Margaret looked away from the cloth-swaddled leg she’d just ripped off the priest’s corpse.

“So?” She shrugged and then stuffed the limb down her throat and swallowed. “Dead is dead, and meat is meat.” Margaret burped. “The Angel gave this man life, and he had the balls to spit that gift back in God’s face. He’s in hell for killing himself; who gives a fuck what happens to him now? Hell, he should be honored I ate him. That’s far better than what an unbeliever like him deserves.”

This time, Pel couldn’t hide her shock. Her eyes widened. Her flighty pulse rocketed. “You’re… you’re eating people…”

For whatever reason, Margaret seemed to enjoy Pel’s revulsion.

“I mean, yeah, honey, that’s the point. That’s what God’s love is, and divine beasts like me get to administer it. It’s a beautiful thing.” With her powers, Margaret lifted the corpse to her mouth, then lashed out with her head and snapped up its skull. Bloody rivulets trickled down her jaw as she chewed through brain and bone.

Margaret swallowed with a sigh of pleasure.

“For people like this unworthy fucker,” she said, waving the priest’s corpse around like a dead fish, “it’s my honor to make his existence never-ending agony for all eternity, and that’s beautiful, ‘cause it’s a reminder of how good those of us have it who were lucky enough to be saved. God is all. You don’t even get to think about messing with Him. Either you bow, or you will be broken.”

One of Margaret’s teeth fell out of her mouth. Her tongue—a turgid, black, rotting thing—darted through the opening and pushed a couple more teeth out to clack as they fell to the ground.

Suddenly, Margaret raised her head. Her eyes went wide for a moment.

“Huh…” Margaret let the remains of the priest’s body flop limply against her coiled flank. “This pussy was the Lassedite’s Secretary. Killed himself after Bishop told him he was a faggot and then kissed him.”

“How do you know that?” Pel asked.

The Norm pointed at some empty space on the carpet. “He’s standing right here.”

Pel stared. “I don’t see anything…”

“Something must be wrong with your eyes, then,” Margaret said. “Maybe you’re cursed or—”

—Suddenly, Margaret’s brow (or what remained of it) furrowed in aggravation. She turned her head to the side, to address the empty space on the carpet.

“The fuck did you just call me?” Margaret snarled, then sneered and grinned. “I guess your torture will be starting early, you miserable rat.”

Margaret’s eyes widened in surprise. “Beast’s teeth,” she pointed in glee, “look at that!”

“Look at what?” Pel asked.

Margaret turned to face her daughter. “I just turned that piece of shit into a rat! It’s like magic.” She blinked. “Oh, now there’s an idea.”

She traced out movements with a clawed finger, as if following something racing around. “Look at him go! He’s a rat made of shit. Angel, that must burn.”

But, seeing nothing, Pel held her tongue.

Margaret turned back to the invisible rat with a smirk. “Oooh… what if that shitty little head of yours was the size of a bowling ball.”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Margaret raised her head and laughed, clapping her claws in joy. “Look at that! Angel’s breath, that’s ugly.” But she quickly grimaced in disgust. “Oh, shut the fuck up already. It’s your fault you killed yourself. This is what you deserve.” Angry, Margaret reared up and slashed her claws through the air. A moment later, she settled back into her coils. “Good riddance.”

Pel had no idea what was going on, and that just made it that much more terrifying. Though Pel hadn’t seen the rat her mother had seen, she certainly felt like one, resting as she was against the Norm’s coils.

For one thing, the demon in her mother’s flesh seemed to have lost touch with reality. She was seeing things that weren’t there. Worse, she was eating an ordinary person!

Pel had to force her leg to stay still. She kept as unmoving as a statue.

If the Norms would eat anyone…

Pel’s stomach turned in knots.

One mistake, and she would be in for an eternity of torment.

Once again, Margaret pulled Pel away from her thoughts. This time, it was with a casual flick of a claw toward Pel’s face.

Pel flinched. She couldn’t believe her heart hadn’t already leapt out of her chest and raced down the corridor.

“Must you wear that awful thing?” Margaert asked.

“What?”

“The mask,” the Norm said, pointing at her daughter’s face.

Pel tried to be as diplomatic about it as she could possibly manage. “I…” She glanced over the changelings feasting down below. Their bodies twitched as they changed. “You saw what that spore breath did to those people in the basilica.”

Margaret nodded. “Yeah, that was pretty cool, wasn’t it?”

Pel let out a whimper of a laugh, and then coughed and cleared her throat, once again trying her best not to vomit.

“I don’t want that to happen to me… M-Mom, so… I’m wearing the mask, as are the kids. I…” Pel tried to look elsewhere—anywhere, other than the demon within arms’ reach—but everywhere she looked was worse. “I’m… I’m worried the spores are… unsafe. Unsafe to breathe.”

