In the radiant moonlight torn by the dense foliage was a quaint creek reflecting the sky above as if shining violet dust was shared by the gods above for a few individuals to see. Small rocks of various sizes forced the water to ripple as it descended to wherever the sea was. Clothes rustling mixed with laughs as the warm hand of a girl gently caressed the fleeing water; Tsuki felt the water, seeing how cold it was to prepare her mind. She wanted to clean herself, forced by Hoomaikai who wanted to take a look at her wound. Slowly, as pains answered her movements, she removed what she was wearing and set it aside on a rock lazing around in front of the flowing water. First her backpack and then her boots; her shoulders slumped down heavily while blisters cried as the cold hair embraced her feet. She removed her warm hoodie and was welcomed by the cold nightly wind pressing into the loose fiber of her bloodied shirt. When she tried to remove this one tainted scarlet, she felt as if something was pulling on the cloth from both her shoulders: both sides a different but equally uncomfortable sensation. Only her baggy pants were left, which she removed while the trio behind her looked at her back with ghastly faces…
“Tsuki…” said a small snake that Hoomaikai was personally controlling. She was terrified at the girl’s body and whatever might have happened to it.
But Tsuki ignored the voice of her new friend and entered the glacial water. She could feel what was wrong with her body better than what the trio could ever see, and she hated herself to the point of wanting to die for letting this happen.
An array of black and white flowers, attached to gnarly and spindly vines grew from her left shoulder all the way to her elbow. The vines entered her flesh freely while binding themselves to her with hook-like spikes. The flowers with long and distant petals from one another were blooming while permeating a sweet and pleasing aroma that Tsuki was familiar with but couldn’t remember where she smelled such flowers.
While her left shoulder was a beautiful garden, her right was that of horror and disgust. Her flesh, scraped like hair, moved like bloody snakes entwined and bundled together as it pulled and ripped her skin apart only to heal quickly. Meat and bone shards moved around freely as the rod she was pierced with pulsated and fused with her flesh. Whatever it was, was becoming her and she was becoming it. This shard of Tindalos, when she met the hound and the hunter which were but poor imitations of their real form as it was the only way for them to manifest, was now shifting to what it should really be like. This peerless abomination was slowly fusing with Tsuki, and its roots were already so deep that she would need to amputate her right arm to remove it.
The other thing the trio noticed first, Fi, in particular, was the calm snowfall made from moving ink in the girl’s back. It wasn’t cold but still made her nerves sensible such it felt as if someone was dripping cold water down her back constantly. She hated this cold sensation that made her clothes hurt her back while simply moving; removing them made it all worse as the cold wind and water felt like daggers stabbing her. Fi felt bad as those cold marks were required for her to manifest in the world. If Tsuki was to ever grow stronger, the snowflakes would be able to reduce in size…which also worked in the opposite situation. Meaning that her body would theoretically be covered in ink if she died – her flesh fully consumed by the spirit’s power and turned into an inky blob. It was also a method Yuu had used in the past to hide the bodies of people she had to assassinate…
Lastly, the thing she hated the most was her outer thigh, the part where a flower formed after an abomination bit her. It kept its design, of a flower with thousands of petals, but now each of them was actually moving like small mouths filled with sharp bony teeth. The girl felt the cold water enter her leg as those mouths drank liberally an amount many times greater than whatever she would ever drink herself. Maybe they drank a week’s worth or more, Tsuki couldn’t say but felt the disgusting flapping of what should be Alice’s skin and her heart became colder than the water.
If only it would have been her own body, she would have been fine with it, but she was in a similar situation as damaging someone’s property. Tsuki akin Alice to someone in a coma, waiting in a hospital she couldn’t choose, and bound to wake up with all their limbs missing. True that the changes to Alice’s body weren’t as bad as missing limbs, but it was for Tsuki who viewed this sick girl too highly. In the past, if the doctor taking care of Alice would have said to Tsuki she could help her by giving her her organs, she would have done so in an instant, even going as far as sacrificing herself fully if the need arose.
