The turn-out for the demon of divertissement’s funeral was meagre, not only as a result of the short notice, but by design. Seventy-two guests attended the burial, many of them invited to the service by Kim Ge-Yeoung due to their loyalty to the family, their level heads, and their position within the organisation. It would be important to monitor their reactions to the announcement he had planned, it would be imperative to the mission moving forward. It was already fragile enough under the care of the ‘iron weapon’.

There were, however, guests that invited themselves. They came not out of respect for the past or to acknowledge the changing world around them.

There was the first new arrival, the pollutant of pointlessness, who was there because she was worried about her friend, and ended up staying four nights to mourn for her death. A happy accident really, she would have missed the funeral if she wasn’t so lucky.

She was no longer wearing the ceremonial garbs of Ees-ees, the self-proclaimed Egyptian god of all things.

No, if one were to ascribe the word God to any of those beings, it would only be in the sense that they are the subject of worship and that they are in possession of an above average amount of power. I don’t think something so base should qualify.

Yes, the pollutant had done away with those old robs and taken on a more appropriate attire for the event. They were Ae’s. The aegis of apathy told her it was alright, that the departed would appreciate it. It was true.

The second foreign arrival came from Japan, the sentai of spectrality who had encountered the demon thrice before now, was in the neighbourhood with his girlfriends. That makes it sound as if the event was just a detour on his holiday, but he did truly care about the girl, she was after all the only other Unit he had encountered to this point.

He was on edge around the hardened criminals, but found some comfort beside the aegis of apathy.

The focal guest of this analysis, the aegis, was wedged between the aforementioned Units. Out of all the guests, he seemed the most… approachable. Unattached. Both the pollutant and the sentai understood that he was a close friend of the demon, and he projected a strength that they could lean on.

The aegis was advised to go along with it, they were Units, they could make an unwanted scene if irritated. This was a sentiment shared by Gi-Yeoung.

As customary, people began to pay their respects at the side of the coffin, one by one they trailed along.

The pollutant was the first of the Units, as she passed by the box, she thought back on something she’d been told. It was a simple line from the ‘merchant of Venice’, ‘All that glitters is not gold’ is how it starts, ‘welcome frost’ is how it ends.

She at once came to understand the meaning of pointlessness.

Next, came the aegis. His face reminiscent, yet cold it held. As he touched the box, he imagined a joke being told, she would have snickered something behind a stretched smile. But nothing like that was shown. Toughening his lip, but keeping the same general expression, he tilted his head up from the varnished wood.

And there he saw it. Her, but not. All the features were identical, her wolfy hair, her thin face, it was all right. But that slightly translucent thing told no jokes, nor did It snicker.

It simply told him he was holding up the line. And it told him to keep moving.

The third Unit, the sentai, placed his snow-white hand down, the colour of the object contrasting his skin more than his black suit simply by possessing pigmentation. He thought of one of his girls, Akahana, she’d be shouting at him for being depressive right now, but what’s wrong with that? Holidays are supposed to be escapes from the everyday. Unlike the rest of his life, this felt real, meaningful.

Once everyone had returned to their seats, they expected the coffin to be lowered, but it wasn’t.

Everyone was rightfully confused, even if they didn’t voice their thoughts. Everyone, except for Kim Gi-Yeoung, Mongkeh Baturbah, and the man approaching from the audiences left.

His fists were clenched, the dark cloth of his hanbok fell down to his ankles loosely, but was bound tight at his ribs. His back imprinted with the Seoung-Soo family seal in light red, gave a sheen against the dark purple of his clothes. Bound to his head was a capped helmet in the style of the Joseon dynasty, yet made from solely organic materials.

The intention was to hide his face, not protect it. All but his eyes were covered.

As he reached the grave, Gi-Yeoung raised to stand beside him.

"To translate", she told Mongkeh. He saw this coming, but everyone else was still in the dark.

“I thank you for coming,” The man now known as Han Chul-Moo grated, “-to the funeral of Ae-Seoung-Soo. I’ve been told… that it isn’t customary to give a ‘eulogy’ in Korea, but then again, I’ve never been one for customs.”

He was quiet for a second, and the crowd began to fill the space with mutterings.

