ã€ŠCharismaã€‹


 Chapter 1: A Shiny, Happy Day!

    I skip along the grass-riddled pavement, buoyantly traveling on my journey to nameless off-brand restaurant number 130, my shoulder-length light brown hair bouncing all the way. The sun beat merrily down on the pavement like a toddler playing with a xylophone. My raggedy bright pink and white sneakers thump to a staccato rhythm as I make a quick pace, listening to dramatic doom metal on my comically oversized headphones. I stop at the entrance, spiff up my uniform, and open the door to the ting-a-ling of the bell.

    ¡°You¡¯re late,¡± accuses my best friend and comrade-in-cooking, Elisa. She taps her stark-black buckled shoes against the tile floor, folding her arms in frustration.

    I, of course, cannot permit such slander! ¡°Excuse me! How dare you level such accusations! It is...¡± I check my watch ¡°8:50! I am ten minutes before my shift starts.¡±

    She grabs me by the shoulders and with the dead look of a long-suffering individual, says ¡°I have been stuck talking with Karen for the past hour because you weren¡¯t here when I finished my preparation of the store. You know, like I always do. Why did you abandon me?¡± a plaintive tone clear in her voice.

    I wince. That can¡¯t have been very fun. ¡°I¡¯m really sorry. I slept in after watching robot fights till 1:00 am.¡±

    Against my greatest efforts, a yawn practically takes over my body, before I slump down in exhaustion, arms hanging down.

    Her glare softens ¡°Ugh, you¡¯re too cute to stay mad at. Don¡¯t think I can¡¯t realize you are using your wiles to escape your just punishment though.¡±

    Hey, I am not using them this time!

    ¡°Now let¡¯s get started before Karen decides to use her Managerial Command on us.¡± she wryly says.

    I shiver. Nothing like the threat of mind control to get you moving. Well, teeechnicallyyy it is not mind control, otherwise it would be illegal. It¡¯s mind influence. It just instills a strong sense of obedience and it makes your body resist doing non-work actions, but for someone who has 2 years till they unlock their system, the legal distinction is of negligible importance when you can¡¯t invest in the Willpower stat.

    I run my work card through the system and got started on the daily grind, making crimes against Mexican cuisine ¡®like a boss.¡¯ I play Frank Sinatra on my oversized headphones and I¡¯m groovin¡¯ and movin¡¯ to the beat. I¡¯m the cat¡¯s meow. The bee¡¯s knees. I giggle at the anachronisms going through my head.

    ¡°Move faster. You¡¯re messing up the proportions. I have never seen such abysmal wrap assembly. I want 10 large salads done in every five minutes. Cut that lettuce faster! Don¡¯t stop until you¡¯re done. Remember, no talking unless talked to.¡±

    Ahhh, the angel herself, Karen. Crap. An old, white curmudgeonly woman in a red shirt and blue-and-white skirt. Unfortunately, her grating wish is my command. Against my will, my hands move from a professional speed to a blistering pace, cutting the lettuce with alacrity. Her wrinkled has-been face wrinkles in approval and she leaves to police my fellow workers. Oof. She¡¯s going to Sanders. Poor guy is screwed, may he rest in peace. He¡¯s so nice that he gets all anxious when he inevitably does not meet her ridiculous standards. He really did not realize what this corpo. contract entailed.

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    Time to try avoiding cutting my fingers.

    ...

    I hate this job so much.

    I¡¯ve worked pretty hard to get high base dexterity, but my hands cannot keep this up. After the first nonstop 5 minutes, and the four hours of laborious taco making before her Managerial Command, my hands are starting to hurt. After the next 15 minutes, they are cramping and spazzing, but I can¡¯t let go. I am sweating and panting. I really need a respite. I''m starting to accidentally scrape off my black and pink nail polish through the gloves, but I can¡¯t slow down to prevent a mistake like I normally would have.

    Goddamnit! I cut myself. Luckily it isn¡¯t bleeding too profusely. It joins the old scar tissue on my hands. I cannot stop to get bandages though.

    I continue cutting lettuce for a while more, until I make another mistake. I fail to move my hand out of the way fast enough and I cut myself again. This one is a gusher. Been a while since I got one this bad.

    Tears well up in my eyes and then promptly retreat as if they remembered whose makeup they would be messing up. Blood starts soaking my gloves and my grip is slipping worse. My ruby lips purse as I try to break the multiple commands. I cut myself again; on accident of course. I can¡¯t risk looking around, but I know that everyone else is under similar orders of silence and focus so they can¡¯t help me.

    Like moving through molasses, I desperately unclench my hand and whisper ¡°Time. For. Lunch. Break!¡±

    It¡¯s so cheesy I would laugh if it wasn¡¯t actually pretty serious.

    To my undying happiness, the skill releases. Managerial Command can¡¯t make you do something illegal, like skipping your allotted lunch break, which is unfortunately part of why it is legal.

    ¡°Haha! Freedom!¡± I shout happily. I drip blood across the floor as I race out to open my backpack. I pull out a heap of medical supplies till I find the gauze and expertly wrap my hands up.

    ¡°I am starving!¡± I exclaim.

    I grab the massive sandwich at the bottom of the backpack with my mummified hands and do my best to imitate my pet python Jerry. Sure, my hands are stinging like hell, but the real pain is my empty stomach.

    After halfway through the sandwich, I pause. A tingling sensation prickles its way up my neck. Goosebumps form. My big blue eyes widen, and I start shaking. I turn around with a big grin on my face.

    ¡°Hiya Boss!¡± I say to the specter of doom in front of me.

    "You got blood ALL over the employee carpet. The mess is ridiculous! WHY would you be so careless?! You should have gone slower!¡± Karen shouts, spittle flying onto my face.

    I summon my incredible acting skills and play the part she expects of me in this situation. ¡°I¡¯m so, so sorry. I¡¯ll do better. Would you like me to clean it up? I¡¯ll make sure to remedy my mistakes¡± I craft a flawless, sincerely apologetic expression just for her.

    It is supremely difficult with her disgusting, germy spit and the images of drop-kicking her into a vat of our Ultimate Spice Sauce running in the back of my mind, but I am nothing if not capable.

    You may now offer your applause.

 Chapter 2: Wonderful Hospital-ity

    Finally! I¡¯m free! I head to the boys¡¯ bathroom and unwrap the gauze on my hands to wash my hands and clean out the cuts. I admire my face for a second in the mirror. Perfectly symmetrical and flawless hair. I twirl my fingers in my hair. So soft. I flutter my long lashes in the mirror and giggle at my own complete lack of shame.

    Alright. Enough indulging in vanity. I change out of my uniform into my informal clothes and pull up my elbow length striped white-and-pink gloves, spin around, and exit the room.

    Elisa is waiting for me, offering me her hand like the devil we both know she is, mirth in her eyes despite her resting bitch face. I graciously accept, internally wincing at the sharp pain as she grasps my hand, and we walk to her black motorcycle in the parking lot.

    I ask the question that has been bothering me all day. ¡°Sooo... how¡¯d you get away with highlighting your hair with neon red?¡±

    The corners of her mouth quirk up, practically the equivalent of a full-on grin for her. ¡°I merely convinced Karen that I was trying to help business by mimicking our mascot Jolly Ol¡¯ Fellow. You know how greedy she is.¡±

    My laugh rings out to the cars in the parking lot.

    ¡°That¡¯s perfect!¡± I exclaim.

    She sits down on the leather and puts her hands on the handlebars.

    *Sigh* and not me. I chuckle.

    She looks at me and quirks her eyebrow.

    ¡°I know you aren¡¯t even half as innocent as you seem to everybody. What are you thinking?¡± she orders.

    I grin and shake my head. ¡°Nothing, nothing. I promise.¡± And then I do the incredibly mature thing and blatantly move one of my hands behind my back to ¡®hide¡¯ the crossing of my fingers.

    She sighs in amusement. ¡°Come on, you pervert.¡±

    ¡°You brought my helmet. See, you do love me, my beloved tsundere!¡± I finish our inside joke, bending forward to stick my tongue out, then dodging her half-hearted swipe at my precious hair. I abruptly turn around and grab my helmet, which is... well, Elise politely described it as unique. I had expertly painted it to look like a hyper-realistic eye-ball with a vivid pink iris.

    I leap onto the motorcycle and pick up the ocular organ-imitating helmet and shout ¡°Forward my steed. Let¡¯s ride on!¡±

    She looks over her shoulder, exasperated.

    And of course, I waggle my eyebrows at my last sentence and place my hands around her waist.

    Born of a decade of experience, she steadfastly ignores me and guns the engine. Off we go!

    ¡°WHOOOO!!!¡±

    Some may call it childish to delight in the wind in my hair, best friend by my side, and hold out my hands while riding a motorcycle like it¡¯s a rollercoaster, but I say they are just boring scaredy-cats. Elisa drives exactly 3 miles below the speed of the fastest car, so she can easily profess ignorance of breaking the speed limit and still squeeze as much speed out of the drive as possible. She has it down to a science. I take a deep breath to savor the air. I smell the rich savory smell of the pizza shops. The sweet gasoline fumes killing the planet. The aroma of brimstone.

    I cough quite a bit at that. I wrinkle my nose. Some fiend must have raced by us. Nasty smell, that.

    We speed by the businesses and billboards.

    On one, a Magical Girl is going out buying sushi, probably only on camera because the reporter invaded her privacy. ¡±Even Magical Girls Adore Our Sushi Rice. Get it now! Limited time offer: 10%¡± Her overly straight posture and slightly turned upper body makes it pretty clear she is speed walking to get out of the establishment.

    Another insurance firm for property damage. ¡±J. John Smith Jr, and co. Will make sure you get premium deals every time¡±

    Another scam charity trying to get money. ¡°This boy tried to kill himself and accidentally summoned a rift. Just sign up and donate 5 dollars to our website www.mental-health-save-kids-stop-torments.com</a> and we can prevent Torments from coming.¡±

    A puppy ad... ooohhh, I crane my head to look over at it. Awww, they¡¯re adorable!!!

    We reach our destination, our favorite restaurant: The Seoul of the City. They have the best Tteok-bokki and it¡¯s actually affordable for me! So spicy and mmhmm makes your face numb! The rice cakes have the perfect texture, the chili and soy paste add the most wonderful flavor hints, and the veggies are flawlessly cooked. It is the ultimate comfort food, and no one can tell me otherwise. Elisa buys this deep-fried waffle Korean combination. I don¡¯t pretend to understand how it works or why she wants to eat it. It¡¯s purist or bust for me. They lead us to a neat simple wooden table, with the necessary utensils and we each pull up a roughly-hewn monolithic chair.

    Although, would it be technically mono-arboreal instead of monolithic since it¡¯s not made of stone and is instead made of wood? Hmmm. With a thoughtful expression on my face, I assume ¡°The Thinker¡± pose.

    Actually, what would a plastic version be?... Hmmmm. These are the dire questions that need to answered.

    Elisa looks at me amusedly.

    I am brought out of my train of thought as they set down the food, we thank the waiter, and sit down to ravenously tear into the food.

    As I chow down, she props her head up on her interlaced fingers and asks the age-old question ¡°So, what class options are you hoping to get?¡±

    I chuckle. ¡°Again with that question? Just because you will unlock the system in a week doesn¡¯t mean I will. You¡¯ve only asked, oh, every day since half a year ago. One might think you¡¯re nervous,¡± I tease.

    My grin changes into a soft smile, and I whisper ¡°Don¡¯t worry. I¡¯m happy that you will get it so soon. You¡¯ve met all the prerequisites.¡±

    Her parchment-paper yellow skin greens in embarrassment, rallying as she describes her passion. ¡°I just can¡¯t wait though. The idea of making contracts, of getting someone¡¯s souls if they fail to follow the fine print... It¡¯s delightful! Maybe I¡¯ll be able to dupe some asshole like Karen into selling their soul to me.¡± A manic glint appears in her eyes, and she breathes in and out heavily at the thought. A bunch of people give scathing looks of disgust at her, though she just ignores them. In fact... HAH! That person is practically running away scared for their life.

    She continues her passionate rant ¡°I¡¯ll be able to give people terrifying powers that fight against Torments and contrive the most aggravating of loopholes that will take the Department of Eternals months to figure out where they are. Really give taxpayers their money¡¯s worth for funding the department, ya know?¡±

    I agree and just soak her enthusiasm in, enjoying her company and the ambience and chiming in with a few comments on the state of things. Like the pitiful attempts of politicians to get rid of Devil imps, even though the powers they give constitute third of the fighting force against Torments and Demonics (those that are given powers by Devils) and Demonics are the backbone of the U.S. army. The army heavily uses Magitech given by Magical Girls, but they wouldn¡¯t dare control them, after the absolute crippling of North Korea¡¯s military by Magical Girl Hyeogmyeong. Which is why there is only United Korea now.

    And I ask what makes a soul delicious or not, which makes her immediately look at one of the nearby table-goers, though nobody else seems to notice the avaricious, hungering shine in her eyes.

    The sunlight outside is dimming, we have all polished our meals off, and it¡¯s 7:00 pm. So, as all things must, I need to leave.

    ¡°Time for me to go,¡± I whisper in the way that people do when contented after a good time. We stand up and I brush off my sleek hooded grey dress before we draw circles on each other¡¯s heads with our fingers, mine around her horns and hers where the horns would be on my head. While the rest of my fellow humans seem to think of this as incredibly sexual, it really is just the equivalent of a demonic hug. I know how to hug everyone! Hugs for me, hugs for you, hugs for them, hugs for everyone!

    I push open the glass door, the bell chiming in the evening darkness, and she gets on her motorcycle and drives off. I looked on for a second before smiling and starting to walk. One of the great benefits of the restaurant, beyond the food of course, is that it¡¯s close to the hospital.

    I jog quickly, soon reaching the dull white building. I make a beeline for the Customer Low-Speed Line and walk in. I check in with Nurse O¡¯Sullivan, who glances around me, finding only glaringly empty spaces beside me, before letting me in with a poorly concealed and stifled sigh. She tries to continue her service smile, but she can¡¯t be as good as I am, failing to make it reach her eyes. Though, it apparently works on most other people. It still surprises me every time someone fails to see through someone¡¯s poker face.

    I retrace the path, walking the white tiles, following my way to the Cancer Treatment Center. My heart pumps faster, and I breathe heavier on my way up to floor 3. A terrible foreboding feeling wells up painfully in my chest, like a cold draft from the water of the oceanic trenches. I move as quickly as I can outside of a full-on sprint.

    I reach for the fake wooden door of room 331 and push it open slowly and peek in, my breath hitching in my throat. I internally breathe out a sigh of relief, my outward breathing mimicking exactly what a person who has been leisurely walking down the halls would be breathing like.

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    Dennis is lying down on the tall bed/gurney, with cheap cotton blankets covering the many tubes injected toxic alchemical reagents into him. I stride smoothly over to him, my footfalls creating a stark contrast between the squeaky-clean tiles and my worn shoes, and sit down next to him.

    ¡°Hi big bro.¡±

    I don¡¯t ask how his day is. He hates that question. There is no point. In part because it is the same old, same old i.e., painful. But really though, that is not even half of it. He confided in me that what really bothers him about the question is that he rarely knows how his day was himself. Most of his time is spent not by himself, but rather, by his medical drugs, and the drugs are a big spender at the casino of time.

    His blue eyes, one of the few characteristics we still share after the constant chemo, glances around me and then back at me. My face falls flat, emotionless. I shake my head in the negative. His index finger twitches.

    I nod at his cue, grasping his hand and start stroking it as I talk about my day, describing everything I did with the utmost care to include the tastes and feelings, the sights and the smells. I know I could easily crush his fingers if I clench my hands too hard, despite him having a Class, and me not having one.

    His Class is Fatal Brain Cancer Patient, the sole intent of which was to keep him alive. In fact, he¡¯d have been a prodigal genius of the system if this was a job or combat Class, already on his fourth Class evolution before today, his 21st birthday. The prior ones being Patient, Cancer Patient, and Brain Cancer Patient. I had thought often and bitterly on the unfairness of it all, and I know that it bothered him as well. He could have received good money from the media that could have paid for better treatment.

    ¡°I enjoyed everything. I wouldn¡¯t waste it, I promise.¡± I whisper, on the verge of crying, but I hold my metaphorical demons back in favor of continuing my story, practically a fantasy for him.

    He¡¯s stuck in this self-contained universe; a monotonous white room with slick soap-bubble butterfly stickers and trailing tubes filled with turquoise fluid sticking into him like leeches. In this universe that he owns live vivid shiny helium-filled butterfly balloons that are far too pitiful for what he deserves and the amber-covered prehistoric butterfly I had been saving. I should have done better. At least I¡¯ll avoid foisting any of my problems on him.

    He looks at my glove-covered arms and then back at me, managing to look at me pointedly and quizzically at the same time.

    Ah. He noticed the discrepancy in my account.

    Shoot.

    I try to pass it off as only the cuts from the knife. There is no point in me taking the joy from his birthday, but he is having none of it. He glares at me disapprovingly and, most aggravatingly, compassionately. I grab the dictionary beside his bed, and expertly go through it to help him freakin¡¯ lecture me. The lovable idiot is going through so much worse. My pain does not matter. I am coping well. My therapist says I am. He, on the other hand, is dying.

    He breathes out huffily.

    ¡°What?¡± I snap, halting in his rant about taking care of myself and the dangers of infection, and yada yada.

    He just looks at me patiently. And then he twitches his finger, annoyed that I¡¯m not realizing whatever he is wanting me to.

    ¡°T. Talked. W. With. Y. You? Your. T. Theater? Then?¡±

    He squints at me, unimpressed by my dissembling.

    I go down to what I knew he really wanted.

    ¡°Therapist?¡±

    He blinks twice with heavy emphasis.

    ¡°I have!¡± I say defensively.

    His eyebrow moves up infinitesimally.

    ¡°Hey! I have!!!¡± I repeat, offended that he thinks I would lie to him.

    He glares at me and then he gets a look of inspiration.

    ¡°L. Lack? Liar? Lie. T. To? To. T. Therapist.¡±

    ¡°You-augh. Not quite. I did not lie. I just bent the truth heavily. But I spoke not a word of mistruth¡± I hold my chin up, squaring my shoulders.

    ¡°You know how I feel about lying. I simply led him to the wrong conclusion.¡±

    He looks vindicated at having solved the mystery.

    ¡°You know that he just reports everything to Mom and Dad. He just doesn¡¯t care about confidentiality when Mom pleads for information on my mental health for the quote-unquote safety of her child.¡± I defend.

    ¡°Then what happens?¡± I ask rhetorically, each of us knowing the answer.

    ¡°She guilts me until I feel terrible for being depressed.¡± I growl out. I would have shouted, but most of the patients on this floor are out like a light at 8:30 pm. They, unfortunately, have nothing in the way of a night life.

    ¡°He¡¯s a nice guy, I freely admit that, which unfortunately is exactly why he is so easily manipulated by dearest mother¡¯s antics.¡±

    He manages to look pityingly down at me, while attached to the Magitech Lifesaver, to my side, and laying down. The gall...

    We went down the list. ¡°G. Get. A. a. N. New. O. One?¡±

    I look at him, analyzing him. He tries to seem innocent, but fails miserably. Not even my brother can hide his emotions well from me. However, that did not mean he can¡¯t pull off meta-shenanigans and manipulate me into feeling bad by being tactful of trying to hide the emotions.

    I run my hand through my soft hair.

    *sigh*

    ¡°Fine. You got me. Even if I could get a new one without leading to Mom interrogating me, I would not tell a new therapist anyway. To heck with trusting anyone. I tried to trust Mom, being open about my true emotions, and look where that got me? Gaslighting. I''m not going to stop.¡±

    ¡°Besides I can¡¯t pay for a new therapist,¡± omitting the fact that was because Mom and Dad cut off all funding for me except for the therapist and I had been living paycheck to paycheck for the past three years. He didn¡¯t need to know.

    He blinks understandingly. We continue talking for a while until he twitches four fingers under my palms. I silently hug him and then stand up.

    ¡°You¡¯re right, it¡¯s midnight. Time for me to go. Dream and sleep well, big brother,¡± Both of us knowing that he will be dreaming a lot longer than just the time he was sleeping.

    I blow a kiss at him from the doorway, and he blinks as much as he can to ¡°text¡± hearts across the air to me. I turn the light off at his request and close the door behind me as quietly as I had opened it earlier. I exit with the big stately hospital behind my back, walking under the purple night with my hand on my mace, skipping by dirty alleys covered in used syringes and miscellaneous and beautiful graffiti shining in the dark.

    A thousand glistening eyes stared down upon this broken, cult-ridden neighborhood. I look back. Do you approve? They wink. I don¡¯t understand why people wish to worship that which they do not understand or that which is above them. For me, my object of worship is the collective of the stars. Perhaps it is vain of me... but I feel kinship with them.

    I intend to be a star.

    I may not be a suitable candidate for being a Magical Girl ¨C I had that very clearly pointed out to me by a Magical Girl themselves ¨C but I have already achieved a level of attention with the plays I have written and acted in. A few million YouTube views there, a request for an interview from a local media station there... I have already made a few baby steps. I¡¯ll get there.

    There are plenty of fellow people of the neighborhood walking by, some flaunting their wares and others flaunting themselves as their wares, while still others flaunt others as their wares. We are powerfully united... in the fact that the other is not worth robbing.

    Ooh!

    I crouch down to analyze a searing-hot junkie corpse glowing with a gorgeous orange light through the cracks in the body interweaved with strings of flesh. The once living charcoal-skin amalgamation currently melting the asphalt with their body heat makes for a striking image. I pull a flashlight out and nestle it safely in the crook of my neck and shoulder before I pull out my coloring book to make a blazing-fast (get it?) rendering of the body. If you examine it really closely, then you would be able to see the maggot white bone and steamed purplish mush that is the guts. Honestly, it reminds me of a blue bottle jellyfish. The non-demonic kind of course. Don¡¯t know what that would like that.

    The gang runic script scrawled o¡¯er the walls and roads that curses non-members, the rotting cadavers of those who take took magical drugs like Magma, the hints of Miasma that still linger from the last Torment... if you take a step back and look at it, it seems really bad. But it¡¯s not like Magical Girls can eliminate it unless they intend to depose the government, and even then, the resulting fallout would be far worse. I promise it has its good parts! And for those trying to cope with it, well, sometimes your coping mechanism is putting on latex gloves and taking a scalpel to the drug-infused body to improve your art and study for maybe becoming a healer someday. I wielded my knife deftly and carefully separated the shoulder from the collarbones without cutting the muscle groups too badly. Boom! Complete arm for drawing. It may be falling apart a bit.

    At that thought, meat fell off the forearm like slow-cooked pork.

    Ok. It may be falling apart a lot. But I¡¯m prepared with a Ziploc bag! I dumped the medical supplies out of the plastic bag before sticking the more bleed-y part in the bag and fitting the zipper of the backpack around the limp blackened hand. The plastic melts slightly but remains otherwise intact. Accidentally poked a finger into ash in the process, but altogether a rather successful haul.

    If Elisa was here, she¡¯d probably take a few bites just for the heck of it, and then I¡¯d have a high imp to deal with. Ahhh, she¡¯s so hot when impulsive like that, and when she shows her true inhumanity, and when she¡¯s doing anything really. We just mesh. Unlike her though, I am human, and no one can convince me to take a bite out of a human.

    I glance at the nearest gang marker, grimacing at memories.

    I can''t remember which gang is in power. They all blend together eventually. I think... Luke¡¯s Pizzeria? Yeah. Those guys. They really know the way to a girl¡¯s heart: free pizza and inclusion.

    They''ll employ everything as long as they aren''t Miasmic, Blood Magic users, Magical Girls, Vengeful Spirits (which are really the only types of spirits now that I think about it), and uh... more. Actually, now that I really think about it, there are a lot of species and magic users they don¡¯t employ. Oh well. Doesn¡¯t matter.

    I work well with any gang. I have quite a varied skill set in spite of my age and lack of System access. My capability in handling anyone easily has earned me quite the reputation.

    I always make the right choice in social situations with what I have available. Only been wrong once.

    Still bugs me.

    I paid the protection money for my parents to the wrong gang, and the gang that was actually in control of the area stuffed me in a room with a couple of Vengeful Spirits. The na?ve assholes thought that just because we live in ¡°the land of the free,¡± we don¡¯t need pay for stuff like that. So they purposefully told me the wrong gang to prove a point, believing the unspoken rules of the Neighborhood to be toothless. I should not have trusted them.

    Oh well! No use crying over spilt milk, or... spilt ectoplasm. Teeheehee.

    When I unlock my System, I will grow above the gangs here and crush them beneath my boot. I won''t be subject to anybody''s whims but my own. Perhaps I will become a crime lord myself or a vaunted Warrior or Mage fending off against Corrupted animals or monsters from the neighboring dimensions.

    Who knows?

    Regardless, I will ascend like the star I am.

    I know that someday, I will become an Immortal. Even ascend into the very Essence itself and become a god.

    For now though, it is time to ascend these stairs!

    I walk over to my bed and collapse onto the mattress face-first, groaning.

    Today was pretty nice as days go. Looking forward to class!

 Chapter 3: School is a Breeze... the Breeze of a Hurricane.

    ¡°My Little Pony, My Little Pony. Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahhh...¡±

    ¡°Shoot!¡± I¡¯m already on the My Little Pony theme song alarm! I can¡¯t believe I slept through the theme song of ¡°She-ra and the Princesses of Power¡± and the ¡°Game of Thrones¡± instrumental!

    ¡°Oh shoot!¡± I repeat.

    I rock myself straight into a standing position and leap out of my bed to my uniform. I glare at it with deep distaste. It¡¯s a blue button-up striped collared long-sleeved shirt with long khaki pants which ran me a bill of 350$, not including the tie that isn¡¯t included but still required. I find the black gloves I had tossed onto my sink and prepare myself. I ensure I have no makeup left from yesterday, removing the mascara, lipstick, and foundation. I take off the black-lace choker with an anatomical heart that I had left on overnight and stare into the mirror completely disgusted at myself. Oh, I still had long lashes and wonderful hair. My eyes were still the same. But there¡¯s nothing quite as changeable as my fair-weather friend, emotion. I glance at the kitchen knife and then at my black fitness watch. Don¡¯t have the time. I sling my backpack over my shoulder and head out.

    I hop down the stairs like a bunny, when my fellow neighbor, a nice philosophy teacher I play chess with on occasion calls out ¡°Can¡¯t you be quieter, you idiot child?¡±

    ¡°Nope! Love you too, old man!¡± I shout back cheekily.

    Elisa is waiting for me, tapping her foot impatiently. I put on my eyeball helmet (they don¡¯t have regulations on helmets at least. Or, they don¡¯t have it yet.) and off we go!

    ¡°WHOOOO!!! Ptui... leaf in my mouth... WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!¡±

    We pull up to the door of Accelerated Eastside High School and Elisa drops me off.

    ¡°Now child, don¡¯t get into any trouble.¡± she says haughtily.

    I stick my tongue out. ¡°Me? I am the paragon of perfection. And seriously, child? I¡¯m 2 years younger than you. Not to mention, if I am a child, does that mean you¡¯re the pedophile in this relationship?¡±

    Her head rears back in repulsion. If she goes any farther, she¡¯ll kiss her own ass. She chokes on her own spit. ¡°Touche. You win this round.¡± She grudgingly admitted, still reeling from my sharp wit.

    I wink at her and saunter off smugly.

    I can hear the whispers of the girls and a few of the boys about my handsomeness as I walk by. I internally preen like a peacock at all the rightful praise.

    _______

    ¡°They have to be fruity! Do you think I have a chance with them?¡±

    ¡°Dude, you have zero chance. Me on the other hand...¡±

    ¡°Oh fuck off! You don¡¯t even care about them. You¡¯re just trying to get a rise out of me.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s working though...¡±

    ¡°...¡±

    _______

    ¡°My god he has such a fine ass.¡±

    ¡°Girl, seriously? Keep it in your pants.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d rather keep him in my pants.¡±

    *Choking noises*

    ________

    ¡°... well I think he¡¯s cute.¡±

    ¡°Yeah. He¡¯s also taken already. By a monster!¡±

    ________

    ¡°That hoe¡¯s just kissing ass so they can get out of the ghetto.¡±

    ________

    ¡°They have such a dreamy smile.¡±

    ¡°I agree... they seem quite kind. I¡¯ve heard that they are going to be the main antagonist of the play next week. Maybe we can go there then, and you can spend your time daydreaming about them instead of actually watching the show.¡±

    ¡°Huh?¡±

    ¡°Nothing, you precious bean.¡±

    ________

    They are not-so-subtly telling me they were interested, while still being able to maintain a veneer of deniability. At least, I¡¯m pretty sure that¡¯s what they are doing. The other option would be that they thought I would not be able to parse the crowd¡¯s many conversations as I pass, but I think it is best to avoid assuming idiocy. It wasn¡¯t until word spread that I was taken that people finally stopped asking me out daily. Now it¡¯s only every couple weeks. I won¡¯t say I did not enjoy it then though. I deftly avoid contact with any of the students and made my way to Pre-Calculus.

    Fuck.

    Apparently not deft enough to escape her though.

    It¡¯s Alexa standing at my locker with her gaggle of goons because why not? I had stopped using it a while ago because I was tired of the constant fruit stuffed in the locker. She manages to get ridiculous mileage out of mocking my ¡°fruity¡± self. I mean, where does she even find a durian in this town? Those things smell nasty! Can you imagine opening your locker for your acting supplies and finding one of the smelliest things known to humanity? I still remember their reaction to my reaction to it. I ripped the durian open ¡°accidentally¡± in their faces, spraying them with the juices, and then loudly thanked them for the present, before taking a big bite of the durian, pretending to savor the sweet pulp. They were disgusted! Hah... it warms my heart. Sure, they punched me until my sides were black and blue, but it was worth the pain.

    I grin insouciantly. I am the best actor in our theater troupe for a reason. Really. I ain¡¯t lying. I have the medals to show for it.

    ¡°How you doing, Alexa?¡± I ask amicably.

    Her sharp green eyes focus on me. She has long blond hair framing her remarkable face. She does not look as good as those with high Charisma, but it¡¯s certainly enough to be to be the center of attention at our large school. She somehow manages to be original and gorgeous despite the many cookie-cutter photo-shopped images of pretty blondies online. Her uniform manages to look scandalous on her while not breaking any rules. On top of all this, she manages to be both one of the strongest and most intelligent students of the school. In other words, I¡¯m still not convinced she is real and not some eldritch entity here to make all teenagers feel incredibly jealous. Not me though. I¡¯m hot.

    I am disgusting. A beautiful trash bag contorted into a flat brick by refuse and sewage. I deserve nothing more than to be a doll in the hands of ghosts.

    She grins menacingly at me. I felt my soul wilt. The damned bodybuilder has something up her sleeve.

    ¡°Just peachy!¡± she said, taking a bite of a peach she was just casually holding.

    She¡¯s making puns. I¡¯m so screwed. And she¡¯s not using the fruit against me. Which means that this one is particularly innovative.

    ¡°Well, I have to go to class. See you soon.¡± I said, going around them. Please don¡¯t let me go, please don¡¯t let me go, please don¡¯t let me go. Grab onto my shoulders then go ahead to beat me. Please. It is far more preferable to whatever you¡¯re planning.

    ¡°See you soon!¡± the class president said back cheerfully.

    Crap. It¡¯s nothing so simple. I can feel goosebumps rising as the fright rises within me. In accelerated schools, you don¡¯t actually get less bullying with more nerds. It just means the bullies are smarter and crueler. To give you an analogy as to why, which would you rather attack you? A person who is well and truly ripped, with a high-level Warrior class, or a skinny low-level Torturer, with all of their tools and implements. The smart individual would choose the former. Unfortunately, I have no choice in the matter since I''m already in this school, and I will have to wait out today with the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

    I speed-walk away to Pre-Calculus, making it just in time to avoid being tardy. I sit down, putting down my backpack and our teacher starts the lecture, looking super-focused, while bored out of my ever-loving mind. How does she manage to make such simple math incomprehensible? It¡¯s truly a talent. I can feel my eyes glazing over. Is her ancestor perhaps Professor Binns? I could see the family resemblance. I can feel my exhaustion from yesterday trying to make me fall asleep.

    ¡°... and that ends this lecture.¡±

    Escape! I get out with unseemly haste. I feel like I am forgetting something that is making me reticent to get out of class. I start walking haltingly to my art class, trying to remember what it is. It doesn¡¯t come to mind by the time I get there. Unfortunately, I am very rudely reminded what it was I was preparing for. A truly horrendous pain blooms in my upper arm. I like to think I have a very high pain tolerance. This, though, is impressive! I hiss in pain. A cold, extremely thin object moves quickly out of my arm, flesh rubbing against and adhering to the metal needle. I collapse to the ground, giving up on my acting, though I still avoid screaming like most reasonable people would in this situation. It hurts so bad. My eyes bulge out in pain, and I start whimpering quietly. I collapse to the ground in truly exquisite agony. A person moves in my peripheral vision, before crouching down in front of me. Alexa is smug with victory. I could tell she is proud of her handiwork. She is savoring my emotions.

    ¡°Finally got you to react, didn¡¯t I? It¡¯s been a while since I achieved a victory, hasn¡¯t it? You¡¯ve really stepped up your game this year, so I thought I¡¯d do the same.¡± She holds out the needle, suspending it by her fingers pinched around a loop at the end. It¡¯s a thin but dull object about twenty centimeters long, or about eight inches long, for those old fuddy-duddies who still clutch onto the system after Magical Girl Crawling Code changed the U.S.A. to the international metric system. She makes it go back and forth in front of my face. My eyes focus on the swinging instrument of torture. My blood goes almost 8 centimeters (about the length of the long edge of a credit card) all the way up the needle. She must have stabbed me that far. Is she insane? My eyes widen at the realization, and I am shivering and sweating in pain.

    A smirk flits across her face as she drinks in my pain.

    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry.¡± she croons, clutching my hair, pulling my head up roughly.

    ¡°I study anatomy. I¡¯m practically on par with the top doctors in terms of my knowledge on this subject. I made sure to avoid any lasting damage. You¡¯ll feel a little weak, and be in awful pain, but maybe a week or so and you¡¯ll be right as rain.¡±

    She lets me fall back onto the cold plastic tiles, frizzes up my hair, and walks off. I just lay there, trying to catch my breath, grimacing.

    I stand up, walk to the bathroom, and liberally pour hydrogen peroxide on my arm, nearly whiting out with the fresh pain. My hands deftly wrap gauze around the wound, before pulling my sleeve over the many wounds I have accrued over the years. From my backpack, I pull out a mirror and brush my hair straight again. A face wrought with absolute rage stares back, my teeth bared in frustration.

    Unfortunately, if I''m being honest, hopelessness was definitely part of the expression as well. I can¡¯t actually stop her from doing anything, because while I¡¯m strong (one has to be strong to be great at dancing) I am just not absolutely jacked like she is. Not to mention, she can sue me ten ways till Sunday. She is rich, but unfortunately not even because of her parents. Oh no, they are upper-middle class, but that¡¯s not quite enough to put me into the ground, or have the school prefer her opinion over mine. The school is not that corrupt. They have plenty of rich kids.

    No, she¡¯s all self-made, having patented a life-saving medication for malaria while not having any system access. This also means that I wouldn¡¯t have the sympathy of rich person vs. poor person, because she earned it all.

    I bet you already start to feel like rooting for her too, don¡¯t you?

    Why, it¡¯s enough to make me feel like rooting for her! She¡¯s saved millions of lives! What¡¯s my life compared to the ¡°Savior of the Sick?¡±

    That¡¯s a genuine question. What do you think?

    I had already presented the bruises as evidence, but my own therapist said that it just looked like I had caused it myself for attention.

    To quote all hippies, ¡°Like, seriously, dude?¡±

    It isn¡¯t even my modus operandi. I use knives, not metal pipes (or needles like this most recent injury). Damn, if I don¡¯t sound psychopathic saying ¡°modus operandi¡± and ¡°I use knives, not metal pipes¡± though. I¡¯ll have you know that I did not get diagnosed as psychopathic. I might have checked a few of the boxes on the medical checklist, but not enough! That¡¯s what really matters.

    I open the bathroom door and look surreptitiously up, down, and side-to-side. Ok, maybe calling my scan of my surrounding environment surreptitious would be a bit too kind. I walk to my art class unimpeded.

    I enter the class with the appearance of joviality.

    ¡°Hey guys! How is the theater troupe of Eastside doing?¡±

    A chorus of welcomes comes from the collection of students. Ahh, my fellow actors. I sit down on my seat, surrounded by my fellow theater members. There is a heavy air charged and crackling with anxiety. This will not do. I mentally crack my knuckles. I look around and stage-whisper, asking what we were doing for this class. Wilbur pushes up his glasses and calmly says we¡¯re going to be drawing a space scene solely using No. 2 pencils and erasers. Adorable kid is the epitome of gay panic. So easy to make him flustered. Such a precious little mochi. When he is the DM though, he is wicked! Always plenty of fun stories with him. I remember when the bard kept fucking everyone, and he slowly and subtly set up the storyline so that the bard''s teammates had no choice but to kill them.

    There''s a reason why I specifically remember that.

    Betsy raves about this application of an eraser that will enable her to make a gas giant more realistically. She¡¯s really good at playing the drums and is great at playing the courageous main character. Maybe not as good as me, but she is incredibly nice and her acting actually draws on her personality. She stands up against bullies every time she sees them even though she pays for it every time. I mean, I do the same thing, but I think there is a qualitative difference between why we do it. I enjoy seeing the bully¡¯s aggravated face when I interrupt their activities and it¡¯s delightful to ruthlessly punish the assholes with pranks. And for Alexa, it¡¯s better that an awful person like me gets punished by her than some poor innocent kid. Betsy on the other hand, she¡¯s practically a Pink Magical Girl (but she¡¯s not. Not yet at least. She has literally no unexplained disappearances for school). She is literally one of the most selfless people I know. She¡¯s one like one of those anime MCs who will stand in front of the bully, make a speech about how cruel it is mock people, and how ¡°we should be friends! Look at the Magical Girls! They get along! Why can¡¯t we?¡± As much as I find her naivet¨¦ amusing, she is one of my closest friends in the theater troupe.

    I mention that I¡¯m going for a more fantastical bent to my space scene and ask whether anyone else is doing something similar.

    Hahahaha. It¡¯s fun being among such uncritical people. It¡¯s nice. I can still go for some hard alcohol though.

    The teacher is pretty hands-off except for grading, so we chat while we sketch our drawings.

    I first sketched the hidden image, before I drew a glowing panorama of stars that you could almost feel surrounded by and reach out to touch. After she graded our drawings, we passed our papers around. We all ooed and aahed at each other¡¯s drawings. I managed to sneak the details past the first eleven members of my troupe before Helix figured it out. I didn¡¯t think it would get past them. They¡¯re pretty insightful. Personally, I think they¡¯re either going to be a bedside therapist or an art critic.

    They raised an eyebrow at my drawing. They looked closer at it, turned it upside down, then turned it around to hold it up to the light, only to find the same painting from the opposite perspective. Haha! Can¡¯t guess it from checking my first layers with light from a lamp!

    ¡°Wait a minute, are the stars actually casting light onto an endless void? Because I think I see something.¡±

    I gave them a shit-eating grin. ¡°Oh, do you? Pray tell, what do you see?¡±

    They gave me the stink-eye back. ¡°It is... wait, I see it! If you piece the ever-so-slightly darker areas and the places where light looks as if reflected, it¡¯s a grinning face! Made of tentacles... that is impressively gross looking.¡±

    ¡°Why thank you!¡± I say demurely.

    ¡°So, you guys ready for the play? Just three days.¡± I ask.

    Wilbur rung his hands in nervousness, a cold sweat appearing on his brow. ¡°Ugh. Don¡¯t remind me. I have been nauseous all day. I don¡¯t know how you can be so calm in front of the entire town, playing the main role.¡±

    I giggled. ¡°Of course! I thrive on attention. You poor thing though! Hope you recover in time so that you don¡¯t mess it up for all of us.¡±

    He gulped.

    ¡°Ahhh, just messing with you.¡± I give a light fleeting touch to his shoulder. ¡°Don¡¯t worry. You will do amazing. I trust you. Just take a deep breath¡±

    *inhale*

    *exhale*

    ¡°Come on everyone. I¡¯m sure you¡¯re all nervous too. Don¡¯t you want to join in?¡± I ask actually innocently, not the sarcastic innocence everyone uses.

    Hesitantly, everyone joins in. Which is when I spring my trap. When we all take a deep breath, I put light pieces of paper right in front of the mouths of the people closest to me. The papers suction to their face and they look shocked for a brief moment, eyes widening before spitting and ptchooing the papers away.

    I collapse off the chair laughing, safely of course. Everyone joins in, even the unfortunate victims of my prank. The mood is successfully lightened, and no one can even think of being stressed while splitting their sides. I have no intention of having the play fail when I could easily manipulate my friends into getting into the right mindset. One might argue that I shouldn¡¯t manipulate people like this, but I argue that everyone manipulates the other without realizing. I see no difference between naturally and forcing oneself to have emotions that will achieve a certain result. Being waspish due to your personality or purposefully assuming the role of an asshole to make one defensive and off-kilter is the exact same.

    Unless it makes a far greater amount of people outside of the group I am interacting with happier though, I try to leave things far better after I used it. I am a benevolent being after all, touching their hearts and injecting light into their lives. A doctor that wields a kind scalpel, a bright syringe.

    I pushed and pulled, a shocking joke here and showing a level of selfishness there that will make me seem more relatable to the cynics of the group. I gave advice about drawing that actually subtly told Betsy how to cope healthily with her depression (Don¡¯t worry, silly. I didn¡¯t recommend that she use my methods. I know they aren¡¯t for everyone). Most importantly though, I assured her that she was not alone and that she could trust her friends to get her analyzed by a therapist. All this without anyone except Helix noticing. Everyone left the room chatting eagerly, feeling prepared to take on our play, forgetting about their actual troubles. For a moment oh so blissful to them, Atlas forgets their wasted dad is constantly high on Magma and is quickly dying. Charlotte forgets about the ruthless beat-down her mom received during sex work. Fernandez and Angel forget about their brother getting... taken, yeah, that¡¯s totally how I was going to word it... by Se?or Screaming Fingers. Lea forgets about her sister being turned into a werewolf and needing to give her up to Luke¡¯s Pizzeria for her safety and training.

    I wave goodbye to them as I head to Chemistry class. Now that I blend with the crowd, I can rub the wound to physically pressure the waves of pain emanating from the tiny hole. It hurts so goddamn much. I duck around a locker corner. I see a metallic flash coming towards me. I tried to dodge with a well-chosen dance move, but the metal needle unerringly hit my leg at an oblique angle. It sinks deep into my thigh, before pulling out once again.

    Aargh! Again! Why?!

    I am already becoming uncomfortably familiar with feeling the cold bite of metal on the inside of my body rather than against my skin. I tripped over my own feet in silence. Unconscious tears welled up in my eyes due to my body¡¯s automatic reaction to pain.

    This time, she does not even stop to gloat. She just walked off like it was her perfunctory duty to cause me pain, which is almost worse than gloating. I once more return to the bathroom. The blood is trickling down my legs profusely. Strongest feeling of d¨¦j¨¤ vu, this.

    I can feel my focus narrow, lasering in on the pain and humiliation. My pupils constrict and I bare my teeth. So help me, that pretty princess is going to face retribution if she violates my flesh once more. I don¡¯t understand why she has suddenly and drastically escalated to such tactics, but I couldn¡¯t care less now.

    I exit the bathroom, palming my scalpel, when suddenly the alarms start blaring excruciatingly loud.

    "Warning! A rift has opened. A Torment is forming. 1 hour until the rift reaches hazardous size. Everyone exit in an orderly fashion in order to make it to the safer shelters!"

    A few students ran past, obviously frightened out of their wits. Well, I won¡¯t deny I appreciate whoever gave the miasma the intent needed to form Torment Miasma or that the miasma happened to reach a maximum threshold today. Alexa won¡¯t be stabbing again this time. She probably will not appreciate being interrupted and will ensure to start all over again, but this misfortune is in my favor. I calmly, but quickly, grabbed my supplies and started traveling through the halls.

    Someone sprinted by me and knocked me flat on my ass. Oof. At this rate, I¡¯m going to be best friends with the school floor. I aggravatedly looked in the direction they were running to. Oddly, I don¡¯t see the asshole. Are they that fast?

    MMRHMPH!

    That¡¯s the sound of me getting stabbed 3 times in the gut at a System-user with incredible Speed. In other words, I practically had metal rip through my body at the speed of a conventional firearm Then I was stabbed in the previously unharmed leg and arm. My vision swam with pain. I tried to turn my head, but I might as well have tried to rotate the rusted gears of a medieval portcullis. All I want is to focus on are the holes she put through my stomach. It¡¯s Alexa. I know it is. As much as I want to vow that I will repay her in this moment, it seems unlikely. That doesn¡¯t mean I will not do my damnedest to end her for these agonizing wounds. With one hand, I unsheathe the scalpel and try to thrust it back. She dodges with a laugh. I can barely focus. I blink back the pain, squinting as I shuffled around. I don¡¯t care how illogical or hopeless it is, she has no right to do this. I intend to take an eye. A blurred blob stops in front of me. I take a step forward towards her, when suddenly she seems to just appear at the end of the corridor. She... was a system user? That made no sense, excluding this situation. While she could have lied about her age, I would have noticed her living at such a speed. It¡¯s how professional law enforcement (and anyone in my neighborhood) knows whether you do or don¡¯t have a focus on speed. You can¡¯t really hide the twitches which are a tell-tale characteristic of it.

    Ugh! I don¡¯t care! I want to rend her to pieces! She needs to kneel and beg and plead. My line of thought derails when the alarm changes.

    "Warning! Get to the safety shelters inside the school now. You will not have the time needed to exit. Miasma is imprinting quickly. 5 minutes until formation. 4 minutes. 3 minutes. 2 minutes. 1 minute left."

    I am befuddled.

    ¡°Why on earth would it cut down from an hour to five minutes? And then shrink?!¡± I speak shrilly to myself. I can feel anxiety overtaking my rage. My breaths speed up, rushing out of my lungs as if they were trying to escape this deathtrap for me. I force a breath slowly into my clenched lungs.

    I just need to make my way to a safety room. Yeah... that''s all I need to do. It definitely isn''t unheard of for people making it out of the rift. That''s why there are precautions built into every Magitech safety room for that type of thing. I may be literally the farthest one can be from any of the hatches ¨C kind of odd I just happened to be caught then ¨C but I can make it.

    There are a couple people who manage to make it to a safety hatch after 1 hour in a Tormented zone. After that, well, they often survived for a while longer, they just never made it to safety. A purplish tint rushed in, coloring the air. Purplish miasma. This color is new to me. I wonder what it represents? Last one I went through was white. That one represented... it does not matter. I shake my head vigorously to dispel the maelstrom of memories attached to it and the drops of moisture on my face. I stand up, clutching the blood-soaked uniform. I really hope that the Anathema here don¡¯t have good senses of smell. Since every hatch is equally far away from me, might as well go for the one with the fencing swords.

    Time to go to the gym.

 Chapter 4: I Think the Janitors Were Underfunded

    I holster my backpack and put up my hair in a ponytail. I put on my best grin for the Tormented zone. Why view this as real life when I would just fall apart as reality bends to fit the Torment at the center of this, taking it too seriously? Might as well do what I do best, show time!

    I take off my shoes and quietly pad down the hallway. Yes, I did tiptoe, but put out of your mind the Grinch on Christmas. There are faster and quieter ways to tiptoe. A dramatic appearance in one place when I was in another would be heavily detracted from by clattering footsteps or by being late.

    The purple tint was growing rather fast. I could just barely see clumps and threads of it hanging in the air, like streamers and lanterns at a party. I pause at yet another corner, looking around. Doesn''t seem like the Torment has spawned Anathema just yet.

    And yet...

    I remain there at the corner though despite the supposed lack of the flesh-hungry monsters that characterize Tormented zones. It seems incredibly suspicious that my journey has remained unimpeded so far, so much so that since I am very much a gambler, I predict there is something important I am missing. While I figure it out, I take out ten scalpels out of my back pocket. I twiddle around with a few of them on one hand, nimbly making them travel across and around my fingers.

    I know! Humans rarely look up! I chuckle. And imps too. Elisa¡¯s face after a trap of mine pelted her with erasers was priceless.

    I am going to get to her and Dennis. Me and Elisa will sit on the couch together, re-watching ¡°The Adams Family.¡± I will play charades with Dennis. I intend to get out before the bell rings. I will see them again.

    So saying, I check "up." I tilt my head up and look into the hallway. Oh dear. I nearly made the mistake of every side character that dies in a horror movie.

    Stuck like barnacles to a ceiling, golden teeth gnash in an ever-changing kaleidoscope, one after another. The metallic growths protruded in a conical fashion, with dangling, glittering gems shining brightly with the brilliance of lights at a ballroom. I note the creatures are the exact placement of the lights in our school.

    I¡¯ve always wondered how the transformation of a Tormented zone works and what it looks like. Guess I know now, but I do wish that it did not come with the danger of having my head plucked off like a delicious grape off a bulbous vine spewing red sap everywhere.

    It takes me a quick minute till my cyan and ultramarine blue eyes flash with an idea. I promptly turn to the lockers and start smoothly twisting the bronzing screws off the door hinges with one of my scalpels and picking the lock, propping the door up with my elbow so it didn¡¯t fall prematurely, catching the hinges in my hand. I carefully settle it down before taking down a second one. I loosely attach them to my backpack with medical tape, wasting valuable time as I jury rig it with my spare preferred clothes and towel so as to avoid clattering. It was this or they could hear me. I just have to hope they didn¡¯t have other more unique senses.

    I remember reading a book by a Warrior who said that Intelligence was incredibly low in starting Anathema, so the creatures¡¯ eyesight wouldn¡¯t matter since they would not interpret me as human with my disguise. I don my haphazard turtle shell.

    My design is laughable. I would rather throw it to the dumpster than wear such a disgrace, but unfortunately, it is literally the only thing I can think of to put between me and certain death.

    I glare through the purple Miasma spiraling around everything, the tendrils of anti-magic curling amorously throughout the halls, and I start crouching and shuffling through the corridors under the growing dangling monstrosities above me, feeling for all the world like I am traveling under hungry chandeliers. My hair trails behind me like a bridal gown, which I must admit is decidedly inconvenient, as amusing as it probably looks.

    *bump*

    A cold feeling condenses in my sternum. I keep moving.

    I gulp nervously, a smile still on my face. A person looking at me would think I was having the time of my life, but they would be dead wrong. This is deeply harrowing, and I just want to hug a pillow and cry. Instead, I am playing the English version of the song ¡°Underdog¡± inside my head as loud as mentally possible while traveling under the stuff of nightmares.

    ??¡°...it¡¯s not a pleasant sound I get that. Go on and call me ¡°coward,¡± never was much of a fighter...¡±??

    *Scraaaape*

    I¡¯m being gnawed on! I can feel the pressure of the heavy metal molars pushing down on me, making the locker doors wobble. And this is just it feeling me out!

    ??¡°Underdog, wonder how long you¡¯ll wait until the day you¡¯re suddenly strong. Don¡¯t you think it¡¯s almost time? Come on, let¡¯s move along.¡±??

    I just keep crawling, each monster testing just what this rectangular metal pill bug that is walking so brazenly beneath them is. I promise you, golden eldritch decorations, I agree that this is incredibly foolish. As much as I find dying to you overly ostentatious bejeweled maws to be a unique way of going out, I would much rather live, despite much evidence to the contrary these past years.

    I finally make it to the end of the hallway. Nothing like stress to make scooching down feel much longer than normal. I hunker down on my butt and pull my hand mirror out of my pocket. I examine myself and fix my hair which has already gotten fairly mussed up. I then push the mirror out from under my makeshift shelter, quickly reaching my hand out, angling it, and then bringing my hand back in. This brings to mind the Norse story of Tyr and Fenrir... which I now deeply regret thinking about. Losing my hand like Tyr is not on my bucket list. Unfortunately, it seems like the chandeliers are in the next hallway as well. My black-rimmed mirror gifts me a glimpse of the atrocities laying in the corridors. Not only had the metallic crushing mouths grown larger, with each molar now the size of my small clenched fists, but there are a couple sleeping hounds.

    Now, don¡¯t get me wrong, when I say hounds, I mean that in the loosest possible sense of the word. Take a perfectly fit, rather oversized version of a gorgeous Irish Setter (I¡¯m a dog lover, sue me), then add so many entrails pouring out of their mouths that they are quite literally breaking the laws of physics.

    The blackened entrails are squirming and worming over the floor in front of them and writhing and scything ¨C each intestine has wicked chitinous hooks attached to them ¨C out of its mouth. Add two massive rust-red super-floofy antennae growing out of empty picked-clean sockets rimmed with bone and you have the gist of it. My blood leaves my face, leaving me incredibly pale, but my expression is set in an assured snarl. I have assumed the role of a fearsome adventurer enjoying the thrill of this horror show, and I am going to commit to it. I check that I have moved to a relatively empty spot and ready myself. From what I can tell, there is a space between their tentacles that is a one-way trip to the hounds¡¯ stomachs.

    I really don''t want to get eaten!

    I am not quite ready to eschew my protection though, as much the weight will burden me. I flatten myself up against the lockers, staring warily at the living stalactites while I furtively unscrew and pick the lock of the nearby locker doors. After I finish with four, the unwieldiness is starting to get out of hand, as they may literally fall out of my hands.

    This is crazy!

    I slowly creep out of the hounds¡¯ blind spots into full view of the resting Anathema, and settle down a couple of the locker doors, before thrusting two doors directly into the oversized shinies on the roof.

    What the fuck am I doing! I wish Elisa was here!

