Chapter 3 - Tapestry

As her consciousness returned, May tried to keep her breath even, although what left her lungs were rasping, agonizing puffs of air. The image and sound of Hector… dying pained her to the core, twisting the central part of her mind in its hard grip, causing the panic to grow in her heart. Slow and fast at the same time, she felt the emotion rise with every exhale and inhale of air, and yet, when it came to fruition, she was still not prepared.

Her body shook against the ground, unconsciously returning to her inanimate form, flesh squelching as it folded under the perfectly mended facade of porcelain. There was no pain, but a sense of relief from not being so stretched that was easily subdued by the panic.

A part of May, conscious of her plight, tried hard to convince her body that fear was unbecoming of a servant. She had started a new avenue toward power and strength, and the Truth of her burned inside her core, begging to reshape reality. Still, she remained an inanimate doll no different from the one in the vision even after rationalizing her situation, to the point where a few minutes later, she was convinced death had come for her and that’s whys she was paralyzed.

The feeling was a cold certainty. Her body had failed her. She had striven for months to try and return to her master’s embrace and she failed. Couldn’t May see she was useless wherever she went? The world laughed at her attempts to be more than a piece of decoration, a toy. She had been discarded twice now, and they were right. Useless. Trash. Unbecoming. Unworthy.

The doll’s mind burned, vision darkening at the edges as she suffocated under the pressure of her terror. The whispers, utterly silent, watched but did not interfere. They would let her die, May’s fears taunted. They’re inside you and not even them want to be with you, cursed thing. How does it feel to be a pariah to your delusions?

The words taunted her, panic peaking while clad in anger. Anger enough to let May 一 for a brief moment, through the haze of her aching, shriveling mind 一 choose to be as spiteful as her Truth could be. If her emotions cannot work with her, then they will be under her.

She let the Gift free of her tight, unaccustomed grip and the Truth soared through reality with the need to Control 一 a brand on the space around her 一 answering May’s desire for dominance over her flailing emotions with odd words.

“[Telepath’s Box]” May spat the words, feeling the fear being forced into a corner of her mind, now enclosed in a tiny, purple sparkling box. Her Gift imprinted on her that it would hold one emotion for now, but the box would grow with her in time.

The injection of knowledge felt as foreign as the sudden wisdom she had been granted inside the… vision? Dream? It didn’t matter. It was still weird but May tried not to take it too deeply.

Success. Survival. Congratulations. The whispers preened inside her mind, voices sweet.

“Not because of you.” May told them, sitting up with a deep breath and testing the movements of her limbs slowly, amazed at the ease her Gift had ceased her terror.

Ah. Ungratefulness. We/I. Helped. They stated, not realizing the mood the visions and subsequent panic had set her in.

Deciding to give up complaining, May chose to focus on other things in the absence of her panic. In fact, the bodies around her served as a grim focus for her attention and a reminder of why she had first chosen to take the Gift. Even if she still didn’t understand what that was exactly.

The girl remained prompted against the shack wall, head dropped as if sleeping. George, however, was a small hill to her low viewpoint, face down on a pool of his own blood. For some reason, May could smell feces and urine from the body, foul even after death.

Walking up to the girl, May ignored the burning questions inside her in favor of one. “What do I do now?”

The whispers understood immediately, and in unison, spoke. Wish. Gift. Keeps. Giving.

“I appreciate the help,” May responded sarcastically. “But I need to know what to ask for.”

No. Creativity. Some of the voices complained in a mumble while the others answered. Ask. Anything. Ask. Control.

Sighing at the cryptic message, May focused on her Gift and wondered: what could Control do that would help the girl? They seemed to say it had to be something related, or it wouldn’t work, but how could she help her with a concept May didn’t even understand completely?

She could… She could maybe… Take control of her wound? It was a stretch of the concept, and the girl wasn’t stabbed or shot, so there was no wound for her to close. And even if she did that, would it be enough? The girl was already dead…

Wait. May’s mind churned as she remembered the talk she had with the whispers before being dragged into that awful vision. Her companions had been clear that no matter what she tried, the girl was gone, too far, too dead. So it wasn’t a girl that she had in front of her. It wasn’t a child full of potential.

No. This… was a body. So could she Control it?

The thought helped her mold a silent question towards her gift, and she could feel it sewing itself to form something new, using her Truth as thread. It had already done this before for [Telepath’s Box] May realized, and this new ability was taking more of that source. When it was done, the power behind her Truth was only half of its original intensity.

The new Ability firmed itself inside her, and with a bit of focus and an exertion of a muscle she didn’t know she had, May could see the final product somewhere deep inside her. Inside her Truth.