His back cracked as he raised himself taller, “I’m a Unit. I’ve been working for this syndicate for four months. And in that time-” He held himself back, “-this-” It was a visible struggle for him.

“-This girl has not only stolen my life from me, she’s made me a damn mule. A tortured animal!” Gi-Yeoung looked back at him while he was translating, and Chul-Moo gripped his frustration.

“I’ve given everything to this. She destroyed 36 years of my life for four miserable months- that isn’t a fair trade. How many years have you given? Forty? Fifty? More? Only for the Bloodline of the instigator to end here? Bull fucken’ shit. Fifty-five years from thousands of people, only for us to get slaughtered like damn animals?”

The guest from Japan looked like he was going to do something. “Stop him,” She told Mongkeh, “Don’t let that boy interfere.”

The aegis extended his hand slightly, and the pale boy understood.

“I’m a foreigner," Han continued, "I have no stake in any of this, I don’t even get that promised land bullshit, she stole my fucking soul! SHE TOOK THE ONLY THING I HAD! THIS IS THE PERSON SHE MADE ME!”

After his anger peaked, he was able to bring it back down. The crowd was a little more at ease when he was able to smoothen out his voice.

“But that girl wasn’t stupid. She knew that this wouldn’t last long at the rate you were running it. You need ambition. You needed an actual weapon. I have nothing to lose, and nothing to gain from taking over, and I am taking over, none of you can stop me, the only reason I’m telling you any of this is because I’d prefer that you not waste good assassins on me. In times like this, we need people with skills like that.”

The boy to Baturbah’s right was shocked that nobody was doing anything to interfere with him.

The woman to Baturbah’s left hadn’t changed her expression since sitting back at her seat. The pollutant had expected power grabs, ugly, distasteful shows of ego, despite the fact that Ae was never too involved with the syndicate, there were people who ran things while she stayed in school.

Baturbah thought about what was actually being said here. The picture he’d put together was that Han was just a mad animal, one that had been leashed and bound by Gi-yeoung and Ae before her death. There was no doubt in his mind that this was a show of power on the part of those backing the goals of whatever sub-faction had formed under the old man’s control. It reminded him of home, the Mladnets.

Rabid, impressionable minds placed under the heel of a physically weaker master.

But they were children.

He knew why he himself was still serving. He guessed at why this Chul-Moo kept going. He was probably lonely, more than anything else. That’s one of the many symptoms of the soulless.

“There will be time to discuss the power shifts, please, try to enjoy the rest of the funeral.”

Mongkeh looked to his side, waiting for the demon to laugh at the irony. He smiled at the thought alone.

As the coffin lowered, so did the experienced young soldier’s eyes.

...

Not far from the graves, the other two Units met their respective entourages.

Sato Takahashi, the dull, pale, highschooler, met his seven girlfriends, ushering them away before they made a scene.

‘Bastard-crowned’ Clover met the boy in green. He had wanted to go to, saying he could wear an all-black mask, but in the end, Clover had told him not to bother. He would only make more trouble for them. Baturbah said that wherever Ae was, she’d just be glad that she was being kept in his thoughts.

Of course, the prime issue with Ae Seoung-Soo’s current existence was that she couldn’t be glad, or angry, or sad. She couldn’t allow the traces of her personality to be diluted with moods and opinions. The position of a spirit is a delicate one, less so for Ae, due to her experience with souls in life.

Mongkeh knew all of this, that the last vestiges of herself were dependant on her not smiling, nor laughing, but he still looked for it.

He checked in on her, seeing a face that couldn’t even be described as bored, it was completely apathetic.

“Don’t stop to talk to them. If you do, we’ll miss the train. Wave. That’ll be enough.”

When the Mladnet did look back to them, he noticed Clover starring. He simply did as he was told. Something told him that despite the bastard crowned not having any spiritual fine tuning, she understood what it was he was always looking for in the distance. Without a final word to either of them, he left to catch a train to Busan.

.

.

.

“What did you think of them?” Baturbah asked. “I think she’ll be ok, eventually. Something tells me she’s seen a lot of death, but she hasn’t experienced a lot of loss. Maybe once or twice, an adult, maybe another friend. Just not enough that she’s able to take it in her stride.”

