Chapter 17 - Through Pain, Memories

Kreacher was suffering.

May could see it so clearly in their amphibian eyes that her anger was washed away almost entirely – like blood under heavy rain. Alis, friendly and careful, cradled the frog under her bosom after the creature gave its first pained grunt.

The doll noticed the tracks on the dust accumulated on the floor, marks of the hopping frog that went forwards, and – after whatever happened that set off that trap – backwards.

Kreacher had tried to return. And from the way a metallic bolt was stuck to their long tongue, May felt it was safe to assume they had tried to block whatever had happened.

It just didn’t work out.

Pulling the bolt from the white and long tongue of the frog, Alis asked for clarification, but the creature was too mad with pain for any response besides an ear-piercing croak.

“What is… what is going on, Kreacher? Hey, Kreacher, talk to me. Please!”

The Priestess was beginning to tear up. And the liquid that came out of her empty sockets was black as ink, trailing down her cheeks and staining the scarf she wore.

She turned to the doll, and it was impressive how much emotion could be conveyed without eyes to reveal them.

“May… what’s going on with them?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

The frog continues their agonized sounds, shaking and spasming on Bel-Alis’s hand as if having a seizure. The white tongue hung loosely on the side of the mouth, eyes darting left to right, up to down as it trailed invisible stimuli.

Or, perhaps, something that just wasn’t here.

The realization came with the memory of what had happened previously to The Brimming Plaza’s explosion. Kreacher’s sudden silence and rage as the human woman the three of them had fought killed one of their bodies.

“It’s the others. The other bodies. They are dying.”

“What?”

Alis managed to croak out, but her ears felt stuffed with tears. She now had Kreacher’s body so close to her chest that May feared she would crush them.

But the doll needed her to focus. So May approached and stung Bel-Alis with one of her claws. Lightly. Just enough to draw the gray blood that circulated inside the drow woman’s veins.

“Alis. The lizard and the pigeon. Kreacher can feel the pain of the other bodies – and the bats are killing them. That’s why they’re so unresponsive.”

“Oh. Oh no. By the Endless Abyss. What are we going to do, May?”

The woman shook with tears, mostly because Bel-Alis and May knew an awful detail about Quartzalite Bats. Both had studied the bestiary – to different degrees, yes, but still deeply enough to know that those Arcane Creatures enjoyed playing with their food.

A sadistic kind of slow dismemberment as they pulled different sides of their prey with their talons, ripping limbs from torsos with their powerful wings – or, at other times, scratching a creature until flesh and muscle peeled off their bones.

They were animals, yes – weak ones even, the kind that most adventurers would have no problem fighting against if they were properly equipped – but they had all the personality and viciousness one would expect from a jagged stone of some value. All pride and maliciousness.

The girl’s eyes landed on the frog and she understood more of what people called pity.

When they had fought that… extremist – as Bel-Alis had called her – May had seen Kreacher lose a few bodies; and the price was them staying out of combat for too long as their consciousness waned.

Now? The sight of the annoying pest suffering like this made her feel a cold sadness. Part of her expected some delight, but even if Kreacher’s comments sometimes stung, May didn’t think she had ever truly seen him as an enemy.

Or someone worthy of this suffering. And wasn’t that a surprising feeling?

Still, she was Control incarnate. And this was a wrench in her plans, and therefore, an annoyance. Just… not directed at the suffering creature, but at the circumstances May had found herself and her associates in.

A division that might not show up in her actions in the end. It was difficult for her to engage in the subtlety of confirming what exactly had rustled her feathers, but she made a mental note to try and not be so angry at Kreacher.

Though if you had made such an accident you would crucify yourself, wouldn’t you? For it meant you were unworthy of Hector and that is the truth you don’t want to face, isn’t it? All this effort just for someone to tell you: “You are worthy May!”, “You are loved, May!” when you know you are nothing but a useless doll.

The thought came and waned, that same voice. Her own voice, whispering from her shoulder like a Mage’s familiar. It rattled her to her core, and for a moment she wanted to crumple and fold and cry.

But Control took the reign. Stitched those emotions together and allowed May to swallow them in a single gulp. It hurt and it stung, sour and viscous like old milk, but she did finish it.

The second time this had happened. And now, with the lengthier sentences, May could tell it didn’t come from her usual half-hallucinatory whispers. It lacked their odd cadence.

This was something else… something wrong that was trying to worm into her mind.

Bel-Alis watched the young girl freeze up, and those usually uncaring eyes widened with such hurt that the Priestess immediately began to worry. But no sooner had that foreign emotion appeared, it vanished.

May turned to her, eyes flaming with anger, and spoke curtly. She feared snapping at the crying woman if she talked too much.

“We will continue walking. Try to find one of the rooms with the Silica Moles. They tend to be more docile if the bestiary is still to be trusted.”

