The room is filled with different sized operating tables and cages, to the side through a glass window is a child’s play area, filled with colored walls and toys. Cleaning supplies lay next to the play area, out of the way, splotches of blood and rotted flesh on the floor with a disposal bin next to it.

The operating tables are perfectly clean, there is a wooden board on each with paper attached to it, writings on each sheet. Seeing them I feel a tremor deep inside, the beginning of myself, the loss of innocence of my childhood just as Anastasia had lost hers, on an operating table with a mad scientist. Were they also trying to turn me into a monster? The memories were always foggy, there in my subconscious, waiting to scream at me from my nightmares, the white walls, it’s never been clearer, here, and now.

The writing on each of the papers on the tables and cages detail multiple ‘creations’. I recognize the bone bear but the rest, apart from mentions of the ‘unicorn’ or at least a thing that used to be a horse, I don’t recognize. All of them taken when young and experimented on over time, eventually implanting them with their own core, transforming them into something… much worse.

There were many different types of animals, even some humans, all adult age, ones that were also noted as being used for the food farm, but it looks like they were failures, thrown away, unlike Anastasia. They were the prototypes, she was supposed to be his perfection.

Apart from the humans there were 12… 12 animals experimented on from babies, all obtained from his employer, his… master. They weren't the same creatures as the zodiacs, but it felt weirdly connected, some extremely fucked version of it, monsters from this world.

The mad scientists' pets, experiments, abominations. Mortscar-mouse, Crossed-Moose, Obsidian-Hyena, Horned-Rabbit, Great Lizard, Tri-Snake, Sky-Horse, Dark-Bear, Steel Fist-Gorilla, Magnetic-Crow, Silver-Wolf, and the Gigantic-Boar. All these creatures were operated on to become something else. Numerous notes referenced the 12 great calamities.

At least 2 I know are dead… or according to the ending of the quest only in this timeline? Maybe in the current time they are still out there, the start of the end of this country.

I wish most of this was what I had pulled out of my ass, but Zelia was muttering and conveying what she thought the whole time, An interesting story unfolding before our very eyes, Keeks and I listening intently to the continued rambling interspersed with ‘wans’ every time she took a breath.

The only item that seems to be of any use is an anatomy textbook, using investigation I find out that it's actually one of the best items I could find down here for me.

Gain Title ‘Anatomy Specialist’

Gives a greater understanding of humanoid bodies.

Improves abilities associated with changing your body.

‘A hefty textbook that was used as a reference for experimentation, contains diagrams of most possible humanoid body types.’

Now I won't have to try and figure out my bone structure, it will hopefully reduce my stamina cost of having to find out all the parts of my body. Considering the wording it should also increase my bone ability as well as the new ability that I acquired from Anastasia. I won't find out until I use it, I think I'll wait until we get to Silver city, there’s enough on my plate as is.

Past all the tables, the kids play area and the cages is a door, the only door in the whole underground area, one that I hadn't seen when I first poked my head in. Off to the side is a ramp leading up and out, we look up the ramp first and see that there's an exit that leads off into the woods, cleverly hidden under some false rocks.

We go back and I hesitate before the door, an itch at the back of my head telling me that I don't want to know what's inside, “Hey Keeks did you wanna check inside first, I’m kind of freaking out a bit moo'' She nods and puffs up her chest, opens the door outwards and looks in, stunned! She gasps suddenly, I start to panic a little bit at what sight she could be seeing right now.

“Borrinnggg!!!! Where's all the gold and treasure and shit! There's just a boring shrine!! Nye!!”

Goddamnit Keeks you fucking scared me! I open the door and look in, yeah it's a shrine, carved out of the stone, a small room with incense still lit and small flames on the sides illuminate the object of worship from inside.

I pause, I freeze, My breath catches, Not again, please, not again, why in this fucking place?!

Zelia starts speaking from the video call “Huh that's a super weird thing, I don't think I’ve seen anything like it before… Lilia?... Lil are you okay?!” I sense hands pushing and pulling at me, my eyes transfixed on the object on the pedestal, no not an object, carved from the rock itself, purposeful, carefully created along with the rest of the room. It is a thing of beauty and horror, of worship, the only reason for this place existing, hidden away even from a place of such horror and monstrous purpose. Is it as abominable in our world as it is in this one?! I had never seen anything like it again after the second time I saw it in person, not on TV not on the internet, such an abomination that no one should know about it. does it exist in this world too? Plucked from our world into this one?!

I know that if it were real, it would be even more perfect, but the work that's been put into it feels like the real thing, I feel it throbbing in my skull. A tree-like shape perfectly raised from the rock, its veins digging deep below, curving into an orb, a prison, a grown platform in the center allowing for something… or someone… to be placed inside, branches push out, 6 and 6 perfect branches all of equal length, coming out and around the perfect orb, how can it be so perfect, how many hours of work was put into just that small fragment of something so much bigger and more horrifying.

I blink and I'm no longer in the laboratory “Wh-where am I?... How long was I out moo?”

Keeks is next to me panting “ARE YOU FINALLY BACK WITH US?! I HAD TO DRAG YOUR ASS OUT THE WHOLE WAY! YOUR LIKE FIVE TIMES MY SIZE NYEEE!!!!!”

I collapse onto the ground and stare up into the stars, it's different from ours, has a lot less lights in the sky, a lot more purples and blues. The hues racing across the darkness like a never-ending aurora borealis.

Keeks slaps down beside me in the grass and sighs, “Thanks for getting me out of there Keeks… I was a bit out of my mind…” Zelia is looking down on us both with tears in her eyes, she knows my story, the parts that I could rip out of me over time, Keeks can only look at me in confusion.