There, a tapestry so fine it couldn’t be called anything other than a masterpiece stood hanged by hooks that dropped from an unseen ceiling. The art piece depicted a dark, cloudy sky with large trees shaped like arrow points at the back, every leaf perfectly made with thread. On the front, the profile of a gaunt old human woman with wispy gray hair and tattered clothes, expression longing for something, stood with a single hand raised forward 一 her wrinkled skin and deep groves below her eyes setting her age somewhere beyond the lady May once saw and kept on insisting Hector called her “granny” 一 in front of what looked like a tombstone, decorated with the statue of a weeping child with bird wings on top of it.

Half of May could feel the name of the Ability as she watched the tapestry. It resonated, almost like her Truth, with something deep inside her.

The other half read the golden plaque nailed on the dark floor in front of the piece. [Lesser Undead Creation]

The name wasn’t much, but it helped, especially considering she had only eldritch injections of knowledge and her instincts to guide her until now. Even so, the new Ability felt… incomplete. Was she going to use the girl’s body as her servant? To do what? Walk with her hand in hand? An undead, if her book about the necromancer and the princess was correct, would need her orders to do everything. What value was there in a servant with no action to attend to its master?

This… didn’t seem to be worth the hassle.

Now what? May stared around and saw another tapestry hanging, but this time no hooks were suspending it. Instead, the piece floated upright half a meter off the ground, without any visible support.

This one had a very different image as well. On it, a box stood on top of a black stone plinth, engravings of faces screaming and trying to crawl out of the box’s purple sides facing the spectator. The lid was half open as if waiting for something, and May approached trying to discern anything of its insides.

Before she could see anything, however, the box closed with a silent thump, making the tapestry tremble.

Narrowing her eyes at the clear disrespect, May looked downwards at the golden plaque that announced this Ability.

[Telepath’s Box]

Curiosity fulfilled, she returned to the problem at hand after poking the box on the tapestry to vent her displeasure at the rudeness. What she now had, May thought, was a useful mental Ability that was of little help tackling the current problem and one that was possibly useful, but that didn’t solve the problem of using the body in a way that she was happy with.

Hand on her chin like she had seen other people do, May stared deeply into the [Lesser Undead Creation] tapestry, losing herself for a bit while trying to gather the possibilities. Feeling her Gift and its diminished strength, an idea sprung into her mind.

The whispers said the Gift keeps on giving, and that she could ask for anything as long as it was within the concept of Control. Now, after two different Abilities integrated themselves into her Truth, she knew this creation had a… cost, for the lack of a better word, taking the initial power of the Gift to weave them.

So, what would happen if she took the remaining power and added it to an already existing Ability? Would that be enough to make the power satisfactory? Would she mangle an entire Ability by adding more to it?

Her mind spun with the possibilities, thinking and rethinking the outcome, but the lack of knowledge about… well, everything regarding Gifts left her in the dark. Well, there was a sure way of figuring things out and that was by trying.

The living doll fearlessly tried to summon her Gift and its energy, and after flexing around and rapidly closing, opening and squinting her eyes, she got it to happen. The power fell onto her hands, forming a large, spheric, strength emanating ball of string.

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May looked at it, disappointed. The purple color was too bright for her, and despite the nice light show as it formed, May was even more resigned to the fact all of this Gift bullshit seemed quite underwhelming at the end of the day. What type of source of power, able to raise the dead and control emotions, would be represented by a ball of yarn? Was she a seamstress of any kind? She could barely get the thread through the needle hoop with the clumsy, tiny fingers she was made with.

And she was definitely not using her more dexterous form to sew something. That would be stupid.

Throwing the yarn ball up and catching it, she kept on considering what to do. For now, she had three facts to guide her: first, she was a doll with Control as her Truth. Second, she had a dead body to use as an ingredient for any possible Abilities. And lastly, she had the power to raise the body as a stupid, thoughtless servant.

So the problem wasn’t that [Lesser Undead Creation] wasn’t enough, because it is powerful magic; the problem is that the outcome didn’t do enough. May failed by asking the Gift for something too broad and ended up receiving an Ability that didn’t compliment her. She had to be more specific.

And what was it that she wanted? Her mind churned and twisted for a few seconds, thoughts growing and withering as she discarded them. In the end, May knew she was unhappy because the control granted by the skill wasn’t personal enough, giving too much freedom to her creation for it to do nothing at all. May needed an even tighter leash.

Arm extended while holding the ball of string, she faced the tapestry with the old woman and voiced her plea, her sinister desire.

“I wish… for a way to use the body as if my own, to have it so deeply under my Control none could take it from me. I wish for it to be mine.”

The yarn untangled on her hands 一 leaving a quarter of the original Truth 一 and flowed through her Gift to weave itself into a new tapestry. No, into an addition to the one she faced, like a new panel that completed a painting.

