Flames flickered all around Jenny. Smoke and the sulfuric stench of burnt hair and flesh stung her eyes. She'd stopped screaming, stopped trying to burn down the entire world, and all that was left was ashes and scorched rubble and quiet.

She choked on the air, and her exoskeleton shifted. The red covering slithered up her neck to cover her mouth and nose, forming a mask that filtered out the smoke and ash. All the while, she remained on her hands and knees, trying to catch her breath. Her tendrils, now large and more pronounced, swished overhead, whistling through the air. Her insides ached like she’d just thrown up uncontrollably.

The tendrils had grown. They looked more like tentacles rather than thin extensions of her skin, and she realized there were tentacles now, glistening like exposed flesh, red and dark and ending in sharp points. She was trying very hard not to think about how they'd grown after sucking blood from that boy. And she definitely didn't want to think about how that had been her desire. These things just reacted instinctually. The same way her covering had shifted into a mask so she could breathe without issue. They were remarkably intuitive.

Jenny was in the hall again. She only vaguely remembered standing in the midst of fire. Only vaguely remembered billowing flames on everything that moved until she'd run out of strength and collapsed again, catching herself with her tentacles before lowering herself to the floor.

Smoldering bits of cloth drifted down and fizzled out. Like a thick blanket of dark snow, ash covered the hallway, the rubble, the melted steel bars, and everything else. Strewn between the ashes were bones. No skeleton was complete. All the bones were blackened and crumbling, and Jenny tried not to picture the students and adults they belonged to. That she’d cut down only moments ago.

A notification reached through the dark clouds of her thoughts, and she sighed, her throat aching, and let it fade away.

Ignite (tier 2): Generate flames from any part of your body.

That's nice, she thought. But I just set fire to a bunch of people from my school that I chopped into bits so I could get the Energy...

Jenny Huang

Human (stage ii) (level 24) (blooded)

Stats:

Power: 25

Stamina: 15

Durability: 20 (+30)

Agility: 20

Stat points available: (14)

Energy available: (1048)

That was... so much Energy. And she shuddered. +4 for every attack on a human, +2 for every angel. Harvesting their pain. On top of that, there'd been several Tarnished Angels in the mix, and all the numbers and notifications had become a mess in her head.

She only felt hollow. She should feel worse, and she felt terrible that she didn't feel worse, but there was only so much despair and horror she could feel before it turned to rage. There was nothing left to bury. No real way to assess whose ashes were whose. Nothing to put into urns. Nothing to return to their families. And she thought it was truly sick that the ashes of the angels were mixed into the ashes of the humans.

“I'm going to murder that thing,” she swore, her eyes shut tight, her tentacles swishing. Fury swelled hot and bright as though she'd used Ignite and swallowed all the flames. Explosions shook the building; distant booms rumbled through the walls and floor, but she couldn't be sure where they were coming from.

From above where Susan had gone? Or below, where the Desecrated Angel was on the move?

It had to be from below, she decided. Most of the upper floors should be cleared by now with everything coalescing here. And even if something should attack Susan, Mrs. Monique or Jenny's babies would protect her. Her babies seemed indestructible and she was glad she'd sent them with her. All she had to do now was finish off the Desecrated Angel so it could stop forcing the dead back to life.

She didn't want to think about Susan or Oliver or one of her babies with glowing blue eyes, their minds warped by whatever the angel had done. Could she kill any of them? Would she let them rip her to pieces?

Was that how the Desecrated Angel planned on winning? Again, she pictured what Eve had shown her: the religious figure worshipped by so much of the world...

It wanted her blood, didn't it? The angel was trying to win and get to her world, that much was clear. And it had some connection to Him. Some enemy of Eve. The reason Eve was here at all.

Make it make sense.

Light flashed. Her hatchet returned to her hand and she stomped back into the ruined lab room, kicking up ashes. Smoke swirling around her.

Eve wanted Jenny to birth it into her world. The angel wanted Jenny so it could... become more human and qualify to win? Was that similar to how she'd become less human? How she had these tentacle-like things now that responded like limbs? There were so many things she wanted more answers for, but what kept surfacing in her thoughts were thoughts of God, the expansion of the ‘West’, and all the detrimental effects of colonialism. The civilizations and peoples and histories plundered and lost.

Did it all tie back to Him? For Gold, God, and Glory...

Her heart raced at the thought. She felt like she was back in Sunday school, questioning the lady trying to teach them lessons from the Bible. Questioning how so many things didn't quite match, even though she'd taken comfort in the good.

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She'd always thought of God not as the disastrous vengeful figure in the texts but as a force for good. As the universe. Even though Jenny had hated the church and her mother's preaching and how everyone acted so hypocritically. How could you preach kindness and still find space in your heart to hate?

They'd made her feel different. Asking questions about where she was from and what she ate and the language she spoke. But she was born in the same city. She ate the same foods. And she literally spoke the same language. Still, they ostracized her until she questioned herself and was unsure who or what she was supposed to be. It only got worse when she started having feelings for Susan.

But how could she reconcile that with what Eve had shown her? Things sort of clicked into place. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them... It was one of the few lessons that had stuck with her. Mostly because it was creepy and gross and seemed to stick out of the entire message of peace and love.

She wondered if that was why her prayers were never answered. All she'd ever prayed for, cried all night and pleaded for, was peace and love. For her mom to be less stressed. For things to be less hurtful at home. And that had never come true. God had always let her down.

Had she been praying to an Angel this entire time? What even was He? Was He like Eve?