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“You can talk to me about it if you want, It's not like I have had the greatest life, I’ll hopefully understand some of it nye”

“I’ve tried to talk about it before, but it's like there's some kind of mental block for a lot of it… I've figured out a lot of what triggers my brain to panic, I know a bunch of what I've seen, I-it's just a lot moo…”

I sigh and try to push some of it to the surface but it feels like my brain is fighting me for my own memories.

“It's okay love, take your time, we can just talk about how you're feeling and what we saw down there wan…”

“When I was younger… when 'Janus' came, I was picked up by a Sci-Axium medical team, covered in crystal fragments from the meteors hitting my town… they were all killed by some kind of military or something. I was taken to a laboratory by them, and a doctor experimented on me… I don't remember exactly how, but I know I saw some things that I shouldn't have, things that my brain blocks out constantly, only showing in my nightmares and when I have panic attacks as well as down there, such a familiar place... The blood constantly dripped on my chest, treated like a storage for those fucking crystals as they pulled them from me, they did so many other things… I was there for probably a fucking year or more… but I can only remember certain days, I don't know if I was drugged the whole time or my 13 year old brain just refuses to remember it all moo…”

I take a really deep breath and Keeks snuggles into my side, “At the end of it all, the most I remember of all, is the white room, the doctor looming over me, looking at me like I’m just a fucking prize. The endless blood dripping onto my stomach, covering my middle body, all the time, every drip at different intervals, always, I could feel it when I slept, SLAP… SLAP! SLAP! changing sound slightly by how much blood was on my stomach, by how long before each time the doctor cleaned my stomach off so they could pull another fucking crystal. Strapped down and unable to move, being fed through a fucking stomach tube, the fucking madness of some kind of Chinese water torture on a fucking child mmooo!!!”

I'm hyperventilating harder and harder, feeling Keeks grabbing hard onto my shoulder, her little claws piercing my skin, tears running down my arm.

“The fucking symbol thing in there is the same I’ve seen before, in the basement under the white room, where they took all the people, all of the people from the medical station. I can only be glad that the lady that took care of me at the medical camp died before she was taken, that she didn't have to be one of the people whose screams I felt through the floor. At the end I was taken down there, when all the soldiers came into the white room and talked to the doctor, fear in their eyes, after I was the only one left. I was to become one of the screaming people. I saw it, a red glowing tree, every branch perfect, the shape curving around itself, every part perfect. I felt it wash over me, drilling into my brain, needing me, telling me to just touch it, to become one with it… I killed for the first time, I pushed the doctor and he died, he died happily with a branch through his chest, his eyes looking at me, wishing I could join them all moo…”

I go silent, nothing else to say, empty. Keeks lets go from stabbing my shoulder and mounts up on my chest with tears in her eyes, bending down and hugging me gently, snuggling against my neck. “I-I’m sorry Moogirl I don't know what to say nye…” Zelia is also silent, eyes closed with tears coming out the sides, leaning back in her chair, in the library trying to keep herself quiet, holding in the sobbing. She knows some of it, but I’ve remembered more since my last panic attack, my body seeming to push the memories back into the surface from every bad fucked up thing I experience, what would it take to remember it all...

I went through lots of therapy when I first got pulled out, back to reality, to society when Zelia’s family took me in. But what even was society anymore? So many were dead, my family, millions of other families, should I even survive, I’ve killed people with my own hands, he was a bad person but still and then I killed another and another... how many did I kill with my words?... just by talking to people... letting them know what happened, what I saw...

I was taken to an orphanage that was overcrowded with other kids, everyone going through their own sort of hell, bodies pushed together like sardines in a can, not that I was there for long… before I got onto the street in fear of people coming after me. I guess that's why the nice doctor wanted to take me in… She knew what sort of place I would go to otherwise, yet there I was in the end...

I pat Keek’s head gently against my neck and hear her gentle sad purring flow through my body. I miss Buta, I need to hold my big chunker more, since we started playing, they haven't gotten as much attention… Maybe our house could expand. I want to live with Zelia, I would also love to have Keeks by our side, the rascally Gnoll has brought me a lot of laughs and friendship, not something that I've had much luck with… and it's pretty easy to move around nowadays… that's not exactly a talk that should be had after I blurt out so much trauma.

“Don't forget your promise of the maid costume when we leave Utor tomorrow, yeah?... Very important nye!” Keeks mumbles into my neck, I look up and through tears Zelia is smiling, she’s definitely messaged Keeks, knowing that the best medicine for my brain is an embarrassing distraction.

“I know your tricks Zel, recruiting a poor horny Gnoll to your whims like a criminal mastermind. I will not stand for it! I'll lie down for it instead moo!” I roll back and forth throwing Keeks around a little, making her giggle like she's on a fair ride. The lesbians of my downfall, I would never live it down if I didn't leave Utor wearing a maid costume tomorrow, at least it's not a French one, there would be nothing my body could hide! I've got to figure out how to make my tail not go up as much, showing off my ass to everyone is not my intention, I have my own dignity as a cowgirl!

“A promise is a promise, my Lil would never break that would she wan?!” Of course she was right, that doesn't mean I would have to like it, I poke out my tongue at the camera.

“Me? Never! I'll be home soon Zel, just need to punish this one first moo!” I roll over fully and squish Keeks underneath my body, making sure not to kill her but that she gets squished perfectly between my tits, pushed against the ground. She squeaks in glee ready to die for her ultimate cause before I whisper goodnight and give her my thanks… for being with me. Telling Fia to log me out, with desperate cries of ‘nyoooooo’ from Keeks as the weight is alleviated from her.

The void takes me, homebound.