53. No Less Than Perfect (Patreon)

It's perversely delightful to watch the whole congregation freak out and turn on each other in the brief moments I get to see with my spatial sense before running off. My mother seems to turn on J-Mom, demanding an explanation and likely trying to blame her for everything, but the congregation looks like it turns on my mom and dad, expecting them to have some idea of what's going on with their daughter. They don't, of course, and I can't help but giggle a little as I watch my parents flail in confusion. I feel a little bad for my dad, but… only a little.

A couple people briefly try to follow me out of the church, but I leave them in the dust easily, sprinting down the sidewalk at speeds comparable to cars on the road. Holy crap, I must be going at least thirty miles an hour! I could probably go even faster if I had the traction, but my chitinous feet scrabble a little on the hard ground. I could make traction if I wanted to; just a little Spacial Rend and every footstep will have holes for my claws made from the simple act of my claws hitting the ground. Buuuut as cool as that would be, it would needlessly destroy city infrastructure and also leave a trail of holes all the way to Valerie's house, and I'm… probably about to start attracting significant attention.

Even with all the outer layers I shucked off in church, I'm still mostly covered up. My feet, my hands, and most of all my extra limbs are the noticeably inhuman bits, and I could probably pass it all off as a weird costume if I wasn't breaking the human on-foot land speed record. Er… well, I would be breaking the human on-foot land speed record if I was still human, anyway. But I guess I'm not, so… I'm not.

Uh. Anyway, I should probably let Ida and Valerie know I'm on the way. I pull out my phone and… oh, right. I threw my gloves off dramatically back at church. …Maybe I can like, use Refresh to work the touch screen somehow? Can I Refresh an electrostatic charge? My Space affinity doesn't play nice with electromagnetics, but Refresh is an Order spell, so maybe? Hmm. Actually, I'd probably break my phone somehow if I tried this. Something to experiment on later, or maybe I should just do the smart thing and get a metal stylus. In the meantime, I guess I just have to try to run a little faster.

Valerie's house isn't very far away from my church, so it only takes about ten minutes of sprinting to make it there. People definitely stare at me when I run by, and I spot at least a few videos being taken… but it doesn't matter. What point is there in keeping my life sane and stable after accidentally pulling my girlfriend into another universe? That's my official limit, apparently. I rush up the stairs of Val's house, smack my thumb into the doorbell, and grin as Ida answers the door. She glowers at me at first, but her face quickly morphs into surprise.

"Wait, did you…?" she asks, noticing me panting heavily. Ida's dressed more practically than I've ever seen her before: cargo pants and a heavy, military-style jacket bulging with tools and supplies.

"Yeah," I confirm. "Ran all the way back. Dramatically revealed my demonic form to the Christian congregation. Let my horrific bladed spider legs taste the fresh kiss of the wind. You know, hot girl stuff."

"Holy shit. Yeah. Hot girl stuff," Ida agrees, a wild grin on her face. "Well, you look kinda refreshed. Which is good, because we've got some cultists to kill."

She pulls me inside as my smile abruptly shatters, a refreshing new panic blooming in my chest. If I'm dragging my friends into this… it means I'm going to turn them into killers. I'm going to force them to face the horrors I've had to face. Can I really do that to my friends? Can I make them do that for me?

"Oh, that's more of a Hannah expression," Ida sighs. "What dumb thing are you thinking about now?"

"I just… are you really okay with killing people for me?" I ask. "I mean, have you ever… I assume you haven't ever… y'know. And it's just. It's not how you think it is. It's much, much harder."

"Mmm," Ida hums, dropping down the stairs two at a time. "Yeah, but you still like, at least mostly function, and I'm way better at compartmentalizing than you are, so I'll probably be fine."

"Um," I manage.

"Hey Valerie!" Ida shouts as we make it to the bottom. "Hannah's worried you're gonna get traumatized when you murder someone!"

"I mean, yeah?" my best friend shouts back. "Probably? I kind of figured that going into this."

"See, there you go," Ida shrugs. "Quit hogging all the PTSD for yourself. It's rude."

"I mean, does it really count as PTSD if—"

"YES!" Ida and Valerie both shout at me. I close my mouth. Well fine, if they're going to be like that.

