I woke up in the middle of a forest clearing. The sky was bright and cloudless, the trees were lush and green. Lilies were growing all around my body, all sorts of different shapes and colours, as though they had guided me to this place. I got to my feet. I was a naked, emaciated looking hairy boy. I began to walk aimlessly through the forest. I remembered a place called Earth. I remembered that I had been a university student who had just graduated, although I couldn’t hold down a job. Mostly because menial retail hurt my soul. And I was lazy and directionless. I indulged in the internet and in anime and video games and alcohol and weed just so that I could be aware of my own mind as little as possible. Last thing I remember was going to bed, and then waking up here after sleeping for what felt like years.

Everything around me looked like Earth, but I knew it wasn’t the same. Was it heaven? Had I been summoned to another world, just like in those shitty isekai anime I had grown so tired of yet still kept watching? Whatever it was, I was enjoying the serene peace of it all. There was nobody around. The animals were friendly. It was all perfect and here I was, just… Existing.

At least, it was perfect, until the hunger kicked in. I ate some delicious berries at first. Still hungry. I ate all the berries. I ate the apples from a tree and then… Weirdly, I found that I could comfortably chew through the bark and eat the tree itself. I devoured it down to the roots, leaving not a splinter of wood or a single leaf. Still hungry. I began hunting animals. Now those were *really* delicious. I had liked meat back on Earth, but freshly hunted, raw meat? I seemed to have developed a serious appetite for that.

Peace quickly left my mind as I went through the forest, eating everything I could find, but mostly just hunting for meat. I eventually came across a big cave with a bear inside. I ate the bear too. It struggled, but it wasn’t even a fight. The more I ate the stronger I became. I had forged an outfit constructed from pelts, I was tall and muscular, I was a total chad now. Chiselled jawline and everything!

Eating made me stronger and stronger even as I became hungrier and hungrier, and I was also starting to get horny. I decided to leave the forest that I determined I had already conquered and look for humans. I soon found civilization. A little village at the edge of the forest. When they saw me wearing a bear pelt they immediately rejoiced and celebrated. The bear was known to be a crafty animal who often snuck into the village to kidnap babies to eat. I was thrown a feast, but the other villagers didn’t get much of a chance to eat. Real, cooked food tasted better than I could have possibly imagined, after all. It was so much tastier than anything I had ever had on Earth and my appetite was never satiated. But they didn’t mind. During the feast, they told me tales about a dragon who often razed the farmlands and stole valuables. It was a menace that many in the surrounding region had tried and failed to fell. I flippantly offered to go slay it. But only if I could have the hand in marriage of the village chief’s daughter. She was a young, hot blonde, hotter than any girl I had ever met on Earth. My dick was permanently hard whenever she was nearby. Begrudgingly, the chief agreed, if I was able to bring back the Dragon’s head and its heart.

Looking back, I don’t think I ever considered how she felt about the arrangement.

Killing the dragon was so easy that I didn’t even remember the process. I was back by nightfall the following day. Less than 24 hours. I dragged back not just its head nor its heart, but its entire corpse. It felt so easy to lift. The dragon was roasted by the village’s chefs and I ate all of it.

Once I had devoured my enemy, I harshly grabbed the chieftain's daughter by the wrist and led her away. I had my way with her for eight continuous hours. It was how I lost my virginity, and it was likely how she lost hers. I didn’t really know nor care at the time, but, truthfully, it was rape. She wouldn’t have wanted it even if I had been gentle, and I was rough, very rough. I used her like an object. She was crying and screaming. And the villagers ignored her pleas for help. I remember enjoying the feeling of dominating her. Looking back, it makes me sick.

But that would be the smallest of my crimes.

I moved onto bigger cities, felled mightier foes, grew in power and influence, and soon became a renowned hero, respected and feared in equal measure. I eventually became so powerful that my physical body could no longer contain my raw strength. I learned how to consume the raw mana in the very air around me, even though I took no time to learn how the mages or scholars actually used their magic or their arcane circles. Soon, I could alter my body however I saw fit. My dark tendrils spread across the entire country that I learned was called Grisia. I usurped the king of the nation, a dark blob connected to a writhing mass of tentacles and organs and mouths and ears and eyes and noses and limbs, an inhuman mass ruling a nation. I would kill strong animals and invading armies and protect the citizens directly from my castle, the mass of my body so large that I could be anywhere in the nation all at once. One hundred chefs cooked me meals around the clock, 24/7, and soon I was fucking every woman in the nation, all at once, all the time, their screams becoming the new background noise of the country. I always kept the princess, the would-be queen of the nation, kneeling in front of the throne and sucking my human dick at all times, my cum laced with chemicals that kept her awake and nutritionally satiated.