The girl opened her backpack and produced one of the maps, signaling to Bel-Alis to point where exactly they would find a safe spot to rest. May would lead them somewhere where they could wait for Kreacher’s other bodies to die.

As gruesome as that sounded.

In fact, she was already half-inclined to order the frog to bash their other heads against a stone and expedite the suffering, but… if Kreacher was still fighting, that meant fewer Bats for them to deal with when they returned.

Cold. Merciless. Brutal.

“Silence you. Just because you found the courage to comment on things doesn’t mean I’ll let you do it for free. Measure your words.”

Her decision was made. And with Bel-Alis’s pointing to one of the rooms beyond the corridor, May began to guide them forward – Kreacher’s grunts serving as the complimentary sound to the awful screeching she could still hear from the hastily risen earth wall Bel-Alis had conjured.

Only to herself, May dearly wished she would find an enemy to fight before she reached the room.

The living doll was feeling particularly murderous.

***

Leading the entourage, May chose to go straight towards the third room of her map. Not the second – as that one had its own population of Quarzalite Bats and, unlike the ones in the first room, these were probably very much awake.

The doll was betting on the not-so-distant ruckus as the cause. Plus, with Kreacher groaning as they were, May was unwilling to risk it – even if Alis assured her [Field of Silence] would be more than enough for them to take the usual routes.

The first attack on her psyche happened when May reached the place where Kreacher’s accident happened. The place was even marked on her map, but apparently, Kreacher was the one to not do their most important homework properly.

The stone corridor, embezzled with crystals and those flickering purple-flamed torches, turned to a sharp left at its ending. A design common to the Mausoleum’s floors, which preferred sharp angles over gradual inclinations.

In this place, a thin pressure plate extended for the entire width of the corridor – an almost imperceptible elevation to the stone floor, perfectly camouflaged with the gray material. Besides that, on the corner wall facing the now closed entrance to the corridor, were two small holes, carved deeply into the stone.

Bolt dispensers.

May could only assume Kreacher had, quite unfortunately, pressed the plate and sent the bolt flying into one of the crystal veils – causing that nightmarish event in the first room.

Although… the distance the bolt covered was extraordinary. May made a wild, amateurish estimation and she betted on something more esoteric being involved. So carefully, very carefully – while Bel-Alis stayed behind and tried to nurse Kreacher back into proper health – May studied the dispensers.

And there they were. Runes. Etched with mad precision into the dispenser’s exit. A ring of arcane power that May lacked the education to comprehend.

The young girl led her eyes to the Priestess and sighed. She’d tell Bel-Alis about it when they returned. Now, it was for the best if the woman kept her focus on Kreacher’s care.

Using them like tools. You’re no different than the Parent, are you? When they knew you had no more value to Hector they threw you away. Just like Alis will do when she finishes studying you. Or Kreacher would have done it a hundred times already. Or how Hector will discard you himself when he sees the useless abomination you are.

May took a step back, dangerously close to the pressure plate. Not even her fairly developed ability to ignore bodiless voices proved enough at this attack – they had hit a memory she had shoveled down, down, down into her mind.

The box shook in the corner, and the whispers feared in languages unknown.

The Parent took her by the arms from a crying Hector, Lady Sbertha holding his shoulders down as the prince fought against the old matriarch. But around her, to be indecorous was to be paralyzed.

She had an Ability for that: [Around Me, Rudeness Has No Place].

A powerful one. Perhaps the Gifted woman’s most powerful one. When you could make Dragons freeze when they breached etiquette with their magnanimity, people usually began to take you seriously.

Or so the stories went.

“It’s about time you grew up, Hector. A prince has no business playing with dolls when there is an entire Queendom to assist.”

“But… mother, please. May is my friend!”

The Parent took her sword, eyes cold as she stared at the doll. Today was a bad day. Hector shook at the sight of the blade, babbling so incomprehensibly that his scarred maid feared he would bite his tongue.

“Do you not see it, son? For you to step forth into your responsibilities is a must. Your sisters are already fighting for their people while you stay cooped up within these walls. This ends today. And the new beginning comes with a lesson.”

The Parent approached one of the windows, high, high into one the castle’s towers. Down below, May still remembered the smell of the roses, petals larger than a child and of a pristine white that would make any noblewoman's teeth jealous.

“All that holds you back, must be discarded.”

And then, May heard the wind and the screams as she fell into the thorns.

The memory ended abruptly as May’s head lolled back as if struck. Dizzy, the girl almost let her true body slip from her hands before reaffirming her grip on the porcelain arms.

May did not need any more of this… interference, but as she kept on guiding a sleeping Kreacher and a distracted Bel-Alis, she knew they would come.

The Priestess, in the meantime, bit her lower lip as she diverted her attention to the girl and the fleeting emotions on her face. She pulled Kreacher’s sleeping form close to her chest and followed, silently, as May guided them through the corridor and its traps.

***

“It should be around here. Check it again.”

We/I. Right. Three. Steps. Left.