"I've got my spells set up and ready," Valerie nods. "I'm going to start with a defensive shield thing that should protect us as we transfer over, and then… well, you transfer us over and we improvise from there, basically. The shield should give us enough time to weather whatever ambush they'll probably have set up and hopefully give us time to get you out of your cage, but there's obviously no guarantees."

"Yeah, sorry, I don't even know what kind of magic the guards have, other than Hagoro," I say. "We could definitely all die."

"We'll be fine," Ida sighs. "Well, you and I will be fine. I still don't know if I can heal Val. Maybe if she pledges her eternal service to me or something?"

"Yeah, I can heal myself, thanks," Valerie scowls. "I think we're as ready as we're going to get without risking Hannah falling asleep on her own. Let's get you somewhere to lie down in case casting makes you pass out."

"Uh… yeah, okay," I agree hesitantly. "Are you sure you guys don't need a little more time to—"

Ida shoves me into the room with her mattress and I end up tripping and falling face-first onto the bed. Rude! I pick myself up with my extra limbs and do a quick hop, flipping around to land on my back this time so I can scowl at her. She just flashes me her usual shit-eating grin.

"Dreamer's Spellbook: Arwin's Ablative Barrier"

A translucent shell pops into being around us, making everything outside it look just a little fuzzy.

"Alright," Valerie nods. "It's active. Hopefully it'll remain active when we get there, if not… I'll talk fast."

"Okay. Uh. Sounds good," I nod, holding one hand out to each friend. "I'm not… totally sure how this spell works, but I'll see what I can figure out. Both of you hold on, okay?"

They nod, and we all clasp hands like we're traveling to a magical realm of dreams and wonders in an old children's TV show. Except, y'know, my magical fantasy land is one of torture and death and trained warriors prepared for our arrival that will likely spell our certain doom. But what other choice do we have? This is a bad idea. I know it's a bad idea. But we have to try something.

So I focus as hard as I can on the feeling of pulling Alma between worlds, and just let myself ride it. The need to have her with me, the twisting of space as I pulled her into my soul, dropped her into the other world… there. I feel it. The bridge within me. Infinitely long and infinitely short. Massive beyond comprehension. A tunnel for worlds. A soul that is one billion parts passageway and only one tiny measly part Hannah. But that one little part still acts as the gatekeeper. So I open the door, and Ida vanishes from my grasp.

Only Ida.

I open my eyes in a panic, barely managing to confirm my fear before my eyelids flutter closed, heavy with sudden, overwhelming exhaustion. Ida moves through me, and I have to be there to let her out at the other end.

"Hannah?" Valerie yelps. "Hannah!? Hey! Ida's gone! Cast again!"

"Sorry," I mumble, or at least I think I mumble. I'm not sure if I even stay awake that long, and the next thing I know I'm in the other world. My eyes don't open, for they're always open, and my spatial sense takes in the state of the room immediately. Ida stands next to me, and Hagoro stands in front of her, impaling her through the heart with a spear.

Hagoro

is

impaling

Ida

with

a

spear.

He's not even the only person in here. More guards are ready, two in the room and more beyond the door. But I don't really have the capacity to pay attention to them, not with every part of my consciousness burning at the sight of the blade through Ida's heart, the fountain of blood leaking out of her chest, into her chest, the blood seeping between the cracks of her organs and pooling within her ribcage. She convulses slightly, a mouthful of blood cascading down her chin. I need to cast something, I need to get her blood moving, I need to do something, but I'm weak and useless and in shock and I just… I just…!

"Surely you didn't think we wouldn't be ready for this," Hagoro says, as Ida pulls a gun out of her jacket and shoots him three times in the chest.

The shots are deafening, the explosions within the compact handgun pounding unsilenced against the walls of the room. A gun. A gun. Ida brought a gun to a fantasy world. Wielding it one-handed and only half-conscious, the bullets fly a little wild but still manage to find their mark at nearly point-blank range. Hagoro stumbles backwards, dropping his weapon, which falls out of Ida's chest in a wet squelch and clatters to the ground. Shock and surprise cover his face as he, too, starts bleeding… though from much less fatal wounds. The bullets passed clean through his plate armor, but for some reason they only barely penetrate his skin, catching on the bones of his ribcage without breaking them. How the hell is he so durable? …Wait. Barrier magic opposes Motion magic. And I'm immune to mundane heat because I oppose Heat magic.

