To the mob’s credit, they waited until I’d finished my sentence before attacking me, unloading a hodgepodge of Real weapons and materialized projectiles capable of exploiting the gap in my defenses. It was how they’d nearly put me down once already; the difference, however, between that distant then of three minutes ago and the cutting edge of now was the star burning in my chest that made every wound feel as real as a distant memory.

“Nadia,” Melissa said, “you need to take this seriously.”

With a speed that belied her bulk, Melissa dove down, coiling her gargantuan serpentine body around me forming a sinuous barrier of scales and muscle against their assault—she was the other reason things would be different. A fact proven when I heard the ineffective pings and dings of bullets, spears, and shattered bone weaponry.

“I promise I am,” I said. “Right now, there’s nothing I’m taking more seriously.”

There wasn’t; I didn’t know if I’d get another chance as perfect as this to show her who this me—I—was and had to offer. She’d seen my devotion and commitment to not cross the line that she’d established alongside everyone else. Now it was time for her to see me in my glory. As something beautiful and worthy of love.

“Mhmm,” Melissa hummed in disbelief.

I watched myself in her eye—emerald and enormous—as I pressed a hand to my chest as flames snapped at the air whilst crawling over my body keeping my perforated form standing. My face was bloody, bruised, and honest. An open book if she’d be willing to read it.

“If you don’t believe me then make me a promise.”

“What?” she asked.

“That I’ll take this so seriously, and that you—until this fight’s over—won’t take your eyes off me.”

She said, “Give me something worth watching.”

It was as good as a yes, and slingshot my hopes beyond the lunar palaces Ferilala Nu-zo spoke of. With a whoop, I ran forward, used an Atomic Glory as a thruster, and vaulted over Melissa’s chimeric body and into the sky. Shooting up higher and higher like some Old World rocket.

I looked back—upside down—to see that Melissa had Mutated her scales into titanium blades. Her lower body coiled faster than it had would-be killers to shred to pieces. While her head, framed by clouds pregnant with lightning, was looking in my direction. Her eyes were on me. She was living up to her promise, and though I had already been in the air—my heart was soaring.

Watch me, I thought. Letting the plea echo in the chambers of my mind. Watch me until you see me. Until you see how I smile, how I laugh, how I soar through the sky light as autumn leaves. When you see me…won’t you love me?

At the apex of my arc, I flipped. Aimed my thrust at the sky, directing my body to the earth. I was a missile. A spear cast by a vengeful god. A knife that wanted to be held and coveted. To the unfortunate man who I landed on; the awful nightmare of having your head crushed, driven into your chest cavity, followed by a crown to groin bisection. His Dream Shell popped shooting his fitful sleeping body back into the crowd.

I spun around to view Melissa, throwing my hands in the air accentuating how I’d stuck the landing. Melissa blinked, slow as a cat. Tilted her head.

Bemused, she asked, “Is that everything?”

“Hardly, I’m—.”

The summoners surrounding me had put aside their tact, opting to try catching me mid-sentence with a concerted thrust of their swords. A tactic that saw their blades slip deep into empty air—I’d already jumped. A backflip that carried me up and over the swipe of Melissa’s black claws which made parts and pieces of the summoners they passed through. Followed by the anxiety-quelling pop of Dream Shells.

Melissa’s tail stabbed the air in a rush to provide me a perch to land on. She carried me back toward her face which tripled the size of my body. I blew my beloved giantess a kiss.

“As I was saying, hardly, I’m going to use every inch of this battlefield to show you who I am.”

She scoffed a train rumble that carried through her body. “So you’ll just be talking about yourself?”

“Is my serpent fishing for compliments?” I asked.

“Alls below,” she laughed. “Rather those than puns.”

A sine wave rolled down her tail, flicking me off and back into the sky. Arcing me across the battlefield. She’d launched me but she laughed. I made her laugh. My smile was so wide it would’ve taken two fingers and no effort to rip the top of my head off.

“Then I will,” I said, “starting with your tail. I love it. You should keep it all the time.”

I formed the seal for Atomic Glory and fired a beam of chalcedony flame that made a donut of some unimportant would-be killer’s head. Pop.

“My tail. Is that all you have eyes for?” she asked, before using that same tail’s halberd tip to decapitate a small cluster of killers to a chorus of pops.