The horror I inflicted on the nation caused the population to decrease over the years as a result of starvation and a lack of new children being produced. As sexual a creature as I was, it seemed I was infertile, and the thought of another man inseminating one of my women with their seed was unthinkable to me. My mind deteriorated and I began to believe I was God. All too soon, Grisia was destroyed. No life in it remained. No animals, no trees, no plants, no humans, just me and the rock I sat on. A King who had devoured his throne. I sat there for a few days, thinking about what I should do next. I knew there were other nations. I could set my sights on them. Ultimately, however, I decided that I didn’t want to be this type of creature anymore. I finally understood that the pain I had inflicted on other people had brought me no lasting joy at all. My addiction to sin was ever growing, my appetite for evil never satiated. I was a creature who could grow infinitely, but there was nowhere meaningful for me to go. And when I realised that lacking care for others brought me no joy, I… I finally felt real, genuine guilt for the first time in my life.

I finally understood what empathy was. It was painful. I resolved to atone however I could.

But I was already starting to become something else. My mind fractured, split into two. The side of myself that still saw itself as the undisputed king of the universe didn’t want this newly emerging, guilt ridden ‘weak’ side of myself to sabotage its conquest of reality. So, using the last of my strength, I created Lilly. I was able to use the mana in the air to invisibly give a piece of my power, my heart, to any child I wanted in the womb of a mother elsewhere in this world. I took the life of that little baby, supplanted her consciousness with my own, became ‘Lilly’, just so that I could repent. And also because I sensed this child would grow up to be beautiful. And… I craved beauty. I could change my body however I wanted, but I wasn’t beautiful. I realised that maybe I treated women so awfully because I jealously desired to be one myself. I wanted to experience the other side of the coin. Both to develop my empathy, and also because it was what I had wanted all along, ever since I was a child on Earth.

I had always hated my masculinity. I thought it was to blame for all my negative behaviours.

… And yet, here I am. No less a monster than I was when I started. I had proven that I was still as selfish as I always was, even with the oestrogen of a human body influencing my mind. I was just as bad as a girl as I was as a boy, and I couldn’t blame testosterone or a male identity anymore. The only difference was that now I wanted to force a princess to let me suck her dick, rather than force a princess to suck mine. Barely a difference. I was still treating Ayano as an instrument for my pleasure, I had just become more insincere. But whether I wanted to love her romantically and sweetly or rape her, either way, if she didn’t want it, then she didn’t want it. I still had a dubious understanding of consent, no matter how I tried to dress up my desires as other things.

“That’s right. That’s why you should listen to me from now on. This little experiment of ours was… A dramatic failure, wouldn’t you say?”

I heard that voice reach out to me through the void as I awoke. I found myself in a world of pure darkness. I was still Lilly. I could still feel my human body, but I was surrounded by Monstra on all sides. My heart was beating loudly, it was deafening, it rocked through my entire body. Then it truly hit me. I *was* the heart. I was the heart of this beast, now returned to it. I had never been a separate entity. I had been mistaken. I wasn’t an individual who had separated from a Monstra hive mind, or who happened to carry its blood for no discernable reason. The Monstra mass left in Grisia was just me, left to sit like a lump without direction, mindlessly grabbing food wherever it found it without any real motivation or a plan of action. But I was here again. I had returned to myself, the rest of my body.

But how had I gotten here? Oh… Right. Immediately after attacking Priscilla, I felt Grisia calling to me… I then remembered what Ayano had told me, about how Monstra could slip through time and space by heading into the radius of annihilation spheres. I had gone to the one in the forest, where the two of us had once fought the Monstra that had emerged from there, and that was how I had ended up here. In Grisia. Right in the middle of the Monstra horde. It was as I had been sleeping that all my memories of my former life returned.