He has permeated through your world for thousands of years. Gaining the most over the previous two thousand. He has rewritten your histories. Scorched civilizations and rooted out their victors and declared Himself the one single truth.

This time, it wasn't visions that filled her head, but things she'd read and imagined. Important things from history classes. The cultures lost to war and disease, genocides spanning the globe. The explorers claiming lands for themselves and God... Eve had shown her gods and goddesses before, and she realized every single culture's beliefs were based on some truth. These were the challenges that led to the gods she loved reading about. They had truly existed in her world; they had been humans just like her.

The Survival Challenges existed for millenniums long forgotten. Before Him. Before even the worlds had taken shape.

It is to nurture change and nurture growth. Gods and monsters and all the stories that have shaped and expanded your world. A means for the spiritual to become flesh.

But He has perverted the Survival Challenge. He wishes to rule every world. With your world in His possession, with the material world finally under His control... there will be no end. All will be subjugated to His will...

But didn't He already win though? The vision you showed me? The last Survival Challenge? She pictured Him again, the flowing hair and beard... the pillar of light as countless bowed before him. He made it to my world. He's everywhere. People all over worship Him.

The man whose mind he consumed; the man your mother worships pinned to a cross. He fought. He defied Him and sacrificed himself to stop Him.

The part of Him that reached your world was separated from the flesh. Trapped as spirit in a material world. Permeating. Adjusting. Shaping your civilization for two thousand years in preparation for this Challenge.

Shouldn't He be here then? Is He here? Dread filled her all of a sudden. The same dread she'd get from church, from her mother. That she was doing something wrong. That she had sinned and was being watched.

I am here. I have protected you.

That didn't really comfort Jenny. She kept thinking about that other world, the one she'd woken in twice. The first time, meeting Eve as the three-headed figure. The second time, when she'd died, and the world had tried to swallow her whole. Eve was only using her too, just as He had used the man she knew as Jesus. It was all a game to them, but there was even more weight on Jenny’s exoskeleton-covered shoulders now.

It was all on her back, wasn’t it? Not just keeping Susan and Oliver safe, but her entire world... wasn’t that too much? She was just a kid! All she’d wanted was to get out of the city and live her life. All she’d wanted was to tell Susan how she felt. But that all seemed so far away and pointless now.

But even if I stop this thing... then what? It only ends when one person is left? So, everyone has to die anyway. But If I die, what happens?

Then we fail and He will reign across all worlds till the end of time.

Our fates are intertwined, Jenny Huang.

But I'm stuck here. That means you're stuck here. and I'm not just going to.... she'd pictured it. Her tentacles reacted before she could help it, snapping through the air. She'd seen herself cutting everyone down. Everyone in the library. Susan's hurt face. Oliver who was already nearly dead. It wouldn't be too difficult to rip them apart. After all, she’d just cut down nearly a hundred students.

She could win. She could emerge as a goddess in her own right, something to rival the legends of the ancient world, something to stop Him. Is that what Eve wanted?

Eve doesn't respond, and Jenny isn't sure how to push the question. She'd wasted enough time. I'm going to find a way, she thought to Eve, afraid to voice the words. Afraid she might fail. So, she spoke them to give them more weight. To generate some false confidence that she hoped would turn real. "I'm going to save them. I don't give a fuck about your challenge bullshit or Him. If Susan's not there... then fuck the world."

She shook with rage and cold determination. Trembling. The new fingers of her left hand, the fingers that Susan had grown for her and were now covered in the red exoskeleton, curled into a glistening fist. She squeezed so hard, picturing Susan crying as she stuck her shining arm into Jenny's chest, and Jenny's fist caught fire. Flames licked up her entire arm, illuminating the ruined lab room and burning hot and ferocious.

This is going to be useful. Jenny glanced back at the hallway, half hoping Susan would come back. That her babies would rush back to her side. She was preparing to jump into the basement and she found herself feeling alone.

There was no point in feeling alone. She focused her attention on her feet, and her exoskeleton shifted. Melted and spread forward till five vicious claws formed around her toes. She did the same for her fingers, the ones curled around her hatchet as well as the ones on fire.

With her tentacles, she tasted the air below. But nothing lay waiting beneath her. The angel had to be up to something. But what? Why had more blue light flashed? Where did the Wretched Angels go? Her babies, the ones that had fallen during the cocoon's eruption, weren't down there either. Nor were the dozens of bodies that the angel must've woken back up.

All she felt when she reached with her tentacles was her own wants. The twisted mixture of hunger and thirst that thrummed through her muscles and made her belly ache. Her throat was parched, and there was an ache in her tentacles like she desperately needed to work them out. She was glad Susan wasn't here. The desire to kill. To hunt. To feed. It was nearly overwhelming. And she remembered how soft Susan's skin had looked... what if her tentacles latched onto Susan?

Would she be able to stop herself?

Kill. Kill. Kill.

She wanted to kill something. Needed to. Not another undead creature, but something living. Something trying to eat her. She could just about feel herself stabbing through an angel with a tentacle and sucking and sucking and slurping all their precious blood... it would be so satisfying.

The cravings threatened to overpower her. If it weren't for her makeshift mask, she'd be drooling, and stranger still, she found it nearly arousing. Her body seemed to be reacting to her bloodlust, and finally, she understood. Bloodlust Ecstasy. Jenny understood why Eve might have chosen her. Why Eve kept pushing her This was who she’d been all along. A vicious bloodthirsty monster pretending to be human.

She took a step forward and plummeted down into the basement, landing with a heavy crash as she broke through a desk below. She prayed earnestly for something to attack her. So she could quench this thirst.