The capital was a deceptive hell scape. At appearance many still had the time of their life, meanwhile these ignored all the staggering failures that were accumulating, and from the outside view of seven weeks gone you'd see it. If you'd been here the whole time, you would simply be dealing with it how you felt appropriate and likely been like most else were.
I know for a fact I would have in their shoes.
Why would I clean up more mess than my own? I could only assume they'd have eight attacks, one a week, though we'd found out asking they had been more sporadic as time went on to the point few came at once anymore. The first three had been goblins, the second three more numbers of the same, and the last couple of weeks forrest trolls. The trolls had come over a few days, one or two at a time and not together purposefully.
By the time they'd experienced the danger a lack of joint tactics could bring from the less volumous but more deadly and independent trolls, group tactics alone were all that was required, yet a unified individual thrill of combat led to casualties no single individual yet had tried to do much about. Parties had pretty much as a rule reformed, with minor exceptions, most had gone back to the ones they'd been in originally.
If there was an earthly saving grace, it was that if you showed people something that was better for them they'd hold onto it. The problem there was when emotion or thought made them seek what was more to their nature, it was in a way unnatural to break your flow towards where you should be. You went where you wanted, that was easier, the path of least resistance.
So, some realized the party they'd had was not what they wanted, but were wise enough to realize it was needed. Because someone was more able or attractive that did not make them a better party member, while the party member that seemed cold as ice or hot as fire to you would be harder to get on with, such people always had as much to teach as learn from you where you two had the heat of friction or cold of distance parting you.
Such emotions we disregard as an anti-social or hostile person unwisely by our nature, our desire to find little resistance in our life will blind us all too quickly of faculties, I know this because it is completely possible for all to accept you merely if you know how to truly accept them as they are. 'As they are.' Not, 'As you wish.', the difference is maximal.
One truly understands while the other can only overstand upon its principal. Simple overstanding is a crutch for when you logically know why things are wrong, but haven't emotionally discovered why for yourself firsthand, as simple understanding is for a feeling that has no logical ration yet. If you're given true understanding or true overstanding, you can fill in the gaps, and get by on faith and trust. They're good enough either way to act as both sakes of reasoning.
Most of the cats and dogs were still around, even though there were so many more, the bodies of dead beings had given them plentiful indirect food besides the direct kind. Many animals they could eat or run off, like vermin and birds, others like wolves and bears they were unlikely to try as often.
In movies it was always rats and crows hording upon bodies, but nature isn't so picky as movies, and you would scarcely believe the reality of what will truly feast upon corpses. Whether humanoid or not, quite a few smaller birds were some of the more constant pests upon them, eating fresh and easy to pluck meats where it was easiest besides picking at rotten flesh or the bugs crawling out of these.
Even those that wouldn't eat flesh, many more types of birds ate the insects coming out, and other types of them like raptors would target the birds or vermin eating at human and hominid corpses. Of course, where the crows or rats were altogether eating, nothing dared to stop them. It was that way with most all the animals in groups, those using bodies as feeding grounds.
Lizards and spiders, frogs and snakes, bats and rats, birds and raptors, mammals and hominids, all of so much just more or less took what they had the power to hold and kept other groups at bay working together. It took numbers or size to change that, eiither way, mass. The insects were the underdog, in intensity, but by volume they were the overlord of this feast. Of course, these were the most attacked, but they were together in mass the most defended.
It was beyond sickening.
Because of the stink and filth, because of the insects and harmful gases, and because most of all bugs were working together more intellegently than the humans living in this city. Even the dogs were scared to roam and stuck together like one large pack, packs went out together to get food, and packs went to find relief together.
People were walking down the capitals streets with wolves and bears, while the bears would eat and lounge they did not stay like the wolves, and you could literally watch the highway and see people thrown from horses regularly as they closely encountered carnivores. These were not many of them untrained riders, nor were the horses other than good ones.
Most clever horses or more clever riders either got spooked for good reason ahead of time at the sight, and avoided this fate, but few recovered their mounts countenance when they encountered carnivores so close. Not with the smell of death so heavy in the air. All senses were shocked to stupor.