He looked across the train car, “Not like us.” She was unresponsive. He smiled, making himself comfortable.

“Still, that kid with her, I don’t know how he’s made it for as long as he has. I’ve heard that the soulless are the tenacious type, but there are far more flaws than benefits. There’s the big pro, immunity to direct attacks to the soul, I’ve heard about some people paranoid enough getting suckered by that, but in the end, it’s not worth ending up like Kim or Han.”

“He was more or less the same when I met him. The only difference is, now he has nothing to love. He had one love that he used to cope with his hatred for the world, and more importantly his hatred for himself.”

He guessed correctly that she was talking about Han, though as far as he knew maybe she was talking about the Irish man.

It was just a factual statement; no emotion in her voice. “I can’t see him benefitting from the change, whatever his life was like before. I understand why you stole his soul, probably the same reason your grandfather stole Gi-Yeoung’s, but hot-tempered simpletons aren’t good in administrative roles, or as aspirational figures for that matter.”

He thought back on the man with the Fabergé obsession at the Siberian branch, noticing a few similarities between the two take overs, the one in Russia was being done with a little more tact. It had to be, what with it being a group a hundred times larger than this gang in Korea.

She didn’t talk back to him, so he tried to squeeze something more out of the conversation, “You pointed out one of the biggest flaws with detaching the soul, it perverts the thing they loved most, they start to hate it too. That’s slightly connected to the other symptom, the unnecessary strengthening of resolve. I’m sure the afflicted appreciate it, it’s probably saved that kids life a few times, made him a little more confident, but it’ll make him uncompromising, he won’t, or rather, is unable to do anything he doesn’t want to do. Someone like him’ll call it a strong moral compass, but I’m sure it’s led to situations where it’s clouded his judgement of a situation. It'll tear him apart when he's pushed across that line, when he does something in the heat of the moment. ”

She wasn’t speaking anymore.

“That's not even mentioning the biggest one. You could call a late-stage symptom, because it’s the one that ends up getting them killed. A lack of concern for their own life. Rather than thinking through a situation based on self-preservation, they’ll look to things like what they can gain from it.”

He realised that this line of conversation wasn’t working, that was alright, going from Seoul to Busan they still had hours left to themselves. Nobody was riding in their car for a reason, it was just him and her.

He smiled just a little.

“I bet you laughed pretty hard when you saw the green guy, it’s a pretty surprising appearance, even for a Unit.”

She answered him back, “You weren’t surprised.”

He laughed and shook his head, “No, no, I’ve been from here to Chernobyl, I’ve met around a hundred different Units in my life, and fought more monsters, so a mask from a cartoon won’t startle me. But it would get you rolling on your sides, tell me, please, what were you doing when you met him?”

It knew what he was trying to do.

“I was at Clover’s eighteenth birthday. I’d flown out a day or two earlier, staying for the week. It was on the night of the party that I saw him first. He was surrounded by people.”

He pushed her harder, the smile on his face widening, as he felt like he was getting closer to his goal, “And? What did you think when you were walking over to him?”

“I thought, ‘this is the man Clover said I could hook up with? This little man in a frog costume?’”

He thought to laugh, but realised she was just listing her exact thoughts in that moment. Still nothing of emotional value.

“Actually, thinking back I suppose there was another reason why I wasn’t shocked by Shamrock. Yeah, there was a kid over in the European sect of the Mladnets, he had a mask like that. It was a leaf, covered all of his face. He needed it for his ability, or for his dark god, something like that.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

She wasn’t even looking at him anymore, uninterested in any information that wasn’t directly tied to her consciousness. She was looking out over the city as the train clacked by. Every building; homes that families had built and lived in, whether bound by blood or love, each one passed in the blink of an eye.

Five hours, Mongkeh told himself. Five hours left.

“Wait, did you say hook up?”

“Yes.”

“We didn’t though.” She blurted.

Here we go, he thought.

“Did you feel the need to clarify that?”

“No. That was just your actual question. Obviously. I’m not just residual information Monkey. I have soul. I still have the capacity for thought.”

Mongkeh laughed at it, “Yeah, I know. It is you, isn’t it? You’re her memory, her thoughts and feelings.”

“No.”

The words cracked into him like a pick through ice.