Pel froze stiff as the Norm bent over and ran a clawtip along her skull. The touch stung, burning as it cut her scalp and drew up blood.

“Pel, honey, you have nothing to worry about. Your mama is becoming a creature of God. I’ll keep you and the little ones safe and sound.”

Pel wanted to scream, but she couldn’t.

A demon had eaten her mother’s soul, and was going to eat hers, too, and her children’s.

She nearly passed out, but a sudden scrape of groaning metal shocked Pel to the core. She turned about as she screamed, causing her hand to slip across her console’s screen.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The console clattered to the carpet.

“Oh, calm down,” Margaret said, “it’s just the patrol coming back.”

Pel reached down and grabbed the PortaCon, barely noticing that she’d accidentally set the camera to Record mode. But Pel didn’t bother to turn it off.

She was too transfixed.

Sitting up straight, clutching to her console once more, Pel lifted her back from her mother’s coils, to get a clear view of what was going on down in the horror in the Nave.

The zombie-filled afternoon wafted in as the Melted Palace’ mighty bronze doors swung open, and a Norm slithered into the Nave. The creature had to be the size of three cars laid end to end. Bodies hovered around it, first bunching up close as they floated in through the doorway and then spreading out, moving through the Nave like a flock of birds. The Norm whirled the corpses around with its dark powers, settling them down in a pile among broken pews.

Two smaller figures staggered in behind the Norm as it pulled in the tail end of its body. The figures were young—a boy and a girl— and almost human.

Angel, Pel thought, they have to be about Jules’ age!

Both of the newcomers had sizable tails, which dangled behind them, limp and ponderous. The girl, especially, looked oddly familiar.

The big Norm spoke, his lower jaw hanging slackly, like a snake’s, but with a broken hinge. Pel had difficulty parsing his words. It was like speech melting into music.

“Here, you can feast,” he said. “Join us in this sacred meal as you embrace the glory the Godhead has prepared for you.”

The young man literally leapt at the opportunity. He used his unholy power to glide across the floor as if his feet were winged. He quickly slipped in between two other Norms, joining them as they fed on a pile of overgrown corpses, eating like suckling piglets and wriggling eels.

Then, to Pel’s shock, the girl screamed.

“What the…” The girl stepped forward and lifted her arms in horror. “What the fuck is this!?”

Pel got onto her knees and leaned against the balustrade, her console till in hand.

“Jessica?” Pel muttered.

Could it really be her?

“Why are you screaming?” the big Norm asked.

“Look at what you’re doing you fuck-face!” the girl yelled. “You’re eating people! You’re freaking eating people!”

Okay, now that was definitely Jessica Eigenhat.

The teenager’s words echoed through the Nave. Feasting Norms looked up from their meals, their heads bobbing on their slowly lengthening necks.

That name took her back. Pel remembered how awkward it had been for everyone when she’d had to stare down Jessica and her mother while she and Jules had been sitting before Principal Shepherd at Jules’ school.

The girls had gotten into a fight. As usual, Jessica had been the one who’d started it.

She never gave Jules even a moment of peace.

The young Miss Eigenhat was the quintessential popular girl: the girlboss whose good looks, connections, and lackeys made her the head bitch everywhere she went until her early peak finally ended and she came crashing down into middle age. Even now, Jessica’s long blonde hair was incapable of looking anything less than great, though there was no trace of the black, sequin-studded hair band she usually wore

“They’re demons, kid,” the big Norm said, answering Jessica’s hostile question. “As divine beasts, it’s our duty to consume that evil and punish it and destroy it.”

Jessica took a couple steps away from the Norm. “Divine beasts?”

“Yes. The Hallowed Beast Itself is channeling Its power into us. Weren’t you listening on the walk over?”

“Honestly, no,” Jessica said. “You said you had food. That was good enough for me.”

Just enough pieces of a human face remained on the Norm’s head for him to scowl as the Norm flicked his tail behind him, side to side behind He reared up his forepart, more than three men tall. “A divine beast shouldn’t be so flippant. With great power comes great responsibility.”

“And by responsibility,” Jessica snapped, “you mean eating people!?” She gestured in outrage.

The Norm lowered himself to the ground and lunged at Jessica, who yelled in fright as she stumbled back. Jessica lost her footing and tripped over the tail of a feeding Norm, landing side-first onto a pile of corpses.

The girl shrieked as if someone had just pulled all her hair out by the roots.

The bodies stuck to her like flypaper as she hit the pile, faces and limbs plastering themselves to her still-human skin.

