I wake up gasping for air, my hair soaked flat against my head and body, breaking ribs as I rip my head out of a partially empty... chest cavity. I leap back with almost a meter, or three feet, in the air, and nearly four times as far!

My head was stuck in her torso like a goddamned maggot.

I push away any guilt, refusing to let it overwhelm me. There is simply no point.

Instead, I note that I feel better on a level unimaginable to me. Even before my one-way track to six feet below the ground, I have never felt so invigorated and strengthened.

Which makes me all the more wary of the addictiveness and changes it has brought. I have seen plenty of people get addicted to Magma and overdose, burning themselves alive.

Which.... is why they called burnies, because they literally bake their flesh in chase of the irresistible high.

It’s never pretty when it- actually, it’s kind of pretty it happens. Pretty sad, but it hasn’t happened to any of my friends yet.

I analyze my body, steadfastly ignoring my friend’s corpse being dragged away by The King for a little snack. My skin is still a stone-gray with hues of dark brown, but even with rubbing off the makeup, it looks healthy and vibrant. Quite a stark contrast to my feverish, sickly pallor.

I examine my fingers, moving them with incredible dexterity. The changes have progressed. I clap my hands together, a bell-like clang resulting.

All the way up to my wrist, my hands have been completely restructured into solid bronze metal, and yet, they are not rigid like earlier when they were petrified into metal only on the tips of my fingers.

I can now feel and move my fingers once more.

For the sake of sheer spontaneity, I slam a clenched fist into the ground, making a popping noise as it rushes through the air with enhanced speed. My fist clangs against the ground like a steel sword against diamond, leaving some pretty nasty cracks in the sunny yellow-red crystal.

My arms have completely stopped leaking pus and blood from the large bulges on my arm. Whereas the bulges had previously weighed down my arms like cancerous weights, I can now move my arm unhindered. They didn’t seem to weigh anything now and they are a lot less swollen. The skin of my arms changed from being colored by the truly putrid bruising to match the rest of my body. Cuts still look pretty ugly though.

I meditate on my changes, staring at the twice-ruined gate but not really focusing on it. Instead, I turn my focus inward, towards my proprioception, which is just a fancy word for the sense that lets people know where their body parts are relative to them in space.

Much to my chagrin, I notice something odd.

It feels as though I was looking at darkness, stickiness and unuse preventing me from automatically seeing, and yet my eyes are open.

Then... I open my eyes. On my arms.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!

I look at the golden orbs with an engraved pupil and iris.

I look at my aggrieved expression with 15 separate views, a golden haze on the world, a peculiar sense of vanity and narcissism attached to the view.

I look at the crystal floor with 10 separate views, a sad sense of not being able to see my beautiful body.

5 eyes are irritated by my sleeves rubbing against them uncomfortably, making me similarly eager to see myself from that point of view.

I close my eyes. Err, I close the eyes that are on my arms.

I take a deep breath. In. Out.

Calm down. Peace.

Looking through them appears to have an effect on my mental state.

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

I am hereby decisively labeling them Orbs of Vanity and I am going to be similarly decisive in ignoring them.

Speaking of eyes, these ones on my face, the crystals are... still there, but they are no longer agonizing, and I can see through them! Small victories!

My hair is... deeply distracting in its beauty, even despite its currently messy state. I tear my eyes away from it.

I stick my tongue out and realize it is no longer impeding my breathing. My teeth no longer dig into it, my gums, or my lips either.

It seems as if my body has accepted the corruption and truly incorporated it into myself. My design has been... streamlined, for lack of a better word.

By now, a thin sheen of Miasma coats my body. And it is MY Miasma. It represents everything about me, every last bit of cruelty and malice I have ever felt. Any vanity and unhealthy adoration of myself meshes with my unrelenting hate of my body. Most important of all, though, is that all of these concepts are summarized in the concepts of the Forsaken Jester, the Happy Bard, and the Noble of Paranoia.

My soul has extended itself beyond my vessel, the sign of a true Mage, showing its monstrous self for all to sense it. The bands where my crystal once blocked my vision now reveal the Miasma I produce.

It is just as mind-bending as The King’s.

There is no doubt in my mind that this... “improvement,” is from consuming the Magical Girl flesh.

I settle back into my unnatural gait, before realizing that it was as easy as walking. Bone and muscle rearranged in less than a second and soon I was scampering around the room and getting under foot of the servants like a huge spider.

I could actually feel a strong breeze simply from how fast I was going.

It was exhilarating, leaping in zig-zag sideways motions around all the servants in motions so decidedly different from humans.

A truly ecstatic laugh bubbled from my laugh as I played with my new body. I will not let yet another dead soul hold me back. She will simply join the retinue of friends that I will join someday.

BUT NOW IS NOT THAT DAY!

“WHOOHOO!”

A couple of servants frantically chased after me, mopping up the bloody palm-prints I left behind on the pristine floor.

My brass hands clanged against the floor as my limbs stuck out at wrong angles, my arms and legs moving with sporadic explosive bursts of speed. My hair trailed behind me in a wild banner.

After a while, the head servant stops me in my tracks, hands outstretched to take me to a bath.

She’ll have to try hard if she wants to get me.

“CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!”

So saying, I hurtle away from her, ducking in between the Anathemas’ legs and weaving through the screaming servants supporting the table.

My hands and legs motor around in sickening fashion, a massive delighted grin on my face, extending on an neck that I stretch out like a periscope.

My tongue lolls out to cool myself down and my Orbs of Vanity look all around at me for incoming bath-givers.

We play for an entire afternoon.

The King watches me from his throne, his head supported on his fist, smiling and so endeared with me.

Finally, she manages to grab me, hoisting me up. My limbs and neck go right back to normal and I’m carried like a small dog to the baths, my limbs folding against my body like wings against a bird’s body.

I am vigorously scrubbed down.

Over dinner, we “talk” through images communicated over the threads about how he was going to put the Magic of the Magical Girl to use. What he was going to improve about himself and the throne, and we have a little fun discussing law. His thought process was incredibly alien, which certainly made this method particularly difficult, but it was pretty fun.

Finally, the head maid, who signed out that her name was Marie, took me to my crystal bed, which reached out its grasping tentacles and brought me to its comfy sheets, enveloping me like a curled-up doggy. I ignored the glowing blue screen that has been hovering in my face for the entire day since eating that Magical Girl.

I curled up, gripping my pants in a fetal position.

That Magical Girl, as I have been putting it, was my friend. She is Betsie, my friend, no matter how much I try to lie to myself.

Why does this one hurt so much? So many have left me.

Wilbur and Helix... their deaths hurt, but not as much.

Is it because she may have still managed to like me as I am?

She was that kind of person. Just... so nice.

She didn’t deserve to die.

*sobs*

I wipe my face of tears and snot, and rock myself back and forth.

I...

OH MY GOD I AM SO AWFUL. I ate her.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!

I made the choice... and I was rewarded for it.

That... almost transcendent experience. It was pleasure like I have never known.

I retch uncontrollably over the side of my bed, desperately trying to evacuate my stomach, as if that would solve anything.

“AAAAHHHHHHHHH” I scream.

I slam my fist into the floor with brutal misery.