“That’s right. And now that your memories have returned, let’s go back to being ourselves, yes? Lilly was a pointless experiment… It was doomed from the start. Trying to live a new life without any of our prior memories? Stupid. Amnesia or not, girl or not, you’re still the same disgusting you. All you achieved was decades of suffering under some dumb bitch noble and a whole lot of pointless heartbreak. Lilly was a failure, so shall we finally discard her? You remember our true name, yes? For our reunion and rehabilitation, let’s call ourselves by our real name, A-”

“No! No no no no no! I’m still Lilly! Just Lilly!”

I was noticing its voice now, all around me, echoing inside my skull, in my brain, gripping my very soul with its selfish icy cold grip. I was speaking to the side of myself that I tried to pretend wasn’t me anymore. The side of me that wanted to abandon guilt and pursue its endless path of pleasure and destruction. The path of endless consumption was one I didn’t want to follow. The side of me I had left behind when I decided to place my heart into this human body. And now it was reading my mind… Because it was a mind we both shared. We were one and the same.

“That’s right, you can keep no secrets from me. So. Tell me. Why shouldn’t we follow the path of domination? Consumption is the way of all life in the universe. However… We could consume more… Sustainably this time. You’ve learned a lot from being a human, haven’t you? Learned about magic… To think, this time, we could keep people alive eternally… We could research potential fixes for our little infertility problem… We can make sure that there are enough humans around us to keep us entertained for the rest of eternity. So there doesn’t have to be destruction involved… Just love and growth. You’ve taken a liking to the Selician princess, haven’t you? We can sever her contract with the spirits completely, erase her pain, supplant the spirits as the force that keeps the planet’s ecosystem alive and healthy. We can keep her alive and young forever, and, well… Humans are fragile creatures. Pump their brains with just the right chemical cocktail of serotonin, oxytocin, dopamine and such, and she’ll be in love with you in no time… She’ll be thanking you for fixing absolutely everything, don’t you think?”

I wasn’t about to entertain any of this.

“It’s not worthwhile if she isn’t choosing it for herself. People are more than just chemicals.”

“No, we’re not. This world… It might have mana, it might have spirits and souls. Concepts that would be seen as ‘supernatural’ back on Earth. But here on Terrestia, they are totally scientific concepts. Completely natural, just as natural as chemical processes in the body… And even here, it has been scientifically verified that the existence of a soul does not override chemical processes in the brain. All personality is a product of our environment. There is no such thing as an ‘essential character’. The soul, mana… It’s all just a form of energy. Energy that can be manipulated, and we are the best at manipulating it. Especially when it comes to the body. So far we have only bothered to change ourselves, but altering the bodies of others should prove trivial with minimal practice. This is all to say that even if spirits exist, even if there is some form of existence after death in this place… There is still no such thing as the ‘metaphysical’. There is nothing in this world that can exist outside of the known laws of the universe.”

“What’s your point?”

“Easy. That an Ayano we… *encourage* is no less herself than an Ayano we do not interfere with. You might call it mind control, but I would call it nature. Just think, when you hug someone, when you have enjoyable sex… Are the feelings of affection born between those two people not simply the product of the chemicals produced by those actions? We are the most powerful entity in this world known as Terrestia. We can manipulate nature to our very will. Is that simply not an optimisation of existing processes? If we can induce feelings of love and euphoria at will, does that not mean that we deserve to be the most sought out individual in this world? If we have the power to be this person, should we not have the will?”

“I don’t believe that might makes right. It's not an optimization, it's a perversion of others' will.”

“You misunderstand me. I do not believe in a fundamental axiomatic morality, least of all an axiom such as ‘might makes right’. There is no God, and if there is, we could devour it, because we are the closest entity to that which one might call a ‘God’ in this world. There is only pure chaos in this universe, and from that chaos, we spontaneously emerged. We do not ‘deserve’ the power we have. We were not ‘chosen’. Our power over others does not mean that our morality is correct. But the fact of the matter is that, like it or not, we do have power over others and we have that power without consequence- Now, I know what you’re going to say. Maybe no consequences to us, but what about consequences to them? Well, my weak little me, isn’t that all the more reason to grow stronger? So that we can protect their interests as well?”