“Of course not. I have my eyes on you all the time. Like how cute you look when you’re focused, and your tongue peeks out past your lips.”

Another Atomic Glory. Another Dream Shell popped by Revelatory fire through the brain.

“Wait, I do?” she asked.

“All the time,” I said, “and it’s the cutest. Brings attention to those lips of yours, so soft and so full, that it takes everything not to kiss them each time you walk into a room.”

Atomic Glory. Pop!

“Okay, Nadia, that’s enough—.”

I disagreed, “It’s not. It’ll never be because there’re so many parts of you to love. Your creativity that'd give a child nightmares. The beautifully designed chimera form that you never stop tweaking to get even an ounce more of performance out of it. That heart of yours which endures everything the world—me—has thrown at it, and still has room to care for others.”

Atomic Glory. Atomic Glory. Atomic Glory. Pop! Pop! Pop!

The summoners below chased my fleeting form across the sky with any weapon they could get their hands on. They could no more pierce my body than shoot my love from the sky. For their troubles—and misplaced attention—Melissa’s slithering form crushed the slow ones. Her blade-scales sliced the quicker ones. All while she chased after me—never looking away.

“Nadia,” Melissa whined, “you’re embarrassing me in front of the assassins.”

I was, oh I was, but how could I stop praising her when she was blushing so hard it looked like she’d Mutated her body to run hot as a furnace the way her scales lightened to an orange that rivaled a sunrise. So I didn’t stop. I landed right beside Mother’s Last Smile. Shot my hand out to grasp the shaft, and freed it from the mud. The metal head blazing from dull gray to a burning white found only when you risked blindness to stare into the sun.

“Then let me sweep them away,” I said.

With light steps I torqued my body. Shifted my hands to the end of the glaive—this was my big swing and none could escape. Set my eyes on the few stragglers still standing and released. Bisect the Sun. A horizontal wave of white mixed with chalcedony chased away shadows in a mad pursuit of those I’d marked to die.

I turned back to Melissa—her face briefly illuminated by my light that made her scales radiant—and crossed the quiet battlefield with a hand outstretched.

“Because these words are for you alone. I don’t love you in pieces. Everything I said is a love derived from you; all those aspects lead back to you,” I said. “My eye may roam, but whenever it falls on you you’re the only person I see.”

A half dozen Dream Shells popped; the strike of a giant’s cymbal punctuating my declaration. My heart pounded loud enough that I wonder if Sphinx could even hear what I’d decided to leave unspoken. A question. Do you see me?

Across the quiet battlefield Melissa slithered, shrunk, reformed her legs, and stopped within arms reach of me. She kept some of her scales, her tail, and traced those karambit claws of hers down her arm—nerves? I didn’t want to risk toppling everything I thought I’d built. She’d flirted with me, laughed with me, and alls below I hoped she’d heard me. Not the words if they sucked, but the feeling behind them at least.

I wanted to have her again. Hold her again. Maybe sandwich her between Amber and myself forming a sleepy little formation with our bodies letting every emotion run from one of us to all of us. There was so much I wanted to do again and do for the first time, and it all hung on that single unspoken question. Did she?

“I—,” she started.

“Yes?” I asked. Fuck, I asked too quickly, she wasn’t done. Alls below, I hoped she didn’t hold that against me.

She chuckled. Let the quiet and the rain fill the space again—though it was only the audible kind. As she stepped forward, gobbling down the gap between us. Resting her clawed hand against my face—I’d never felt anything softer.

“I haven’t seen you smile like that in so long—too long,” she said. “But I’m glad I got to see it. You were like the sun in the sky.”

What?

She said, “And so boisterous as you leaped and soared.”

No.

“Even when they cornered you—which had me so worried—you were brilliant until you went down and just as brilliant as when you got back up.”

No. No. NO!

“I missed you,” she said, “but I knew you were still there.”

Fuck! I looked around for someone anyone I could cut down in a way that didn’t fucking remind her of someone who was gone. Of some ghost I couldn’t compete with yet claimed my every success. That Nadia didn’t combat a curse while racing across an island to rescue her. That Nadia didn’t fight her way up a hill to reach her. That Nadia didn’t—then my eyes landed on someone.