Squirrels chewing up fabrics for their nest as much as the less rotten flesh, and bones, not much different than rats. By the outskirts of town I'd seen a rabbit chewing a dead fox, and like all the things I saw, that one was just a part of another. While a hawk had been coming down for the same rabbit eating flesh and fur both, a horseman had ended up striking and killing the hawk and rabbit in its talons.
If the rider had cinched his saddle he would have never been dumped promptly on his feet when that horse reared, after it had bolted leaving behind rider and saddle, blanket the only fool chasing it in the wind shortly before being dropped not long after rider. It had stuck mostly because it hadn't been taken off in months, and hair and static had made it cling fast, but bodily fluids from the sore that was its back also coated the blanket.
I was able to provide its back relief to look like mere thinned fur, beyond just healed where it was still bald, what I was able to do on reaction before it was out of range.
Some flesh and rot were on the underside of the blanket, I didn't even know if that was from it being on too long or if something had spilled on the it, but the horse itself had been covered with stinking pus and had kept on straight towards the capital. "Stupid useless animal..." The man muttered about the horse, never having to break his stride, meanwhile the horse limped on lamely.
If only he knew, if only he could see and feel, he would know he was talking about himself from the heart without realizing it. Horse nor rider would have found ill with the other, in truth, the horse hadn't even been upset with the useless stupid animal on his back. He'd been startled by the sudden appearance of the hawk, and though he'd killed it, the pain and fear together just overloaded its composure.
He was trailing blood from his hooves, the horse was by far the victim at worst. At best the human had made victim of them both. Such was so of all aspects of the capital, that by ignorances upon ignorances, these people were making victims of themself. The same carnivores would continuously be attracted to this area, and after awhile, there'd be none instead of more due to food causing any population explosion.
People would start killing them, the hominids that attacked would too, they'd kill each other because of this unusual perpetuated phenomenon and diseases would spread as rampantly through them as people. Already, many of both had doubtlessly been sickened, gorging and fighting and mating and competing were excellent for disease to spread anyway. Here, it was just magnified, but end results are not as obvious as surfaces suggest.
There would be short-term benefits for most all, but the long-term was only detriments. This war was one only the insects would win, although, those who won this war the insects way would become like insects.
Even the animals would soon sense it was time to leave, the party and fun were over, all that was mostly left was mess that even animals wanted no part of. It was revealed through the back alleys and abandoned streets and homes that only insects poured into and out of. Not even the lizards and spiders eating these dared enter such places, even in their numbers, they simply waited outside thresholds.
Entire streets and alleys lost to ants and flies, but we were the ones acting like insects here.
Food and alcohol, rest and sex, discovery and recovery. These people had been through a mess to find how to get clean, no different than people on drugs getting an ultimate high that led to an ultimate low they somehow survived, more each day had started looking for the reigns of control they lost when the positions they had control in no longer worked.
The only control you had over stink was to clean it, or smother it. Carting the freshest dead to burn, covering others with dirt, mainly many were carting in dirt with which to cover the insect ridden corpses and recover the worst areas where the most action was seen. If they'd kept the action to the fields, and not let this get so out of control, their burning would be easy.
That wasn't possible in the capital, you'd burn down the residential and commercial quarters, those buildings had wooden interiors even where they had stone and mortared exteriors. They'd all burn, mostly because every roof was wooden, although more than a few had already burned down. The tannery and the brewery were gone, so too a few smaller stores, but dozens of homes had been seemingly set fire to.
I happened to catch a candidate for at least some of that, a young woman who percieved comic relief and healing power in arsonry, one who enjoyed spending mere moments setting a fire that would provide over an hour of brilliant entertainment for her bright mind in the dark of night. It's no way to talk about your highschool flame, to call her hothead or blockburner, yet I'd never know Victoria to cut loose.
Still a babe, but gone bad? 'Tori. What. The. Fffuuuuck?' That had been just before night really fell. I'd noticed more useful infirmation though, from a watchtower, one in the square. From there I'd scanned much, Kate and Paige had both come, I'd asked Kate to scout for information she'd brought up wondering as we looked. The attack patterns and frequencies, they'd been her concern, specifics. Casualties hadn't really even been noted, a few put them at one in five at most. One said one in three.
My own view had been general, open to suggestions that my senses and faculties would pick up, seeking no one thing and taking in all that I could. The more something had tried to stick out then, the more I'd scrutinize it and try to be done with it, in order to take in all I could.