May followed the guidelines from the whispers. The doll had allowed them to assist her after they noticed her most recent conundrum.

And that was her lack of sufficient arms. If on one she held her true body, and on the other an open map, how was she supposed to feel the slight indentation that could grant access to the secret tunnel?

The answer was: she couldn’t. If an enemy came up to May while she carried all those things, the least it could happen is that the sound of her letting everything fall to the floor would attract more of them.

So, May compromised. After the voices promised to assist her properly and she ensured the truth with threats of bodily harm.

Of course. Some guarantees had to be made.

Still, she couldn’t deny that there was a certain satisfaction in watching the voices slowly return to their place beneath her. May, for all that she had fought and attempted to annihilate them, silently admitted she might miss them if they were gone.

Which was… odd. And she did consider it being something like a spell on her mind, binding the two of them together through this building affection, but no. Watching Alis take care of Kreacher like that assured her this might just be the beginning of affection.

Not in the same way Priestess and the mushroom shared theirs, of course. But still, a kind of partnership May would feel sad if it ended.

Well… May would feel sad after she killed them all. But she would feel sad.

Three steps to the left later, May finally felt her fingers stop at the lower area of the wall. It was subtle, less than a centimeter in difference, but when all the architecture was as smooth as crystal, it became glaringly obvious.

Although if you didn’t have the ability to see in the dark like her, things might get a little complicated. The purple-flickering flames left shadows in the same proportion that they produced light – and with their constant flickering over that red base, it got difficult to notice details.

Or the lack of them. Because, if there was something May had expected to find here and she hadn’t, were the drawings. Those carvings that were etched into every single one of the Inner City’s buildings, telling stories or painting scenes and different characters.

All that art was absent. Not scraped off the walls – they never even existed.

As May pressed down on the wall, hearing a part of it move beside her in a way that was not so different from Alis’s [Chapel]’s entrance, she broke the silence with the Priestess.

“Where are the carvings?”

The woman, distracted as she was, raised her face from the floor to face May. The doll waited for a response.

“... Sorry, what – what did you say, May?”

“The carvings? Like those in the Inner City? There are none here.”

For a moment, Alis looked confused by the question. Distant, even. But soon enough the meaning of the words dawned on her.

May couldn’t lie to herself – the time it took worried her, but the distraction was better than nothing. Sometimes, you just have to take your mind off of your feelings.

And this was proving to be a necessity for both of them

“Oh. Uhm, Yugo built the dungeon, but there’s no mention of him working on the more… artistic parts of the design. Part of it was made by the White Queen. She was an architect, you see, and a sculptor. Her work was what influenced the first settlers to make the carvings.”

May listened, attentively, as Bel-Alis lost herself to the topic. It was easy to do so, and with the silence and – if the map was correct – safety of this more secretive passage.

“Why didn’t he like it? I’d have thought making a dungeon required a more artistic touch.”

“Oh. He had it. The artistic touch I mean. Yugo was known for being an amazing diviner, yes, but also for his studies in anatomy. Some reports say that’s how he and the White Queen got so close – before he made the Exodus’s prophecy.”

The Priestess licked her lips and found them parched. With some effort, she pulled her waterskin and took a few sips of the liquid.

“She was a sculptor and architect. He knew how to create dungeons. They ended up complimenting each other in many ways.”

“Like a queen and a servant?”

“Uhm… More like two scholars of parallel areas. Yes, she was his queen, but he was also one of the most influential advisors in her court. Though there are fewer recollections of the days after the proper birth of Asden than there are of the Exodus.”

May grunted in understanding, wordlessly, before stopping with a sudden curiosity. She took a deep breath, readied herself for the mocking, and asked.

“How do you know so much?”

The Priestess froze and… smiled. Tenderly. The past days and the events had made Bel-Alis forget that, for all that May talked and – sometimes – acted like an adult, she was only six months old.

Just like Kreacher. They were so young. Too young, perhaps.

“I’ve been studying my entire life, May. I began my lessons when I was three and only left the lyceum when I was eighteen. That’s fifteen years of doing nothing but studying.”

“Didn’t you get bored? I… like knowing things, but staying put and reading gets dull after a while.”

Scoffing softly, Alis thought to herself that she really shouldn’t have expected anything else. May acted like Kreacher did before they knew their letters.

“It gets way easier to study when you get better at reading, May. And you’re doing well by the way. For someone that’s self-taught, you’re already leagues more advanced than anyone could expect.”

The young girl shrunk and hugged the doll close to her chest. May refused to turn around and face Alis, but she did slow her pace down.

Just a little.

“Thanks… I guess.”

“It's the truth. And answering your question… sometimes. Uhm, there were days at the lyceum that got pretty boring. And it’s not like I enjoyed all of our subjects. I liked history and magical lessons. But I hated studying the Free Tongue, or mathematics or – darkness forbid – alchemy.”