But now, the sight of the terrified trio only made her angrier against herself and the cruel world she was stuck inside. That doll, or more aptly the one controlling it, would pay for what they did…or so she wanted to believe…Alice was the one to make the doll. What if it was someone she knew from her past? Alice never really talked about her family…The only thing Tsuki knew was that her parents wanted to sell off Alice when her health spiraled down. She wondered if she had to hate the doll or whoever was behind it if Alice cared about them.
“Tsuki!” said Hoomaikai worried about the girl. She had no idea how those things appeared on her body but knew better than anyone that it wasn’t normal. “What happened to you!?”
“I’m perfectly fine!” gnarled Tsuki as her face was tainted red, not a red caused by her shame of being naked but simple anger. “Vergeltung! Clean yourself this instant. We can’t have our prey smell us. Fi, help us out.”
“Wait!” said Hoomaikai suddenly. “You can’t be serious about hunting something? All you need is people to escort you back so the—”
“—And what else do you want me to do? Starve to death after waiting for someone’s help? If I can’t even hunt something…then why am I still alive? If I can’t even feed a few people…then what hope do I have in protecting the one I love…” a few tears mixed with the cold water and as those salty pearls disappeared in the flowing liquid, so did the young girl’s lonesome trait, drown in a smile that was all too forced.
Hoomaikai had nothing else to say and looked at the lonesome girl who had her long hair washed by the floating spirit. Vergeltung was one of those rare cats who liked water and he was beyond happy to be able to remove the disgusting stench plaguing his fur. He couldn’t even groom himself as the pus covering him would get on his tongue and the taste was a thousand times worse than its smell.
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He wasn’t able to remember his fight against the two abominations, there was only rage at that time. But he remembered well how his body felt light and how a strange power was bubbling in his heart. Whenever he tried to recall this mesmerizing power, his skin would feel warm while his mind would calm down. It was a sweet feeling that he was starting to get hooked on. It called him from the deepest part of his soul as his rage screamed for the unjust death of his family. And right now, in this cold water, he felt it call to him; to let his rage explode and find the mastermind behind this hell…
“Vergeltung!” said Tsuki who gazed coldly at the cat. “No farting in the water!” she said as if it was an absolute rule no one could break. It wasn’t that the cat was doing such a thing in the water, but the bubbles forming around the cat because of the intense heat he was producing made her believe so.
The girl’s sudden words managed to wake the cat from his stupor, and he returned a smile to keep the truth hidden. “What beast does the mistress wish to catch?” he said coyly.
“Big!”
“Hmmmm…is that the only requirement?”
“Yes! The bigger the better!”
❀
The beasts living in this forest all had the ability to wrap their surroundings one way or another. Some used illusion while others used more direct methods and modified the ground and the trees to their liking. One day, a calm river might flow up a hill and the next day this place could become a field of sprouting hammers…The only rules that existed were the ones made by those mysterious creatures. Logic and normality only exist in the eyes of the beholder. As such, the spiraling stairs made of magma that went deep into the ground that Tsuki was looking at were absolutely normal, all things considered.
After cleaning themselves, they spotted a large shadow stumbling forward. Red liquid continually dripped for an open wound and upon contact with the ground, expanded into a blob of magma. They followed it until it burrowed into the ground. The hole that was only dirt and stones a moment ago turned into this odd structure in an instant. Hoomaikai, who was following the beast closely with her snakes, lost some of them when the surroundings suddenly changed around them.
Mechanically, Tsuki began to cut small branches in the surroundings without explaining her plan to the others. She intended to create a few traps for when the beast would need to leave its burrow not knowing its size or whether sharp sticks would even be able to pierce its skin. The cat looked around the perimeter, making use of its nose to make sure there wasn’t anything stalking them as his instinct was screaming at him. He desperately wanted to leave, but Tsuki refused to do so.
“The surroundings are safe,” said Vergeltung who had returned from his inspection. “Do you know how we can pull it out of that hole?”
