"You should probably... and I don't mean this in a mean way, I think it's great, but you should pick another face to meet a group of traumatized and scared humans. If they see you as you are now, they might ruin the carpet." Puppy said, trying to stop her from probably making a situation worse with his injection of levity but failing.

That's fair. Dark lord bodies aren’t for everyone.

They had been walking and talking for fifteen minutes and were within sight of the anchor that would dump them back into the inner apartment. She felt like she was conversationally rambling, and was doing her best to put them back into their normal feeling space but doing a piss-poor job of it.

Puppy was having a rough day and came to her for help and found her in the middle of a little blood play ménage scene, and she almost didn't stop and was just gonna let him watch.

No big deal.

She did stop, so it's fine. He wasn't acting as awkward as she was, so she needed to just let it go.

It's fine.

And then, the dude she was working up to absolutely ruin with her superb mouth-banging skills while she had him bound in ropes of her blood and the other dude who was desperately watching, hotly begging her to be included, both fucked up a simple spell that was supposed to be a deniable and ignorable temporary courtship ritual to transform it, making it basically supernaturally, magically marry the lot of them. Innocent bystander Puppy included.

Super cool.

It's whatever.

But it might not be okay.

"Max, I can tell you're spiraling. It's okay. Everything is fine." Puppy said. He grabbed her hand and held it.

She went back to her regular old Dirt Max form. She grew almost a foot and her vision got better. Other than her olfactory senses going haywire, it felt like putting on pajamas after a long day of work. She started to relax even though the clothes she put on for a significantly shorter her were now comically small on her.

Muffin tops and accidental capris look great with a shirt that’ll split in two if I breathe too deep. Whatever. Stop making it weird, Max. He doesn’t care.

She smelled something that reminded her of a laughter-filled kitchen and autumn afternoons. Like being at home on a lazy Sunday. It was nice.

"What are you so worked up about? Maybe I can help?" He was still holding her hand. That was nice, too. It relaxed her.

"You're the one having the bad day. I don't want to trauma dump all over it." Her eyes watered and she sniffed a little. “Me spilling my problems on yours might make yours heavier.”

"It's fine. It actually might help me to focus on something other than... yeah." His eyes got sad and he focused on the anchor. On the other side, there was a collection of his new slaves that he owned unwillingly and a few assholes’s deaths that he caused.

"Okay." She took a deep breath and blurted out her biggest concerns, while also staring at the anchor. "I want you to know that if you said the word, you, me, Miles, the kids, and the elves can fuck off of this planet right now. I'd rip a tear in the fabric of reality and we could go to another world. I could put Miles in charge of us all. We don't even have to take the light elves. I could set them up as a backwoods cult with the vault of our stockpiles and they'd be fine for the next several generations. I just... We aren't stuck here, no matter what magic fuckery happens or whatever anyone says. I could shatter my anchor and we could just leave it all behind.” She blinked and looked at him. "And if you wanted to get away from me now, I wouldn't stop you. It wouldn't be right to."

His eyebrows furrowed. He looked rattled. "Why are you saying this, Max?"

"Because I have been in situations where the power dynamics got fucked up and lines got crossed and I only realized later that I was taken advantage of. And I would rather die a true death-- a real death, a painful one --than ever do that to you, pu... Merrick." Her mouth felt weird moving around his real name. "I don't want you to feel trapped with me, either. Magic marriages or not. And I never, ever, ever want to put you in a situation where you're uncomfortable but you feel you can't say anything because I hold our Pack's safety in my hands. I would never demand anything of you that you weren’t willing to give.”

He blinked. He stared at her for a minute. It looked like he had an epiphany. He smiled and it was like the sun appearing after a thunderstorm. "Max, do you know how regular Packs are run?"

"I've never been in a Pack before. I've only seen them when I had eradication quests and I was..." She reconsidered her words as, holy fuck, they were in poor taste right now. "Only ever from the outside."

"Do me a favor, then. It'll pay back the favor you asked of me in the blood collecting, okay?" He raised his empty hand, the one that wasn't holding hers, and touched her cheek, briefly, with the pad of his fingers. "I want you to look in your big library, or look it up on the internet, or talk to Emma, or something, but I want you to learn about the role of alpha in a Pack-- which is what you are-- and what it is that the betas actually do-- which is what I am. Look into what they agree to when they join. Okay? I think we both have had a bit of a misunderstanding, but it's okay. Okay?" He squeezed her hand. The good smell was overwhelming and she wanted to melt into it. "I think you're a really good person with a really good heart, Max. I know you think you're some big, horrible monster, but you're not. This whole thing," he took their joined hands and waved them in a circle, "proves it."

"Okay? But you still need to think about what I said." Max argued.