There, a few feet away, was that summoner bonded to Mastery—the martial artist—who’d kicked from the sky. She was perfect! Sure she was wobbling and her eyes were unfocused, but why wouldn’t they be when she’d somehow dodged everything we’d thrown at the mob.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I pulled away from Melissa’s touch. She yelled something to me—probably more words of praise and love for that fucking empty space in my spirit—so I ignored it. Kept my eyes on the summoner who to her credit did her best to re-establish the spells she’d dropped for some reason.

She threw a kick. It was so slow, too slow. I danced around it, spinning atop the loose mud, and arrived at her back. Plunged Mother’s Last Smile into the dirt. Wove a rear-naked chokehold around the summoner’s head and flexed my spirit releasing Sphinx’s wings. My intention rode the fibers of my spirit down to Sphinx who activated an Atomic Glory shooting us heavensward.

“Would your Nadia ever think to do this?” I asked.

I went up so fast that I tore the little martial artist’s head from her body. Her spine wiggled behind it like some gore-dipped caterpillar. Gore? I held out my hands and turned the head to face me—its eyes were half-lidded. You could almost describe them as sleepy.

My breath became shallow and hard. I had been upside down so many times today, but only this time it felt like the world was spinning. Clouds became the earth, trees became the fingers of a stormy sky. Everything blending until it was all caaaaarmine.

I finally heard Melissa. She’d been yelling, “Nadia, no, she woke up.”

A syncopated laugh danced up the steps of my throat. Of course, the Kennelmaster had said that you could wake up. If you did, you could keep taking the test. It was a way for you to mitigate your own risk. Decide how far you’d go.

I lifted her head up higher like it was some chalice. Blood dribbled from her lips to splatter against mine—I couldn’t resist having a taste. Then I got hit with a rush of feeling like fingers tracing my spine. Stars exploding into a constellation across every nerve.

“Well,” I said, “guess this is as far as you go.”

The two of us lowered back to the ground. Took the head by the spine and whirled it around until it became a blur—then released. It flew quite far. Farther than she’d go now.

“Nadia, you have to stop,” Melissa said. “You know this is the curse!”

It was—I knew it was—and that changed nothing because that red river I’d been wading in all day had risen past my head. The Bloodlust was drowning me. Rushing down my throat, my nostrils, staining my eyes. If I wanted to stop I didn’t know how. All Amber had said was killing progressed things. She never said how to manage it when you were in it. So I didn’t, and the curse ran its course.

The first target were all the lovely little bodies scattered around me. A buffet of lives that in my curse-addled mind had been threats hiding and waiting to unveil themselves. I couldn’t let them do that; what if they hurt Melissa? No, never that, so I took my glaive and thrust into a sleeping body—a head rolling off down the hill.

“Nadia!”

“Sorry, the address you’re trying to reach isn’t home right now. Hasn’t been in a while.”

Slice—that body split in half at their cinched waist. Stab—that one went through the heart, and the person flopped like a fish making one bold gasp before dying. With each kill everything became red and redder as Bloodlust rose around me like a fog, and every breath cycled that same Bloodlust into my body feeding the curse.

I pounced on another body only to be shoulder checked out of the air by someone dense and scaled. My feet dug into the mud as I slid to a stop. I turned my head without moving my body to see Melissa standing in front of the slumbering would-be killer that would’ve had no mercy for her if I hadn’t put them down earlier.

“You’re protecting them,” I said.

She said, “We already beat them.”

“No,” I argued, “they’re asleep. If they wake up they’ll just keep trying to take your beautiful head from your shoulders.”

“You don’t know that.”

I pointed the hand-spell for Atomic Glory at a nearby sleeping summoner—the girl who’d shot me—and split infinity. Chalcedony flew faster than Melissa could move. The body was a beautiful bonfire that soon became nothing. Melissa looked around unable to properly remember the person who’d existed and now didn’t.

I said, “Alls below, Melissa, they ripped off your leg, your arm, stole an eye from you—.”

“And I healed it all back. Nadia, none of that matters.”

I scoffed, “Well it matters to me. You’re mine and they wanted to take you from me. Like those masked assholes who took…”

Tears rolled down my cheeks mixing with the mud and blood that’d splattered my face already. Everything an impressionistic jumble made incomprehensible. The only thing I could follow was Melissa slowly walking toward me as if I was a predatory beast. My tongue traced my fangs enjoying the comedy and truth of the comparison.

