Mia was busy exploring the changes in her body, and the other two went to bed right away, leaving Noir to do what he did best.
He had a man pinned to a stretcher and a container filled with crickets.
First, a cricket was placed into the man's mouth, an overwhelming shove of the grafters power doing almost nothing except for dissolving the cricket into the knight's body.
"Simple rule, do not resist unless you want to know why I have monkey arms."
The horsemen of pestilence said, his subject gulped, not sure that any of his options were even partially positive.
The doubts quickly rose as more and more bugs were placed in his mouth, the vermin unmoving as they seemed to disappear, melting into his skin, before said organ began hardening.
He was only three crickets in when the knight felt his stomach grumble, something that resulted in a weird black paste being forced down his throat, accompanied by a bunch of crickets that didn't move out of the way.
"This seems to take up a lot of energy from your body."
He heard his captor mumble, any question he had disappearing as his skin burst apart to make place for a new layer of protection, green plates growing to protect his vital organs from a predator's attack.
He felt his eyes bulge and then split apart into hundreds of parts, his scream of pain cut short as more of the liquid trickled into his mouth.
"Now we are getting somewhere, only the tertiary limbs and brain changes are still a bit bugged."
It was certain it was losing its mind, the pain unimaginable, the taste of the liquid becoming better by the second, and the laughs of a maniac convinced the patient that he was doing so. It was impossible to comprehend the world, his ears and nose disappearing, better organs formed along his legs. His body elongated, stretched apart as it made room for a second pair of legs.
The screams turned to screeches, and the pain to hunger. It was unbearable when the procedure finally stopped, the former knight barely hanging on to his memories as his brain had been mutilated, an elderly woman standing where he couldn't see her before, a quick bow exchanged between his torturers before she left.
"You are Knight, first among the hive queens. Your purpose will be to breed new soldiers and tunnel the world. But first, we need to get rid of that pesky remaining bit of humanity in your mind. You are hungry, and I have something for you to eat."
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The grafter said, the Knight's mouth salivating at the thought of the black liquid, only to be presented with his soldier's corpse.
"It took me a lot to save this from death, he's a greedy one when it comes to resources. Now go and eat, you just need a bit of acclimation before I can set you free again."
Then, Noir left the room and went to sleep. Knight attempted to escape, but struggled to even stand up, his body completely devoid of energy, and his mind still unadjusted to the new body.
It was then that his mind faded to black.
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Noir and the coven of the mind set on the kitchen table at midnight, staring at the wine before them with suspicion.
"You promise that there is no human meat in this, and it won't spontaneously give our body up to you?"
He laughed at that, the hags faces remaining serious.
"I promise I wouldn't create the sludge to waste on you. It took me quite a while to create enough of it to alter that one man. If it wasn't for the bloodshed today, I could not have created this nectar even if I wanted to. You wanted to know what caused my physical changes and growth of power? Overuse. Simply channel as much power as possible, and then you have to not die. And this juice quite literally took up most of my concentration for today. Now at least raise a drink with me to celebrate a further step in the good experiment, with this as the counterpart to Famine, I will soon find an all neutral slime."
The four drank to that, dark cackles raised to stay in the roles they had built for themselves.
"What is it that you want to achieve? You create warg and unibun, insectoid and goo. As the lord of pestilence and bearer of fate, what is your ultimate goal?"
The first rubbed her hand and licked her lips.
"Do you want to create the ultimate being to incorporate into yourself?"
The next smiled mischievously, looking at him with a knowing gaze.
"Is it an army of loyal minions you want to raise?"
The third cracked her fingers and back, biting her tongue in anticipation.
"You simply want to cure the human condition and make them worship you as a god."
To all that, the grafter shook his head, and every time, he realized a bit more that his actions might be a bit extreme for his goal.
"The end goal is to create a number of unbelievably cute creatures to roam the world and help people like my apprentices and the hero group we recently met fight against them to train without actually risking their lives, preferably even set up a few dungeons. I mean, doesn't everyone dream of living in a relaxing fantasy world? Bug nests in the earths center with tunnels to the surface where the weakest of them fight, self reproducing slimes that slowly cover ruins and forgotten caves, Kobold villages because they are a necessity and of course a race of wolf people simply chilling in deep forests. If we get our plans rolling, this entire world will turn dreamlike. And I am certain some pervert will spend enough time with my creations to ensure the existence of cat girls and hobgoblins. That one is inevitable."
His speech left the hags confused, and prompted them to leave the kitchen once their drinks were finished.
Once he was left alone, he considered his own morality.
"Do not worry, a world of our creation will be beautiful." Gazer ensured him, her shiny form calming him as he remembered the beauty of his powers.
"And you are doing it for the kids, right? You do need to crack a few eggs to make an omelet." Warper ensured, leaving Noir to silently drift into sleep. Unconcerned about the beast in his laboratory slowly coating its former colleague in digestive enzymes.