changed from contact with Heidi. Not aggressive tumours, not exactly, just… what looked like tiny blooming… flowers? Flowers? She stared in bewilderment down at the things. Flowers, flesh-pink, with little bone-white buds at the centre. They twitched in the breeze, petals unfolding further and further, extending little ligament-roots downwards to wrap around her fingers…

"Patience. Knife."

It was tossed her way, and Taylor immediately set to work. Yes, it hurt. Yes, they bled when she cut them. Yes, they apparently screamed a little, which she was going to politely ignore. And when she was done, she had a series of bloody welts at the tips of her fingers… more scars. Easy to manifest them. She despised Angrboda at the moment - the closest comparison was when she fought Bisha. Speaking of whom. She started setting to work on one of the nastier tumours in her side - the nastiest that she could reach with her knife - and turned to Vicky as she began the process of slicing it away, scarring the wound over as she went. Vicky gave her a look. Well, fair enough. Some situations warranted a look, and honestly, there was no better time to take care of this. The platform was fast, speeding upwards much faster than the Butcher had managed. They'd catch up soon, and she doubted any aspect could catch them. She hoped not - they took some weird forms, and she wasn't willing to tempt fate too much. Regardless. Vicky looked concerned, Patience looked on the verge of a breakdown, and here Taylor was in the middle of it all, a centipede still growing out of her eye socket, a hive blooming in the flesh around it, and she was carving out what felt like a single, hard ball of teeth bound together with twine-like hair.

And yeah.

It hurt.

"...OK. Plan's done. But we'll need to work together."

She grimaced.

"Think of it like this. We get Heidi up there, maybe get her to eat a few more aspects, but before we introduce one to her… we put a little of the Frenzied Flame inside. Infect her. Turn her into… less of a reminder, more of a ticking time bomb. She gets to the comet, rebonds with Angrboda - if that's possible-"

Vicky interrupted, her eyes consciously kept away from Taylor's amateur surgery - Taylor's control was such that she didn't need to look while she worked. Very convenient.

"It's possible. Shedding these roles… look, I think that we can re-add them. Not sure of the consequences. Might do nothing, might…"

She shrugged. Tyalor took over.

"Bisha's ego being damaged was enough to destroy him. If her solipsism is bound up with… all of this, then shaking that solipsism might be able to help. And if she needed to care away all this crap to be a true solipsist, then reapplying it should disrupt her mentality. Not the first time I've done something like this. But… even so, that might not kill her. So, the Frenzied Flame finishes the job. There's no way of working with it, no way of reasoning, and it was already here to kill her."

Heidi was ignoring them. Ignorant of anything like this - she was still made of simple desires and inclinations, gradually becoming more complex. Probably barely had the ability to remember more than a few things at a time. Still, Vicky looked uncomfortable talking about sacrificing her while sitting very, very close, on a rising platform she controlled, as the distance to the ground grew larger and larger. Not sure what she was worrying about, she could fly. What looked like a gothic cathedral swept by them, mangled and melded into the rest of this sliding heap of rubbish. Vicky leant close.

"...so, I just need to…"

Taylor tried to look sympathetic.

"I'm sorry. I'd do it if I could, but… I've never actually summoned the Frenzied Flame. Only used it once, months ago, and it was already present. You're the only person I know who can actually summon it."

Vicky frowned, looking utterly exhausted.

"...you know how I managed it?"

"How?"

"I was trapped in a sealed chamber slowly filling with oil. I could feel my body mutating. You see this sixth finger? Sometimes it's not there. Then it's back. And it looks newborn each time. I don't know where the others go. I don't know if they're crawling around somewhere, if they're dead… no idea. I was stuck in that chamber, certain that I'd die here. I'd just seen Dean be possessed before exploding in front of me, I was wearing someone's skin - two people's skins - and I was feeling pretty shitty. And then I talked to my scarf."

"...ah."

"Yeah. Uheer. Her power is planning out how to disassemble groups in the most amoral way possible. It literally doesn't care how many kids you need to skin and hang from lampposts, all it cares about it winning by any means necessary."

"So…"

"I asked it how to disassemble New Wave."

Taylor blinked.

"Yeah. So, my uncle might be my dad, my cousins might be my half-siblings, my mom cheated on her sister's husband, my adopted sister is the kid of one of the worst villains this town ever saw-"

Taylor glanced over at Patience.

"A different one."

She glanced at Heidi - at Angrboda.

"A different one. Not saying which. Oh, and my not-dad is depressed as hell, and I haven't been helping him enough, none of us have. Which was a wonderful feeling."

She leant close.

"What do I ask now? Do I ask how to disassemble our group?"

Her eyes abruptly widened, and Taylor shuffled away. Just a little.

"...it's telling me how to disassemble our group."

"How?"

"You don't-"

"Tell me."

Patience was very close indeed, staring with unashamed curiosity. Well, she wanted to be flayed. This was possibly her future in front of her, of course she wanted a closer look.

"...wait for Ahab to die. Then get to work on the others. Bribe someone in a… mercenary company, find out where Turk's daughter is stationed, leak the information, get her killed. Then… take your dad hostage. Threaten to-"

"OK. That's enough."

Patience whistled slightly.

"Holy cow. That's… somethin', that is. Nasty power. Did you use that on us?"

