“What are you doing? Why are you dripping? Where are your clothes!” Trinity hisses, panicked and shuffling away from me.

Oh~! I did strip down, didn’t I? And I didn’t groom myself after. No, just jumped into a lake and got eaten by a fish.

“How is this happening?” I ask out loud.

This is bullshit. Finding out I was robbed, I sleep walk, I was on public display, people treating me like a tourist attraction, people somehow reaching into my void to communicate with the jellybeans who are now fucking bears, and now I’m standing unbathed in a public --. Is this a park?

“I woke up and wanted to know where my stuff went. That’s it!”

I grumble, draining the water off of me before donning robes. Light blue on the shoulders, quickly to dark blue and yellow spots, then dark grey strokes on deep grey. A sky above a shadowed mountain with a forest at its feet. Not sure if I can make foods into dyes and use that on my silk.

I put my new guild pendant in my belt and walk after Trinity who is power walking away from me. Still. Seriously? I sigh and leisurely follow as he tries to get more distance from the scene we just left.

-Will you stop running from me?- I send when he disappears around a building further ahead.

He peeks back at me, hissing, eyes shining in amusement, and I realize I’m being played. When I finally round the corner he’s sitting on his heels sipping tea, still hiss laughing.

“I was under the impression that foxes make an ungodly amount of noise when they laugh,” I say, shifting him to the forest in the Eager Heart mountain. “The lake and burrows are too toxic, but this is part of my void, supposedly. I think we should be safe here.”

“We can’t be here,” Trinity stands up, eyes wide as he stares around in shock.

“Why --?” I start and he cuts me off immediately.

“The mountains aren’t accessible! They’re on the fringe of the void!” he shouts back at me as he moves down the mountain.

“Is that why I’m getting tired?”

How in the hells do I have decorative mountains as a boundary marker? I shift us back to the base of the mountain with a punch drunk apology to Trinity. He asks if I’m okay, and I let him know that I didn’t realize I was out of bounds, and that staying on the mountain was tiring.

“How’d those people follow me earlier?” I slur, turning back to him and dreaming about sleeping in my Red Silk bed.

“If you really are a void treasure or script enhancer, then you sitting around the edge pushes it further,” Trinity says nervously. “And I learned how to control my laugh, thank you very much.” Okay, so maybe I was a little rude earlier. “Why were you naked?”

“I went to take a bath, then remembered I wanted you to teach the cubs how not to house pet,” I mumble.

I walk over to him and give him a hug, rubbing my face against his. He’s got a layer of fuzz, but he’s not as warm and fluffy as I’d hoped.

“I am not a house pet,” he coughs and twitches.

“Oh, you need to be treated for essence contamination,” I stare at his glittery face in horror. Why did I do that?

I wake up snoring on a bedroll in an empty white room. I’m still wearing my robes, although they’re loose, and my limbs are splayed. Guess I passed out? I don’t remember…

I do a big stretch, still in hunan form, and wonder how I didn’t shift form or to my void. Guess I thought I was still talking to Trinity. I smack my lips, and wonder how long I was out. I could ask.

I shift to my void, shift to Bendy, and she wails when she notices me. What the fuck?

“Rude,” I say while frowning.

“Stay away from my den!” Bendy shrieks, pointing at me and shaking in rage. She turns, storming off while glaring over her shoulder at me.

“What is your problem?” I ask, honestly getting pissed. I stopped them from being experimented on, now they’re too contaminated to use, right? “You want out of my void? You’re old enough to leave now. You’re so far from what you were supposed to be because of my interference, even if you were an experiment, they can’t use you anymore.

“You want to leave? Leave.”

I shift to my house with the plan to do something constructive. Just accomplish something. I deserve a treat. I didn’t kick them out. I stopped them from being experimented on. I didn’t let them get exterminated. They’re strong, resilient, and free thinkers. They don’t want to deal live in the Sandy Sanctuary? See if they’ll live so well without my request system!

Where’s my reward? Saint’s Wine would be nice. But so would some tea, fish and veg...

I hop into my bank and look for something for me. No to the long grains, short grains, and fish. I try to spawn a Saint’s Wine tree, -- I’m about to pass out anyway because of the fucking not mountain, why worry about it? -- and nothing happens. Wait. Saint’s wine was the finished product. What was the fairy’s name. Golden Sap? Gold Maple? Silver Syrup…? Golden Nectar!