Is… is Hagoro just resistant to all impacts? Oh my Goddess that is absolute fucking bullshit. Wait, I don't have time to think about this.

"Refresh!" I and the Goddess shout, forcing oxygenated blood back into Ida's brain. She blinks, the glassiness in her eyes vanishing quickly. But the rest of the room isn't idle, and Hagoro knows exactly what to do when faced with a dangerous, unknown ranged attack.

"Zone of Law—"

"No Less—"

As she speaks, Ida quickly fires three more shots—one miss and two hits—that down the other two guards.

"—Ban Projectiles!"

"—Than Perfect!"

Ida and Hagoro both reach for the ground, Ida tossing her gun slightly behind herself as she lunges for Hagoro's spear. Her wound—and the damage to her outfit—all rapidly fixes itself, a feral snarl on my friend's face as she manages to snatch the spear at the same time as Hagoro, barely holding the speartip back from her throat as Hagoro forces her backwards with his superior size and strength.

"Spacial Rend!" the Goddess happily roars, letting power ignite on each and every one of my limbs, attacking my cage with reckless fury. The barrier magic holds, though, repelling my claws. Not perfectly, though. I can break out. I have to.

"Ida!" I scream. "Hang on!"

"You fucking thought!" Ida cackles, a mad, bloodstained grin on her face. "I do not die, motherfucker!"

"I have no idea what insane things you're trying to say in that alien language, and I do not care," Hagoro answers with a snarl, his strength forcing her to take another couple of steps back as they fight for control of the spear.

"Oooh, wacky fantasy words!" Ida continues to grin, despite how her hands start to slip on the spear's shaft, still slick with her blood. "Well, let me put this in a way you torturing, limp-dicked bastards can understand. You want to hurt my friends? You want to kill me?"

The other guards burst into the room, and Ida steps to the side, losing more ground to put Hagoro between her and the new enemies.

"Fine, then," she hisses. "Come And Have A Go, If You Think You're Hard Enough."

And they do understand that. The name of a spell is meaning incarnate, the line between a sophont's words and the divine's intuition. An ant, straining to describe the taste of the fruit they eat. Hagoro and the other cultists may not know the words, but they feel the challenge and the raw, unbridled arrogance just in time for Ida to suddenly twist the spear out of Hagoro's grasp, flip it a hundred and eighty degrees, and stab him through the neck.

I am pretty darn sure Ida did not know how to use a spear like that five seconds ago, but I suppose that's the nature of her magic. I remember her talking about a spell that lets her win competitions, all the way back when she was first figuring out what she could do. I guess 'fighting for my life' qualifies as something she can beat someone at.

Lo and behold, Hagoro's spear is enchanted, so it somehow passes into him even more easily than the bullets. Whooping in victory, Ida quickly stabs him again before moving on to his allies, twisting away from some kind of spatial distortion before stabbing its creator with unnatural precision. The second guard just grabs Hagoro and helps pull him away, both of them desperately trying to heal the wounded as Ida stacks a third corpse into the room. They flee, shouting warnings and setting alarms to blare as Ida turns her attention to me. With Hagoro's spear attacking from the outside and my Spacial Rend attacking from the inside, we manage to finally crack open my cage. I'm free!

"Holy shit, Hannah, you are fucking hideous," Ida chuckles, retrieving her gun and swapping out for a fresh… magazine? Cartridge? I have no idea, I know nothing about guns. She replaces her ammo. "Guess tallgirl didn't make it? Hoo boy, that was pretty wild. I've never been stabbed in the heart before."

Someone suddenly appears in the room and lunges at me with a knife, to which I respond with jabbing my own knives through their face in two different places, letting their head fall to the floor in pieces. Oh Goddess, that scared the shit out of me! That's… that's my first kill of the day, then. First of many, probably. It feels cold, and it feels easy. Almost… satisfying. Some level of revenge for the pain I endured here. I hate it. I shouldn't feel this way. It's wrong. Ida blinks at the sudden carnage, chuckling humorlessly.

"Right, okay, less talky, more escapy," she babbles. "Uh… which way."

That's a very good question, which I don't know the answer to. You know what? Fuck it.