“Maybe they are, maybe they’re not, but they’re no threat right now,” she pleaded. “Nadia, you saved me.”

“I did, didn't I?” I asked, shoving tears and blood out of my eyes.

“You did.”

“So why won’t you let me keep you safe?” I asked. “It won’t take long and then there won’t be anyone to threaten you.”

Melissa stopped advancing toward me. Shook her head with a bitter look on her face like I’d made her try the worst fruit in the world.

“I can’t do that, Nadia,” she said. “You asked me at breakfast to help you fight this curse, so I will even if it means I have to fight you. Please, don’t make me fight you.”

A wind rolled across my battlefield teasing my hair until it fluttered behind me.

“A headwind,” I said. “How ominous.”

“What?”

I threw my glaive at her. Melissa’s scales were sturdy, but Mother’s Last Smile was sharper than anything Real—at least they usually were. The bright metal head dimmed from its previously blazing white hue. When it struck Melissa it didn’t even score her scales. It just bounced off of them into the air spinning wildly.

Using Sphinx’s wings I took to the air to catch the glaive. Melissa was still in shock that I’d thrown my weapon at her—probably also in shock that it hadn’t pierced her big empathetic heart. I furled the wings falling into a sharp plummet with the glaive cutting the air behind me with a whine normally heard from nails on chalkboard.

It was a good idea, impaling Melissa had failed so why not try slashing I thought. Only for the metal to dim even more—duller than when I’d plucked it from the mud—causing it to slide off the scales of Melissa’s forearms she’d held above her head for defense. The glaive should’ve cut her in two, but instead the force had only pushed her back cutting nothing.

I held the glaive to my eyes with disbelief. The metal tip looked less like some potent conceptual weapon left behind by a Sovereign; rather, it was duller and dimmer than the butter knife I’d used at breakfast. Then, whilst staring into the depths of the weapon’s head, I felt a pulse of feeling vibrate across every fiber of my spirit—disappointment, sorrow, a low-broil anger—all of it rippling and rippling and rippling. Driving me down to my knees.

It felt like I was being ripped in half under the weight of it all, but the carmine in my eyes clouding my mind was falling away. The vibrations tossed it off of me even as it tried to stick and dye itself on my spirit. The two forces warred in my body and I’m sorry, but it was all so much…too much. In my weakness, I threw Mother’s Last Smile from my hand.

As it sailed away—and with it that palpable displeasure—I rose again on unsteady legs. Reaching out for something to help hold me up, and finding the sword I’d tossed behind when I was falling from the sky. I gripped its hilt so tight that you’d think I’d grabbed the blade itself from how blood ran from my hand trickling down the grip.

“Nadia, whatever’s happening you have to fight it,” Melissa said. “Come back to me, please, you can still come back home.”

“You keep pleading to someone who’s not here,” I said. “How come you have a heart for everyone but me? Do I have to carve it from your chest to have a shred of your love?”

I unsheathed the sword from the earth—it was a rapier that meandered in a serpentine fashion—deciding that it’d be an adequate murder weapon. Then with a great beating of Sphinx’s wings which I used my spirit to keep unfurled, I raced across the earth to try and wound Melissa again. Whether it was the fact I never learned to fight with a sword, let alone one of the more elegant sort, or the heavy-handed touch of the curse I failed to strike a wound on Melissa even once.

Her body was a Mutant thing that bent at sharp right angles no spine should, armored by scales which deflected every thrust and manic swing. It was infuriating trying to make her bleed and barely being able to even touch her. I snarled in fury thrusting forward with all my might; she only had to Mutate her skin and organs around the thrust creating a perfect gap for it to slide through—it was wide enough that there was at least an inch on all sides away from any metal.

Then just as fast as it opened it closed before I could recover the weapon trapping it inside of her without actually being inside of her. Melissa twisted her hips, ripping the sword from my hand. She took a step backwards, pulled it free, and then broke it over her scaled knee with a snap that I wished was her bones crunching in my hands.

“Nadia, this is over,” she said. “You’re done.”

“No, I don’t think we are,” I said.

I ran my hands through my blood-soaked mud-covered hair pushing it away from my face. Shook my head in disagreement at the claim. Flexed the muscles in my jaw as I paced around her assessing every inch of flesh I’d once covered with kisses in what felt like a lifetime ago. All so that I could find the point that would let me peel her apart and taste again the sweetness I knew existed in her body.