Vampires had changed, their accumulating genetic variation had made them different from Alyssa and the others who hadn't fed on people, and the most obvious change was they were all the more like wolves in sheeps clothing. The most deadly of threats usually seem like the safest things, which is what makes them the deadliest, it wasn't that vampires advantages were at all supreme.
They sensed like prey, looked weak and beautiful, besides innocent. They were predators however. Ruby lips and eyes in shades of reds and pinks, pale complexions, and glossy black hairs in the moonlight were more of their charm over others. Living in the moonlight to seem more radiant than they were was a charm over themselves.
It didn't make them more beautiful, it made them seem more beautiful, and the truth was something they might very well lose in time. Sunlight was still good for them, and they were giving it up without a fight, if I doubted it would kill them nobody would doubt it would soon hurt them. Eventually, it would be like poison, if only because the vampire charm over them made it so.
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Alyssa still had her own charms, the violet eyes like bruised plums, brighter only at the edges but dark in the middle no different than how light plays on plums. Her skin was still the same moderate tan over a slightly more pale white complexion, her lips were still a soft pinkish brown, and she had the same very dark black glossy hair anyway outside moonlight.
It got more luxurious at night, but we all slept then, and where we slept in the Thirsty-Valley keep was exposed to sunlight naturally recessed into a cliff. There were few vampires like her, more were men, but even among them not many more weren't living it up and night and feeding. The vampires had no other apparent changes.
Succubi had their male incubi counterpart here, but for that matter Valkyries had no males. They could have either or a mix of both of the organs of a male and/or female, at least I still assumed valkyries might also have intersex potential. With no gender selection option, it seemed prudent that there would be a middle ground for those within it.
The succubi and incubi were a little more different, they didn't seem gargoylish anymore, the look of their blue-grey wings and tails flesh had spread to their upper chest and back visibly with most. Necks, upper arms and lower bellies that were visible revealed the same thing. I assumed their pelvic and rear area were not spared, but the flesh didn't look any different except color.
I hadn't even noticed the males were male at first, myself, without a close look at first all of them had seemed too fair to be other than women. Only looking at the two now revealed their differences had become more pronounced with gathering lust.
Of them, some now had only fanged teeth in their mouth, but these women did not change from performing any sex acts. The lust alone for them was enough to fuel their continued mutation, all I could assumed was the few horned specimens of them I saw were women who maybe were using sex to get more intense lust.
Banshee and male wraith, with their vessel resting somewhere deemed a mummy when they left it hibernating, these moved about to and fro looting or looking around and moving on so much they were the easiest to see on the surface but the hardest to get a real deep read on. The males ghosts were a bit thicker, the females a bit thinner, but height and sex seemed to create a uniform thickness to them without variation and all looked thin.
I could hear them after awhile only by letting my sense of hearing go deaf, in a way I was just letting my hearing fall asleep unlike the rest of my senses, and it seemed natural to do so from my experience as astranaut leaving my vessel behind at will. Asleep, a sense was in the astral, we did not always let all our senses sleep. They could rest, or wake as well. Resting they were closer to the astral, awake, the physical.
If there were changes to them, it would perhaps be with their bodies, or else if I spirited out amongst them and disembarked from my own vessel. My focus was general, specifics were a second to my purposes.
Satyresses and Satyrs, of them their hooves had become pronounced and while most wore shoes still, you could tell less than half seemed liked they would wear them much longer. Aome were just hoofing it now, literally, not like how I went barefooted most of the time but wearing armor to keep my ankles incredibly powerful and flexible. Such feet were dense, and with less spread out form, also condensed.
They might not get frostbit or burned as fast in snow and sand, but such feet would be awful to have travelling over sand, snow and ice. You'd hate every step, for horizontal and four-legged locomotive animals whose weight was spread out naturally it was not so detrimental, for vertical two-legged locomotion it was a loss. Plenty of versatility gone for minor gains.
Moderate offensive and defensive increase, true, and the increased traction and ability for downwards compression in a concentrated area would make you jump higher and get more spring in each step or kick. Heat, abrasion, cold, plenty of resistances. And yet swimming was harder for them now, they'd no feet to kick with, as well the hooves were denser.