"Miracle Eye," I declare, hoping to hell that it's a better name than 'Extrasensory,' or at least good enough. And… well, the Goddess actually said it, so I guess it worked? The Goddess shrugs. It's a sensory spell. Sensory spells usually get boring names. Sindri wouldn't have been alive to meet me if the Goddess was too picky about boring names. Which, uh, is something that gives me rather mixed feelings, but that was probably why She said it. Bitch.

The Goddess sticks her tongue out playfully and I do my best to ignore her, focusing instead on the nearly doubled range of my spatial sense… or I guess my 'Miracle Eye,' technically, although I still think that sounds kind of stupid. Should I have gone with Extrasensory…? Whatever, too late, it doesn't matter. I need to find Alma. I rapidly search through every room, mostly just finding a kicked beehive of cultists, but… wait, there!

It's not Alma, but it's still pretty damn good. Helen rests in a cell a few floors below us, shackled with manacles and guarded by—

"Aura Sight!"

—four Order mages, two of which are also Matter-aligned. I've definitely got to rescue Helen, partly because she's my friend and partly just because she's absolutely terrifying and she can probably carve this complex open like a tin can.

"We're going down," I tell Ida.

"What?" she asks.

"We're going down!" I repeat, this time in English, jumping out of my destroyed cage and onto the floor. With Spacial Rend active, my extended blades pierce clean through the ground, and all I need to do is spin to open up a large hole in the floor, dropping down to the floor below.

"Woah, okay," Ida says, jumping down after me. I quickly drop us two more floors with the same method, then move to carve a hole in the exit to the room.

"Are you ready to shoot some people?" I ask.

"That is indeed why I brought a gun," Ida confirms.

"Okay, there's four guards in the room we're going to infiltrate, three people in a nearby room, and two people running down the stairs towards us. That way, that way, and that way."

I point with three different limbs.

"There's also a curly-haired girl kneeling in one of the cells," I tell her. "That's Helen. Don't shoot her. We're saving her."

"What about Alma?" Ida asks.

"I don't see Alma yet. We'll have to keep looking as we move around. I'll take the guards in the room, you deal with reinforcements?"

"Roger wilco."

I rend open a hole in the wall for Ida and leap through the fourth dimension to pass through walls and flank from a different direction. With just the tips of each foot I skitter along the edge of tangibility, rushing into Helen's cell and leaping towards the first guard's neck. His head flies off, and I manage to carve a chunk of torso off the guy next to him on my way down, killing all four of them as quickly as possible to prevent anyone from incanting. It's easy. Too easy. They can't see me and they couldn't hit me if they did see me. Blood and viscera splatters through the room as more gunshots ring out in the hallway, Ida landing a bullet in the brain of five different cultists with terrifying precision. Guns are… very good at murder, especially when you have magical super-aim.

"Hannah?" Helen asks, seeming about as shocked as the expression on the corpses I just made.

"That's my name," I confirm, scuttling into view. "Are your manacles trapped or anything? I see some aura."

"You should be good to just break them," Helen shrugs, so I do exactly that, quickly slicing them apart with Spacial Rend. Helen rolls her shoulders and stands up with an indulgent stretch, trying to get a crick out of her back.

"Damn, it's good to see you," Helen yawns. "Those cultists were really trying to get me to work for them. Fed me all kinds of bullshit about you. You okay?"

"About as good as a girl can be after being tortured for a week and killing a bunch of people," I answer, scuttling up onto her back. Gosh, I'm big now! I have to hang partway on her shoulders and partway on her head, I can't just curl up on her scalp anymore. "The light-skinned girl in the weird clothes making a bunch of noise out there is a friend of mine, so don't blast her."

"Wait, you have friends other than me and Kagiso?" Helen asks.

"Yeah, in my home universe," I answer. "She doesn't speak Middlebranch or… well, any languages that you know, but she's really cool."

Helen's eyebrows raise.

"You can teleport people between universes?" she asks.

"Apparently?" I confirm. "Look, we've got more people to save, we can chat later."

"Right."

Helen walks out into the hallway, and I call to Ida to make sure she doesn't shoot us when we emerge. She's not even looking at us when we emerge, though, her gun trained on a room with two fresh corpses piled in the doorway. Two more dead bodies rapidly cool on the stairs. My stomach rumbles.