Alis shivered at the memory of glass wares and the nagging over “precise measuring and proper safety procedures”. They were never her forte.

“So you were a bad student?”

May asked, almost impulsively, and Bel-Alis puffed up her chest in pride.

“Much the opposite, May. I was one of the best. Just because I didn’t like the subjects, doesn’t mean I didn’t study them.”

“Huh. I get it, I think. I don’t always like Kreacher, but I still help them – kinda like that?”

The Priestess sighed and thought over if it was worth it to give a better metaphor to the girl, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. It would be best if May maintained her own examples.

“If it makes you understand, then yes.”

Silence reigned between the two of them for a minute, the passage curving slightly as the sound of the Bats in the second room penetrated the solid wall separating the two areas – their screeches and the music of water falling to the floor. Muffled, of course, but still audible.

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

Summoning all her bravery, May asked something that had been nagging her ever since Alis’s first answer.

“Could you… tell me what a lyceum is?”

The words echoed for a while, almost mockingly along with the Quartzalite Bats’ screeches. May pressed onwards, not knowing if her almost silent question had been heard.

“Ah, of course. You need to keep asking me these things, May. I… tend to think people know the same things I do – an old problem of mine. Well, a lyceum is a place where the young go to learn, basically. Where I come from we had different professors that taught us different things each year.”

The Priestess reminisced with a slight smile on her face, cradling Kreacher close to her chest and speaking in an almost whisper. Like a lullaby.

“We lived there, all fifteen of us. We could go out and see our parents every seven days, but during the others, we studied. I… don’t remember the first years, but I know they taught us basic things – how to read, how to write, how to tie our shoes. When we were six they began with proper lessons, as the professors called it. We began to have tests and scores and rankings. By the time I was twelve, there were only eight of us left.”

“What happened to the others?”

“They failed. In one way or another, they were not good enough for the standards of the education they were provided.”

Alis spoke with a degree of vitriol May had never heard from the Priestess before, and her presence pulsed with faith for a moment. The elongated shadows returned to their usual proportions as the drow woman took a deep breath.

But the darkness in her face was distant now. Solemn and sad.

“When I was fourteen, they introduced the thesis. There were only six of us in our class now – one became Boundless and chose to leave, while the other simply slipped in one of their grades – and I had already frozen myself in second place in the ranking for five long years. The first place, the golden medal, belonged and had always belonged to a boy: Ine-Lirem.”

There was such pity in her voice that May wished to stop and listen to Bel-Alis. This was a tale that deserved her attention, she thought. It was personal, coming from a place of vulnerability only the possible loss of a friend had opened in the Priestess’s chest.

So May stopped. When the muffled sound of screeching could no longer be heard, the living doll forced that murderous need she would maybe meet in the third room and listened for a few minutes.

Distracted as she was now, Alis barely noticed their lack of advancement.

“He was disgustingly perfect – in everything. Boundless from birth. My professors praised him all the time. A model for all students. A mind only found every hundred years. A prodigy. He even became a Deacon earlier than the rest of us…”

“Something happened to him didn’t it? Something… bad.”

The drow woman nodded, and Alis could almost see her colleague’s face. The gray skin, the empty sockets where his eyes should have been. They were never friends, but Lirem had always been kind.

“At the time I thought the thesis would be what propelled me to first place. I even found a theme that suited me perfectly: Ancient Civilizations of Southern Ethios. Did you know the area below the Great Hunt has one of the oldest recordings of occupation? Indeed. Even Professor Sibila, who guided me through the thesis, thought it was a good area to study.”

“And it was perfect May. I just needed to become a Deaconess and all would go smoothly – I’d deliver my thesis and the knowledge would help me achieve the second Step maybe even sooner than Lirem. A single move and multiple outcomes.”

Bel-Alis gave up and sat. Her back ached from spending so much time hunched over, and if she were to finish the story, better she do it comfortably.

“Lirem, however, had other plans. He chose to study our God. The Tunnel of No End, itself. Not a new area by any means, but there was always more to discover. He even managed to have the Dean as his advisor, an old man far enough on his Path that he was a treasure trove of information. Everyone thought Lirem could do it – he would make the entire Republic proud, the Council of Sages itself would commend him for his work, and he might even find a better way to commune with the Endless Abyss.”

“It didn’t work.”

“No. It did not. He was only fourteen. A child. A Deacon. And they were pushing him to study something that only our greatest masters might understand. It isn’t the correct emotion you know? The Master in the Dark is about trust, not understanding.”

Bel-Alis didn’t want to linger on the story. It rattled her in a way few things did. But… she looked at May and her curious eyes, one of the few expressions the girl ever made, and decided not to cut the story short.

So she skipped a few details.

“The first year was the hardest for him. The others were advancing well into their thesis and even I had scheduled to come to Ethios for a couple of months. Lirem, however, was unable to… do anything. I think the biggest problem was that he told people about what he was studying. It built these expectations he was unable to meet. He was failing – and Lirem had never done that before.”

