††† Siegfried †††

"Are you going to strip now, or will you hop in with those leather pants?" Eurydike teased.

Pulled out of his thoughts, Siegfried made a show of confidently taking off the rest of his clothes. Shyness was never a trait of his character, and he could play that game as well. He stepped into the bathtub, goosebumps forming as his muscles slowly relaxed a fraction in the warm water.

"Mhm, just lean back and let me take care of you today," the provoking blonde stated with amusement while walking behind the tub. Sieg just wanted to reply that she could join him when he felt a set of delicate fingers sprawl around his shoulders and start to massage them. This time he couldn't suppress a slight moan as he closed his eyes. His muscles were tense like iron from the past day, and the woman clearly knew what she was doing.

A sudden flashback forced itself into his mind. Recollections of unbearable pain as his body hung suspended from two meathooks. The face of a young woman with fiery red hair across from him. And the low, scratchy voice of the disfigured, hooded figure next to her.

How long will you be able to bear it before your spirit breaks?

Sieg fought to keep his breathing even. He’d been free of that nightmare for over a year now. Why now of all times?

"Hey, relax a bit, young man. Put your worries to rest for a moment."

"I know. I'm okay, Eurydike."

"No, you are not, Siegfried. After everything that happened in the past days and the resulting uncertainty of the future, you cannot be okay. Even if your body is already recovering, you haven't let your mind loosen up at all," the perceptive shapeshifter declared.

And she was right. The stress must have conjured up that flashback. Accepting that insight, he gradually let himself go and directed his full attention to her tender ministrations. He closed his eyes and revelled in the feeling of weightlessness in the warm water and the relief of his muscles whenever Eurydike found a knot and loosened it. When she moved to his pectoral muscles, the tightness in his chest slowly lessened under her magic hands.

Still, he couldn’t get the cursed images out of his mind, and every thought of intimacy vanished.

Fortunately, Eurydike seemed to read the mood and contented herself with giving him the best massage he ever had.

"Eurydike, we're home," a smooth baritone announced an hour later.

Fully clothed again, Siegfried and Eurydike went to the main room to welcome the arrivals. They found Tyler, the wiry guy who helped bring Sieg into the infirmary and another woman Sieg did not know yet.

"How by the goddess' fat arse are you already walking around? You were half dead just yesterday!" Tyler asked Siegfried.

"Seems like my ability isn't restricted to conjuring blades," Sieg responded with a grin while shaking Tyler's hand.

"Yes, and if he needs to exert his power every other day like that, we need to raid the third sector for food, or he might eat us out of house and home," Eurydike added.

Tyler let out a guffaw, and the woman behind him chuckled lightly. Sieg analysed her appearance with a single glance, taking in all details in the blink of an eye. The only visible part of her skin was her face which seemed to shine dimly as if a thin layer of sweat covered it evenly.

As for most people, the almost inhumanly intense gaze of Sieg's odd-coloured eyes caused the dark-haired woman to flinch instinctively.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Tyler slung an arm around Siegfried's shoulder. "And this beautiful creature is my loving wife, Penelope."

Quickly recovering her posture, Penelope offered a fully gloved hand. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Siegfried." Her attire was a simple but robust working-overall like the cleaning crews wore it, including the leather gloves. "I don’t mean to be rude by leaving the gloves on. It's just that I was a bit more... unfortunate with my evolution," she said with a smile that never reached her eyes and deep-rooted sadness hidden in her undertone.

"Something to do with that subtle film on your skin?" Siegfried asked. Her eyes widened alarmingly at his statement while Tyler shot him a curious glance.

"How are you able to see that? The layer is so thin I can't discern it even though I know it's there. Bone blades, regeneration and now super-sight? What kind of unfair ability is that?" Tyler inquired.

"Nothing of the sort. I just always had excellent eye-sight," Sieg dismissed the question.

"Fortunately, I have not yet met anyone else who could tell my skin is coated in that substance, but you are correct. My skin produces a kind of fluid that eats through most organic matter except my own," Penelope said and lowered her head. "I could never touch any other person after my cursed ability manifested. If I keep it passive, it will just cause a slight burn on human skin, and it can't eat through leather, but I would be easily discovered if I hurt someone. I really thought I could not ever touch any human again."

Her gaze was set on the ground when she told her story, but they lit up again when Tyler held her hand, and a genuine smile graced her lips. "Until I met Tyler."

At Sieg's questioning look, Tyler produced a small knife from his belt and held his empty hand. There was a stretching noise, like a thick rope tightening, and the texture of his palm seemed to shift before he rammed the knife into it. The knife's edge skidded Tyler's palm with a screeching sound like a sword would slide off a metal buckler.

"That's a neat trick," Siegfried commented.

Tyler chuckled, "yeah, and it allows me to touch Penelope's skin without melting myself down. As you can imagine, most of us are keeping clear of relationships with normal humans. The risk is just too high, both for them and us."

Siegfried nodded. "Which brings us to my first question: how did you all manage to stay incognito inside the city so far?"

This time it was Eurydike who answered. "There are not many who actually have a chance of doing so. According to my own knowledge and estimation, at least two thousand people should have changed in the past twenty years. And we only know of thirty-two who survived to this day. Whether there is any chance of hiding inside the city or not depends on which kind of evolution you undergo.

"Most will have permanent visual changes, like the giant you slew years ago. Shapeshifters like Haylee, who can shift between their human and a second form, are quite rare, and I never heard of another human with an ability like mine. Some of those evolutions even make a person more beast than man, including their brain functions. They act solely on instinct, and there is no saving them in any way. Some can flee the city, but only the strongest and most adaptable can survive out there."

"Only thirty-two... no wonder you have not tried to fight back or rile up the citizens by spreading the truth. You have no fighting force, and the Red Brigade would just follow the rumours back to you if you start them," Siegfried spoke his thoughts. "Taking your estimates of two thousand in twenty years into consideration, we won't get anywhere within the next few decades like that." The realisation made him growl in frustration. "Do you have any information about why those... evolutions are happening to us? Is there a pattern?

"No, we don't," Eurydike admitted. "If we want to stop Akali's chosen from slaughtering innocents, we need help from outside."

"Outside?" Siegfried looked at her like she had lost her mind. "You don’t mean outside the sector but outside of the city, right? What kind of help would you search for between monsters and demons?"

Eurydike smirked. "We actually do have first-hand information about the inhabitants of The Wilds. Despite being as dangerous and often aggressive as the priesthood claims, they are neither demons nor monsters. The non-intelligent species seem to be derived from normal animals... at least most of them resemble different species of animals we also breed in the divine cities. And several of the intelligent denizens have vaguely humanoid shapes, intelligence and even speech."

Siegfried dragged a hand over his face. "You’re saying that they might be like us. Originally human and changed to something else. But that must have happened before the city was built."

"This is our assumption, yes. I believe that a widespread instance of the same forced evolutions happened centuries or even millennia ago, and they are the descendants of the aftermath. Why it suddenly started to also occur within the city for the past two decades, I can't say. But killing off innocent children won't stop it. We need to find a way to coexist in the city with normal humans.

"Life in the city, no matter the sector, is peaceful and easy compared to The Wilds. If we can coax a force of evolved individuals from outside, we could affront the current regime."

"Okay, maybe we should contact Bolverk before planning any grand-scale operations," Sieg offered. "He has a lot of experience and knowledge, and I wanted to check on him as soon as possible anyway," he said with a frown.

Eurydike smiled, "I already presumed that he knows about your ability and asked Haylee to keep an eye on him. We will arrange a meeting then."