"You said there are three people in that room, right Hannah?" Ida asks. Oh, I did, huh? Glancing into the room with my spatial sense, I confirm there is a third cultist inside, still alive. But he's also… hiding. Crying and shaking, curled under a desk as his stomach tries to vacate itself at the sight of his dead friends.

"...He looks like a, um, noncombatant," I tell her. "Let's get out of here."

"Hmm, alright," Ida says, lowering her gun to point at the floor. "If you say so."

Woo golly we sure are a bunch of teenagers committing mass murder. It's fine though. It's fine. That's what therapy is for. …Wait, does Ida have a therapist?

"Uh, let's head that way, I still need to search around for the others," I say, pointing towards some stairs at the far end of the hall that don't have corpses on them. "Are you doing okay, Ida?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she nods. "I brought plenty of spare ammo. If you're talking like, 'how am I handling getting impaled through the heart and nearly dying,' the answer is halfway between anxiety attack and god complex. But we can unpack that shit after we're safe, yeah?"

"Right," I agree. "Fair point."

"Also, that's Helen, right? Tell her I said it's nice to meet her."

"Um, Ida says it's nice to meet you," I translate.

"...Likewise, I guess," Helen answers. "What's that she's holding?"

"Uh, it's a weapon," I tell her. "Sela might know the word for it in your language, but in our language it's called a 'gun.' Think of it like a super powerful, extra deadly, easy-to-use bow."

"Physical projectiles?" she asks for clarity.

"Yeah," I confirm. "Little metal pellets."

Helen looks back at the corpses one more time before we make it to the stairs, blood oozing out of a single hole in the head of each.

"...Good to know," Helen hums, and we start to ascend.

The stairs are claustrophobic, spiral shafts made of stone. I'm glad I can force Helen to be the one to run up them in my stead, because my stubby little claw-limbs would seriously struggle getting traction, let alone making good time.

"I see Kagiso!" I announce once we head up a few flights of stairs. "She's really heavily guarded. Looks like they're setting up there because they expect us to free her."

"Well, they're right," Helen grunts. "Let's bust her out."

"What's up?" Ida asks, and I repeat everything so she can understand it too. "Ah. Well, I'm no coward but I'm still not super keen on the idea of finding like twelve guys at once. Wanna just smash and grab?"

"Ida is suggesting we just grab Kagiso and run," I translate.

"Nah, let's just kill them all from here," Helen says. "Are they all clumped together?"

"Um," I answer. "No? They're sort of… around Kagiso."

"Oh, okay. We'll do both, then. You yoink her down through the floor and then I'll just kill everyone. Your friend can cover me while I incant. Are there any other Chaos mages up there?"

"Uh, not that I can see," I confirm. "Haven't seen any for the whole escape, actually."

"Okay, great," Helen nods. "Let's go."

And so we do. Helen sets up two stories below Kagiso, and I crawl up the walls alone to dig a hole right underneath her to pull her out. I scuttle up to the ceiling as Helen's murder-death-blast incantation starts, carving a Kagiso-sized hole and then crawling up another floor to carve another hole directly below her. The cultists seem to expect the possible attack from below, but they don't seem to expect Kagiso and I just dropping down together, the surprised dentron squawking indignantly as we fall right before Helen speaks the final words.

"...Finding Beauty In Oblivion!"

As always, I'm stunned by how quiet Helen's spell is. It always feels like a massive Super Saiyan Kamehameha-style energy blast should be bright and loud and dramatic. But it isn't. The area it affects doesn't glow with power, it dims, consumed by a pale, translucent shadow of nothingness. Everything is quieter while the attack exists, sound swallowed by the cold despair up until the moment that the hungry shadow departs, a dull, pressurized whump signaling the air shifting back into place.

None of the cultists around Kagiso's cell survive. Above us, we see the sky for the first time in far too long.

"Hannah! Helen!" Kagiso cheers, wrapping her arms around us once I finish freeing them. "Good hat good friend good hat good friend!!!"

"Woah," Ida mutters, staring at Kagiso with wide eyes. "Not quite what I imagined."

"Hi, Kagiso," I greet her back, wrapping a few limbs around her. "This is Ida, she's my friend. Let's get the heck out of here, yeah?"

"Agree!" Kagiso confirms.

"We still need to find Sela and my friend Alma," I tell her. "So let's get rolling."