“By the time I returned, he had already derailed completely. Days stuck inside the library, searching our oldest tomes and paying the price with mind and sanity, only for these sessions to end with him getting berated by the Dean for lack of advancements. He didn’t eat – he didn’t sleep. At the end of the year he was much like a corpse walking the halls.”

The emaciated corpse, walking out of the library, blood caking his nostrils and bags so heavy under his eyes the skin looked bruised. At times, in the few classes they still had together, Alis heard him mumbling over pages and pages of scrambled notes – trying to connect a puzzle that no one should glimpse at.

“After one long session of complaints from the Dean, the other professors turned on Lirem as well. Cursed parasites. They saw him quickly losing favorability and thought it was over for the golden boy of the lyceum. A boy many of them had been teaching for years, May.”

“He snapped.”

“Ha. Like taught rope. But the world is a cruel place and… he found something. A last, desperate attempt to prove himself…”

She could still smell the iron in the air. Thick blood over the multiple drawings on one of the lyceum’s classrooms. The butchered corpses, the bleeding ones that still breathed… and the fire. Purging that sinful attempt.

“It didn’t work. Ine-Lirem died. And after that, I… couldn’t stay. So I left. Came back to Ethios and gave up on my thesis – though I did restart it here, after Cas-Inar convinced me, as a way of becoming a Priestess. And that’s it.”

May nodded. She didn’t know what else to do. The story was… darker than the ones she was used to, but awfully fitting with Bel-Alis’s personality somehow. It wasn’t hard to imagine a young, studious version of Alis scampering about while carrying loads of books.

The Priestess, meanwhile, could barely remember why she began telling the girl about it. It felt good to talk about it to someone – Alis only expected the first listener to be someone closer to her age.

“Learning doesn’t sound so nice anymore.”

Bel-Alis couldn’t help herself. The serious delivery had burst something in her. She guffawed, and then laughed for a minute or two.

May tilted her head, not really understanding, and got up to continue their journey. It never went through her mind to say something else to Alis.

For all that she was a doll, comforting someone wasn’t a skill May was good at.

***

It took them only a few more minutes to reach the third floor. Using the not-so-secret passage to go around the second had been a better decision than May expected, giving respite enough for all of them to at least recover mentally and continue their exploration.

Well, those that were awake. Kreacher still slept on Bel-Alis’s hand, snoring softly as a persistent bubble of mucus expanded and retracted from their amphibious nostrils with every breath.

May was almost definitely certain they had made that possible on purpose.

Nevertheless, the path ended in another solid wall which May had to press another indentation to open. A small hassle she overcame with the – quite unnecessary – constant commentary of the whispers.

Exiting through the right side of the third room, the open space the trio entered was larger than the first one. Plainer, though. Here, there were none of the incredible crystal veils, but only more of the large pillars that, this time, were made of colorful and vibrating crystals.

Moss grew abundantly over the floor, hiding the small openings on the stone where the Silica Moles made their tunnels. There was, however, none of that First Grade type.

The Mirror Moss was the main source of food for the Silica Moles. Which in turn, were one of the more common sources of sustenance to the Quartzalite Bats – along with the Mirror Moss to some lesser degree.

It was interesting to understand that the bats May first met were as alive as any other animal. Which meant they traveled through the corridors of the dungeon to hunt and feast just like any other predator.

Taking a step forward, May noticed some of the Moles hiding from her. Their blind head, covered in the glass shards that gave them their name, appeared from the ground and quickly dove back into the tunnels they occupied. From between the reflective shards of the Moss, what impressed May the most was the color of their short fur.

Alabaster white. Or that’s what it was supposed to look like under all the grit from their constant digging. Nevertheless, their glass crown coupled with the long teeth and claws on their forelimbs made these creatures the size of small dogs far from cute.

Still, the scared and shy presence of the creatures alongside the resurgence of the purple-flamed torches – which had been absent during their walk through the secret passage – almost brought a smile to May’s lips. Were it not for the need to watch her steps for the presence of the pitfalls, she might even call this area a peaceful hunting ground.

She was seriously considering going forward and hunting the moles by herself when Bel-Alis broke the silence.

“I think I’m going to sit for a little while, May. Wait for Kreacher to wake up.”

The doll nodded – though her eyes kept on diverting to the holes filled with prey. She was hungry now as well. More and more problems.

“I want to eat them. There’s no risk of poisoning, is there?”

“No. Go for it, actually. They breed way too much. Just be careful with the glass. Oh, and bring one of them to harvest their blood. Gods, I almost forgot about that.”

With the confirmation and warning, May let Kreacher and Bel-Alis behind, the duo leaning on the wall and waiting for the frog to recuperate. The doll even left her original body with the Priestess, leaning her porcelain head on the wall as if she was merely dozing off to sleep.