“-I’m not me. You know how this works Monkey. There are issues with the soul. Weaknesses. Like a body filling itself with adrenaline or how you might perceive time as passing slower as you reach death, at the end of its time, a soul will react.”

“It cries out, begging, ‘I don’t want to go. I want to keep loving baseball; I want to stay alive’. It speaks. At least greenie doesn’t care if he dies, you’re the one who has to live with that fear of death.”

He kept the smile, fixing his posture slightly, “And what’s so wrong with that?”

“I can’t judge. You know what will happen if I do. Your grief is blinding you from it.”

He snickered ever so slightly.

“Something beyond death, should I let that clinging part of my self win. The longer I exist like this the more I’ll change, emotional stability is now bound to my physical stability. You know this. But you still push me.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t make any snide remarks. In the silence there was only the clashing of the steel beneath them.

Once he thought of a logical reason, he let her know, though some time had passed since she’d brought it up.

“Once you get to that property in Busan, the process will be put on hold, as a part of whatever deal your family made with those entities. The whole promised after-life should Korea be dismantled.”

After eternities passed them by, she finally looked at him.

“This might be the last time we see each other- assuming I don’t join up with the whole devil worshiping, blood drinking thing. It’s just five hours, come on, crack a joke!”

She didn’t.

She looked to his side. They were passing by a body of water, a lake or reservoir, she didn’t care, nor did she care for how the light shimmered across it, or how the sky glowed red in the near-setting sun. She did not care. It was just information. Information that would go towards her loss of humanity, the death of self.

Mongkeh kept a cool face, a cool head, but deep down, brewed emotions that he didn’t even know he had.

“You said Clover tried to hook you up with that green guy, right?”

“Yep.”

“That must have been rough for him. Seeing as, you know, he’s in love with her.”

He thought that her silence meant something in the few seconds it lasted.

“What are you talking about?”

He laughed, hoping that this time she might be different.

“Well, right off the bat, there’s his outfit. I’m pretty sure he isn’t getting any girls dressed like that. And with how flustered he gets from talking to a girl he knows well, it’s safe to say that's the only girl he talks to. If you want to break it down, he’s probably just hot for her because he’s never been this close to a girl before.”

“You’re a master when it comes to this sort of thing, are you?”

He was elated.

There wasn’t a sarcastic tone to her voice but it was a question that came from the direction he was pushing her.

“Well I do work with kids. It comes with the territory.” He crossed his arms, waiting for her reply.

“You are a kid, Monkey. You have been alive 17 years.”

“I don’t see why you need to speak like a robot. I’m 17, yeah, what about it?”

“17 years doesn’t make you an adult. I was nearly three years older than you when I passed. I honestly don’t think that’s enough time either. And it’s especially not enough for this.”

“You might not let it compromise the ‘mission’ but you’re taking this just as bad as Clover. Be honest, Monkey.”

He kept that smile.

“I’ve seen things. I’ve had people die on my team; you were there for one of a dozen of my comrades. It’s not just the fact they’re gone, it’s how they go. Quick and instant, or slow like an eternity. You can argue that I haven’t completely risen above all of this yet, but I know people who have. With all due respect Ae, you aren’t a Mladnet, you’re a free-lance Unit-”

She interrupted him, not a thorn in her words, “I was a free-lance Unit. I am dead,” But they still stung him.

“Those kids Monkey? They’ve been broken. Children are fragile. Their minds are glass, after being subjected to enough pressure they shatter, shards scatter, parts lost. Empathy lost. Those people are sociopaths Mongkeh. They’d have to be to survive in that environment.”

His smile faded, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go, “I’ve survived in that environment since I was 13, are you saying I’m a psycho?”

She shook her head, “I’m saying you aren’t, Monkey. You might try to be like them, but you aren’t.”

He turned away, the smile fading from his face.

“My name is Mongkeh Baturbah. So why do you keep calling me ‘Monkey’?”

There was a long pause, “That’s just what I call you. It’s just a nickname.”

“It’s a play on words. ‘Monkey’ is also used as an insult, between friends, it’s a joke.”

He glared at her now.

“It isn’t. That’s just what I usually call you. It’s a force of habit.”