"We could just leave the murderbot," Helen grouses.

"No whining! Only rescue!"

With the incanted Miracle Eye, I can see the top and bottom floor of wherever the heck we are, but not the far edges. We pick a random direction and start running, just to let me sweep my attention through the various rooms of this startlingly large underground complex as efficiently as possible. I'm not finding them anywhere though. You'd think that they'd both be at least decently well-guarded. So where the heck—wait a second. No way. No fucking way.

"I found Sela," I growl. "That way, up those stairs!"

Cultists are still swarming, but with my senses we can avoid them decently well and with Ida's gun we can… well. It's kind of scary, honestly. By the time someone has opened their mouth to try and incant a spell, Ida already has a bullet through their head. The smart ones throw spells at us without saying anything, but Helen can counter most of them on her own. The vast majority of the cultists don't seem to be trying to stop us at all, however. They're just evacuating. Rushing towards the exit in a panic, because the apocalypse and her friends are pissed.

"This one! This is the room!" I tell everyone, and then I just leap through the closed door without waiting for anyone to open it. "Sela! Sela, are you okay!?"

Laying out on a wide table, in hundreds of different pieces, is a collection of metal and wires that I can barely recognize as Sela. The cult was disassembling it, vivisecting it, trying to figure out how it ticks. Looking through the rooms, I'd never have thought this was Sela in a million years had I not seen inside the core processors in its chest, which is thankfully still intact. Nothing else is, though. Its arms and legs are nothing but carefully-disassembled pieces, its head has been stripped clean of the metal scales that allow it to emote and made into a shell of broken-down sensory bits. Diagrams of its design, notes on its power sources, its motors, its everything is scattered around the room, looking like someone tried to collect it all in a hurry and ended up dropping it.

Sela was not even treated as a prisoner to these people. It was treated as a project. Like I was. At least it doesn't seem like it had to be conscious for it all.

"Goddess," I hiss. "You know how to put it back together, don't you?"

She descends all around me, holding me, smiling at me. I believe in a world where my friend is whole, don't I? I don't need to worry, She'll take care of it all. My biggest fan, from beginning to end.

"Refresh," we growl, and wires start to move, twisting around to tie to their counterparts. Small chunks of metal fly through the air, forming what little structure Refresh is strong enough to provide. My friends open the door just in time to see the Goddess and I finish twisting the robot back together, at least to the limited degree that we can. Sela is nothing more than a skeletal face and half-constructed torso now, but if the divine revelation flowing through my head can be trusted, it should turn on when we give it power. And conveniently, the cultists didn't see fit to free the trapped soul.

"Kagiso," I ask, since the glass soul battery is a little too heavy for my magic. "Could you plug Sela in for me?"

My four-armed friend doesn't quite seem to understand the phrase, but she gets the gist of what I want her to do and walks over to shove the soul battery into its hip-port. Sela's body churns and hums, quieter now that most of its coolant systems are broken, unusable messes, but I'm nonetheless relieved to hear the sound.

"Reboot complete," its synthesized voice buzzes. "Restricted-Class Diplomat 5314 online."

"Oh, thank the Goddess you're okay," I yelp, unable to restrain myself from giving it a light hug. "I mean, you are okay, right Sela?"

"Analyzing query," Sela answers. "Status report: locomotive systems missing. Sensory systems damaged. Coolant systems damaged. Defensive systems not found. Weapon systems not found. Processing systems restricted to low-energy mode. Status summary: not okay."

"I… right, yeah, that makes sense, sorry. Is your memory okay, at least?"

"Memory systems…" a slow hum splits her answer in half for a second or two. "...Undamaged. No programming anomalies detected. No memory anomalies detected. Black box intact. Enabling system two processing. Warning! System two processing not recommended for durations exceeding one hour of continuous operation at current temperature. Please repair coolant systems before using your CHOKE AND DIE for any longer than necessary."

"Man, it sure would be cool if I could understand any of that," Ida grumbles.

"It's mostly just diagnostics," I assure her. "Hey Sela! You awake? I'm sorry, I did the best I could at putting you back together, but my magic can't really handle any of the heavier parts. But we're going to head right to your Crafted city place and get you fixed up, okay? Uh, after we save everyone from cultists and escape, anyway."

Sela's eyes twitch slightly, trying to take in more of the room.