"Yeah. It said to wait. Your entire organisation is constantly killing itself, and if the Butcher is gone…"

"...the Teeth go too."

Patience mulled this over.

"Good. Fuck 'em. Grubby little shits - I started by living with them, then they just got… gross. I was tired of waking up surrounded by trash and crackheads. Started dressing better, went to nicer venues, developed an inner court so I could keep the riff-raff away. Being a filthy hedonist is fun for a while. Then it just gets sad when half your friends die every week from brain haemorrhages, strokes, overdoses… sometimes all three at once."

The wind rushed into them at intense speed - and the platform came to a stop. Heidi, the multi-limbed abomination that she was, was… peering at the wall in front of her. Taylor went to see what the problem was, as scowls developed on the faces of her companions. Heidi was staring, enraptured, at… bricks. Just bricks. Old, slightly red… Taylor came closer, but largely contended herself with watching. It'd be worthwhile not pissing off her ride. Heidi reached out, cautiously… and dug her fingers into the bricks. Taylor expected dust. She expected cracking. She didn't expect the bricks to bleed oil and carve under her fingers, she didn't expect Heidi to rip a chunk of meat-brick out of the wall, to raise it to her lips and take a huge bite, oil dripping down her chin and onto her raggedy blue dress. She chewed slowly… and the wall moaned. Taylor shuffled back slightly, hand automatically reaching for a weapon she didn't have. It moaned in a mixture between pleasure and pain… and Heidi reached out for another chunk.

Taylor poked her with the tip of her knife.

"Oy. Heidi. Keep moving. We've got stuff at the top."

"...but…"

"The building will be here after we're done. Go on. Keep going up. Please."

The girl pouted slightly… and reached out to stroke the wall for a moment.

"Gravity. Space."

She smiled happily.

"I'll be back."

The platform accelerated so suddenly and so viciously that Taylor was flung to the ground, her clothes immediately becoming stained with the gold-ruby blood of the giant, now long-since taken apart, devoured, or cast over the side. She crawled over to her companions, settling down with a grumble of irritation.

Patience drew two more knives.

"Anyone else in the mood to cut off their deformities? These antlers are getting inconvenient, going to file them down slightly."

Her laugh was desperate and forced. Vicky shrugged, not accepting the knife. Holding out hope for Panacea to heal her? Maybe. A chunk of teeth fell to the platform, a golf-ball sized hunk of flesh gone from Taylor's side after quite some work. She healed it over as quickly as possible, but the scarring was slow to accumulate in large areas like that. Lost quite a bit of blood. The platform rose for what seemed like hours… the time it took to get up here was about the time Taylor imagined it's take to get from where they started to the outermost shadow of the cliff. Heidi was accelerating their progress enormously - and Taylor didn't want to think about the experience of fighting aspect after aspect, struggling through combat only to climb for days, maybe weeks up an enormous wall riddled with decaying buildings that might well be impassable in some areas. They'd have lost this race before they got to the top, she was certain of it. Still… the chunk of matter where the Butcher had been climbing were still visible. Accompanying them up - and she flinched at their size. It still had a head start, and they were hard-pressed to beat it. Heidi was completely silent, ignoring all three of them except when they came close. Patience was having a whale of a time with her, oddly. Liked getting her to cheerfully explain advanced racial theory while Patience cackled wildly. She was demanding an explanation for how rice encouraged the overdevelopment of slave mentalities in Orientals when the top came closer, much too close. Gradually, ever-so-gradually, they were sliding to the top…

And with a snap, the platform ceased.

They were here.

Taylor gazed out over the top of the cliff.

A red sun shone.

Tiny.

Miniscule, really.

The size of a coin.

The size of a world.

A jagged black plain of rippling metal, where abominations moved, shuffled, shambled, gnawed at one another and slumped off into the dark. Some were the size of mice, and others were so huge that there was no animal comparison to be found. One was nearby - a bloated tick of a creature, a woman with her back cracked backwards until it formed a smooth arch, her stomach erupting upwards, churning with something between starmatter and haemolymph. Her face was cold and dead - a skin tag. But a hand pressed against the glittering red fog… and Heidi licked her lips with a long, bloody tongue, her sapphire eyes gleaming with infinite facets. Her next meal. Vicky shuddered, aware of what she had to do… unsure if she had the strength for it. The abominations continued onwards, one of them staring downwards with the coldest, most authoritative eyes she'd ever seen, a figure drenched in crowns and gold, a giant with a skirt made from prison bars and a head made from piles upon piles of paper, cunningly shaped to support the heavy metal mask that formed her face. A naked woman ran amidst the ruinous waves of frozen metal, a bloodstained rock in her hand, hair dangling down to her waist, limbs marked with pseudo-primitive tattoos, and her teeth rotten down to black stumps.

And amidst them… a wolf.

Herald of the apocalypse.

Rushing to hatch the red sun. To crack the egg of the world.

A universal singularity lay before her… and Taylor shivered.

I'm here. We shall endure.

Taylor, just for a moment… retreated into her own head. And as the world descended into complete madness… she stood beside Chorei. Beside her first kill.

The two watched through her eye, through the swarm, through the centipede that had grown too large to be contained behind her eyepatch, and now dangled like a heavy, chitinous tear down her cheek, frozen by her power.

The two slowly took one another's hand.

And readied themselves for an ending. One way or the other.