With a scream, Jessica pushed off the pile, desperate to pry herself free, only to scream even more as the dead flesh fueled a surge of change. Her voice distorted as her body deformed, the clustered corpses smoothing out, spreading their mass over her body. Growth bolted up her arm as her limb slid over half-crushed flesh. Her clothes tore. Skin exploded off her hands as her palm and fingers doubled, then tripled in size.

She tried to crawl away, but one of her legs broke at the knee.

“No!” Jessica screamed. “No!”

The other Norms watched this display in confusion.

Then an all-too familiar voice boomed from the second floor balcony, near the Moon Door.

Verune.

“What is the reason for this commotion?” he demanded.

His voice drew everyone’s eyes—even Pel’s.

With a spurt of power, Jessica managed to thrust herself off and out of the pile. She raised her head, struggling to speak. “I’m…”

She got up on her unbroken knee. The leg behind it was gnarled and shriveled, like a burnt match. “I’m not some fucking cannibal!” Jessica wept as she screamed. “Isn’t this supposed to be a church? You’re all monsters! You’re all fucking monsters!”

“Open your eyes, girl,” Verune said. “Repent of your sins.” He cooed in melodious polyphony.” You have been chosen for a great and beautiful purpose. You should be honored to join the ranks of the divine beasts.”

Verune summoned water with a flick of his hand. A stream of spore-stained water rose up from the basilica’s fountains and its reflecting pools and flowed in through the doorway, where it coalesced into a sphere in the middle of the Nave. Verune thinned the sphere into a vertical disk and then turned it to catch the light of the setting sun passing through the Imperial Promenade. The disk lit up with the sunlight, becoming a brilliant mirror.

“Look at yourself, girl,” he said. “See yourself as your Creator sees you.”

Jessica shook her hideous, misshapen head. “No… no…” She started bringing her hands to her face, only to look at them in horror.

She screamed.

“Don’t cry,” Verune said. “Why are you crying?”

Jessica raised her arms in rage. “Look at what you’ve done to me!”

“Yes, I will.” Verune said. “And do you know what I see?” He smiled broadly. “I see a beast of myth, scaled in sapphires and maned in fire of gold. Your fangs are pearls that cut through the dark. You are beautiful.”

“Are you kidding me?” Jesica shrieked.

“Lying is a sin,” Verune said.

All the Norms stared.

With a groan, for a speechless moment, Jessica lowered her head and stared at her hands, entranced by the Lassedite’s words. But then she shook her head.

“No!” She clasped her head in her hands. “No, no no! Not again!” She closed her eyes and screamed, flailing her hair. When she opened her eyes again, she bored down on the Lassedite in a glare of renewed determination. “Fuck you! I already went through this bullshit once before! I know what’s real, and what isn’t!”

“I’m showing you the truth,” Verune said.

Jessica thrashed. “No, you’re not! You’re fucking hallucinating—I should know, it happened to me!” She looked around the Nave, locking eyes with the changelings. “Listen to me, I thought I was going crazy, but then I realized: it wasn’t fucking real! It was all in my head! Our thoughts have power, damn it! They make us see what isn’t there!” Jessica nearly swatted her head with her enlarged hand as she pointed a budding clawtip at her face. “This is real! This is what we are, and it isn’t changing!”

Pel couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

And yet…

The newer Norms looked around, confused and afraid.

“It isn’t real?”

“What is she talking about?”

“I saw so many things. Crazy, crazy things!”

Margaret had been hallucinating. The Secretary. The rat.

Jessica glared at Verune. “You’re fucking nuts, bucko!” she yelled.

“Brothers, calm her,” Verune said. “Get her under control. She’s been corrupted. She must be healed!”

Norms in more advanced states of change slithered out from the shadowed hallway at the Nave’s sides.

“Leave me alone!” Jessica yelled.

What if they were crazy?, Pel wondered.

The girl tried to run away, but stumbled, her changed body refusing to obey her like it once did. Jessica scraped across the marble as she fell to the floor. But then the approaching Norms caught Jessica with their power.

She never stood a chance.

No…

Pel wanted to do something, but what could she do? Margaret loomed over her like the shadow of death, watching the proceedings in the Nave with the utmost interest.

Jessica writhed and flailed, fighting back with powers of her own. Her strikes flung bodies and broken pews left and right, streaking ruin across the floor But then her body quivered and calmed, caught in the web of the Norms’ unholy might. She tried to yell. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

The Norm slithered off, floating their prisoner alongside them, powerless to fight them.

“What was her problem?” Margaret muttered.

Pel pressed the pause button on the PortaCon’s surface, knowing that everything that had just happened was now recorded for posterity.

She had to know more.