[Kyda]

"That was… inefficient."

I slowly turned to face the source of my irritation and began the short walk to the site of mangled tree trunks and flesh. Both wooden and bony limbs were a combined broken mess. With every footfall, I reviewed a failure that had led to the present situation, never pausing my physical movements for idle thought.

One step: Claire’s body was both weak and irreparable. While I retained absolute confidence in my ability to deal with any threat, I wasn’t foolish enough to adopt a “glass cannon” approach to combat. My physical body was both durable and easily fixed, a piece of my risk equation that didn't apply to Claire. I had been impatient; I should have taken more time to increase her durability, her survivability, before ever bringing her along.

Two steps: I had placed too much faith in my understanding of anima beings. The creature we just faced had shown no typical indication to my ethereal sight of a movement ability, much less flight. It had been a purely physical enhancement from the perspective of the being’s soul. I had overlooked the physical characteristics of flesh and blood, which would have helped me deduce its true mobility.

Three, four steps: the worst of all my sins. The previous could have been forgiven, as I found the physical world of beings of flesh and blood too distasteful to devote my study to their workings. But I had misunderstood myself, my own being. The creature, though primitive as it was, could still tell the difference between a constructed entity and a naturally occurring anima being. When alone, a beast would still flock to me regardless, but with Claire present as a point of comparison, there was no contest as to which target was more appealing, more assured.

Five, six, a dozen more steps: in the end, I only found minor faults in my actions. Yes, I had created an unnecessary opportunity for failure. However, the opportunity was a scant probability, requiring multiple niche criteria to be met in order to cause such a failure. Still, failure was like an infestation of roaches. If you saw one, there were likely a thousand more hidden beneath the surface, waiting to emerge given the right circumstances. So, it was best to thoroughly kill any you saw, prevent any possible avenues for more to intrude on your domain.

Before I knew it, I arrived on the scene of the thing’s crash landing. The thing’s 'wings' were a broken mess, folded and splintered around the trunks of the two nearest trees bordering the clearing. It had barreled through regardless, the trees not nearly enough to stop the trajectory of its scythe-like mandibles. The anima creature responsible was no longer tethered to the brain of its overgrown insectoid body; rather, it was firmly within my grasp. I would need to harvest some physical material from the corpse if I wished to preserve it as Claire and I had originally intended. However, there were more pressing concerns.

Pushing the creature over with anima-assisted limbs, bracing against the main chitinous body and the forest floor, I got a clearer view of the second body. Arms and legs were bent askew at odd angles and rent from their socket joints. Ribs were crushed, the abdomen was a pulped mess, and the neck ended in nothing but a clean, smooth stump, painting the needle-ridden floor in arterial spurts — an eerie testament to the precision of the initially fatal cut. Though, I wasn’t checking the fatal status of the injuries, for I already knew the outcome given that the anima being known as Claire was clearly visible to my sight a dozen yards away. No, I merely needed to extract some more biomass.

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I shrugged off my smaller satchel, my main pack left behind at our most recent campsite, and removed a large bore syringe. A few strategic jabs to the major veins, some already conveniently revealed, provided me with a solid 250 mL. Removing the bore needle and discarding it in favor of a cap, I tucked the syringe away in my satchel and turned my back on the mess, marching off in a direct line for my most recent companion.

A small divot marked the initial impact of the unfortunate character, and a few paces more lay the final resting place of the head, still wide-eyed and slack-jawed in shock, though with a more glassy and detached emotion behind the lifeless orbs. Another person might have taken amusement from how this was likely the closest her expression would ever come to my own.

Claire herself was the most interesting part of the whole scene; I have always thought so about anima beings. The tendrils of anima intertwining with bundles of neurons is beautiful in life, and one of the only things I would describe as profoundly saddening in death. Watching them grasp aimlessly to manipulate unresponsive, ischemic cascading neurons, begging to influence the body to think anything. It's a sight that puts me truly into depression when witnessed in a sapient being such as Claire. It made me express some mild degree of empathetic pity for human women who witness harm and death wrought to their children.

I had two options from this point. I could take the head and Claire with it like a snail with its shell, or I could move the reluctant mollusk to a more durable, storable, and less messy container. A few simple enchantments can keep a syringe of blood oxygenated and alive-enough for weeks or more, but the shelf life of a head in a sack wasn't a fraction as impressive. In the end, I reluctantly yanked Claire from her desperate and futile grasping of dying cells and shoved her forcefully into the syringe. Manhandling the usually ethereal anima structures was second nature to me, arguably the primary purpose of my existence and that of the vessel I inhabited.

Claire was less than happy with the new arrangement, grasping for any influence over her temporary 'body' and finding none at all. Poking blood cells and platelets around the viscous plasma was completely unsatisfying to her, and she soon entered a catatonic but still intact state.

Even still, any sapient being of anima was beyond beautiful compared to any work of matter. An undulating being of infinitely dividing, braided spindles of luminescent fiber, coalescing into the form of a blooming spore and mycelium. There was something enchanting about her spectral filaments, an artistry in her quiet proliferation. She was nature's embroidery, a cosmic lacework that played out the most intricate patterns of existence, expanding and evolving in ways that made the grandest of celestial bodies seem pedestrian. Truly, she was an iridescent marvel, an embodiment of life's complex beauty, spun from the loom of the universe itself. And here she was, resting in a mere syringe of biological fluid. The beings of this world knew not how lucky they truly were.

Not more than a few minutes had passed, yet I was already ending my stay at this clearing. As I began another march directly back towards our campsite, I passed the main bodies of the two fresh corpses one final time. I paused for the first time since the rapid turn of events and considered the last item of value, Claire’s boots. Replaying events in my mind, they had failed her in the end, at the last moments when moving a step to either direction could have spelled a different outcome. Shoddy craftsmanship, the interference of one boot with the other was not considered in their enchantment.

In the end, I turned and continued on, the keen and wail of the dejected boots growing softer with every step I took. I was affirmed in my decision to limit Claire’s version of the anima perception spell; that sound was insufferable.