The next morning, a young woman was praying deeply at the foot of The God’s Mangrove. She had a very difficult exam to pass, and if she passed it, her acceptance to a University near the prestigious city of Fanyang was assured. She easily could have gone to any University in the world, but going to Fanyang wasn’t just going to a prestigious University. It was connections and opportunities that didn’t exist here in Richardsville. The right friendship could get one anything they wanted, even beyond their wildest dreams. It’d get her parents a real home instead of that shack on the outskirts of town. It’d get her a title, something elegant and befitting her intellect and beauty. And most of all, it would be validation that she was greater than this damned tiny town.

And then she looked up and saw the thing emerging from the trunk of the mangrove. She had no way of knowing that it called itself Emily and that it was just experimenting with the limits of its ability to shape its form before projecting itself into the world. The girl who prayed at the foot of the tree only saw a pulsating and writhing mass of rough, blackened skin and uncomfortably soft and wet pink insides. It had faces, teeth, fingers, and a lot of other things that vaguely registered as human while being positioned and used in ways utterly alien even to her educated and clever mind. She screamed so shrilly that the being paused, and Emily wondered what was happening to warrant such a response. The girl scrambled off of the ground and ran as far away as she could. The sheer fright she was given would rattle her nerves so completely that she would fail the exam completely.

“This is useless,” Emily thought as she watched the girl sprint away. “I can’t get anything done like this.” With that conclusion, she retreated into the tree to try again.

The girl ran screaming past the front door of a small home near the south side of Richardsville, and a young man opened the door and poked his head out. He shrugged as nothing happened to warrant the commotion and imagined that it was a hysteric who escaped the care of the Temple and who would soon be returned to whatever therapies they had invented to attempt to cure her maladies. He shut his door and returned to his breakfast of flavorless bread and root vegetables, which he enjoyed with a cup of beer for just a moment before there was a knock at the door. He sighed and got up to answer the door, only to be met with a young man and a young woman who looked like siblings.

“Hello sir-” David began before Vual leapt forward, colliding with the older man’s chest and sending him crashing to the ground. The librarian shook his head and rushed inside, shutting the door behind him as the demon in his sister’s body wrestled with the man.

“Get off of me!” the man roared as he tried to fight her off, only to find his wrists pinned to the ground by strength that shouldn’t have been able to exist in her slender body.

“No~” Vual taunted before she forced his arms above his head, using her grip to hold both of his wrists in place with one hand. David looked through a window, keeping an eye out for passersby as Vual beat the man to death, hammering his face with her first until his skull cracked and he stopped moving.

“That wasn’t clean at all,” David protested when it was over.

“It was fun.”

“I made that plan entirely to-”

“Can it, boy. Check the house. See if he had any family.”

David sighed and began to look around the home. He already knew the answer. Alexander, David never learned his last name, was a recurring patron of the library. A humble man who worked as a stonemason, he was literate enough to hold an interest in fairy tales. He lived alone and kept no friends, likely due to a combination of his social impotencies and a lifelong predilection towards isolation. Most importantly, he was professionally successful enough to own his property and enough of an old-fashioned man that he kept no bank accounts, only coins and valuables in a burlap sack under his bed. It was the perfect home for a demon.

Vual followed him for the entire tour through the home, taking in how clean and orderly everything was. She’d thoroughly enjoy ruining that. “Step one is done. Now all I need is a body that fits my tastes, and I’ll let you have your sister back.”

David sat down on Alexander’s bed, ignoring his small sense of loss for the man as he looked up at Vual. “And what exactly are your tastes?”

“Young-”

“Absolutely not.”

“Not that young, you cretin. About your age. Female, and distinctly feminine. Of good health physically. It’d be nice if she was a virgin, too.”

David tried to think about who at the Library would fit that description. He did think of Emily for a moment, but he pushed that aside. Anyone too closely affiliated with the University would’ve caused too much concern had they vanished. He needed the least attention possible until he could cut Vual out entirely. “I can get you all of those things, except for young.”

“Do better.”

There went the Mary idea. David groaned and leaned back on the bed. “I can’t think of anyone.”

“Shame, shame. I guess I’ll need to keep your sister’s body forever. I wonder what depravities I can ruin it with~”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I would ruin you first!” David shot back as he sat right back up.

Vual let out a cackle. “Oh, how I love your sensitivity. I propose heading to the nearest den of sin. There, I’ll find a new body, and you’ll find someone willing to let you touch them so intimately that you have some fun for the first time in your life.”

This time, it was David laughing. “Whatever place you’re thinking of, it’s not here. The Temple runs the only alehouse in Richardsville.”

Vual scoffed. “Of course. Poisoning yourself is no fun when the Gods approve of it…”

“I have an idea,” David said after a short break in the conversation. “An inn. Plenty of pilgrims pass through here, mostly to pray at The God’s Mangrove. We’ll sit there, have a meal, and wait for someone who catches your eye to pass by. Then, when you find them, we’ll break into their room, tie them to the bed, and have you enter their body. How does that sound?”