“You don’t want this. I mean, you haven’t cast a single spell at me. You’re fighting this and you don’t even know you’re fighting it!”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yes, really…”

I stopped listening after she said yes. I’d used the glaive, the sword I’d recovered, but no spells—it forced me to a standstill. My mouth had uttered no incantations. My hands hadn’t shaped a single spell aimed at her direction. Then again, who said I needed to make a hand-spell to wield my Sorcery when I was already covered in it?

“Melissa,” I said, “do you remember when you were shot?”

“I do. I also remember how scared you were for me.”

“How I searched for the bullet in your body?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“Good,” I said. “I want to know if this feels similar.”

“What?”

Melissa was so good at solving problems, but sometimes a little slow on the uptake. Again I’d caught her trying to catch up to my own intimations. In a few steps I’d pounced on her, deciding to live up to the beast she thought I was, and taking us both down into the mud together. She tried to scrabble to stop me, but I was the better wrestler. A three-time champion at knowing just how to pin my love’s arms above her leaving that beautiful soft neck of hers open for attack.

“Now isn’t this familiar? Doesn’t this bring you back?” I asked.

Melissa said, “Nadia, please, you don’t have to do this.”

I ignored her—she wasn’t talking to me after all.

“See, Melissa, I know your body so well. I’ve kissed every inch of it. Loved every curve and fold and stretch mark. It’s a territory I’m very familiar with, and even with all your Mutations there are some things you just can’t change,” I said, leaning in to whisper into her ear. “Like how sensitive your neck is.”

“Nadia, no—.”

I silenced her voice as my fangs—aided by the flames of the Inviolate Star—pierced her scales releasing that sweet taste of her blood in my mouth. It was an explosion of flavor I struggled to guzzle down. A consequence of whatever she’d done to her arteries and heart to pump even more blood through that delicious body of hers.

Then I bit down further, harder, and realized that blood wasn’t enough. I had to shove what I could of her into me so that it went to me and not the ghost she kept trying to summon up. With a yank I tore out her throat, swallowed everything but a scale—that got spit out, and leaned back to behold my work.

She’d clasped her hands together in a failed attempt of some hand-spell. While her hair splayed around her head in a gorgeous ashen birch crown that played off the rain-darkened mud around her. While her blood—her gorgeous sharp red blood—fractaled like the branches of a tree that rose from the crimson pool that slowly grew with every continued heartbeat.

“See Melissa, my fingers tore away at your chimeric body back at the ERO facility, but who knew my teeth were better. Fangs really are a great addition,” I said. “But you probably can’t hear right now can you. All that blood draining out of your neck—making such a mess of the place—it’s beautiful.”

Melissa smiled and calmly said, “I’m glad you think so. Did that help?”

“What?” I asked.

“Did it help? I want to make sure I got the experience right for you.”

I couldn’t understand how she was so calm. She was pleading only moments ago. I didn’t know what trick or scheme she was planning, so I released her arms and used Sphinx’s wings to beat a hasty retreat. Yet when my feet touched the ground they felt numb, disorderly, causing me to stumble in my landing. The only reason I didn’t hit the ground was because I landed in someone’s arms—someone’s arms?

Reflexively, I tried to pull away but the arms held me fast even as I squirmed and fought. The more I moved the more numb I felt as whatever Melissa did to me spread through my body. If I wanted to cast even a single hand-spell that train had left the station and was on the other side of the world by now. I couldn’t feel my fingers. My heart slowed to a crawl.

“It’s okay, Temple,” Amber said. “We got you.”

I tilted my head up to see that my captor was Amber. Her face slowly spun with the rest of her body and the rest of the world down an unseen drain. My eyes slid back to Melissa feeling like the world was too slow and my body too fast.

“What’d you do?” I asked.

Melissa formed a quick hand-spell that regrew her torn artery, muscle, skin, and plated it back over with scales. She walked over to where Amber held my numbing body. Pushed a few locks of hair from my face tucking them behind an ear.

“What you wanted us to do—help you fight the curse,” she said. “Now, you’re going to feel a little sleepy, and once you wake up we’ll explain everything.”

Her voice deepened as time dragged on in one long drip. I swallowed—when did my mouth become so dry? Melissa kissed my cheek. Amber kissed the top of my head. Then, twice-kissed, it all went dark.