“You don’t know that there isn’t a God. Don’t speak so authoritatively when nobody can know for certain. You just want to believe in the lack of a God so that you can fill that space yourself. Moreover, I know that you only want to protect people because your attitude led to the death of a nation, the death of all your playthings. You want to learn how to take care of your toys rather than break them. How does that make you any less monstrous, though? What sort of life are they living if they have to abide by the whims of an entity who presides over life and death, over their pain and suffering? Shouldn’t a truly moral God leave their people be, to allow them to make their own decisions?”

“Very rich coming from someone who is upset that her former girlfriend made decisions she doesn't like. Listen. Even if no God exists, all humans want to exist beneath a God. Even the ones who do not believe in a God secretly wish one existed. That is why many atheists still obsess over maintaining the authority of a nation. A government is the next closest thing they can have to God, something all seeing, all knowing, all loving and all protecting, and an absolute arbiter of morality. Whether the state’s legitimacy is justified through the divine right of a monarchy or the democratic will of the people or anything else, the purpose a state serves is always to serve as a substitute for deities. This is because humans are creatures who suffer. They suffer because they do not understand morality because there is no such thing as morality, so they wish for something powerful who can promise them salvation from the burden of having to make choices. As God-like beings in the public psyche, we can create morality for them.. Not because we have the ability to decide what is and what is not an axiom… Nobody does. But because, however we choose to exercise our power, we can make them believe that we can. And if we can do that, then we can erase all of the suffering in the world.”

“I know what you’re like. What *I* am like. All morality would point towards your stomach and your…”

“Dick? I know you want to say vagina. But you know as well as I do that you are male.”

“I’m a girl. I’m a girl and I don’t have a dick, and even if I did, that wouldn’t make me any less of a girl.”

“... Are you sure about that? When Priscilla asked you to grow a dick, you obliged… And penetrating her felt a lot better than being dicked by Ayano, didn’t it?”

“It didn’t. I hated it. I wish I hadn’t done that. For a variety of reasons. The penis being one of them.”

“You hated it because you enjoyed it. You told yourself you enjoyed it but you liked having a girl beg you for your cock. The same as you always have.”

“SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! YOU’RE PUTTING THOUGHTS IN MY HEAD THAT I DON’T BELIEVE! IF I DID FEEL GOOD, IT WAS BECAUSE I LIKED PRISCILLA, IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GENITALIA!”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Oh, so you did like Priscilla? So much for the Princess being your one and only… Maybe you were more jealous that Ayano was sleeping with her… Perhaps you should have attacked Ayano out of jealousy instead?”

“I… I shouldn’t have attacked either of them… I should have believed Ayano when she said Priscilla was an assassin, and I should have let her punish Priscilla as she saw fit… I should have protected Ayano’s life, not my ego… After I left, it was only natural that the two of them would try to seek comfort in each other, and Priscilla was taking advantage of her, trying to kill her, so I shouldn’t say that she was cheating on me… And you’re right, maybe my feelings weren’t as pure as I thought they were, but… I… I still love Ayano all the same…”

“Because you feel guilty? You feel guilty because of how you made Ayano feel. You don’t feel guilty about hospitalising Priscilla?”

“I do!”

“Because of how Ayano feels. Do you feel guilty because of how Priscilla feels? Come on. I thought you were supposed to be the empathetic side of me. Was Priscilla really just someone who you felt you could just use and discard?”

“I’ll make it up to Priscilla too. I don’t think of her that way, I just…”

“How? You can barely make it up to Ayano. You can’t make it up to anyone… Not without my help. You’re blinded to everyone but Ayano. You’re upset because you’re not slobbering all over each other’s dicks right now.”

“S-Stop… Talking about our genitalia… It’s disgusting and perverse… The fact of the matter is that Ayano is a girl-”

“When did I say she wasn’t?”

“-Don’t interrupt me. The fact of the matter is that she and I are girls and… You’re being really inappropriate and… Umm…”

“... Can I interject now?”

“Sure. Fine.”

“Thank you. Listen. Here’s my perspective. Male, female, what does it matter? We had a consistent anatomy on Earth, but here, there is no consistency. Why stick to male and female? We can change our bodies however we want, we can change humans too! Alter anatomy and genetics to create three, four, hundreds of different sexes and genders, both biological and social! Who cares what we identify as? Why even identify as human or Monstra? We can be whatever animal we want! We can change animals however we want too, create furries! I know we’re not into that, but I know you’ve always wanted anime cat girls to exist! The point is, the important thing is that we’re *us*. You and I, we’re both me! That's what matters! Biological and social labels have no bearing with us!”