    I am unsurprised that they instinctively bite down. I do however underestimate just how much force they can generate when ignoring basic physics like leverage. The metal does not break, but as it deforms it makes the most obnoxious screeching.

    This is so insane! I swear I¡¯m going to have a heart attack.

    The hounds shoot awake but seem to be incapacitated by the sound, their massive fluffy antennae wiggling and shaking in irritation.

    Dang. Lucky break.

    Ahhh! They are awake! I expected it... but ahhh, why do they need to start moving!?

    The noise is certainly excruciating, but I live in a high school for most of the week: there is no shortage of mistakes ¨C err, I mean indie rock ¨C blasting out of the club rooms. I swiftly pick up the doors and make the slights on canine-kind deep-throat the metal rectangles, shoving it brutally into their gullets past their now-limp tentacles. Encouraged by the lack of response, I move closer to one and push. I can feel the organs tear beneath my applied force. The Anathema dog-thing collapses, the antennae stop twitching, and I move on. I could try to attack the other hound...

    They are too scary! I¡¯m running!

    ...but the chew toys I gave the chandeliers have already been sliced in half and the other hound is scrabbling to try to get the metal door out. It is distracted and I have no interest in making the mistake that everyone makes when the violence starts i.e. they need an injury from the enemy to get rid of their bloodthirst.

    I have seen it happen to far too many gangsters when I am supplying medical services to them. I have worked out my rage at Alexa for stranding me here in the Tormented zone by killing one of the creatures. I do not wish for her to succeed in killing me like I believe she wants me to. I do not pretend to understand her motives nor her capabilities at this moment, for all I know it may not be her, but I will not make a foolish mistake.

    So saying, I crouch down and run through the hallway. I step over the blood-soaked objects in my path.

    After a couple minutes, my heart freezes as a realization hits me. The music score that would be playing at this realization would be a purposefully discordant but soft violin drop-off.

    A certain chill runs up my back as my now terror-frozen heart plummets into my stomach. My eyes widen in terror. I have passed no doors as I am running down the hallway. There should be bathrooms and class entrances in this hallway on the way to the gym. This corridor is... growing.

    Sweat beads on my neck. There are already spatial shenanigans going on this rift. Which means... well, all that comes to mind to describe this is ¡°fuck.¡± More than a few people have been killed.

    Sapient creatures getting eaten by Anathema fuels both their personal strength, inducing evolution, and increases the miasma, which means the environment changes to suit the Torment¡¯s message, whatever inhuman logic its very existence is made to simultaneously follow and force upon the world.

    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    As if the Torment wanted to prove my conclusion correct, the rasping sound of stone against stone prompts me to glance behind my back.

    Neon purple stone cylinders, like the stone version of purple glow sticks, rupture out the cheap plastic tiles, cracks spiderwebbing the area around... pillars? They continue until, wait a minute, I- that doesn¡¯t make sense. They should have reached the ceiling by now.

    Oh... I see, the ceiling is changing too, rocketing away from the floor.

    I do not trust that the chandeliers are finished growing, but they should be far enough away that I should be safe enough to analyze these rapid-fire changes without my head being plucked like bread from a handbasket. I need to make sure I keep my bearings.

    Just breathe.

    Calm down.

    You will crush them.

    The pillars connect with the ceiling once it stops running away. I wait there for a minute, the 15-minute rule thrown out of the window by now, so I might as well move cautiously. So far, there is nothing else of note. This hallway is now just a particularly oddly proportioned rectangular prism with an overly far away ceiling in comparison to the width between the walls, and all of the unearthly decorations too, obviously. I reach out to touch the pillars in a moment of carelessness, though no reprisal results.

    This cold stone... this fascinating marvel... more than a few had to have died for it. A tear runs down my face. The adventurer role I have taken unnecessarily drives me to take a moment to give my respects to them, something I would have done already, at least I think would have...

    The best thing I can do is attempt to immortalize the rift that their lives fueled. I... I have no idea... no idea whether it would actually be a fitting tribute to them, but I probably know them, so sit down in a lotus position and take out a large journal from my backpack and scratch a few notes on the pages in cipher (you never know when a bully will try to take your journal to read it) and a quick sketch and shading of the environment. Afterwards, I continue to take advantage of the time this shifting has given me to stand up unhindered and run down the ever-lengthening halls, keeping a watchful eye on the faraway.

    ¡°Woaoaoh!¡±

    I skid to a stop. At this moment, I am seriously peeved. I am going to the gym to supply myself with potential ways to defend myself. It is, or was, pretty close to Chemistry class. And yet, I have not arrived at the gym and instead I am face-to-face with yet another threat. This time the creature is... a maid? Assuming Anathema do not spawn as the incorrect gender like humans are occasionally born as, I believe this maid is female given the exaggerated chest and hips.

    Though... the secondary sex characteristics that would make one think female are exaggerated to the point of blatant ridiculousness.

    That cannot be good for her back, right? Oily black tentacles are tied up in a messy bun on top of the head I have just brought down my metal locker doors with great alacrity. A white comedy mask with a red handprint painted on the right cheek cracks with my over eagerness to wail down on the creature.

    I grin as the maid drops the crystalline broom she had been sweeping with to swiftly block and grab the metal rectangle, crumpling it within her perfectly manicured human hands. I have no intention of letting her use the obvious weapon that the broom is.

    I also expected her to be far faster than me, so the moment she had reached up to grab it, I drop one of the doors onto to her reaching hand, and switch to slamming the thin side of the other door straight into her throat.

    I certainly appreciate that these creatures have thus far remained animalesque and not completely deviated from earthly biology like later Anathema tend to.

    I knock her off balance and she falls onto her flouncy, Victorian, overly-elaborate dress, the black-and-white maid uniform puffing up with caught air.

    Obviously unencumbered by her form, her hand grows many different hinges as it reaches and slams the screen-white nails to the floor right in front of me. She pulls herself upwards and towards at the speed of a stone from a slingshot.

    Speedsters are notoriously unpredictable, but for the briefest second, I can predict her trajectory. I dash towards her, my short legs moving fast past her distended arm to shove four scalpels into each of her tar-purple eyeholes. The thin metal knives and their handholds sink into her head all the way with ease, purple goo sprays out of her eyes all over my hands.

    She still retains her momentum, launching past me and... tears pour out of my eyes. I crumple like a wet rag doll, an excruciating pain radiates throughout my face. I can¡¯t fucking handle it. I gingerly touch my cheek and promptly fall unconscious.

    _________

    I wake up. HAH! I wake up? I''m alive! I completely ignore the torture of the feeling of my right cheek flapping in two separate parts in the air as I stand up, blood dripping down from the separated muscles!!!

    Yes, I have completely ignored it in favor of the fact that I had taken out the maid, evidenced by my continued survival, though I cannot see that lasting much longer with the blood pouring down my face. I put all analysis of the situation on hold, pulling out my mirror. I desperately hold down my bile at the site of my beautiful face marred by the injury.

    For a brief second, I think that maybe this actually pretties up my face, the ugly thing that it was.

    I could seriously infect or add acid burns to wound if I threw up. I crawl simultaneously limping and rushing to the house cleaner Anathema.

    I just want to fall asleep....

    My face flushes at the stupid thought, blood pouring out a little faster. I told Dennis that I would live life to the fullest. I have always stopped my own suicide attempts. I can refuse to lie down now too. I grab the fabric under the tough dress.

    Dang girl! This is high-quality silk fabric. This would be nice material for our costumes in the play next week. I tear a clump out easily, and gently tuck it in my mouth to restrict the flesh and skin¡¯s movement. With shaky legs, I stand up, avoiding moving my head, and walk unsteadily to my backpack. I rummage frantically through the backpack for medical glue and breathe a sigh of relief out through my nose once I find it. I grab out gloves and disinfectant for my hands. Wait... where¡¯s the purple goo that splattered on my hands from stabbing the Anathema? I thought I was going to need to wipe that off. Now that I think about it, that purple goo was odd. It was weightless and... I couldn¡¯t feel it when it landed on me. It acted like goo, but it did not give me the sensation of wetness. I analyzed my scarred hands: nothing. Nada.

    I mentally shake my head. It¡¯s not the time to get distracted. I disinfect my hands and place gloves on. Now for the part that will be the most difficult: lifting the thick gushing flap of muscle and flesh of my face to apply the glue.

    The tears flow freely down my face as I pull up my cheek and liberally squirt the medical glue and push both parts against the silk in my mouth so they align, salting the lacerations that cut through my face. I am not brave enough for this. I can think of their faces, the faces of my brother and my girlfriend, to give myself strength, but it is... so difficult. Rallying in the face of this torment... I¡¯m just so tired. I should do stitches as well... I¡¯m so tired...

    It feels like I have been in this new world, in the Tormented zone, for hours

    I am alone... Again... There is no one else in this vast, wide world.

    Really though, when has that ever not been the case?

    Mom never thinks I am genuine. I trusted my parents with my identity, and they use it against me every day, every time we interact.

    I never truly trust my friends. They always leave before I can confide, I always hide it. I always dance around issues, sharing only as much as will continue our friendship, only enough for there to seem to be mutual benefit.

    I can-can-can n-not even say I trust Dennis. I did but... d-d-d-do I still trust Denn-him now? I avoid talking about my personal iss-issues, manipulating the conversation, only purposefully making mistakes like yesterday, letting him glimpse through my mask. Can...

    *sob*

    I clasp my hands against my mouth, not in terror, but in sheer embarrassment that someone might hear me. Mom said I do not deserve these emotions. It is stupid of me to feel alone. I¡¯m just making a victim of myself.

    I''m perfectly fine.

    Nothing''s wrong with this situation.

    This is just my lot in life, right?

    Yeah, totally.

    I focus on my surroundings, though it is incredibly difficult with the pain and constant threat of impending doom.

    It''s fine. Haha.

    While I had been unconscious, the pillars had grown into monuments in of themselves, their girth rivaling that of a house with eerie purple light hiding the purple reliefs in their stone.

    I really don¡¯t think I had been out that long. Feels like a weeping angel/ Doctor Who scenario. In other words, it changed more just because I hadn''t been looking at it.

    The ceiling had shifted into a storied arch covered in art that depicted larger-than-life scenes of horror in war. Millions bowed down before a looming entity of many lines at various angles, specifically Prussian blue, velvet-red, and purple degrees wide, which then flattened them into paste because they had not broken their spines to bow low enough.

    A thousand hearts were stolen from a glistening star, which sent billions of burning regal-purple grins, a fleet of ¡°diplomacy,¡± to punish a living green-and-blue marble.

    The King placed his boot on the stretching, cracking neck of an indeterminable person of every shade while his shining iron-covered tentacled hands curled around the necks of indeterminable many in the shade of submission.

    Unbeknownst to me, the irises in my enraptured eyes dilate, devouring my pupil, turning Tyrian purple with thin black striations. What I do notice though is the change in taste as the tears pouring out of my eyes and over my lips switch from salty water to the acrid tang of iron. The oddity niggles in the back of my head until it allows me to tear my wide eyes from the impossible murals. I look back in the mirror and sigh in relief, stopping halfway through the sigh when my cheek stretches alarmingly and elicits additional searing agony.

    I do not pay for the view with blood from my cheek though. The medical glue did its job in closing the cheek together. I pull out a sterilized needle and choose surgical thread ¨C versus silk and nylon ¨C and set it aside for the stitches. I grab out some previously pilfered expensive anesthetic and antiseptic. I dab on the former via cotton ball with great relief.

    Sweet bliss... I may be nowhere near as amazing as Alexa, but for those in need of cheap health services in my neighborhood, though most disparagingly call it the ghetto, I am the go-to doc for a reason.

    I need to move quickly though this procedure, because the anesthetic is strong enough to mildly impair my motor capabilities given time and I don¡¯t want add insult to injury for my muscles by making a mistake.

    I peer at the lower half of my face with the small mirror, carefully threading loop after loop along the massive gash, sowing my own cheek together. It looks like a ghoul is trying to sew their all-too-wide mouth closed.

    Funnily enough, the way the maid cut my cheek open won¡¯t impede smiling at all. A neutral face strains the stitches uncomfortably, and I found that anything besides that is a no-go after the pain that crawled throughout my face nearly knocked me out again despite the anesthetic. I better not become a cheap Joker knockoff, and I tell myself so too.

    ¡°Don¡¯t you dare mimic the Joker. If you become evil, choose something that is actually original! I mean, smiling is still on the table. But clown aesthetic so passe."

    I then realize there is another option that¡¯s even worse. What if I was connected to Jeff the Killer? I would be the discount of a discount Joker... that would be terrible!

    *sigh*

    The humor would normally make me laugh, and it actually would not be difficult or painful to laugh, but I can finally rest.

    I have been moving under incredible tension for too long, however long that is. Going any longer is going to get me eaten. Electronics never work in zones so there is no point in checking what the time is. I cannot remember whether Anathema are willing to eat each other, but the maid and her supplies could be useful, so before I collapse, I painstakingly drag her ridiculously heavy body over to the locker. I shove her up, blowing both her and my hair out of my face as her body ¡°tries¡± to fall on my face. One of the things I have to work around to remedy in plays and such is my height. I am about 1.57 meters tall, or about 5 feet 2 inches, which makes it rather difficult to push her up into the locker. She¡¯s got at least 22 centimeters, or about 9 inches, on me.

    ¡°Just... need... to put my back into it! Whew.¡±

    I close the door and move into the next one over, breaking down a couple of separation dividers between different lockers. Actually quite spacious!

    I look up at the terrifying and alluring royal murals with gnashing golden mouths dotting it all over and place my backpack behind my head, curling up in a ball.

    I close the door and close my eyes.

    I promise myself that I was not attached to Wilbur and Helix. Those soaked objects I stepped over... No, better yet, I never saw their corpses. Yeah. That¡¯s how it is. They are totally still alive.

 Chapter 5: â€œA Whole New World...â€

    I wake in darkness, feeling well-rested, albeit incredibly hungry, downright thirsty, and low on blood. I sit up and rub the back of my neck.

    I frown. My hair feels like it is drenched, but it is not wet... This is not the first time I have woken up with hair drenched with blood. And a bit of my brain and skull, but that''s besides the point. A werewolf, I think his name was Al, from Luke¡¯s Pizzeria scratched the back of my head open by accident while I was sewing him up after a gang battle and he gave me an expensive healing potion that completely regenerated the back of my head.

    See, this is why Luke¡¯s Pizzeria is the best. The rest of the gangs would have just been like ¡°Oh well. What can you do? This kid isn¡¯t worth it.¡± They actually prevented me from dying of brain and blood loss.

    Regardless though, that is not the feeling I¡¯m getting. It is more oiled up.

    The sensation coming from my hand is that it is... subservient? What the actual fuck? What does that even mean? I feel around, touching fabric and then the feeling of touching cold bone... or an ivory mask!

    A realization hits me. Somehow the locker separation between me and the corpse of the Anathema disappeared, which has... deeply disturbing implications. Could the environment change to benefit the Anathema?

    More immediately though, this... subservience personified... is all over this floor.

    It¡¯s repulsive.

    Oddly enough, even though I can feel it trying to convince me to submit, to what I could not guess, I can tell it is ineffectual in affecting my mind.

    The moment I can put that into words, the feeling changes. It almost has a sense of intoxicating power, of regality, which I immediately reject. As deserving of the power that I am...

    I chuckle derisively.

    ¡­ I will have to strongly decline.

    It changes again. What is it trying to do? This time, the emotion tingles in my head and I feel a deep connection with it. It is the most complex yet.

    It is the je ne sais quoi of a bard in rags wooing the world, of a jester talking amicably with a king about the horrors going on under his dictatorial reign couched in humor and crude jokes, of a many-faced noble presenting a thousand personalities.

    You know, odd quirk I have, I quite honestly don¡¯t trust random emotions and nonsense from the goop of a truly evil virulent magic that ravaged the world. Peculiar, I know.

    Humanity in general has become jaded to Miasma. It is just something that we must deal with, like car accidents or that random vampire republic that has kept popping up every four years for the U.S. election since the Civil Rights Movement succeeded.

    Miasma, and its resulting effects, is still the leading cause of death in every country still around though. It is literally anathema to Magic, which is Essence that forms from every positive meaning. Magic pervades every event with positive emotion, from the righteous anger at an evil that will motive one''s courage to a delightful birthday filled with positivity. Miasma naturally forms from every event with negative emotion, from a drug-addled individual seeing terrors to a popped balloon.

    Before the first-world countries realized they could no longer exploit or allow death to happen to the level that it did in many countries, the miasma forming from disease, political corruption, war, and other such things formed Titans. These are Torments that required hundreds of nuclear blasts and the help of the Magical Girls that were just getting their feet under them as well as just getting levels from the new System. One, the Titan Diarrhea, even attained enough power and ascended into the Essence, the source of all magic in our dimension, forever strengthening the Miasma on our planet and allowing cults to actually create rifts of their own. As a result, the Elvish cities thumb their collective noses at humanity for being such awful creatures that we managed to let a Titan join with the Essence.

    Elves are arrogant bastards the lot of ''em... and yet... I have not met a single one I didn''t like... perhaps that says something about me...

    Nah!

    I am perfectly humble...

    Anyway!

    Some Titans are still around, resting in miasmic zones that spawn Torments, instead of Anathema. Needless to say, I try my best to fend off the emotions, so I don''t get corrupted like those poor animals near the zones of Earth that overlap with demonic dimensions.

    Ugh. Those pictures of blue whales after they passed near a demonic rent are something else. They were censored because they kept driving people insane. Naturally, Elisa managed to give a printed photo to me as a birthday present. So many eyeballs. According to her, the squirming, ecstatic, tingling sensation in your body when you look at them is them using a Lust-powered ability to fuck your soul all the way from in the Atlantic Ocean.

    I really don''t want to become like the blue whales.

    Needless to say, I try my best to fend off the emotions that the goop is attacking me with.

    Much to my surprise, I actually succeed. I guess dealing with the Managerial Commands over and over actually helps. Although the fact that even though it isn¡¯t classified as a mental attack, it still helps me fend off against a mental attack, well, the irony is not lost on me.

    Then what I¡¯m certain of by now is solidified Miasma changes again. It, for lack of a better word, deepens in meaning even further than the already head-splitting philosophical nonsense going on in my head.

    I try to block it, but while so successful the first three times, I do not even have time to analyze what the emotions of the Miasma is this time. The goop of feelings fits... perfectly. It does not sneak past my mental defense. It brazenly fits into the defense like a puzzle piece and bypasses it completely. It surges up my arms and disappears. That¡¯s just unfair. All of the cuts on my arms sting like a jellyfish lashed my arms over and over.

    I suppose most people would be shouting in pain and I understand that it does hurt, but it does not actually impact me like, well, literally everything else these... 24 hours? I don¡¯t know. I just know it¡¯s been too long.

    Seriously though. What the actual FUCK!?

    Oh crap. Oh crap! Miasma, anti-magic, the cause of the apocalypse, just went and violated me.

    Oh dear... that sounds wrong...

    Hmmm... it just went inside me!

    I don¡¯t think that¡¯s any better...

    I purse my lips trying not to laugh. I am going to stop now.

    I push against the locker door. I need to get out of this claustrophobic space. I push against the metal ¨C wait, something is very off. This is linen. As an artist, I have certainly made enough paintings to know.

    It is so creepy that the world just changes around me.

    I poke at it. Yeah. It¡¯s rigid with paint on the other side. I really don¡¯t want to damage it if I can help it. Who knows how gorgeous it is? I want to see what it is like intact. I feel around for the frame.

    AHA! Found it!

    Dang, this frame is ornate. I may rely more on my eyesight like most humanoids, but I can still tell that it has inset calligraphy so ornate as to practically be art itself. Is there a ¨C yup, here¡¯s a nook that separates it from this place, which I thusly pronounced the royal cupboard. I gently jig it around to unhook it and push it open.

    I peek out and the breath caught in my throat. It is a fractal glass world of awe-inspiring proportions. The impossible tall stone obelisks truly shine with purple starry light reflecting against a crystalline floor and glass wall, black emptiness right next to solid purple light. It looks as if an expert jewel delicately crafted a flawless beauty of a house, created an alien galaxy in miniature. Honestly, it makes me feel quite... peaceful to have even imitations of the stars so close.

    One single gnashing orb of stretching, contorting gold, shrieking with the unnatural sounds of bending, grinding metal teeth inset with window-sized precious stones and rubbing skin spanning the size of a McMansion hangs from a maddeningly thin thread in this dark fantastical ballroom, not even appearing oversized next to the truly monumental backdrop of the murals. Many eyeless gasping faces corkscrew over its body like whirligigs; tremendously large jaws extend out of the globe like hands through latex and snapping at the air with explosive shark-like bites, cheeks ballooning and glowing a red-white hot light.

    The murals are as obvious as they had been in clear light, their Truths evident no matter the darkness or glare...

    And I look away blinking furiously as if a fleet of onion-cutting ninjas just Naruto-ran into the room.

    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    ¡°Dumbass! Idiot! Fool!¡±

    I really need to stop glancing at them. It is clearly damaging my eyes. Things are looking slightly fuzzier than they used to be and more life-giving liquid sprays from my eyes. Why do I keep staring at them? It is so stupid of me!

    I turn my attention to the painting I found in reverse to most typical stories: I was in the secret compartment and then came across the painting that led to it, though it¡¯s not necessarily as applicable since the painting hadn¡¯t been here before.

    AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!

    Why did I expect it to be any different!?!?!

    This is so much worse!

    Wh-what-w-why!??

    This is so fucking bad!!!

    ¡°HAhAHAhaahahahHAHAHAHHAHHAHA! I just wanted to know what it looked like to fulfil my artistic curiosity!!!¡± I babble and shout. I fall back and scuttle backwards, shaking my head wildly in pain.

    If it was a stabbing pain, it wouldn¡¯t hurt nearly as much. I have never felt anything like it, other than maaaybe frostbite. The best way I could possibly describe it is to tell you to imagine a literally cruel light.

    This light causes chemical reactions in your eyes, alright?

    Parts of your eye petrify into thin layers of diamond which start piercing just the top layers of your eye and GROWING.

    Goddamnit, I can feel perfectly cut facets excruciatingly rubbing against the inside of my eyelids.

    I am all for new sensations, but this is, quite frankly, ridiculous. I am starting to truly understand why most people die very quickly in these zones. Lines of my eyesight are gone! Just alternating blankness and vision like the stripes on my ripped uniform.

    I will admit I am incredibly infuriated that it has been an entire 24 hours and not only have Magical Girls failed to eliminate this rift (most rifts are closed within a few hours nowadays), but I had been hoping against hope that I had proven that I held the will to kill and fend against Anathema to the alien race of Familiars which were the symbionts of Magical Girls. I am literally going blind here. I have successfully dodged multiple Anathema and killed two, on my own, with no freakin¡¯ system to help me, an insane feat that almost always allows people to become Magical Girls.

    I guess that floating moss-covered ram of M.G. Herb was right. Literally nothing about me was good enough to be a Magical Girl no matter what I did.

    I let loose a low guttural growl of inestimable frustration that echoed oddly off this crystal world suspended in a void of inestimable size like a flawless bubble suspended in light-sucking soap. Apparently, the sole survivor of the many living chandeliers did not like the noise as it swung agitatedly on its string, grasping maws stretching out on long necks and pulling it up and down on the string like a deeply messed up version of a spider¡¯s legs.

    My intention to analyze my arms for any damage will have to wait until I have gotten somewhere safer and brighter. I won¡¯t be hindered by dragging the Anathema maid body I still have for useful material though. I will rob her body and then leave.

    I jerk back as the fully suppressed memories of Helix¡¯s corpse come to me. Against my will, my thoughts whir back to Helix¡¯s corpse at the hound¡¯s resting place that I have studiously pretended never existed. One of their arms was completely gone, their shoulders complete mush from blunt teeth flattening away their limbs with supreme force. Their torso had been pried open and was just a skin sack at the waist, empty of their intestines and flooded with blood from the rest of the untouched body.

    Why? My head twitches in temporary physical pain. Why did they leave me? If they just stayed still, I could have saved them. I mentally grab the emotional pain and ruthlessly shove it away. I am the ruler of my emotions.

    First, I grab the mask off of the Anathema, which, to my surprise, completely destabilizes the body, making it evaporate and rush into my arms, causing the expected stinging pain, only worse this time.

    I smack my forehead, carefully avoiding the maimed part of my face. It feels like every single decision down to the last has led to a terrible consequence. Well, might as well ignore the sunk cost fallacy and go full ham while I¡¯m at it. There is a wonderfully comfortable and very expensive dress now empty of its owner, right there just waiting to be used. I remove my blood-soaked shirt and switch into the flouncy dress, navigating the many silk folds until I poke out of it.

    It is so comfortable. Oh my. This is nice. The excess fabric seriously impedes my movement like expected. It might seem incredibly stupid to wear this costume because of its fluff, but... yeah, no, it¡¯s pretty stupid.

    Logically, it probably is not worth the Anti-Magic getting into my skin or the effort to use my costume designing skill to get rid of the excess fabric, but I need this illogical thing just for the sake of my sanity. I can feel my sanity slipping even further away than it already was, and the dress is far cleaner and less disgusting than my shirt and just fulfills me more than my uniform.

    I grab the fabric and start working on it with my scalpels, until it shrinks out of my grasp like an eel. The dress writhes around me, and ribbons grow out of it, the fabric tearing and folding like a cloth kaleidoscope. I start wondering whether I just made a fatal mistake as it buffets around me, obscuring my vision of the world and fabric circles around my throat and hair.

    Then it settles down and my jaw promptly drops. Hah! I just went through a freakin¡¯ Barbie dress transformation.

    It fits perfectly, the excess fabric removing itself and violating the laws of the conservation of mass. It changes from a black-and-white exaggerated maid uniform to the perfect dress for me. It has a sleek bodice, and the dress is checkered with big sections of cyber grape purple and mauvelous pink. It still retains some nice ruffles around the skirt part and creates some around the short sleeves. It accentuated everything I loved about my body and minimized everything I hated about it.

    A big, impossibly light, scarlet bow is pinned to my hair. My gloves are replaced with opera gloves that fit like a second skin. My pants have even changed in style and color to match my dress. And I can tell just from how it flows that movement will not be impeded at all.

    Soft lace wraps around my neck with a tragedy mask completely mummified in thread right at the center, which I figured out after fiddling around with it. Upon examination of my surroundings, I notice that the comedy mask I had grabbed off the Anathema has disappeared, presumably becoming the tiny mask.

    It really is the only part that disconcerts me about the dress. Everything else is great... just...

    ¡­

    ¡­

    ...

    Why did it change to a tragedy mask?!

    It could have stayed the same...

    I am offended! Comedy fits me!!!

    I don¡¯t see how this choker fits me at all! I hold my nose up and turn away haughtily, pouting very heavily and folding my arms.

    My righteous indignation is all but forgotten though when my head is at an angle that the striations of crystal on my eyes don¡¯t impede my sight and I can see what happened to the crystal broom.

    It has transformed into a crystal guitar. My vulpine grin practically splits my face. I pick it up and caress it with my hands, strumming a few perfectly tuned cords. I hold it by its handle and maneuver it up and down like a club. It has the perfect heft for playing music as well as smashing heads in.

    I would love to see how Alexa¡¯s skull caves in. More like a watermelon? Or more like a caramel-filled chocolate?

    I test out the guitar again. For scientific purposes, of course.

    Thwack! Twish! Twish!

    The rhythm of snapping jaws behind me stops.

    I squint, my mouth a short line.

    Fuck.

    My head turns slowly, haltingly, around.

    Every oversized mouth full of molars is contorted and stretched so that they all face towards me, the tiny dinky person far down below and far away from this monstrous predator, shiny golden skin pulled back in a shitload of snarls.

    I¡¯m not waiting to see what it does, like an anime would make the main character do so as to exaggerate the drama of the main character¡¯s horror towards a monster. The sheer terror already is enough for me by far. The dress and changed-up pants do not impede me whatsoever as I sprint for my life. If anything, they are far easier to move in than my stiff uniform.

    Maybe ten seconds in...

    SMASH!!!

    A wave of force from an orb of magic-dense metal the size of a mansion knocks me flat on the ground, blowing my ears out. My head rings like a bell with the impact. Tiny shards of crystal pepper me from the incredible distance between me and the creature. Feels like a cactus I touched, so not too bad.

    I use the guitar I somehow still holding onto, to prop me. My hope had been to rely on my hearing to track the monster''s rate of progress behind me, but that is shot to heaven. I scramble forward and glance over my shoulder for one brief moment.

    With terrifying dexterity, jaws spiral out of the golden mass flattened on the ground like quicksilver and pull it into an ambulatory form. Crushing jaws bite into the gorgeous galactic floor, cheeks ballooning with the light of a forge, shattering the ground into splinters, the view looking akin to a celestial jawbreaker candy being shattered into shards of sugary starlight. It writhes over the ground with ridiculous speed, having already pulled itself out of the crater and traveled half of the multiple kilometers between us.

    There is no comparison between the two of us. If I had been anywhere near it during its fall, the explosive force of the side effect of its drop would have been enough to pulverize me into a fine mist of blood and disintegrated cells.

    I would become spray paint, an end that more than a few subway officials might find deliciously ironic.

    My goal is the towering doors made of impossibly fine filigree silver metal that I somehow never noticed earlier: the only obvious way out. It reeks of something suspicious, not literally.

    Unfortunately, I am completely and utterly screwed.

    I either get eaten by the monstrosity or cut down by the scarab-beetle headed knights guarding the door.

    I will not break down though. I will stay true to my strengths and die with dignity.

    If my last role is to die, then, as I have done so with every other role in my life, I will do so with a smile.

    I can hear the bass of the creature behind me, its insanity evident. The guards covered in white anime-style metal hold their weapons in a poise ready to cut me down, their emotions unknowable with their inhuman beetle heads.

    I look back and forth between the metaphorical fire and frying pan.

    I am screwed. It''s either I eaten by the monstrosity behind me or I get cut down first and then eaten by the guards.

    *sigh*

    I am resigned to my death. Welp!

    I will pretend that in this moment, I am not alone.

    I will refuse to believe in reality as it is for my final moments.

    I will pretend to be an Anathema.

    Hey look, I¡¯m just like you.

    Hey look, I am a monster too.

    Hey look, I am putting on my show.

    I crouch down in an unnatural position, my joints grinding together and my muscles groaning under the pressure, grinning with true joy.

    It is happiness that I have actually made myself feel.

    Not happiness directed to happy thoughts, no.

    I am now genuinely happy that I will be cut into pieces.

    I strum my guitar in a way that just matches everything in this scene. The creaking of the armor is the violin accompaniment of my manic, hilarious tune.

    I use my vocal training to laugh melodically, a sparkling, kind thing that should never exist in this nightmare world, as if I am attempting to talk with them.

    It matches well with the tinkling of precious stones raining down from every crater formed by the mouths slamming into the ground.

    I can see the rapidly closing mass reflected in the guards¡¯ armor.

    Goodbye Dennis. Goodbye Elisa.

    Hello new friends.

 Chapter 6: Old King Cole was a Merry Olâ€™ Soul and a Merry Olâ€™ Soul was He

    They have yet to cut me down. How dare they leave me to be eaten by the creature?

    I grit my teeth.

    I snarl happily at them and one-handedly pluck my guitar aggressively at them. I move closer to them, so as to snap and laugh at their ankles.

    Clink, clink. Their armor has the feel of porcelain. It¡¯s awful-tasting! Which... is to be expected.

    They tilt their heads as if confused. Why are you confused, dumbasses? I am right here! Pull a Queen of Hearts on me!

    I roll onto my back onto one of their feet and grin wider, more menacingly than previously, my hair fanning out across the floor and exposing my lace-covered throat.

    Nothing! They are doing nothing! It¡¯s enough to make a girl scream!

    Am I that weak that they are going to just leave me to be eaten?

    I widen my eyes and pout at them while I blast a blistering metal solo.

    The guards look at each other and shrug, at least, I think they do. It¡¯s hard to tell where a beetle head is looking.

    I bark a laugh at them. Hey! Look at me, you buggarts.

    Stab me. Slice me. Gut me.

    I¡¯m ready.

    I¡¯m available.

    I¡¯m hot.

    A shadow covers me. I continue strumming my guitar, completely unbothered and supremely joyous at my imminent demise, splayed out on the ground like a mockery of one of my stars that I worship.

    Beetle head to the right looks at the towering eldritch abomination and then down at me. They lift a hand up above me.

    Are they going to squish me? I mean, they are going to have to bend down. It will be kind of awkward using their hands.

    They then make a... shooing motion?

    Do they want me to leave?

    The darkness caused by the ambulatory chandelier leaves.

    Wait...

    So they doooo want to kill me themselves.

    They are really giving me mixed messages.

    I mean... sheesh.

    They turn towards the doors that are more works of art than actual entrances, and beetle head to the left holds a bugle to their... mouthparts. The mandibles and other parts that I do not have the names for clasp around the mouthpiece. Instead of sound, the thick Miasma occluding the surroundings thrums. Beetle head to the right crouches down and I cock my head this time.

    Strangling? Classy.

    They place their hand on my head and... muss my hair up!

    Why?! Again!

    First Alexa, and now them?!

    I snap at their fingers with a massive grin, holding my hands around my hair protectively.

    A little voice niggles at me that maybe it is best not to antagonize them, that they seem to be avoiding hurting me like one would a pet. The voice is saying ¡°you don¡¯t want to be put down like a sick dog.¡±

    Screw that! I am committed to the role of an Anathema until I die or... yeah, no, probably until I die. And getting payback for ruining my hair is totally part of that. Sure, it may have already been mussed up from running for my life, but it is the principle of the thing that matters! Anathema can have many characteristics, like unnatural sadistic-ness or obsession with stock-market numbers (The amount of rifts that form in the stock market is frankly ridiculous).

    Vanity is going to be one of mine, in addition to being happy in perpetuity.

    Their shoulders shake suspiciously. Are they... laughing?

    My eyes darken with angry amusement.

    The one crouching down ¨C who I am now naming Dung Beetle out of sheer spite ¨C deftly avoids my defensive hands with inhuman agility to muss up my hair one more time before standing up to chuckle silently again.

    At that moment is when two more soldiers with beetle heads, they nod seriously at each other and switch places. Their mouthparts clatter at me and Dung Beetle makes a motion as if to say, ¡°follow us¡±.

    Dung Beetle then slumps down, then awkwardly and more vigorously tries to make me follow them, because I am very obstinately not following them.

    The other member of the duo, the soldier to the left, who I am now calling Beetlejuice, perks up in inspiration. The beetle head soldier forms a freakin¡¯ brush with the Miasma out of thin air. If you look closely at it, it looks like a repurposed sword that has been shrunk down and bristles have been added. How did Beetlejuice even make that leap of logic?

    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    Well, whatever. He''s right. I want that brush, particularly as part of my role as an Anathema. I roll up onto my arms and legs, crawling after Beetlejuice, giggling quietly to myself at the very obvious exasperation of Dung Beetle.

    I look at Dung Beetle and make a snort-huff before following after Beetlejuice, who walks very smugly. You can tell from the over-exaggerated leg movements and upper body tilted in Dung Beetle¡¯s direction.

    My chosen form of movement is excruciating. My hands and feet splay out to my sides, but I have to move at a reasonable pace and avoid movement that is too jerky. My shoulders are grinding against my collarbone, and the muscles I am using are not meant to be used like this. Not to mention, I finally am noticing what the solidified Miasma, from that maid Anathema, entering my body has been doing to me. The old cuts I have on my arms are all inflamed, swelling red welts with purple mottling. If anything, it seems like I am going to die of infection unless they have veterinarians here...

    I bark a laugh out loud.

    Yeah... here? That would be funny. Going with the theme this Rift has shown, I¡¯m just imagining a royal physician sticking meter-long hydra-like leeches on my body wondering why it isn¡¯t healing me.

    The funny thing is that if I was an Anathema, something like that would actually be a successful mechanic for healing, despite the illogic of it.

    In contrast to the eerie galaxy I have left, the truly massive crystal floors of these arched halls that I am currently crawling along seem aflame with golden and red light.

    Standing out even amongst even this gorgeous scenery, a truly ugly, grinning Sun, that firmly lies in the uncanny valley, travels across the area around us, leering creepily at me.

    Ugh...

    Normally, I can appreciate even perverts liking my body, but... I would rather to go back to the golden monstrosity wanting to eat me then have this staring at me...

    I break away from following after the soldiers and crawl quickly to a spot where the Sun settles down for a second to gaze delightedly at my ass.

    Oh, this bastard is asking for it. I bash him with my guitar...

    ...and he moans in appreciation...

    EW! Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew!!

    So gross!

    How does this perverted Sun even tie into the theme of the Tormented zone? It¡¯s just gross and out of place!

    Wretched thing...

    I turn around and skitter back to the soldiers, feeling the physical press of the Sun''s awful stare on my back.

    The soldiers look... aghast? Their mouthparts move wildly and they gesticulate towards me with big sweeping motions above their heads. I quirk my head at them quizzically, grinning in confusion.

    An expression of utter terror starts to dawn on the beetles.

    Did I do something wrong?...

    The gaze of that perverted drawing of a Sun disappears.

    The revolting sensation of the gaze is replaced with the rather novel sensation of the world itself bowing, groveling at the feet of the upcoming presence.

    The crystalline floor itself moves to feed the presence a few fingers on the vine.

    The presence, no, he, sighs royally.

    The mere sigh knocks the breath out of my lungs as the sheer disappointment of this new plaything messing with his fancy little spell shoves my mind around.

    The soldiers promptly fall to their knees and with loud excruciating noises and white blood spurting onto the floor... break their backs to bow low enough. I nearly puke. Are Beetlejuice and Dung Beetle alive?

    This reminds me of those... alluring murals.

    The walls themselves mutter in his ears what is going on in his domain in terrible, ear-rending whispers. Blood drips down my ears.

    A band plays in the distance, instruments that I have never heard before heralding his arrival. I can feel my ears actually distort and grow fur at the insanity of the music. I actually do enjoy the music. I think it is an acquired taste though. As in, you need to acquire the features you need to be able to listen to the music safely.

    I refuse to end my act though in the face of whatever Anathema this is, continuing to grin, though I stick my tongue out in the direction of the band.

    The Anathema jauntily striding in, my soul quivers in submission at the ??¡±...merry old soul...¡±?? before me. He is ancient and delighted.

    And feels entitled to my body.

    He towers ten meters... or ten kilometers, it is impossible to tell in this mind-breaking land... above my crouching self, leering at me, curious what creature walked into his domain that would be so not...

    SUBMISSIVE.

    Oh fuck. I was wrong.

    My assumption was so wrong.

    He exemplifies control, power, to the point that his existence forces the environment to adapt to him. He is dripping with riches, err, no, he is bare of anything: a slave to his people, massive iron manacles made for colossi like him with chains ripping through the crystal ground with the ease of ripping paper.

    Broken souls of my friends squirm and grovel in submission beneath the soles of his solid lead boots, err, no, his airy cloud-covered ballet shoes. For a brief moment, I see Wilbur¡¯s face. I see Louie¡¯s face. Ina¡¯s face. Rosalee, Elias, Mohamed, Simon, Katherine, Maryl¨¦ne, so many.

    A mockery of the old British crown is fused askew to his grey awful head. Its rich red fabric fuzzes with red mold; the thousands of diamonds and other jewels replaced with an equal amount of weeping, sparkling eyes; and instead of gold, there is only bone tarnished with greed distilled.

    His mouth is far too oversized for his bald, eyeless, and pallor-less head, massive molars stretching his face akin to the living chandelier I just escaped.

    Even the world is Tormented by his mere existence.

    He is not simply a spawn of the rift, not an Anathema...

    He is The King, a Torment, an embodiment of an ideal that someone¡¯s broken self inadvertently sculpted out of the Miasma.

    I have no idea how to respond. I think that Sun was his eyes or something. And I smashed it.

    My mind halts for a moment. If I can¡¯t think, I die.

    I feel like I cannot breathe in next to this terrifyingly superior existence. Am I merely a bug beneath The King¡¯s boots?

    So, since I am in doubt...

    I grin wider.

    I will do what is in character for this role of an Anathema.

    When in doubt, double down. That¡¯s how it goes, right?

    A niggling voice in the background of my head screams at the sheer stupidity of what I am about to do.

    But I DO think I understand how things work here now. You simply have to choose the best role to interact with the Anathema, the insane role. The one that no other would do. Your personality needs to match the theme of the Tormented zone.

    So, what do I do?

    I roll onto my back and viciously laugh at his face, pointing at his ugly mug.

    Oh.

    So.

    Mockingly.

 Chapter 7 - Part 1: Wow! What a Gentleman.

    To my sheer delight ¨C and the sheer terror of my sane side ¨C anger radiates from him, the wrath of a tyrant. The purple Miasma thrums with his rage at my mockery, something he has doubtless never felt before in his short existence as the center of this universe, this Tormented zone.

    His maggot-like tentacles in place of fingers wrapped around me slowly but surely. The warm pulsating chitin curled around my legs, my neck, and my waist, lifting me up to his face. Bile rises up in my gorge at this compromising, grossly intimate position. He could break all of the bones in my body with a mere twitch of his muscles. Torments have incredible power in all categories from the moment of their existence and yet... he is using this power to purposefully put me into an alluring pose, accentuating my hips and exposing my neck.

    It is humiliating.

    He grits his huge mouth into a grimace and peers into my peculiar eyes, forcing submission on me. I cannot actually resist. There is nothing I can do against his skill. Managerial Commands is a paltry skill in comparison to his. The sheer weight of his Charisma forces me to bow my head.

    However, I can still be incredibly spiteful while I''m at it.

    I incline my head quickly to his fingers and with a long lick that singes my tongue with Miasma, slobber all over the tentacle curled around my throat. He promptly drops me in disgust, following the expected storyline even if he is far grosser than my slobbering over him.

    It''s even for me to understand that it¡¯s the fact that a ¡°lowly peasant¡± would do such a thing to a ¡°higher being,¡± that is what disgusts him, even though he had been violating me without even a thought for consent.

    I think I broke a rib. Fuck!

    We are both caricatures, one of an animal and the other of a King.

    I cackle on the ground like a hyena, shrill and maniacal, strumming a bop of a tune, with quick erratic changes in pitch. These are the only sounds that have taken place in this wild, Alice in Wonderland¨Clike situation.

    The anger radiating off of him becomes even more palpable. The guards quail in terror, preparing themselves for impending death, probably wishing they killed me instead of bringing me into these royal halls.

    Now it is time to change roles to avoid being put down like the dog I am in this story. I stand up fluidly and lean against his massive bulk like we are great, ol¡¯ buddies.

    I recalled the emotions of the Miasma when it was doing something mentally to enter me. I drew on the je ne sais quoi of the Jester.

    I gesticulate frenetically as if I am leading up to a hilarious joke, a minor tiny smile gracing my lips to build up suspension, all of this taking place in silence. And then I pause, and grin wildly, laughing my ass off.

    His response to me completely changes, as if he had completely forgotten my retribution. He joins in with my mime with heaving, slobbering chuckles, his simultaneously emaciated and muscled body shaking silently.

    It is all I can do not to get knocked off and sprawled onto the ground. If I did fall... he would probably eat me for the inherent Magic in every human. I move from him and crouch back down into my persona of a wild Anathema.

    I must say, I am quite curious as to whether I have actually tricked him into believing my act, or whether I am just pushing the right buttons that makes the Torment fine with me, like I do with everyone.

    Regardless, he swiftly turns around, the Miasma forming a fur cloak behind him so it could swish dramatically, a beckoning tentacle gesturing towards me.

    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

    I plod very slowly after him, but it seems like his patience has limits, for a chain flings out of the light surrounding him, cold iron clasping around my throat and dragging me across the background.... or he is just an ass who likes to see his playthings dragged across the ground.

    Personally, I am leaning towards the latter.

    The chain is making it rather difficult to breathe, but more importantly, he is scuffing my dress. What an arse!

    My sane self that split apart from me a little bit ago mentally smacks itself in the face, moaning at my priorities.

    I couldn¡¯t care less though. I try smoothing the ruffles futilely while he pulls me like someone dragging a stubborn dog. The halls themselves bend around him, rushing over themselves like churning foam in a waterfall to get The King to his destination.

    The King is part of his true name. How do I know that? Well... I have no idea.

    I won¡¯t deny I am quite curious as to where we are going, my eyes wide open and inquisitive, grinning at the new scenery, because I am back in my role of an intelligent, but wild, Anathema.

    What this role requires though is for me to be bored after a short bit though. I start gnawing gently on the chains in aggravation, my teeth and the metal clinking together. I can feel the shocks of anti-magic run up and down my teeth and I hate it. It feels all weird and vibrate-y.

    After a few minutes, far shorter than it took me to travel when the Tormented zone first appeared, we arrive at yet another collection of towering gates, which start opening slowly. Instead of waiting for it to open though, he releases my chain and brutally rips the solid iron doors with casual ease, peeling the gates back like wallpaper.

    What is the point of that?! Patience, The King, is a virtue! Also, this chain around my neck is incredibly heavy. I am certainly going to have some bruises under my lace choker tomorrow.

    It probably wouldn¡¯t bother me if I wasn¡¯t starving! I haven¡¯t eaten for at least a day and a half. I can feel my stomach growling. Well, a numb, empty stomach is nothing I¡¯m not used to. I skitter awkwardly through the doorway after The King, my tendons groaning and my limbs trembling. My cheek and broken rib are screaming with pain.

    *sigh*

    They are screaming metaphorically, not literally. It is absurd that I have to specify whether it is metaphorical or literal, but with corruption, they could literally be screaming with pain.

    With the mighty earth-shattering steps of the king of ogres; with the perfect pose and inviting body language of the kindest king, he walks across this throne room and sits down primly, hungrily, on his throne.

    Like everything else in this world, the throne appears differently, as if through many different lenses and perspectives, which seem to increase in number the longer I stay here. But what matters most to me is that the perspective of solace, of rest in a chair. A pretty basic meaning that does not connect to the theme of The King, but it does connect to that of a throne. Which means I can find safety next to the throne as a pet.

    I crawl up the three steps, the mountain full of steps, up to the throne. I can feel the Miasma swirling densely around me at this center of the Torment¡¯s power, caressing me, invading me.

    I recognize how the meaning of the Miasma deepened now with so much of the anti-magic permeating my skin, turning me into a monster as I prepare for rest next to the enemy of everything good.

    There is still the je ne sais quoi of a bard in rags wooing the world, of a jester talking amicably with a king about the horrors going on under his dictatorial reign couched in humor and crude jokes, of a many-faced noble presenting a thousand personalities.

    But there is a side to each that they all share hidden within the intent of the Miasma. A similar scene that connects them all. As I curl up next to the throne and fall asleep, I dream warped nonsensical dreams.

    The bard loses herself in hedonistic pleasures, erasing her personality and being surrounded by people. He is always alone and adored by the people whose beds they sneak into with kind, sweet nothings.

    The jester is the close confidant of the king, but they cannot confide in anyone, or he will die. She is always alone trying to better things for people who will never know you.

    The many-faced noble is friends with everyone, and yet, when he sits down to eat with his family, will she be poisoned that evening by her spouse? They are rightfully paranoid, seeing real and imagined danger everywhere. They are always alone and attacked at any show of weakness.

    In my sleep, I mutter ¡°I¡¯m always alone.¡±

 Chapter 7-Part 2: I Dont Want To Impede on Your... Important Business.

    I am roughly woken up with a terrible crick in my neck from the massive chain around my neck and something curled way too far up my leg.

    Is that? Yeah, an insectile tentacle of The King. Lovely.

    I may have pants... I am still NOT ok with what feels like an oversized cockroach rubbing around my ankle, leg, and hip, dragging me across the floor and ruining my hair.

    Urgh! It is terri... so wrong, feeling contracting and expanding segments of the monster all over my lower body.

    Speaking of hair, it appears the Miasma wants to give me aesthetic changes too. If my hair was unnaturally pretty before, it is truly top-tier hair now. From the glimpses I can see of it through the rims of crystal on my eyes, it has corrupted from light brown to a truly gorgeous blue. It looked like the blue of crushed lapis lazuli paint, streaked with imperial blue.

    Yes! I am benefiting at least a little from being corrupted by the rift.

    My arms, on the other hand, have turned jaundiced and are... oh! That is so gross!

    My arms are leaking liquid onto the floor like a bag of rotten vegetables as I am being dragged along.

    I give myself at most a couple of days until I get blood poisoning and die. Lovely. Well, I¡¯m already resigned to death. It just doesn¡¯t seem like it is going to be quick and merciful.

    Finally, The King finishes dragging me to a rather oversized banquet table absolutely groaning with food, the tentacle uncurling around my leg, though not before unwelcomingly touching me further.

    Thousands of servants are running at incredible speeds around the table, ensuring that everything is set up, their overly elaborate dresses and suits like someone¡¯s anime version of the Victorian era. All of them have grinning ivory masks and monochrome colors. It is a pretty cool scene.

    Unfortunately, as is expected in this storyline, one of them inevitably messes up. A man rushing by The King trips over the tyrant¡¯s feet, who catches the suited man with supreme ease. A spotlight shines from the ceiling on the two of them and The King grins wider, his skin-covered sockets quivering with lust.

    Every servant bows their head lower and ignores the unfortunate Anathema. The King draws the poor man to his chest, tentacles curling all over him like worms over a corpse. The King abandons the banquet for his bedroom chambers with the victim, leaving me all alone and surrounded by incredibly dangerous Anathema.

    Shocking the poor servants with my disrespect of The King¡¯s authority, I clamber up The King¡¯s chair at the head of the table and plop myself down on the seat. It is quite plushy and soft with all of the velvet. I start perusing the foods under the aghast stares of the servants.

    A butler, I can tell because she is the only one with a serious prim mask, walks up to me and tries to shoo me off. You know, I am just not feeling like moving from this spot. Channeling my inner cat-after all, I have the ears of one-I curl up and ignore her. She huffs silently and shrugs at the rest of the servants, holding her hands out in wide, sweeping motions, as if to say, ¡°Your funeral, you wild animal,¡± and to say ¡°I am not going to hurt The King¡¯s new plaything trying to get it off the chair. You are welcome to try.¡±

    To my endless amusement, the rest of the servants shook their heads vigorously. I turn my attention back to the food, which looks absolutely delicious. The dish in front of me has sugary, vivid red fruit. I reach out to pick one... and then I pull my hands back as if I had touched a burning hot stove.

    These are pomegranates! Gah! They look so delicious! I nearly fell into the stupid trap!

    Rule number 1 of eating food offered by Magical beings, be it deities or Fae, Vengeful Spirits or, in this case, Anathema, don¡¯t eat pomegranates. For Fae, just don¡¯t eat anything they offer, but for the others, they will offer food that is tied to human mythology for humans in an attempt to shackle them to the realm. In this case, the myth is that of Persephone and Hades. She ate pomegranate seeds grown in the Underworld and is forced to stay in the Underworld.

    It is impossible to overstate the danger of the trap.

    I nearly tied my very being to the realm. I could have turned directly into an Anathema, do not pass Go. Perhaps my role would change to that of The Queen, like Persephone became queen of the Underworld, the Torment¡¯s counterpart. If the Magical Girls actually managed to finally take down this Tormented zone, my soul would have dissolved along with it.

    Which, duhhhh, would have been bad! Instant death.

    And even if it did not turn me into an Anathema, eating fruit still does not fit into my current role of a pet Anathema. I need to go for the meats and savory foods, not dainty sugary food, as much as I adore sweets.

    Unfortunately, the roast chicken is all the way in the middle of the table.

    Sorry in advance guys. I have to stay in character, it¡¯s you or me.

    I start clambering over the table, stepping on and knocking over fancy dishes. This immediately throws them into a tizzy, frantically grabbing falling food and preventing the expensive cloth from getting soiled. My hands are unfortunately not free, so I chomp down on the meat and drag it back right the way I came, much to the servants¡¯ chagrin.

    I sit back onto the throne and gnaw on the chicken. It is delicious. Impossibly flavorful. The spices add just the right balance of spice and oil, while the texture is perfect no matter the bite I take, the muscle breaking apart perfectly. The aromas of whatever fruit was used in this dish complement the meat flawlessly. It is the best dish I have ever had, period.

    It¡¯s almost enough to make me break down and cry. I have been so hungry, shivering with gnawing pain always at the edge of my thoughts. I may still be all by myself, but having a full stomach definitely eases the pain.

    I cannot even be frustrated at the changes in my body now that I have consumed such Miasma-rich food. I just feel relief at easing the gnawing pains. My ears grow taller, and my hair lengthens all the way to my hips, turning ever more vivid to the point that it unnaturally pulls on my attention to admire it.

    More cuts on my arms start leaking the clear fluid all over the chair, which bothers one of the servants incredibly. He takes off my opera gloves and wraps high-quality bandages all around my arms and hands.

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    Look, I have the limbs of a mummy now! Fear me!

    Unfortunately, my diminutive size does not a scary mummy make, to draw from Yoda¡¯s speaking style.

    I chuckle my thanks to the servant, having realized that the intent of thanking is far more important than actually expressing thanks in this world.

    I leap off the chair, stumbling a bit, but I am rapidly getting used to this inhuman gait.

    I need to figure out something that ensures that I am still entertaining to him for the foreseeable future.

    I cock my ears, feeling the extremely peculiar sensation of previously immobile body parts swiveling to focus on sounds. I hear screams of pain combined with cackles of pleasure, and even more disturbingly, someone¡¯s bone crunching coming from The King¡¯s bedroom.

    I gulp. I amend my statement with an addendum. I really need to figure out how to survive this monster¡¯s whims without being a living sex toy or food... or both at the same time.

    I travel across the fiery crystal, scuttling around the servants rushing around. I find a tiny chair to ensure I am at a low enough height for when he finally ends his... activities. I drag the chair screeching across the crystal in front of the throne.

    I then crawl around looking for that band, walking along the many hallways that extend from his throne room.