They'd fall through ice more, sink in mud and loose sediments more besides powdery snow, and the one terrain they'd enjoy advantage on was solid grounds. Compacted sediments and soils, rocks, mountains would be where they plied effort efficiently with such feet. They could walk at least, but did they know how much they'd lost?
Nymphs were plentiful, many women had gone for beauty and it had done for them what they wished or more, but like valkyries they were the other all female mutation. These women lived the daylight life, the sun seemed to do them justice, and yet these were the most isolated and prideful besides strikingly beautiful women.
And then at night, the glamor of it was gone, and when only pride remained they seemed to disappear from sight. This was not because they left or went straight inside, they still fared well in the lit areas where their beauty remained heightened, but the only thing that stuck out about them was their nose by then. At least, their proud natures were not all there was to them.
Everyone of these had a similar story, losses besides gains.
I couldn't quantify visible difference with pixies, and so, went to begin interacting to learn more. Groups were using their banshees and wraiths to steal from each other, that was the big secret going around, one some groups with them were using for theirs to watch out for that type of threat from. Day awake, and night as a ghost, they could watch without detriment and see ghosts like them.
Neither banshee nor wraith could see my spirit, not unless I revealed it to them, then they'd taken me for another of their kind and answered more questions than they realized. Few had been forthcoming about negatives when they were doing them, those who hadn't were, the others were more curious about how I'd been invisible.
They were the easier to figure.
Pixies I still found no answer for, not until mid evening after many hours of confirming the same did I start realizing some deeper truths than were apparent. The succubi nor incubi were to blame for lust. Lust had belonged to the pixies all along, and that was what gave these their insect-like wings, and what made them seem attractive.
They couldn't control their own lust anymore, but they could manipulate others lust, those who were not pixies.
Vampires lost their sloth, they didn't have any, they took others comfort and nutrition and stamina from them. They had none, so took it from others who were not vampires.
Wraiths and banshees had no gluttony, they wanted for nothing as the living dead, and yet already they were stealing for others needs and wants. They had none, so they took it from others who did, others who were not wraiths or banshees.
Satyrs and satyresses had no pride, they needed others pride, so they went around acting without reservations and making others too proud to talk to them. People who were not like them.
The succubi and incubi had no greed, so they sought others, and the thing most sought was to possess their company. Their lust was their own, assuming they'd be attributed to it by a name alone was foolish of me. They were not sexual beings, but earthly ones seeking earthly comforts, and to be paid or awarded for their presence alone was greedy of others for them. They had no interest in each other either.
Nymphs were not pride, they were wrath. Nothing infuriated more than being looked down at, they wanted your wrath, they had none. There was no more peaceable being, none yet that sought to cause rage, anger, but above all conflict where multiple angers collided and escalated.
With bodies like theirs meant to be seen most in the light of day above others, when they were most beautiful and the lighting was more optimal, women like them could nurture plenty of wrath. Nymphs weren't together anywhere either.
Valkyries flocked. They had no envy, but boy did a valkyrie want to be envied, and they didn't mind trying to get it from anyone. Mostly each other, they acted as if they were each in love with one another, and the truth was they hated theirselves. If not for looking out and seeing another like them alive who was not there, they would be miserable.
They were in love with one another because of the complete and utter detestion and desolation they felt in theirselves, and one could not be alone from others a few seconds without trying to kill theirselves, but other valkyries would swarm them to stop them and nurse them back to health quickly.
They had no desire in them, no urge in them, no will or fire, they did not want, truth or lie meant nothing to them and they were above illusions and tricks or lies yet they were below symbols and signs or truths. They had no self preservation, no drive to survive for their selves, and ultimately valkyries were nothing but love that was empty.
Envy. In negative connotation alone it was as we thought, the word as we imply it surely means only the acts of evil, earthly wants for better. Need to be the best. Take all of that away and instead of virtue, what do you get?
Self-esteem, self-soothing, self-control, and no more ego. Robots with a uniformly empty personality, a shared identity, if nothing else it was simply too much virtue for an individual to balance with the sudden loss of an integral and major facet of emotions. Envy might be envy, but when your heart didn't envy at all it was love left.