“Forces of habit aren’t a part of your memories, or your will. It’s a bodily mistake. A mistake of the living.”

She stammered, “Yes- I can’t stop. My soul wants me to be alive. It wants to exist, against the natural forces it continues on-”

He interrupted, face calm, “You can’t deny it Ae, you want to live. That is natural. It’s utter bullshit that one minute we’re eating fucking breakfast, and the next you’re a spirit, and I’m- You’re being selfish. This isn’t fair to me. Seeing you like this over the past few days-”

This was it.

“Now, that I think about it, why have you stuck around all this time? You could have left days ago; you’re not bound to me or anything. I’d say it was to make sure that your syndicate didn’t collapse seconds after the news came out, or maybe so you could see Clover one more time- but what’s the point if you’re going to act like this? You know who needs to be honest Ae? You need to be you. We’ve got four hours now, is this seriously going to be your final memory?”

Say it, that was his will.

An unnecessary movement. A lick of the lips, a tilt of her head.

Say it.

“Just cut me down, you idiot.”

What.

What?

The silence would have been audible, if the clattering of the rails hadn’t already filled Baturbah’s ears.

“What?”

At last, the thought passed his lips, the emotion in it finally true.

The spectre replied to the slight tremble.

“You’re right. I haven’t been fair, not to Boston, not to Clover, and not to you.”

His heart winced.

“I let my desire to keep living cloud my judgement. But now that I have been a spirit for four days, I understand the severity of our situation. Of my situation, Monk. I’m falling apart. Shattering. I’m going to lose everything, or worse, have it perverted into a- a monster. I’d rather you- and I’m sorry that it has to be you- I’d rather you cut me down.”

He got up, wearing a face identical to the one he wore when Clover asked to see the body.

“You’re asking me to kill you, wh-”

“I’m dead.”

Two words.

She’d already said them, he had heard them the first time.

But now he understood. He realised at once that she was right. He’d been blinded by his emotions. She had the right approach to all of this, he needed to be reasonable, sensible.

“I’m dead, Mongkeh. Save my memory.”

He struggled, wavering as the force from the train pushing against the rails vibrated up his legs.

He squared his stance, willing together his soul.

Mongkeh Baturbah holds a family heirloom, one passed by hand, yes, but it is what can’t be held that is most important about this object. His uniform is not the standard issue, adjustments were made so that this heirloom could be more manageable.

He pressed down the smart cloth integrated into his combat armour. Like a wet rag being wrung, a liquid dribbled out of the cervices of the fabric. Defying gravity, drops and streams were pulled into his open hands.

First formed the handle, making a sort of crook shape to the wielder, then a guard materialised, drooping down to complement the crook. Lastly formed the blade itself, curving one way, before sweeping up the other in a crescent.

He made a sword. He willed it in that form because that’s what she told him to do.

To the average observer, the boy pulled out a sword from nowhere, that’s how they’d rationalise it later.

To a Unit with no sensitivity of the soul, they observed the Mladenet make one of many crude weapons he could manifest.

To Seoung-Soo Ae, Monkey had pooled an enormous amount of soul energy into the shape of a blade, displaying not that he was capable of putting this to an end, but that he had the will to do it. To strike her down as she asked.

A good soldier, she thought.

She tensed, not just at the glaring of the blade that could rend a person; soul and body, but at that stray thought.

She was losing her edge, the humour she loved in life was clamped to her like a shackle.

But she wasn’t the only one.

It melted.

Not her pressurized will.

Not just the sword.

But that idiot.

Both of them thought at once, ‘This isn’t what I wanted’.

Mongkeh looked at her, any barriers he had built up were shattered like ice, and melted into tears instantaneously.

“I don’t want this Monkey. I want to live. I want to live. I thought just one day, then it was until the funeral, and now, I realise I’m not strong enough. I don’t want to go. I want to be with you.”

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, he wanted her to say it, but not like this. He just wanted hear her laugh one more time.

“I don’t care if there is a perfect world after this. I don’t want to live in it without you, not for a second.”

The soldier dribbled snot as he cried.

“I don’t want to exist on any level without you.”

His will once again bent the silver liquid. It was a bulky shape, clinging to his hands and chest. He wanted armour- he wanted to be strong, safe from this feeling. And he wanted to be able to grab a hold of her.