    Ugh! This place is a maze. Where are they?

    Wait... that would be absurd. This would be completely illogical.

    I stand up straight and strum my guitar with simple arpeggios, walking like how I would imagine a rock star would. In other words, arrogantly and ready to write a signature at all points in time, though I maintain a joyous grin and holding my limbs at slightly awkward angles to still give the impression of an Anathema. Like magic, or miasma in this case I guess, after just a few more minutes of walking, I come across the veritable hundreds of creatures that played the music and songs that heralded The King¡¯s arrival.

    Their forms are indistinguishable from the background and yet, they stand out and draw all the attention. I walk up to one of them and shake the many lines reaching out to me, as if I was meeting an old friend.

    We are best of buddies, and I pat them on the back genially. I very nearly commiserate with them about our boss, the big man himself, as a natural progression of our relationship in this play I have created between myself and these magical constructs that barely seem to even be Anathema. They just don¡¯t have much substance.

    The curiosity of this observation certainly piques my interest, but unfortunately the show stops for no one. Instead, I call their attention to me with a laugh. I strum multiple different tunes and vocalize the many different parts to show them the extremely ambitious opera. I familiarize myself with the different sounds of various instruments.

    There are piccolos of teething silver and triumphant trumpets with self-mutilated wings that I have to figure out how to adapt to this opera. The violins and cellos were pretty tame. Just needed to avoid getting the leaking blood on the pages. The worst ones to deal with were bass clarinets. They looked completely normal, but their sound is ruining my body.

    One of the musicians started playing one of them and I could feel my sanity leaving me. I could pinpoint my bones with exact precision because they were vibrating like a fucking tuning fork. Threads of thin layers of skin started peeling off my body.

    As a result, I changed the play. We would rely more on vocals, so I promptly switched to the only other opera I knew by rote, Pers¨¦e.

    I finish plucking off my skin and get started on the set up for the opera.

    I go around searching for other staff people after they understand magically understand me. I rope the tailors into making elaborate costumes that I drew out and left them to fill in the blanks and do the fabric work that is not my strong suit, as much as it pains me to admit I am not good at something in the arts. Unfortunately, in the end, I must... trust the tall gangly beings with blackened suits and charred curly white hair, with fifty bleeding stumps each sprouting out of their backs and sides. They touched my dress jealously, trailing their stumps on my head in circles around my new cat-like ears as if they are my friends. I preen under their attention.

    Once I leave, I go up and down, sideways, and diagonally across the steps. My path goes in circles and moves obliquely, until I reach the servant quarters. Apparently, directions do not matter as much as the actual distance crossed does, as well as just picking whatever feels most random and whimsical to myself. I convince the servants there to help me plan out and set up the venue.

    In addition, to fulfill my vanity, I ask them to clean and spiff me up from the blood of the tailors and general bits of skin I had missed. Thankfully, they promptly fixed me up.

    Due to the servants¡¯ applicable Skills and high stats, they manage to set up the appropriately deferent and ostentatious decorations for the play in just eight hours, the first three being me drawing out exactly how it is supposed to look. In comparison, the last time I set up something of this scale with my theater troupe that are still all alive, none of whom are old enough to be System users, it took over four weeks just to set up everything. This set up would have been even faster if I had not taken three times longer than it normally takes for something of this scale. Aggravatingly, my poor eyesight hampered me heavily.

    I do need to draw on my experience to direct them as needed, but once they get started, it once again hammers just how out of my league I would have been if I had if I had somehow escaped that oversized shiny ball and ended fighting them. It certainly lends itself to frustration that 6938 days old (or roughly 19 years old) is how old I need to be a system user. I still have 2 years until I can even start crossing the great divide between and old Anathema.

    Unfortunately, I do not have anywhere near that long.

    I pull myself out of my resting position in the massive pile of fluffy costumes, at least relative to my size, in the empty, but prepared, venue. I¡¯ll be able to be of worth to someone for the last few days of my life, even if it is an eldritch entity capable of vast destruction.

    I walk off, clutching my head from the splitting headache assaulting me, shaking back and forth, giggling to myself in tune with my plans for the opera tomorrow. Suspiciously, I find a closet immediately, but I won¡¯t ignore fortune, or rather, how story impacts this world.

    I sit down inside the closet amidst the cleaning supplies with the door closed. I wait in silence for a few minutes, clutching my knees with my rotting arms and burying my head in the folds of my checkered dress. I look up wide-eyed, my joyous smile wiped away, contorted in the pain I have been working with all day, tears flowing down my cheeks. My tall fluffy ears and big eyes tremble.

    Me and pain are best buds. Mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, soul. Pick your poison. We aren¡¯t getting along very well today though.

    I scream sharply and shrilly, baring my teeth. I abruptly stand up and smash my small hands into a shelf, throwing out a foot through a pile of clothes.

    I stomp on everything in sight ruthlessly until I crush, break, and shatter all of it. I claw my chest and face wildly, growling and cackling, drawing blood the best I can.

    ¡°WILBUR! HELIX! WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME!?!¡± I fall to the ground weeping on my knees, slamming my fists into the solid grey stone.

    ¡°First the Vengeful Spirits, then my parents, and now you... why?¡± I whisper hoarsely out into the darkness of the closet.

    I twitch and take a deep breath to calm myself down, shaking my head and hands out, my hair going everywhere. My face flushes with shame. I lost control again. For nearly a year I had avoided any incident of unchosen emotion, and yet, I have been forced into extreme emotions over and over. I lied earlier. I am not resigned to death. I want to survive for Dennis. I want to live life to the fullest for him. I promised. I don¡¯t break promises. And I broke as a result...

    ¡°Ahhh! Krch.¡± I spaz.

    It is foolish of me to show such inappropriate, immature behavior.

    Alexa, I will punish you for these slights I have gone through. Though I may die, I will form a Vengeful Spirit to haunt you for eternity. My mortal coil already resembles one. It will be easy for me to make the leap to phantasm upon my death. The thought delights me, causing pain to those in my life.

    I regain control over my previously rebellious emotions with supreme ease, switching trains of thought with the push of a mental lever.

    I head back to the throne, this time the Sun is watching me again as I crawl along. Don¡¯t worry abomination, I will entertain you sufficiently tomorrow.

 Chapter 8: A Sweet Candlelit Evening

    When I get to the throne room, I come across a rather... odd scene. The fiery floors and beautiful blazing-bright gold walls now in shadow, speckled with candlelight. There is a small table with two wine glasses, two menus, and two chairs. It is... suspiciously romantic. It is too normal and immediately sets off alarm bells in my head.

    The King is sitting on one of the chairs and a butler is standing to the side, with painted red handprints all over his mask and wrinkled, but dapper, suit. Is that... the poor Anathema who tripped?

    I understand now... those red handprints are symbolic representations of damage. So that maid I had killed with the handprint on her cheek... was likely crippled before I even attacked her.

    I... it was her or me.

    The King beckons to me.

    What the fuck is this?! This is so out of leftfield. We just completely changed story to a frickin¡¯ romantic candlelit dinner, and it is exactly what I did not want.

    This is bullshit. I cannot think of anything that I have done that would change the storyline so badly from court jester and pet all the way to being fucking courted. I have only acted as an entertainer and as an animal, right?

    I can already see how this story would progress. We will ¡°get closer and drink to his wealth and greatness as I try to avoid offending him and getting killed as a result of offending him. Then, drunk, we will go to his bed.¡± The story probably ends there for me. I just can¡¯t survive such torment. A high-level System user requires an equally high-leveled (or someone with a Prostitute class) person to fuck with.

    I have zip in terms of System.

    I will kill myself if it comes to that.

    I will repeat again, this is such bullshit! I-wait. I know why. I stare at the bastard in this brief moment of surprise that I can get away with before he becomes annoyed.

    This is because of my breakdown, isn¡¯t it?

    The tit-sucking masochistic horn-using burnie!!!

    I refuse to let the work I have put in for tomorrow be thrown away by this bedroom sewage sprayer! And my life of course.

    I discard the pet role and stand up, walking with haughty grace towards the ¡°battlefield¡± he has set up. I eliminate any sign of awkwardness in my limb position, a polite deferent smile on my face. From manic joy glinting in my eyes, I crinkle my eyes and raise my eyebrows in surprise and appreciation at the banquet. With the posture of a noble, inclining my head in deference, but also ensuring I appear like I am hiding ambition and intelligence.

    If it was not a matter of life or death, I would be enjoying myself. I always have loved assuming new faces.

    With an overbearing gesture and a knowing smile, he gestures to the menus. I pick up the one closest to me with a dramatic flourish, and quickly find the most unromantic meal that I can still eat delicately. Spaghetti, as well as milkshakes, are the worst possible ideas in history, that type of meal just leads to kissing i.e. having my face eaten. Any sizeable meat portions are incredibly messy and unbecoming of a noble, not to mention, kings are known for going on hunting trips. Enjoying that food may make me ¡°get along with him far too well.¡± Seafood in general has far too many romantic overtones, so things like filet mignon or shrimp scampi will not work. Anything with chocolate is a bad idea.

    Much to my relief, I find tacos. If you are smart about it, you can primly eat them and avoid sauce dripping down your face and arms. It¡¯s just really difficult. The butler nods his assent and nervously turns to The King, who languidly points at something on the menu. It takes all of my willpower not to narrow my eyes in suspicion. I am dying to know what he ordered.

    I let the silence go for a few beats. Then right before it gets awkward enough that he would start the conversation, I lean forward curiously. I gesture towards the door and expansively wave my arms, asking how things are going in his domain with my body language and the posture of my head. I giggle with a rising pitch, questioning.

    I am not quite sure why no creature speaks. I know that more intelligent Anathema and Torments in other Tormented zones are perfectly capable of speaking. I would even go so far as to describe some as needlessly verbose. Wordless vocals are allowed, laughter seems to stand in for communication, and screams are permitted. Yet, none speak.

    Regardless, I refuse to be the one to break the seeming ban, though it certainly makes things incredibly difficult, though I guess it simplified the teaching of Pers¨¦e to the magical constructs/musicians.

    To my hidden surprise, his face contorts in distaste. He then goes on to flare up his power in dominance, attempting to cow me from this line of questioning.

    The force of the Miasma is tangible, weighing down on me to suppress everything about me. But I stay unbowed, my posture still straight-backed and slightly deferential, with my grin unmoving, whilst flaring the ambition in my eyes. It is obvious there is a threat to his authority, and given it literally cannot be an Anathema, it is highly likely that there is finally a Magical Girl in the rift. As expected of a noble, and not of someone hoping to get along with him, I immediately want to leap onto the subject.

    First though, I need to get him off guard, or at the very least, show that I am a conniving bitch under a boatload of altruism. I ¡°take the hint¡± and look away, checking in with the butler on just how long until the meal arrives by tapping my cheek while staring at him. In doing so, I made him feel uncomfortable until he answered the question he thought I was asking.

    I then turn back to The King, truly eager to hear how I could commit myself to the protection of our citizens. My eyes widen and turn slightly downward at the thought of tragedy. It is truly in my interests that his loyal citizens are saved after all. Anything to further The Being To Which One Gratefully Submits.

    I chose that title because it seemed like it summed up his identity the most with a great heap of flattery. I expressed my interest protecting the monsters by glancing protectively at the guards at the throne room, before looking at him with serious conviction in our cause.

    I cannot actually do anything to help, and I am sure he knows that, but one of the most important things is to offer empty platitudes, ensuring that you would be a martyr for the cause if you were sacrificed. In the end, that would endear your family to the people and aggravated them towards The King for sacrificing me so needlessly. And again, I do not have a family, but it is what a noble would have. In addition, I am quite certain that a rival Anathema noble family would form just to accommodate that storyline. I do not have terribly much to back that statement, but by just analyzing this rift, I am quite sure that is how it would work.

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    It is all quite meta, but when you really think about it, given that Tormented zones form around a strong enough meaning, you simply need to follow the absurd conclusion. Granted, my guess is that to follow the absurd conclusion, you must be three things.

    One, you would need to be a truly amazing actor capable of withstanding intense torture, of which there is a surprisingly large amount, from Ninjas to professional Spies. If I lived anywhere in Japan, I likely would have been promptly recruited from the subordinate cities by the Ninjas.

    The second is that you have to be insane enough to actually be able to follow the peculiar logic. This rules out most Spies and any incredibly high-level Actors. Ninjas though... well, most of them are still on the table, if you get my drift?

    However, the third, which makes it vanishingly unlikely that anyone would be able to replicate what I am doing, is you have to be incapable of assuming a role which will influence the rift. In other words, the Assassin always gets revealed, the Magical Girls are the existential threat to Torments when you think about it so they can¡¯t change the story, military troops cannot change the role of being an invading force, etc. This is where they fail and I, unfortunately or fortunately, succeed. I literally cannot do anything to The King because of how weak I am.

    Ahhh, my tangent aside, I have succeeded in throwing him off balance and the meals have finally arrived.

    Obviously, as the embodiment of a king, his nature having the abilities to deal with crafty nobles baked into his very existence, he did incredibly well in obfuscating his emotions. I applaud him. I have not faced such difficulties in analyzing a person¡¯s emotions since my minor, one-day encounter with those Vengeful Spirits. And yet, instead of gazing longingly into my eyes with a besotted look and ignoring the food that the butler put down, as I think he intended with going out of the lines of the fine story we had going on, he looked appreciatively at the food and the squirmy things behind his skin-covered sockets slumped in relief at a reprieve from my web of interrogation.

    Perhaps he did not enjoy that no matter how he responded, it would make him seem less kingly or more submissive.

    Buddo, I regularly play Contact Contract with my girlfriend Elisa and can hold my own in creating loopholes for days. She is going to hold the Devil class. Give up!

    HAHahAha!

    I feel tempted to grin and steeple my hands menacingly as I dance literary circles around him. But of course, I must play a light hand while we eat unfortunately, otherwise he will feel threatened and likely cut my tongue out for such silvered words. Kings are not known to appreciate being trumped, and that will certainly factor into his behavior. I play to my aspect of vanity, something I had been very obsessive over to focus myself. I curl my hair around my fingers and smooth out the nonexistent crinkles in my dress.

    I look at his food, and there are no romantic connotations to the massive roast ham in front of him unless you wanted to be incredibly lewd.

    I look at my tacos, and immediately, my eyes want to twitch.

    It¡¯s chocolate!!!

    It is one of those weird dessert transformations that all savory meals get eventually.

    The corn tortillas I was hoping for are replaced with hard wafers dipped in chocolate!

    And! And!! The unidentifiable insides are covered in powdered sugar and... strawberries!

    I love this type of thing!...

    Which is why I HATE this!!!

    It¡¯s romantic! He is still going with the story?

    I show nothing, but inside my mind churns my noblesse disgust and dislike of The King.

    Then a tentacle reaches over the table and rests on my shoulder like the weight of the world.

    I look up, expression unchanged.

    He grins that he found a dish I really like, but more importantly, his nostrils flare with victory. My throat tightens with horror. We both know he can just force me into a relationship. It turns out he had no intention of allowing me to weasel my way, despite the taken status I had made clear during our ¡°conversation.¡±

    He... he... I swallow nervously, the first crack in my composure, interrupting my thoughts. My cheek twitches.

    Incomprehensible lines at royal angles horizontally translate to the predatory coordinates and the cubic volume of admiration of my beauty

    Three of his tentacles touches... me.

    Only Masua and Enterion can do th-no, this is bad. Very bad. I had repressed this quite successfully. This is not conducive to ensuring I forget about the Vengeful Spirits. They are gone. They left me.

    I do not stiffen or otherwise react to his touching. If this is going to be - well, for my quickly fading sanity, I will politely describe it as a nonconsensual Nervous game ¨C then I will at least hold onto some form of control by refusing to encourage his advances. I continue to primly eat.

    The very Miasma caresses me, going under my clothes where The King seemed to refuse to do so with his physical body, as if that was any better than doing it with flimsy fabric in the way. It ruffles my clothes as it travels, searing like a light trail of a lit cigarette along my skin.

    He never takes me to the bed room, merely gesturing and rubbing me with ¡°sweet¡± motions. He tugs on my hair which...

    It¡¯s too much. I should...

    My throat tightens. I feel nauseous.

    I am not brave enough to kill myself.

    Sure, I can throw myself to the wolves easily.

    Ha.

    I was deluding myself in thinking I could go farther on my own strength than just injuring myself.

    I finally finished my meal and stood up. I bowed to him perfectly perpendicular to the waist, expressing my gratitude to him for such a wonderful meal and then walked next to his throne.

    My eyes strained to cry, to change from the noble¡¯s mask. I crouch onto the hard crystalline bowl which welcomes me, on my knees and hands. My throat clenches hard enough to make it difficult to breathe normally and unruffled by the events. I curl up, my gorgeous hair somehow serving as a blanket to me. I give myself a soft smile to appear preciously sweet in my sleep amongst the precious stones.

    If I could break this role for a second...

    Oh, if I only could. I grin wider as I settle for sleep far too close to The King''s resting place for comfort.

    I would hopelessly clasp my rotting hands over my soft furry blue ears, completely despairing over the sweet nothings and commands I can now hear the Miasma whisper to me. I would tear at my skin attempting to pull away the thousands of lace threads which now connect me to The King and wrap around the battered skin on my body tightly, loop after loop digging into my skin.

    Instead, the tongue in my mouth that I had used to lick him and get out of his arms when we first met lolls out my flawless lips, ebony black and long.

    I can feel my sharp, newly knife-like teeth digging into my tongue.

    The crystals on my eyes expanded during his... attentions. I can barely see and blinking requires conscious effort.

    ...

    Well...

    ...

    Gosh dang!

    He certainly left his mark on me!

    I mean, seriously, a hickey would have been simpler!!

    Geez! He''s got no class, am I right?!

    Well, well! Looking forward to tomorrow!

    Had a very productive day with setting up the play and all that jazz! And the dinner was truly delicious! Plus, I did not have to pay for it!

 Chapter 9: First Step to Stardom-Class M

    I wake up, my body freezing, yet I am absolutely dripping with sweat and a foggy mind. My dress, pants, and hair are completely dry in spite of the dripping perspiration, but everything else is absolutely soaked. My head is currently doing its best to mimic the myth of Zeus and Athena¡¯s resulting genesis. In other words, I have one bastard of a headache.

    Ugh. It seems my timing is right. I am now on the fast-track to death. I grit my teeth in a smile, my new default expression, albeit more strained than is my intention. This fever is directly affecting my ability to think, which is making it rather hard to control my emotions.

    See, this is why I hate getting sick! Being unable to control my emotions again!!!

    It is...

    HUMILIATING.

    I shake off the blush of shame crawling up my cheeks, my hair going everywhere.

    I walk away from the oddly welcoming floor next to the throne. Though, it does reach out to me with glass pillow-shapes and comfy looking blankets.

    My grin contorts into a grimace as I look at the living floor up and down, my glare filled with revulsion. It is cute, but...

    I sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, hope that the crystalline bowl that formed where I slept is like a harmless pet wanting cuddles.

    The alternatives... well, let¡¯s just say yesterday was enough for me.

    I once more resume the role of the bard. In all likelihood, it will be the last role of my life.

    Hoooo, boy, that''s a thought and a half.

    Sorry Dennis. Guess you''ll live longer than I will. And Elisa, we definitely knew you were going to live longer than I was, but...

    I... had hoped... uhhh... I had hoped we would someday sign each other''s contracts...

    I quickly meet up with the magical construct musicians, and we review and finetune our music one more time.

    One of them plays a bass note, and I shoot a furious glare at them due to the skin peeling off of my face.

    The mischievous magical construct somehow has the gall to shrug and look around them as if to say ¡°Huh? I don¡¯t what you¡¯re talking about...¡±

    How aggravating and... oddly intelligent of them.

    I stride quickly to the location in the castle where the tailors are located. The many looming tailors tower over me, yet appear sheepish and nervous, as if awaiting my praise.

    Their short, white, and charred hair obscures their faces, though more importantly, their faces have those comedy masks, so it would be impossible to tell anyway. They then switch to holding their hundreds, perhaps thousands of bleeding stumps out from behind their backs holding up the costumes like a child holding out their crayon drawings.

    I am not quite sure how they are managing to avoid soaking the outfits, but they are. Actually, their blood is spiraling away from their stumps, forming sigils behind them.

    My eyes widen and I quickly grab the costumes out of their arms and thank them sincerely. Some clutch their faces with their wounds in a mockery of embarrassment, while others titter silently.

    All the while, streams of blood are channeling across the ground in the shape of sigils.

    I quickly walk out of the room as fast as I can without seeming rude.

    Those were curse sigils. The curse mages that the gangs were so fond of are capable of scrawling curse sigils to draw on for power during gang battles, making them both forces to reckon with and useful symbols of marking territory, since sigils are each distinct to each curse mage.

    Are they preparing for battle?

    I can recognize them from other sigils due to a curse mage I knew. She was fond of graffiti, and curse magic was a natural fit for her.

    Aggravatingly, she left me during one of the aforementioned gang battles.

    In other words, she stumbled into the medic room I was working in and clutched onto my pants begging for me to help as the very flesh liquified down her skull, her eyes the only thing left on the skull-headed corpse, before POPping over me.

    Unfortunately, I had no time to weep, because I needed to get back to putting the still-beating heart back in and reconnect the arteries of a human with a Tank class before they died.

    Ugh. This stupid fever is messing up all my nice repression I have going on.

    I flick my head as I continue walking down the hallways, wincing less from my forehead smarting and more from my festering fingers burning at the contact.

    I get to the massive theater that the servants set up.

    I nod approvingly out to the vast venue. We are ready.

    Next to me, the towering giant named The King nods with me and pets my hair...

    ¡­

    AGAAAAAAAAAAIN!!! WHYYYYYY?!?!

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    _______________________________________________________________________

    In Act 1 and Act II, I play the noble part of King C¨¦ph¨¦e, using my acting skills to cater to The King eagerly watching and critically analyzing my performance for signs of dissent or criticism.

    Of course, with the help of my costume and a boatload of trickery to make myself seem far taller than my actual height, I fully succeed in making it obvious that I was emulating him. I couldn¡¯t actually flawlessly imitate him. For one thing, there are limits to the magic woven into the costumes despite their remarkable craftmanship, so I obviously could not bend reality to better suit my ideals like he does.

    More importantly though, outside of the obvious effects, I can¡¯t make him feel like I was too close to him. It is important to ride the fine line of the saying ¡°imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.¡± More specifically, I need to be an imitation, not a full-blown copy.

    He won¡¯t actually feel threatened, but if I do not follow the rules about dealing with a king while pretending to be one, he is not going to just cut me some slack.

    He will behead me if I am too arrogant or regal. Of this I am certain. It is simply a popular narrative in stories involving royalty. There is no way he is not colored by this brush.

    Though... I predicted his behavior incorrectly yesterday. He may be more lenient.

    I have no intention of making a fatal assumption though.

    Ah. Time for my role as Medusa!

    Hahaha!

    This¡¯ll be fun!!

    The snakes are so-so, but I don¡¯t have time to bug the tailors for... a re-do.

    I look down at whatever is bumping my ankles, interrupting my train of thought.

    It¡¯s my living bed of crystal?

    That is so interesting! It grew legs like a fancy ottoman. I wonder how? The pointed multi-faceted part of crystal bumping at me manipulated planes of crystal to shift up and point towards my face.

    Kind of like my pet python Jerry.

    I reach down to pet it gingerly, still unsure of its intentions.

    I have just a couple of minutes before I go on stage, buddy.

    Suddenly, it... tenses. I¡¯m not quite sure how this is possible, but regardless, I am extremely hesitant. I start moving backward.

    Then it leaps onto my face like a goddamned face hugger!!!

    I fuckin¡¯ knew it!

    I would scream out loud, but I can¡¯t even breathe right now!

    It is so fucking heavy for something so small and hollow. I grasp at it wildly as I try not to topple over and bump into the curtains that are soon to rise.

    It rushes over my snake-hair head set like a fluid, before tearing it off and settling over my hair. The fluid crystal finally leaves my airholes and I promptly calm down.

    The show must go on after all. I can¡¯t look terrified when debuting as the villain/person brought low by fate.

    I need to blow my nose from the fever currently driving me up the walls, so quickly I pull out a handkerchief and flourish it outward dramatically, and blow it. The curtain starts rising.

    I have 5 seconds max before I introduce myself as one of the main villains and then get pretend decapitated by one of the actors who will be playing Pers¨¦e.

    One.

    I reach into the hidden pocket on the dress (the benefits of having Skilled tailors: always having pockets) and whip out my tiny mirror to observe from my hairline up.

    Two.

    There, made of opaque colored crystals, are flawless snakes moving around. Moving with my surprise, the snakes stick out their bodies like a porcupine¡¯s many quills.

    Three.

    The curtain is almost up.

    I stuff the hand mirror hurriedly in my pocket. I force all emotions and fever-borne headaches to fall to the background.

    Four.

    I live to be the villain.

    I grin hungrily.

    Sure. There is the finale act after these two that is solely done by Anathema, but I have dwarfed these dim stars in every way that counts, whilst still being a great enough existence to know to avoid detracting from the story.

    Five.

    I stride out arrogantly, my gorgeous emerald and black dress trailing behind me. My crystal snakes writhe with passion, manipulating the very Miasma around us to

    For a brief moment, I lock eyes with the sockets of The King, my sheer vanity and arrogance on full display, my arms out in a grandiloquent manner.

    You can suck it, bastard.

    There is no subtlety in this act.

    Niggling doubts and screaming feverish pain clamor inside my head, trying to tear me down.

    Afterall, The King tried... no, he succeeded in tearing me down yesterday.

    Bu though I am like Medusa who was brought low by Minerva with divine retribution for sheer arrogance, I will rebuild as I always have.

    I will paste the shards of my shattered mirror into a funhouse mirror if I have to, the reflection monstrous.

    I sing. A gorgeous rich melody erupts from my mouth as I sing in absolute defiance of the colossus to which the very reality submits to.

    I wink at him, as I draw his attention, as well as his courtiers, a veritable menagerie of devastatingly powerful Anathema, weaving a masterful narrative.

    _______________________________________________________________________

    Nearing the end of the play, I look on with delight as everything and everyone does their parts without a hitch.

    Now that I think about it, it is peculiar that I was able to teach them so much. Some had skills for this type of thing, but even then, I should not have had been able to fit in so much.

    I start getting a nagging suspicion that fuckery has been going on with my experience of time somehow, but that takes a backseat for the moment.

    It is time! Time. To. Bow.

    As the spotlight shines on my inhuman face and as whatever infection that is taking its toll on me runs through my body, all I can think about is how much I truly love the stage, the magic of it all.

    There is a eldritch cacophony coming from The King¡¯s courtiers surrounding him. He locks his eyes with me once again and nods once in appreciation.

    The horrors of yesterday are all but forgotten as I flush with success at his gesture, as my eyes sparkle with the delight of being just a little closer to a star.

    The string instruments behind me thrum in tune to a rising crescendo and we bow once more.

    I leave the stage, The King standing up and gesturing broadly and with the grin of giving celebration, laughs uproariously.

    He offers his arm.

    I may have no choice but to take it, but I loop my arm around his with no hesitancy, the Miasma searing into me this event that I created with my own hands just as gravity creates a star.

    Unprepared, all of my emotions during the opera that I donned as easily as one does a hat magnify. Arrogance, vanity, hunger, misery, terror. All branded into my mind.

    I stumble forward before catching myself, helped by The King.

    We walk across the red carpet, furry scarlet-red worms bowing before us, as alien eyes click like cameras.

    We both smile and wave.

    Time for a celebratory feast!

    WHOOOOOOO!!

 Chapter 10: A Fabulous Celeb-Literal Gatecrashing

    I primly sit down, inclining my head with the appropriate degree of deference towards The King and then observed all of the appropriate rituals.

    To my left is a courtier who is all around far bigger than I have. The courtier has a massive verdigris eagle head and a huge lime-green body with large rolls of fat that jiggle like Jell-O. Every time the body bumps into the table, it melts through parts of the banquet just by touch. Every time they laugh to ¡°talk¡± to me, I have to crane my head all the way up, practically perpendicular to my back, which is such a pain.

    Not to mention, I despise the type of noble they represent on principle.

    To my right is, I would presume, the captain guard, a scarab-headed guard with even more elaborate anime-style armor. They act all serious and gruff. I can tell from the alert antennae and efficient movements he makes as he eats, not to mention, the subtle scanning he makes of his surroundings for dangers. He also has 3 feet on me.

    I really want to grumble. I am surrounded by friggin¡¯ giants!

    GRMnmNRrrrRRRrMn.

    The King toasts to me and my wonderful celebration.

    How wonderful. Truly.

    Praise be to me.

    Ugh.

    I just can¡¯t muster up emotion outside of my current ¡°mask.¡±

    I¡¯m exhausted and my arms are in excruciating pain. It feels like a hammer is driving multiple spikes into my head.

    My impending death is soon. No doubt.

    I breathe deeply, the world turning dizzy for a second. My iron-clad posture starts to bend.

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    ¡°BANG!¡±

    I sit to attention as if I was in the military, narrowly avoiding slamming my head into my pasta.

    I turn towards the clashing sound, peering around the massive bulk, and trying to find the right angle to see past the crystal on my eyes.

    What is interrupting? A messenger maybe?

    The first thing I see is the gates torn asunder yet again.

    Awwww, seriously? Those were just fixed!

    Standing amidst the ruins of the gates, proud in a flamboyant light pink dress, is Betsie.

    My eyes widen and I stop breathing.

    My mouth dries with absolute shock.

    She is... alive?

    I- HAH! She... I¡¯m saved?

    I can¡¯t believe it. I mean... this... could she heal me? My thoughts go

    I stand up in disbelief, pushing back my chair in my haste, the rest of the Anathema still frozen in this still tableau, unsure of what to do.

    I walk lightly around the courtier, my feet padding quietly across the ground with my ragged pink-and-white sneakers, my speech stuck in my throat.

    She paints an imposing figure, looking at all of the Anathema in complete and utter disgust. In her hand she holds a valiant sword. She has the remains of Anathema all over sword, but otherwise remains untouched. She is every bit the Magical Girl I thought she could be.

    I know what her name is automatically, just from the way that the Miasma, now ever-loving on me, quivered in fury at her intrusion. It spelled her name in searing kisses on my body, urging me to rid the Tormented zone of her existence.

    Her name is Magical Girl Charity.

    I ignore it with ease, in favor of staring at her with complete shock.

    She realizes I seem to be the only one moving in this odd scene. Everyone seems to be waiting for the other to move. She points her sword at me, failing to recognize my features, but still hesitant.

    She could impale me at any time, like she has obviously done to many Anathema, but...

    She recognizes something is wrong with this. All of this.

    A faint smile graces my face. A wistful smile full of so much pain, and yet, what breaks the soul held within my eyes is not that.

    No.

    It is filled with hope. So much hope.

    I whisper. I whisper so quietly.

    ¡°Hi Betsie.¡±

 Bonus Chapter-Stats, Studies, and Stars

    The Stats: An Essay by Elisa, a Devil-in-Training

    Dexterity: the physics-breaker and the bane of scientists everywhere. A force that allows enables to feats like walking on dust, running perpendicular and upside to a flat horizontal surface, treating a silk string like a thick metal pole. While useful for scientists, the impacts it has on their experiments cannot be understated and working around that is the bane of every scientist. It is an energy that prevents speed and strength from harming yourself, and it is the driving force for all physical classes. Oftentimes, berserker classes will decrease dexterity at cost to the body in return for an increase in strength and high regeneration. Classes like assassins go incredibly deep into this stat and ninjas somehow channel Dexterity to do what every other stat does. The way it is used varies heavily, from completely unnatural contortion to simply being able to dodge with incredible accuracy. The truth of Dexterity: ease concepts into the world.

    Perception: The stat of the senses; it works on all senses except pain (unless there is a skill involved, like Masochism or Pleasurable Pain), though simply the presence of a skill depending on a certain sense will lead to further focus on that sense than is noted in the description. For the absolute idiots, a dump stat. Required to allow your brain to keep up with literally all stats. You need to be able to observe things in more complexity and faster in everything from potion making to magic, hand-to-hand combat to writing. Low-level people just cannot afford to put stat points in it though. It makes life more vivid and enjoyable, and as a result, some people are addicted to leveling and putting stat points in Perception. One of the more neutral stats in terms of reputation. The truth of Perception: Observe the world as it is.

    Charisma: the social stat, it improves social skills and appearances. It also simultaneously has the best and worst reputation of all of the stats. It does not have the cool factor of the other stats but investing in it has brought happiness to many individuals completely lacking in social sense. It is highly lauded for ¡°fixing¡± autism. While the argument on how this type of thing is described in media has its own issues underlying it, it is also a great stat for Magical Girls, which enables them to be so inspiring and even subtly decrease the rate of rift formation around them. This is because it can have a passive positive effect on other people¡¯s emotions (though Charisma-based skills are quite capable of using for intimidation, fear magic, and more). The main reason why so many hate it as well is because it is the bread and butter of politicians. Not to mention, in combination with Will, it is the stat for mind manipulation classes (not mind control classes, which are quite different). Subtly improves all stats, and is certainly worth investing in if you can, but the stat-to-power ratio is not enough to replace other stats. The truth of Charisma: Grow into your conceptual best self.

    Will: Your will acts upon the world. It is the stat used for magic. It is required for bending the Essence (and others) to your will. It and Charisma are the only stats that have a direct impact, and are impacted by, your personality (though Charisma has much less of an impact per point). You are literally forcing the world to be how you want it to according to your emotions, so narcissism and pride are expected, as well as whatever emotion or emotions you use to fuel your magic. Some high-level Mages can be freak-aaay when using their power, though Charisma tends to make it just seem cool or pretty. In spite of it being the main stat of mind control classes, it has the best reputation due to the public¡¯s obsession with Magic. The truth of Will: bend the world to your concepts.

    Speed: Makes your body move faster. One of the most basic stats in comparison to others, it still is rather beloved. For magic that requires physical movement, such as hand gestures or dance magic, it, as well as Dexterity, is a vital stat in addition to Will. Flying can be done without Speed using complicated applications of spells, but getting flying as a Skill requires high Speed, even if you have magic. Not to mention the most obvious application. People like Quicksilver for a reason. However, without Dexterity to manage it and Vitality to survive accidents, you are guaranteed to turn yourself into a paste. At high speeds, a clothesline will decapitate you if you cannot see, avoid, or just blunder through because of Vitality. The Speed stat does not affect muscle size. The truth of Speed:  coexist and grow with time with life.

    Strength: Increases the amount of force one can generate with their muscles, though Skills, Speed, and Dexterity are required to actually apply said force. Sometimes derided as the stat of muscleheads, it regardless is devastating in its simplicity. Clever applications of strength can terrify just as well as it did before the system. Skills are what really gives Strength the power it has though. A Magical Girl focused on Strength can generate entire walls of force from simple swings of the sword and create avatars for themselves that ensure they can leverage force to tear mountains asunder. This ensures that mages cannot outpace them. The Strength stat does not affect muscle size. It does also work on your base stats and on your skills, which is why constant exercise under ever-more extreme conditions is required. It can certainly be overcome with enough stats, but getting to that level without the exercise is extremely difficult. The truth of Strength: the world bends before your life.

    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    Vitality: the health stat. The ways in which it affects everyone are ridiculously varied. Similarly to Dexterity, it benefits all stats, though sometimes it negatively affects Charisma due to its changes. It increases toughness, nullification of force, how deadly wounds are, the level of regeneration, and/or just last longer with damage. It can also decrease the effect that poisons, diseases, lack of air and oxygen, magic with the intent to harm, and other varied extreme environmental conditions have on the body as well. The ratios and proportions of how much it changes each is so varied that it can be used in identification of individuals. Increasing it can change the pallor, color, and even texture of one¡¯s body, which is why sometimes it has a negative effect on charisma. Its interaction with traits and skills can lead to wholesale changes in body structure, from increase in muscle mass and in density of bones to turning eyes into orbs of fire and creating uninterpretable symbols on your skin. The general outlook on Vitality is to just view it as health points and analyze the changes as they come, because predicting them is hopeless unless you have an extremely strong trait, which will affect you in a predictable manner. The truth of Vitality: give yourself life.

    Traits: Traits, in general, apply to stats or skill split into three types: unique, color, and hereditary. Often work upon stats in some way, shape, or form.

    -Color trait: In Magical Guardians (colloquially called Magical Girls in the human dimension), all traits are magnified, and they each get assigned one of the color traits: Green, Pink, Red, Blue, Yellow, Dark. The colors typically come from a personality trait (with the exception of Yellow and Dark) that gives them their Magical Girl name. Particularly powerful color-adjacent perks (more common in Pink and Dark) often appear in Magical Girls as well. Magical Girls are believed to be the only ones with color traits, though there is strong debate as to whether some Ninjas have color traits.

    -Hereditary: A trait that is passed down through the repulsive act of reproduction, these traits are incredibly varied. They typically result from unique traits that have a recognizably permanent effect on the body. Ninjas have the highest percentage of hereditary traits, and the traits tend to considerably more powerful as well. Examples include the Verdant Green Blood, a poisonous blood trait capable of growing in toxicity with use, the Mirrored Eyes, a trait in the "friendly" hidden "village" Kage no ¨­i, capable allowing even a mere child possessing the trait to use any skill they have seen,.

    -Unique: A trait ingrained in you due to your own efforts of the course of your life or the environment. These traits are similar to perks, but perks are rewards for relatively short-term rewards while unique traits are from something you have devoted your life too. For example, I will earn the trait Devil, due to devoting my life to obtaining souls with contracts - from research to apprenticeship to contract combat - and I will obtain the perk Devilish Soul for the achievement of obtaining a soul prior to even having the class Devil.

    An excerpt from ¡°An Analysis of a Vengeful Spirit¡¯s Sight - Abstract"

    Nanomolecular phantasmal threads weave through the curled-up superimposed dimensions that vital essentia permeates. The threads oscillate with furor that shift each peak of the waves into the emotional realms of Essence. The dampening effect of the coiled quintessence of the Homo sapiens on amplitude is used with incredible alacrity to pinpoint via triangulation and mild strangulation of the quintessence, which is believed to also lead to the typical sensation of proximity to a hysterical phantasm. Spite from Homo sapiens tends to have an effect akin to gravitational warping on the threads, causing hysterical phantasms to fumble due to decreased vision, precipitating peculiar effects that elicit a sense of negative fortune surrounding the spiteful Homo sapiens in this experiment (as a sidenote, this was done with full consent of the parents, the sponsors of this experiment: Electronics, Inc., and the child. No coercion was involved). The vision of apoplectic phantasms is capable of traveling through metal extending into the emotional realms, and increasing the amplitude of the coiled underdeveloped quintessence, creating a juxtaposition of soul that excludes the skill Manipulate Magic.

    Mutterings on the Stars

    We wink on ourselves, an uncountable number of glistening, twinkling eyes hungering for sight beyond the lightless blood under which they are submerged.

    We turn around on ourselves, moving empty flesh; distorting billions of sights above eyelids.

    We avoid the mockeries on ourselves; we are The Glistening With Tears And Starving For Adulation.

    We feed on ourselves, a twinkle of amusement in our eyes; our saccharine world and you go squidgy, squidgy, squidgy, squidgy, squidgy, squidgy, squidgy, squidgy, squidgy...

    We see the monotone fueled on ourselves and give to the nonexistent through the nonexistent blood.

    We place the stage on ourselves; coughing, mindless actors crawling miserably over our beautiful bodies.

    We proffer a hand to ourselves for we care not to do so to you.

    We hum a song on ourselves, a reverie of dying and hunger, for we are made for flying and crying, we are falling and older, then lying and younger.

 Chapter 11: The Making of a Pink Star

    Betsie

    With my Familiar next to me, invisible to all but the most powerful Anathema and Torments, I put an end to the endless numbers of monsters, from the Guard Dogs: terrible dog-like creatures with entrails pouring out of their mouths, to the Beautiful Beastly Chandeliers: nasty metal ambush predators capable of breaking her sword with ease.

    I helped reality itself with every slash of my sword.

    The barbed hooks swung at me from every angle, but with supernatural Dexterity and Speed, I ducked and weaved and spun around. I cut off the tentacles by the dozen, dodging the ever-growing piles of poisonous purple sludge spewing out of the cut-open entrails, feeling the wind on my face as I defended the world from these monsters.

    I use my teleportation skill Bounding Step to get a reprieve. The exhilarating feeling of space blurring beneath feet will probably remain for me the rest of my days.

    I love magic with all my heart.

    And I love my Familiar. I may have only met the adorable little fluff-ball of a dog today, but Kindhearted One knew me so well, we just became the best of friends.

    I would defend the nerdy little girl with my life!

    I look down at K.O. hopping like the fluffiest bunny on Earth around my ankles.

    I never thought I would unlock my system so early, much less become a Magical Girl.

    But then this area became Tormented. I never expected that would happen. The moment I heard the alarm, I ran out of the sports field into the school.

    I refused to let my little sister Gillian and the rest of her classmates get stuck. They were pretty far away from the shelters and I refused to just stand out in a shelter doing nothing when others are in danger. Besides, I have an entire hour.

    I HAD to help.

    I hurtled through the doors past a couple of staff members ushering people out.

    They shouted out after me. ¡°Kid, come on back! Head to the shelter and let the professionals help.¡±

    I grinned sheepishly, though they wouldn¡¯t know, as I ignored them, continuing my path towards my sister.

    I stopped.

    Someone was shouting, muffled by something in the way. I looked around frantically, seeing a locker rattling. I used my class president key to quickly open it.

    ¡°S-m--ne -elp --!¡±

    *Bang*

    ¡°Ple--e g-t me -ut! - d--¡¯t -ant t- -et eate-!!!¡±

    *Bang. Bang*

    ¡°P---se-AHHHHHHhhh. OOF."

    A girl fell out.

    I quickly rushed to help her. She quickly brushed off her tears, looking away from me as if she hadn¡¯t been crying.

    I¡¯m not going to mention it. Maybe we can become friends and I can make her feel better? I hope so.

    ¡°You ok? Here. Take my hand.¡± I held out my hand and she grasped it, and I hoisted her up.

    I look her eyes and say seriously ¡°You have to get to shelter. Got it?¡±

    She nervously nodded.

    ¡°Thanks.¡±

    I blushed. ¡°D-don¡¯t mention it! No need to thank me! It was my pleasure to help.¡±

    I started running away hurriedly, both of us going in the opposite direction.

    I stop quickly in bathrooms and glance into classrooms, making sure that everybody is getting out. There were more than a couple kids who were blasting music just a bit too loud; feeling kinda sad in the bathroom; uh, well, high on drugs; or just really invested in their books. Finally, I came across my sister and three other kids who I didn¡¯t know.

    ¡°Little sis! Are you ok?!¡± I hugged her, squishing her close.

    ¡°Ahhh! Sis... Let me go!¡± she squealed. She strained against my hug, making a very half-hearted attempt to push herself out of my arms.

    I nuzzled with her for one more second, before standing up and gestured for them to follow me.

    ¡°Come on! We have to go quickly!¡±

    The two boys, the other girl, and my sister nodded in affirmation all serious-like.

    Squee! So adorable!

    We sprinted for a minute, the air faintly purpling with Miasma, though the air always stayed completely clear at least 3 meters, or 10 feet, around us, and the Torment Warning blaring at an ear-piercing volume.

    The poor kids were panting. None of them are particularly fit, including (don¡¯t tell my sis!) my sister. They definitely still have that baby fat that makes you just want to pinch their adorable little cheeks.

    Then the alert changes.

    Warning! Get to the safety shelters inside the school now. You will not have the time needed to exit. Miasma is imprinting quickly. 5 minutes until formation. 4 minutes. 3 minutes. 2 minutes. 1 minute left.

    I paled, and even though I did my best to put on a poker face, I think the kids saw the terror in my eyes and my serious expression.

    ¡°Come on kids. Let''s get into this classroom.¡± I waved my hand frantically, practically shoving them into there. I looked to check that the coast was clear, and then closed the door behind me.

    My sister and her friends looked at me with worried eyes, on the verge of tears.

    I tried to put on a reassuring face for them, dramatically grabbing a cheap wooden-and-metal chair and hoisting it up as a makeshift weapon.

    ¡°Alright kids! I just need you guys to follow me, and we are certain to get out of here.¡± I valiantly shouted, pumping my fist in the air.

    I have no idea what on Earth I¡¯m supposed to do...

    I just don¡¯t understand why the formation happened so quickly.

    I have heard of it happening, sure, but incidents like, well, this, are extremely rare.

    How can we all be so unlucky?

    This is a freakin¡¯ school! It¡¯s not like this is a war zone or a plague zone.

    Could a cult of the Deity Diarrhea have set up a ritual? I mean, still, why here though? Again, it¡¯s a freakin¡¯ school! What¡¯s the point?

    I started to panic, my breath rushing faster than normal.

    I steel myself. I promised myself that I would help them though!

    ¡°Yeah!¡± I blurted out loud. The kids looked at each other confused, my sister rolling her eyes at my antics, and I blushed in embarrassment again.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    I psyched myself up and then opened the door again. I looked both ways again just to be sure, and then pushed it all the way open, marching with assuredness that I most assuredly did NOT have.

    My hands may have shaken against my will and sweat may have run down my back, soaking through my uniform, but the kids followed behind me, convinced that I had this well in hand.

    We ran as quickly as we could, with the kids right behind me. From what I remember, the nearest shelter is only a minute away.

    I cannot make a mistake.

    I use my practice avoiding my best friend Theo¡¯s pranks to scan all blind spots and angles.

    Is he... alive?

    I worry. If he died... well, I think pretty much everyone would be miserable. The androgynous kid is the life of the party, always knowing just what to say to help everyone. Even his mistakes makes everyone laugh. He''s pretty inspirational.

    Me and the kids pad down the carpet, nothing on the ceiling nor on the walls.

    We quickly make it to a shelter and yet there is an obstacle, of course, because the frick not!?

    There is an Anathema. A massive hound covered in russet-red fur and puke-worthy tentacles coming out of its mouth.

    Actually, on second thought, I realized that those are not tentacles.

    Those are... intestines covered in knife-like edges coming out its mouth. The way the intestines impossibly overlapped made my head hurt. My mind knew they shouldn¡¯t be able to move.

    It is standing up, wide awake and watchful for any hopefuls that thought they had succeeded in finding shelter.

    I clenched my fists around the cold metal legs of the chair. No... I refused to let us just waste out here.

    I wasn¡¯t carrying this chair for show.

    I didn¡¯t lead my sister and her friends out just so we could break down in a different location from that classroom.

    I turned to them. Their teeth were chattering in fear. I looked in their eyes one-by-one.

    ¡°We are going to get out. I swear. Stay here until I say go. I promise that I¡¯ll fight it off and you guys will be fine¡± I whisper firmly, gritting my teeth.

    I mean every word I am saying. They are going to escape, even if I have to give up my life. I can¡¯t let my sister die or let her get hurt emotionally by her friends dying.

    Small silver lining, there is nothing else in the corridor.

    Well, there is only one choice. All of the others are not actually choices. Abandoning the kids, just trying to speed by, going on a different path around the creature... I refused to let those even cross my mind.

    I charged forward, yelling.

    The bulky monster¡¯s bushy, furry antennae sprouting out of its empty sockets wiggled for a second, before the creature leapt up to me. Its many intestines trailed behind it as it rushed toward me.

    I entered a state of focus like never before. I was riding the line between life and death. The ultimate tightrope walker.

    I think I was drunk on adrenaline.

    I dodged to the left of the furry rust-red dog, taking advantage of the opening by slamming the wooden chair directly on its face to the best of my ability.

    It opened its mouth wide open, as if to scream in pain. It halted in its incredible speed, its antennae broken due to sheer luck.

    Having realized this is a weakness of the creature, I hit it with my full force again, a meaty smack resounding through the air. I raised the chair for another blow, but I am forced to dodge as the creature starts lashing out in every direction in a desperate attempt to kill me before I hit it. I duck under a bloated purple pipe of excrement whooshed over my head. Four tentacles slash down, blocked by my raising of the chair. I shuffle around the beast, blocking five diagonal slashes from my left, and rotating the chair to block three in a pincher movement.

    ¡°GO NOW!¡± I shout, turning my head towards them.

    Turning away was an awful mistake.

    Jagged cold enamel tears through my cheek. An intestine somehow attacked me from behind, unconnected to the actual body.

    I shouted out in pain, reflexively closing my eyes in excruciating pain. My left bicep got torn into as I stumbled around in pain.

    I hear my lil¡¯ sis scream my name in the background.

    ¡°Get inside now, sis! I love you!¡± I shouted.

    I stumbled away from the blinded monster, as I am blinded myself. Jolts of pain shoot up my arms and white-hot pain blots out any other sensation like a flood of White-Out over paper.

    I¡¯ve never felt such agonizing pain. It¡¯s excruciating. Truly on another level.

    I place down my chair and prop myself up on the frame. My own blood gurgles into my mouth, a bitter iron taste left as I open my mouth to leave it to drip onto the floor.

    My muscles twitch in response to the wild pain ravaging my control over my own body.

    I look at the creature, still wildly lashing out at nothing, moving in random directions.

    Shouldn¡¯t it be able to smell me? Maybe all that poo is stinkin¡¯ up its nose?

    Heh. That¡¯s a pretty funny thought...

    I think I might be a little delirious from blood loss.

    I grimaced in pain.

    I looked over to the entrance and then realized the people in the shelter thankfully opened it for them.

    They are safe. I started crying with happiness.

    I helped successfully.

    I doubted I¡¯ll be able to make it past the Anathema. It¡¯s somehow moved back in front of the doorway despite its seemingly random movements. Might as well do one more act of good in the world before I die.

    I shifted my weight back to my legs, shaking as they are with pain, and hoisted the chair up with both hands. My left arm practically screamed with pain.

    I put the chair back down, leaning on it as my literal blood, sweat, and tears all poured down my face.

    Drip, drip, dripping down onto the floor.

    I won¡¯t stop though. I need to do one more act of charity to the world. Getting rid of this ¡°Monster!¡±

    I power through the pain, dragging the chair along. The dog has calmed down, its tentacles no longer moving now that we aren¡¯t fighting. With as a small of a motion as I can manage, I raise the chair and bash the head of the dog in.

    Over. Its entrails start whipping out, cutting into my torso.

    And over. They halt.

    And over. They fall limp once more.

    The dog is probably dead after a while, but I only stop when my body gives up on its own. I topple down onto the floor, dragging the chair along as I try to slow myself down to prevent cracking my own head.

    I¡¯m surrounded by dark purple Miasma. If I relented to my silly thoughts, it almost looks like it is marching around me, drumming on an invisible barrier around me.

    A shrinking barrier.

    I closed my eyes and started praying for everyone I knew. I wished for everyone to make it out alive. I wished for my family to be able to move on after I die. I wished for the chance to become an angel so I could continue to help others, even in the afterlife...

    My vision blurred with pink and hallucinatory sparkles appeared at the edges of my vision, then they faded away.

    Something wet poked at my face, reminding me of my dog Sniffles, short for Miss Denis Salvador Sweet-Candy Sniffles.

    A soft, breathy voice tickled my ear. I really wanted to scratch my ear now, but I was so tired. ¡°H-h-hey. Are you alive? I mean..., I know you are alive, but... uh... are you... uh... cognizant of your surroundings? I¡¯m h-h-h-here to h-help. You can be a Magical Guardian, if you agree to the rules.¡±

    I force my unwilling eyes to open. Right in front of my face was an adorable pink and white Shih Tzu that was simplified into a cartoon character standing on two legs, wearing a golden dress and big solid glasses. She was like a miniature doggie librarian! What an adorable hallucination!

    The Shih Tzu brought its paws together in a nervous gesture, before pushing up her glasses. ¡°Uhmmm, I¡¯m not a h-hallucination. I am your Familiar,¡± she said, firming up with seriousness, before slouching shyly. ¡°That is... if you¡¯ll h-h-h-h-have me.¡±

    But hallucinations know what you are thinking, and people, and cute dogs, can¡¯t really read minds. And you know what I''m thinking. Therefore...

    ¡°But, I¡¯m... uhm... a Familiar. Also, you are... uhm... dying, so we kind of need to skip this, and get to the Bond. At the very least, you won¡¯t lose anything if this is fake. I really want to save you. I would explain, but we don¡¯t h-h-have the time.¡±

    If this is real, then I¡¯ll gladly agree. I still want to help this world. I don¡¯t want to go yet.

    ¡°Uh-uh-uh-uhm, great,¡± she stuttered out. She reached out to me.

    ¡°I, the Familiar of the Kindhearted One, stand witness to this Bond approved by Magic itself. Will you take my paw to exemplify the PUREST of Essence and become Magical Girl Charity? ¡°

    ¡°I will.¡± Oh my gosh! If this is real... I, as in me and myself, I will be a Magical Girl.

    I reach out and shook her soft little toe beans with decisivness, sealing the contract

    The world around me was carved clean of illness with each syllable, and perfected with help from the loving Magic that looked upon the hallway floor that I lay down upon. A billion kind deeds distilled into Essence saturated the area around me. The Shih Tzu shook with barely contained power, blinding me with Pink light, before a flood of Pink infused my very soul. I could feel tunnels carved through my body, a surge of liquid magic traveling through my veins.

    It scalded my flesh, remaking my very body to better channel the Magic of Charity. My hair flowed out, rearranged, grown, and cut into an elaborate hairdo with aid from the very light around me. My hair turned a vivid shade of hot pink, shaped into stylistic lightning bolts hanging from the big white bows pinned to my head.

    My uniform shimmered with the light of an angel¡¯s wings, waving and fluttering before it changed from the coarse blue fabric of our school into a pink-tinged white satin fabric. It touched my skin with impossible softness as it grew into a modest ancient Grecian outfit. If I remember correctly, Theo said these were called a chiton and a himation, a type of tunic and a type of cloak respectively.