Pure love was in their hearts, they just could not get it out, and that energy was trying to get to every part of them. There were a few dead valkyries that had gotten far enough away to die. I could not abide the crime of it, and though I had stayed as objective as possible, I had to try and correct this. Time had stopped, I had choked it in my grasp, so as to find the solution without them suffering anymore.
For me, time went, for else it stopped but all I could realistically do in that state with what control I had of time is think. No time means no space and matter or energy manipulations, meaning you'd have to let time be the places you needed to work with, a thing most people don't know because they have never moved time.
A time-dilation, one which minimizes interfering upon spatial or gravitational forces, is very permeable to air. Air that isn't in your body, and sound outside you besides what you produce, both are immediately pushed out of one. The hearts ability to seize time has time seize the heart also. Air around you goes quick, the air in the mouth and nose, and then the lungs before cells start being robbed of oxygen by immeasurable magnetism.
There is neither light nor dark in a dilation intense enough to stop time outside of it either. The light rapidly leaves, it can't come back in, there is no time to. Air can't come back in it. Darkness can't exist there either, because it's too intense with energy you get a true shadow by which there is no shade, nor light, nor dark. All that is in such a time dilation is sensed as one thing. It is all of time.
So much time passes inside with so little to see the brain can instantly process all the information around it silmultaneously. You become all knowing of this environment at once, feeling the forces at work no different than if they were by your own hand, which is only true by virtue of what you have done by putting yourself out of time.
You have died.
All of the chemical reactions possible, energy state changes of matter, and cyclical processes of universal forces of time occur instantly. Only the mind survives, the spirit survives with hearts eye and heart intact with all faculties, knowledge, memories, unable to deviate from what it was with the death of the vessel.
'If they just know they are loved, and they know they can be forgiven of anything, with pure love in their hearts that can't change and loving their self as much, the valkyries can more than recover. They'll be perfect, hundreds of such could change the course of this world. Nobody deserves the fate they have without that.'
I knew the consequences, and I'd had my doubts about even those limits. This body was beyond time and being destroyed or failing, neither could it destroy others body or let them fail. Perfect purpose must be dual-fractal of a singularity to be balanced, this one was triple-fractal, for God would not let it fail or be destroyed either.
Sunlight passed through and the body only had light inside, nothing so intense produced by it to emanate, however it would not change during the day or night. Invisible to the naked eye as it was, for the valkyries, they instantly sensed and went unconscious unto their own restorations. I left them like that, the last thing I needed was a group putting me on a pedestal. Winged women at that, no.
I no longer had a shadow. Shadow I had lost, but not doubt, and all I can say to have gained was a body that embodied the proverbial power to weight ratio. I didn't have earthly mass anymore, so you could rearrange einsteins theory of relativity and remove mass, then change the speed of lights exponential squaring into cubing without this conflicting with his theory.
This was pure energy, not mass relative.
The energy I had felt about like that, there was no contention, in a way I became even less powerful. There was so little of this energy this body even needed, far less than the old, yet I had exceedingly more though I felt I could have already done seemingly anything.
Time went on about half as fast after, and I could not speed it up more, I was along for this new permanent ride with a hell of a new perspective on things 'Dragging by me all day long.', from this point forward. I was outside of time in a world with it, my circumstances could admittedly be worse, and I had no shadow. It was so exhilarating to be that's all I was doing by the time I saw her.
"Tori? What. The. Fffuuuuck?"
I'd seen too much at once not to paint a pretty pathetic picture of her. "You. Tell me, what do I look like to you, Jack?"
"Elaborate. Please, don't ask me that open-ended, I can't help but say it now. Damn." I straightened my lazy posture. "Victoria the flame vixen. I think you're taking your nickname way too seriously these days." "Uh-huh. Well that was what you called me, only you put 'the flame' in it, my friends called me mostly my name. Few called me the other names, gamers, once.
"If you tell me how my body looks to you and tell me what you did to cheap out of directly saying you loved me the second time around I'll do you a solid."
"You look like you. A human, a woman, twenty though you're over thirty and still with that impossibly youthful quality. If you're over thirty here though - nevermind. About the other thing, I told you with eight periods and two spaces over an IM on that old messenger."
She started to approach me, no emotion on her face, and from quite a distance. "Seriously Tori? Fire might approach me, but it'll never burn or touch me."
"Don't worry. Little old me, why I'm just gonna' rekindle what smoulders yet."