May watched, hypnotized by the floating thread that weaved and twisted and grew and colored, making a new image that continued to tell the story of the initial tapestry. When her Gift completed the work, the new tapestry stitched itself to the side of the representation of [Lesser Undead Creation] seamlessly, changing both of them to attend to her desires.

Beyond that, before May’s transfixed eyes, the threads moved on the tapestry, telling a looping story.

Where the old woman used to face a tombstone, the changed, sadistic eyes now watched a suspended young female body, crucified with metal nails in her hands and feet. The blond long hair concealed the features of her victim’s face, but it wasn’t enough to hide the deep vertical cut that came from the base of her neck to her navel, bleeding and festering like a rift to the Hells.

The image flowed along the expanse of the tapestry, revealing the older woman, tattered robes dragging along the floor, reaching the crucified body and entering the wound. Her figure shrunk inside the belly of the younger, blond girl until she resembled a medical drawing that May couldn’t quite remember where she recognized it from.

To May, however, nothing inflamed her anxiety more than the woman’s smile as she delved into the body, covered in blood. It was a predatory thing, filled with teeth and contempt for the lost, stretching from ear to ear and growing beyond what should be her physical limitations.

Disturbed by the depiction, May darted her eyes downwards and met the new golden plaque at her feet. The words were carved in it, the calligraphy so perfect that she couldn’t help but feel a little envious of it when compared to her awful, childish handwriting.

[Skin Walking] it announced, carving the instinct of how to use it on her very being and making her giddy with every tidbit of understanding.

This would do… Oh yes, this would do nicely. May was certain now, the feeling of rightness the Ability gave her surging on her chest, making the oddness she felt reading [Lesser Undead Creation] vanish.

The smile on her face was an uncontrolled thing, porcelain splitting to reveal the black mouth stretching from ear to ear. Licking her fangs in satisfaction, May left the presence of her Truth and returned to the alley and bodies, excited to test her new toy. She never thought of how similar her smile was to the one that had just disturbed her.

Fingers touching the skin of her cheeks, May held the girl’s head in her hands and stared at her closed eyes. The expressionless face never gave away her satisfaction at being able to take care of the girl so closely. The poor thing was lost here in the slums, but May knew better and would take good care of what she left behind.

“[Skin Walking]” Her voice sounded through the night, filled with the invisible threads of her Truth. May could feel a part of her leaving the doll body she occupied and flowing through her arms and the body, settling at the unmoving heart on her chest.

Her eyes opened when the Ability finished its job, the instinctual intake of air feeling foreign as her new lungs expanded and contracted. Her vision, however, remained the same: able to pierce through the darkness with little problem, a characteristic that May was certain wasn’t part of a human girl’s usual repertoire.

Still sitting down, she stared at the soft flesh on her arms, taking her left hand to poke and pinch the skin, only stopping when a jerk of pain made her grimace. Wait, a grimace? Fingers flying to her face, she felt the movement of her facial muscles as she pulled and tried new expressions. The way her smile stung when stretching the cracked lips, the way she had small wrinkles when flexing her forehead.

May even had eyebrows now! Actual, hairy eyebrows!

“Ah,” She said, smiling in satisfaction. Her eyes darted left and right, her hands closing and opening as she tested her dexterous fingers. “This is going to be so much fun!”

The high-pitched laughter that escaped her startled the poor rat that edged closer to George’s body, sending the creature back into the shadows.

Getting up from the dirty floor, May dusted her pants with her new fleshy hands 一 even using her nails to pluck some grime that stuck to them 一 and noticed her limp, porcelain old body fall from where it stood on top of her chest.

The figure was white against the muddy ground, naked due to the transformation that destroyed her clothing earlier. Lifeless huge blue eyes stared into the night, the artificial hair clamped with mud and arms rigid against the featureless torso.

Her smaller body looked incredible from this third-person viewpoint.

“I must say,” May mused while taking the doll from the floor and using her shirt to clean the worse of the dirt. “I’m super cute!”

Hum. Cute. Doll. The voices agreed, but May felt the smirk on every word. Nasty. Insides. Though.

“Tsc. I won’t argue with someone that doesn’t even have a body.” She pouted, holding her other body and jumping over George’s body. “Plus, you guys should compliment me, I’m like, your only friend.”

Why? They questioned.

“Because it’s polite, obviously,” May said. “I won’t talk to you if you’re rude.”

Manners. Unnecessary. Teasing. Fun. They responded, and for the first time, May felt what it was like to sigh with exasperation.

“You know what? Fine.” She kept walking deep into the slums, rats following her steps from the sides. “Since you helped today, I’ll let it pass. But don’t push too hard.”

Uuuh. Scary. The chorus of laughing voices at the end made a vein pulse on May’s forehead.

Turning a corner, May tried hard to ignore the next jabs the voices made and continued her leisure walk towards her main hideout: an empty shack on the outskirts of the slums, far enough from the inner wall of the city.