He laughed and said before he stepped through the anchor, "And you need to do some reading."

***

When they arrived in the inner apartment, it was deathly silent, even with the sound of twenty-one different people breathing. No one was moving except Beasty, and she was waving her hands around, gesturing at Miles. He was pretending to be a golden appliance on the kitchen counter, so Beasty just looked like she may have gone insane.

"Is everything okay in here, Em?" Puppy asked.

"Yeah, but I can't get them to do anything. They won't even acknowledge that I'm speaking to them. I mean, they moved from the outer to the inner apartments just fine when I told them the vamp could call them out, but after that, they just... Well, kinda shut down." She pointed at all of them.

They all just stared into space. It was uncanny. "Let me see what's going on with them." She walked up to the closest one, a woman, and she looked into her eyes. The woman did not focus on her at all. "I'm going to touch you on your head. Is that okay?"

The woman stayed silent and checked out.

Max put her hand on her head and cast the first half of [Divine Doctor's Touch]. She wanted the diagnosis part more than healing.

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When she saw what it bounced back, she almost puked on the floor.

In the past, she had seen a lot of things. She'd seen people being eaten alive by all sorts of monsters. They ran the gamut from small, like microscopic boring worms that moved in swarms of quintillions and could eat a whole city in a few seconds, to the large monsters, like the apocalypse beasts that in some universes, swam between stars and swallowed whole worlds. It was rumored that there were even bigger monsters that could devour entire galaxies, and Max didn't doubt it for a minute. If someone told her that this galaxy was inside of a monster's stomach, she'd not even blink.

But what she always hated most was the cruelty that came from people. People were always the worst kind of monster, no matter the species or world. You'd think that if you could hold a conversation with something, it would be less likely to be a sick fuck, but that was surprisingly untrue. If you see something jaw-droppingly evil, nine times out of ten, a person is behind it. The other one time, it was probably a demon or devil from one of the hells, but they started out as people too-- they were just so good at being sick fucks that they got promoted to being a ball of condensed souls that was full-time sick fuck.

A boring worm doesn't do what it does to inflict pain-- it just wants to eat. A galaxy eater was the same. Max could understand hunger. It’s why she didn’t even really have a moral problem with vampirism.

She could never get over casual cruelty though. It made her want to inflict it back a lot less casually.

Max dropped her hand and went to another silent person, staring into space. And another. The big ones. The small ones. The old one. They were all the same.

She felt herself go a little mentally blank. She tried to turn off her feelings to get through her abhorrent thoughts to reach a solution. "Were they talking in the cages? Or when you were escorting them back?"

"They only cried in the cages. They were weirdly quiet on the way home, but I thought it was from them seeing me eat a room full of people. I thought they were scared." Puppy's eyebrows met in the middle of his face over his nose. "They all walked for a lot longer than I thought they'd be able to."

She swallowed bile but told him what she found with a blank face. "Their abdomens have three extra hearts that have metal shards running through them.” Her eyes got dry because she hadn’t blinked for some time. “Their intestines have been removed and their abdominal cavity is packed with beating hearts and... nails? They have to be in excruciating pain." She ran a shaky finger over their collars. She whimpered but tried to reach for the blankness again. "They feel it all, but the collars make it to where they can't make any noise. It has a low-level healing spell on it, so it heals them enough to keep them alive and heal up any damage the nails do to the surrounding organs." She gagged. "This is... “ Blank. “They're understandably all catatonic from it. They have enough awareness to follow simple orders, but that's it." She looked at Puppy with tears falling from her blank eyes. "The cages probably nulled the silencing spells. It's why they were crying. Because they finally could."

Puppy looked both sick and incandescently angry and then sick again. "Why would someone do this to them? That's... that's unhinged."

"I don't know. Usually shit like this has no reason. It's the workings of the depraved." She felt the attempted blankness fall away and she was pelted with the horror of it all.

A plan. We need a plan.

Max looked at Miles with wide eyes. "'Will you tell Cora I need her to prep the surgery room? And tell Ines and Hugo that we need help with transport?" Her heart hurt. It was constricting in her chest. "I'm knocking them all out, right now, and hope that my [Sleep] spell is strong enough to make them oblivious." She was pacing, her mind was racing through options, trying to think of the first step while casting rapid-fire [Sleep]s. "It won't last that long, though. Do we have enough anesthesia for all of them until I can regrow their fucking guts? How are the hearts even beating? They have to be attached to the circulatory system, but four hearts beating at different intervals should make their blood pressure insane. What the... Holy fuck, it's gonna take months! Of course, we don't have enough anesthesia! What am I gonna do? What..." She started breathing harder. The air in the room was thin. She grasped her own throat. It felt like her shirt was tightening around her neck. "Regrowing is always horrible, but guts are the worst. How do I culture a full microbiome that will work for all of them? Holy shit, some of them are children... I can't.. I can't..."