    I gasped as the magic had worked its way to my face, working a miracle of healing. My cheek knitted together painlessly; just a brush of magic and it was fixed. The magic then drained out of my extremities and body, before swirling around in the center of my chest, crystallizing into something solid. It started beating to a dramatic bass rhythm.

    Two rainbow hands in a firm handshake appeared on my center of my pale clothing, expanding into their shape like an expanding inkblot, having much the same density of color as different-colored ink too.

    Unbeknownst to me, my sister was watching me through the cameras of the shelter, squealing with happiness that her big sis just became a Magical Girl.

 Chapter 12: Looking Through The Telescope

    Betsie

    Gravity slowly regained its hold on me, the transformation finishing.

    There is now a new Magical Girl in this world...

    And it¡¯s me!!!

    WHOO! I¡¯m a Magical Girl!

    If I wasn''t so exhausted, I would have run around whooping with happiness.

    K.O. is just too cute. While I stumbled to the shelter super slowly, exhausted after my magical experience, she talked about the rules she hadn¡¯t been able to cover. She reminded me of a super shy, but serious, secretary with a soft side. She walked stiffly, pushing her oversized black and grey glasses with a very adult expression, holding a clipboard of all things.

    She kind of breezed through the restrictions, though she gave me a list if I wanted to read it in more detail.

    Rule 1: Save as much life as you can if you decide to enter the fight against the Torments. You do not have to fight. You can let others fight for you. We do not wish this fight upon anyone. But whatever you do, avoid killing Magical creatures, be they anything from humans to vampires. If absolutely necessary to save life, then truly, we give you our best of wishes, we are sorry you are in this horrible situation. Make the choice that you are comfortable with. If faced with Demonic creatures, attempt to come to a peaceful resolution or just get along with them if you can. If they are organisms that are merely influenced by Demonic Essence, attempt to heal them.

    If an organism is made of Miasma, kill them if you are capable and willing. If corrupted, try to heal them. If not successful, we would strongly recommend killing them or they will die in excruciating agony. We are deeply sorry for any pain that this truth causes.

    Rule 2: Do not depose the governments of the world and institute your own government. This is an abuse of your power and the Bond will be revoked if the government is successfully deposed. Long-term planning for overthrowing governments, and putting it into action, will be pre-emptively stopped by revoking of your bond as well.

    Rule 3: This is not a rule, but rather a warning. As a Magical Girl, you will be an extremely potent source of food for Anathema and Torments, capable of pushing a Tormented zone from merely taking up the size of a room in the real world to as much as an entire state, depending on how high-level you are.

    Rule 4: ...

    She is super certain that I would not break any of the rules though. Her trust is so gosh-darn sweet!

    I grab the massive crank to the shelter and turn it. I enter the room that every shelter has in case of stragglers. It examined the place for any Anathema or Torment signatures. I look all around, looking for any of the weapons that would activate in the presence of such signatures. Unfortunately, there is no visible signs in the sleek, futuristic room. It would be cool to look at them while I wait for it to finish examination.

    Unsurprisingly, I passed muster and continued through the next door.

    My eyes widen in surprise as a small blur hurtles toward me, slamming into me screaming ¡°BIG SIS¡¯!!!¡±

    Small hands wrapped around me in a big hug as my little sis held onto me with all of the force of a traumatized child.

    She then remembered that she was too cool for hugs and then leapt back with a steaming red face.

    Oh no she doesn¡¯t. I just got ripped into by a monster. We ARE hugging it out.

    ¡°COME HERE!¡± I reach out mischievously, pulling her towards me.

    ¡°EEP!¡± she squealed.

    I knuckled her head, mussing up her hair, and tickled her mercilessly.

    ¡°Sis, noooooooooooooooooo!!!¡± She starts laughing uncontrollably.

    Like that, I spent an hour relaxing and calming down. I had to fend off my friends¡¯ and the adults'' curiosity about my transformation into a Magical Girl, but I am prepared to fight now. I left the safety of the shelter to help the world.

    And after a few hours on a direct warpath to the Torment, I stand at the towering pearly gates to the blight on this Earth.

    I can feel the Miasma coming from it in waves. K.O. says that I won¡¯t be able to fight it yet at my level. I just need to scout it out, and I¡¯ll be able to use my trait to escape and tell the other Magical Girls what I found. That should make it less dangerous for them. I glance at my status sheet before channeling a devastating slash to rend the gates apart.

    Class: Magical Girl Charity ¨C Level 27

    Base Will: 15. System Will: 85. After traits: 93.5

    Base Vitality: 8. System Vitality: 68. After traits: 74.8

    Base Dexterity: 13. After traits: 96.25

    Base Perception: 9 After traits: 9.9

    Base Speed: 11. System Speed: 65. After traits: 143

    Base Strength: 14. System Strength: 100 After traits: 110

    Base Charisma: 17 After traits: 18.7

    Traits:

    <ul>

    <li>Unique-Boundless Optimism and Bounding Steps: Stats do not need to be added to Dexterity in order to balance out Strength and Speed. Speed is multiplied by a factor of 2. Your stamina reflects your bountiful Pink attitude, endless and never exhausted. </li>

    <li>Color Pink: All stats multiplied by 1.1. All experience, Skills and Class, is multiplied by 1.1. </li>

    </ul>

    Magical Girl Charity Skills:

    <ul>

    <li>Fixing Miasmic Pollution Violently: A sword art which allows you to use your stats to wield your sword properly, and to use your strength to affect the conceptual. Turns stamina into Essence which eliminates Miasma. Level 27. Unevolved. </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Fighting Exploitation: Enables you to access healing arts which prevent corruption up to a point. Minor cuts and damage to Adorable Outfit can be healed. Level 5. Unevolved. </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Adorable Outfit: Enhances Charisma and Vitality indirectly (does not show up on System stats without force of Will). Naturally self-cleans. Level 19. Unevolved. </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Helping Hand: Buff added by contact. Cannot be given to yourself. Boosts skill capabilities. Level 0. Unevolved. Cooldown involved. </li>

    </ul>

    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    <ul>

    <li>Bounding Stab: Cooldown=3 minutes. Teleport to any destination achievable by running and within line of sight. Level 27 </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Aspect of Magic: Radiance-Pink </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Familiar Bond:&^%$%^&%$#!@#@!#$% </li>

    </ul>

    General Skills and Magic Aspects:

    <ul>

    <li>Moderate Mesh of Drumming: A prodigy of the drums, you are an expert of drumming without Essence. Level 2. Tier 2 Evolution. Total levels ignoring evolution reset: Level 152. One comprehensive skill under this category. </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Poor Housework Connection: Out of the kindness of your heart, you always do your best with your chores around the house. You still hate doing housework with a passion and it shows. Level 11. Unevolved. All cleaning related skills are included and not expanded upon in this unless you so choose to see. </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Major Mesh of Friend Making: You have shown a remarkable ability to make friends with your startling kindness. You embody Magical Friendship even before the System. Level Magical Girl. Tier 3 evolution. All friendship related skills that you have are included and not expanded upon in this unless you so choose to see. </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Pain Resistance: Pain is dulled. Level 5. Unevolved. </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Singing: Increased vocal control and a grasp of rhythm. Level 14. Unevolved. All singing related skills that you have are included and not expanded in this unless you choose to see. </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Minor Mesh of Drawing: You have shown an avid interest in drawing, and shown an above average talent in drawing for your age group. Level 14. Tier 1 Evolution. Total levels ignoring evolution reset: 63. Skills Sketching, Erasing, and Coloring under this category. </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li> Poor Reading Connection: While interested in reading for your other interests, the act of reading is merely a means to an end, and it is not your forte. Level 24 Reading skill. Unevolved. </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Crotchet: A minor interest, an occasional hobby. Level 15 Crotchet Skill. Unevolved. </li>

    </ul>

    <ul>

    <li>Jogging: A minor interest, an occasional hobby. Hard to level without the System. Level 9. Unevolved. </li>

    </ul>

    I bring my sword down in a slow arc as inevitable as me becoming someone''s friend when I decide to, bringing the power of friendship to bear in my sword, Will, and Strength. A glowing pink arc hovers in the air for a second, before moving at the speed of a slow walk, growing exponentially in height and girth until it reaches the gate.

    The entire gate splits apart, warping in multiple sections and splitting into separate pieces with metal wails and a cacophony of clanging metal.

    I rubbed my eyes in discomfort the smoke cleared and as the fist-sized pieces of rock, metal, and crystal stopped pelting and slamming into me.

    I really thought that dealing with the Guard Dogs had steeled me, but I was not prepared for the disturbing scene in front of me.

    An enormous banquet table was supported on the backs of literally screaming Anathema, completely unaware that I had just entered, so intense was their focus on supporting the multiple-ton table. Their wails resounded throughout the miniature world of fire and crystal that this throne room is with perfect clarity. Their clarion calls spoke of desperate unheeded apologies for whatever penance they were doing. Tears welled up in my eyes at their anguish.

    All of the creatures sitting at the table seemed only annoyed by my entrance, completely ignoring the servants beneath their feet.

    The food looked extremely delicious, but with an instinctual pulse of my Magic in my eyes, it revealed the truly mind-warping, festering Miasma that made up every last meal.

    A roast turkey was the representation of a glassy eyed human head staring listlessly from its porcelain plate, the concept of "off with their head" embodied in the meal.

    A fancy dish with calamari was in fact a symbol of the cross embedded in the anti-magic made up of thousands of conceptual cockroaches.

    An orange that an extremely tiny Anathema next to the Torment was pulling the peel off avidly was... a glowing sun. Kind of off brand for the rest of the food.

    Hundreds of incredibly powerful Anathema were present. I wouldn¡¯t even stand a chance against one of them.

    One of the closer ones was a haggard bulldog with a Karen haircut... with scalding brown liquid bursting out of bulging veins like a geyser, searing the nearby members of this festivity. It was also the size of an average human, but with the same super beefy proportions of a bulldog with jutting canines from hell. Each tooth was a rotting black and yellow.

    Another that stood out to me was a creature literally made of eyeballs, all of them looking around nervously, as if prepared for an assassin. It was shrouded in shadows and looked ready to abandon the table. It looked almost relieved that I was here, though I am unsure how such a creature managed to do that when being made completely from eyeballs.

    I tried analyzing the surroundings for this scouting, but the silence and complete lack of movement was simultaneously extremely disturbing and distracting. I was expecting to need to dodge spell after spell, fend off the grasping hands of these monsters. This... was not what I was expecting.

    The world warped, but I could feel my Magic preventing the Miasma from changing my surroundings within a few meters around me. An island of sanctuary amidst these unnatural changes.

    I observed the Torment at the head of the luxurious mockery of a banquet, and yet, the abomination wasn¡¯t the one to stand up.

    With immense majesty, the small figure next to the Torment stood up from the absurd festivities going on, dwarfed by the rest of the monsters. Their hands trailed along the table with a light, gentle touch, before turning to face me, walking slowly towards me. Their sneakers, so at odds with the rest of them, padded against the floor.

    None of the hundreds of abominations within this mockery of a royal court joined this tiny figure. Any that stood up to join it were waved down by The King, the name of this foul Torment. I avoided paying too much attention to him. Just looking at him was hurting me. I saw my health ticking slowly down just from being in his presence.

    This whole thing seemed... off somehow. I couldn¡¯t pinpoint the reason. Regardless, I readied myself for battle while still scouting my surroundings.

    The tiny monster walked as if it owned the world, like it knew I should bow before it, and my refusal to do so merely amused it for its futility. This incredibly haughty, infuriating posture contrasted starkly with its warm expression.

    A precious smile graced its face, beautiful ruby lips quirked in a loving smile.

    It had eyes just slightly larger than normal, most of the whites in the monster¡¯s eyes swallowed by an iris with a gorgeous purple evoking the Roman emperors of old, amethyst facets grown in frost-like bands across its pupils akin to icy purple ivy. It had a cute little button nose and its eyebrows were raised as if surprised to see me.

    It seemed like it had once had rich brown skin, before darkening to a solid stone-like gray with faint dark chocolate undertones, though it was probably spawned like that.

    Its face was framed by hair so blue it would rival even a Blue Magical Girl¡¯s hair, a shade of blue that I swear had to have been magically enhanced for hypnotic effect. Each thread had an impossible luster to it, as if the essence of sapphires were distilled into extremely soft-looking, luxurious silk. The hair extended all the way to its hips.

    The threads seemed to catch on something, as if they were suspended and falling off of thousands of invisible threads attached to the monster.

    Pinned on its hair is a cartoonishly large scarlet bow, but somehow it fits with the monster¡¯s ensemble.

    It had a fascinating dress; a checkered pattern of purple and pink which exaggerated its hips and waist, though its chest was flat. The skirt part and the sleeves had ruffles, while the rest was sleek and soft. The dress split into more and more lace-like purple-and-pink threads when it reached the creature¡¯s collarbone, entwining around the creature¡¯s neck, a weeping mask wrapped up by, but visible through, the threads. It had flared pants that extended all the way to the floor, covering its feet.

    It had fancy white gloves stained yellow, rust-red, and green, the arms distorted by odd bulges.

    Is it going to fight me? Despite its diminutive size, it is super imposing.

    It walked up to me, easily within stab-able distance. I prepped my sword, ready to run it through if it tried anything. It cocked its head in... confusion? Surprise? And its expression changed to deeply hopeful.

    Something¡¯s off...

    I started to call on my magic to kill it...

    ¡°Hi Betsie...¡± whispered the mons- oh my god NO! My sword disappeared back into my sparkles in shock.

    I stepped back... NO!!! I hurriedly stepped back a few more steps.

    No, no, no, no, no, no!

    It can¡¯t be... it is?

    This.... this is impossible!

    Yet... the truth is staring me in the face...

    I refuse to believe it!

    NO! Is this...

    ¡°Theo?! What the FUCK!¡±

 Chapter 13: Supernova

    Back to Our Adorable Little Trash Bag

    The innocent and aggravatingly tall girl goggled at me. I must admit, I too am incredibly surprised to see she is not dead. I expected her to corral everyone she could, forgetting about her own safety, and then die to one of the many Anathema. She¡¯s got a wee bit of a hero complex, the sweet child.

    I would bet everything I own that the only reason she is still alive is because the Familiars did an emergency bond to save her protag ass.

    ¡°It¡¯s me! How are you doing?¡± I ask. A little bit of a buzz from my hoarse throat creeps into my voice, but not too bad.

    She stays silent in surprise for a little while, before realizing I said something, and shakes her head vigorously.

    ¡°W-what did you say?¡± she stuttered out.

    ¡°I asked: Wassup?¡± I say amusedly, a big smirk on my face.

    ¡°I-¡­ Wassup? Seriously? That¡¯s what you¡¯re asking?! Are you joking!? Are you ok? How can you be so chill? What happened to you?!¡± she spluttered out, asking her questions rapid-fire.

    ¡°Whoa, whooooa... Slow down! One question at a time...¡± I raise my hands to mimic holding her off. My smirk grows bigger. This is fun. She is so easily messed with.

    She opens her mouth, before closing it.

    ¡°ARE YOU SERIOUSLY MESSING WITH ME RIGHT NOW!?!?!¡± she shouts.

    ¡°Yup!¡± I say unabashedly. I have no shame. You should know this by now.

    She waves her hands up in the air in sheer, unadulterated disbelief.

    She... is obviously not high enough in level to help me. She obviously is a Spell Sword in build, just going off her ensemble, choice of weapon, and personality. Magical Girls are always on brand. Makes it easy to guess their abilities, not that it matters when they are so powerful.

    Her movements, when thinking about the fact that she is a Magical Girl (with all the boosts that entails) I estimate she is nearing level 30.

    This is... not bad for a couple of days, but even if she was specialized in healing arts with stats solely in Will and Perception, and even despite the massive bonuses just being a Magical Girl would give her, she would need to at least be near level 50. Right now, she looks like she needs to be at least level 175 to help me.

    Welp!

    I guess I¡¯ll just enjoy her company before encouraging her to leave me here to die.

    ¡°Still haven¡¯t answered my question...¡± I say teasingly.

    She squints at me, before nervously glancing over my head at the Anathema and The King behind me. She runs her hands through her hair exasperatedly, grimacing.

    ¡°Well... uh... I have been doing ok. I¡¯m a Magical Girl now... Are we seriously going to avoid the glaring issue that you are all monster-y now?! All of... this, is so wrong on so many levels.¡±

    I give myself the expression of someone who is barely restraining their laughter, much to her chagrin.

    Actually, I can hear something else. My furry blue ears twitch, before rotating to face a spot next to Betsie.

    *snort* Teeheehee...

    Hmmm, perhaps I can hear the Familiar. This would be despite them using their peculiar brand of magic to hide themselves. How interesting...

    No matter. Just another sign of how far gone I am. Just too corrupted to survive.

    ¡°Well, it is very simple. After spending a few days in a Tormented zone without any Magic of my own, I am corrupted! Pretty cool looking, ain¡¯t it?¡±

    I brush back my gorgeous hair with a clawed and stiff metallic hand.

    She looks like she wants to ask something, but I continue before she asks the question.

    I lean forward, as if to eagerly whisper a secret.

    ¡°It hurts a bit, but I have had a pretty good time here! I even created an ENTIRE play with the help of the Anathema here for The King. It went reeeeally well! That¡¯s why we are having these festivities. It¡¯s to celebrate all of the hard work I and the other members of the cast have put into it, and to show The King¡¯s appreciation for our unique entertainment.¡± I say energetically, stars in my eyes, and a super happy childish smile and posture.

    I lean back and giggled happily, spinning around on a foot, before stopping and putting my hands on my hips proudly, chin up.

    ¡°Are you... okay?¡± Betsie asks haltingly, her face knitting together in deep worry.

    ¡°Yup! I¡¯m having a blast!" So fine, in fact, that you should leave here now, so you don¡¯t get killed by The King.¡±

    Goddamnit. That was one of the least convincing acts I have ever done. I was letting way too much of my naturally manic personality bleed through for this situation.

    Not only that, I sounded antsy! It¡¯s humiliating!

    Curse this fucking fever!

    She looks so confused. It¡¯s kind of funny.

    A lightbulb went off in her head.

    ¡°Wait a minute! I have a skill that heals corruption! I can use it on you!¡±

    It¡¯s not going to help...

    She starts channeling magic into her very obviously low-level skill. I notice a multitude of emotions running through the threads looped around my skin. The most obvious are a sense of impending doom, possessiveness, and protectiveness from The King.

    He does NOT like this skill channeling going on. The emotions are so intense and heady. It¡¯s fucking weird, like waves crashing violently against the cliffs of my mind.

    Is that frickin¡¯ concern from the monster?!

    Naaah.

    I ignore the very obvious concern radiating off our connection. It is palpable, and yet, just too absurd to even consider.

    I try my best to push a sense of calm and ease through our bond and the emotions stop hitting me so hard.

    ¡°It won¡¯t help me,¡± I warn her.

    After a whole minute of channeling her Will, she throws the ball of raw, poorly honed healing Magic onto me. It stings a bit, like hydrogen peroxide over a gaping wound, but actually helps a bit. My sense of impending death is a bit further away.

    I give myself 5 more minutes of life.

    I sigh.

    ¡°I am unsurprised.¡± t

    Though I am surprised by how dead my voice sounds now. I guess I hadn¡¯t extinguished my hope. If it wasn¡¯t for this fever I would have managed to quell it! By now, I am certain this disease is essence-caused rather than blood poisoning that took advantage of my corruption, because otherwise it would not be affecting my emotions so much, since it would not be able to affect my malformed soul so much. Still equally lethal.

    She opens her mouth to say something hopelessly na?ve in a kind attempt to assuage me.

    I bring my hand in a slicing motion towards her, cutting her off in the pointless attempt.

    ¡°The Magic is nowhere near enough. You... will not be able to help me.¡± I say mournfully, my high, androgynous voice enriched with amusement at her lack of knowledge.

    Her face flattens into a horrified expression, and I go on without sympathy.

    ¡°I can only just barely hear your Familiar, but that is enough to know that my corruption is too far gone.¡±

    ¡°See these ears, buddo?¡± I point up and twirl my fingers around my pointed ears with a ¡°cuckoo¡± gesture. ¡°Only Anathema, Torments, Magical Girls, and other Familiars can sense Familiars. I have the ears of an Anathema and my body is rejecting its body parts. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge on how corruption would make the same conclusion,¡± I said, smirking at my obvious insult of her intelligence. Distinguishing between my prior behavior and the now is important, and cruelty will be sufficient in showing that I am awful enough to...

    ¡°Regardless, the time I have spent here is enough to determine that I am a dead monster walking...¡±

    I wink at the spot where Betsie is looking to for moral support. ¡°I¡¯m sure that your Familiar had noted everything wrong with me already, and the poor creature was trying to figure out how to explain it to you.¡±

    I hold out my arms in a benevolent gesture, green-yellow fluid continuing to seep into my opera gloves. I let my mouth quirk up in amusement.

    ¡°I will help her explain. I am going blind due to crystal growths.¡±

    She raises her hand to her mouth to hide her gasp, though my improved hearing still allows me to hear it.

    ¡°My arms are rotting alive, and I feels like my body is burning alive. Very soon, blood poisoning will kill me,¡± I go on with no sympathy.

    ¡°My very bones are fractured, and my fingers are slowly being paralyzed as they petrify into brass metal.¡±

    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¡°Hahahahaahaha!¡± I laugh maniacally.

    ¡°Why, I even have Tormented burns over my body from skin-on-skin contact with The King. Hear that? We got kinky up in here. Teehee,¡± I bop my cute little head to the side, my large, adorable eyes glimmering with amusement.

    I bring my hand to my mouth in a demure gesture, fingers touching my lips gently. I will admit the sweetness of the motion was... heavily offset by my huge grin, though I was not yet showing the extent of my teeth.

    ¡°Truly scandalous! A Torment and a human, transcending boundaries and creating a most detestable love. Oh, whatever will the world say?¡± I roar with laughter.

    ¡°Why, I even have aesthetic differences in the form of changed hair and eye color, and I¡¯m not sure if you know, but my girlfriend, an expert on Magic by the way, says that changes like that are a sign that Essence is starting to like you. That¡¯s why Magical Girls change so much.¡±

    With every point I make, cruelly trouncing on every bit of sympathy she has, she shakes her head in denial and disbelief.

    I never thought I would see such a reaction, particularly towards me, but she managed to look like she was stabbed with every injury I listed. I suppose I was too convincing during school that I was deserving of her sympathy.

    Me. Deserving of sympathy? How amusing she would think that. How... sad.

    ¡°No... I refuse! I could bring you out of here! Find another Magical Girl with better healing. I don¡¯t understand what is going on, but I can help. I¡¯m sure!¡± Her voice cracks in sympathetic pain, tears welling up in her eyes. She clenches her fists.

    ¡°Let me show you how wrong you are, innocent child.¡± I grin slightly wider than normal, just enough to show the rows upon rows of wicked sharp teeth, each as long as a finger.

    A disgustingly slimy, dark black tongue slithers out of my mouth.

    I use my long, muscular ebony tongue covered in strings of putrid saliva to lick my lips in a truly disturbing fashion. With a disgusting slurp, I bring it back into my mouth, my head knocking back a bit from the sheer mass of my tongue rolling back into my mouth.

    I turn my head towards one of the servants in the still tableau of Anathema and their Torment and laugh a request for them to be a darling and pull my gloves off my rotting arms, which they promptly fulfill.

    Bulges distorted the flesh wherever I had harmed myself with particularly deep cuts, jagged slits tracing along my arm. The pus and blood drip onto the clean crystalline floor like a metronome.

    Betsie blanches at my peculiar means of communication. Her eyes roam over the sheer damage on my arms.

    I remove the fake skin sticker that had covered my stitched-up cheek.

    A faint whisper comes from Betsie¡¯s familiar at this. My big, floofy, blue ears twitch to catch every vibration through the Miasma itself and turning it into sound.

    ¡°This... are you... sure he isn¡¯t a second Torment in disguise? He shouldn¡¯t have such control over them and you already admitted that this person is acting pretty different from what you remember about Theo. They don¡¯t even seem like a guy to me... Uh... that they can communicate with the Anathema is pretty suspicious too. Ummm... It is not unheard of for there to be one or more Torments. I... being on the edge of death from Miasmic corruption and being a Torment look pretty similar to my Familiar¡¯s sight. It could be a trick?¡± she thought to Betsie shyly.

    Internally, I grin. Doubt creeps in so easily, as it always does.

    Ah, and the gender. Well, the Familiar is rather on the ball there. I don¡¯t identify as male or non-binary, and my family doesn¡¯t truly think I can possibly be female. Don¡¯t have the parts after all.

    So, I just choose male as it makes more people at ease. Less awkwardness and cruelty towards cis males.

    I doubt I deserve the moniker of female. Not enough of society agree with it and plenty make a mockery of those who change their gender.

    Besides, gender is for a person.

    I am a monster.

    But this is neither here nor there. This passing truth is brought up by this godawful sickness. There is no point to think of this once more! I¡¯m already aware of my place in the world! I HATE this disease.

    Before Betsie can respond to end this awkward silence, I interrupt. ¡°There is a way to prevent me from dying in excruciating agony...¡±

    They shouted in tandem. ¡°There is?!¡± ¡°There is?!¡±

    ¡°Indeed... though it is one that your Familiar has been desperately avoiding tell you,¡± My smile turns carnivorous, a content half-lidded stare on my face, like a spirit that just caught a tiny child after making it run for years on end in the kid¡¯s nightmares.

    Betsie looks at her familiar, with a betrayed face. Ahhh, she really hasn¡¯t changed much during this undoubtedly traumatic incident. Just as much of an open book as before.

    I am betting her Familiar is waving her forepaws around wildly, trying to fend off my accusations.

    ¡°Ahhhhh, don¡¯t blame her though. She is doing her best. Really, I fully agree with her. Keeping it from you, Betsie, is the best option. Unfortunately, I really am selfish.¡± I analyze my nails in an affectation of shame.

    I lock eyes with her, a wild glint in my large purple eyes.

    ¡°You could just kill me now.¡±

    The look of horror on her face nearly made me laugh uproariously, and then I suddenly felt the urge to sob. Perhaps not the correct reaction to such an awful situation.

    I make my sales pitch for immediate extinguishing of my continued existence. ¡°I don¡¯t have a System. It would be supremely easy. I highly doubt that The King would intervene to save my life.¡±

    My ears rotated to hear creaking and squealing of metal, as if the table of the banquet was being slowly crushed. What is going on behind me?!

    Her eyes widened and her breath sped up faster. She involuntarily took a step back at the desperation in my eyes, and... furtive glances to behind me... It really makes me want to look behind my back.

    Still though, she can see it in my eyes. The realization dawns on her. My hope was solely borne from the fact she could kill me instead of this corruption.

    I will cling to life no matter what. But if I can convince myself that there is really nothing I can do about dying, then I will gladly let someone else kill me. Perhaps this is contradictory. Perhaps it makes no sense, but I would not mind her killing me.

    ¡°I... NO!!! Why the FUCK would you ask me that? That¡¯s not helping! That¡¯s what I am all about!¡±

    The King shifted at her screaming. Odd.

    ¡°I disagree.¡± I say, before chuckling a bit.

    ¡°After all, assisted suicide is legal in Washington State for a good reason. It avoids needless pain. I am currently in excruciating agony and it will only get worst,¡± I wave off her statement flippantly.

    ¡°So...¡± I whisper sibilantly, stepping forward ¡°Will you do it?¡±

    ¡°NO! I refuse. I can save you! I will save you!¡± she shouts, sobbing through her gritted teeth. Sparkling tears fall down her cheeks, her inherent charisma pulling at my heart.

    I look down in frustration, and then look up smiling with a big ol¡¯ grin. It was an ugly, hungry, and malicious thing.

    I believe it disturbed her deeply. I view it as highly unlikely that any form of manipulation will push her to leave, after all none of it has worked thus far, but there is still the smallest chance that convincing her that I am past saving will succeed.

    ¡°Well, then leave! There is only death here for you. I can tell, just by your movement, that you have nowhere near enough stats to fend off a Torment that has been around for a few days. It will -¡±

    ¡°Wait, a few days? What have you been talking about?! It has only been a few hours.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± I nearly lose control over my expression in my surprise. It appears I made a miscalculation. The likelihood of convincing her to leave has decreased even further.

    Then it hits me.

    ¡°Time dilation... time goes slower in this zone. I see... even it bends the knee to The King. I don¡¯t have the magic to fend off the effects of the Tormented zone and you do, don¡¯t you?¡± I hiss, infusing my voice with quivering rage.

    Just leave, goddamnit!

    She seems taken aback by my animosity. ¡°You were never like this. Unflappable, always kind and happy. What happened?¡±

    ¡°What happened? What happened?! I have always been like this. You simply failed to notice. You all do. I merely need a glimpse of someone¡¯s eyes, and I immediately know what they are feeling. Everyone cannot understand me. I am a monster now and a monster then. I hurt my family, I hurt Masua and Enterion, I hurt my girlfriend, and I always get away with it, because I am a manipulative MONSTER!¡± I shout hoarsely.

    ¡°I do not feel emotions like all of you. I change my personality easier than do the whims of weather change. I puppet you all with ease.¡±

    Infusing my true emotions should push her away.

    I thought back to the last time I met up with Masua and Enterion. They were so eager to touch me while we talked, sticking their phantasmal fingers in my head to toy with my mind and indulging in pleasure, using my body as their doll.

    So I brought them low. I expertly blamed them for ruining my soul, putting them in tears, making them beg and plead for a mere touch of my skin. It... pleased me, even despite their Essence of Rage and Revenge tainting my soul then, trying to overwhelm my mind. That was how strong my delight at influencing them was.

    I know that Masua is still miserable after that conversation and I feel little remorse. That is how cruel I am. Enterion still gives me the cold shoulder for manipulating them like that.

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter. I am no friend. You were wrong about me. Don¡¯t waste your life for a monster. Go. Live your life. Survive to see another day. As my brother says, please live life for me¡± I say derisively.

    I promptly turn around and walk back towards the feast, truly emulating the best of nobility.

    ¡°Where are you going?¡± Betsie asks.

    ¡°Isn¡¯t it obvious? I am going the direction opposite to the one that you should be going. You fight him and you will die. Your Magic cannot even overpower his Miasma. Your aura extends, what, a few meters? That¡¯s what is pushing back the Miasma.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± I turn back around, grinning. ¡°And by the way, you do need to leave now. I¡¯m not quite sure why, but The King seems to be getting more and more annoyed the longer you talk to me. I have no interest in seeing your corpse.¡±

    ¡°NO! I will help you! I will take you away from this monster. You will at least be able to die surrounded by your family.¡± her face contorts into a beautifully valiant expression.

    I sigh. ¡°Then I will add your tally to the list of friends who left me permanently.¡±

    I turn to The King and bow apologetically. I giggled my sincerest apologies for prolonging his judgement and any missteps I have made. I then hummed in a patriotic tone, expressing my appreciation for granting me the boon of meeting my friend and allowing me to attempt diplomatic relations with her.

    I greatly appreciate Your Majesty¡¯s mercy and I take full responsibility for her spurning of Your Majesty¡¯s kindness. I am willing to take punishment for her, but she refuses to submit and leave your Kingdom. Your Majesty, I cannot vouch for her. She has no intention of following your gracious rules, and intends to eliminate the court and eliminate submission by the dint of her sword.

    During the midst of my statement, Betsie realizes, to her horror, that I am conspiring with a... Torment. The blight on all dimensions. I am a traitor to all of humanity.

    And yet she STAYS!!!

    Her Familiar shouts ¡°Run!¡±

    Smart one.

    ¡°NO! I will save Theo!¡±

    Idiot!

    Behind my back, she raises her sword, and lunges, clearing the gap to run me through. A shining Pink light flares around her and hearts float around her.

    *sigh* Unfortunately it is too late.

    At the end of my statement of laughter and song, The King stands up from his throne of imposition. He does not change in size to the towering colossus I know he is capable of. He does not move for a second. His face finally changes from a smile, and flattens into a grimace.

    And he is infuriated.

    All of the servants drop to their knees in synchronicity, breaking their bodies. Time grovels and cries apologies. His crown shines with the beautiful light of the Sun.

    He would punish the fool for messing with his toy.

    He is as far beyond Magical Girl Charity''s existence as the Sun is beyond a speck of dust. What follows... I cannot even comprehend.

    Her head... turns in on itself to paste as penance for defiance to the SUPREME POWER OF THE LAND. The very flesh of her head betrays her and submits to him.

    In the Familiar¡¯s pain, it inadvertently reveals itself, a tiny Shih Tzu.

    I hear their endless screams.

    A gutteral, enraged thing full of anguish and love.

    It chills the bone and curdles your gut.

    It goes on.

    And on.

    And on.

    And on.

    It¡¯s too much for me. Gales of Miasma scald my skin. The Miasma starts warping the world even further, all blurring in a morass of unnaturally REGAL colors.

    A wave of Magic as the Familiar dissolves alive over her friend¡¯s corpse cuts into me as weaponized love disintegrates bits and pieces of my monstrous body.

    I collapse right after Betsie¡¯s corpse, weeping silently as I fall. Another has left me. They just can¡¯t stay around.

 Chapter 14: The Donner Dinner Party

    I wake up on the crystal floor, mind-bogglingly large mandalas of runes hovering over me.

    I¡¯m... still alive?

    Why?

    Just... why?

    It befuddles me. I truly don¡¯t understand.

    Others keep saving me. Over and over and over. And then they DIE.

    It¡¯s obscene.

    It¡¯s ridiculous.

    The blank-faced Torment leans over me, his sockets squirming worriedly.

    Fuck this.

    I reach out my hand and a tentacle promptly coils around my arm up to my forearm, pulling me up.

    I don¡¯t give a flying fuck that this isn¡¯t proper noble etiquette.

    I chuckle my thanks to him as I lean on his body for support.

    He points to the body of my friend who left me, massive bites already made in her corpse, desecrating wholly. Already I can tell that everything has become so much... more. The concept of The King and this Tormented zone has truly entrenched itself in this reality with the help of her Magic-dense flesh.

    The puzzle pieces click together. Anathema eat to heal and they eat to grow.

    He is offering to let me, an ¡°Anathema,¡± eat something I know would be better put towards The King¡¯s consumption.

    How... kind.

    I am not an Anathema.

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    It won¡¯t help me.

    Do I... continue the role?

    Take a nibble?

    Squeeze one more hour out of this?

    Or do I quit the role? Let him kill me?

    ***

    Screw this!

    Screw this all!

    I will fight to preserve my existence!

    One more hour to live, laugh, and love.

    I need to stop pretending that I am willing to die and end my cursed existence. Asking Betsie, err, Magical Girl Charity I mean, to kill me was merely a flight of fancy that I foolishly let escape my lips.

    Besides, there is still a dark, festering hope inside me that her flesh, my FRIEND¡¯S flesh, will help heal me where she couldn¡¯t.

    I think it''s possible. After all, some people consume... imp flesh, and it heals them of virtually any injury.

    I detach myself from The King¡¯s bracing support, and clamber across the floor, hand after hand after foot after foot. My alien gait brings to her body, all ends of my limbs pressing into the sticky red; sharp pieces of bone poking into my palms

    I take in her corpse in, cocking my head to the side. Truly the damage done to her, headless and missing most of her torso, does her injustice.

    It really is a travesty.

    I lean in. My mouth waters, my massive tongue squirming in... distaste? Hunger? Who knows.

    My maw slowly opens, hovering over her arm.

    My warm breath moves in and out of my mouth, and sweat beads on my forehead.

    My chest tightens just a twinge.

    My muscular pitch-black tongue extends all the way down out of my mouth onto the smooth unfeeling floor, curling under her bare arm. Mildly chalky at first, before a salty taste, tiny hairs prickling my tongue.

    Goosebumps raise up all over my body, a terrible chill overcoming me.

    My tongue pulls her arm up onto my rows upon rows of teeth.

    I BITE.

    A rush of white-hot ecstasy and overwhelming flavor makes me stumble a bit, before my limbs fail to support me.

    As tears fall down my cheeks and my breathing speeds up, I gnash my teeth from my resting position into her body.

    IT IS SO GOOD.

    Passionate white-hot fire overwhelms the mind.

    A spider¡¯s yellowing web is made with crude solid strings, hanging.

    Blue lines are torn in twain with a cruel snap.

    Warm breath rushes in ferocious gales over this cooling landscape.

    Purple threads twirl happily around gummy red.

    Bone-white drips red in this dance among peach-pink.

 Chapter 15: Unlike Voldemort, My New Body Has a Nose

    I wake up gasping for air, my hair soaked flat against my head and body, breaking ribs as I rip my head out of a partially empty... chest cavity. I leap back with almost a meter, or three feet, in the air, and nearly four times as far!

    My head was stuck in her torso like a goddamned maggot.

    I push away any guilt, refusing to let it overwhelm me. There is simply no point.

    Instead, I note that I feel better on a level unimaginable to me. Even before my one-way track to six feet below the ground, I have never felt so invigorated and strengthened.

    Which makes me all the more wary of the addictiveness and changes it has brought. I have seen plenty of people get addicted to Magma and overdose, burning themselves alive.

    Which.... is why they called burnies, because they literally bake their flesh in chase of the irresistible high.

    It¡¯s never pretty when it- actually, it¡¯s kind of pretty it happens. Pretty sad, but it hasn¡¯t happened to any of my friends yet.

    I analyze my body, steadfastly ignoring my friend¡¯s corpse being dragged away by The King for a little snack. My skin is still a stone-gray with hues of dark brown, but even with rubbing off the makeup, it looks healthy and vibrant. Quite a stark contrast to my feverish, sickly pallor.

    I examine my fingers, moving them with incredible dexterity. The changes have progressed. I clap my hands together, a bell-like clang resulting.

    All the way up to my wrist, my hands have been completely restructured into solid bronze metal, and yet, they are not rigid like earlier when they were petrified into metal only on the tips of my fingers.

    I can now feel and move my fingers once more.

    For the sake of sheer spontaneity, I slam a clenched fist into the ground, making a popping noise as it rushes through the air with enhanced speed. My fist clangs against the ground like a steel sword against diamond, leaving some pretty nasty cracks in the sunny yellow-red crystal.

    My arms have completely stopped leaking pus and blood from the large bulges on my arm. Whereas the bulges had previously weighed down my arms like cancerous weights, I can now move my arm unhindered. They didn¡¯t seem to weigh anything now and they are a lot less swollen. The skin of my arms changed from being colored by the truly putrid bruising to match the rest of my body. Cuts still look pretty ugly though.

    I meditate on my changes, staring at the twice-ruined gate but not really focusing on it. Instead, I turn my focus inward, towards my proprioception, which is just a fancy word for the sense that lets people know where their body parts are relative to them in space.

    Much to my chagrin, I notice something odd.

    It feels as though I was looking at darkness, stickiness and unuse preventing me from automatically seeing, and yet my eyes are open.

    Then... I open my eyes. On my arms.

    ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!

    I look at the golden orbs with an engraved pupil and iris.

    I look at my aggrieved expression with 15 separate views, a golden haze on the world, a peculiar sense of vanity and narcissism attached to the view.

    I look at the crystal floor with 10 separate views, a sad sense of not being able to see my beautiful body.

    5 eyes are irritated by my sleeves rubbing against them uncomfortably, making me similarly eager to see myself from that point of view.

    I close my eyes. Err, I close the eyes that are on my arms.

    I take a deep breath. In. Out.

    Calm down. Peace.

    Looking through them appears to have an effect on my mental state.

    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    I am hereby decisively labeling them Orbs of Vanity and I am going to be similarly decisive in ignoring them.

    Speaking of eyes, these ones on my face, the crystals are... still there, but they are no longer agonizing, and I can see through them! Small victories!

    My hair is... deeply distracting in its beauty, even despite its currently messy state. I tear my eyes away from it.

    I stick my tongue out and realize it is no longer impeding my breathing. My teeth no longer dig into it, my gums, or my lips either.

    It seems as if my body has accepted the corruption and truly incorporated it into myself. My design has been... streamlined, for lack of a better word.

    By now, a thin sheen of Miasma coats my body. And it is MY Miasma. It represents everything about me, every last bit of cruelty and malice I have ever felt. Any vanity and unhealthy adoration of myself meshes with my unrelenting hate of my body. Most important of all, though, is that all of these concepts are summarized in the concepts of the Forsaken Jester, the Happy Bard, and the Noble of Paranoia.

    My soul has extended itself beyond my vessel, the sign of a true Mage, showing its monstrous self for all to sense it. The bands where my crystal once blocked my vision now reveal the Miasma I produce.

    It is just as mind-bending as The King¡¯s.

    There is no doubt in my mind that this... ¡°improvement,¡± is from consuming the Magical Girl flesh.

    I settle back into my unnatural gait, before realizing that it was as easy as walking. Bone and muscle rearranged in less than a second and soon I was scampering around the room and getting under foot of the servants like a huge spider.

    I could actually feel a strong breeze simply from how fast I was going.

    It was exhilarating, leaping in zig-zag sideways motions around all the servants in motions so decidedly different from humans.

    A truly ecstatic laugh bubbled from my laugh as I played with my new body. I will not let yet another dead soul hold me back. She will simply join the retinue of friends that I will join someday.

    BUT NOW IS NOT THAT DAY!

    ¡°WHOOHOO!¡±

    A couple of servants frantically chased after me, mopping up the bloody palm-prints I left behind on the pristine floor.

    My brass hands clanged against the floor as my limbs stuck out at wrong angles, my arms and legs moving with sporadic explosive bursts of speed. My hair trailed behind me in a wild banner.

    After a while, the head servant stops me in my tracks, hands outstretched to take me to a bath.

    She¡¯ll have to try hard if she wants to get me.

    ¡°CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!¡±

    So saying, I hurtle away from her, ducking in between the Anathemas¡¯ legs and weaving through the screaming servants supporting the table.

    My hands and legs motor around in sickening fashion, a massive delighted grin on my face, extending on an neck that I stretch out like a periscope.

    My tongue lolls out to cool myself down and my Orbs of Vanity look all around at me for incoming bath-givers.

    We play for an entire afternoon.

    The King watches me from his throne, his head supported on his fist, smiling and so endeared with me.

    Finally, she manages to grab me, hoisting me up. My limbs and neck go right back to normal and I¡¯m carried like a small dog to the baths, my limbs folding against my body like wings against a bird¡¯s body.

    I am vigorously scrubbed down.

    Over dinner, we ¡°talk¡± through images communicated over the threads about how he was going to put the Magic of the Magical Girl to use. What he was going to improve about himself and the throne, and we have a little fun discussing law. His thought process was incredibly alien, which certainly made this method particularly difficult, but it was pretty fun.

    Finally, the head maid, who signed out that her name was Marie, took me to my crystal bed, which reached out its grasping tentacles and brought me to its comfy sheets, enveloping me like a curled-up doggy. I ignored the glowing blue screen that has been hovering in my face for the entire day since eating that Magical Girl.

    I curled up, gripping my pants in a fetal position.

    That Magical Girl, as I have been putting it, was my friend. She is Betsie, my friend, no matter how much I try to lie to myself.

    Why does this one hurt so much? So many have left me.

    Wilbur and Helix... their deaths hurt, but not as much.

    Is it because she may have still managed to like me as I am?

    She was that kind of person. Just... so nice.

    She didn¡¯t deserve to die.

    *sobs*

    I wipe my face of tears and snot, and rock myself back and forth.

    I...

    OH MY GOD I AM SO AWFUL. I ate her.

    WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!

    I made the choice... and I was rewarded for it.

    That... almost transcendent experience. It was pleasure like I have never known.

    I retch uncontrollably over the side of my bed, desperately trying to evacuate my stomach, as if that would solve anything.

    ¡°AAAAHHHHHHHHH¡± I scream.

    I slam my fist into the floor with brutal misery.

 A Question For You Guys

    Uhm, so, I hoping to know what I did wrong writing this story. My story is so awful that it is 2.9 stars, so, uhm, I really want to know if there was anything that stood out to you guys. I''ll definitely continue for a while because I am doing it for myself as well, but if it really is that terrible, then I don''t want spew trash on the internet and I might as well relegate this to a personal hobby. No point in public participation if I am not really adding anything to the public.

    Stolen novel; please report.

    I know I focus on a lot of intense topics, like cannibalism, rape, unsafe environments for trans individuals, and very poor mental health. I do believe it is possible to cover them and that they should be covered, but if I have mishandled the topics and really dropped the ball on them, please let me know.

 Chapter 16: A Magical System

    I wake up bleary-eyed, letting loose a massive yawn and arching my back like a cat, smacking my lips together.

    ¡­

    ...

    I unlocked my System early.

    I don¡¯t have to wait a couple more years! My stars above, I really am impressed I survived this long already.

    This is wonderful!

    Also kind of unheard of, since I am not a Ninja, Magical Girl, nor animal-turned-monster.

    This whole... thing may have been the most inevitable death I had coming, but it certainly is not my first near-death experience. I swear, if I find something stupid in my status that explains it, I¡¯m going to scream.

    I focus on the blue screen that has been waiting for me.

    EEEEEEEEE! I have my System unlocked! I¡¯m so happy!

    Lying again to myself. How foolish. I am miserable and I know it. I mean this sincerely, Betsie, I hope you can rest in peace.

    Class: Not chosen

    Name: Theo? Theodora? Monster? Pain in the ass? Little gremlin? Child?

    Original Type-Species Designation: Ruined Soul-Human; Later Type-Species: Corrupted Ruined Soul-Human; Official & Current Type-Species Designation (Recently Created for Accuracy): Tormented Princess

    Original Base Will: 27. Miasmic Base Will: 54

    Original Base Vitality: 6. Miasmic Base Vitality: 120

    Original Base Dexterity: 17. Miasmic Base Dexterity: 119

    Original Base Perception: 12. Miasmic Base Perception: 120

    Original Base Strength: 10. Miasmic Base Strength: 100

    Base Charisma: 100. After Traits: 1000.

    Available Traits and Perks for Selection. You may choose none to all.

    Congratulations! As a result of intensely focusing on manipulating people, making over ten thousand people do what you want and react as you¡¯d prefer them to (excluding manipulating others into being your friend), you have met the requirements for the trait of Puppeteer. Boost to base Charisma and influencing ever larger numbers of people with each push and pull.

    Congratulations! For making friends with more than ten thousand people and expertly maintaining connections with all of them, you have met the requirement for perk Avaricious Friend Maker. Boosts friend making.

    Congratulations! For being obsessed with the Stars, you have met the requirements for the perk Star-Touched-in-the-Head. 50% boost to communication with the stars, 25% boost to star-based magic.

    Congratulations! For extended unhealthy experimentation and deeply unsafe extended contact with Vengeful Spirits, in addition to perpetual depression, you have met the requirements for the trait Phantasm Poisoned. Your blood is replaced with ectoplasm that induces despair and permanent mental damage the longer a person is in contact. You no longer require needing to breathe. The more Vitality you have, the more effective the ectoplasm is at inducing despair and permanent mental damage.

    Congratulations! For making ¡°friends¡± with Great Vengeful Spirits, an impressive feat, you have received the perk Broccoli.

    Congratulations! For facing Phantasmal soul damage before unlocking your System and surviving, you have received the perk Ghost-Resistant Soul (a very small boost to your soul¡¯s resistance against Phantasms). For facing Demonic soul damage, you have received the perk Demonic-Resistant Soul (a very small boost to your soul¡¯s resistance against Phantasms). For facing Torment soul damage, you have received the perk Valiant Soul (a very high boost protecting against corruption). For facing three types of soul damage before the age of System access, all three prior soul-related perks combine to form Stalwart Soul. It is far sturdier than before.

    Congratulations! For having more than 100 friends die in front of you, you have received the Achievement A Following in the Underworld.

    Congratulations! For showing an expert control of your personality that is nearing the PERFECTION of the Fae, unmatched by any other species besides the Fae without the System, you have met the requirements for the trait of Fae Heart. Charisma is boosted by a multiplier of 10. Your body will be emblematic of unearthly beauty. You cannot break promises. You must tell the truth. You can mimic your prior appearance. Explore your connection with the Fae and this will grow in strength.

    Congratulations! For having a Ruined Soul-type, you have received the perk Deadly Soul. If someone tries to touch your soul with theirs (i.e., soul hugs between Eldritch Horrors, soul-based healing magic, soul-based communication, etc.) their soul will wither the longer they are in contact with your putrid soul.

    ERROR! HATRED! Stalwart Soul and Deadly Soul have warped into A Torment¡¯s Grasping Soul. You are able to manipulate your disgusting soul to reach out and grab others¡¯ souls.

    HATRED! For committing an atrocity against Magic itself (accidental or not, it does not matter), you have achieved the perks (these are not avoidable): Disliked by the System, Hated by the Magical Pantheon, Betrayer of Humanity, Betrayer of Elves, Betrayer of Unicorns, Betrayer of All Animals, Betrayer of Minotaurs, Betrayer of Gorgons, Betrayer of Vampires, Betrayer of Dryads, Betrayer of Elementals, Betrayer of Sirens, Betrayer of Ogres, Betrayer of Trolls, Betrayer of Monsters, Betrayer of Orcs, Betrayer of .... You are a TRAITOR! TRAITOR! TRAITOR!

    HATRED! You have achieved the trait Torment due to meeting the requirements (this is not avoidable) @(!&)$_#%)@&(@*&!(&$(@&(@)*$)#&&(@&!(#))&*&#$)))#)&!)&*!)%)#)&#$&@&

    HATRED! Due to your General Skills being incredibly high-level for your age and rapid progress with manipulating Miasma, you have earned the title of Detested Prodigy.

    Select Traits in order to make changes

    General Skills and Magical Aspects:

    Truly Terrible Karma: A curse from a deity of Magic that gives you the worst of luck. I will remove this if you break up with that Demon.

    It Just Will Not Die: The Stars wish to keep watching you. You are entertaining. Their desire to keep observing you accidentally turned into a blessing which enables you to escape situations within reason.

    -Major Mesh of Pain: Your life is characterized by pain, and you have a deep connection with it, be it physical, soul, or emotional. After participating in numerous gang wars and sustaining numerous injuries, committing numerous acts of self-harm, feeling the pain of soul damage, gone through torture for gang secrets, feeling the pain of corruption, among other examples, your Pain Resistance skill is Evolved. Veteran Pain Resistance (sole skill in this Concept Mesh). Tier 3. Level 34. Total level 384.

    -Major Mesh of Friend Making: You have shown a remarkable ability to make friends with your calculating capability to appear to have the best personality for every person you meet. You embody peculiarly deeply possessive friendship, built on a foundation of benevolence and a need for surrounding yourself with friends. Level Torment. Tier 3 evolution. All friendship related skills that you have are included and not expanded upon in this unless you so choose to see.

    -Moderate Mesh of the Muse: Your grasp of the arts without the help of the System, and at such a young age for your species, is matched only by a few. Skills in this Mesh (all are max at the end of Tier 2. Requires Essence to push it higher. Exception: Costume Designer and Costume Making are each Tier 0): Drums, Banjo, Cymbals, Guitar, Piano, Pipe Organ, Harmonica, Violin, Viola, Flute... Vocal Control, Lyric Crafter, Vocal Percussion, Music Writer... Painter, Sketch Artist, Coloring Expert, Blueprint Maker, Anatomy Compendium...

    -Major Mesh of the Social Tactician: Understand etiquette, from the proper procedures in High Elvish nobility to how to be a perfect gang minion. Level 12. Tier 3. Total Level: 362.

    -Minor Mesh of Combat: Basic Knife Skill. Level 36. Tier 0. Basic Dodging Skill. Level 48.

    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    -Minor Mesh of Sleight of Hand: You hold a deep fondness for pranks and tricks. Synergizes with Fae Heart. No actual skills, but they are easily gained.

    Oh my stars. Where do I even begin?

    I think the first and perhaps most poignant thing is that the very System, the impartial observer that distributes Magic amongst thousands of civilization, that will congratulate even the most abominable of warlords known to Magical kind for committing mass genocide for levels, dislikes me.

    I, uh, I don¡¯t even know what to think about that.

    That... fuck you System.

    Seriously, fuck you.

    Eating her saved my sorry life and you have the gall to criticize me?! You congratulate living catastrophes! Fuck you three ways till Sunday, buddo.

    I tried my best.

    I swear... I tried my best to convince her to leave.

    I promise...

    *sobs*

    I flatten my expression into a thousand-yard stare, not wanting to put too much effort while I am still safe from prying eyes, alone and huddling next to the throne.

    My eyes catch on the sentence at the end of the curse...

    FUCK!

    I lost the bet! Nooooooo! I owe so many people money now!

    I am actually cursed!? I was sure there was no way that I actually managed to get the notoriously lazy capital-G God on my ass. I mean, he cursed a singular witch during the witch hunts, among the thousands that came into contact with Devil contracts.

    What made him get off his ass to curse me?

    My relationships are none of your business!

    *sigh*

    Still, I wouldn¡¯t change anything though.

    She is so worth being cursed.

    I look up to the sky and raise my middle finger, wagging it around towards where I imagine God would be.

    ¡°Go fuck yourself God! Like hell I¡¯ll break up with Elisa! Feather-dicked, pompous, self-righteous, lazy, cowardly, sadistic, credit-stealing...¡±

    It particularly bugs me that he would purposefully calls her ¡°that Demon.¡± It¡¯s not like saying ¡°that human.¡± While that can certainly be used in a disparaging way, ¡°that Demon¡± is like a Low Elf saying ¡°that flesh bag¡± about a human, reducing a living individual to merely their physical components and obviously implying their superiority in build.

    And so, after a few more choice words about his dumb-ass genesis and stars-awful religion, I got back to focusing on all of the boxes.

    The blessing from the Stars makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. That I would be entertaining is what I live for!

    And all of my skills made me preen inside. The levels are quite high. I think I underestimated just how much experience I have.