And then, it was time. Finally, May would hear the screams of her prey.

***

The first five minutes were… not the carnage May had expected. In fact, it was quite far from that. To the point the doll had not tasted the blood of the Silica Moles once by the time she hit the five-minute mark.

And May had tried. Hard even.

Her plan was simple – shove her hand into one of the occupied holes, guiding herself by the sudden, if somewhat dull, shine of the Moles’ glass crown, and try to grab one of them by the tail before they escaped.

The major problem? The cursed creatures kept fleeing her before she managed to take more than a step towards them, digging themselves more and more tunnels while refilling the old ones – which meant the places they appeared differed all the time. And the Moles dug fast. Faster than May could run to them.

All of that while blind. Imagine if they could see her? May’s back was already hurting from how folded with shame she was – and even after she blocked the pain with the learned capabilities of [Skin Walking], the memory of it still ached – and by the time the unsuccessful hunt became unbearable, she finally began to consider a new approach.

For as much as the chase was satisfying to her, doing it forever was both exhausting and left her even more hungry. And angry. Hangry.

But she was not a doll without tricks. Standing still in what was close to a center area of her new hunting ground, surrounding herself with easily abandoned hideouts, May called for her [Puppeteer’s Strings].

Ten thin strands sprouted from her fingers, black as night. Her Ability fell to the floor and slithered like snakes, looking almost alive were not for the fact they were nothing but thread.

At first, May thought of enacting the same steps with her Abilities – the strands coiling readily over the edge of one of the holes to dive in and bind one of the Moles – but the doll thought better. She was a clever girl, and her Truth didn’t hum with her actions.

Her hunting method brought no resonance. It was a chase simply for the chase.

There was no Control to it.

So May tried something new. An old art that had been on her to-do list of next things to study ever since she opened the books and maps with the layout of the dungeon.

Slowly turning her body, May saw one of the moles blindingly turning towards her – following her movements through senses she didn’t understand. She did not step forward, and the Silica Mole continued still in response.

With a silent command, May sent pairs of her [Strings] into each of the holes surrounding the Mole. The threads slithered slowly and methodically, so light that they barely touched the ground.

Of the five pairs, two met walls of broken stone soon after entering the hidden tunnels – and May ordered them back after feeling the barrier. The other three pairs managed to slither into the holes unimpeded, trying to blindly find the connection to the Silica Mole still staring at May.

One of the pairs met another obstacle on the right tunnels, and May pulled them back after realizing nothing could be done to remove the blockade. Another, advancing from the west, ended up in a tunnel that dove below the one where the Mole was – and ended up cut off for their efforts.

When May retracted them, the [Strings] were significantly shorter – probably another Mole cut them in the intersection, but if the animal did it with their claws or glass crown, May couldn’t tell.

But the last pair, coming from a hole in the southeast, was the one to find it. May could loosely sense where her threads were – much like how she knew the position of her legs without constantly looking at them – and these got close. Closer.

When May felt the [Strings]’s tips mere centimeters away from the Mole, she knew she had done it. It took barely a second for her to order the threads to advance and coil around the mole, raising it from the hole and into open air like the stem of a cursed flower.

The squeaks the animal gave made her squeal in delight. With two of her left fingers serving as anchors for the [Strings], May advanced slowly towards the animal. It was a dirty creature, long, with yellowed nails and chipped teeth – even the odd glass growths that came from its face to the base of its skull were oddly dull and opaque.

Low quality.

And yet, May’s victorious smile was all pride and viciousness. No more would the Mole mock her and make her dive into the floor in search of it. Now it was her trapped prey, and the Control it gave her made May’s Truth hum in delight.

She ordered the threads to squeeze the animal… and stopped when she heard the creak of bones. The poor thing, scared as it was, had already defecated all over its tail as May held them with their belly pointed to the ceiling.

Raising her right claws, the metal gleaming with the simple enchantments Bel-Alis had carved onto them, she put a finger against the creature’s throat. May was ready to gut him from top to bottom – salivating at the prospect of fresh meat hitting her stomach – when the glass crown exploded.

Shards of dull, opaque glass flew from the Silica Mole’s head and left only a bald spot where they had once stood. May’s only luck was that she had positioned herself to the side of the animal, and had escaped the projectiles.

Or so she thought until she tried to take another step. The dull pain made May look down, and the sight of one of the previous shards that occupied the base of the Mole’s skull now lodged into her right foot was what she met.

The discomfort flared for a second before she tweaked her [Skin Walking] and cut off her pain receptors – though her wish was more on the lines of “make the pain vanish”. Nevertheless, by the time she had pulled the small dagger out of her foot and examined the blood coating it, all thoughts of granting a clean death to the animal vanished.

Her gaze sharpened to a point, her eyes aflame with rage. Even the [Strings] holding the Mole in the air tightened themselves against the creature until they cut its breath.

The butchery that ensued would leave the Quartzalite Bats ashamed.