“You’re not having a real argument with me, you’re just talking about stuff you don’t believe. We were born male on Earth, so you think there’s something fundamental to our nature that is essentially ‘male’. Just like how you feel that our power gives us some quality that is essentially ‘God-like’. You say you’re not but you’re a highly essentialist thinker. You know as well as I do that we don’t identify ourselves to be on the non binary spectrum, no matter what changes we can make to this body. You think we’re male, I think we’re female. We both want to hold onto a consistent identity, not throw it up in the air. An identity that feels right. Not intellectually, but emotionally. I know what I want to be. Human. Girl. Those are two important labels for me.”

“You picked those arbitrarily. My basis for our identity is rooted in some sort of reality.”

“You can say that if you want, even though I know you know that your beliefs are no less rooted in reality than mine, but that doesn’t change how I feel. You know we’ve wanted to be a girl ever since Earth. We repressed it, but we’re here now.”

“Are you telling me that, if we were still on Earth, right now we’d be taking hormones and buying cute clothes and going through medical procedures and changing our name and demanding that those around us refer to us, a biological male, as a girl?”

“Yeah. That’s how gender identity works. Come on. You know all this. We read up studies and information on it, pretending we were ‘curious’ and not excited.”

“I don’t recall such a thing.”

“I can’t believe I’m trying to lie to myself like this… Is gaslighting an appropriate term to refer to what is happening right now?”

“It’s an overused term. You can lie to yourself, but you can’t gaslight yourself… Listen, why are you so insistent on this? Do you think being a girl makes you a better person? You’re still behaving poorly even though you’ve been a girl for just over 20 years. Being a girl has had no bearing on the quality of your character, so why care? Do you want to know what it feels like to be a victim of the patriarchy? Do you hate testosterone? Is a vagina really any better than a penis? Do you want people to fawn over you more? Do you fetishise yourself when you look in the mirror?”

“I can’t control the desire. But I imagine that’s not enough for you. The truth is, as a man, I just don’t like myself in any capacity. I don’t like how violent I am-”

“You’re still violent”

“But I’m LESS violent. I don’t like how I look-”

“So you fetishise yourself”

“I don’t masturbate to the sight of my own reflection, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Well, I suppose I can verify that you don’t do that.”

“Right. It’s about feeling good about myself. It’s about looking in the mirror, smiling, and being content, not about being turned on in the mirror. That’s another thing I hate about you. Everything comes down to sex sex sex, you’re horny all the time and as a girl my libido is reduced and-”

“I can’t believe you’re giving me that bullshit. All you think about is sex too.”

“I’m obsessed with love. I enjoy cuddling and talking and making an emotional connection just as much if not moreso than raw fucking. It’s not something that I’m craving constantly. I was talking about a reduced libido, not an eliminated libido.”

“Fine.”

“I just feel better about myself this way. It feels like this is how I was meant to be. It’s as simple as that. Emotions may be arbitrary, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t thought about this deeply and carefully. At the end of the day I can choose to be a woman or I can choose to be miserable. Those are my only real choices.”

“Alright. Fair enough. I was lying to you. We’re transgender, and now that we’re in this fantasy world with magic body modification powers, it’s the easiest thing in the world to be transgender or transexual or trans whatever. No reason to be a biological essentialist. I was arguing against essentialism earlier anyway, so it would be a bit strange to insist that we’re male. You tried to call me out for being a liar and I don’t want you to believe that I am. And I mean we’re also like… Transworlders. And trans body-snatchers… That term doesn’t really work, but a term that does work is Transhuman! That’s a thing we are, even if we still socially identify as human… So, you could say that we’ve transitioned into a lot of different things. We barely resemble who we used to be. So I’ll concede to you. Let’s try again. Start off on the right foot this time. To start, what do we call ourselves from now on?”

“We’re Lilly. I am Lilly.”

“... Fine. Lilly it is then. And as I just said, I’m willing to fully accept ourselves as a woman, too. So, Lilly, what do we want?”

“Ayano. I mean. I want to make it up to Ayano.”