    Fae Heart is absolutely, completely fucking insane. A TEN-times multiplier for Charisma. It just... absolutely boggles the mind. Do the Fae just inherently get that much Charisma as a matter of course? The restrictions are incredibly peculiar as well. They don¡¯t really limit the effectiveness of the trait like most trait limitations. For example, a common trait like Embered Hands (as common as traits can be, given that all serial arsonists get it), which boosts Fire Manipulation by 50% will slowly decrease your current health the longer you use it.

    I have heard large stat increases are one of the most amazing feelings ever. When I activate Fae Heart, I will increase my Charisma by 900 stat points. That... concerns me.

    I won¡¯t do it yet.

    Now I should look that the weird smokey purple boxes that are hovering here.

    Species: Torment Princess

    Name: The Charismatic Star. The Forsaken Jester. The Noble of Paranoia. The Happy Bard. Broken Mirror.

    CONGRATULATIONS! You have achieved a remarkable feat that distinguishes you from most Torments. You have consumed a Magical Guardian.

    CONGRATULATIONS! You are one of the few Torments with a hand on the scales of the Magical System.

    CONGRATULATIONS! You have been infected with a boon from the Divine Titan of Plague, Diarrhea. Your soul now coexists with an extremely virulent soul-based plague. It can only spread from yourself, but your trait A Torment¡¯s Grasping Soul has evolved into A Torment¡¯s Mummifying Soul, which both drains the soul of ectoplasm and induces hemorrhaging. Permanent curse upon those you touch unless removed.

    Torment Skills:

    Hunger: You can eat as much as you want and store it as needed.

    Language of the Court: Communicate with any Torment through their stories, Miasma, and your body language.

    Species Skills:

    Orbs of Vanity: See the world through many narcissistic lenses. They cannot hide from the eyes which wish to compare everything¡¯s beauty to your PERFECTION. Improved by Fae Heart.

    Metallic Golem Hands: Perform feats of impossible dexterity without the use of Dexterity. Your completely solid metal hands are virtually unbreakable, though this does not extend to the rest of your body. Level determines whether your concept of unbreakable wins against someone else¡¯s concept of destruction.

    Wicked Sharp Teeth: Your teeth are built for shearing through Magical flesh.

    Stone Skin: Increased vitality.

    Alluring Royal Hair: Your hair is made from Essence whose sole purpose is to make your hair look impossibly beautiful. The color signifies your right to rule. Improved by Fae Heart.

    Plushie Predator Ears: Your ears are remarkably adorable, and being so large in comparison to your head only increases the ¡°awww¡± factor. A characteristic that drastically increases survival against Magical Guardians. Allows you to hear what you should not be able to hear. Improved by Fae Heart.

    Outfit Creation: Create the perfect outfit for yourself. Improved by Fae Heart.

    Crystal Frosted Eyes: Your eyes are inherently irresistible, flavored with royalty. The crystallized tendrils are lenses which allow you to see the hidden.

    Inhuman Movement: Allow your body to move beyond your previous pitiful mortal body. Extend your tongue as long as you wish, move your limbs in any direction in three dimensions (only forward in time and in no other spatial dimensions).

    Flesh-Given Skills:

    Miasmic Stats: Adds to base stats, with the exception of Charisma, based on your improved form. Gained from consuming a Magical Guardian.

    Jester¡¯s Privilege: Invoke peace once a week for a day. No violence may be used against yourself, nor may you use it against others. Otherwise, you may do as you please.

    Bard¡¯s Voice: Your voice is inherently more seductive. You may not turn off this effect. You can infuse more meaning into each sound you make with Miasma.

    Noble¡¯s Wealth: A spatial hoard for any form of currency (precious metals are able to be stored in greater quantities though) which passively increases in size. The greater the size of your hoard, the greater the likelihood of encountering assassins.

    And there is a second System? I really thought I would have heard about that... Even non-Magical Entities like Eldritch Horrors and all Demonic entities use the System.

    It doesn¡¯t seem terribly different from big blue... you know, with the exception of the focus on eating Magical entities.

    This purple seems pretty wispy and insubstantial, like smoke.

    I would bet good money that it is constructed out of the Miasma surrounding me.

    I think, that, just perhaps, this is majorly fucked on so many levels.

    On the better side, a lot of these skills are pretty badass. Jester¡¯s Privilege is a remarkable skill and seems like it would absolutely incredible for making plans and setting things up without retribution. I can just imagine spending a day setting up a massive array of runes without getting attacked or arrested, and then boom, one of those stupid gates to heaven explodes. I would still need the magical energy needed to fuel it, and make sure the angels never noticed, but with this I could really up my game from petty pranks and window breaking.

    The disadvantages of Noble¡¯s Wealth are quite terrible. I don¡¯t think it necessarily means that the assassins would be trying to kill me, but considering my penchant for falling into the weirdest of situations... that just seems like it is a fairly safe assumption that they would be after me.

    Bard¡¯s Voice, well, I can think of a lot of delightfully devious things I could do with that.

    Miasmic Stats is pretty insane. Magical Girls will still be able to outgrow me, but I am definitely starting with a much higher stat base.

    And thinking about Magical Girls, I have a terrible feeling that I am going to run into conflict with them by forced association with the murderer of a new Magical Girl i.e., with The King. A Magical Guardian dying on their first day would probably be heart breaking for the Magical Guardians. Their entire subculture centers around the Bond. Something like this will lead to mass grieving, and soon to turn to righteous fury.

    Ugh! I will have to figure out something that will help me avoid those overpowered warriors of Magic.

    Quite a few of those traits in the blue System look useful. I just wish it didn¡¯t need to reference the requirements. I don¡¯t need to see shit from my life rehashed.

    Aggravatingly, none of these skills will aid me in actually getting out.

    Now that I have a new lease on life which I ruthlessly forged from my friend¡¯s corpse and handed over to the hands of the reaper, my goal is to improve my abilities so that I can escape.

    If that doesn¡¯t work out, and it likely won¡¯t due to my current skillset, perhaps The King could let me go on an ¡°expedition.¡± I doubt it, but there is precedent with Queen Isabella and Columbus. That would only tie me to him even more, plot-wise, though, which is not desirable. After all, one has to come back from their expedition.

    The final possibility is that I just bide my time for other Magical Girls to finally kill off The King. Then I can escape.

    After that, there is much I want to do. Continuing my education is the first thing that comes to mind.

    But with my new magic, I could actually participate in the war against Anathema and Torments, like a Magical Guardian. That stupid Familiar, the one that said my personality is so awful that I have an abysmal connection with Magic, will be able to suck it.

    I could use my existence as a monstrosity to help. I mean, I have always wanted to be a Magical Guardian. There is so much about being a Magical Guardian that is just irresistible.

    I could use their strength to defend the people I know, preventing them from leaving me. I would keep them with me. If I improved my magic, then I could create a body for Masua and Enterion. They would finally forgive me, right? Then we would get along with each other. They wouldn¡¯t try to hurt me, and I won¡¯t need to argue with them ever again.

    I could be Elisa¡¯s knight in shining armor, protecting her from all of the assassins that come her way. I won¡¯t see her bleeding out on me again. She only just managed to get healed by her body guards.

    OH! OH! And my parents would forgive me. They wouldn¡¯t hate me if I was the epitome of America, a patriotic protector, right? As a Magical Guardian, they won¡¯t need to lie about me failing to be the son they wanted. They will genuinely forgive me.

    I could heal my brother. He would be able to walk after five years of being stuck in bed.

    And... Being a Magical Guardian (M.G.) would prove that my soul is not as twisted as that idiotic green ram of M.G. Spring¡¯s Champion said it was, as Masua, Enterion, and my parents said.

    Well, they were proved right about that. My monstrous nature is irrefutable, I guess. No matter. If I escape, I will still be able to use these awful powers to achieve the first three.

    Enough feeling sorry for myself!

    I mean, all of... this...

    All of this is so cringe-inducing, right? Just so freakin¡¯ cringe. All of these emotions are so shameful and juvenile.

    So stupid for me to have these emotions. Me having them makes no sense.

    There is no reason why I should be feeling miserable or angry.

    I don¡¯t really deserve having these emotions.

    I forcibly halt my anxious spastic movements, standing up from my previously manic and huddled state.

    I look back to the blue System, the Magical System as my purple boxes put it. I might as well select them all if I cannot even avoid the traits I don¡¯t want to have.

    I drag my finger all the way down, selecting every single last one.

 Chapter 17: The Beauty Of Despair and Of Euphoria

    The System touches me for a brief second. For just a brief moment, I connect to the Magical Construct that spans this universe. Eerie logic in electronic blue lines crawls across my vision as it readies the Magic that will change my very body and give me the traits that will give me true power and color any classes I can obtain.

    My awareness of my reality temporarily expands to all the Magic under the System''s Domain, before retracting back to my body like a balloon, bringing with me the Magic that bonds with my being.

    The traits will change me to something more Magical in nature, this System sending Magic as needed for achievements that define the person''s very being.

    Within my mind¡¯s eye, a cartoon representation of my soul on a chalkboard appears. It is made of clear-white chalk lines surrounding empty spaces with the typical grayish-green and wooden frame of a stereotypical class chalkboard.

    My soul is scribbled inside a representation of my body, but for some reason, it just looks wrong inside my body, like a square peg in a round hole. If I had a body in my mind, just looking at it would give me a full-body twitch.

    I ignore this in favor of watching the chalkboard magically being written on, all of this being inside my mind¡¯s eye, a fever dream created by the System for a peculiar reason that I fail to comprehend.

    First, thousands of grey-chalk hands are scratched onto the chalkboard. Thick, beefy hands roughly grabbing and rearranging my soul, before the stop-motion picture settles on a derelict ziggurat in ruins.

    *scrape, scrape*

    Red chalk stubs are used to scrawl horns onto the ziggurat in ruins.

    The chalk drawing then swirls together in a Tim Burton-esque swirl on the otherwise normal chalkboard, before becoming a mess of chalk glass on a ground with anime sparkle symbols.

    A child weeping tears of calcium carbonate walks into the picture. They desperately glue the liberally sprinkled shards into a facsimile of the figure they want. It almost looks like how I want to look, but it is just off.

    It is just SO WRONG!!!!

    The mind view trembles at my severe anger - like a video taken with a shaking camera - but does not end nor is the material inside influenced.

    The statue of glued-up glass, where it had been looking into the side, emotionless, turns its head towards me.

    It looks down at its stomach, then looks at me, its dainty, lightly shaded mouth opening in surprise. Its stomach explodes into nasty, yellow diarrhea.

    A blur of the sun and the moon is scribbled onto the chalkboard like a comic book montage, until the sketch shows a drawing of the same figure, but older, having fixed themselves after that long while. This older version is a haggard being abstractly made with geometric glass.

    A hyper realistic kid walks up to the being and hugs them. The glass creature looks at me hauntingly as the child withers like a grape stuck on a vine.

    Trait: A Torment¡¯s Mummifying Soul

    A hand of shadow rushes into the picture from outside of my view. The blurry grey limb extends from the darkness into the spotlight that laid upon the chalkboard. It grips the board fiercely, before spinning it around until it is practically a cylinder.

    Then I find two hands of shadow gripping my arms ruthlessly. Now I have a body, and the hands of shadow lift me up and place me in a fragile and skinny boat, before something kicks the boat with great enthusiasm, sending me riding through the base of the "cylinder" on a skinny boat. I close my eyes, preparing to get the mother of all concussions as I ride into the optical illusion of a cylinder.

    And yet logic is defied. Instead of getting smashed by the spinning board, it turns into an actual tunnel. Suddenly I am steering through crazy twists and turns in an endless branching labyrinth of tunnels

    I am submerged under this drab, hopeless grey liquid, just riding along this wild current.

    Suddenly, a huge metal fin, practically a wall, crashes down through the ceiling.

    Just as quickly as it came, it rises back up. The current takes me on a path following right after the silver fin.

    WHOO! I shout wordlessly into the awful grey. I feel rather at home here. The colors just seem to evoke nostalgia.

    Me and the boat fly out on a massive spray of grey solution.

    A shocked giant with an oversized nose looks at us with a comical wide-eyed stare. We land on its skin. The grey fluid seeps into their blank white skin, and the giant promptly falls downs, sticking its hands to its face, shaking wildly. Between its fingers, its eyes stare out crazily, wild pinpricks looking at everything with intense hopelessness.

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    It laughs at the misery, at the despair, of the world. It was completely overwhelmed.

    It shrieks in desperation as a grey pallor crawls up its skin, massive blank white molars biting into its skin to remove the grey.

    Bloody grey chunks rain down onto the blank white floor of this world.

    It sighs in relief as all that is left is a ripped up and bright red arm, arterial blood spurting all over me and the boat.

    I feel an irresistible pull of the logic of this fever dream, forcing me to look over the edge of the boat onto the arm I am on. I see a grey drop drip down from the boat in slow motion.

    Once more, the grey crawls up its arm. This time, it swallows the entire being, permeating the being with grey despair.

    And the being bashes its brains out onto the floor, tossing us up in the air, where me and the boat hover in defiance of physics.

    For a brief moment, I am fully aware of exactly where every last bit of my blood is. A web of veins colored an apathetic grey run in three dimensions through my entire body. And it is unadulterated despair.

    Trait: Phantasm Poisoned

    The boat stretches and warps into a stadium full of shadowy simplified figures, at once larger than the Super Bowl and yet I see each betrayed expression with perfect clarity.

    Speech bubbles pop up from all of them, "TRAITOR!" in blaring, bold black font.

    Trait: TRAITOR! TRAITOR! TRAITOR!

    The stadium fades to black, before cheap exposed bulbs light up one by one in the darkness, lighting up a vivid red sign of cheap cloth.

    ¡°Welcome to the Carnival¡±

    The scenery of an amusement park made of faint purple blurred past me, as if I had been running past them.

    Finally, I reached a empty theater, surrounded by an audience of customers. They whispered among each other, confused as to whether it will start.

    A glowing gossamer thread floated down in front of me.

    I look up.

    Suspended on the ceiling is a spider-like figure, a Cheshire-like smile on its face glowing in the dark. Hundreds of glowing silk threads extend from its back, attaching themselves to the heads of everyone here.

    I look closer at one of the threads, only to realize that they are actually made of miniature words.

    After an hour in this weird space, someone throws a punch. And then everyone starts throttling and wrestling each other in a vicious melee.

    Trait: Puppeteer

    In the midst of this internal chaos, my perspective of this internal world falls on its side, as if I myself have collapsed to the ground.

    In massive blocky letters, carved out of solid wood, ¡°BA BUMP!¡± falls from above.

    A bigger ¡°BA BUMP¡± falls from the sky, crushing the previous letters.

    This repeats a few times, in time with what my heartbeat would be.

    The final time these towering wooden letters fall from the sky, they are aged, with lichen and mushrooms growing on them. The letters B, A, and P each have a rustic-style door in their hollow spaces, of the kind that the tradition for building it is desperately held onto by traditionalists.

    Each of them is pushed open and absolute beauties, the epitome of Charisma, fly out. To describe them would be a travesty upon their perfection. One could make entire books on them describing their Charisma and those who have seen them would do their best to burn those books for the supreme arrogance of trying to describe their perfection.

    They are the Fae.

    I never thought I would ever lay eyes on a creature that is the epitome of a stat.

    They come closer and place their hands on the left side of my chest, right above my heart, and glow with intense essence.

    Then they disappear, a mischievous giggle being the only thing left in this forest clearing I find myself in.

    And now I find out what 900 points of Charisma does to a person.

    Incredible power flows out from my chest with every pulse of my heart, sculpting and changing me ever so slightly.

    It settles deep within my flesh and gives me a shove.

    I feel like I have been pushed forward on the path to my ideal self.

    I have stepped onto my path of perfection, onto the path of Charisma.

    Err, well, I guess it would be more like I had run up several flights of stairs along my path.

    There is nothing like the euphoria burns through you, elevating you into the existence that is best for you. Nothing as pitiful as flesh restrains you from matching what your beauty your soul can be unrestrained by weighty chains.

    My skin does not need every blemish removed, nor does it need the most gorgeous shade of brown or grey. That is not me. Every little facet that is me becomes metaphorically polished until I achieve a greater beauty than I would if every imperfection was removed.

    Every Orb of Vanity glimmers with a gold luster surrounded by ebony darkness of the dimension hidden within my arms, covered under eyelids that stand out on my arms in a way that they are meant to be.

    My teeth against my now-purple lips exemplify the beauty that carnivorous teeth in the abyssal waters of the ocean have always exemplified. My facial features are notably mine, but exactly as feminine as I want them to be, as I need them to be.

    The metal of my hands is bent into angular instruments of death that sing to any warrior of the beauty of violence, and yet, they constructed by a metal of perfect purity and easily turned to the pastimes of peace.

    I giggle, my joyous laughter ringing through the empty space.

    Then I start sobbing with happiness. Tears pour down my face.

    My body is the perfect shape for me. I hug myself, pleased as - well, as meager as this phrase can be in describing it, it kinda works -pleased as punch. So many trials and I am given this gift. For a blissful moment, all of my doubts, on whether I deserve this or not, on whether the price was worth it... all of my doubts disappear. The horror of my prior visions fade to the background and the whispers of my past fail to crush me.

    My dress changes to better support and fit my changes. I could go into detail after detail that covers every minute change of my body, but it is mine, and it is private.

    It is mine.

    Trait: Fae Heart

 Chapter 18: Entertain Me, Peasants!

    I shoot up from the floor. I did not even realize I had fallen unconscious.

    Apparently, when I fell, my limbs went literally every which way. For example, one arm lay perfectly flat along my back and along my opposite side and one leg had temporarily folded into a digitigrade structure. I rearrange them back to my preference.

    I take in a deep breath, in... and out.

    Those visions focusing on my traits are freakin¡¯ intense.

    Most of the adults I talk with do not describe their trait visions to be anywhere near as intense as what I went through. Though, I did read a series of poems on the trait visions of army soldiers. Those were pretty awful too. PTSD Berserker Rage is an absolutely nasty trait. From the few excerpts I could understand at 7 years old, the soldier was a Gun-Augmenter with potent regenerating abilities, and she essentially bull-rushed trenches through no-mans land repeatedly against enemy fire and magic. The trait vision she had after she left the war was of getting triggered and killing her family with her bare hands; all in excruciating detail. She put herself in a high-security asylum soon after that.

    I stand up and brush out my wrinkled-up dress with my metal fingers, delighting in my perfect self. Unfortunately, my gloves are all shredded, so I need to remove them, but it doesn¡¯t matter now that I feel whole, like a broken mirror expertly pasted together. My eyes (the ones on my face) looking around, while my Orbs of Vanity all look at myself, for I feel too enamored with my wondrous self to not enjoy the work of art that is me.

    I should name myself something new; something which just resonates with me. I look back over my truths.

    Name: The Charismatic Star. The Forsaken Jester. The Noble of Paranoia. The Happy Bard. Broken Mirror.

    I should take inspiration from these. I adore The Charismatic Star the most, so I should choose something that draws on that the most. I would use it if it wasn¡¯t a title instead of a name.

    Stella? Eh, kind of boring.

    Sterling? A bit rich for me. I enjoy coins though. They are always works of art.

    Ugh, I really like the name Sirius. I love the idea of the name, but everyone will think of Harry Potter, and I don''t need a death flag either.

    Then there are a whole bunch of names that would be perfect! Like Sidrid and Namid, but they come from someone else¡¯s culture. In particular, ones that it would not make sense for me to use.

    You know what? I like Sol. It¡¯s simple, but I think it fits.

    I¡¯m pleased with it, and that¡¯s all that matters.

    I am Sol, and I will be a blazing star like the world will never know!

    Very chunni phrasing aside, The King does not seem to be up, so I might as well explore his lands. Who knows, I might even find an exit.

    I just need to find someone to be a guide.

    Hmmm... Tormented Princess, huh?

    On a whim, I stand up straight, stretching myself out and exulting in my new form.

    Instinctively, my Will gathers the Miasma my body radiates out like a furnace releases heat and pushes my Miasma in an imposing clarion call of royalty and clap my hands once.

    I laugh commandingly and like magic, an Anathema servant appears next to me. They nod affirmatively and start walking.

    I quickly grab my guitar and follow close behind them, strumming my guitar in a simple arpeggio. My fingers flutter over the strings expertly.

    I hear rapid clattering behind me and turn to look behind myself coolly. Awww, it¡¯s my bed/puppy/crystal snake-wig maker. It bumps against my legs like a cat and walks beside me with an adorable bounce to its steps.

    Now that I am not temporarily addled in my role as an Anathema, I can focus on the weird fuckery going on with the spatial dimensions of the hallway. Everywhere I look, wherever I expect walls to meet up, it seems like Miasma is seeping into and warping... something. I would presume the three main dimensions of space, but since I normally do not get a glimpse into the very foundations of non-essence reality getting messed up in front of me, this will have to remain speculative.

    I reach down to pet the little creature.

    I jump trains of thought, thinking about my little crystalline pet. I should name them too.

    Names for everyone!

    Hmmm... maybe Iris, after the goddess of rainbows? Dude is pretty sparkly and colorful. Perhaps I should use a less gendered name, given that I don¡¯t know their preferred pronouns. Granted, they may not be intelligent to even care or understand that type of thing, so I guess this is mainly for my sake.

    Crystal? Nah. I should not even be considering that. The lack of originality pains me so much that I want to pull a Dobby and punish myself.

    Ottoman? As amusing as it would be to name them after a foot rest given how much they resemble one sometimes, it, perhaps, is a bit cruel.

    Prism? A bit dull.

    Facet? I kind of like that one.

    ¡°How¡¯s that sound, buddy? Does Facet sound like a good name?¡± I say as I lean forward to pet them

    Fragile sheets of rectangular crystal shear off its main body, forming a ¡°head.¡± It quirks its head in confusion.

    My mouth quirks up in amusement. Perhaps I should use different logic. After all, they are still an Anathema. I don''t think they even understand what a name is. ¡°Does the meaning of Facet represent part of your truth?¡±

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    At that very edgy (yet apparently effective) sentence, it nods vigorously.

    ¡°Then that shall be your moniker,¡± I say solemnly.

    It prances around me happily at my statement.

    Ah. Looks like we are at the tailors. I poke my head into the room, my blue hair hanging askew.

    They are still preparing for war. I would have thought they were preparing for Betsie, but maybe they have been preparing for a different incoming force.

    The tall spindly figures turn slowly to stare eerily at me, the pitter-patter of blood dripping onto the floor with hundreds of arms filling the silence, everything lit up by the sickly green light of the curse runes.

    I slowly drag my head away from the opening and a full-body shiver runs up my spine, my many eyes blinking in fear. I don''t need to talk with them.

    I continue padding along the crystal floor, my ragged pink-and-white sneakers squeaking loudly in tandem with the clacking, spiffy buckled shoes of the servant next to me and the odd clattering/thudding of amorphous semi-solid crystal squishing against solid crystal.

    *sigh*

    And the gross laughing of the leering sun watching us.

    I ignore him though. The servant though is jittery as a squirrel. He keeps looking at the sun nervously, walking stiffly, perfectly faking the role of a terrified, abused servant.

    I heartily laugh and pat them on the back with far too much force. They stumble a bit.

    Hahahaha!

    I am definitely liking this new strength.

    I chuckle quietly and reassuringly to them. The servant bows firmly, before throwing a crisp salute to me.

    I grin, and motion them to follow me. My bones crack and muscle slurps as it rearranges itself. I skitter up the fancy embellished walls, perfectly horizontal to the ground.

    The sheer power I feel from my strength increase is just wonderful. With sheer momentum and force, I propel myself along the walls, my bronze hands slamming like cannonballs into the wall.

    As expected, the servant is capable of fixing the walls right behind me, so I unleash hell upon the halls, for there is no need to hold back the devastating physical force I can bring to bear. The servant runs after me, outpaced considerably by my new Speed and Strength. Now that I think back on it, it is such a major difference from when I first was thrust into this Tormented Dimension.

    While I muse on this, Stamina, the source of Strength, coils in sharp lines inside my thighs as I ready to jump. I slow down for a brief second, before my limbs launch me forward. They spring from tightly wound to thin poles of broken bone and flesh three times the length of the rest of my body.

    Wind rushes fast in the tight corridor as I jump nearly 50 meters with the aid of Inhuman Movements, before scrabbling along the walls to prevent sliding. It could have been even farther in an open space on the ground, but alas, the ceiling impeded me. Still, in under a minute, I finish what had been a two hour long walk to the study room for us musicians.

    I enter and at once one of the musicians stands up to greet me. We hug and he pats me all manly-like on the back. I pass him a fun music piece (on paper) I thought up. He passes me an eyeball with a green iris covered in music notes.

    HA!

    That¡¯s pretty funny. I think I needed that reminder these are vicious hungry monsters.

    However, I am one of those monsters and we already have a sort of camaraderie, so I am not going to let that get in my way. We all start working on each other''s music projects.

    I take a deep breath in while my metallic fingers fly across the strings. Oh, I needed this. Being able to relax and just chill out playing music is food for the soul.

    An organic symphony arises from our instruments. I can feel the deadly tune of monstrosities thrum through my bones in a delightfully discordant chorus.

    The Miasma radiating from my body as I play my song strengthens the concepts behind the musicians, building upon the foundation of The King¡¯s Miasma, which does not particularly resonate with musicians, with my truth of The Happy Bard.

    I never expected that Miasma would come so naturally to me. This may not be Magic, but it is magic, you know? Notes of Essence materialize over my instrument, pulled out from my Torment body and making bubbles in those shapes of music notes. They hover over me like a cloud of bees, before I send them off to the musicians with a nudge of my mind.

    The music notes hover over each musician before popping over each of the Anathema, raining down on them with droplets of Miasma. It leads to an immediate effect, changing each single one of them.

    Many mouths of various sizes start to appear on the lower half of their faces, each mouth warping the ethereal musicians, growing into carnivorously happy smiles.

    They wrinkle and grow haggard, their many perfect smiles and flawless teeth soon set on impossibly old-looking spirits.

    Lurid makeup creeps up their faces like moss up the corpse of a tree, somehow disguising their haggish features and making themselves look youthful once again.

    I look on with fascination. I mean, why not be interested in this? Everyone is always interested in those personality tests, and this is similar. The difference is that instead of some meaningless data, I can see one of my personality traits, a core part of what I am, affect the outside world in a way that not many get to see.

    Two lock many lips in an impressively weird take on a French kiss, fusing together into one solid figure. Each has a hand to the other partner¡¯s back, stabbing them straight into the back with the violas they had previously held. Their silhouette forms a black harp that radiates a song of terror and eagerness to betray the other because they can¡¯t stand a relationship built on compassion.

    Another, singing like nails on a chalkboard, runs around the room to escape a tumble weed of hands and arms that somehow plays twenty piccolos despite the lack of mouths.

    It really is horrifying to watch. It makes one squirm inside knowing they are so abominable that stories play out in miniature exemplifying those qualities.

    My grin widens reflexively as I gnaw on my hands in a nervous tic, long teeth chiming as they gnash together with the bronze hand like a pure symphony of bells. My eyes glow like ghostly beacons even in the well-lit room as I focus on the changes, pushing more of my truth into them.

    I can feel a connection with each of the Anathema in the room and push the Miasma they produce into the room. Adorably, large Among Us characters in the form of cheap, plastic balloons pop up. A poorly made prop of the meeting table in Among Us appears in the center of the room.

    I can see the symbolism involved in the amusing reference to pop culture.

    I really am an imposter. I even have the tongue and the teeth.

    I giggle maniacally, my mouth opening wide as the absurdity hits me and I recline onto my chair, my laughter joining the cacophony of beasts in the music lounge.

    No one be sussin¡¯ me though! I¡¯m too good to be caught!

    I¡¯m hungry.

    My thoughts immediately turn to consuming the Anathema, a haze of hunger settling over my mind. All I could think is how delicious Betsie...

    AHHHH! Goddamnit, no!

    I shake my head wildly, clutching my head while I laugh my ass off in horror. The Anathema look at me weirdly.

    My arms tremble as my muscles rebel at the thought of avoiding such an addictive pursuit. My face twitches as my emotions war across my face. I want just a taste... but it so abominable.

    *inhale*

    *exhale*

    I stand up and clap my hands, calling on the servant once again.

    I laugh out to them that it is time to leave. I need to distract myself and rid myself of these thoughts. Some more exploring will do me good.

    Facet was strutting around like an art deco bird, flapping square sheets of crystal and standing on two legs ending in pyramids. My face softens. I pick them up and pet them as we walk away from my abominable creations.

    I lean in close and whisper to Facet, "You are best birb. Who is? Yes! You are! Such a good birb."

 Chapter 19: The Brutal King

    The King

    The light was his courier and delivered to him the information to ensure he knew he was still in control over his land.

    The puppets under his dominion scurried to and fro, building in preparation to ensure he will retain the submission of reality, as is his right to rule, appointed by his goddess. Invaders of Magics rebelled, they will be here soon, the barbarians at his border.

    It enraged him.

    Those Magic-influenced beings called humans require an authority to rule over them, and if the Magical Guardians will not willingly surrender, then he intended to conquer them with an iron fist until everything was his plaything. He eagerly awaited the day every single thing will dance to his whims, as is the epitome of submission.

    He looked within his Miasmic construct attached to the concept of The One to Which Others Submit To, The Brutal King, The Tormenter and Lover of His Progenitor embedded in the Essence. Within it, malicious purple magic crackled and thundered around a pink orb which had been steadily diminishing over the past two days. Soon, he will have finally broken the Magical Guardian¡¯s Soul, and push the expansion of his kingdom even further, even faster.

    The fragments of the soul he had eroded bent to his Will, as all should. It turned into his Miasma, which he used for ripping and tearing into the physics of this dimension until it matched him like a cloak.

    How dare she attempt to take away his plaything? How dare she attempt to take away the one whose mind he sprung from?

    Charity. Hmph. What a weak concept. It cannot stand up to what is always at the top of the hierarchy.

    He spun his righteous rage into a royal tapestry befitting his stature and sent it off to anchor his concept on the immediate territory of the enemy state surrounding his palace.

    He warped the information that the light had nervously brought him as its tithe to the forefront of his mind, what passed for memory for this alien creature. He focused on his Lover, the royal creature that he had control of.

    They had easily mimicked the wild beasts in his domain. It LICKED him. Disgusting. He felt no fear thrumming through his Miasma, merely joy... and distaste that he was messing up their hair.

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    He has made a point since of messing it up at least once every three hours.

    He knew full well that the peculiar member of his Royal Court did not technically belong to his schema. It is an impossibility for something such as that to escape his notice. They are simply nowhere near strong enough to cover the fact that they were human.

    He instills far too much fear in the laws of reality for the laws to lie to him about that. But the recently appointed Tormented Princess fits in so well with the story he wove that leaving them out would be a travesty.

    They are the unwilling Lover of the King, the Jester of the Court, and his wild dear Hound that his soldiers found on his doorstep.

    Why would he not incorporate them? It enabled him to elevate his concept to from a mere puppeteer of his domain, to a being capable of enforcing his grasp over the humans. Now, it does not necessarily improve his strength nor could he use it against Magical beings coming for him.

    It will just be beautiful to enslave the humans, he will incorporate the humans, warping them into his ideal: SUBMISSIVE. That is all. It will simply be beautiful.

    They are such an endlessly interesting plaything... both he and them knew fully well that the other were perfectly willing to kill each other, but instead of (what he saw as) assenting to dying like the rest of those, with fear and terror or feeling murderous intent, they were willing to change their personality to submit to his ideals.

    He ¡°thought¡± on this. Really a precious treasure he owned. He admired them, just enjoyed watching them and showing his control.

    After all, if the guillotine falls and no one is there to observe it, did the servant really get beheaded?

    With a ruthless twist of his will, he looked through his leering sun, a spell he linked to the symbol of ¡®Big Brother,¡¯ an ingenious idea for even slightly Magical beings. He ¡°looked¡± at the object of his desire, besotted with their newest changes. They are simply so PERFECT. One of the most beautiful things he owned in his domain.

    He grinded his massive teeth, torn between devouring them or preserving the prized flower that they are.

    Writhing worm-like magic squirmed behind the pale skin devoid of facial features as he was overcome with lust of The King.

    His tentacles of his construct trembled and writhed with the intent of twisting their pretty little neck.

    He commanded the air to sigh for him. Truly a difficult choice.

    Devour the morsel or keep them alive?

    They glanced at his Sun, before smirking, their smile akin to a work of perfection. They were a natural in using Charisma, their mastery in their social graces easily channeling Charisma to exude an aura of royalty in addition to the simple fact that they knew they were royalty in a way that few do, subtly influencing all of his servants to adore them. His Anathema, unless he directly ordered them, would die for his Princess.

    They opened their mouth and sang a song with a rich, seductive baritone. Each lyric resonated with him, teasing him with their role as Jester and showing themselves off as a deeply attractive Noble.

    It made all his truths agree: he will let them survive for now.

 Interlude: OP Ninja - A Child Fond of Glassing the Place

    I looked at him with a lazy smile. Shadows stretched across my face, my bored half-eyes standing out like glass beacons against the darkness.

    He looked at me with offended eyes, his posture just far too arrogant.

    How foolish.

    I blinked slowly, daring him to attack me during my moment of weakness.

    He does not leap upon the opportunity.

    How idiotic. This fool deserves to die.

    ¡°I am top of my class! You are a mere child! Bow before me and I will forgive you for your stupidity,¡± he shouts all full of hot air.

    I fall backwards right into a resting position on the ground, hands behind my head.

    I snort with contempt, before going ¡°Zzzzzzzz.¡±

    His eyes twitch at my insolence and veins pop out of his forehead.

    ¡°Calm down old man... you¡¯ll have a heart attack and die before you even throw a punch...¡± I yawn.

    ¡°Old man!?!¡± he shrieks. ¡°I am ten years old, a prodigy!¡±

    Finally, he attacks.

    Took far too long.

    He stabs at where I am, his kunai, covered in a plume of fire, sinking into my throat.

    Oh wait.

    Just kidding.

    I replaced myself with a log with fake explosive tags attached to it and he had stabbed that instead.

    He shrieks and starts running from the convincing threat.

    Not before I pop out of a reflective puddle.

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    And pop one of his lungs with a broken shard of reflective glass.

    He falls down flat on his face while I slowly make a tall glass rectangular frame. I thread some razor wire through a hole on the top, before connecting it to a big glass rectangle with an incline angle on the long side facing downward.

    To make it more obvious for you, I made an ornate guillotine.

    He was crying and dragging himself across the ground.

    Oh dear.

    He moved himself out of alignment with the blade.

    That''s annoying.

    *Scooch.*

    Uh, not quite.

    *scooch.*

    There we go.

    ¡°PLEASE NO!¡±

    *Shink!*

    I¡¯m going to get some ramen.

    I looked at his headless body and at the rose-encrusted glass guillotine.

    I shrugged.

    I¡¯m not moving that. Too much work.

    I focused my chakra on my senses, expanding my chakra sense out into the world.

    Three large flickering plumes of chakra from adult ninja are hiding in the bushes preparing to assassinate me.

    Ok.

    I started walking slowly away from them

    One thousand and two shuriken infused with Fire chakra come hurtling at me.

    I raise my eyes to the heavens.

    How boring.

    The entire clearing is bombarded with a thousand and two impacts, each strong enough to be a military-grade talisman.

    I kill one of the assassins, disguised as a tree right where they were before they even found me.

    All three are looking around for me.

    I''m just joking.

    Only two are looking.

    I killed one, remember?

    Disguised as one of them, I stab the other, then I mimic the corpse I was hiding in the other bushes, falling dead with a dramatic, rattling gasp.

    I perfectly mimicked the flavors of chakra of the deceased assassin.

    The one assassin left runs to my resting spot, crying.

    ¡°No! You weren¡¯t supposed to die. WHYYYY?!?!¡± he shrieked to the heavens, wailing in heart-broken grief.

    He cradled my corpse-like face.

    He must have loved this man.

    How dumb.

    I lift my hand up to his chest and he gasps in happy surprise, thinking that his lover is still alive.

    With a forceful press of chakra, I easily overwhelmed his inherent chakra, turning his flesh to glass.

    Threads of spun glass extended from his back like an octopus as he gasped, his heart frozen, my forceful push turning the air behind him to glass too.

    I wipe off my illusion.

    Now I get ramen.

 Chapter 20: Finding the Perfect Stress Ball - Part 1

    I walk aimlessly, my retinue of servants increasing with each Anathema I pass by.

    I calmly and elegantly look around at the scenery of the palace.

    I glance back at the ever-increasing number of servants trailing behind me and I then turn my face forward to my travels, desperately trying to restrain my smile to normal levels (or at least normal according to the standards of this Tormented Zone). They fawn over me, fussing about with my bow and dress.

    HAHAHAHAHA! A tear runs down my face.

    Their body language blatantly expresses infatuation with me. How dearly amusing. It is so difficult to not preen like a peacock.

    They... love me?

    I am filled with happiness and revulsion in equal measure, golden Miasma of Vanity spinning around in beautiful spirals over my arms like the turbulence of slow-moving rapids over a rocky waterbed.

    My Orbs of Vanity whisper to me through the Miasma. It is only right that they love me.

    My mind mentally twitches at the intrusion of thoughts that are not my own. I internally grimace. I am truly not enjoying these thoughts that have come with becoming a Torment. I can feel despair running through my very veins, screaming and wailing in tandem with my soul. Metallic vanity is concentrated in my very arms, wishing to make the world cry tears at my beauty.

    With ease, I force my will upon my claws and sharpen my fingers in long talons.

    *SHINK*

    Without a twitch in my expression, I drag my home-grown weapons along the eyes on my arms, silencing their incessant narcissism. My gray blood sprays all over the floor from my eyes, the orbs ¨C parts of my body ¨C cracking like brittle glasswork.

    I can¡¯t resist the need to see the body language of the servants.

    They have their hands plastered to their faces in shock, stiffening in horror. If only they weren¡¯t faceless entities with smiling masks. I wish I could have seen their reactions.

    *sigh*

    I rub my face with my metal hands, oiled as they are with my own blood, before realizing my mistake. I hold a hand out, and a handkerchief is quickly placed in it so I can clean myself up. Unfortunately, this self-harm is only a temporary solution. One of the problems of being a Torment. The closer a creature is to being a living embodiment of Essence, the faster they heal from physical injuries and the much harder it is to actually kill them. Which is why it is pointless for anyone besides Magical Guardians to fight Torments. I mean, it¡¯s a bit more complex than that, but that¡¯s...

    Hmmm...

    Now, this is odd.

    My eyes laser in on a discrepancy in the walls of these hallways. I quickly race towards the wall, scrutinizing the oddity. There are ripples in them in these palatial structures, as if something was messing with the Miasma.

    Perhaps a remnant of Betsie¡¯s battles?

    The skin of her face, once always filled with compassion no matter her real emotions, was ripped and torn.

    Her own flesh had invaded her brain like a vivid scarlet cancer, her nose inverted as it went through her nasal cavity.

    Shards of bone poked out of the dome of her skull and her jaw could be found by looking far to the left of her half-eaten corpse.

    Fuck! I nearly twitched there.

    Starsdamnit Betsie! Your fucking compassion and kindness are haunting me from beyond the grave!

    One of my arms shoots out and grabs a nearby servant by their head.

    They struggle helplessly against my improved strength. I could crush them so easily compared to when I had first been thrown into this crisis. Destroying them in a fit of rage would relieve my anger so much. They really are the chaff of the Anathema after all. They aren¡¯t even sentient. Their life doesn¡¯t matter.

    My fierce grip tightens, the monster¡¯s bone-white mask cracking. Tears fall out of my eyes. They slam their monstrous, gloved hands uselessly against my arms and body.

    I just am not coping well with this place. I just want to take out my frustrations on something created by The King. This is all so much.

    If I take just a bite, I could wash away the pain with pleasure.

    With immense willpower, using Charisma to augment it, I force my fingers to open, releasing the poor servant.

    I wrinkle my nose in disgust. There is no point in having yet another breakdown. That just makes me an unlikable person. Everyone is ok with a few mental episodes, but well... any more is just impossible to empathize with. People will hate you for being so weak. People will avoid you, and rightfully so, maintain their mental health.

    At least, that¡¯s what I learned from Mom. And she¡¯s always right.

    I crouch down and apologize to the servant for my needless cruelty.

    I follow the ripple, mentally shaking the distraction off. I eliminate my emotions with practiced ease.

    Congratulations! You have progressed further on the Truth of The Happy Bard.

    You have acquired the skill Mind Control of the Self: Using Will, augmented by your considerable Charisma, you can temporarily delete emotions and memories that are making it difficult to focus on being the perfect you for others.

    A feeling of surprise washes over me. Seems like the Purple System agrees with me.

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    I activate the ability, my feet automatically carrying me in the direction of the ripple as I sink into the depths of mind.

    Within my mind, a sheet of violin music that I just know that others will not enjoy listening to appears. Each note represents a memory. I drag a finger along it, sounding it out as I go. I come across a particularly nasty section.

    Outside in the real world, my royal purple eyes glow with intense Charisma as I erase the section. The skill whispers creepily to me that the memory will come back, but for now, I won¡¯t be a disgusting person for being so weak.

    ________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    After a while walking regally, I really would love to get back to skipping around. It is a far more enjoyable movement and I really love being seen as bubbly and dramatic.

    Where¡¯s the fun in being small if you can¡¯t make someone squeal at your cuteness? Oh, and now that I think about it, now that my body has changed and my hair is even longer, I¡¯m going to be able to get away with a lot more outfits!

    I stutter to a halt as the source of the oddity becomes evident. Looks like I¡¯ll have to postpone my thoughts on how I¡¯ll be able to braid my hair for now.

    A massive metal cylinder absolutely covered in Magical runes of protection stands out blatantly against the palatial Tormented Zone.

    It is made of Builder-enhanced metal that is at least 10 feet thick at the smallest and it is twenty feet tall.

    Its coloring comprises of mainly steel-gray, with some yellow and black hazard paint, decorated with a few big, flashing warning lights attached to it. In contrast with the rest of the lighting by the living chandeliers, its lights cast the corridors in ominous red light. This design makes the building easier to find in the midst of emergencies.

    It is the emergency shelter. My chest tightens. If only I had made it in time...

    Well, I didn¡¯t make it in time. There is no point in wishing. If I wish to indulge in dreams, then I am free to bury myself in bitterness on my own free time.

    Instead, I have a better idea.

    On an impulse, I grab the butler¡¯s jacket right off from his back.

    They aren¡¯t really going to think I¡¯m a child if they notice my chest. My chest is fairly average for my age, and that¡¯s ALL it needs to be for me. It is still perfect for me, which makes it perfect, period. It still is a blatant giveaway though, detracting from my role mimicking a child. And screw those who say seventeen is still a child!

    The sleeves hang over my shoulders and the lapels bump against my ankles, not quite dragging on the floor. It really exemplifies why I was the bane of our costume-makers in theater.

    ¡°Why do you have to be the lead actor? It is such a pain to make specialty costumes for you,¡± grumbled Helix good-naturedly.

    I cannot help but feel bitter that all of these people are in there, safe and sound. Meanwhile, I am out here, and I have been TORTURED!

    I walk up to it, trailing a hand across the runes. I peer at my hand with intense curiosity.

    How interesting...

    I am unharmed.

    Well, well, well. Looks like I am still Magical enough that the runes built for keeping Torments out don¡¯t hurt me.

    My ever-present smile widens into a wider grin.

    Time for some harmless fun.

    You see, people cannot leave the shelter until the Tormented Zone is gone. And sure, they have plenty to last them, from TV to electronic books galore! And yet, it is human nature to be curious at what is going on outside of their cozy little hidey hole. Which means they are most certainly keeping watch over the outside world. Some are probably looking at the screens obsessively, still racked with nerves.

    It¡¯s not like anyone is going to recognize me after the changes of Fae Heart. I¡¯m still recognizably me, even despite everything, but with all of these changes, they will ignore it faster than you can say ¡°despair.¡±

    I look right at where I know the cameras will be, protected as it is with layers upon layers of Magical Guardian technology.

    Time to put Inhuman Movements to the real test: psychological horror.

    I reach out a hand, the Skill lengthening my arm to compensate me for my height and add that ick factor. I lightly tap my metallic finger on the camera to get their attention.

    I then retract my hand and wave it around jubilantly, as if I am super happy to find them.

    I stand up and up and up, my legs lengthening like a cartoon character, though it looks oh so awful and disturbing in real life, until my eye and half of my face is pressed near the camera. Oddly enough, my pants manage to lengthen with my legs too.

    My eyes widen with intensity and my mouth splits open across my face, an awful sound of rubber bands snapping as flesh breaks apart to make away for my new maw with excruciating slowness. My Pain Resistance, improved by the System based on all of my experiences, completely nullifies the pain. As a result, I can use Inhuman Movements to my heart¡¯s content, exploiting my new Dexterity to the hilt.

    I make sure they hear every. Single. Last. Pop.

    My amethyst eye roams around wildly for a second, my iris restricting from being so close to the mirror.

    Now, here is the thing. Everyone would expect a ¡°~hello~¡± in a creepy tone. And I¡¯m sure I could still make plenty of them piss their pants at that. To really creep them out though, you need to throw them off and befuddle them.

    I retract back to normal, all of my Inhuman Movements reversing.

    ¡°Anyone want to play chess? I have been stuck out here since the whooshy purple magic came zoomin¡¯ to class¡± I ask brightly and naively, hands behind my back and twisting back and forth in an eager mood for having play time.

    For the act, I wait eagerly. Waiting ten minutes. Which takes forever to turn into twenty minutes. And then turns into thirty minutes. After roughly an hour and fourteen minutes, slowly making my posture dejected and depressed in a childish manner.

    I slump onto my knees in what looks like a completely unplanned expression of frustration, groaning. I look over to my servants in distress.

    ¡°Mr. Butler, sir, are the rest of my class not here? I don¡¯t understand why they don¡¯t want to play. They always wanted to play when the teacher was away!¡± I say, tears running down my face and sniffling.

    The servant quirks their head, dearly confused.

    * internal sigh*

    My dearest friend, most noble servant that you are, and well-versed in the ways of spiffyness... your acting chops suck.

    Welp! Time to improvise! Let¡¯s really play up my obliviousness.

    ¡°THANKS MR. BUTLER, SIR!¡± I leap up to him with YOUTH and VIBRANCY and oh my god I am trying so hard not to laugh. I give him one biiiig hug.

    They pat me on my back awkwardly.

    Yessss. That awkwardness is perfect.

    I disengage from the hug, much to the obvious relief of the poor servant. I muster the smile of an innocent child who is far too attached to a stranger they do not know. I have first-hand experience with this one!

    Still though... the hug was really nice. Even if they didn¡¯t really understand, that little bit of solace and comfort was... it was really nice.

    I do wonder just what their reactions are. Hahahahahahahahahaha. The urge to laugh maliciously is strong, but I am stronger!

    I walk up to the shelter, once more assured! Ready to ask them again! If you don¡¯t succeed, try again and again!

    ¡°Um, I¡¯m not sure if you didn¡¯t hear me, but I was wondering if anyone wants to be my friend.¡± I breathe shallowly and make myself look incredibly nervous.

    I stand at the thick stubby vault-like doors, rubbing the back of my head nervously. Awkwardly, I rub my arms in anticipation and pursing my lips in childish impatience. It really is nice to cope with all of my anxiety these past few days by redirecting it to someone else by taking it out on these poor bastards.

    ¡°Oh... I see. You guys think I¡¯m... annoying too.¡± I nervously run my hands through my hair.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry if I was bugging you guys. I understand. I think I am annoying too.¡±

    I walk away from the shelter, leaving them to welter in sympathy.

    ~ I¡¯ll be back. ~

 Chapter 20: The Stress Ball Feels Squeezed - Part 2

    In the Shelter

    A teenager lounged in front of the cameras, bored out of her ever-loving mind, eyes listlessly going over the empty hallways around the shelter. Everyone else was playing board games all around her.

    ¡°When will this Tormented Zone end? It has been at least 10 hours!¡± Claire groaned out loud to her friend next to her.

    Al pulled his black hat down over his resting bitch face and grumbled ¡°I don¡¯t know, and I didn¡¯t know the first billion times you asked...¡±

    To most outside observers though, it sounded like ¡°Midnno ¡®n¡¯ midnnofstbilln tahmes uasst."

    Claire gave Al a glare and punched him lightly in the shoulder, though there was no real heat to it. She went back to lounging, trying to get her ADHD ass settled. She fidgeted, with her chair squeaking and groaning as she tried to find a comfortable position.

    Out of the corner of her current view of the ceiling, a blur moved onto the screen. She shot up and focused on the many figures moving into view of the camera.

    Her eyebrows rose as high as they could, with her mouth forming an O-shape and her eyes widening in shock.

    The most adorable girl-creature-thing she had ever seen just walked onto the screen, huddling in a way-too big jacket. She was surrounded by an entire group of Anathema servants like a princess surrounded by body guards. The contrast between the two - Anathema? She was unsure whether the kid was an Anathema. She was just too cute - was stark.

    The girl on the screen lit up as she looked at the shelter, skipping forward out of the circle of servants that had formed. She was just too cute!

    SO CUTE!!!

    ¡°Hey, are you ok?¡±

    SO FREAKIN¡¯ CUTE!

    ¡°HEY! What¡¯s wrong with you!?¡±

    JUST IMPOSSIBLY CUTE!!!

    *smack*

    ¡°OWW?! What was that for... SO CUTE!¡±

    *SMACK*

    Claire shakes herself off, grimacing as she pulls herself off the floor.

    ¡°Why did you hit me, dude?!¡±

    ¡°Girl, you were freakin¡¯ drooling like you found the ultimate cat meme!¡± he shouted, gesticulating wildly in worry. While he did so, he made sure to studiously avoid looking at the screen, not trusting that he wouldn¡¯t fall to the same trap.

    He too was a fellow admirer of cat memes.

    ¡°What?! No, I wasn¡¯t...¡± she brought her hand up to her mouth, coming away with slobber. ¡°Ew! I was!¡± By now, everyone had gladly left the board games in favor of watching the drama going on.

    An absolutely adorable giggle came from the screen, and the teenagers looked at each other in terror. They slowly turned to the camera; the voice completely irresistible.

    A huge, purple eye stared at everyone through the camera, covered with amethyst tendrils of crystal, like frost under the purple light of an Aurorae Borealis. The iris looked around manically, the eye devoid of any iris.

    The cat-girl/monster pulled back a little bit, allowing everyone to see her smile. The grin crept across her impossibly attractive face, widening way too big.

    Then the cheek started to separate.

    Someone puked up their rations.

    Flesh popped and separated, strings of white fat and red flesh doing a poor job covering the awful maw of rows upon rows of bone-white, conical teeth. Both of the teenagers shivered, and a couple more people puked.

    Everyone physically winced with each *POP* and *SNAP* as the strings of flesh snapped like violin strings under duress, dangling like macabre garlands.

    The one kid huddling in the corners well-known to be conscripted to benefit the gangs barely restrained her chuckles at the pitiful people who were sick at such a tame sight.

    The girl-monster-thing retracted back to her ADORABLE SMALL FIGURE!

    Both Claire and her friend, along with some others, started getting sucked in again, before tearing their eyes away with visible effort.

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    Unfortunately, all of the students¡¯ willpower was only overridden by mere sentences uttered by the creature.

    ¡°Anyone want to play chess? I have been stuck out here since the whooshy purple magic came zoomin¡¯ to class," said the adorable little child, twiddling her hands nervously. The girl on the screen twisted side-to-side with barely restrained energy.

    You could practically hear the shattering of hearts of everyone in the room at that sentence. At once, everyone felt absolutely terrible at leaving this poor child outside.

    One of the teachers stood up.

    He said firmly, ¡°We cannot let the monster trick us. We all know that Anathema can be devious in the utmost. It is obviously mimicking a child. Just look at its eyes. That is NOT human. This monster must be trying to manipulate us. Surviving this long in a Tormented Zone without the System is an impossibility, particularly for a child.¡±

    The teachers nodded seriously, in addition to some other students, though quite a few still snuck furtive glances at the camera.

    ¡°We should put cloth over the camera. We can use one of the shelter blankets,¡± said one of the teachers.

    They quickly put it over the screens.

    The two teenagers were forced to leave their entertainment and watch an intense Monopoly game for an hour. By then, they were sure that the monster had left. The teenagers were certain there was no way an Anathema would just wait there when their ploys weren¡¯t working.

    She whispered into her friend¡¯s ear and he nodded, a calm smile on his face. They disentangled themselves from the game and sneak to the screens.

    One of the teachers sighed in the midst of a game of Candy Land with her Grade 9 students. She whispered to herself, ¡°Kids, you think I don¡¯t have a skill that lets me know what is going on my class? My Perception is 30 times more than yours.¡±

    ¡°Well, it¡¯s not my problem...¡± she said, pushing up her glasses in exasperation. She turned back to the board game.

    ¡°Now kids, let¡¯s see who wins.¡±

    ¡°Ha. Looks like I have the Gloppy card, kids.¡±

    ¡°Awww, man!¡± chorused the children.

    The teenagers snuck towards the cameras, lifting the sheets off of the bright screens. The sight before them was absolutely heartbreaking, the effect of unbelievable Charisma on top of the depressingly sad slump the child completely did their hearts in the way of the dinosaur.

    Claire and her friend observed the girl swaying back and forth in exhaustion, before she yawned way too large. Claire flinched back at the predatorial teeth, before feeling bad as the girl covers her mouth in embarrassment, her perfect gray skin blushing darker in embarrassment. The girl looked around frantically to make sure nobody saw her before visibly slumping in relief along with her large ears, not realizing that people in the shelter were watching her.

    Was this really the creepy individual staring into the camera? She thought aloud. I mean, it¡¯s not like being cute is a crime.

    ¡°What do you think, Al? Do you think she really is an Anathema?¡± she whispered to him.