Tsuki didn’t respond; too focused on making her bundle of sharp sticks, she didn’t even realize the cat had left and just returned. She used her sharp knife with impressive ease as chunks of wood were removed like butter. “Fi, can you inspect the area?”
Vergeltung was a little bit hurt by what this girl had just asked but the response of the strange spirit somewhat worried him. “I can’t.”
“…Can’t you just go up in the sky and look like you did last time?”
“No.”
“…” Tsuki was so confused she dropped the stick she was working on and looked blankly at the floating girl still riding the plushy.
“…Shouldn’t we get in before we are crushed?”
It was a strange thing to ask out of nowhere but for Vergeltung, it was the last piece needed to understand what his instinct was screaming about. He picked up a rock and threw it at the sky, where it met a transparent wall and bounced back with enough energy to make an indent in the ground.
The first to say anything was Fi who was suddenly above the mouth of the hole. “Let’s go.”
“Are you insane!” screamed Hoomaikai who experienced her snakes burning in the stairwell of magma. “We’re all going to die if we touch that! It’s better to dig like a mutt and go under this barrier than roast our flesh perfectly for the beast down there!”
“?” Fi didn’t seem to understand that lava was dangerous for the three in front of her. “Then don’t move.”
“And be crushed like a bug when this thing closes in on us as you said! I won’t die from this but think about those two over there.”
“Hm,” Tsuki tried to insert herself into the conversation. She was told by Yuu that Fi was strange, yet she didn’t know how strange she was and why it was something important that had to be said when much more important stuff could have been said. “Say, Fi, what even are you? Can you make going down safe for us?”
The question seemed to have awoken something in the small spirit as she spoke for the first time with energy. “Fi is I. Fi is the Fifth spirit of ice. Fi – Fifth – Fi. Fi is Yuu; Yuu is Fi. Fi can make it safe!”
Tsuki didn’t understand most of it as there seemed to have been more to it, but the fact she said she was a spirit of ice was interesting. “Then Fi, can you cool down this lava?” asked Tsuki who didn’t understand that it was a wrong command. For Fi, the lava was already cooling down and oddly enough, she found it pretty cold already. For her, heat was related to the movement of something and nothing else: a flawed understanding. Even if a gas and a solid were at the same temperature, this little spirit would say that the solid was colder as its molecules didn’t move as much. She knew a lot of things others could never understand but was also wrong about a lot of them. “…Can you make it possible for us to walk on it without our flesh melting then?”
This time, Fi understood. “Yes, I can,” but it wasn’t what Tsuki expected as her body was instantly cut from external warmth. The cold of the night mixing with the heat of the lava created a mixture of winds of which she could only feel its pressure but not its temperature. “Can we go now?”
“Hn!”
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In the heart of a molten core was a wounded beast who had just escaped what was known in this forest as the dream-lance cavalry. They were beings who had proved their allegiance to the ruler of dreams after surviving this ruler’s unknown challenge. The only ones who knew how to pass the test were those who had succeeded. This was because the moment someone learned of the test requirement, they would instantly be tested and die if they weren’t strong enough. This beast, wounded by such cavalry, was trying to pass the test but with such a wound, it was bound to fail and be killed. It never wanted to become part of the despicable cavalry who only knew how to steal from others, but the test was forced on it nevertheless after it learned of the truth.
And now, worst of all was the bugs who entered its home. Despicable, it hated everything as its life was crumbling down. It was born in this forest and wanted to die for this forest, but the ruler had turned unusually cruel and forced more and more people under its control by feeding the truth of his test in their dreams. The wounded beast wanted to rip this ruler to shreds and engulfed everything in a sea of flame. Those bugs would pay the price for entering its nest. The pain on its side reminded it of how close it came to dying and realizing those insects might be able to finish it, multiple wicked smiles appeared over its body as a plan came up in its head: it would tell them the truth of the test and kill the ruler once he shows up with his disgusting grin.