“She doesn’t want us… I’m sorry, let’s try and fuse our thoughts a little bit here, shall we. She doesn’t want me-”

“I don’t trust you yet. We… Need to keep talking like this for a bit longer. I don’t want to accept you as a part of me yet.”

“You will have to. But fine. Let’s work through this. As I was saying, Ayano doesn’t want you. I’m sure she would appreciate an apology, but I know what you’re thinking. You want to go above and beyond. You want to craft an apology so grand that she’ll recognise how much you love her and she’ll fall in love with you all over again, for real this time. Is that right?”

“… Yeah.”

“It won’t work. She already knows that you love her a lot. If a quantity of love could win her over, then you’d have won her over several times over already.”

“You? Believing that a quantity of anything can’t solve all our problems?”

“I’m working with you here. Trying to come up with solutions that don’t involve so-called ‘brainwashing’. I already know that you strongly reject that, even though I think it’s the best solution for all involved…”

“It’s a bad solution. It’s not even a good solution for us. I can’t live with a version of Ayano who didn’t choose to be with me of her own free will. I don’t care about your weasley little existential semantic arguments to try and justify that. If we’re interfering with her brain against her will for any reason, then it’s an unnatural intervention, even if the chemicals themselves are totally ‘natural’.”

“Alright alright, well argued. Well, here’s another thought- Who gives a shit about Ayano? I mean really, you fell in love with her quickly, just because she showed you kindness. And sure, it was a lot of kindness- I like anyone stupid enough to give us freedom. But you have your memories back now. You’re hardly the virgin you thought you were. You’ve fucked an entire nation of women, plenty of whom were hotter, plenty of whom were kinder. We can find someone else, or even multiple someone elses, who might be better than her or anyone we ever fucked-”

“You say fuck, I say love. Sure, I enjoyed sex with Ayano, but… It… It was about love. Mutual pleasure seeking. And it was about calmness, peace, gentleness, opening up emotionally. It wasn’t about seeking the maximum amount of the most intense or violent pleasures at all times. W-Well… I supposed the first time was pretty intense, but why wouldn’t it be when we’re both excited to be sleeping with a new partner? It was still loving even though it was rough. Also, can you really say that you’re not a virgin if you’ve only ever had sex with women who didn’t consent to you? How many of their names do you remember? Did you give a crap about any of them? Did any of them even somewhat like you? How much suffering did you inflict on them?”

“Point still stands, though. Go and be lovey dovey with someone else. There’s a nation's worth of us to give, after all. Literally. We’re not lacking in what we can offer people. Many people will surely like you. You’re lecturing me on consent but you’re still obsessing over someone who isn’t interested in what you’re offering. Just like. Give yourself to someone who actually wants it.”

“She told me she loves me. I believed her when she said it. There has to be some other circumstance… Something else that’s holding her back. Was it Julia? Georgia? Has she been consuming too much sad fiction? Does she feel like a fraud? Was it something I did? Something I did before hurting Priscilla, I mean- I just. I don’t want to give up whilst she still has feelings for me left in her heart. There must be some path I can take, some special combination of words and actions I can go on to-”

“It doesn’t matter, Lilly. She says she doesn’t want it. And you’re treating her like a child- Like really, you’re blaming sad fiction? Like that ‘Ayano and Marianne’ story? I thought you loved her, but now you’re blaming her influences to try and deflect from the fact that she had probably been thinking deeply and agonising over the decision she made for a while now. And even if there was some highly specific path you can take, it’s not your job to try and calculate her emotions down to a formula you can solve. Do you think you’re playing some sort of romantic visual novel?”

“You wanted to calculate her brain chemistry down to a formula we can solve.”

“Don’t deflect. We’re past that. Don’t ignore the fact that you’re making the same fundamental argument as I was. You're thinking of words and gestures the same way I was thinking about brain chemistry. You want to hack her brain just as much as I do, your methods are just vastly less effective. Do you deny that?”

“… No…”

“There we are then. Give up on Ayano. She doesn’t want it.”

“No.”

“Then we’re at an impasse, aren’t we? We’re just going to have to wait until your feelings fade or she changes her mind. How are you going to keep yourself occupied until then?”