    ¡°I mean, she isn¡¯t human. Could be corrupted or a demon though,¡± her best friend, Al, posited.

    ¡°I was thinking that too,¡± Claire settled into a thinking pose on her comfy chair.

    ¡°I just don¡¯t understand how she could have survived so long if she isn¡¯t an Anathema though. She should be dead. I feel really bad that I am just watching what looks like a child surrounded by monsters wait in front of shelter.¡± she muttered to him.

    ¡°Same.¡±

    On the screen, the kid suddenly slumped down to the ground with the kind of dejection only children can have, looking absolutely miserable. Her long hair pools around her as she groans in dejection. She turns her head to the most serious-looking servant/Anathema.

    ¡°Mr. Butler, sir, are the rest of my class not here? I don¡¯t understand why they don¡¯t want to play. They always wanted to play when the teacher was away!¡± the kid groaned towards him.

    The butler tilted its head to its left, not even understanding what the kid is saying.

    The two teenagers felt shame turn their ears bright red as they just watched the poor kid who has been waiting for someone to play with her for an entire hour, all alone in solitude. She may have been creepy, but was that really her fault? And she has been surrounded by awful monsters that she is giving meaning to their actions that doesn¡¯t even exist. It¡¯s like watching a kid pretending her dolls are her dead parents.

    Suddenly, the kid leapt up with hands on her hips in a Superwoman pose and then ran up to the ¨C well, apparently the butler. She leaps up and gives him a fierce hug as if she desperately wanted solace.

    ¡°THANKS MR. BUTLER, SIR!¡±

    She disentangled herself from the hug, before firming herself up with confidence. She frowned adorably with intensity and marched up to the vault doors like a comically cute policewoman.

    ¡°Um, I¡¯m not sure if you didn¡¯t hear me, but I was wondering if anyone wants to be my friend?¡± she asked, her confidence quickly fleeing.

    All of the sudden the teenagers felt really pressured to give her some answer; any answer at all would work.

    By now, quite a few had decided not to listen to the teachers¡¯ decision not to watch the cameras, and had joined Claire and Al in watching the poor kid looking like a kicked puppy waiting to be let in.

    ¡°Oh... I see. You guys think I¡¯m... annoying too.¡± she nervously ran her hands through her hair in a habitual tic.

    If this had been an anime, a cartoon arrow would have stabbed everyone who was watching the cameras straight through their hearts.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry if I was bugging you guys. I understand. I think I am annoying too.¡±

    More than a few cartoon arrows would have joined that singular arrow if it had been an anime. A few people even whimpered at the pitiful scene.

    Everyone watched as the child walked dejectedly away from the vault, further cementing in their mind that she was not an Anathema. That horrific scene of her cheek splitting apart to reveal a carnivorous maw of teeth still niggled in the back of their head though.

    The scene was sad on its known, but everything about it just pushed their buttons perfectly, making it one of the saddest things they had ever seen. They tried to hold back tears yet to no avail.

    The teachers tried to be annoyed at so many of the kids defying them. Yet tears ran down their faces too as a chill formed in their heart, seeing a defenseless child walk away surrounded by monsters.

    It was horror by way of sympathy. They desperately wanted to protect the diminutive child but were helpless. Something that felt far worse than anything a gory movie could have brought about.

    Everyone¡¯s morale was well and truly crushed as the child walked away hand-in-hand with the monster next to her.

 Chapter 21: Baskinâ€™ in the Sunshine

    For the rest of the day, I made sheets of music and messed around with The King, perfectly emulating the Jester of the Court. I truly sunk myself into even further into the role, going so far as to wipe certain memories from my brain for the day to make sure I acted in the way he liked.

    We laughed together as twisted best friends, wiping away tears of joy and patting each other on the back.

    Miasma whispered his emotions and cruel thoughts endlessly into my ears.

    The pretense of happiness is so frail, though I had regressed in my opinions to a more juvenile understanding of the world due to the memory wiping. As a result, it couldn¡¯t bother me.

    He broke my rib cage as easily as twitching when he hugged me, before ordering the bone to fix itself. I gain a few levels in Pain Resistance as a result.

    At night, I snuggle with Facet, perfectly comfortable. We cozy up with each other, sharing in each other¡¯s warmth like wild dogs in a den.

    I get up first thing in the morning, ready to rack their minds with terror. I was the unruly Princess, ready to torment those around her.

    I skip eagerly to the vault, sneering as I prepare a plan to terrify them.

    They are so innocent, hiding in their shelters, living in a whole ¡®nother world separate from the bloodshed I crawl through every day. It enrages me to see them come out everything every day whole and hale. They are completely incapable of beginning to understand my personality and decisions because their surrounding life never molded them into a monstrous cast.

    I will teach them how to be HAPPY.

    My head twitches to the side, snarling as if I could growl out the mental intrusion. I clutch my face, drawing ethereal blood easily.

    No. I have done enough. I¡¯m changing my mind.

    I refuse to do pranks at the behest of the wrong concept. I don¡¯t want to teach them a lesson. I do pranks to liven things up. It increases the entertainment of life, and increasing entertainment betters life. I am no philosopher taking their logic to the natural, yet extreme, conclusion. I am a monster enslaved to my whims and quirks, not to some higher ideology.

    So on my whim, I backflip in the opposite direction of the vault and run on my hands back to the throne room.

    Suddenly, the wall in front of explodes!

    *CRASH!!!*

    The walls in front of me shatters in a massive flash of light and I switch to my legs for running, not that it would make much difference in my speed given my Inhuman Movements.

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    Massive chunks of solid stone tumble down in an avalanche, half-molten with lava condensing from the air as parts of the wall that had turned gaseous cool down to liquid state.

    The timing is rather suspicious, no?

    ¡°WHOOP! WHOOP! I never get tired of blasting through these Tormented Zones,¡± shouts a high feminine voice.

    A smile fights its way across my cheeks. It doesn¡¯t seem like they noticed me.

    ¡°Hey, WATCH IT! There are people walkin¡¯ here!¡± I shout out towards them in a Bostonian accent, giving my voice a curmudgeonly affect to it.

    ¡°Kids these days, firing their dinky little weapons everywhere!"

    ¡°Who the fuck is talking to us?¡± A Magical Guardian with electric yellow hair shouts back, zooming in with a befuddled expression on her face.

    ¡°It¡¯s me, a poor, innocent citizen of our most noble city." I say wryly.

    "Please don¡¯t kill me, Magical Girl Sunshine.¡± I drop the act, smiling in amusement. I recognize her easily. She¡¯s one of the top protectors in our neighborhood and she is well-known for being trigger-happy. She could kill me at any moment.

    Her jaw completely drops, her face flushing intensely. While floating mid-air, her posture turns nervous and she pulls on her armor plate like she is trying to release heat. Which is honestly kind of weird because her armor looks it is one continuous humanoid tank shell made of solid plasma.

    It wouldn¡¯t exactly make sense to be trying to release body heat when you are armored by something as hot as the surface of the sun.

    ¡°Oh my... ummm, hi.¡±

    I frown at her reaction. I know I did nothing that would elicit such a reaction. Was she poisoned by one of the Anathema? I literally asked her not to kill me. That should have elicited worry or concern at the very least.

    ¡°Are you ok, ma¡¯am?¡± I ask worriedly.

    ¡°Oh yeah, I¡¯m, uh, I¡¯m fine.¡± she gives my body a long look and I don¡¯t even think she knows that she was obvious.

    My eyebrow raises.

    I understand now.

    This is ridiculous. She is in the midst of what amounts to a warzone. Thoughts of romance should be the farthest thing possible from her mind.

    ¡°Well, um, I¡¯m going to leave now. I hope your work goes well.¡± I give her a sloppy salute. I jauntily walk off, whistling as I go.

    ¡°UH WAIT!¡± Suddenly, she is right next to me, holding onto my shoulder. I look back with interested, wide eyes, staring into the depths of her eyes with an intense stare. I then look neutrally down at her hand and then back up.

    She looks down at her hand on my shoulder and then leaps back with an ¡°EEP!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry! I was just wondering whether I could have your phone number?¡±

    Now it''s my turn to be shocked. My skin turns a darker shade of brown-grey.

    Puhhhhuhuhuhuhuhahahahahahaha! I mentally wipe a tear of laughter. What the fuck is going on?!

    ¡°Ummm, I wouldn¡¯t mind trading phone numbers for, like, friend-type shit. I, er, have a girlfriend. Still would love to be your friend,¡± I say awkwardly.

    We... trade phone numbers... and that¡¯s it...

    She didn''t attempt to stab me...

    I go towards The King¡¯s throne room, and she goes to back to her team of Magical Guardians. She did not attack me, nor did she interrogate me. Was this really due to Fae Heart? Without skills to weaponize that Charisma though, my thousand points only emphasizes what is there.

    I am dearly confused.

 Chapter 22: The Elite Torment Killers

    I flew up unsteadily next to my comrade M.G. Mourning Diamond who was coldly and efficiently preparing a large-scale resurrection array for the upcoming battle with the Torment. Though worryingly, it seemed like there was more Torments than command thought there was. Specifically, there is a minor Torment that has one of the most subtle mind influences I have ever felt. It might not have been powerful but...

    I grit my teeth in embarrassment as I think about that beautifu- horrendous monster.

    ¡°Mourning Diamond, I need you to check me for mind influence. I just ran into what I think was a Torment that specced in mind control.¡±

    M.G. M.D. immediately paused his preparations for battle and rushed over to my side. His slanted eyes looked over me for obvious signs of weaponized corruption. He was the epitome of calm and collected, practically emotionless. Without saying a word, he wept blue diamonds that flowed into a fancy calligraphy over me.

    Like always, he puckered his lips down at his ability''s usage of tears to form the spell, still finding it weird that he wept spells into existence. I found his hang up childish since he has had been a Magical Guardian for the past three decades, but I suppose his ability is a bit more esoteric than mine. I''m a simple woman. Bigger booms are all that''s needed for me.

    A blue light radiated off the shining blue calligraphy he wrote, drenching my mind in his magic of Depression, which he had managed to turn into a powerful desire to heal. Ironically, the poor guy¡¯s poor mental health makes him one of the best mind healers among Magical Guardians. It got taken into account by the System, and so now he can heal others of what he cannot heal for himself. His case is pretty abnormal though. Magical Guardians rarely get so shafted, unlike the rest of humanity.

    ¡°Everything is all clear, Captain Magical Guardian Sunshine. No signs of Miasma, nor other Essence, besides your own. Analyzing the trace Magic signatures created by prior emotions you have felt, I have come to a different conclusion. From what I can tell, you were naturally besotted with the individual, and their high base Charisma merely accentuated what was already there,¡± he stated calmly and seriously. "It is likely that this is an outside influence that you fell head over heels for."

    I started choking on my own spit.

    Curse his lack of tact! I gave him a glare, for all the jack-shit it did. His face might as well as been set in the diamond that was part of his namesake, with his poker face.

    *cough, cough*

    Unfortunately, my comrade Magical Guardian Fire-Fighter, who had been twiddling her thumbs while she waited for battle, had been right next to us, whooshing around on her flames.

    She burst out into raucous, aggravating laughter.

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    ¡°BAHAHAHAHAHAHA! He told you the facts, girl! You are in luuuuv~¡± she mocked.

    I was deeply unimpressed and gave her a quelling glare, which was far more effective, making her raise her hands in surrender to me.

    ¡°Sorry, sorry, sheesh! I¡¯m just trying to find humor after all of the death that¡¯s been going on,¡± she said, not particularly sorry.

    ¡°It¡¯s been rough you know. And you have been a tight-ass since the Torments made this play,¡± she complained.

    ¡°I understand. I apologize. I just worry about that there is some random creature we know nothing about. I believe to be similar to Sirens in terms of levels of attractiveness, and apparently even better in combat prowess. After all, it has survived in a Tormented Zone for so long. The time dilation effect means it has been here for nearly a week and it has lasted that long.¡± I said, offering an opening for her.

    ¡°Yeah. I guess,¡± she grudgingly assented.

    Then dough-girl chimed in.

    ¡°Is it really that concerning? I thought that Torments and Anathema are really the only things dangerous to Magical Girls,¡± asked the noob.

    Oh Lord, why did I get I stuck with a Pink noob? It¡¯s like dealing with an anime protagonist all fucking day long: Righteous, dumb, and far too much power than they know what to do with.

    How does she not know basic tactics? I knew that when I was her age, a century and a half ago.

    I couldn''t snap at her though. She needs to be fine asking us if she truly doesn''t know. I summoned on my Leadership skill to cool my head, metaphorically and literally.

    ¡°A lot of times, you may encounter variables during a fight with a Torment that make the battle far more difficult than it otherwise would be. Case in point." I raised a finger up.

    "I blasted the Ninja Dimension''s Daimyo of Agriculture out of existence with my usual application of firepower. He was a cultist of the Divine Torment Diarrhea, so he needed to go," I said, accentuating it with a smack of my fist into my palm.

    "Unfortunately, the Ninjas couldn''t take it like men. So, they gave me a bounty high enough to get assassins all the way out of the Ninja dimension cross-over to hunt my ass down." I explain amicably, but with emphasis.

    "An ENTIRE GROUP OF ELITE NINJA jumped me during a routine fight with a weak Torment," I said, starting to raise my voice.

    Everyone winced in sympathy at that, with the Pink noob grimacing especially hard. Then I hit them with the second blow.

    ¡°I lost BOTH of my arms because of the Ninjas. The Torment, naturally, ate them. It grew so powerful that it achieved Titan status. It demolished the entirety of Detroit before enough Magical Guardians assembled to defeat it.¡±

    ¡°It was the Cannibal Maker.¡±

    The noob opened her mouth, only to think better of it, and thought on it in silence.

    After a few seconds to let that sink in, she found her voice. She firmly said ¡°I misjudged the potential danger and I apologize. I appreciate you bringing up something that was so awful for you to go through just to teach me thoroughly.¡±

    Ah. So sweet.

    Pinks are so hard to stay mad at.

    ¡°You¡¯re welcome,¡± I say firmly.

    ¡°I¡¯m done with the array, S.¡± barked out M.D.

    ¡°Let¡¯s kick ass then, guys.¡±

 Chapter 23: Ready! Set! Action!

    I am merely minding my business, just walking leisurely to the throne room only to find The King is getting impatient. How can I tell? A veritable storm of Miasma rushes me like a bull.

    Trust me, there is nothing like a blackish-purple flurry of thick strings and wicked-looking whips flying over the fiery, orange-and-yellow crystal halls, unfurling in ugly and cruel fractals to drag my ass all the way to the throne room. It buoys me up in the air in a delicate balancing act, upsetting my stomach thoroughly.

    I duck around a few of the younger chandeliers'' gnashing, golden teeth, my smile looking decidedly frustrated as I bob up and down.

    The storm of Miasma unceremoniously plops me down next to the The King''s seat of power.

    Oof!

    How rude. Very unbefitting of a Princess to be so ruthlessly manhandled.

    I swat the cloud for its insolence, before brushing out my dress. It lashes my back in retribution, easily breaking through my skin.

    I sniff at it pettily and then a petal of hanging strings grabs my hand to use it punch my own self in the face.

    I squint.

    You''re going to go that far, huh?

    I wipe off the phantasmal fluid oozing from the lash it had given me on my back, before waving it threateningly at the whirling storm.

    It promptly retreats in fear of the pure despair that coats my fingers.

    Yeah. I thought not.

    I turn my attention to The King, who is currently making preparations for battle.

    He stands taller than any skyscraper I have ever seen in person, in ceremonial armor constructed out weeping, submissive souls. Granted, I believe there are a few Master Builder-Enhanced skyscrapers on our blue marble that rival him for height. It is important to keep in mind though that those are masterpieces taller than the tallest mountains known in our solar system.

    The light has literally fled the room, leaving only essence-based senses to allow observation of the activity in the room. Thankfully, my ears and eyes, recently modified as they are, put me head and shoulders above most in the next 300 hundred levels in terms of perception. This includes even those who spec in Perception, though it excludes taking into account certain existences. Still though, I have not exactly foregone the typical human reliance on light. It is still quite disorienting to rely on these Torment senses. It is certainly a learning curve when you don''t have the words to describe what hearing magic sounds like. It is like a horrible amalgamation of an impossible register of sound with a forced telepathic link.

    The noble (and I don''t mean it kindly) Torment''s maggot-like fingers trail along in the air, ruthlessly rending an unbelievably powerful spell into existence. The sheer amount of Will he is incorporating is considerable. He rips off a piece of the Magic souls he had forced into his armor and elegantly rams it into the spell.

    He shoves the spell into the throne and then unholsters a sword from his back, the slab of metal practically a building itself. With surprising gentleness, he demarcates a circle around the throne, including me in it. Grinding shrieks emit from his cut into the ground, sending my ears bending backward against my head in pain.

    He points a finger at me and then at the throne. The message is very clear.

    SIT and STAY.

    Of course, my lord. I hear you loud and clear.

    ...pushy bastard.

    The amount of concern he has for me is palpable. In fact...

    I parse the threads of Miasma, focusing intensely on the whispers it passes to my big Plushy Predator Ears. This concern brings hints of his concept The Brutal King.

    My eyes widen upon realization. Hidden in the concern is a promise.

    If something ever happens to his treasure, he will subsume himself in brutality.

    If the Magical Guardians save me or hurt me... either one, it doesn¡¯t really matter... he will turn himself into a mindless, malevolent maelstrom (gotta have that alliteration in dire circumstances, no?) unbound by any rules and logic other than the intent to destroy as much as he can before he dies.

    A chill runs up my spine.

    Looks like the choice has been made for me! I get to chill out here!

    I settle into my role of Tormented Princess. I need to make sure that he really does keep me safe, and following his storyline is the best idea, as it has been since I got stuck here. Therefore, I should put on a show! HAHAHAHA!

    Admittedly, there is a less-serious motive in addition to the all-important motive of saving my life.

    I just enjoy terrifying the shit out of people.

    While it may not be successful on the jaded, immortal Magical Guardians, I should still stand alone as a terrifying work of art. It¡¯s like modeling for a fashion contest.

    Why should I not take the chance to show off? Why not delight in being strange? And enjoy my monstrous self?

    I open all of my golden eyes, looking from the shadows under the gaping cuts on my arms. The multiple views in golden haze temporarily disoriented me and I can feel the faint movement from the huge Orbs of Vanity moving under my flesh, swiveling around as they were with glazed stares. I still manage to become quickly reaccustomed to it though.

    I laugh to Facet to make a throne next to The King¡¯s. Facet does this with enthusiasm, eagerly violating the law of conservation of mass as they grow, expanding into hundreds of crystal tentacles that form a beautiful eldritch throne. I gingerly sit on the terrifying living statue, squirming crystalline tentacles nuzzling against me everywhere like an octopus with a dog¡¯s mentality.

    While I do so, The King summons all of the Anathema in the entire Tormented Zone by making the fabric of space bring them to him like a courtier. My Plushie Predator Ears hear the gravitational waves that compose the space-time''s servile muttering, which is certainly a downright novel sensation. Which is why I have the even more novel experience of hearing space-time carry all of the Anathema into this dark space all why speaking to The King with like a sycophant. That certainly is an extreme way to teleport. It is none of the Divines of space-related concepts that he is commanding. He would have to be Divine himself, and be a superior Divine on top of that. Rather, he is ¡°only¡± commanding a law of physics. It is still a ridiculous show of power, and a reminder of why there is no escape.

    Someday I¡¯ll escape though and kill him. I am certain of it. I can say that with utmost confidence.

    For now though, I continue my role, improving upon it by adding to my art, with me as the centerpiece.

    I remove my bows and bands from restraining my hair back, letting it loose and allowing it to partially obscure my face. I hold out a mirror that The King gave to me yesterday and focus on changing my facial features into a slightly wolfish shape. Cracking noises come from my jaws and skull as I slowly and carefully mold my face into a gorgeously animalistic expression. My own bone cuts me from the inside as it rearranges. Blood leaks behind my skin, before oozing back into the arteries they are supposed to be in. I lock my expression into a wolfish and manic, yet still regal, grin.

    I shiver with happiness. I am perfection personified.

    Fear me.

    It is amazing what Charisma can do, allowing me to express even more than what my undeniably considerable talents had been able to do.

    And speaking of Charisma, with so much in the stat and such a natural grasp of it already, I should just be able to brute force a mind-based aura. More specifically, I push all of my misery and despair at being stuck in this hellhole and make it affect the Magical Guardians. That will really accentuate this art piece.

    I focus on the well of the energy that I can feel infuse my flesh with each beat of my Fae Heart and focus on exuding it for my target audience. My fellow actor The King should not receive the mental attack. That will distract from his role.

    Through the lenses on my eyes, I can see Miasma-infused Charisma radiate off my grey-brown skin, filling the room with despair. Panicked faces formed like whirlpools in the wake of someone¡¯s trailing hand, though they were only visible to me, the creator.

    I decide to do something pretty extreme for makeup. I claw two trails in my skin from my tear ducts down my cheeks, blood slowly flowing out of the shallow cuts.

    Now I am permanently crying! Isn¡¯t it soooo beautiful!?

    It¡¯s nice to cry, even if I have to harm myself to do it. I know for certain that The King would kill me for normal crying. The immense amount of favor I have curried with him will be useless even now for certain actions. My knowledge is affirmed by our prior talks over dinner.

    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    Now, let¡¯s see if I can change my outfit from a casual (if still very elaborate) style to a more ball-gown formal look. The tragedy mask mummified on my neck is obviously the main source of the magic. Being the main symbol on the dress, it makes sense that I should focus my Miasma control on it. I give a general idea to the source of Miasma in it and hopefully, it will make something from the bare bones of my idea.

    Hey! Lo and behold, my decision pays off. I am a prodigal royal! I ram my fist against my chest pridefully.

    A suitably gothic outfit spins itself into existence, though with a similar color scheme as before.

    I look myself over.

    Damn! I look hot. It¡¯s really nice to be able rock dresses like this.

    My throat closes as I feel The King¡¯s gaze run over me. He reaches over and musses up my hair, my ears getting scritches as well by his maggot-like fingers.

    Kill me now.

    Granted, I didn¡¯t actually feel the prior emotions because I had selectively wiped my memory for the day. Soulless machine for the win!

    He turns back to his vigilance.

    You know what? I think that inspired my artistic side.

    Acting on my inspiration, I ask Facet to wrap tentacles around my arms and legs like manacles. After all, I am The King¡¯s prisoner, in essence.

    It certainly makes a spectacle for the Magical Guardians that will be coming soon, and I feel like it is important to include some commentary on him in my art piece.

    Ah.

    Perfect timing.

    Four Magical Guardians fly in a relatively slow pace. In other words, the top speed of a cheetah. The cheetahs that are still around, anyway. The rest have been poached by elves.

    Looks to be the Magical Guardians Sunshine, Mourning Diamond, Fire-Fighter, and uh... I don¡¯t recognize the Pink Magical Guardian.

    What I do recognize though is that exactly like Betsie, she is way too much of a noob to do much. She is solely here for the learning experience. I can hear the intense shielding magic wrapped around her that is practically blasting the Essence-sound ¡°PROTECT¡± right in my ears. I twist a finger in my furry ears, trying to ease the discomfort I feel at the "loud" magic.

    I know I would twitch normally seeing someone so close to Betsie, but dang if this repression skill isn¡¯t paying off dividends. I¡¯ll pay the price at some point, but that day is NOT today!

    The moment the Magical Guardians enter, they look around for the source of the effect messing with their mind. I am unsurprised. They are too well-trained for my makeshift skill to be seriously effective. My skill hasn¡¯t even been recognized by the System.

    That doesn¡¯t mean it isn¡¯t rather horrifying to suddenly feel a deep fascination to see how they should let themselves die and rid the world of their monstrous existence. There is nothing as draining as an incessant temptation to kill themselves in the most miserable way possible because it is what they deserve. Not to mention, the fact that I am actually having an effect on them despite their no-doubt-considerable Will deserves a pat on my back.

    Pat-pat. Good on me.

    They quickly recognize that the effect is coming from me, turning their heads towards my location with intense looks.

    Sheesh! They might as well have a Skill-based gaze attack! They look fierce! If everyone¡¯s looks could kill... well, I would have killed them first in this hypothetical, but at this moment, they could certainly do some damage.

    While the three veterans do a good job of restraining their expressions, the Pink cadet looks deeply disturbed. As a sidenote though, I feel like I should qualify the veterans¡¯ control of their expression with ¡°more-or less.¡± I can still see their disgust and horror at my art piece. To think they would be able to hide it from me is laughable.

    The success of seeing all color leave the Pink cadet¡¯s face warms my heart, being from a different species not affecting my enjoyment in the least.

    I stare at her specifically and whisper ¡°~Soon you will join me. Hope you won¡¯t leave me like the others.~¡±

    True terror begins to replace the tame variety on her face.

    Technically, if she analyzed what I just said, she would have realized that I want her to survive. However, the surface meaning likely made the poor girl, unused as she probably is to Devil court intrigue, ignore any potential messages.

    Thus I could delight in the terror that formed from her ignorance.

    M.G. Sunshine unfortunately has no intention of letting me continue to frighten the cadet she is taking care of.

    The standoff between The King and the Magical Guardians ends as M.G. Sunshine rushes around him to get at me and end the mental effects.

    My eyes widen in surprise as she appears right in front of me as if she had teleported. Practically right after she appears, an ball of raw, unstable Magic the size of a house burst into a conflagration capable of demolishing an entire metropolis.

    Am I going to die? Is this how I go?

    Oh.

    How sad...

    It didn¡¯t kill me.

    The spell The King made earlier saves me. I appreciate his foresight. To say I didn¡¯t expect being attacked would be a lie. It¡¯s fun to tempt fate after all. I appreciate it nonetheless.

    My eyes widen further as in retribution, the entirety of the Anathema, in synchrony, use the curse magic written in blood for days on end to blast all four Magical Guardians. They move around in their various particular manners, completely furious that the Magical Guardians would dare attack their Princess.

    They really know how to make a monster feel special. Awww. So sweet.

    The rivers of rancid dark blood running over the clear crystal lights up like a gunpowder fuse, huge volumes of green sparks burning through the curse runes. Within the circle, the Miasma clears up, subsumed to fuel the signature green aura of curse magic, before it reaches a trigger point. M.G. Fire-Fighter and M.G. Mourning Diamond look briefly surprised, M.G. Sunshine looking cool as a cucumber, and the noob just looking stressed as fuck. They hastily activate ridiculously complex, pre-made arrays that had been orbiting them as the array releases its pent-up magic.

    For ten minutes straight, green flames that might as well have been taken straight out of Disney''s "Sleeping Beauty," Maleficent-style, liquifies the entire ballroom, only to reveal the Magical Guardians to be unharmed, completely healed by healing magic. It does manage to push them back multiple kilometers from where I am and completely rid them of any backups that they had prepared prior to entering the battle. The advantage cannot be understated. Magical Guardians, given time, can completely resurrect other Magical Guardians. Unfortunately, I am unaware of the limitations of that type of skill.

    I still frown internally, though I maintain my manic grin.

    Magical Girl Sunshine frowns at the fervor every Miasmic entity shows in protecting me. With casual ease, Magical Girl Sunshine swings her sword down to the tips of her feet, summoning the Sun in miniature. From the intense and barely constrained blaze, she creates many salvos of yellow laser-blasts towards The King. Each are as wide as a house, these massive pure energy blasts numbering in the thousands, giving the illusion of a singular, continuous laser extending towards him.

    The most shocking thing is how casual she is. She set off this awe-inspiring arsenal of firepower with a slight move of her hand. She hasn¡¯t even used the powerups that Magical Girls have as part of their classes.

    The King twitches one of his finger tentacles equally casually, his massive molars still stuck in his smile, creating a transparent wall easily demarcated by the veritable flood of power crossing the throne universe.

    He moves from defense to offense, grinning wider as he launches his body ¨C and keep in mind that his body is still the size of an entire skyscraper. A skyscraper made of flesh and bone is now airborne ¨C bringing his sword of gnashing metal teeth down onto the relatively miniscule M.G. Sunshine.

    The explosion from a sword with the length of a multiple-story building going supersonic batters the room, and yet, M.G. Sunshine is untouched. Whether she was just that fast or she had teleported, I don¡¯t know. Regardless, she easily dodged the blow. Like a cartoon, she turned into a flat pane of light, zigzagging around him with Speed.

    Sword fighting doesn¡¯t stop after one move though.

    With incredible speed of his own, he brings his weapon to bear, deflecting hundreds, thousands of blows from M.G.s Fire-Fighter and Sunshine. He forced space to allow him to reach through multiple dimensions, sending his blade into what seems like impossible directions. He then let loose a slew of blows that left rips in the outfits which represent the Magical Guardians inherent protection.

    He slashes offensively in an upward motion, only to get caught on a shining blue shield created by M.G. Mourning Diamond, who dances around this throne world, while crossing more distance than he should technically be crossing with the motions he takes. The King¡¯s crown sent out monsters in retaliation like a volcano turned into a cannon, burying M.G. in a pyroclastic flow of evils. The Torment then swung the sword towards his chest, only for it to emerge behind his back like a shield, blocking the retribution from the Pink noob. All the while, his shackled legs dance around in a ballroom''s dance. It is a work of art, where he nimbly flits around and lands punishing blows.

    A pulse of Will in the form of his purple Miasma grows into a snowflake-like array, as frosty as his callous personality. A wave of crystal emerges from the world of the Tormented Zone to swamp the Magical Guardians, casting shadow on the floor of the ground of the entire zone, only for M.G. Mourning Diamond to make his return, who had shredded the unstable Anathema into bright fragments of light that littered the floor. The temporary spawns no longer could serve their purpose.

    M.G. Mourning Diamond¡¯s short, limp hair starts floating as if he is underwater, and his tear ducts shine with radiant blue energy. Like growing rifts radiating out from a hotspot, fractures grow out from his feet, glowing blue light gleaming from them. The tsunami of precious stone becomes riddled with these cracks before it crumbles before the Magical Guardian¡¯s might.

    And yet...

    bit by bit...

    though The King sustains nasty injuries, he still gains the upper hand. Through turning the Anathema around him into fuel to heal himself and fuel to burn for his attacks, he fights on the level of the Magical Guardians.

    After trading more attacks than I could count, he teleports into just the right angle, hovering right where they are unprepared, his chains slowing them down. His aura explodes, demanding that they cower. A meteor of Strength forces his ideal of Submission upon the weak link: the Pink cadet.

    Its trajectory is inevitable.

    M.G. Mourning Diamond summons as many shields as he can to block it. M.G. Sunshine and Fire-Fighter are in no position to block it.

    Their best efforts prevent total annihilation of one of their members, but it is still takes a limb in addition to who knows how many injuries the cadet sustained.

    The Pink Magical Guardian gazes helplessly at her arm, her lifeblood gushing onto the ground, unable to comprehend that she just lost a piece of herself. M.G. M.D. panics and he quickly rushes over to her, weaving a simple spell that prevents more blood from escaping.

    With a roar of righteous judgement, M.G. Fire-Fighter reaches the conditions for her class powerup. And just like that, all of his progress halts, as she summons something truly terrifying.

    In this miniature world, a vast whirlpool of orange and red fire spins into being.

    The summon that she has used to punch far above her weight-class.

    The bane of all heroes.

    Truck-kun, Fire-Truck Shiny Mode.

    Once the fierce automobile joins the battle, the war turns in favor of the Magical Guardians.

    From my first-class seat of this show, I clap my hands excitedly, straining against my bonds to show how deeply entertained I am by the battle.

    The tentacles of Facet writhe in response to my infectious enthusiasm.

    How delightful!

    Truly top-notch entertainment!

    "Hahahahohohoho!" I laugh, mimicking an eager spectator.

    HAH! I am on the edge of my seat. If only I could participate...

    Is what my face says. I look forward to the next scene of this act.

 Chapter 24: The Finale

    I giggle quietly to myself as The King is slammed into the walls of the throne by yet another blow from the truck. Automatically, the wounds from negligible at his level to increasing to potentially fatal proportions. His crown topples off his head and he lays askew on the ground, a broken colossus of epic proportions.

    I gasp dramatically to give the injuries the appropriate emphasis they deserve. I need to make sure he feels loved and cared for, since I am the Princess and he is The King. To do otherwise would be to ruin my role.

    Miasma poured out of him like arterial blood, dousing the area around him in his corruption. Giggling, shrieking taskmasters pulled themselves out of the purple ooze. They appeared as indistinct purple shadows, each and everyone wielding whips, leaping toward the Magical Guardians Spider-Man style.

    Magical Guardian Sunshine gives me a scathing look, unrecognizing of the person she had met, seeing only the monster.

    I just quirk my head to the side quizzically, heaping volumes of fake innocence upon my expression.

    She points her sword at me threateningly.

    The message is clear ¡®You¡¯re next, monster.¡¯

    Tears fall down my cheeks completely unbidden.

    The Magical Guardian sees me as a monster.

    She sees me as I am.

    I didn¡¯t trick her.

    She doesn¡¯t think I am a nice person. She agrees with my parents.

    I am a MONSTER.

    I... I don¡¯t want to die though.

    Death... it fascinates me... but I don¡¯t want to die.

    I¡¯m a hypocrite like that.

    The King stands up shakily out of the edge of my vision and walks slowly to the center of the room.

    Symbolically, he is protecting me from them.

    Uhm... thank you?

    I feel rather touched.

    Instead of pressing their advantage, the Magical Guardians decide to stage a fighting retreat and regroup, allowing the creatures of The King¡¯s blood to freely attack with abandon against M.G. Mourning Diamond¡¯s bulwark while M.G.s Sunshine and Fire-Fighter regenerated the peculiar resource which powers Will so they could reattach the Pink noob¡¯s arm.

    By now, The King has already devoured consumed every single last Anathema to heal himself. It isn¡¯t enough. The damage during the battles is just too much.

    He is standing on his last legs. Half of The King¡®s red ribbed chest is caved in, part of his forehead and warped fused crown is missing, and his ¡°fingers¡± have been turned into white paste. I can tell he is flagging. I¡¯ve been with him long enough to know what approximates fatigue for him.

    All he can do is rest and wait for his Vitality to try to heal him in a meaningful way to prepare for a final fight.

    I look over to the outpost that the elite team of Magical Guardians are setting up.

    Their outfits, the representation of their protection, don¡¯t look much better. They have rips in their flamboyant neon shirt-part of their dresses or rent parts in their armor, tears in their poofy and flouncy skirts or broken links in their chainmail, and they look exhausted. However, they are only stopping to ensure everyone makes it out. They could probably take him out without stopping at the cost of safety. Instead, they¡¯re working cautiously. Magical Girl Sunshine holds up an enchanted shield that prevents attacks on both sides apparently, as neither side is making an offensive move. Doesn¡¯t really match with any of the Magical Guardians here. While she does that, a soft blue light is emitted from M.G. Mourning Diamond onto the newbie MG, the girl¡¯s pink outfit knitting together, and her lost hand magically re-attaching.

    There seems to be a cease-fire at the moment, which does fuck-all for me. I¡¯m still sitting in my awkward, but not painful (go Pain Resistance for the win!), position next to the towering, gnarled throne. I desperately want to go over to their side and escape, maybe I could be able to get treatment for my rotting affliction besides... But I know that my spot in the shadow of the throne is the only practical spot. The weird warping redirects any of the errant attacks that can easily demolish a non-Builder backed room, I would just get killed by accident. Besides, I highly doubt I look or could act human enough to save myself. My face is practically stuck in the joyous smile that stands out in the terrible darkness, my numb purple lips bleeding scarlet. The acting that has saved my life will kill me. They¡¯ve already all-but-admitted they think I am a Torment from their body language. Amidst one of the interludes between fighting as they stood off waiting or building up a move, I even overheard their Familiars saying that they thought I am a Torment. I would die...

    I don¡¯t want to die.

    My mind races. A hard glint appears in my eyes, crinkled as they are with merriment. The King has already used the rest of the Anathema as cannon fodder. I¡¯m not sure why he has not ordered me to take a blow for him like the rest.

    But... I¡¯ve already committed to my role for survival. Eating Magical Girl flesh, following The King like his pet... this idea I have would simply be a logical extension of my role on the stage.

    Besides, it¡¯s not like I can do anything. If I can just heal The King... I won¡¯t die.

    I want to enjoy everything the world has to offer. I can¡¯t die here.

    Stolen story; please report.

    Time to call upon all of the rapport I have built with The King, time to use all of the understandings we have of each other, time to use HIM.

    Mom always said I was a manipulative little bastard.

    My grin widens.

    I imitate a sparkling laugh that rings out through the deafening silence of the cease-fire.

    I can see the Magical Girls involuntarily shuddering all the way from their resting spot. Through my curtain of royal-blue hair, my faceless King looks at me, nodding that I have his attention.

    My arms supporting me want to shudder and my eyes want to twitch. My throat wants to choke, and my mind wants to gibber at the sheer insanity of my plan.

    But I know it will work. I slowly unfurl into my full, still rather short, height. And kneel upright, my back screaming in pain at this ¡°unnatural¡± position.

    I flourish my arms out in a gesture any royal knows.

    That of a gift, an offering.

    Everyone looks at my outstretched hand. It is empty. The tension, the confusion, is palpable.

    I move my hanging head to indicate just what my gift is.

    Only he understands. With his loping gait he closes the distance between us in the blink of an eye, a twitch of a muscle.

    Our gazes lock onto each other, eyes and sockets staring into the other.

    I raise one of my hands up for him to kiss.

    He is the prince, and I am his dance partner.

    He leans down to grab my hand with inhuman, unfairly tender grace. And brings it up to his lips to kiss. So soft.

    The Magical Girls cannot move for they have yet to recuperate. They can only look on in naked horror at this scene I have created, my piece de resistance. The culmination of this tragedy, MY TRAGEDY, that took place behind the story of these main characters.

    This is the true culmination of the insanity, of the fever dream, that has been my wild ride through the Rift, the Tormented Zone, the Miasmic Corruption.

    His kiss deepens, his mouth engulfing my limb up to my elbow, his teeth raking along this journey. The most intimate action I have ever had, it is simultaneously disgustingly erotic and pleasurably terrifying.

    I whisper for his ears alone.

    ¡°Hail to The King. May you accept this pittance, your Majesty.¡± My throat constricts in preparation.

    His distorted mouth is all the way up to my shoulder.

    It is gone.

    There is a flawless stump next to my collarbone, as if it had always been so. All the weight, all the flesh and muscle.

    My arm.

    Gone.

    The newly-healed newbie vomits.

    I certainly want to join her, but I smile on, like nothing has happened to me. I can¡¯t break character now. I can barely be sure where I start and the act ends.

    All the magic humans naturally have; a compatibility with Torments formed by the taint of miasma in my body; being a Torment myself; it heals him.

    My torture on Earth, I healed it. Practically my slave master, a nightmare made real, I healed him with my sacrifice. Not only that, it strengthens him. His chest swirls around, a concave immaterial tornado of flesh that settles into a whole and hale shape. His fingers lengthen into massive white tentacles extending to the ground, ready to move with incredible strength. His forehead heals and his crown transforms from a mockery of England¡¯s royal crown to a crown of thorny, gnarled horns. He stands in a regal pose that no king could match, somehow staring into the distance behind me despite his sockets being empty.

    The Magical Guardians¡¯ reactions are as varied as they are. Sunshine firms up, her posture set in fierce opposition to The King. A radiant aura of yellow light emitted from her skin scalds the ground, making a truly angelic-looking figure. I am unsure why the aura does not hurt the other MGs.

    Mourning Diamond grimaces, and sharp 2-D panes of blue crystal form a full-on reaper¡¯s scythe. A power armor version of the Grim Reaper¡¯s trailing cloak, but crying blue, overlays the dress he wears.

    Fire-Fighter¡¯s face widens into a manic, battle-hungry smile. Starving-red fire literally crawls out of her back. It shuffles and leaps onto the ground like elemental caterpillars. She resummons her ax.

    The unnamed Magical Girl looks nervous, but she summons her outfit again and nocks an arrow with a pink heart-shaped head on her violin strings.

    But I noticed. They can¡¯t hide it. That brief look of desperation. The tinge of despair that colors their auras.

    I return to my inhuman crouching gait, sans my ARM, and start to head back to the shadows, but he grabs me by my left arm. My eyes widen, will he take more?, but I school my face and turn back.

    To my complete and utter shock, he speaks for the first time. His voice rumbles with power.

    ¡°My COURT JESTER. My pet. I will not survive this battle despite your magnificent gift.

    However, I have enough power to ensure one of us escapes the fall of my mighty Kingdom.

    I WILL leave a legacy.

    They will not prevent this.

    This is my boon to you.¡±

    Miasma coalesces in his hand to form a gilded-gold collar that glimmers like skin and scales under a spot light. From it hangs a large medallion which somehow exudes a powerful gravitas, an irresistible charm. In it, it has a deep three-dimensional relief of a jester¡¯s hat, which morphs into one of a tiara, then into one of a stylized castle, and finally a lyre.

    Written around the relief, repeated over and over, is the word ¡°Charisma.¡±

    He connects it around my neck. The situation evokes for all the world the feeling of a soldier receiving accolades for their valiant service.

    I boggle in confusion. I just cannot understand this. Why would he do this? He does not care for nor about me. I was certain.

    He still won¡¯t survive? Why?

    I just sacrificed my arm.

    And why do I feel disappointment?

    I still survive.

    Goddamnit what the fuck are you on about you piece of shit!?! Tears start running down my face. You can¡¯t just speak after so long in prison with you. You¡¯re practically my jailor. You can¡¯t just save me! You tortured me!!! Where the fuck do you get off with a redeeming arc?!

    Why are you leaving me like everyone else?

    ¡°Goodbye, my princess.¡± he says emotionlessly but for a brief moment, where intense possessiveness inflects his words.

    For a brief second, he whips out a circular black case that opens, rubs a tentacle in it, and then applies it expertly to my face. Did he jus-just put makeup on my face?

    I sputter in surprise, trying to find my words.

    ¡°Don¡¯t let that Torment get away!¡± shouted Sunshine. The protector dispelled the shield and launched from their resting spot, a yellow blur hurtling towards us.

    Velvet-red miasma warps around me, the last image I see of the Rift is My King lumbering around to face her, defiantly standing against the living solar beam. I remember how the kings of France used the sun in their divine right mythos. I wonder how this fits in with that.

 Chapter 25: 9 & 3/4 Messed Up

    All of my eyes blink uncomfortably, doing their best to get rid of the tears and squint through the bright sunlight.

    The contrast from the pitch-black throne room to this open space is far too much.

    And oh my gosh! I clutch my sapphire-blue ears in discomfort, my fluffy hearing organs flattening against my skull. There is an absolute cacophony of people surrounding me. Where the fuck am I?

    ¡°Put your hands up or we will blast you for being an unknown illegally telepo... oh damn you are cute!¡± shouts a man.

    I naturally follow the order, regardless of the rather unprofessional last addition. This Charisma is getting difficult to work around.

    Also, not to speak ill of the dead, or soon-to-be-dead, but teleporting me into a security enclosure is dumb as all get out. The King, I want you to know that.

    My ears hear the peculiar ¡°sounds¡± of Magical spells being cast. This sounds like they are bringing out rather heavy artillery.

    Of course, there¡¯s no way I¡¯m not going to take precautions to avoid get killed. They could be readying spells to ensure I die anyway.

    Besides... I have a really cool ability that has just been waiting to be used. Not only that: I am a member of a gang. The gangs directly undermine U.S. military authority. I don''t want them to pull the classic: it would be better if this ''filth'' was clandestinely disposed of. We''d be doing the world a favor. In addition to being a Torment. It¡¯s just a good idea to be prevent any potential death.

    Instead of waiting for them to pull whatever shit they wanted to, I find the marotte, essentially a jester''s scepter, inside my mind that signifies a particular Skill, a jester¡¯s scepter, and swing it around like a child bashing a cockroach.

    ~Jester¡¯s Privilege has been invoked~

    Miasma gushes out of my body, flooding my surroundings with intent.

    I chuckle happily as every potential method of violence becomes encapsulated with threads of colorful pink-and-purple Miasma.

    Finally, I can see past the glare. I am surrounded by Warriors in full-body armor, each a Spell Sword readying a Strength-Will hybrid attack.

    Immediately the materials of their armor stood out, as composed of incredibly expensive demonic creatures. They all have special chitin sourced from high-level creatures. Still pales in comparison to some of the stuff that Elisa has shown me, but it is enough to know that I have been teleported deep into hostile territory, surrounded by fairly high-level individuals. Though admittedly, my gauge of what is high-level has been skewed by recent events.

    I look at them with wild eyes, freshly red from crying.

    ¡°So...¡± I rasp out. ¡°Would you mind putting down those spells?¡±

    Their eyes soften and they immediately extinguish those spells.

    I internally smirk at them, before they finally realize they had no intention to stop threatening me.

    ¡°Warriors, attack! This is a hostile using mental influence!¡± shouts, presumably, the captain.

    A maelstrom of flame, wind, and gas generation floods toward me, only dissipate entirely as my Miasma strangles the source of the attacks as well as the ill-meaning attacks themselves.

    ¡°Look,¡± I called out. ¡°I just escaped a Tormented Zone at the cost of my arm. I had four limbs just moments ago. I promise I had no intention of coming here. I was playing with Magics I didn¡¯t understand, trying to push through a teleportation attempt without System help or high Will.¡± I waved my hand in front of the stump, imprints of The King¡¯s molars visible in my flesh to all who had freakin¡¯ eyes. I was not going to be happy if they said they didn¡¯t care.

    ¡°I recently gained a remarkably powerful trait augmenting my already high-level Charisma, and I do not have a handle on how to avoid affecting you all. The most recent ability I used was to ensure that my poor control of my stat did not lead to my inevitable death,¡± I calmly and peacefully lay out to them.

    ¡°Will you be willing to submit to an interrogation? If not, we will have to kill you regardless of whether you are telling the truth.¡±

    Well, when you are putting that way... I internally roll my eyes. Throughout the conversation, I put an expression of haggard exhaustion on, and at his bloodlust, I put switch to surprise.

    ¡°I suppose... could we keep it to 3 hours? Please? My friends are dead...¡± I swallow, showing real emotions for the first time, ¡°and I-I-I" I swallow again, letting tears fall down my cheeks again.

    I could, oddly enough, sense the captain¡¯s eyes twitching in sympathy. Perhaps Charisma is boosting my grasp of emotions?

    All he said though is ¡°6 hours at least. No arguing.¡±

    Oh, you fucking hardass. Still rather tame for a government agency. Even if he doubles it or triples it, I¡¯ll still be out before my ability ends. The only issue is it wouldn¡¯t be surprising if they just decided to keep me for a month or even throw away the key. The U.S. government has no qualms about being ruthless against System users, especially those who find themselves near important assets.

    ¡°Now. Offer up your hands so we can put you in chains to keep the officers safe.¡±

    ¡°Ah, officer. I must insist that putting chains or getting within a foot radius is deeply unsafe. I am from the Neighborhood in Indiana, and I have a very nasty trait which I have absolutely no control over. If you have a different method, I am up for it, but anything that involves any of you getting that close has a high chance of leading to your death.¡± I didn¡¯t want to call him officer. He was likely a power-hungry Warrior like the rest of them who happened to get a government position, but I recognize my biases as a gang member and will reserve judgement.

    ¡°We shall test this out. You are likely underestimating our capabilities and Vitality. I can see you are laughably low in level, but I have no intention of risking my officers¡¯ lives when you so freely offer information about your capabilities,¡± he barked out professionally.

    ¡°Go get fetch a high-level Demon,¡± barked out the Warrior captain.

    One zoomed out in a blur, before zooming back in, carrying a military-grade trained Hellhound literally 10 times their size as it growls with Wrath. It¡¯s kind of comical if I¡¯m honest. Also, if I remember correctly from my walk with Elisa around her city, I think it is Caniferal panzer. Pretty high Vitality demon. I¡¯m impressed they were able to source that. I am ramping up my impression of how important this facility is.

    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    The moment the rust-red demon gets within a foot of me, it switches from trying to escape the soldier¡¯s immense Strength to holding onto them as tight as it can, trying to avoid Torment¡¯s Mummifying Soul: Your soul now coexists with an extremely virulent soul-based plague. It can only spread from yourself. It drains the soul of ectoplasm and induces hemorrhaging. Permanent curse upon those you touch unless removed.

    It¡¯s too late though.

    It screeches with inhumanly high pitches, making my eyes fold against my head.

    I involuntarily take a deep breath, not realizing just how wonderful the balm of ectoplasm felt upon my Ruined Soul.

    It slowly but surely shrivels up, its limbs involuntarily contracting against its body as its soul drains away, eaten by the plague I have spread to it. Stuck in a howl due to rigor mortis, its body dramatically crumbles away in its entirety, dusting the soldier holding it up with grey powdered Hellhound.

    The soldier sniffles really loud as their nose clogs up with the flour-like dust. They step cautiously upon realization I was more dangerous than they thought.

    ¡°As I thought...¡± I rasp out, leaving an expectant pause. Really though, it only affected the Demon because the poor creature was unlucky to be in my presence. You see, Jester¡¯s Privilege is a rather eccentric skill. I can¡¯t commit violence against someone, nor can they do so to me, but if they purposefully use me as a battering ram to kill something without my intention, well... it¡¯s a neat loophole.

    ¡°We shall simply have to hold you at sword point. Follow us, but get too closely and we will be forced to take action.¡±

    Internally I smile as I comply with his orders. It isn¡¯t likely that they will be do anything. It wouldn¡¯t be hard to just wait out my ability, but they don¡¯t seem to have a reality-warping concept that would allow them to break through my skill. Ah, the benefits of being a heinous monster hated by all Magical races.

    And so I find myself facing a veritable tank of a man, with armor plates rivaling the scales of a Hydra. They really decided to pull out the elites for little ol¡¯ me. Well, color me impressed. They are quite a bit more serious and invested in their job than the ones back home.

    ¡°What is your name?¡± growled out the man.

    ¡°Sol.¡±

    His armor glowed, but it was less the enchantments and more the Magic I could hear coming from his own skills.

    ¡°Where are you from and have you left that area at any point? And if so, where have you left to?¡±

    ¡°I am from the Neighborhood in Indiana, and I have been to the Demonic Dimension and 2 Tormented Zones.¡±

    ¡°I see. What were you doing in the Demonic Dimension?¡± he asked, a warning bite hidden in his voice.

    ¡°I... uh, quite a bit actually. Should I summarize?¡±

    ¡°Quite a bit? For seeming so young, having left our dimension is quite odd for someone like you. I would like you to avoid summarizing and elaborate as finely as you can until I say stop.¡±

    ¡°Most of it is traveling with my girlfriend Elisa. We walked along the Stygian beach where we would collect barnacle-covered crow skulls, where we would enjoy the other¡¯s company under the glowing pentagrams. We also go to the cafes, and I would try out all the unique Gluttonous cuisine, while she would exorcise the Demonic energies from my body afterwards. I would play Contract-Making at her house, where we each would try to one-up the other in making the most subtle loopholes possible. I have also enjoyed some reading time in her library and helped her with some of her essays for the School of Magic, though I was not able to participate at the time due to my lack of System access at the time. We occasionally went hunting with her parents¡¯ Mimic crossbows to get some money from the imps who did not want to put the effort into killing the pests...¡± I continue blabbing on and on about all of the things I did there as he became increasingly amused.

    ¡°I suppose your girlfriend is an Imp? What Sin does she embody? Have you engaged in any illegal activities with her?¡±

    I give him the side-eye. Does he not know how inappropriate that question is? Or he is just ignoring the implications?

    ¡°Yes. She is an Imp, recently unlocking the class Devil. Also, why on Earth would you ask such a personal question?! Asking her Sin? That is so freakin¡¯ inappropriate I don¡¯t even know where to begin.¡± I shake my head vigorously. ¡°There is no way I am telling you that. Of all the things to ask.¡± I am getting rather heated, but I can¡¯t help it. It¡¯s like asking me to show him nude photos of her. What the actual fuck?! ¡°And in answer to your third question, which is actually reasonable to ask, yes, we did. On our birthdays, we would give each other illegal contraband, such as Demonic paint for my art pieces and curse runes for her.¡±

    He smiles, though I can still only tell with my Charisma. Obviously, he asked such a personal question to make sure that I was telling the truth. I knew the intention, and I was perfectly willing to get as heated as would make sense. It was too far.

    He switches tact.

    ¡°Did you teleport yourself here?¡±

    ¡°No. To elaborate, I was teleported against my will.¡± Damnit. This man is a mind influencer. Not only does he have incredibly high level armor skills, likely meaning he has a Strength- and Vitality-based build, but he can deviate enough from his original build to overpower the Miasmic Stats I have in Will.

    ¡°According to the guards, you said you were messing around with Magics you didn¡¯t understand. Elaborate and clarify.¡±

    ¡°I was. More specifically, I was in an unfortunate circumstance in which all agency was dependent on a COE, Creature Of Essence. I was forced to conspire with the creature to preserve my life and when Warriors came to kill it to protect humanity, the crude relations we had built up made it value me enough to teleport me away.¡± By the end of my dry delivery, I was spitting out each word with enough venom to down an elephant. I could feel his eyebrows raising with my Charisma.

    ¡°I see. What Creature Of Essence was this?¡±

    ¡°It was a unique variant of an Essence concept, pocket Type A.¡± Stop with the questioning, starsdamnit. I don¡¯t want to reveal that it is a freakin¡¯ Torment. Thankfully, my connections to imps, I.e. my girlfriend, explains my vocabulary. I don¡¯t want to explain that it is because I was trained by the local gangs in power to be a battle medic who can assist Vitality healing. They might not want to let me go just to slight the gang there.