“What the fuck? ‘Silver Syrup’?” I scoff at myself. “It was gold, dumbass…”

I spawn a Golden Nectar tree. Nope. Still nothing. Golden Pear…? There we go! An ethereal drawing of a tree appears next to the shit shack. Now I’ve got to wait for it to fruit. At least I don’t have to wait for it to grow from a sprout.

I flash back to the burrowing snake fish and wonder if it’s poisonous, then wonder if they ever caught it. Then wonder if it’s lying in ambush waiting for me to sleep so it can try to slither inside of me. Joke’s on it if it tries. All of my holes have teeth. Phrasing!

Wait. I stop and check my hands and ears, remember I have eyes… Well, I’m toxic as fuck, so surely it’ll die or I’ll panic absorb it before things get too far. There’s a bell, like a little hand bell, -- someone’s summoning the servants! -- and I reach out, pulling back a bowl of noodles. More food and gifts spawning around me.

Come again?

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Did they set up a feeding system? Ho--? Whe--? I can’t see outside my --! I try to look around my anchor and I can see outside my anchor. Wha…? I look around, and I can shift my vision around. There’s the white room, Nate with his hands on his hips, Freckles gesturing weakly, and Joe with his arms crossed over his chest. I shift out, shift back in to make sure I’m wearing clothes, then shift back out again.

“Did you set up a feeding system while I was asleep?” I ask pointing to the empty corner behind me where my anchor would be.

“Not sure if you’re awake or not, but we lost you after hunting down the buyer,” Nate reminds me.

“How long ago was that?” I never did find out how long I was asleep.

“About six hours,” Nate sighs. Dude, I did so much and I’m still awake, fuck you, this is amazing! “You were found asleep outside a building. Someone reported a pervert running around naked, but you were fully clothed, but passed out behind a building.” And? “We’ll talk about that later. We’ve got more important things to discuss while we have you here.”

I thought I was passed out at a vandalized lake and my biggest worry was having a hangover at work. See if I have any shame! Wait. I pause as I realize I was pretty embarrassed.

When I focus again they’re standing around looking at me. I sigh, go to my logs, find out that they said they lost me and found a lot of transfer scripts in the warehouse… Blah blah blah… Can’t find triggers or keys, don’t need ‘em. Was I kidnapped?

“Not by them,” I snort and snicker. Are these guys for real? “Did you --.”

I can’t help it. The only people who didn’t kidnap me bought a bunch of super powerful poisons --. Oh. Right.

I scan through my logs to see if they said anything about that in the last few minutes, find out that someone got the shits from a nearby restaurant, but it wasn’t poison. They’d taken the poison and swapped it out with fermented teas and cheap wine. Oh, thank fuck… Wait, why? They don’t know…

“Little Sis” was super stoked about some tea leaves. Said they hadn’t been seen in centuries. Do I have rare toxic plants and they bought them, in bulk, for super cheap?

“Why the fuck am I still here?” I ask, scoffing as I realize that the poison clan is probably making tasty poisons with my shit. “Other than the food.”

There’s no guarantee that the shit the other group is cooking up is any better than braised beef noodles and pickled veg. Wow, I’ve got a lot of food now. And I just eat it all? Or, no wait. I don’t remember the bell until today. Is it like a weekly feeding?

“How often are the tributes collected?” I ask, still in my logs so I can see, in writing, that Nate is scoffing and smirking about how simple it is to control such a powerful spirit beast, and Freckles telling him to shut up because I’m powerful in ways they haven’t figured out yet. Surely a bank isn’t a catastrophe.

I can read people’s sends in my logs. I flash back to the triplets telling me to check my logs, that the fucking army of little decorative bricks around the edge are filters, and that they learned through my. Logs. I can read people’s thoughts. I can read their actions. I can read things that I can’t even see because my logs record everything that goes on around me. Holy fuck, I’m not reading all of that! How did they have the time?

While I’m having a crisis over the absolute fucking library I accumulate on the daily, -- how the fuck have I ever found anything? Thank fuck there are filters. Oh, my gods, I’m complaining about a few lines in what I’m looking for and I can filter this shit to names and times.

I sit down and weep, actually crying tears of joy and relief. When I go to see how Nate and Freckles are responding I learn that Freckles is literally restraining Nate with one hand as Nate wants to drag me off, -- Did they kidnap me? Not as often as you try to! -- telling him that if my scales are bad news, they probably don’t want any of my fluids on them. I laugh harder before realizing that, even if I wanted to, I probably couldn’t attempt to breed.

“That’s so bad,” I chuckle breathlessly, banking my tears for later culinary investigation. “It’s so good, though.”