***

May couldn’t tell if she was proud of the violence. She was satisfied by it, yes, but proud was another thing entirely.

Thinking back on it, she did feel the need for revenge against the Silica Mole.

It was her prey – so it should die.

It harmed her – so it should die.

And yet, it was a detached kind of judgment. A verdict that was proposed by wrath and enacted through her own will.

A guilty pleasure? No. It was all pleasure and May rarely felt guilty afterwards. A shameful practice? There was no shame in a successful hunt or trap or chase, only victory.

Then where was the pride? And it clicked in her. She had been looking in the wrong place – there was no pride towards the killing part, as it was as natural as breathing to her and no one felt proud because they inhaled and exhaled air. No, it was the success of it. The ability to hunt and do so successfully, to engage in something as vicious and, quite honestly, barbaric as the relationship between prey and predator and never lose Control while doing so.

To do all that while listening to the enticing appeal to her baser instincts. While listening to that blissful rage she used to respond to the world.

That made her proud. Though… the feeling did have a particularly bloody way of showing its face.

For a moment, the doll wondered if the others would think badly of her for it. But judging by Alis’s lack of reaction as she approached the Priestess – blood coating her metallic claws and clothes, three Silica Moles’ bodies with their throats cut, and another struggling against its bindings – her concerns were probably for nothing.

Here, with these people, the worry of judgment amounted to very little.

Or at least she dearly hoped so, because if Bel-Alis saw what she did to that first Mole… well, maybe even the Priestess would be disturbed.

“Had fun, May? I see you’ve managed to grab one alive.”

The young girl shrugged a little, and the threads holding her prizes in the air wobbled as if following the movement.

“Yeah. It’s nice. Though, did you know their glass crowns can be used as projectiles?”

“I… did not. Huh. I don’t think the adventurers allowed them to live long enough for us to see that. Though it should be on the bestiary. I blame lazy writers for that. Did you get hurt?”

May wiggled her toes around, and was it not for the open cut on her foot, she’d consider herself entirely hale.

“No. Just a scratch. That’s why I’d do the whole bleeding thing quickly if I were you – their glass can hurt quite a bit.”

“Oh, all right then. Let me grab a vial and… well, you cut it.”

The Priestess pulled one of the glass vials from her bag and pulled the cork off, releasing the soft pop that marked it as well sealed. As Bel-Alis adjusted the vial beneath the Silica Mole – while keeping her distance from the attack line of shooting glass – May ordered the threads to strangle the animal.

Keeping it suffocating, but alive, the girl was quick to pass her sharp claws through its neck, releasing the pulsing blood in a small fountain. Alis made a small sound of disgust as the liquid fell onto her hands before she adjusted the vial's position, but seemed satisfied when it got filled enough.

As the animal finished dying, May sat down with her body and tried to lean her head against the wall in a way that felt the most comfortable. As soon as she finished adjusting her position – nitpicking the way her muscles would fall when she slept – the doll released her [Skin Walking].

A stray watcher might think there would be a certain dissonance between the bodies. Or even a moment of dissociation, but the truth was that May never felt the change after the first time. It was smooth and natural, like changing your clothes.

And even if her porcelain body was definitely the more comfortable one, it did not mean the young girl’s body wasn't as well. In fact, it led May to question if it was just the Ability or the fact she considered both as truly her own that helped the process. Maybe both?

Nevertheless, her change of bodies also meant the loss of her previously cast [Puppeteer’s Strings], which was an important detail to know. So when the bodies fell to the floor as the threads turned into wisps of mana, May began to move her original body once more.

The dress she wore, a present from the Brimming Plaza and their manager, was a light blue thing filled with the ruffles and frills she only saw the human ladies wearing. It was pretty, it was comfortable and it let May look as cute as she had ever wanted to look while completely obliterating her enemies.

Although, there was a problem. May looked down – then at the bleeding corpses – then down again, and for a moment she dearly wished for a fork and knife. Or at least a cleaver. The idea of getting her dress dirty appalled her greatly.

Returning to her previous spot, annoyed and hungry, May quickly traded bodies once again – bearing the expenditure of mana that left her Gift feeling a little hollow – and proceeded to make quick work of the bodies with her claws. For a moment, she even considered returning for the already dismembered Mole, but… May had spread the pieces quite thoroughly.

Nevertheless, the process was crude, bloody – and with some assistance from Bel-Alis – it took more than ten minutes for May to strip the legs from the torso and try, with meager success, to remove parts of the abdomen. Most of it had to be discarded after she nicked the intestines and the foul juices poisoned the meat, but at least she had a meal.

Rubbing her human hands on the stone floor in an attempt to clean them, May proceeded to finally deactivate her Ability and let herself have a good meal of proper, still bleeding and contracting, meat.

That was, of course, the moment Kreacher chose to finally wake up from their trauma-induced coma.