    ¡°Do you know what, exactly, it was?¡±

    ¡°Yes. It was a magical construct-type being based on the concept of Submission and Owning All.¡±

    ¡°Those are rather nasty concepts. I¡¯m surprised you managed to survive. Could you tell me what you did to avoid dying? I would have thought that you would be corrupted past the point of no return or killed by such a nasty creature, and yet you appear fully human.¡± He kept his tone even, but the wording choice clearly emphasized his suspicion that I may not be human. And on that subject, I now know what that makeup did. It made me look normal. That is surprisingly thoughtful of The King. I can¡¯t help but notice the avarice in his tone as well.

    ¡°Unfortunately, it is not something I believe that you will be able to replicate. I could be wrong, after all, you seem to have quite a bit of resources at your disposal. However, I only survived due to matching a role that would fit with the creature¡¯s concepts. I was both weak enough and adept enough to fit the role, and my high Charisma, I believe, pushed the COE to covet me like a dragon.¡±

    ¡°You are oddly informed about Essence creatures.¡±

    ¡°Well, I did enjoy reading the bestiaries in Elisa¡¯s library. I kind of picked up the terminology and decided to use it here to convey conciseness.¡±

    ¡°I appreciate you being so straight with me.¡± Internally, I cannot help but giggle. Straight? There is nothing straight about me. Rather immature, but still amusing.

    ¡°Now, be honest with me. What level are you, how old are you, and are you human? Answer these truthfully and we may let you out before the three hours are even up.¡± His aura flared up, fighting against my soul, Charisma, Will, and Miasma. I could feel a light burn from the makeup on my face like concentrated menthol. Safe to say, I did not feel compelled. Unfortunately, something told him about the intense resistance, and he promptly shoved all Will he had into it. His enchantments glowed to augment all over his armor.

    The room lit up with Lust pentagrams, which lent themselves to mental magic, the eliciting of such inappropriate behaviors like sexual attraction filtered out by Magical runes.

    ¡°I am level 0. I am 17. I am human.¡± I could feel my own Miasma rebel against me at the last statement. I could no longer resist. My defenses crumbled before the onslaught. ¡°I am level 0 like I said, and I am definitely 17, but I am no longer human due to intense corruption.¡±

    Whereas previously the man switched to standing to truly focus on throwing as much power as he could at me, he switched back to sitting.

    ¡°Looks like we are going to be here for a while.¡±

    He sounds so smug.

    I hate mental compulsion.

 Chapter 26: The Interrogation

    ...

    ¡°So,¡± he steepled his hands in a cheesy villain gesture.

    I¡¯m sure others could have pulled it off and still looked professional, but not him. He''s perfect for a minion trope, with a bulky, armor suit. The lead villain role suits only me, the monster.

    ¡°Reveal your disguise.¡± He has already asked this...

    5 other different ways...

    But he is a government individual. It¡¯s practically a requirement that he bugs me death.

    ¡°I do not know how to. The COE was the one to place it on me.-¡± I mean, technically I could guess, but minor issues like that easily allow one to skirt by auras like this. ¡°-Why would you even want to see the ugly corruption? What is the point?¡±

    "You will answer as needed," he bites out.

    "It is our prerogative know of any creatures that could threaten the US military. Describe the corruption to me in exacting detail," he commands.

    I go into full detail, making sure to infuse my self-loathing into my voice to appear as if I want to return my original form. HAHAHAHA! I would be willing to kill if this transformation was ever reversed.

    ¡°What are you? Are you even humanoid?¡±

    ¡°I was a human being.¡±

    ¡°What are you now?¡±

    ¡°I am now strongly influenced by the COE, resembling some of his concepts. I have already described in exacting detail,¡± I say exasperatedly.

    ¡°I think you know what you are and what the COE is. Tell me.¡±

    ¡°I only know that we are Essence-based beings.¡±

    ¡°Yes, but what kind of Essence-based beings?¡±

    ¡°The kind to capture me, torture me, rape me, and corrupt me until I lose my humanity.¡± My Charisma flares and pain practically radiates out of my eyes like waves of heat warping the air around forged metal. I slam the table with my fist and he flinches in preparation for a possible blow. ¡°I am a victim, you asshole. Why can¡¯t you just let me go?!¡±

    "This is a detestable abuse of power, you monster. You make me sick!" I scream out.

    Oddly, for a second, he keels over, beset by nausea.

    ¡°You still have yet to tell me what you are. Tell me NOW!¡± he rallies, shouting gruffly back.

    Golden chains phase out of the ground, sinking into my chest.

    I glance down in faked, aghast surprise, patting my chest in dumb gestures, as if I am attempting to see if the chains are still visible.

    HA! Funnily enough, I can actually hear their clinking with my unnatural ears and... echolocate them, in a way. Once more I curse the lack of descriptors in the human language. If I knew languages from the monarchy of Sloth, I would already be able to describe them. All of the creatures there rely on sound and various magical senses.

    As I am now though, I must unfortunately swear futilely at my lack of foresight. Confound it!

    ¡°I am unsure beyond what I have already given. I have answered your questions plenty!¡± By now, his Will is exhausted, and I am emotionally exhausted.

    A blue flicker appears in my vision, offering a brief moment of respite from the interrogation.

    -Major Mesh of Pain: Congratulations! You have obtained a branch off of Pain Resistance. The concept of pain has integrated further into your being. Interrogation Resistance gained.

    ¡°Looks like you got a notification. What is it for?¡± He asks, just as professional as I am. He has had plenty of years to raise his own Meshes. I wonder how powerful they are.

    Unfortunately, I cannot ponder this at the moment. This is FUN though. Being able to tell only truth is an interesting restriction. I also appreciate that the Charisma has enabled me to resist the bastard¡¯s ability. It¡¯s nice to actually be able to fend against someone else¡¯s ability instead of being subject to the whims of their skills for years.

    ¡°It¡¯s a branch off of Pain Resistance.¡±

    ¡°Oh? What is the reason you are so high level in Pain Resistance at such a young age?¡±

    I give him a flat look.

    ¡°Personal reasons.¡± I am purposefully stonewalling because giving personal information so easily would equally be a dead giveaway that I have spy training, because it would have meant that I have an answer prepared for everything.

    ¡°Give them.¡±

    ¡°Why should I? This is America. I shouldn¡¯t have to give personal information.¡±

    ¡°Kid, that was void when you ¡®accidentally¡¯ teleported here.¡±

    ¡°I already told you that a COE did it against my will.¡±

    ¡°And yet you weren¡¯t honest earlier. If I remember correctly, and I do, you said that you were trying to teleport without the help of the System and failed. Now you''re saying that a COE did it.¡±

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m sorry. I made sure to prep my cards, read a few times to make sure I had my facts straight, and then kindly asked the monster to send me home once all of my friends died.¡±

    ¡°Wait. Don¡¯t think I did not notice you trying to change the topic. Why is your Pain Resistance so high?¡±

    ¡°Dude,¡± I slouch in my chair, kneading my forehead in false exasperation and exhaustion, ¡°I wasn¡¯t trying to do shit. I already told you I didn¡¯t want to tell you. The topic of interrogation changed. That¡¯s how conversation works, dummy.¡±

    ¡°Tell me.¡±

    ¡°No.¡±

    ¡°Tell me!¡±

    ¡°Nice try. My stats are quite a bit more impressive than your shitty aura since that COE messed with me,¡± a cat''s smug grin scampers across my face, as I try to see if I can get his blood pressure to raise a bit. By now, I would be expected to be antagonistic. Unless you are a saint of patience, imp of Sloth, an immortal, or a professional spy, antagonism is expected from the tired innocent civilian.

    A hint of anger creeps into his voice. Success!

    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ¡°Get someone to partner with me. If you can, get Sallie. I know she is busy. Tell her my aura is doing jack shit by now, and our hostile needs some stronger stuff.¡±

    I swear the way he phrased it sounds like I need stronger alcohol instead of needing someone with a more dominating mind control aura. HA! I¡¯ll admit, I could use some stronger alcohol.

    "I''m not a fuckin'' hostile," I add in crassly.

    ¡­

    ¡°While we wait for her, who are your parents?¡±

    ¡°They are dead.¡± Dead to me, that is.

    ¡°How surprising,¡± he said sardonically. What the FUCK does that mean? Are you attacking my personality, buddy?

    ¡°What are their names?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t recall.¡±

    At this, he frowned deeply. Through his helmet of course. He still hasn¡¯t removed it in the past three hours in this purposefully insufferably hot room. By now, I am certain the bastard has internal air conditioning. So unfair. Why not offer some air conditioning to this monster?

    ¡°What do you mean by that? You don¡¯t recall their names?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m, uh, sorry. This is rather embarrassing,¡± I visibly straighten up, an obvious change in how I was carrying myself. ¡°I didn¡¯t really like them, but to not remember their names is a bit far, even for me.¡±

    He inquires further along this vein for roughly an hour, exposing my deficiencies in memory.

    ¡°I was on my way through school.¡±

    ¡°Did it involve Magic in the curriculum? You seem rather powerful. Are you a contractor or Magic Girl?¡±

    ¡°It did involve Magic.¡± Of course it did. There were Magical Guardians that saved my ass. What are with these dumb questions? I know you aren¡¯t that good, but these are sad.

    ...

    ¡°I¡¯m a contractor.¡± With my girlfriend. These are so riddled with loopholes they can only be the standardized questions that the government makes.

    Ok. Deep breathes. In. And out. I have to remember that they are not Imps.

    ¡°With what Demon?¡±

    ¡°Elisa.¡±

    ¡°I thought you were strictly romantic.¡±

    ¡°We are not strictly romantic. That¡¯s... the main stuff in our relationship. But if you really want... to use your aura to nitpick, then we also trade things back and forth. Sometimes, we would play a few games of Contract Contact ¨C TheCOEforcedmeintoacontract ¨C and have a blast.¡± By now, I am really hamming up my exhaustion from the heat. This heat really means nothing.

    It is, however, convenient for a well-placed breakdown. Slowly, I have guided us here, just need to some more time to make him feel like he is getting somewhere.

    "What was that?"

    And the dumbass falls for it.

    ¡­

    I can feel his feeling of feeling like he is getting closer to the truth. I internally smirk.

    ¡°Just how did you lose your friends and in what way did you participate? How did the COE use their deaths to send you here, and for what purpose? I understand that it wants you as a plant in school, but for what purpose?"

    ¡°I-¡± I pause for a moment. Tears well up in my eyes.

    ¡°Where is it now?¡±

    ¡°-don¡¯t-.¡±

    "Kid... come on, just fess up, damnit," he groans out. He''s just so freakin'' done with this.

    But I am not done with this bastard.

    ¡°AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH...¡± My jaw drops in rattling horror, as my face eyes inhumanly spiral in terror, eventually rolling towards the back of my head. I scream hysterically, clawing desperately at my face. I gouge hanging trails of flesh from under my eyes, toppling over to the floor.

    I make sure to really work my cold brass hands inside my cheek muscles. Sprays of poisonous grey blood sprinkle over the ground around my face. I calmly note, while rending my flesh apart

    ¡°Guards! In! NOW! Subject of interrogation is attempting to kill themselves due to to a possible geas. Restrain subject!¡± The guards immediately stampede in, throwing out spells to restrain me from increasing my self-inflicted injuries. I shout and babble nonsense, mummified by spells.

    "My liege will conquer all! I must submit! HAHAHA!!! Swear your oath of fealty, all, and he will only punish you slightly! He is kind and merciless! Be thankful, fiends!!! Grind bones and grovel! Here is your pound of flesh!..."

    I focus intensely on my own tongue.

    I must commit to the role.

    My indulging in my mindless, maniacal speech halts.

    *choking noises*

    I engorge it with my own blood, till it bloats like a writhing black leech with a life of its own. My teeth chip as I force it to writhe out as if my body is rebelling against me due to corruption.

    They shout in terror, avoiding the shining-black tongue waving around as long as my body. I make sure I avoid them as my ability Jester¡¯s Privilege would prevent me from attacking them in the first place.

    I choke on my own tongue, muffled screaming issuing from my lips like a clarion call of pain, as the eyes on my face rolled to the back of my head. In a falsely desperate attempt to escape the bindings and kill myself, I dislocate my shoulders and break my angles.

    ¡°HOLY SHIT! GET A HEALER IN HERE NOW! SHE¡¯S RUINING HER BODY TO KILL HERSELF!¡± Doing that much for little ol¡¯ me? Healers aren¡¯t exactly common. In fact, I would go so far as to say they are the rarest class known. Of course, this is excluding Magical Guardians when measuring the number of Healers that exist, who skew practically every statistic in the study of Essence.

    They all surround me, a mixture of wariness and shock evident in their bodies and aura, linked to me with a careful application of ropes glowing with Strength. The Healer rushes in, a radiant expression of worry for life on their face. I always find it hard to believe there are such saintly people like Healers. Those people are always pacifistic and caring for other¡¯s lives to the point of ridiculousness.

    ¡°Oh no! What happened to you!? You poor thing. Just a couple of seconds and I promise you I¡¯ll help you.¡±

    The person raises their hands and weaves a complex array of runes, throwing it over me. Just like that, I am healed in spite of my desperate thrashing around.

    ¡­

    I find myself once more seated at the table, my self-inflicted injuries healed, and playing up my trembling from exhaustion into traumatized jitters at ¡°trying to kill myself.¡± The interrogator would have likely been able to handle me if I had caused any trouble, but now two guards are crowded in for my own sake.

    The interrogator looks at me with a frankly exhausted expression.

    *Creak*

    The exit door swings inward and a tall individual in an equally elaborate suit armor resembling his strides in, closing it behind themselves. He turns to look at them with naked relief and jabs a thumb at me. ¡°She¡¯s your job now Sally. Resisting her Charisma has just about crushed me mentally. You thought being a teenager was bad? Try dealing with the mood swings her tears cause you. Have a party.¡± So saying, he practically skips out.

    The new interrogator, Sallie, turns to look at his quickly exiting self vexedly, before turning back to me with a heavy sigh. She plops down on the chair, puts her feet on the table, and reclines backward. With no fanfare or gestures, her Will slams into my mind so hard that I smash my nose right into the steel table.

    ¡°Oh f-f-f-fuck you!¡± I chatter out, giving myself a dead-fish stare.

    ¡°Why is your Pain Resistance so high?¡± she demands.

    ¡°I-I-it''s because I cut myself on a regular basis be-be-be-because I detest myself. I am clinically diagnosed with severe depression.¡± I stutter out, making a token resistance to avoid telling her.

    ¡°What are you?¡±

    ¡°I t-t-t-told you already. I am something influen-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-ced by a COE and not a human. I have n-n-n-nothing else to say to you.¡±

    ¡°Look kid. I¡¯ll be honest with you. I think you are an elite child soldier, modified by a country in one of the Dimensions that America isn¡¯t on good terms with, and you have a natural talent in spy-related tactics,¡± she said with remarkable frankness.

    I ¡°muster¡± up enough venom to kill a horse. ¡°Well, I¡¯m n-n-n-not. Let me go. Please.¡± I swallow emotionally.

    It didn¡¯t change her mind, not that I expected it to, but the emotional impact hit her like a truck. After another hour of back-and-forth dialogue and then another few hours of trying to get me to talk after I ¡°broke down.¡±

    Boo-yah! With luck, they¡¯ll stick me in an Magic-Teaching academy with a military scholarship just in case they can use me to find ¡°the deadly COE going around changing kids and trying to spread their influence.¡±

    I deserve a pat on the back, not going to lie. I talked my parents into still paying for the school despite disowning me. This was similar... but simultaneously, so much far harder than that.

    Damn. I¡¯m so tired.

    I feel like a gacha game player sometimes when I do these things. Let¡¯s see whether it works. Crossing fingers.

    The healer wheels me in onto a soft bed, while I am in a ¡°state of shock¡± after scolding the interrogators for pushing me too hard.

    And then the most incredible thing happened.

    Facet crawled into my bed, somehow teleporting with me, and sneaking by everything inside the building this entire time. They have to have the ability to go through freakin¡¯ walls. I send the biggest smile over a plume of Miasma I breathe out over the the living crystal-bed.

    Starsdamnit, I cannot believe it. You did not leave me. A tear slips down my face. Maybe things are looking up.

 Interlude: Elisa-A Devil of Gluttony

    I drove up to the school in my motorcycle. I have ten other of mine, but I just cannot help but covet each and every one of them. I grumbled internally flicker back to the events of today following dropping off my dearest as I rev the engine, finding comfort in the purr of the motor. I will never show it on my face, but the Academy of Essence¡¯s most recent exam brought me no end of irritation. Those pompous, Magic creatures rubbing their Perfection Essence in my face.

    My hands clench possessively around the motorcycle. That A+ is mine.

    Someone drives right in front of me as I duck and weave through the leaving cars. Dealing with human parents driving their children home is such a hassle. Though I swear it is far worse than normal...

    Has everyone forgotten basic human etiquette?

    I swear.

    I finally learn not that it¡¯s not ok to randomly crush someone¡¯s car because it looks really nice and I deeply want it... and humans just throw back all of the rules back into my face.

    I internally shake my head amusedly. Well, truth be told, I learned that is not allowed immediately during this venture into the human world. The first thing I did was acquaint myself with human law, however poorly crafted it is. I just could not bring myself to care. That man¡¯s shiny, red car that I really, really, really wanted...

    Well, it needed to go. I do not make the rules. I studiously ignore the fact that the aforementioned rules do not actually include the righteous destruction of stuff you cannot have.

    I nearly crash into another woman¡¯s drab car, noting an oddly panicked expression on her face through the glass.

    It was not even directed at me. My attention is swiftly drawn from such trifling matters though, and instead focuses on her delectable soul. I cannot be blamed. It looks so delicious that I could not help but be distracted.

    I still manage to avoid the collision though. With a swift lean to the side, I skid upward and over in defiance to all the laws of physics and the basics of how riding a motorcycle should work.

    I smash into the parking lot behind the careless driver, the keratinous plates, attached to the hubs of my motorbike, flapping like the pigeons I scared away upon impact.

    ¡°Fffffffff...¡±

    Fuck.

    Another tire gone. Oh well. I stick my hand down my cleavage and pull out an entire tire from my pocket space, which I had opened the gate between my boobs. A person¡¯s eyes, the windows to their soul, flare with Lust at the titillating sight.

    Congratulations! You possess another level to add to Your Space.

    I may be devoted to the Sin of Gluttony, but my Demonic Essence can still grow slightly on the Lust of these humans. And more Essence is always better.

    I still wince at having to give up another tire. It¡¯s mine. I hate seeing the number of tires in my pocket space go down.

    *sigh*

    But I love doing more and more stunts. Accruing more talent with the vehicle and seeing my Mesh of Motorbiking become bigger is just wonderful.

    ¡°Hah...¡± I breath out. I remember that delightful song Theater showed me. How did it go? Ah yes.

    ¡°??...Because bigger is better. And biggest is best...??¡± I hum to myself. I skirt to the side and spin around in a needless affectation to my formal walking style.

    I look up sharply from my leisurely footsteps to the school. Something''s wrong. I cannot believe it has taken me sp embarrassingly long to realize that.

    My elf-like ears wiggle as they burn from contact with fully fleshed-out Miasma embedded with an appropriate idea and trauma. My neck flushes with green as the hunger all Gluttony imps have agitates me. Anathema are a delicacy.

    But that is quickly overwhelmed by my heightened concern. Borne of panic, the ink within my eyes flares out as I race through the blockade the pitiful Warriors who police the area set up. The teeth in my throat writhe in worry.

    ¡°So help me... if that biii... oh my, nearly swearing. Only you make me so uncouth, dearest," I mutter to myself. If my strange, little human got stuck in yet another Rift...

    The Warriors, upon seeing an imp sprinting toward them at top speed, immediately go on the offense. Not that it matters. All of their swords and Magic Essence shatter on my parchment-yellow skin, destabilized by my Demonic Essence.

    ¡°Demon, this is outside of your jurisdiction. Leave!¡± uselessly shouted the captain in charge, right before I knock every single one out with a burst of Gluttony. They all collapse, clutching their stomachs as an insatiable craving for something to fill their stomach gnaws at their mind.

    While they roll around like tin cans, I come to a stop in the courtyard, the facade of the school warping just. As. I. Feared.

    In real time, a tall structure of Miasma is being built, block by block, purple stone being laid in place. All of this encircling around the school to turn it into a fortress for the Torment at the center. Crenelations and watch towers slowly reveal themselves as the seemingly random placements construct a prison for all students inside it.

    My dearest... could die.

    ¡°You... you... you BITCH! If you hate it when I leave you, stop leaving me yourself!¡± I shout helplessly at the towering gates in front of me, clenching my clawed hands. Stay where I can help you, you... I am not going to swear. I need to be proper.

    Just take a deep breath.

    In.

    And out.

    My ears twitch far more rapidly once more, rotating rapidly as they sense more incoming Miasma, of thousands of different flavors.

    Within a mental map of my creation, hundreds of rifts open. Even without a System, I was far beyond many in the workings of Essence. The training I had received before I was cut off all too soon was the best possible. The paper-mach¨¦ constructs within my mind are beset by hundreds of miniature storms. And worse, they are far less content to stay still like the one my dearest is stuck in.

    There are Anathema pouring out like swarms of ants, corrupting the surroundings with abandon and slaughtering thousands.

    Theater will not be getting help any time soon, will they? Upon that realization, I completely lose my cool.

    The ink billows out of my eyes in a gaseous vapor, a haze of black swirling in the courtyard. My strength is not nearly enough to break into a Tormented zone.

    I am helpless once more to save what is...

    ¡°MIIIIIIIIIIIINE!!!¡±

    I roar into the skies in fury, my feathered writing quill crackles into being from an orb of light summoned into my hands. A pitch-black carefully maintained plume as long as my legs are, my weapon''s sharp, pointed nib shines in the gloom. My horns crack and snap as they lengthen into a crown of horns. Wings wriggle out my back, pumping up with blood like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.

    I will help Theater of course. Just need some help from my old business partners and I am sure I will be able to extricate her. The stress they cause me continuously will not abate the help he will receive. I¡¯m sure they are alive. He would not die from that.

    There is no way.

    I refuse to believe that is likely.

    She has told me far too many other harrowing situations that she has gone through, raising my blood pressure far beyond what I, as her girlfriend, deserve.

    Ah. Right.

    My business partners will never help me if they see me so upset. It is not befitting of a noble. So. Some stress relief is in order.

    I turn toward the cowering playthings.

    With my writing implement of mass destruction, I prepare to wipe the surrounding block from existence. Let us see if we can¡¯t get this done before the real powers of the neighborhood mobilize to stop me from blowing off some steam. They will not begrudge me a fit of rage after potentially losing the prize of my collection, the eye of my hoard, to this Torment.

    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    ¡­

    A minute later, I walk up to the hospital, stretching out my back, hearing a couple of pops from my spine. That was nice. I feel slightly better have some carnage.

    I flick off a tiny bit of rubble off my suit, my nose wrinkling in distaste.

    I hate hospitals. They are all so... gross. I would never go into these for my brothers and sisters. How Theater is willing to do this for her brother, I will never understand.

    I cock my head to the side, still staring with trepidation at the glass doors. I suppose that''s not true. I do understand, given I am doing this for them.

    Time to let his brother know.

    I sign in the paperwork, delighting in reading the fascinating legalese and red tape put for imps visiting patients in the hospital. My hand moves across the page with quick, practiced flourishes, filling out the information with intense eagerness. If it were not so inappropriate for a noble to giggle in such a public place, I would have done so.

    There were reams of paper, all trying to trip me up. How could I not enjoy it?

    Perhaps a Wrath imp would have set the place ablaze at the mere sight of so much paper, I note to myself. I need to make sure I understand others¡¯ perspectives, otherwise I¡¯ll let intended injustice go... Theater firmly believes in letting no injustice go unpunished, unless it happens to her, the sill fool.

    But this is just too much fun.

    The nurse trembles behind her desk, nervous eyes following every movement that I make, despite it being so simple as writing hundreds of words every second.

    Perhaps it is culture shock, but I still have yet to get used to the prejudice they all show. Continual rage to everything or inherent superiority to everything, that makes sense to me. Wrath and Pride, similar to the prejudice in these humans, make sense. But such directed hate, fear, and disgust towards imps specifically is always confusing. Predators need to eat, do they not? And besides, they are the ones giving up their souls. It is their fault for being such desperate mortals.

    All too soon, it is done. The paperwork is all filled out. Internally, I snarl in distaste. The ink in my eyes dull in their shine, devoid of the earlier passion within them. I give the paper to the nurse roughly, wrinkling the pages.

    ¡°I am done,¡± I snap out, annoyed by the loopholes near the end. They are easily spotted and the clear efforts of some insurance company worker who is too tired to put the effort to do it properly. That last half part is trash. It is offensive. That¡¯s how it ends? How disappointing.

    I turn abruptly the wall of my foot, walking briskly toward room 331, my hoof-wear clicking against the floor rapidly. With greater Speed than the Warriors I crushed earlier, the doctors scamper around me. I can appreciate that they are so invested in their work that they just cannot pay attention to me.

    I rap on the door.

    ¡°May I come in?¡± I call out smoothly, my deep, even voice reaching through the door. A runic stone hanging on the door flashes green. Lucky me. He¡¯s awake. I had been, quite honestly, hoping he had been asleep.

    I push the door open firmly. My black orbs look at the alert man before me, shriveled up like an old man from all the nutrients leeched out of his body to sustain cancerous pustules erupting from him. His stark blue eyes stare at me fiercely, despite his soul flickering and on the verge of guttering out.

    So gross... I cannot help but internally moan in disgust. I can see that his cancer has already gained a soul of its own, and has even activated its own system. I will not go into further detail. The disease is just too disgusting to focus on any further.

    Theater¡¯s lectures on how cancer typically evolves due to the System affecting it are more than a little hard to understand, but I understand the gist of it. Sooner or later, even with all the nasty alchemical reagents getting pumped into him, it will overtake him. It will even obtain sentience, turning Dennis'' body into a Cancer Slime or some other nasty, icky thing that will need to be put down.

    Ewwww... it is sooo gross!

    ¡°Hello. I have a brief update on your sibling, Theo,¡± I say, devoid of any emotion. My girlfriend is very careful not to say the name that truly fits her, like every proper imp avoids doing. I applaud their forethought. Rarely do humans avoid sharing their name as a matter of course. Regardless, because of that, I just use the one that their parents call them, instead of the one that gets closer to how he feels when we¡¯re together.

    Dennis¡¯s irises move up and to his right; his cheek twitching. If I remember correctly from Theater, this means he wants me to continue and is impatient.

    Shut up, withered raisin. You try saying to your dearest¡¯s beloved brother that she could die at any moment. It is not easy.

    ¡°Theo... is in one of many Tormented Zones that have opened, all of which have formed synchronously far faster than they should have,¡± I say, quickly growing quieter with each word.

    His eyes stare at me with utter horror. It almost feels like he is accusing me for losing her.

    I raise my hands defensively, my tail lashing out behind me. ¡°I did not do anything! This is just as awful to me as it is to you.¡±

    Apparently, that is not what he meant, because he just slowly looks listlessly to the side. Tears start to pour out of his eyes. He just looks crushed. I blanch, the green tint leaving my cheeks.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry!¡± I bow and zip out of the hospital, panting heavily and keeling over.

    I unfurl to my full height, wiping away my expression, sneering at myself. I should have handled Dennis'' and my emotions better. Granted, I thought bitterly, if dad had taught me better before he died, I would likely have been better in social interactions like nobles should be. He should have given me attention. It should have been mine.

    I crush the bitterness welling within me and then crush my special teleportation item. I barely feel anything at losing it though, despite the clamoring of Gluttony within my Essence.

    The desire to have Theater back in my collection far overrides the desire to hold onto the expensive item. The dust falls through my trembling grasp, millions of dollars turned to powder as I am immediately transported to the Gluttony ring in the Demonic dimension, right where my business partners reside.

    ¡°Hello, gentleimps. I have a proposition for you,¡± I say, monotonal, in the dialect of the region.

    They all eagerly await my words with grasping hands outstretched for gold and the raised knives characteristic of their profession.

    ¡°It is always nice to see the noble girl back, managing her ventures in person,¡± MB the 3rd says, looking up from the highly volatile military-grade. I cannot help but wrinkle my nose at that. I do not want my suit ruined by her bombs. She should keep her eyes where they belong: on the dangerous device she is building. And she knows that, judging by the teasing smirk on her face.

    ¡°Got a COE¡¯s home to ruin, k-k-k-k-k-kid?¡± mutters the least stable of my siblings, Coin-Grabber, the ink in his eyes rotating in an unusual whirlpool, while his two arms fight themselves in a remarkable feat of Dexterity.

    We know none of the others¡¯ true names. Only a fool would reveal that to the other. To risk such control is utter foolishness. Granted, some do not even have names. They may just be indecisive. Even after centuries, some do not have a true name and will be forever weakened by their idiocy.

    I take out yet another teleportation bauble, this time coded for all of us.

    ¡°Damn, kid. This is personal, ain¡¯t it? Surprised another one of your close ones managed to get in a life-or death situation,¡± chortles Pound-of-Flesh.

    I roughly grab my brother¡¯s shoulder, my face splitting into a grimace of a smile as I get up in his face. Wordlessly, I pull up the Demonic system and look at him with false amusement as I decrease his salary.

    ¡°Whoa, whoa. Yeesh. I¡¯m sorry... WHOA! NO! KID-I MEAN BOSS! NOT A DEMOTION! PLEASE!¡±

    I let go of him, before tightening up my necktie in a routine motion.

    ¡°Glad we understand each other. Let¡¯s head out,¡± I drone out drolly, before crushing millions of dollars worth of teleportation equipment in my grasp once more, the Essence swirling around us.

    The team quickly channels a stone gate into being. Their operation is just as smooth as when I first found their venture. I nod approvingly, though my left foot taps against the ground anxiously. They all eye my foot nervously, none of my siblings wanting me to lower their salaries.

    MB the 3rd throws a metric ton of custom-made Demonic explosives into the chambers attached to the gate. Veiny tendrils of organically grown Demonic spells, crawling up all over the specially harvested substrate, channel the undirected energy into a breaching spear the size of my ancestor¡¯s gullet.

    ¡°FIRE!¡± I command.

    Before I can even understand what just happened, the gate is removed with absolutely no trace of anything happening. I blink in surprise. I lean over the gaping hole in the ground, only a well of darkness of indeterminate depth left. My eyebrow raises.

    The mercenaries raise up their weapons in preparation for combat, getting ready to flee at a moment¡¯s notice. As I thought, this individual or monster is far out of our league. If it had not been, then the mercenaries would not be so terrified.

    I whip my head around. What is that flicker in the corner of my vision? The rest of the mercenaries are equally confused, despite having access to the System, unlike me.

    Then, blatantly visible to all of us, is a tall teenager with a feverish glint in her eyes reclining against the castle walls. She is quite possibly in one of the most vulnerable postures one can be in. Her physical appearance is, quite frankly, gorgeous and enhanced with quite a bit of Charisma. Long, blond hair cascades down her back and her folded arms show off her well-built physique.

    ¡°Soooorryyyy,¡± she calls out, her valley-girl voice carrying unnaturally over the distance to us. ¡°I can¡¯t just let you ruin what the Goddess wants. I would much rather kill myself before that happens.¡± At this, she giggles and titters, in all respects, sounding and looking like an airheaded bimbo, if it is not for one fact.

    Her Vitality far exceeds the damage output of my entire group¡¯s attacks combined.

    ¡°Get out of our way,¡± I demand. Perhaps... no, it is certainly foolish to demand that from such a powerful being, but I just want Theater back.

    ¡°Hmmm... hmmmm... nahhhh!¡± she falsely ponders.

    The oddly radical glint in her eyes only grows in contrast to her easy-going slouch. Then, she leaps up and is gone. Just gone. A rush of wind overtakes us, and the scenery changes jarringly. I glance into my mental map.

    ¡°We are all the way at the other end of the neighborhood!¡± I shout in fury. And as my eyes adjust to the abrupt changes, they widen in terror.

    Coiled around us is an enormous Torment, a long groveling worm exulting in its worship of its Goddess. It is a mere shell though, completely devoid of anything inside of it. Its structure is akin to a crumbling ruin. Metal bricks, tinted with white and gold, surround empty space. Gaping holes in its infrastructure make it appear in seeming disrepair, enough so that a Builder would have a fit if they saw that.

    ¡°I am the Fanatic; the Zealot of the Divine Torment,¡± whispers the cursed being in our ears, its voice similar to the whistling of wind through a hollow building. I tremble uncontrollably at its earnest voice, jittering in pitch as it tries to get our attention.

    ¡°The Goddess Diarrhea will spread us like the plague, but first she must winnow her creations until she has the right strains in place. The carriers will hide, until this world¡¯s Essence is infected. It is her right to spread. It is only natural,¡± raved the Fanatic, its mandibles splaying and closing in a desperate attempt to capture some lost glory that only existed in its imagination.

 Chapter 28: Nearly Headless Nick Got Nothing On Me

    ¡°Get up. You¡¯re getting out of here.¡± A random soldier stands at attention to my bleary eyes. Their armor is incredibly low-quality compared to the rest I have seen in the facility. It is built using human craftmanship and sourced materials from non-magical metal instead of the high-level demonic chitin forged by dwarven hands that the rest wear.

    They aren''t even wearing a helmet.

    I lean back on my cot, glaring at the weak lout who clearly drew the short straw.

    Ah. And it looks like Facet disappeared once again. Their comfortable weight is gone, leaving me to deal with this person.

    ¡°How do I know you won¡¯t bring me back there? And then... and then I¡¯ll try to kill myself. I don''t want to die," I query frantically.

    A dead look overtakes my eyes as I start to ¡°panic,¡± a wheezing gasp rattling my throat, before I transition into a high-pitched whine. My pitiable posture bears much resemblance to a beaten dog.

    ¡°What¡¯s the point? I know the government never lets people like me go, regardless of whether it¡¯s a mistake. I might as well die now,¡± flip-flopping from my earlier anxiety to a venomous, cynical drawl.

    Not literally venomous of course. Not yet anyway.

    My flawless face does its level best to place a wicked snarl upon my lips, though the illusions that The King gave me belied that. Still, even without my abyssal fish maw thing going on, I still tremble and give a great manic grin.

    The soldier rushes over to physically drag me out of bed in a moment of furious haste. Their fingers stop just a foot away from my hand as they are about to touch my bare arm.

    ¡°Yeah. That would have been stupid,¡± I say blithely.

    I don¡¯t need yet another corpse to my name. The list is getting long.

    ¡°Just....¡±

    ¡°Just get out of bed, kid,¡± he finishes saying exasperatedly.

    Interesting.

    I can automatically determine what the gender is from my Charisma. I could easily determine his sex, but being able to determine one¡¯s gender is a delightful side benefit. Very convenient! It almost makes me want to hop up and down and clap my hands spastically!!!

    *sigh*

    Unfortunately I must restrain my passion for knowledge so I can give him the act he expects and deserves.

    Still though, I wasn¡¯t aware that Charisma could do that. Perhaps I''ll learn more about the usage of the Stat at the Academy.

    Oooohhhh~, I am looking forward to it!

    He taps his steel-toed boots against the concrete floors impatiently, the epitome of the underpaid guard. His mouth - well, look, I¡¯ll just come out and say it. His face cannot compete against mine - puckered up, his veins pulsing on his neck.

    No, no, no. I should feel terrible for this poor person, who has to deal with filth, absolute trash, like me. Not insult looks. It is the inside that counts and you are a pox, literally and emotionally, on the inside.

    "Alright, alright. I''m coming. No need to raise your blood pressure," I say amusedly.

    And hmmm, speaking of... blood pressure... I mentally snorted. I have the looks to really flaunt it now.

    A trickster¡¯s light enters my eyes.

    I shake my head in tiredness, faking my exhaustion in order to make my hair flutter just right.

    If you are careful, you can mimic the unnaturally beautiful hair movements of TV. Most people rely on stats and Meshes to do that in their roles, but long before I got a ridiculous boost to my Charisma, I was already capable of appearing unknowingly beautiful.

    My long lashes flutter over eyes colored an illusionary blue and I stretch out my back, accentuating my chest at the perfect angle.

    My dress fit me flawlessly, already wrinkled in an alluring manner.

    The Charisma funnels through my body with ease, my motions and intent easily releasing it without the use of a skill.

    ¡°Alright,¡± I heave out a sigh.

    The bald man stands antsy. His body language clearly shows that I have succeeded in eliciting his attraction.

    Bring on the HORNY!

    ¡°You¡¯re so adorable,¡± I whisper cheerfully, grinning big, a slight bit of maliciousness tugging at the corners of my lips. Without even realizing, Miasma weaves threads through my vocal cords, whispering its intent to my ears. A cacophony of the anti-magic makes a ruckus of The Happy Bard, while a blaze of irresistibility shines through my eyes.

    You have boosted your seductive appeal using Bard¡¯s Voice.

    Your Crystal Frosted Eyes have entranced.

    Your expert use of hair dynamics and your Alluring Royal Hair accentuate your impossible beauty.

    Congratulations! You have utterly crushed the Will, as well as personality, of Sal Khan and progressed along the truth of The Charismatic Star and of The Happy Bard.

    You deserve a reward!

    Congratulations! You have been rewarded with a corollary ability of Crystal Frosted Eyes, colored by the Achievement: A Following in the Underworld: A Pupil of Stars-The longer you are able to stare into a person¡¯s eyes by using your Charisma to hold them hostage, the more likely a star-shaped pupil will grow within your eyes and make the person brain-dead.

    Ahhh... it¡¯s quite enjoyable to be praised so. His praise is so kind to see. That I could make him so happy with my lies...

    He is so enamored with my body, as he should be. It is the truest form of love, no?

    I am such an inhuman slut. *giggles*

    *sigh*

    I miss Masua and Enterion.

    Wait.

    Argh. No.

    No, I don¡¯t.

    NO, I DON¡¯T! Just a foolish child, am I?! Aaaarrrgghhh!!! My hands curl tensely into the sheets, the muscles in my face tensing as I recall...

    Heheheheh...hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! I can ignore the memories. I am the one in control. Others'' whims can control everything but myself because I SAY SO.

    I get up from the bed stiffly, my motions followed by the gaze of the poor man I had entranced. So many emotions run through my head as he follows me, entranced like Elisa when she smells a CEO''s soul. All direction he had held is completely erased, ruined by my various abilities. They work so well together that they make me the center of his universe.

    Is that... drool going down his face? I mean, that¡¯s rhetorical. I can see that there is drool dribbling down his chin.

    HATRED! You have improved the Major Mesh of Friend Making. Level Torment. Tier remains 3.

    A burning pressure, much like a migraine, but in my throat, builds up until I whimper in horror.

    I run over to the stranger, all the while keeping my composure. In other words, an ugly expression of shock is pasted on my face, as if I don''t know how to handle it. There are probably runic LSLs, or Lux ad Sonus ad Lux, everywhere. Watching this.

    ¡°Oh stars no. Wake up. Please,¡± I beg. You know... it¡¯s almost worst that I don¡¯t know them. Because of that, I can think of how similar it could be to my brother once he- er, I mean if! Definitely if!- turns into a creature puppeteered by his own cancer.

    I don¡¯t want that to happen to this stranger. All I can see is my brother¡¯s face.

    ¡°No, no, no,¡± I grasp him by the face. ¡°Please, wake up.¡±

    He just looks down at my face with awe, as if an angel held his cheeks helplessly, rather than the abomination that grasped onto his face.

    His face contorts grotesquely with impossibly intense attraction, adulterated by inspiration borne of my beauty. I am like a muse in his eyes, a being of such perfection that he could be so inspired as to make endless art just from a glimpse of me.

    The innocent man, hair a sandy-brown and eyes an electric blue, shrivels within my hands. The valleys and peaks of the wrinkles so extreme that it feels like a nest of gray frilly coral grew beneath my palms.

    It rasps against my fingers, breaking against my touch as if the shriveled wrinkles were dead leaves instead of the flesh they once were.

    I fell down on my bottom aghast, the unsuspecting man¡¯s decapitated body landing on top of my lap.

    My body shakes like a petrified cat.

    ¡°Hmph.¡±

    ¡°Heh,¡± I breath out, more an exhalation than any laughter.

    I smiled in utter horror, the corners of my mouth nearly reaching the corners of my eyes. There is a humorous delay between the fall of his body and the fall of his head.

    Long after his body fell across my lap... the grey flakes of his head finally sprinkle over myself like crushed up pastry, but riddled with soul plague.

    My care only caused more harm to someone else... that¡¯s a new experience for me. I have never had that happen.

    My care for myself has hurt me, certainly. And my care for others harms myself plenty. And that is as it should be. But.

    I have never hurt... someone with my care in all my 17 years of life.

    ¡°¡°Never. Never. Never. Never...¡± My lower lip trembles and my blue eyes fill with the opaque sludge of disbelief, mirroring the narrowing of my sight. All I can see is the neck of an innocent man cauterized by agonizing mummification. The rest of my vision is blurred out in my peripheral vision, none of my extra eyes helping. They are all tightly shut with emotional pain.

    I doubt there was even fluid or soul left in his upper chest. Black crawls hungrily across the edges of my vision, a need to breath clawing at my chest futilely...

    My large ears twitch.

    ¡°See? She¡¯s going to need supervision and tailor-made equipment to prevent herself from killing the other students in the Academy for Magics, Demonics and Altogether Eldritch Vessels,¡± says a woman smugly from outside my narrowing focus.

    *sigh* ¡±I suppose you¡¯re right. It¡¯s just such an expense. You know D&T won¡¯t appreciate we¡¯re using more funds for this side venture. And yes, yes. I know. You don¡¯t need to repeat why it¡¯s important to make use of her,¡± snaps an enby angrily.

    ¡°Oh my gosh, you look so unbearably smug,¡± they add to their complaints, with little actual heat to it.

    ¡°Now. Get up,¡± ordered the woman to me, ignoring the chatter of the enby.

    I start to get up quickly despite my shrinking vision. The threat of impending violence is imminent.

    People touch me with hazard protection, measuring and examining my body.

    A couple more die before they settle on the right protection, the rush of consuming other''s ectoplasm eliciting ecstasy.

    I''m itchy now, greasy chunks and flakes of pastry-like flesh sprinkled over my neck and hair.

    Perhaps they are tailors? I cannot be bothered to care. The soft rasp of gloves trails tightly over my hands, replacing the opera gloves I had discarded a while back. Someone, with complex metalwork protecting their hands, places the peculiar clothing articles on my exposed skin.

    I can feel metal wires running underneath the itchy fabric of what I presumed to be the protection equipment. I can¡¯t help but feel an incessant need to scratch at my arms in a panicked tic. And yet, I cannot bring out my hands out from under the man who met his demise in my hopeless grasp. That would move my sleeping brother - I mean, move my accidental victim.

    It is a crude mockery of a pet owner having their hands tied up by their pet sleeping sweetly on them, each enjoying the other''s company.

    Ugh.

    My emotions flatten down back to normal, so quickly that I wonder: were those emotions real?

    Internally, my nose wrinkles in thought. I don¡¯t believe so. An apocalypse, which is indeed what Torments are, cannot feel sorry for the one it devours. I was manufacturing my emotions earlier, just like how I am posting these expressions now to match the situation. Just me participating improv to make a better theater play of life, to make a better direction for all of the actors and me.

    I am just pushing out synthesized emotions into the world that don¡¯t belong to me. Cannot stop now or they might note down my capabilities for messing with my emotions.

    I stare sardonically at the random stranger dead on my lap.

    *Click*

    *kerchunk*

    *tat*

    *tat*

    *tat*

    With each click of the equipment, my awareness of my soul grows.

    Ah will quit mah whining ''n'' attention-grabbing sissy feelings ''cause no son of his should be so girly...

    So... that I can focus on the soul instead of the corpse, erasing the discordant notes on today''s music piece of memory. I can feel a vapor-like soul lick the edges of the few blank spaces left, a sensation of phantasmal proprioception flickering and sputtering more like living flame than a simple soul. It compresses against the restraining magic, restraining against the metal weave like water straining against a thumb placed against the opening of a hose.

    It is almost calming, in the way that sticking one''s hands under pooled-up dishwater has a fun, compressing feeling.

    ¡°Grab my hand, kid,¡± says someone.

    I stand all too easily with the help of whoever¡¯s supporting gesture is used to lift me up. My eyebrows raise in surprise as my stats giving me the strength and liquid grace to easily stand up above, completely ignoring the weight of the corpse.

    Honestly, it feels rather sacrilegious to easily let the corpse fall.

    My vision clears up as the panic attack recedes, my eyes alighting on the woman pulling me along. I put on an expression of awe and terror at holding the hand of someone who is stupidly rich and insanely powerful.

    "The L-l-l-lady of D-d-d-d-death an-n-n-n-n-n-nd Taxes..." I stutter out, my face blanching on command. I am shocked, for sure, but my surprise is only showing on my face because I want it to.

    So that''s what the guards meant when they mentioned D&T and her annoyance with the cost of putting me through school.

    Internally, I grimace in frustration.

    OF ALL THE PLACES THE KING COULD SEND ME, HE SENDS ME TO THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE?!?!?!

    Oh my fucking Stars. I don''t know whether to burst into laughter or into tears.

    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! *internal screaming*

    The IRS is strong enough to ensure taxes happen for the entirety of the USA. Enough power rests in the iron fist of its leader to take the dough from most of the old monsters within the States.

    "Yes. The Lady of Death and Taxes, i.e. ME, is putting you through the Academy for Magics, Demonics, and Altogether Eldritch Entities. It is because you are connected to the abominations that have been popping up all over the neighborhood in Indiana. You are using MY TAXES, so you better do well, tiny creature... or your disgustingly foul soul will be eaten by my aspect of Death," the lady in question said matter-of-factly.

    Hidden under the illusion, my ears fold back against my skull. The symphony of her Magic, of screaming souls and clattering coin, is excruciatingly loud. Papercuts pepper my ears, my sensitive organs harmed by nonexistent, conceptual dollar bills.

    When my gang boss Luke had been filing his taxes, I had overheard him ranting to the unfortunate mobster that me and friends convinced to bring in the tax forms.

    Hey.

    Don''t judge us for siccing that on the poor kid...

    You wouldn''t want to bring a werewolf tax forms either when none can get citizen status in the States. Makes taxes a wee bit problematic for them.

    Anyway, according to him, she may be on the verge of ascending into the essence.

    More specifically, I heard him yell "-That Yue-damned miser. Needs to get her bony ass. Out of my Yue-damned business! You are going to fill out the forms for that prick on the vergin'' on Divine or you''re gettin'' none of grandpapa''s pizza tonight-" in his characteristic Irish brogue.

    Serious threats, that.

    I snap back from fond memories right back to the present. She is nowhere close to ascension to merging with the Essence, but she certainly is merged with the concepts of Death and of Taxes close enough to kick ass for most on this level of reality. This being in contrast to those up and fully merged into the Essence, which are on a different level of reality.

    ¡°Just pick her up. It¡¯ll go faster. You probably won¡¯t die. I want to get back to my money and not babysit you weaklings,¡± she callously demanded of another Warrior.

    "Wait! I-I-I want a promi-i-i-ise. I-I-I-I-I need to check i-i-i-in with my aquainta-a-a-a-a-ances before I go to thi-i-i-i-i-i-i-is school."

    "Fine. But I am not waiting for your stumbling, stuttering self, nor any of these weaklings, when I could be collecting taxes," she said standoffishly. With a smooth wave of her hand, she makes me gasp.

    No, not like that, you slutty Lust fiends. You''re all pervs and you know it!

    Like a clattering of maracas, bones rattle behind my back as an impossibly sharp scythe draws up to my throat.

    "I have to kill you to use my teleportation. Don''t worry. I''ll bring you back to life. You''re low enough level for that."

    Before I can even act out the absolute terror I feel in that moment...

    I am looking at my headless body, hoisted up just in the corner of my vision by the Lady''s hands grasping onto to my slender forearms.

    ...

    ...

    ...

    That''s my headless body?

    My irises bulge out of my recently displaced head, in a way I am pretty sure they aren''t supposed to, as I strain to look around me. Looming next to me is the cold face of the Lady of Death and Taxes as if she regularly kills people for Uber transportation. The broken-up fragments of a giant''s skull, glued together by oversized, almost comical, gold coins, form a grimacing helmet devoid of emotion around her head. Glowing gold bones make up the rest of her unique avatar. And just like that, we start gliding at impossible speeds, her cloak fluttering ominously and slowly despite the blurring of the world around us.

    Now''s the time, baby!

    With an agonized grin, I mouth... "To be or not to be, that is the question," my chin lightly bumps into her palm as I speak it.

    This is the perfect moment to play such a role to exactitude. I highly doubt that I will be decapitated ever again (and remain conscious anyway), and my Veteran Pain Resistance skill is keeping me cognizant in spite of this utter extremis of agony. So why not play the skull''s part from Hamlet; the one that belonged to the dead jester of the court, Yorick.

    And hey! What da ya know? I''m just a dead head and I''m a jester! Now''s the perfect time. No need to focus on that trifling pain.

    Technically the skull of Yorick was silent and Hamlet was the one talking to the silent bones, but ahhh... technicalities.

    "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. ¡ªWhere be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady¡¯s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.¡ªPrithee, Horatio, tell me one thing," I mutter dramatically to myself, though no air escapes my dead, blue lips.

    On the plus side, I just need to remember unlike Yorrick, I still have lips. They haven''t rotten away like his did in the Shakespearian tale. And unlike my brother Dennis, I can still move my lips, however dead they are. So don''t worry brother, I am still enjoying life for you.

    I''m having the time of my life as we travel!!! Really!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! THE PAIN! OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!! It is - if I could, I would wheeze with laughter. Unfortunately, my vocal cords can only shift below my neck into the open air - IT IS EXCRUCIATING!!!

    A phantom sensation of my body teases my spazzing mind. Now I know what it is like for all those war veterans, though perhaps... just a bit more extreme. The phantom limb - errr, body - hangs from my head like a overripe fruit, jittering and bouncing as if it is filled with thrashing maggots. My brain can not even compute missing so much of me, instead replacing my mind with all-consuming white-hot pain. It feels like my entire body, despite the... quite important fact that it is no longer attached, is contorting in impossible movements.

    I try to scream, try to cry, try to laugh. Miasma pierces through my soul like a glass spindle, while a golden skeletal hand grips the ectoplasmic construct in question, keeping it forcefully attached to my head. The sweet touch of Death cracks me in all the cruelest ways, forcing me to live the part of a prop in a desperate attempt to retain my sanity.

    Bubbling beneath my Miasmic skin, in both my head and my suspended body, is my Truths. They truly resonate with my plight.

    The pain... will I go insane? Is this where I truly break? Shatter until I am not even a Broken Mirror, but instead useless, BORING dust? Will I no longer be able to amuse the Stars, the watchers of my life?

    The illusionary makeup starts to melt off my face like wax from the sheer boiling potential of my Miasma. The anti-magic grows and condenses in strength and now I stand on the edge of a precipice.

    HATRED! Veteran Pain Resistance Level 34 levels up!

    HATRED! Veteran Pain Resistance Level 35 levels up!

    HATRED! Veteran Pain Resistance Level 36 levels up!

    HATRED! Veteran Pain Resistance Level 37 levels up!

    HATRED! Veteran Pain Resistance Level 38 levels up!

    HATRED! Veteran Pain Resistance Level 39 levels up!

    HATRED! Veteran Pain Resistance Level 40 levels up!

    HATRED! Veteran Pain Resistance Level 41 levels up!

    ...

    Oh dear. WHOO! I am falling down the cliff of these crazy concepts now! I would clutch my head and seize up if I could.

    The Broken Mirror and The Forsaken Jester whisper to me a feeling of solace, taking on my pain. All that is left is enjoyment of this agony for the purpose of playing the fool of the court. I can deal with this now. I can''t tell whether the Truths are messing up my mind or keeping it intact. Could be either, but all I know is that the pain is but a distant memory already, a bird that has already fled the nest of my mind.

    This is fun!

    I sigh as the juggernaut called the Lady of Death and Taxes remedies my unalive situation. Her palm lobs my head up in the air, leaking brain and blood all the while, before batting my head onto my body much like smacking a magnet against a fridge door. A pulse of ominous, very classically Death, black magic blinds me for a second, somehow fixing my Torment body with ease. This role has been unique.

    I take a deep breath to steady myself, focusing on my notifications from both Systems as a centering point...

    And fall down on my ass because holyyyy shish kebab! That is a rush! The Lady really knows how to make one weak in the knees.

    "I have someone I need to kill for tax evasion. Call my name and I''ll be back," she states, collapsing into a tiny black point in reality, before that too collapses with a pop.

    She''s lying. I can see it. I just know it. I have absolutely zero idea where she is at right now, but if I could hazard a guess, she is probably watching from a high vantage point, tapping her foot against the skyscraper''s impatiently. And she is probably rhetorically thinking "Why do I have to watch this child when I could be getting taxes?"

    I have her personality down to a science! Internally, I commit to an evil anime rich person laugh while pressing the Fae Heart skill to resurrect the illusion on my face. It comes oddly easily, so perhaps that makeup The King gave me ''taught me'' how to use that aspect of Fae Heart? These are all hypotheticals though, and I cannot be sure.

    Fae Heart: Charisma is boosted by a multiplier of 10. Your body will be emblematic of unearthly beauty. You cannot break promises. You must tell the truth. You can mimic your prior appearance. Explore your connection with the Fae and this will grow in strength.

    In my mind, a simple and anatomical heart sketch sketches out, beating and releasing sparkles onto a hunched-over stick figure with a potato-shaped head. They become a normal basic stick figure, so I would presume that it works. A quick verification by vision assures me of that too. Thankfully, the Lady isn''t surprised by the view of my strange, real form though.

    My mind has recovered already! While reading my notifications, in the middle of the random street she plopped me in earlier, I get up and starting busting out some moves just for shits and giggles.

    "Right here, right now! For your viewing pleasure! My fine ass moving around in fine! Fine! Fine! Fashion!" I speak to myself in a vintage ad announcer voice, my various limbs and head moving in robotic dance to match with my artificial tone. A man walking by gave me a side eye, looking simultaneously concerned for my wellbeing and deeply amused by my antics.