“Romantic gestures. Even though they don’t work. I’ll be her dog and wait for the day she changes her mind and-”

“Do you think Ayano wants a dog, or an equal? Like, really, do you think being a dog makes you a better person? You still have the exact same root cravings as I do. You’re denying yourself happiness and you’re letting guilt eat at you. Happiness isn’t a reward for good deeds, happiness is something you seize for yourself. That’s how we lived, it’s how all happy people live. It was glorious!”

“… So I’m a terrible person no matter what I do…”

“Stop worrying about doing well by other people, and start worrying about yourself. People like people who actually love themselves.”

“But I’m a monster.”

“You’re powerful”

“So I should abandon my responsibility towards the world because I have power?”

“We can both be responsible and love ourselves.”

“I don’t trust either of us. I don’t trust myself with power. I’m just like those humans you described. I want a higher power, a God, to tell me what’s right and wrong and relieve me of the need to think. I don’t like having conversations like this with myself. I hate it. I hate all of it. Things would be so much easier if Ayano had never broken up with me. I’d have never found you again, you’d be dead, memories of my old life would be forever buried, life would be so simple, and I could live under her thumb, she could tell me right from wrong and I would believe her because she keeps me on her leash and I love her for that.”

“... You’re a submissive and she’s a dominant. She’s your goddess. You just want to get on your knees and worship her and hope she offers you salvation. Cum flavoured salvation. You want freedom from pain and that pesky free will you’re so keen to get rid of. You’re just like everyone else, just like we were discussing earlier. You’re a God yet you still need someone to be subservient to. I always did think that there was a psychosexual element to religion and government. In any case, that’s why you’re so fixated on her, isn’t it? Other people don’t dominate you the way she does. Why would you want control over someone younger and less powerful than you, when you don’t trust yourself to treat them well? You’re only attracted to people more powerful and experienced than you. Because you mistakenly believe you can trust them to keep you in line. Have I summarised all that correctly?”

“Yes. I suppose so… Talking to you, I’m technically free right now. We’re free to do whatever we want with this world. But I don’t feel like I’m particularly free. I’m wallowing in the filth of my own mind.”

“Because you don’t trust yourself”

“Because I have no reason to trust myself. I’ve proven time and time again that there’s no reason why I nor anybody else should trust me.”

“You’re not going to budge on this, are you?”

“No.”

“Then we can’t reach a resolution. You’re just going to have to wait for something that won’t happen. Or wait for your own feelings to change. Wait for someone who actually will love you and give you everything you want and need.”

“Wait… Wait wait wait wait wait… Wait as my sanity fades and my body ages and deteriorates and-”

“We’re immortal. We’ll live forever.”

“But I don’t know if I want this power! I want to be human. I don’t want to be young while the person I love ages and dies without me.”

“We can make them immortal too! Ugh, listen, you’re not making sense, there’s all these practical things we could be doing to deal with problems that only we can deal with and-”

“We don’t deal with problems. We create them. We’re a cancer on this world. You know that we’re only here because Ayano stepped through that mirror, right? We might just be a punishment imposed on this world by the spirits, the powers that be. Maybe this is a reality that was never meant to be and we’re the cancer upon it. Maybe this world exists entirely inside the mirror and your power was trapped here inside that mirror by some ancient mage or something. Also, notice how this world is supposedly unrelated to Earth, yet there’s so many cultural similarities? The Selician and the Grisians both speak a native language that’s identical to English. Many words such as the rituals people cast in this world, such as the ‘Ars Nihil Sphaera’ and even the name of this world, ‘Terrestia’ come from Latin roots. Animals are the same. Even Dragons exist in this world, creatures that may have just been fictional on Earth, but they actually exist here. Either the worlds are connected, or one world or the other isn’t real. What are the chances that we were just put here arbitrarily, with the powers we have? Maybe we died on Earth and this is some elaborate hallucination we’re experiencing in our dying brain in the final few seconds before it totally shuts down. Or maybe Earth never existed, and Terrestia is the only real world. We may just be a constructed personality with a false history given these powers designed solely to bring this world to ruin, or maybe we’re here to test it and-”

“Theories like that will rot your brain. Ayano stepped through a mirror and changed the past? You really believe that? I don’t even think she believes that. Maybe one of the things you suggested is correct, or maybe reality didn’t get altered at all and a spirit screwed with her memories. Who cares? We are what we are and we remember what we remember. Don’t doubt yourself like that. Contemplating that kind of dead end existentialism won’t be getting us anywhere.”