May froze as she brought a thighbone to her mouth and promptly hid her hard-earned meat behind her back.

She was, most definitely, not going to share her hunt with the pest.

***

Kreacher tasted despair on their white tongue. They had been lucky. If their kitten body had been around the Faithful to the Mourning Damsel at the time their other ones had died… things could have gotten rough.

They shuddered at the thought of what someone so specialized in establishing connections based on suffering could do against a network like theirs. If a single glimpse at the Divine Rune ended up requiring three bodies constantly spinning Blight to fight it, a proper attack could very well be Kreacher’s doom.

Yet… they had persevered. And the fight had made them stronger for all that it had hurt like the Hells. Kreacher could feel it in their Truth – that deep cave, illuminated by green lanterns, where their Abilities grew like mushrooms – and in their Core how much more energy they now had to wish for new Abilities.

The Gift keeps on giving, after all – and it would not let Kreacher’s sacrifice happen without a recompense.

But that was for later, when necessity demanded it. For now, they would entertain themselves with their new Ability – one that belonged to a class of them Kreacher had not yet seen.

Their amphibious and feline eyes opened simultaneously, that link shared by the pigeon and iguana being an ugly cut when they tried to see it. The stumps would heal, but Kreacher did not need them hale for their infestation.

“Kreacher! Blessed Dark, are you all right?”

Alis’s shaking voice reached their ears with obvious concern. The frog managed to click its white tongue, feeling that the hole where the bolt struck had already been patched with new mycelium.

“Could’ve been better. Not gonna lie, it hurt like the Hells, but it’s over now. Though… we wouldn’t count on those bodies.”

The peace with which Kreacher talked about the experience would alarm most listeners, but when there was little loss to the process and their prolonged death ended up being the cause for many of their enemies demise, it did become a lot more bearable. Though the pain was still awful to deal with.

The Priestess nodded, sighing with relief as she kept on petting their slick skin. From behind her, however, came another voice – who silently observed while swallowing what seemed like large parts of meat.

The doll narrowed her blue eyes, the mechanical eyelids under May’s control. Accusation emanated out of her like spores, seeking to cling onto Kreacher’s rubbery skin.

“You caused that. Why?”

Jumping out of Bel-Alis’s lap, Kreacher barely managed to find their balance. Their Truth felt spent, even if full of untapped energy – and that made Kreacher more tired than the whole dying thing.

That and the sudden need for sustenance. Kreacher hadn’t realized how hungry they were until the body's instincts turned their ugly head and implanted the sudden craving for insects inside their infested brain.

“We did not. It was an accident.”

The frog sighed, bulging her neck before deflating. Kreacher jumped closer to the doll and watched her porcelain lips curl downwards in disgust.

They… hadn’t actually remembered her aversion to the only body they still had, but it would work for their purpose. Still, her doubt was clear for all to see – though only through the way May crossed her arms.

“We speak the truth. We have been here before, May. So yes, it was an accident, and one not of our making. It was… the floor.”

The doll, almost believing the frog’s argument, scoffed at the revelation. Then May remembered her self-promise of not being so angry. Kreacher had already gone to the Hells and back, and she refused to be so petty.

“The floor? You almost got me and Alis killed. You died. Twice!”

“And yet we speak the truth. The corridor… we don’t know how to explain it. It just shook. Entirely. Like, someone moving their arm or something.”

May was about to respond when Bel-Alis interfered. Space was part of her God’s domain – a concept that rested at the Unseen Eye’s core – and even if she wasn’t far enough on her Path to view that distinct truth, Alis was still a daughter of Mei-Anara. And no one messed more with space than her kind did.

Well… her kind and the Elves.

“Hold on, May. What do you mean by it shook, Kreacher? Was it just the floor or, like, the entire corridor dislocated?”

“The entire corridor. We hit the ceiling and then fell back onto the floor, and then we touched the trap’s mechanism. We even tried to stop it, swear on our many tails, but we didn’t manage to. Not before it fucking shook again.”

The Priestess thought, silently, and then exhaled her breath. Bel-Alis’s dark eye sockets overflowed with magic as she remembered more of her lessons.

They were distant, old classes she attended even before she began working on her thesis. But History was her domain, and Alis was merely delving on her own.

And then… there it was. A question from one of her colleagues – and the answer from her professor that mentioned a name. Strix’milan, or, The Maw of Strix.

A natural dungeon birthed within the blistering sands of Asseris’s desert. One that developed too closely to the Collapsing Dunes and ended up changed by Bel-Alis’s Patron’s energy. A change to their Core.

“Well, first and foremost, Kreacher. Mind your language. Secondly… we might be utterly fucked.”

May heard the Priestess and felt the flecks of meat stuck between her sharp teeth souring. In her mind, a single concern sprouted, one that almost made her transform into her more bestial form right then and there. And it didn’t even come from the harmful voice inside she kept on hearing.

She’d have to change her plans. Again.