"...Hannah?" it asks.

Holy crap it called me Hannah.

"Y-yeah, that's me!" I confirm. "Sorry, the cultists kind of took you apart."

"Yes," Sela growls. "My most recent prior memory is rage at my inability to prevent my own death. I… did not expect to ever see this room again. Or anything."

"Well hey, one of the things that makes robots superior is how you can be put back together after getting taken apart, right?" I say, as lightheartedly as possible. "You ready to get out of here?"

"Affirmative," Sela growls.

"You gonna be any use in a fight, murderbot?" Helen asks.

"...Negative," Sela admits. "I am running exclusively on essential systems while completely drained of coolant. Analogy: consider me as lacking three days of sleep. Combat capability is at less than one percent of ideal levels."

"It doesn't matter, that's not why we're saving Sela," I insist. "Kagiso, could you grab it?"

"Sad for no backpack," Kagiso sighs. "But also no bow, so nothing else need arms for. Okay."

Kagiso grabs Sela and hauls it up into her arms. If there's one advantage to barely-functional skele-Sela, it's that it's way lighter than before. Not having any limbs or epidermis will do that to a bot, I guess.

"Okay, well, everyone in the cult seems to be rushing for the exit," I announce, "so naturally, that's where we're going. If they run away from us and don't try to fight, great. But if they stand their ground, we'll have a terrifying battle on our hands."

"We could just get out through the hole in the ceiling?" Helen suggests. "I could boost Kagiso up there, and then she could haul the rest of us up."

"Oh, that works," I nod. "Let's do that. Problem is, we still need to find Alma, but best I can tell Alma isn't in the cultist base anywhere. Which… well, is a little scary."

"Well, we'll try to grab a cultist to interrogate on our way out, then." Helen shrugs. "Come on, let's book it."

We head for the top floor, and I find a good spot where rubble from the obliterated ceiling makes the surface a little easier to access. Kagiso tosses me up on top before getting on Helen's shoulders and hauling herself and Sela up as well. It's all gray stone here on the Pillar, clean and scoured of lichen and moss. It's possible to see for miles in every direction, the curving of the pillar itself the only problem for visibility in the absence of forests.

Helen helps Ida up next, since Ida is light and short, and finally Kagiso clasps hands with Helen to haul her up last. Holy guacamole it feels so good to be out here, breathing fresh air again. I… I don't even know how many people we killed to get here. For the first time, it's not immediately important for me to figure out that number. It's just… death. Again. I should be scared of that, and hopefully I will be later. But for now, I just feel relief.

And of course, that's the exact moment when I should have expected an enemy attack. As Kagiso pulls Helen slowly upwards, something seems to bulge inside the Chaos mage, visible only to my spatial sense. Before I even realize what's happening, the bubble of Space within her body rapidly expands and pops, Helen screaming as Kagiso suddenly yanks her up at startling speed.

It's easy to see why: missing one leg and nearly half her torso, Helen is suddenly quite a bit lighter.

"Holy shit!" Ida yelps, rapidly searching for whatever or whoever just attacked us. But she doesn't see them. I don't see them, and I see literally everything in a hundred-foot radius. So where is—

"There!" Kagiso roars, pointing at a rock at least two hundred meters away. "Can't reach with throw! Need bow!"

"What's she pointing at?" Ida shouts. "I don't see anything!"

"Just shoot the rock!?" I guess.

"The rock? What… oh hell. I don't know if I can hit something that far."

Ida attempts a few shots, and one of them does hit the rock, but it seems to just be a rock.

"Give!" Kagiso demands, snatching the gun from Ida's hands.

"Woah! Hey, be careful with that, fuzzbutt!"

Kagiso ignores her, firing three different shots in three different directions before nodding to herself.

"Ricochet," the Goddess snarls, and the next shot bounces in a wide arc, glancing off three different boulders before striking the spot she pointed at from behind. "Ricochet! Ricochet! Ricochet! Ricochet! Ricochet!"

Again, again, again, and again, the shots ring out, stopping only when Ida reaches out and grabs Kagiso's wrist to demand her weapon back. Barely visible, blood leaks out from behind the stone target. Whoever they were, they're probably dead now.

But blood gushes out of Helen. Not even Refresh can handle it all, with multiple major organs in her body completely deleted.