"Max. MAX. Breathe. It'll be okay. We've..." Miles was talking, but he was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. This is wrong.

"It's not okay! Look at them, Miles. Children! It's not fucking okay." Her eyes were crying but she wasn't. Her chest hurt. She didn't know how to fix this. She was clawing at her neck, trying to get her shirt collar away. She could cast a death curse at them and put them out of their misery, but that seemed fucked up since they hadn't died on their own so far. It wouldn't be right if she killed them. Right?

"Max." She heard Puppy talking. Beasty was slowly approaching her from the kitchen with her arms held out. Thom was hugging her and she didn't realize he was even in the room until now. "Max." He said again. "We've got you. You're here, with us. We are okay. We are going to hold you and ground you. You need your Pack. We are here and we love you. We are safe. You are safe. We will fix this and all will be well." He was murmuring in a soft, low tone and she could hear it but only barely understand it. Beasty grabbed her and held her, right next to Thom. Puppy wrapped his arms around them all and slowly lowered the four of them to the ground. Miles clasped himself around her neck and used one slender and wonderful leg to caress the back of her head.

She heard sobbing and absently hoped it wasn't freaking out the kids. "I don't know what to do for them. It's just so awful." Realized the sobbing was coming from her own throat, her own mouth. Oh.

Puppy ran a hand through her hair, down her back, and pulled her chest closer to his. Squished Beasty and Flower between them, but they were murmuring assurances at her, too. He said to her, "I know, but we'll figure it out. I'm sorry I brought this into our home."

She choked on her tears, chest still clenched in a fist, and gasped, "They would still be crying in those cages if you didn't. That's even more horrible of a thought."

Home filled her nose. She sniffed through dripping cry boogers. She was getting snot on his shirt, but she didn't care. Home slammed into her brain. She was surrounded by the smell of her Pack, her home, and it fuzzed her brain enough to let her mind switch off for a minute. She floated in the safety of her people. She disconnected and didn't exist for a moment. A hazy nothingness. A soft void. It was a lot like the blissful moments just after landing. She grabbed onto it and held it. Floating.

She held it for hours. Her chest slowly unclenched. She started to breathe easier after a while. Her nose was full but her eyes weren't when her brain switched back on. They were lying in a pile on the floor, dark elves on three sides of them, petting them like they were sleeping children and guarding them like they were precious. Those who were in the pile were still gripping each other tightly. She was calm enough to realize what happened. It curdled in her stomach.

Her croaking, broken whisper broke the tranquility. "I'm sorry guys. It's been a while since I've had one that bad."

"A panic attack?" Beasty asked.

"Yeah. Sorry. I thought I was doing better. Apparently, abhorrent body horror is a trigger for me." She tried to smile, but her smile was offline. That's fine. She said, ensconced on the bottom of the pile of limbs and limp bodies, "Okay, the first order of business. Hugo goes out, finds the vamp that did this and murders her, her progeny, whoever her sire is, and all their little stable keepers. Agreed?"

"Agreed," said Miles.

"Agreed," said Flower and Beasty, simultaneously.

"Agreed," said Puppy.

"Okay. That's settled. Now." She looked up to Puppy, down at Flower, and over to Beasty. She raised a hand to Miles. "Thank you. I was never luckier than I was the day that some rude little child accosted me for bread to feed some ducks." She smiled at Flower and mussed his hair. "Thank you for coming to me. For loving me. I love you all, too. You are all making me better, not just mentally better, but making me better as a person. And I could not have asked for a better Pack. So, thank you." Her voice was shaky and her eyes were wet again, but not the bad kind of wet and shaky.

"Thanks for being our alpha," Flower said and squeezed her again.

"You're alright too, scary lady," Beasty said, squeezing her and looking away.

"Thank you, Max." Puppy said. His eyes were looking down at her softly.

Miles tapped the back of her neck and stayed silent.

Lying in a puppy pile and surrounded on all sides by the people who loved her, she said, "I think I know what to do about them. We still have a warehouse of healing potions, right? Hear me out-- after days and days of the surgeries they all need, we suspend them in healing and sleep potion vats with rebreather masks. It could work." She was still looking at Puppy. "I always wanted a mad scientist workshop that had entombed humans floating in watery vats along the walls. We could get lighting that shines through the back to make it especially creepy.” She was going to continue, really go hard into describing a horror laboratory until they asked her to stop until a female voice talked from the other side of the door to the bunker. It was Ines.

”There’s a vampire at the front door. He’s holding a box and says he has a message for Lord Puppy.”