“I like it!” Vual announced before going for a hug, resulting in David standing up and pushing her to the ground.

“Fine. Then let’s go.”

As the demon and the librarian sat out for the nearest inn that night, Emily reemerged from The God’s Mangrove with a brand new form. It was similar to her human form, but this time, it looked much more like a tree. In fact, she considered it to be her greatest accomplishment so far, even more than finding her way out of that damned void. Bark and wood merged like muscle and flesh, creating a masculine body sculpted in such a way that artists would have delighted in studying it to quantify the ideal ratios of the human form, the ones that they found to create beauty. A pair of dull green eyes darted around the plaza before Emily began to set off, curious as to how the form moved. It walked like a human but felt much heavier than the average body. She wondered if it was stronger and if the natural weakness she had to fire carried over to this body. Midway through a step, she wondered if she could transform, and she did. Emily, as David knew her, was standing in the middle of the plaza, clothed in a loose pair of pants, a loose shirt, and a long cloak.

That was useful, she concluded. If one body were unsuitable for a certain situation, she’d just change whatever about it wasn’t useful for something that worked. In fact, that was power, as she recognized it. Imagine if an insect could, upon realizing it was trapped in a predatory pitcher plant, evolve a pair of legs long enough and strong enough that it could effortlessly walk itself out of the plant and then spread the wings that it already had in order to take flight, spinning around in mid-air for the sole purpose of taunting the plant. Such a being surely would have been the king of its order, and that was what Emily had to have been–the Ultimate Tree. On a whim and feeling very confident in herself, Emily decided to set out to see Richardsville by night, wondering what she would come across.

The Inn was at the entrance of town, and it was called The Wolf Den. Such a fierce title did little to match the interior, which was clean and domestic and mostly held traveling religious sorts and a few students who were visiting the local University for their own needs. Towards the center, David and Vual sat, carefully watching the other guests while whispering among themselves.

“I like that one,” Vual finally concluded, pointing her finger at a young woman wrapped in the white cloak of a Priest. She had a stern expression as she read a thick book, clearly taking its contents seriously. David had to admit that she made him anxious. Priests like this were typically powerful and knowledgeable in the magical arts while also being determined to the point of insanity.

“Are you sure?” he spoke up.

“Absolutely. Let’s keep an eye on her.”

At the same time as they began to stalk the young woman, Emily stopped outside of The Wolf Den. She tilted her head in confusion at the painted sign. There were no wolves here. Only alcoholics and holy people. What a fascinating contradiction, she thought as she stepped inside. The redhead marched to the front desk, where a kindly old man greeted her.

“Ah, a new face! You a student, a pilgrim, or something else?”

“Student,” Emily nodded, proud of herself for maintaining consistency with the lie.

“We get a lot of you folks,” he explained. “Staying here until the housing situation gets sorted out over there. What rooms are you getting?”

Emily thought about it for a moment. Money was exchanged for goods and services. If you had no money, you did not get goods and services. She hardly needed a place to sleep, but if she said nothing or denied this old man, she would have wasted his time, which was typically bad. What she needed to do was affirm the quality of his goods while acknowledging that she did not need them. And so she smiled, puffed out her chest, and looked him dead in the eyes as she spoke.

“I’m not good enough for your rooms.”

He stared at her with blank confusion for a few moments. “Is that so?”

“Indeed. They are rooms for a great student, and I am lazy and stupid.” I’m doing so good, she thought.

“I’m sorry you feel that way?” he offered. “I’m sure you’re good enough for a place to sleep.”

“Nope, and in fact, I intend to sleep beneath a tree this evening. Good night, sir.”

She then spun around and marched clear out of the building, happy with how things had turned out. Just as she left, David let himself look up from the table.

“She didn’t see me, did she?” he asked Vual.

“She totally did,” Vual lied. “Looked like she’d seen a ghost.”

David frowned. “Funny. But I’m serious. I can’t have anyone who knows me see me here. If I’m connected with a death-”

“Who says that the Priest is dying?”

“You do. I know you do. I can’t imagine you undergoing a process that doesn’t involve torture and death.”

Vual scoffed and waved at the air as if his words were a fly she could chase away. “Unnecessary. I’ll simply hijack her body. Her soul will die, and she’ll vanish from whatever responsibilities she holds, but no one will think that she died. With any luck, her leadership will assume she stepped into a place of ill-repute and is spending the rest of her life servicing foreign nobles during their Grand Tour.”

“You’re disgusting, but I understand,” David replied.

Then, they watched as the young woman closed her book, stood up, and began to walk towards the rooms. They looked at each other with shared understanding before noticing which room she entered, and both of them made a mental note of the exact location before departing the inn for the time being.