By the time she had focused again on the path in front of her, May noticed a figure appearing a few meters in front of her, feminine in their shape, but the thick clothing showed no details beyond that. Under the night sky, all that could be seen was the top half of her bald head 一 the lower half currently covered with a scarf 一 and the extended knife-shaped ears, so long their points stood behind her head. The rat on her shoulders was almost unassuming with all the exotic traits the woman presented.

The woman’s skin was dark and dusty, a matte violet that made her a true oddity among the cream-colored inhabitants of the city. Black eyes staring at her, May saw their corners crinkle as she gave her a hidden smile and took a limping step closer.

“Ah, hello there!” The woman said, a cane made of bone helping her stability. “You should be careful, this is no time for a young girl to be walking around.”

May’s stance turned defensive at the words, and she could see the woman give her a confused stare, head tilting to the side. The rat on her shoulder squeaked a little, giving the woman a very blank stare.

“Very subtle, Alis.” The animal articulated with some difficulty, the voice so high-pitched it got hard to differentiate between words and squeaks.

“What? Did I say something wrong?” She said pointing towards her own chest, confusion on her brows.

Eyes widening, May lowered her arms in astonishment. “Did the rat just talk?”

“Great, now she heard me.” The animal said, sighing.

“C’mon, it would happen eventually anyway. It’s no big deal.” The woman, Alis, soothed, but the animal clicked its tongue in response.

“Just get it done with already!”

“Alright, alright! Gods, you’re being such a bastard today.” Alis took a step closer and her eyes were suddenly downcast when looking at May. “You need to come with us. Right now.”

May listened to the words and almost laughed at the absurdity of being accosted by unknown people in the middle of the night that wanted her to follow them willingly. That… was plain stupidity.

“Why, pray tell, would I do such a thing?” She retorted, a smile on her face that was too toothy for the new human body

“Because,” Alis took a step closer to her, and the sound of her cane hitting the floor echoed over the silent street. Life was silent all around. “These people are coming for you, and… well… how do I put it?”

The rat concluded, voice clipped. “They’re going to kill you.”

“Well, yes,” Alis said, taking a moment to think over her next words. “So we really need you to come with us, so we can talk about this and you get to live! A win-win!”

“Or don’t.” The voice of the rat came from somewhere around May, emanating from different shadows around the alley. “It’s not like we care.”

“Kreacher! You take that back!” Alis reprehended the rat on her shoulder, its pink tail curling around one of his paws. She turned towards May with full attention, softening her voice. “We do care, alright? It’s just… you won’t survive them. I promise.”

May looked at the woman, the shadows around her eyes deepening, and thought through her annoyance. There was only one logical conclusion. She resumed her guard. “Thanks, but no.” Her voice was sickly sweet, and the small smile on her face entirely condescending. “I’ll try this phantom menace by myself.”

“You don’t get it…” Alis said, approaching with slow steps, a free hand in a supplicating gesture. “They already know where you are. Your Gift left a mark and they can track一”

Kreacher interrupted the explanation, stiffening so abruptly his voice became a hiss. “They found us! We need to go, Bel-Alis… They are too close.”

“Shit! All right… please, come with us! We can explain things better without those hounds sniffing our butts.” Bel-Alis tried again, but May’s face was resolute now. She couldn’t trust these odd people, so she would go back and choose another hide-out, simple enough.

“Let her, Alis. She will die or kill a few of them. It matters not.” Kreacher spoke with the cold voice of someone whose attention was somewhere else.

“You saw what they did to that ghost man, Kreacher! She won’t survive.” Bel-Alis bit her lip, and the silence and shadows around them deepened.

The animals around them sighed together. “Do what you must then, but be quick!”

May took a step backward, watching their interaction with alertness. A single movement from then and she would run as fast as she could. She doubted the woman could catch her with that limp, and the rat… Well, she had been eating mice for the past two seasons. He would make a nice dinner.

Bel-Alis took a deep breath, and May tensed with another small retreat, but her left foot sank into the mud street. The loss of balance was enough to make her stumble, losing her focus on the duo for a moment, and that was enough for Bel-Alis to slam her cane on top of May’s head.

The blow came utterly from nowhere, the woman moving with supernatural speed and strength and using the sudden change of stance, leaving May’s new ears ringing, unable to react. Dizzy, she lost the remains of her balance and fell, hands holding the doll.

“I’m sorry, but we need you to live!” The woman said, face reflecting the pain she felt from moving her bandaged, wounded foot so abruptly.

“[The Chapel Below]” The Priestess of History’s voice sounded through the night air, the summoned Ability pulsing through the earth beneath them like a heart.

All May saw through her foggy vision was the cane rising once again before the next impact, and then… they fell.