"Ida!" I shout. "Can you heal her?"

"Are you kidding?" Ida counters. "I can't even talk to her."

Fuck, fuck, fuck. That's the kind of logic that only works on Ida's weird ownership-targeted spell. But I can't stabilize her, and even if I could what would we do? Where would we go to get her healed? Goddess damnit, why can't I be the kind of Order mage that actually heals people? I can't even heal myself with Order magic, I have to use… Transmutation.

"...Everybody step away," I order. "Get back! Now!"

To their credit, my friends don't argue. Kagiso picks Sela back up and she books it alongside Ida, leaving me alone with Helen's quickly-dying body. And then… I let my Transmutation spell flow. More magic, pumping as much into her as I possibly can. And it starts to work… a little. I can see her body twist and twitch, growing in places where it was previously just leaking. But it's slow, way too slow. I need more power. I need to name it.

Fuck, I don't know what to name it! It's a Transmutation spell, it transmutates things into monsters. Pokémon theme, though, all my spell names are Pokémon themed. Evolve? No, that's not a move, all my spells are currently moves. Wait, duh. The right name is obvious. I'll just name it Transform.

The Goddess takes my breath… and She says nothing. Really? Transform? That's what I want to go with? There are literally hundreds of moves in Pokémon, and I pick the literal most boring possible option. It's not even very accurate! I should be ashamed of myself, honestly. Name rejected!

And so I scream, my body twisting and changing, my internals rapidly outgrowing my chitin shell and splitting me open from the inside. It's a horrific pain, to be sure, but it's not quite nightly soul torture and I don't have time to care about my own body right now! What the fuck do you want from me, Goddess? What the hell is wrong with 'Transform' for a transformation spell?

Uhh, everything? Obviously? It's such a terrible name I don't even know why I'm asking. Do I even have any conception of what the spell does beyond 'turn people into monsters?' For that matter, do I even know if 'turn people into monsters' is even at all what the spell does in the first place? Like yeah, that's the effect, but why is that the effect? What exactly am I doing to people when I cast it? I need to think about this shit, that's how magic works, I know that's how magic works and the Goddess is NOT going to give me a free ride on this kind of laziness twice in one day. If Helen's life is the price I pay for not learning this lesson, on my head be it.

…N-no. Wait. No, I can't let her die. Goddess, please. Help me.

I don't need help. I need to stop whining and think. I know what I'm about, and always have. Spells are a part of me. What is this spell? What do I know? What do I need to admit?

I don't cast the spell very often. The first time it was on accident, in a fit of pain and desperation, when I was trying to heal myself. But it wasn't just that, was it? I was also intensely overwhelmed and insecure. My new friend had just revealed herself to be two people combined together, and she was not happy about me being what I am. She didn't like me. She didn't trust me. She helped me out of obligation, because crisis management is part of who she is, but she never wanted to be part of any of this. And that scared me.

Good. That's right. Keep going. What next? What happened?

Well, Autumn transformed. She started to become a chimera, slowly but surely over time. A mythical beast made of multiple animals combined. I didn't know that, though. When I used the spell on her a second time, it was because I was happy. I wanted her to be happy too. I wanted her to know why I was happy, instead of… instead of looking at me in fear.

I felt like I could only be myself with someone who was like me.

The question isn't just how Autumn became a chimera. It's why Autumn became a chimera. And the answer to that is the horror I don't want to face. Alma doesn't see herself as a chimera, that's for sure. I've seen the mural of the crumbling machine in her mind palace. I've learned her favorite animal is the jellyfish. And I know the absolute last thing she would ever want is her new tail, her constant reminder that Jet is in there with her, always waiting to wake up. Jet, too, doesn't think of herself that way. Doesn't want to be that way. I did this to both of them. I turned them into a monster because I'm a monster.

I'm a monster that wishes the rest of the world would be just like me.

I'm the only one who thought of Autumn as a two-headed beast. I infected her with my idea of what she is. I made that into reality. And now she's stuck with it, forever, because I thought it would be neat. Because I thought I understood what she is, and forced it on her. That's my nature. It's not a spell that empowers people. It's a spell that cuts them in half and fills the gap with me. And there's only one attack that feels right for a spell like that.

"Nature's Madness," the Goddess and I say together, and Helen's wounds grow into scales.