No one’s gonna be able to try to force babies out of me. As long as I don’t accidentally reach out to some soul recruit job board, I should be fine. How did I reach out to a soul recruit job board?

“We’ll need your help getting through the transfer circles,” Nate finally gives up on something to through his hands up in frustration. “We’ll still need to assemble a team. We don’t know what they did with all the poisons and toxic items, but they’ve got some immunity to them. I suspect they might be a poison cult of some kind.”

Gotta warn sis that they’re comin’. I nod and smile, dusting myself off before shifting to the warehouse, through a transfer circle, and back into reception filled with guards. I pull out my Red Silk purse, holding it up for everyone to see as they fling powders, silks, knives, and liquids at me. I bank everything and wait for Fashion Disaster to recognize me before putting away my “badge”.

“The ones who sold you my foods wish to come through the circles you left behind to find you. You should probably destroy them.” I shrug as the group of people surrounding me keep waiting for me to keel over. “I was told I have cousins nearby. Death Moths? I’d like to drink Banishment Wine again, if someone would be so kind as to be my guide.”

Look at me being all polite. Weird how them throwing food at me in defense isn’t as triggering as --. No, I’m definitely playing nice because I want to know where they keep all their shit. Huh. Foresight? I don’t think I can eat that, but I’ve gained some from somewhere…

Holy shit, can I eat personali--. I fucking ate souls! I shake my head and sneer at my own dumbassery. Yeah, I probably got this from the weaving sisters or Silent Howl. The fake it bullshit is definitely from Lady Lord. Sweet! Quality really does trump quantity! I ate so many people when I was younger, but I guess they were all greedy bastards hunting for gold and glory. I don’t hoard points, I hoard poisons, but big numbers are always good. Also explains why I care about money even though I never use it.

“Huh,” I wander off, hands pulled into my sleeves as I head to my room.

I need to explore, but I’ve got some reading to do. Scratch that, I’ll read while I explore, I don’t want to waste down time on searching for shit. I’ll work on my house when I’m home and read and explore when I’m out. Sounds like a plan.

“Waaah!” I duck and turn around wondering why there’s a fucking air raid siren, but it’s only Little Sis running up to me like an uncoordinated numpty. “Don’t ignore us!” she whines swatting at my arm.

Oh, she was crying! Well, fake crying. ‘Bout what? I head to my logs, search for latest conversations, laugh as I see that someone shit themselves, wince in sympathy as someone gets a lungful of poison that melts their insides, -- they know they’ve only got a few minutes left, and they’re legit using the time to excuse themselves so that they don’t die in the middle of the room and embarrass themselves. They get a faceful of someone else’s poison, and they don’t want to shame the clan by looking inept, so they go off and die quietly? Couldn’t be me. --.

What was I --? Oh! They wanted to know about the transfer scripts and how many keys we’d gotten and from who. I snort and let out a quick laugh.

“I’m a Void Moth Queen, I am the key,” I do a quick stretch, eyes on my logs.

She’s jealous of my “mounds”, wonders at my sleight of hand to pretend to eat poisons or make them disappear so quickly, honestly thinks I’m a cultivator from a different clan running away with secrets, is afraid that I might be a spy, and thinks my race is a title in whatever clan I’m from. How the fuck am I fucking up being honest?

“I’m more than just a pretty face,” I tease her. She laughs, holding up her fan, and Fashion Disaster, -- whose name is Rich River Loam. -- is irked that she still has her focus.

He’s pissed that he invested so much time and effort, his tool was soaked in so many poisons, proof of his resilience and dedication, he’d become section manager, and this bitch who put in more effort on her appearance, -- oof. She’s a useless beauty? She’s got the social thing down, -- still has her tool. It’s only got one poison for each dot, -- he says there’s eight, but I didn’t count, -- and his 32 layer treasure is gone while she still gets to keep her garbage.

I need to work on my reading speed, although processing Silent Howl has done wonders. Reading this little drama was entertaining and informative, -- they’re wearing the food! -- but I’ve been standing here mumbling as I read. And~ they can understand me, although it looks like I didn’t read everything out loud? Whoops.

I shouldn’t laugh, but I’m laughing as Sis is pouting, bottom lip pushed out as she keeps glaring at Fashion Disaster out of the corner of her eye, looking back and forth between him and the fan she’s clutching to her chest. He stares, wide-eyed, and I go back to my logs to see he thinks he was talking out loud, and I was skilled enough to pick up on his anger about his focus and correlate his displeasure with her weapon and position.

Them am thinks I’s a gen-mius! Poor bastards…