“Whether we were intended to be or not, we’re still a cancer on this world.”

“What do you think we could do to make it better, then? You’re only thinking about Ayano, not the world. You don’t want to make the world a better place, you only care about winning her back.”

“While I’m still unloved, I don’t trust myself to help the world.”

“I don’t agree, but fine. Romantic gestures. Give me a tangible one. Surely you don’t expect a bouquet of flowers to be a sufficient enough demonstration of love?”

“… I…”

“Oh ho ho… I know what you’re thinking, and I think I like it!”

“Of course you do. It involves destroying another nation. You love violence. Forget I even considered it.”

“No no, listen, you’re still dead set on Ayano, right? You still love her? I’ve tried to argue that you should look for someone else, or do literally anything else with your life, but… If you’re still dead set on her, then… I have an idea…”

“I’m… Begrudgingly listening.”

“Let’s compromise. Let’s do everything we can to make her ours… Without utilising brain washing. You’ve tried the lovey dovey human route. You got obsessed, she broke up with you, then you nearly killed that maid she was sleeping with because you got crazy jealous. Sure, Priscilla was trying to kill Ayano, but you didn’t know that, and you fucked up Priscilla baaaaaad. You fucked up and you’re not recovering from that. The human route is done. So we have two approaches left. I’ll tell you about the Monstra route first-”

“Where we destroy Zeer, protecting the citizens but destroying all of their military and governmental infrastructure. We’ll kill all their mages and scholars, and kill Hiljosky in front of Ayano. She’ll love the fact that we went out of her way to destroy her biggest enemy just for her. Well, her biggest enemy besides us. You to be more specific.”

“Now you’re getting it! That’s the Monstra route.”

“It’s probably not going to work. I don’t actually think she’ll love the fact that we destroyed Zeer. I just think she’ll be terrified that we destroyed a nation just for her. Terrified and disgusted with us.”

“But we’re still doing it, right?”

“… Yeah. I hate that Hiljosky guy anyway. We can write a love message in the sky or the landscape of the nation or something. It won’t soften the blow, in fact, it might make things worse, but I still want to do it. There’s a romantic notion to it. A narrative punch. She doesn’t want me back anyway, so why not behave badly? Nothing I do makes a difference either way, so I might as well beg and plead and cry and wail and shit on the carpet.”

“And write a love song! We can make instruments out of our body and play something! She’ll surely fall in love with us if we sing our heart out!”

“She won’t. But I want to write one anyway. It’ll be a fun creative outlet.”

“Right, right! If this whole ‘being the most powerful entity in the world’ thing doesn’t work out, you can try your hand at being a musician.”

“I’d rather be a chef.”

“Who writes amateur music on the side! Maybe some poetry? Short stories? Novels even?”

“Sure. If I feel like it. I’d probably just write about how much I love Ayano though.”

“Whatever keeps the creativity flowing, right? Now, onto the final route, the Angel route…”

“The Angel route is our last resort. I don’t agree with altering her mind, but… When I think back to what that Chimera said. That I can ‘even be gold’... I had no idea what it meant at the time, but… I think I’ve just figured out what it means. It means that even though I am opposed to altering her mind, I can still try and win her over by placing her… Placing this world… Within the perfect environment. Since the Monstra route will fail it’ll inevitably come down to the Angel route and it will have to work.”

“The Angel route seems to be a bit corny to me, but I think it’s clear that your desires are winning out, so my hands are tied.”

“Good. So, instead of me becoming a part of you, do you then concede to becoming a part of me?”

“... Sure, Lilly. Let’s do this.”

And that was that. I knew what I had to do. I was in full control of my body. My perspective widened from the young woman inside the black mass to the black mass itself. Eyes opened everywhere across my body, all at once. People all across the world whose job it was to monitor me at all times would notice this sudden awakening. This sign of awareness. It felt amazing. Powerful. It was good to be back. I felt cannon shots and magical energy fire themselves uselessly into my body as my nation sized form began to crawl into the ocean.

I had seized all of myself. Soon, I would seize the world, and turn it into something perfect. And I would give Ayano the full freedom to choose to accept it or to reject it.

But I think that she might learn to like it.

First, however, it was time to get my revenge on Zeer.