He tumbled forward, arms out wide, almost falling on her.

Despite his condition, it wasn’t an abrasive hug, it was hesitant and gentle. He didn’t go to her because he wanted to grab onto something to keep him up, he hugged her to tell her he was sorry.

He said it with a nose full of mucus and a throat full of reluctance.

“I lub you-”

He didn’t want any of this- He didn’t want it to go this way. It was horrible saying it out loud, even if it no longer mattered- maybe it was because it was too late.

Her voice was muffled by his energy fighting against her projection, “I love you.”

That hurt them both more.

But that’s what they needed to hear. Baturbah knew it. Seoung-Soo only just realised.

It wasn’t enough for her will, her desire, to fade. It helped her on her way.

He sobbed for a good portion of the ride.

Ae knew that if she joined him, it would destroy her. She wouldn’t be coming back from such a feeling.

It was clear that he wouldn’t be able to get rid of her if she became a threat. She’d seen what a normal human could do after they died. She was a Unit with a massive soul. She’d become an imperial threat. At least.

He knew that, but here he was. Despite all of his training, he’d turned ‘weak’ in the knees.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I can’t. I can’t keep doing this.”

“It’s okay. It’s only four more hours.”

“We only have four more hours.”

He paused before finally giving in.

“I can’t handle the responsibility of- stopping you from changing. You’re right. I should have been thankful for just this.”

Disregarding this she still displayed a desire.

“Remember me. Even if- if that afterlife stuff was bull crap, I’ll be content if only you remember me.”

He laughed, a little.

“I can’t forget you. And we both know it’s not just me. Clover won’t forget, and with the Mountain watching over her, she’ll probably last longer than me. You’ve got tons of Normals in Korea, you remember the other week- or I guess last month- when I walked in on you face timing, decked out in my suit?”

He didn’t wait for the laugh; he knew now it wasn’t coming.

“Hey, now that I think about it, that Han Chul-Moo guy doesn’t seem like he’s going to be forgetting about you anytime soon.”

He bit his tongue just after he said it. Realising he should cut the joking tone he’d picked up, and that if she was asking him to remember her, it probably wasn’t as the type of woman who stole souls.

She glossed over it, “Speaking of him, I need you to do something.”

She didn’t want to steer the conversation away from them, but she’d need to say it sooner or later.

“Not now, it’s too soon for him, and it’s too late for you. I know you need to get this flight; they won’t allow any more delays.”

She leaned in to whisper, though no one was in the train car to hear.

“I want you to give a part of your weapon to him. A milligram. When next you meet him, I want you to make a judgement on whether or not he’ll be able to conquer this country, that, or if you find yourself in a tight spot.”

There was a sliver of suspicion in Baturbah now, “If you want me to give even a drop of my family heirloom to that guy-”

“I don’t. If it looks like things are just on the brink of working out, or you’re about to die, give it to him. It’ll interact with his own abilities, I don’t know how, maybe it’ll kill him, maybe it’ll turn him into a monster- It might even grow him a new soul.”

He realised that she wasn’t saying this because she thought it would strengthen her syndicate, she was telling him this so that there was a chance she could apologize to the man who had cursed her out at her own funeral.

“But if he’s still the same, or if you get into a fight with him, don’t so much as touch him with it. And I mean that.”

He scratched at his head, “Is that all? Because you’re leaking out a lot of emotion.”

“That’s all.”

He thought for a moment about what they could talk about.

“Tell me what you want me to remember about you. Without telling me. I guess you could tell me stories and secrets; facts.”

He looked into the shallow pool of pressure in that train car.

And they talked.

She told him stories, about her father, her thoughts when she met Clover. When she encountered the remains of her father’s spirit. She told him about the robots, how she goaded Han-Chul-Moo into a competition, how she and the boy in green tricked the tiny robot. She told him things nobody else knew, and she told him things that only they knew.

And as quick as a paragraph, the train crossed all of South Korea, and they were in Busan.

They passed it, the sanctum that Ae’s soul would be entombed in. And they parted. There were no grand final words, rather than the short candle they had held for each other burning out naturally, it was snuffed by a passing breeze.

.

.

.

It was maybe fifteen minutes that Baturbah spent alone in that car, until it finally reached the station.

He took a moment to steel himself, but he had already taken up enough of their time, their resources.

“I hope you understand, Baturbah, that it was no easy feat organising this with the Korean government?” The man waiting just outside the door asked him.

“I know. But it had to be done.” Mongkeh lied.

The man scratched his slight beard, “Had to be done, you say. This was a personal matter for you, you asked for this. I’d be surprised that it went through, if it weren’t for your devilled tongue!” He laughed.

He laughed, before returning to the matter.

“Did it expect it? Was all of this necessary in the end- in your expert opinion.”

“No, she didn’t, and yes it was. As I’ve said, I needed her to be in a sterile environment, the constant movement compiled with the constant flow of information, contrasted against a friendly, familiar environment weakened her mentally, loosening her control on the soul.”

He lied to a superior.

“Right, good, as long as it’s taken care of. You will have to deal with quite a few consequences now Baturbah. Not many will take kindly to your interference with a foreign power, though you won’t have to worry about the Internationals, if anything they’ll be thankful for the intervention. The bastards have bigger fish to fry in Africa- and if my suspicions are correct, a certain Mountain mule.”

Normally, Baturbah would hold this man’s suspicions in high regard, but right now, he didn’t care. He hadn’t the energy to care.

Let alone the energy to exorcise her.

.

.

.

She wandered streets unseen, unacknowledged by the ignorants around her. She observed human beings, some old, some new. All made equal in the end.

In her current state, she couldn’t float, to do so would contort her form further, and she was so close now, her father hadn’t made it, but she was so close, she was a few metres from the shrine, the shrine built by her Great-grandfather, this was to be her end.

Now, rather than shy away from this, from death, she welcomed it. It was a final far, far more appealing than the alternatives.

Be cut down by that boy, or become something like her-

Her father.

It stood at five metres tall, its backwards legs taking up around a third of the height of it. They were taloned, the both of them, three thumbs reaching out sharpened to a claw. The pillars were textured unlike the rest of its body, they were scaled like a bird, rather than a lizard.

Infact, the theme was carried out through the whole body of the beast. It’s main body, from a distance, might have seemed to be covered in red feathers, but on closer inspection you’d see it as a complex weave of overlapping leathery skin, borne red in shades of vermillion and garnet, the colours expanding in great waves. This was carried on its arms, chest, and was shown best in the ‘tail feathers’ held up and shifted by vertebrae. It exploded from the bird’s hind in three main strands upon which the shifting feathers of flesh followed, making a hairy looking peacock sail.

It’s head and neck had traits from both its bulked legs, and the torso’s padding.

It’s eyes remained unchanged, though the rest of his face had been deformed, the nose was greatly enlarged, the nostrils upturned at the side, and the upper lip fused together with it. The chin had nearly been erased, the disproportionate size of the eyes and brow conveyed a great sadness in the creature.

Whether this was a product of the soul or the mind, Ae did not know.

“Honey.”

It was one word, and it made her shiver.

Her emotions had been teased out, and now they were being pulled.

She didn’t have any powers in this form, not as an unchanged soul, if he was looking for a fight, she was destroyed.

“I need to tell you the truth.”

‘The truth?’, she thought.

He left a wide enough gap for her to understand.

This sanctum was supposed to ward off soul degradation, and the degraded souls.

So how was he standing there? Within its walls.

“It isn’t possible, Ae. You can’t remain static.”

She looked up to its craning neck as it bent down to her, it’s head like a hawk, those eyes pierced into her.

“You're dead. You will decay. I am sorry.”

She looked down.

Thought back to Monkey.

There was no way she’d be able to find him now.

He wanted one thing.

He wanted to see her laugh one more time.

He wanted to see her, but she denied him that.

For this?

There was a word for this, she was sure.

Tragic? A tragedy?

After everything she’s lived through, this is it.

She put a hand to her mouth, as her form buckled.

And then it came out of her.

An explosion that dislodged her head.

“This is ironic!” She laughed, “Just what I’d expect! What I should have expected!”

The vertebrae began to form, snaking around her new form.

And from a foot within the false sanctuary, her failed father stood in melancholy.