    He walks off, his day made a little brighter by my cringe, but well-done, spectacle. I take a deep breath in, though it eventually turned into a jaw-splitting yawn despite the time of day. I feel better now. Making someone happier that day, or cringe in almost physical pain at my acting, eases the soul.

    ...

    HATRED! Veteran Pain Resistance Level 209 levels up!

    HATRED! Veteran Pain Resistance Level 210 levels up!

    HATRED! Veteran Pain Resistance Level 211 levels up! Tier 3. Up from Total Level 384 to Total Level 561.

    CONGRATULATIONS! The cracks of Death riddle your mind and soul evermore. There will be no turning back from the Truth of The Broken Mirror. The splintered edges of your mind have been honed by pain. You have gained a skill borne of this Truth. It worms its way into the Magic System through its connection to the Major Mesh of Pain Resistance.

    CONGRATULATIONS! You have become a Jester even in death, and while playing a fool, you played the fool of everyone. You have gained a subset of Miasma built off taking this Truth to the next level of entertainment. Requires Ritual Experience and Runes Knowledge Meshes to operate, as well as the environmental component of your bone: a Magic-dense skull from the creature that your Miasmic Truths grew from. A reward will be given from the System of the Torments itself if Magical, rather than Miasmic, Meshes are used to accomplish this. In addition, the Divine Torment will improve the infection within your soul.

    HATRED! You have improved your Major Mesh of Pain Resistance drastically.

    HATRED! You have improved your Major Mesh of Pain Resistance drastically.

    HATRED! You have improved your Major Mesh of Pain Resistance drastically.

    HATRED! You have evolved your Major Mesh of Pain Resistance into Proficient Mesh of Pain Resistance Tier 4. Having also grown numerous branches in the Proficient Mesh of Pain Resistance, it is has grown into the Major Mesh of Pain, going back down a Tier. A class is now available based on this Mesh, untainted by the heinous, disgusting Miasma you have introduced into the Magic. Check your available classes (only take the ones that are untainted).

    I squint at this, before looking back up to the purple notifications, before looking back again. The purple boxes, the Miasmic System, very clearly say that Pain Resistance is essentially a back door for a Torment skill to appear in the Magic System. So... the Magic System is not omnipotent?

    My brow knits in worry and frustration. I am lacking knowledge on something fundamental to mine and others'' existence, and find that I don''t much appreciate that.

    "Hmmh." I pout.

    And not only that, I consider myself to be far more well-informed on the limits of the System than others. For example, I know that the "glitches" that appear in the System when Eldritch creatures are present is simply a warning that ''these fuckers are bad news. Your puny mind can''t handle this shit.''

    With enough force of Will, you can get the System to take off what are essentially the safety wheels it puts in place. Though there are plenty of Mages who did that far too soon, and the System gave exactly the information those fools were asking for.

    Each of those Mages received the Darwin''s Award in case you were wondering.

    At least I have a more official name the Miasmic System than "purple boxes" or, well, Miasmic System. It goes by System of the Torments. It may not necessarily be important, but having a name to something is just plain reassuring.

    I switch my attention back from stewing in my concern to looking through my curtain of azure blue hair to check out the rest of the fascinating notifications while standing on my hands. Don''t mind me! Just doing some simple popping and locking improv dance.

    HATRED! You are eligible for the class Apprentice Pain Mage Tier 1 Class. Carve and cut up your Will to mold the sensation of suffering, be it yours or others, like putty to your mind.

    HATRED! You are eligible for the class Apprentice Torturer of Pain Tier 1 Class. You became built to increase suffering due to the suffering you have experienced. All traits related to torture are boosted by Aura Will skills, ready to increase every aspect of pain that they cause.

    HATRED! You are eligible for Tutored by Suffering Tier 1. As bona fide royalty and a prodigal genius in social work as all Princesses should be, your pain has taught you much. Shaping your body and personality both through lessons you took to heart and lessons damaged into your head and soul, you have been an eager, if unwitting, pupil to Suffering. Now get some real-world applications for your learning. Time to try out your new abilities as you figure out how you shall reign as Queen.

    My stats allow my body to move like herky-jerky clockwork into a close-to-perfect right angle position between everything above and everything below my torso. After that, I pop into splits in a dynamic skewing, twisting my body in a way that would make it appear as if I am a clock from an diagonal point of view. All the while, wiggling my body behind the "hands of the clock" or rather my legs, like an undulating worm at an angle requiring incredible core strength.

    Well, I think that all the choices look positively smashing! I leap up and clap my hands together in eagerness, a grin filling my face like hot ginger peach tea filling up a cup, though my eyes are the ice cubes in this analogy.

    Despite the joy of gaining more power, and thus freedom, in this world, a cold glint in my eyes burns in my eyes. Charisma pours out of my expression, creating an oppressive aura of utter fury that eats through the vast amount of Charisma stored rapidly. Everyone on the street freezes like deer under a frost giant''s breath.

    The Lady of Death and Taxes literally killed me, decapitating me, without so much a thought to my wellbeing. If I wasn''t - well, let''s be honest - if I wasn''t me. And I had been literally anyone else without Pain, Torture, and Interrogation Resistance (and the incredibly high levels I have in them) I would be a gibbering mess.

    My teeth grit together. She did not have a right to do that to me all for the sake of expediency.

    She killed me... so she could save time. Perhaps one could ''say all''s well that ends well,'' but I say that if I succeed in ascending, she will be near the top of the smiting list.

    "Ohhhohohohoho..." the callousness is strong with this one. She will pay for hurting my body in such a way. She is not the only one that earns my ire though. I gaze at my blessing askance.

    It Just Will Not Die: The Stars wish to keep watching you. You are entertaining. Their desire to keep observing you accidentally turned into a blessing which enables you to escape situations within reason.

    I did die! Apparently that does not count as a situation within reason... and I suppose one could argue that I came back from said death! But I couldn''t care less! She committed ctrl+alt+delete on my life! I don''t care whether she fished me out of the metaphorical/digital trashcan files!!! The bragging rights are insane, and I will rub it in to literally everyone in the gang, but that was not fun!

    I suppose the curse from capital-G God won in this case.

    "I choose Tutored by Suffering."

    HATRED! You have unlocked the Class Tutored by Suffering Tier 1.

    You have unlocked the Skills:

    -The Student Becomes The Teacher: Choose any moment of pain you have been dealt in your life, and deal it thrice-fold to your enemy

    -Pain Magic Level 0 Tier 1 (Boosted by Detested Prodigy): A prodigy in the workings of pain, you have an understanding in how to cause others pain far beyond most your age in the surrounding society. Learn how to work Magic in general, and how to inflict and use the concept of Pain with your Will, to level. Using to achieve goals will level ability.

    -Despair-Stained Hands Level 0 Tier 1: Weaponize the ghostly blood that runs through your veins with a flex of Will. Kill or mind-break to level.

    -Rapier of Broken Reflection Level 0 Tier 2: Choose an emotion to make snap off for the time of battle and wield a shard of The Broken Mirror, causing others to feel your Pain. Improve in sword-fighting Skill and slice open flesh and mind alike to increase in level. You will only feel variations of that emotion during the battle. Try to survive its use. Don''t try to survive its use.

    -Increase Pain Level 0: Overlaying your Will onto anything will increase the pain that thing deals depending on the amount of Will you use.

    There is really no other choice, if I still want to carve my path in the world like I desire to. This may be the one infected by Miasma, but that means it draws power from far more of my experiences.

    Others much nicer than me, *cough* Betsie *cough*, would totally avoid letting the enemy of all Magic-kind hack into the Magic System. She would probably be stronger and better off choosing the other options anyway, just due to her life experience and personality. If she received identical class options in an absurd hypothetical, her experiences would still color how her classes operate. Since most of her experiences would fit more under the Apprentice Pain Mage than any of the other options, it would likely be the strongest for her.

    But she''s not in this position. I am.

    I need the power Tutored by Suffering will give me. Being a monster in the "eyes" of the Essence of reality means that doubling down on the worst filth within my mind will push me head and shoulders over a kinder option.

    Now that the notifications are out of the way, I start skipping in the direction that I know brother''s hospital is. The warm, eagerly bright sun lightly graces my skin, curiously gazing upon me as I jauntily travel down the road to the two members of my small family. I jubilantly switch to running and jumping in equal measure to get to Elisa and Dennis faster.

 Chapter 29: Interlude - An Uncle Fond of Glassing the Place + Plus Story Title Poll

    My bare feet padded along the dusty, rocky road. I glanced over to the kids playing in the rice field, my mirror-coated eyes lingering over the rough-and-tumble play. They splash around, uprooting their parents¡¯ rice plants and giggling as they lob mud balls at each other.

    *scoff*

    So boring.

    My ears perk up to a whistle of wind.

    Just need to move one of my feet to the left, forming a cracked-up crater from the force of the chakra in my footwork compacting the ground, and then propel. I narrowly avoid the falling sword.

    I turn my horizontal movement into a roll, covering myself with plates of pointed, reflective glass. The 5 meter-in-diameter (or ~15 feet in diameter) rolling tank of silvered, spike-covered glass races off after the ninja. The enemy grimaced at the sounds of the glass of my war machine grating together.

    Sad.

    It didn''t throw him off despite his annoyance.

    *shink!*

    A hole of bright light opens in the darkness of my rolling behemoth, the glittering dust I used to suspend myself no longer the only light within the pitch black.

    Yawning heavily, I was forced to tilt my body out of the way of the sword stabbing through my war jutsu like butter. Not only that, but I had to wiggle like a worm as the sword stabbed, not the once, but instead 50 times in the next three seconds.

    How droll.

    Payback time.

    Cracks appeared on the skin around my eyes, the reflective parts seeming to catch light, like a nerd¡¯s glasses in the light of inspiration, in the darkness of my war jutsu. I balled up, tensing as the rolling tank of glass around me exploded like an oversized tank.

    My attacker¡¯s brown, almost black, eyes widened in a rare expression of surprise. He used the substitution jutsu ten times in a row along with an Earth-style jutsu with a wall as thick as a Daimyo¡¯s mansion and 10 times as tall. He quickly ran out of Chakra trying to escape me.

    And still, despite his efforts, he sustained injuries I would have thought fatal... if I didn¡¯t know he has more lives than a cat.

    From an unknown source, chakra flowed into the cockroach-like ninja, filling him back up.

    A quick succession of hand seals saw him healed. I noticed a succession of hand seals while he sunk under the earth to obfuscate his direction against my bombardment of oversized splinters.

    A false corpse surrounded by a storm of fire grew from the dusty road right below me, grabbing my ankle to flip me parallel to the ground.

    He swung his upswinging knee up.

    *snap*

    Impressive.

    He broke my back.

    Blood sprayed out my mouth, so with a simple push of Wind chakra, I sent it into his face on a gust of wind. He gathered up my blood in his palm with ease, before dodging shoddy glass spears from my hand with a cartwheel and sending the liquid back to me with the same motion.

    It became a glob of white-hot fire that left imprints in my vision despite the natural resistance.

    I knew he used hand seals I could have copied, but they were disappointingly hidden by the annoyingly bright fire. He probably did that on purpose.

    And my stomach rumbled because I still have not gotten to my favorite restaurant for ramen.

    ¡°Man... what a drag...¡± I groaned.

    The man smirked knowingly, before cutting open his arms to send a dragon¡¯s worth of fire at me.

    I hopped and skipped around the fields like a rabbit, covering vast distances as the Kage-level Ninja absolutely demolished the entire set of farmland around us. Rice went up in flames as the wind behind my speeding form cut the rice up like so much chaff.

    The hairs on my neck raised, my medical ninjutsu preparations paying off and allowing me to sense the vibrations of the earth like a spider.

    A towering behemoth of earth was ripped out of the earth by the force of nature behind me with nothing but chakra and his bare hands. I narrowly use my mirror creation to blast myself out of the way like a rocket, only to find myself and the land around me covered in a light shadow.

    My reflective eyes glance up, the perpetual boredom within my eyes replaced, for once, by shock.

    A vast cliff of a hand outstretched over me and my surroundings, blotting out the sun with its jagged, rock-encrusted outline. It hurtled down with ridiculous speed for its ridiculous size like a meteor of cataclysmic proportions.

    Sped by panic, my hands spun around in a variety of hand seals that I had created myself. Hand seals complicated even for me that created hand seals within the Mirror World I had access to, which created hand seals in a world within the Mirror World, and ad infinitum. Dull glass eyes flick around as I focused on each shard of chakra, fitting them together like a high-stakes puzzle.

    Which are not boring.

    Layers grew upon layers of reflective glass around me like the formation of a house-sized shiny pearl. They screeched together in an annoying nails-against-chalkboard sound as they grow into place. I stomped my tiny foot down on a glass shard, blood pouring from it to write summoning calligraphy into the ground.

    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    *poof*

    My only slightly boring teammate appeared in a cloud of smoke, only to get thoughts shoved into his head by genjutsu.

    A cliff is falling on us. Dying would be so boring, so pull your weight.

    His nine black eyes stared at me accusingly. The number of his eyes stands for longevity, which should help. Or at least, that¡¯s what I pray for with poor posture because doing it correctly for my ancestors would increase their expectations of me.

    And I don¡¯t want that.

    Too much work.

    Glowing white circles appeared in the center eye of Ajax, my summon.

    A second has passed since I summoned him.

    He pranced around with his eight legs, funneling chakra into a glowing ball of unparalleled density before passing it onto me so I could activate my finishing jutsu.

    My bubble of glass morphed into a mirror the size of the entire behemoth that the attacker had summoned, fueled by the immense chakra reserves of both me and Ajax.

    Two seconds have passed.

    And impact.

    Utter silence.

    The earthen behemoth was swallowed by my superior jutsu.

    A sword was held against my throat threateningly. I looked down to the cold steel, and then back to the war-hardened old man holding it.

    ¡°Fuck.¡±

    He sheathed it and we jumped back at the standard distance for formality.

    We bowed to each other.

    ¡°Thank you for your guidance, Uncle,¡± came my cold, eerily high voice.

    ¡°This Uncle is humbled that you appreciate his guidance,¡± he gruffly rasped out.

    ¡°Come with me,¡± he demanded, and we left the corpses behind.

    I trailed behind his baggy kimono until we finally made it to a public bench in a park. The chakra plumes of the less successful child Ninjas were sprinkled throughout the area, as they prepared to kill me if I did something as exhausting as betray him.

    ¡°So,¡± he started off amicably, ¡°Which one?¡±

    Immediately, I leapt to my feet. My finger aimed directly at the peaceful waters.

    ¡°Perfect. Come out 13L0017,¡± he said peacefully out to across the windswept, light green grass, the idyllic pond trembling from his chakra-infused words. A light smile graced his face as he gestured to the child disguised in the ponds with a wave of his aged hand.

    The contented emotion on his face never failed to set shivers up my back when it surfaced.

    The idyllic pond turned a bloody shade of red, which coalesced into a spiky mane of scarlet hair. A girl fixed her large glasses, temporarily blinding me and Uncle with the refraction, as she strode through the blood-drenched mud towards us.

    She knelt before Uncle, dark grey eyes staring into the ground.

    ¡°You did such a good job, 1310017. Your reward is being next to me,¡± he said contentedly.

    She stood up, sitting next to Uncle on the park bench. He took out a hairbrush from his robe to start taming her wild hair.

    ¡°I am deeply disappointed you were found in the first place, but-¡± he tugged at a tangle in her roughly, ¡°- I will overlook your revolting flaws for now. 6LASSY-3Y317, who is next?¡±

    I limply pointed at a chubby kid, who teleported in front of Uncle in a kneeling position.

    ¡°Of all under me, you are the worst. You are nothing but trash,¡± spat out Uncle venomously.

    *shink*

    The kid¡¯s cherubic face rolled across the ground.

    ¡°Now. The rest of you Numbered... go back to work.¡± He clapped his hands, and they all left by jutsu that I filed away in my mind for future study.

    ¡°Now,¡± he stated, stomping on the ground and opening the entrance to his home. A loud rumble shook the ground as earth rearranged.

    So uninspired... and so boring.

    ¡°Follow me,¡± he finished his statement after the hole in the ground stopped shifting.

    All three of us blur down the steps, the earth rearranging to close up behind us again.

    The fact that Uncle could kill me at any moment in this talisman booby-trapped pit of his made me feel the cold touch of the Shinigami against my neck.

    I took a shallow, shuddering breath to calm myself.

    ¡°Don¡¯t tell you¡¯re afraid of the dark, are you?~¡± he said, oddly musical.

    ¡°No Uncle,¡± I said blandly.

    ¡°Of course not. It¡¯s absolutely preposterous, the concept. I guess I am growing senile in my old age. My prot¨¦g¨¦ would never be anxious around his dear old Uncle,¡± he said to me, 130017 completely forgotten in the corner.

    He reached over and pinched my cheek with enough force to crush the reinforced heads of most ninjas. It only bruised my skin, though it did give him a firm enough grip to pull me close to his suddenly furious face.

    ¡°Imagine if I sent you on an infiltration mission and you showed anxiety like that?! You would dare humiliate your Uncle like that with such poor control over your expressions?!¡± he said. His words still managed to sound like screams despite his seemingly calm delivery.

    He tossed me away to the ground with enough force to crater the ground.

    I scooted along the ground, tilling the dirt until I stopped at the end of the cube hideout.

    Such a drag. Literally.

    I got up, not brushing off the dirt, so it didn¡¯t seem like I was brushing off the physical marks of his punishment. For the same reason, I avoided healing the swelling on my face. He would get... violent... if I did that.

    He¡¯s boring like that.

    ¡°You both are growing weak here, fending off against the same methods of attack. I tire of your leeching,¡± he started.

    Here? As in... the Hidden Village.

    ¡°So I am sending you away to get more useful. You both will be enrolled in the Academy for Magics, Demonics and Altogether Eldritch Vessels. You must infiltrate it successfully, avoiding the ire of the Immortals that teach it. Or you will make Uncle very mad, which would be both of your maggots¡¯ fault, and you would deserve to be squashed, understood?¡±

    ¡°Yes Uncle,¡± we chorused.

    ¡°Now, you will need to leave our world to get to it, and I have secured transportation for you both... so be thankful,¡± he ended with a whisper.

    Killing intent turned the air a turgid red. It was so heavy it drew blood from both our necks.

    ¡°We thank you sincerely from the depths of our heart and wish we could grovel at your feet in our appreciation,¡± we chorused fervently.

    There is a high bounty on a Torment that escaped the pursuit of the Magical Guardians and is believed to have killed a member of that organization. you find that one¡±

    Torment? Magical Guardians?

    My eyes narrowed in annoyance. I have no idea what those are, and I can¡¯t ask for elaboration or he might make an example of one of my family members at random.

    He¡¯s an ass like that.

    I¡¯ll have to see if they have any scrolls available on the history of the Talismanic World.

    I am... only slightly... looking forward to going there. They have so many talismans implemented into their daily life style it¡¯s insane. How many boring bookworms do they have in their dimension?!

    I look to my coworker and find her excitement to be leaking out through her expression too.

    ¡°Before you pack up your items, how long has it been since you have eaten?¡±

    ¡°2 weeks,¡± we say at the same time.

    ¡°Good. You may have ramen now. You need to put on the pounds to blend in with the others.¡±

    Our eyes sparkle with happiness and we leave to get some delicious ramen in our bodies, thin as rakes we were.

 Hiatus Announcement

    It is time to make one of the most colorless announcements I have ever had the misfortune to make. I can''t handle things right now. Everything is bland. I''m just plodding through everything, and utterly empty of emotion. Completely drained of energy, I just cannot write right now.

    I am going on Hiatus.

    Everything just feels so hellishly gray and unbelievably BORING. My depression and anxiety have hit me like a sack of bricks, so I''m going to be spending some time trying to stuff the emotions back in the toy box. I am absolutely out of my mind with worry for one of my little siblings and one of the people I hope I can call one of my friends. They are both in dire situations, medically.

    Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    I''ll be back, and hopefully my emotional mask will be affixed more firmly than it is right now.

    Signed,

    The Monotone Puppet/Kaydence.

 Chapter 30: These Are Screams of Enlightenment

    I try, and fail, to brush the extra remnants of my flesh and blood off my REALLY nice dress as I skip jovially through my home territory.

    All my efforts amount to is spreading of the previous contents of my head further over the fine lace of my fashion statement like strawberry jam over bread.

    Every single eye on my body starts spazzing angrily in their sockets as I only succeed in brushing the bigger chunks off my chest. The Orbs of Vanity strongly dislike the besmirching of my gorgeous image with such gorey material, though they still gaze obsessively over my body. In spite of their distaste, they still, nonsensically, only grow more obsessed with my blood-drenched form.

    The striations of the golden orbs turn heart-shaped for a second, expressing their never-ending infatuation with my perfect self. Pink rust grows and shrinks over them like shifting weather over the surface of the earth, or a growing colony of lovely bacteria that soon die off.

    As all should be.

    I gaze around at everyone I pass by. They all walk by, only stopping for my precious beauty, their eyebrows raised as they look at me with a variety of intense feelings. Some are envious to a worrying degree.

    Don''t attack me.

    Please.

    For your safety, it is, I promise you, better to not attack out of Envy.

    While others are completely failing to be discreet in admiring my body, and a few are cackling because they find my beauty to be so great that it turns around to humorous for the amiable individuals.

    I snort. That man is drooling.

    A realization sparks within my head, and I quickly start frowning hard.

    As much I appreciate the admiration of my body, they should be far more concerned for their safety. Being confronted with the frightening vision of a child strewn over flesh, they should be steering around me with horrified expressions rather than enjoying my dancing nor appreciating my fine body.

    I think on what could be preventing me from looking to all as if I had partied in one of the impromptu charnel houses of Se?or Screaming Fingers.

    *smack*

    I drag my hand across my face in exasperation. Duh! The illusion of Fae Heart must be covering my ¡°jam-covered¡± body up.

    Stars.

    Moments of stupidity like that are how you get killed here. Honestly, incredibly slow on the uptake right now. What if I had not been saved by the random-ass, OP skill I had been luckily granted in the Tormented Zone? I am completely undeserving/I am so deserving of such a skill. After all, this is outside of its parameters, so stretching to include the gore on my outfit is not something I can just expect to happen.

    I could blame being decapitated, a rather reasonable excuse, I think. However, a star must uphold their smarts to a far greater standard, however much they must struggle against their lacking intelligence.

    If I could anthropomorphize my skill, I would offer endless and effusive appreciations to the illusion of Fae Heart. My poor skill is much like an employee that can''t refuse when people ask them for help: overworking and pulling over-time.

    But UGH! It¡¯s so stupid of me... how could I not realize it?

    I hate having to rely on others and on idiotic wishes that the whims of the world will turn to my favor; on hope.

    So how could I indirectly rely on hope; by falling to stupidity?

    I spit off to the side at the thought, a piece of coagulated blood - or rather a congealed piece of phantasmal fluid, I suppose - that had been stuck in my teeth from the decapitation. Like too much ink in one spot on the page, grey spread across the black tarmac from my bloody saliva.

    And who knows... my mistake could still cause me trouble. All it will take is for one passerby or guard of some form to have an illusion-piercing skill or trait. Those are some of the easiest and by far the some of the most widespread in the System. And there are plenty of skills and traits with a not-so-specific focus as illusion-piercing that could still get around the skill. For example, skills that stem from the stat Perception could get around it if the illusion-creating skill and my backing Charisma is not enough to fend them off.

    ___________________

    My golden-black eyes observe the stains of grey contamination spreading from my despair-drenched clothes.

    While looking through them, there is an odd disassociation between my... original? It is original, right?... personality and the one while looking through their inhuman, narcissistic perspectives.

    They see a tainted dryad of small stature walking through this urban world, only instead of flowers sprouting in my footsteps, I carelessly litter my treaded path with a hunter''s traps. Meltingly drab liquid creates expanding pit traps, though the only falling you shall do is in your mind, in an never-ending spiral of depression.

    I grimace. I need to find somewhere to clean myself up... or a magic waste facility. I am a menace to society at the moment.

    Scratch that.

    Now if I revise it to "I am always a menace to society at the moment just by being me," it is far more accurate.

    Much better like that!

    Now, I can safely assume that the Lady of Death and Taxes won¡¯t wish to wait long while I find the appropriate cleaning SO!

    The corners of my mouth pull up in a smirk. I guess I must obtain her help with this incredibly important... cleansing.

    She is going to be my cheap laundromat.

    "Hey! IRS boss lady! If you want me to do my stuff faster, then whip up some Magic to help me! Otherwise you are going to be here a looong-"

    I pause, blinking as the sensation of being clean hits me. She didn¡¯t even let me finish my statement. How... *hmphs snootily*... how rude! I''m just. I''m just so offended. Right here, right now. Can you see this? I''m shaking my head in disappointment at the truly just stars-awful lack of manners she is showing.

    Really though. My overdramatic antics aside, I am quite impressed with how quickly she managed to get rid of the mess with her Magic, not that I would have noticed if she did it the normal, slower way of cleaning. She¡¯s just that fast. The perks of being an Immortal who has worked their ass off to achieve power. My guess is that she somehow managed to ¡°kill¡± the mess with her Death concept, turning all of the flesh into ashes, which sprinkle the ground...

    I watch with disbelief as exactly what I had been trying to avoid happens. My eyes dilate and constrict as I struggle to accept the consequences of the Lady''s casual indifference to life.

    Mass genocide.

    Under the bright white sun and big blue sky, the stiff breeze runs through the streets, carrying the grey ashes of me. The gusts twist and twirl, dusting the many people on the street walking unknowingly with the monster in their midst: me.

    It is much like the toxic fallout of America¡¯s Immortal Poisoner testing out his skills as well as testing out how the advancements in runic tech amplify said skills right near a few inhabited atolls. The ashes dust these civilians like a miniature model of the unfortunate victims of those weapons testing. The civilians of this road stop to look at the greasy ¡°snow¡± with various puzzled or lightly amused expressions.

    The unfortunate souls are so unwary; so unprepared.

    Their eyes squint uneasily when they see a faint discoloring of their skin. Perhaps they think it is a trick of light?

    ¡­

    Then the entire road turns a slimy, opaque grey like someone used the ''fill'' function on a drawing tablet, having chosen a particularly poor color choice. The hysterical screams, and worse, the bubbling laughter bursting into uncontrollable cackling, begin.

    Innocent children and unsuspecting adults collapse to the ground all curled up, like adorable Rollie Pollies. They sob, turning grey like the bugs¡¯ titular shell too. A mania overtakes them, their sobs and giggles freely waver and warble across the city block as my phantasmal blood turns them in writhing messes.

    A business professional grabs his fingers, plucking them with complete abandon. I can hear the gunshot-like sounds as he puts his Strength to bear and rips apart his tendons, flesh, and bones so as to allow him to binge-eat his fingers.

    Pop, pop. Pop, poppety-pop, pop. Pop, pop, pop. I amuse myself with imagining that the gunshot-like pops, instead, sound like the "pop" sound of smacking my lips together as a child.

    A sweet child, barely in his teens, is more careful in how he eliminates his cursed existence. You know, the one I cursed with my own horrid blood. He efficiently find a long pole, balancing it on its flat base. The logical person monotonously tests a couple swings to make sure he has the right angle, before swinging his head RIGHT down on the pole.

    My mind cringes.

    His twitching green eyes, the sole spot of color on his body, bug wide open as the pole pierces STRAIGHT THROUGH to the back of his head.

    A group of friends huddle together, hugging each other in a suicidal attempt to get some attempt at comfort. The emotional help they yearn for so strongly, the hugs they so helplessly give each other...

    In a moment of shocking clarity, I realize I can tell what exactly goes through their minds at this time. Every contact they make hammers home the realization that the relationships they built with their "best friends" are so shallow... they become increasingly more crushed. One of them reaches out for a tentative, fleeting grasp, only to looked stunned, as if she took a baseball bat to the face. Another''s trembling arms encircles his friend, until his legs start flailing like a pinned cockroach. He is so crushed that he does not know whether to stay or leave.

    And they never realized it until now. They had simply been selfish actors trying, but in reality failing, to achieve peace.

    What was the point of being kind and confiding in each other? All of it... had been pointless.

    And yet they still fail to learn the truth of the lesson in the process, crushing each others'' ribs in the infectious despair.

    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

    Whether I am horrified or not, I''m not sure, but I make sure to plaster on a body language of paralysis from fright and disbelief. I turn away from the spectacle I caused. I am causing it by the gross negligence of allowing myself continued existence.

    The Lady of Death and Taxes POV

    The head of a low-life in an illusionary boy¡¯s skin twitches so heavily to one side that its cheek slams into its shoulder hard enough to bruise. Its arms tremble, veins crawling up the muscles that now bulge up out of the originally slender figure. Its tiny, metallic hands clench hard enough to create sound that she, the head of the IRS of the entire US, could hear from miles away.

    Her thought process took a digression as she thought about how her jurisdiction only covered the US. It was no matter though. She had plans to expand the agency out of its original parameters soon enough.

    Hundreds of variables whirred within her head, used and discarded at a moments¡¯ notice. Parallel minds computed an entire economy, measuring each and every move that the Internal Revenue Service makes to extract the revenue from all of the businesses.

    One such parallel mind grimaced in disgust and... perhaps... overblown horror. Focused perpetually on the Skill Money-Counter of the Eons, it watched as numbers increased digit by digit.

    You have lost 117,169 in your coinage system during the time watching this being.

    The accursed thing she had to fund for school was taking far too long to recuperate emotionally.

    She believed it was time to kill that creature for transport to the school, wipe her hands of this completely useless pursuit, and return to collecting money and killing tax fraud escapers. It would be safe to say that the foul creature was purposefully wasting her time like all lazy bestial imitations of humans.

    She needed to be able to fund the ravenous military, or the corrupted animals that procreate around the various Dimensions will overrun the surrounding metropolises. She has those she needs to protect there. A few of her great, great, great, great grandchildren live in those danger-prone areas for profit, following the Money Sense Trait that runs in the family. She has no intention of stopping her large amounts of funding she was sending to those areas¡¯ military and for bribing those politicians always trying to move around the military, so that she could protect her descendants.

    Suddenly, as if the subhuman filth heard her thoughts, it about-faced, tapping a finger to its chin in thought. A stark contrast to the horror it showed on its face.

    Disappointing. She now had no excuse of the monster having fallen into temporary insanity.

    The POV of our adorable little trash bag: Sol

    HATRED! You have driven twelve System-less children insane. Lourens Maikens, Natalie Jeanna, Lukas Wright, Roswell Anton, Tori Sprout, Pankas Kadri, Evelyn Jeffery, Joanna Tillie, Yesujin Ti¨ºn, Jake Miller, Maximillian Moore, and Carolann Taylor have all been crushed mentally by the trait Phantasm Poisoned. Experience added to class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! You have killed twelve System-less children. Lourens Maikens, Natalie Jeanna, Lukas Wright, Roswell Anton, Tori Wright, Pankas Kadri, Evelyn Jeffery, Joanna Tillie, Yesujin Ti¨ºn, Jake Miller, Maximillian Moore, and Carolann Taylor have all commited suicide or been killed by their close ones due to your trait Phantasm Poisoned. All experience going to your class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! You have driven a Werewolf classed with Barber and Teacher of Self-Defense insane. Emidio Santi has been crushed mentally by the trait Phantasm Poisoned.

    HATRED! You have killed a Werewolf classed with Hunter of Information and Teacher of Self-Defense. Emilio Santi has committed suicide due to your trait Phantasm Poisoned. All experience going to your class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! You have driven a Human classed with Poor-Quality Merchant insane. Experience added to class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! You have killed a Human classed with Poor-Quality Merchant. Jojo Sage has committed suicide due to your trait Phantasm Poisoned. All experience going to your class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! You have driven a Human classed with Knife for Survival and Rogue for Survival insane. Emily Sprout has been crushed mentally by your trait Phantasm Poisoned. All experience going to your class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! You have killed a Human classed with Knife for Survival and Rogue for Survival. Emily Sprout has committed suicide due to your trait Phantasm Poisoned. All experience going to your class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! You have driven a Human classed with Knife for Survival and Illusion Mage Apprentice insane. Garnett Keirnon has been crushed mentally by your trait Phantasm Poisoned. All experience going to your class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! You have killed a Human classed with Knife for Survival and Illusion Mage Apprentice. Garnett Kiernon has committed suicide due to your trait Phantasm Poisoned. All experience going to your class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! You have driven a Human classed with Runic Industrial Builder and Laborer insane. Laura Preston has been crushed mentally by your trait Phantasm Poisoned. All experience going to your class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! You have killed a Human classed with Runic Industrial Builder and Part-Time Warrior insane. Laura Preston has committed suicide due to your trait Phantasm Poisoned. All experience going to your class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! Despair-Stained Hands Level 0 Tier 1 levels up!

    HATRED! Despair-Stained Hands Level 1 Tier 1 levels up!

    HATRED! Despair-Stained Hands Level 2 Tier 1 levels up!

    HATRED! Despair-Stained Hands Level 3 Tier 1 levels up!

    HATRED! Despair-Stained Hands Level 4 Tier 1 levels up!

    HATRED! Despair-Stained Hands Level 5 Tier 1 levels up!

    HATRED! Despair-Stained Hands Level 6 Tier 1 levels up!

    HATRED! Despair-Stained Hands Level 7 Tier 1 levels up!

    ...

    HATRED! Despair-Stained Hands Level 49 Tier 1 levels up to Level 50! Despair-Stained Hands requires a unique Magical action to evolve past Tier.

    HATRED! Class Tutored by Suffering levels up to Level 32. You have committed your first massacre, honing your craft as Torturer and Mage.

    Mind Control of the Self: the memories have been removed in a perpetual loop, preventing from you noticing the massacre. A delightful show of "turning a blind eye" turned to the perfect extreme. This skill has grown to the next stage. Your constant use of this skill-as a crutch to get by in mind-breaking circumstances, so you can break your mind in privacy, and multiple unique usages of the skill-is the reason for your advancement.

    ______

    A memory niggles at the back of my head. I feel like I should be able to see the truth of the world in front of me, but instead a lie is presented for my safety. Perhaps I put the lie there? I am not sure.

    I frown, my brow knitting together in thought.

    No matter!

    I should look away! My smile turns sunny once again!

    As much as I want to depart directly for my apartment so I can call in Elisa and Dennis, I can¡¯t let the gang get antsy. I haven¡¯t paid the fee this month and they need to be warned that D&T is in the area.

    How unfortunate! I must delay my reunion for the "greedy bastards." They are so inflexible; all about that guap, bones, moola, dough, wads, cheese, frogskins, lettuce...(HAHA! I love archaic phrases. They are just so fun!) The issues of being an adult in the neighborhood, am I right? Just forkin'' over all your earnings day in and day out.

    I suppose I should not judge them, even for a moment.

    Also, I need to retract calling them "bastards." That may hit waaay too close to home for them. I offer a moment of mental apology.

    Regardless, as political institutions go, they are many steps above. They are practically demonic saints!

    Though... others may just view naming them after an epitome of sin, one of seven things in the entirety of existence that invokes genuine hatred from God as one of the lowest of insults (I''m not even halfway there, despite being cursed).... They don¡¯t know what they are talking about! To me, being called a demonic saint is the highest praise I could offer. To receive dislike from Him, to any degree, is to push you to exalted in my mind. He is the force of evil in my life; the source of those cannot stand of me. He has committed gross negligence, claiming the title of Creator when he fails to take responsibility for those who walk under his name. His detestable nature incites enough wrath to rival even my supreme loathing of myself.

    Regardless, it is in my favor to support them.

    And not being foolish enough to lead D&T to them in a manner that will give her legal reason to eliminate them is part of the way I shall support them.

    I smirk to myself. Poor Luke. Little does he know that the tiny medic he helped train is walking back to them with the continued existence of Luke¡¯s Pizzeria in her hands.

    No, no, no. His hands. Their. Its. His. NO. Her. Fuck!

    Luke may just grow grey fur after this. Hopefully he doesn¡¯t wear down his canines from grinding them together in stress.

    I bring a gloved hand to my splitting-wide grin, my face cast in shadow while biting at my thumbnail.

    Oh, the irony!

    My detractors within the organization argue that System users should be found to replace me. After all, they suuurely could do a much better job than a mere non-System user. My expertise and self-study simply can''t rival the skills of the System. I start nibbling at the flesh of my thumb a bit more aggressively. Ohhh~ the idiot thugs¡¯ stupidity incites quite the wrath in me.

    I wish that Elisa could be here right NOW, because then at least my girlfriend could get some delicious food, feeding on my Wrath. Someone''s gotta have the benefits of our relationship. My precious little dragon... I miss you. Sorry for abandoning you. Maybe I could get D&T to pay for semesters for you too. We''ll go together.

    And guess what! Not only did the elite training I chose to receive in payment for my services as a medic pay off, I shall be the savior of all my friends, even those idiots! It¡¯s enough to make me fall into fits of laughter. The one who holds the ENTIRE fate of the organization of Luke¡¯s Pizzeria in their smol, bronze hands is this gal. I shall prevent the Lady from killing them all.

    I think back to her aloof expression as she had carried my head. I had slid around in her slippery grasp helplessly, my sapphire hair trailing behind my emptying, paling face. Reflective eyes, with the scars of surgery around them, gazed uncaringly around her as she pulled off some form of travel that I could not identify. Normal brown hair hung down from her head, while thin lips pursed at some annoyance kilometers away.

    Surprisingly enough (sarcasm intensifies), I do not think that even if a random person had been fully coherent in my position despite being decapitated, that they would have noticed the expressions. They were oddly faint, even to me. Regardless, I have a good enough grasp of her personality to understand that she would not care even if I killed hundreds in this neighborhood, maniacally laughing all the while.

    On the other hand, direct and actionable evidence, obtained through legal means, of what is practically a popular, nascent government... well, that just won''t stand.

    One would think that killing hundreds would undermine the country as well, but according to the actions and prerogative of the government normally takes, you would be sadly mistaken.

    After all, it matters not if the over-populated neighborhood decreases a bit, and the country gets a higher-leveled individual to boot. HAH! Even if someone eliminated an entire neighborhood, that could hardly compare to the death toll that rages ever higher from daily battles between the Torments and the Magical Guardians.

    Nah!

    What really matters to this whole world is the effective subjugation of System-users. The goal of every organization that lasts long enough is to ensure that most fail to ascend up the levels or kept down from rebelling with the threat of brute force, while the rest who do rise are either incorporated into the organization efficiently or that the wrath of the up-and-comers is directed elsewhere.

    Countries were less brutal before the advent of the System and perhaps many today would have taken a different direction... but after the militaries supped on levels from the slaughter of vicious creatures, they set up their own government under the thin veneer of prior legal law. For example, when the introduction of potent levels of Essence halted the Revolutionary War of the United States early, the Constitution got turned into a figure piece of literature by the military, solely meant for propaganda.

    The military is a right bastard like that! A bloated and cancerous limb that had long ago strangled the body it belonged to. They rule under martial law that never ended after the encroaching of the various Dimensions onto our reality, activating the Essence in our Dimension. And so we became the Land of the Free Humans.

    And what do I find, to my eeendless delight? I am not only as far away as possible from my human origin, I am one of the most detested beings that exist!

    Though the world is unknowing of these aggressive, perhaps overly bitter, thoughts of mine, I scream "-Isn''t this delightful?!-" to the far-off rooftops of the soot-blackened buildings to let them know, all on a fit of whimsy to do something meaningless. I''m sure I make a odd sight, a feminine boy in strange fashion, tiptoeing around the beggars crippled by magical drugs. I spin around, showing my helpless amusement at this rage-inducing world.

    Heh.

    Skirt go spinny. Wheeeeeee.

 Chapter 31: ~"Its a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood..."~

    My moments of enjoying life is cutting it close with the Lady''s patience. I will not deny that I do not appreciate being rushed, particularly when I am doing these for my brother and for the Stars'' entertainment!

    "Grrrrr," I growl cutely.

    I stumble off my wrathful and whimsical spinning into a shortcut through the labyrinthine alleys of tall, steel buildings, my arms pinwheeling as I try to find my balance and avoid the alley walls that the rune-makers have packed far too close together. They¡¯d rather choke out the walking spaces with their structures than deign to trade profit for the ease of the poor traveling the area.

    Toxic silver smog billows out of the windows of the industrial rune-maker buildings, enshrouding me and the rest of the denizens shouldering by me. The warm gases puff into my face, an acrid tang burning my nose and mouth as I hold my breath with an adorable pout.

    Metallic sludge is pumped into the alleyways by the pipes belonging to the factories, jutting out of random doors and windows. It is the rare few pipes that actually come out of built-in outlets. Those typically come from the rich companies that can afford to blatantly ignore regulations.

    A man molds the toxic waste product into an glue-like product for a temporary shelter.

    I hereby nickname you Termite Beggar! In good company with Pervy Beggar 1-69, Racist Beggar 1-26, Spider Beggar, Banshee Beggar, Alligator Man Beggar, and Tickle Beggar.

    Pale pink blotches dot his body; burns seared into him by undirected Will radiating off the building materials he uses. The silvery, used reagents in the sludge store the dangerous undirected Will of a Mage that had radiated off the spells used to carve the runed products of whatever this factory is set to construct.

    At first blush, I normally would not have given him a second glance. His body language is neither aggressive nor manic.

    Nonetheless, a rush of air hisses through my clenched jaw.

    Two simple wooden rectangles.

    A dark, rich mahogany wood.

    Interlocked with each other in a horrid symbol.

    At right angles.

    Within his hands...

    Is a simple wooden cross.

    I jump over the hazardous liquid around his structure with a hop-and-a-skip, my checkered dress flaring up behind me with the loud sounds of fabric whipping around in the wake of my haste.

    ¡°May God protect me from the dangers of this poison,¡± he mutters in prayer, unknowing - NO. UNCARING - that I am here!

    My fluffy ears flick back under the illusion, a minor gesture for the rage consuming me. My skin flushes a bright mahogany brown with a hint of pink, on both my stone-grey skin and on the illusion above it, and I release my control over the muscles of my face. My mask of a smile breaks down into a brittle grimace beset by rapid twitching around my eyes and mouth. The whites in my eyes widen.

    I crouch in front of the nervously working Mage, a ragged PEASANT of a man.

    Though the Rogues of Luke¡¯s Pizzeria are likely already following me, they are well aware of my hatred of God. Though I will admit I find it surprising that they are escaping my remarkable prowess in senses. I didn''t realize my new sensory organs were that weak to basic Rogues.

    They died prior to the Phantasm Poisoned trait.

    Earlier notifications:

    HATRED! You have killed a Human classed with Knife for Survival and Rogue for Survival. Emily Sprout has committed suicide due to your trait Phantasm Poisoned. All experience going to your class Tutored by Suffering.

    HATRED! You have killed a Human classed with Knife for Survival and Illusion Mage Apprentice. Garnett Kiernon has committed suicide due to your trait Phantasm Poisoned. All experience going to your class Tutored by Suffering.

    Memory wiped by Mind Control of the Self (1). Set in a perpetual loop until you make yourself pay attention to it. Conveying the words of the deity of the System of the Torments, the Goddess Diarrhea says "You, Magic System, fail to produce antibodies against this new strain I have provided gene transferal to."

    It would be out of character for this LOATHSOME show of that religion to go unpunished.

    ¡°Hey!¡± I bark out right into his face.

    The man trembles as his face, scrunched in terror, raises until it lays wide brown eyes upon my furious visage.

    My one remaining hand, gloved, reaches out to grab him by the chin forcefully.

    I must keep the pretense... unfortunately... that I believe I am human enough and that I had not simply been tricking them in the interrogation room.

    The Lady is watching.

    No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no...

    I should not be relying on outside observance to keep from killing someone.

    NO, NO, NO!!

    But... but... argh.

    But she''d be fine if I kill this man.

    A growl rumbles in my throat as I fight the urge to rid the world of a blighted existence.

    My stark blue eyes narrow into black crescents. How dare he use such a foul symbol in front of me? The source of so much of my pain and misery?

    It was the origin of the very first Tormented Zone I suffered through, the Miasma imprinting on the venomous poison the two Crusaders for Righteousness preached to their child. It was the filth that poisoned my parents¡¯ mind, emblazoning upon their minds that I was subhuman, sinful dirt on the heels of their shoes. It was the source of the curse of my life.

    I can''t separate the two. I should be able to. But. But I can''t bring myself to see the difference between a reasonable show of faith to God that is simply for solace in a cruel world versus those whose life is a perpetual war against so many groups, all done with the aim of beating them down in the name of God. There is too much hate in my heart.

    I never said I was a nice person.

    My head cracks viciously to the left, my lips receding back until my button nose disappears.

    Revealed from this nightmarish deconstruction of the lower half of my face is a glistening pink and white maw of impossibly many, impossibly long teeth and gums. A abyssally blue tunnel yawns gorgeously behind the macabre beauty of conical rows upon rows of bone-white teeth, each oxymoronically lit by the indigo darkness behind it.

    The grinning snarl rips up all the way up to my furry blue ears; a delightfully disgusting sound that could be likened to wet cloth tearing at the seams. My teeth grind together, the vibrations traveling up my bones like the squeak of StygianFoam.

    I tremble with disgusting and repulsing anger, leaning forward until my teeth are nearly touching the PEASANT¡¯S nose.

    The blue irises of the illusion disappeared for a moment, making my true eyes visible to the petrified faithful for a split second. My purple irises constrict into tiny pinpricks, erratically flickering around in a constrained pattern.

    The trembling madness gave me the feeling of a faintly burning sensation in the back of my eyes.

    I must kill him.

    I should not kill him.

    Like a caged rat, the mind of the God worshipper desperately scrabbles at the edges of the whites of his eyes and the skin of his body. He can¡¯t help but try to escape, but his fear fails to boost the hand the System dealt him.

    Mind Control of the Self (1) has been induced by the System of the Torments for your sake. This sacrilegious entity must die, for he is a slight upon your existence. Enforce your right as future monarch to control the faith within your domain.

    A raging melody blasts in my ears, hundreds of music notes flying onto the music sheet of my mind. It sustains a deep pitch, raging and hoarse screams gutturally filling the air. My ears fold back against my head, blood dripping from them and soaking the fur and hair.

    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

    The world blurs around me, a grey and black fade of a background, as I move forward to his grimy face; innocent eyes stare back.

    My jaws yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwnnnn open.

    And then close in a perfect grin.

    The brows and cheekbones that dissolved beneath my ebony tongue, the tender flesh that turned to ashes beneath my plague-ridden teeth, the eyes that popped like pustules in my throat... they were of no consequence, failing to stop my inevitable return to a smile.

    I wiped off the deliciously savory dust, ignoring the notifications of the System of the Torments.

    I cutely yawn, my face resetting back to normal, before stretching out my back as if I did nothing.

    I leap back, horror written clear on my face.

    Did I actually kill him? Did I... eat him?...

    I backpedal from the glazed stare of the man.

    He... he¡¯s still alive...

    I should just leave him alone! And... and then.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I reassure myself, the sound of my entrancing voice calming myself.

    My mouth resets to normal.

    For real this time.

    Then he¡¯ll be fine. He won¡¯t die like that sacrificial test subject given to me back at the IRS.

    Just avoid helping him and all will be good. He should be fine.

    I race out of the alley into the red-light district, leaving the drooling man frightened into unconsciousness. From a distance, the Rat-Eaters - chihuahua-sized, fuzzy jumping spiders - skitter into the alley. Their dark black eyes focus on me and the man, before rushing to him. Welp! He looks like he''s going to die!

    I can''t help but be viciously satisfied and peaceful. A sense of shame and guilt ties it all together like a neat little bow. Like a child in The Nightmare Before Christmas, I am scared by my present. The emotions I find wrapped under my paper-mach¨¦ of happiness are terrors straight from Halloween.

    ________________

    I cross through the elaborately constructed entertainment town of the neighborhood, each building a work of art. They are either created into a symbol of the House that resides there or really emphasize the sexual shapes. For the former, that would be like a deck of cards or something and for the latter they are very vulgarly shaped, if you get my drift.

    *waggles eyebrows*

    On my left is a disgusting-looking building in the shape of an oversized boner ten stories tall. Bleck! ¡°Blood vessels¡± pulsate along the building, horny individuals doing Stars know what in those fetish-filled ¡°veins.¡± Let your imaginations come up with the wildest kinks you could think of, brought to life in those "veins." Stars know that you are vastly underestimating just how depraved the fantasies that go on are in there.

    The see-through plastic that makes up the ¡°vessels¡± is perfect for all of those exhibitionists.

    My eye twitches.

    Why are so many exhibitionists looking at me?! Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew! But I like it, but I like it, but I like it, but I like it, but I like it! They are praising me with their eyes upon me as they commit unspeakable acts!

    To my right, is a mansion in the shape of an androgynously pretty and drooling face, with blush painted onto the innocent cheeks of the long-haired model of a building. Transparent soap, much like saliva in consistency, flowed down its mouth.

    ¡±Our establishment Drool. Grab some now for a couple bucks and have a blast jerking off to the System-enhanced sexiness of our building.¡±

    Each and every one of these fantasy fulfillments throughout the entertainment district are boosted by Skills and Meshes of the System, making the prostitutes capable of fulfilling the most twisted of "favors." Though on the plus side, thanks to the System, the prostitutes find enjoyment and fulfillment in their job, no matter how messed up that shit is. They stay Magical in thought-process, rather than leaning to Miasmic.

    For the most part.

    None of the institutions here could be supported without the skills of Builders though. They are, most certainly, a cornerstone of all countries with how property damage is more common than sliced bread.

    Essentially System-empowered craftsmen, they employ Will to improve their construction in addition to the high Strength, Speed, and Dexterity they need. The successful Builders got the big payouts of making the structures in this town, while small-time Builders reapplied and operated the Magical effects of the buildings here. The Drool creation of Luke¡¯s Pizzeria¡¯s prostitution array comes from a very complex array, operated by small-time Builders.

    I remember a blood-bonded sibling of mine, someone who forged an oath outside of the System to be my sibling, built solely on trust with me. He was a Building-obsessed man, who dabbled in rune-making as well. We went through thick and thin together. I was his social crutch, as he was utterly incapable of interacting with others. No one could understand nor was willing to craft the mask necessary to interact with him. They thought that their honesty would enable them to get along with him, and failed every time. He would shriek and get emotional at things that appeared completely illogical to the average Joe.

    Incapable of understanding certain emotional cues, while becoming suicidal or aggressive depending on others, he was a danger to those around him and himself.

    I became the perfect puzzle piece for him, improving his life drastically for a couple years. I would calm him down by switching between multiple exaggerated expressions, and when we talked, I would emulate the responses he would have instead of him actually doing them. Pout, smile, sneer, gasp, snarl, cry...

    He would feel a sympathetic connection with me and then I could teach him in the peculiar way he needed. In return, I managed to improve the life of someone who would normally get a strait-jacket and thrown away into the bins of the asylums around here, and occasionally he would build something for me. While I need reagents from the various gangs passing through the area to keep the things he built working, I still treasure them. One such thing was the runed surgical tools I employed to great use.

    He was... a great learning experience. This what he was.

    As always, he died sooner than later. Kicked the bucket, though it feels like I am the one who stubbed the toe when he kicked it.

    And get this! He died to some random ableist on the streets, of all things. He had so much potential, it makes me want to gnash my teeth at the loss! The prototypes he built; the levels he reached...

    His last creation, a huge apartment heavily trapped with runes, is in fact right over there...

    My musings are interrupted as I halt.

    I¡¯m sorry... What was that?

    I turn around in shock, my eyes widening at what had been decidedly not been there last time I had walked by it.

    What.

    The.

    Fuck.

    Yes, yes. I know. Such an eloquent expression of surprise. Nonetheless, I think it is rather apt for this situation.

    A veritable pillar of steam gushes up behind a crater wall about a house or two in height of the broken slabs of numerous pastel-colored housing apartments. Macerated asphalt and concrete mound up around the area, rivaling some landfills. The small slum of huge apartment complexes that had sprouted up on top of the free parking lot is nothing but a thick ring of rubble.

    I stumble over to the rubble, panicking as I climb through the treacherous terrain. It can''t be...

    I fall flat on my face on a mound of glass, which ineffectually try to cut my face. Shoot! I forgot I¡¯m missing an arm.

    Just kidding. I never forgot! I just wanted to see what it would be like if I made a major mistake like that! Pretty fun.

    Where is all that steam coming from? Is there a geyser or some other thermal activity somehow producing an entire pillar of rushing steam in this seismically stable area?

    A bit of light peeks through an opening in the rubble that rivals the bramble forest of Sleeping Beauty. I stick my face through, a piece of metal trying and failing to scratch through my Vitality-infused skin.

    My large eyes widen further more than they already are. Though no one would realize it no matter how good they are at cold reading, the smile within my mind, reflecting my face¡¯s smile, turns into a brittle ¡®o¡¯ of surprise. A weary sigh overtakes my body, and I sit back exhaustedly on my bottom, resting frustratedly in the shadow.

    A boiled-pink garden of curled, bulbous flesh. Glistening plump leaves of liver-like vegetation composed the garden, growing atop writhing thighs that split into pale white, mycelium roots. It sprouts from a plug of pale beige flesh, with white marbling much like pork bacon. The plug, the mass of still flesh, filled up an enormous crater.

    Bulbous fleshy valves of varying shapes and... similarities to real-life equivalents... pulse outward, releasing steam in spurts amongst the entire domain.

    A Tormented Zone. Another one.

    But of course! Why not rebel against all sense of probability and plop down another Tormented Zone in the same state on the same day? I cannot even blame God for this, because as much as He is a stars-awful buggart, he has nothing to do with Miasma.

    More friends dead.

    My pet python Jerry lived in that apartment. One of my most treasured gifts from Elisa, he was my comforting Demon of Sloth, defending the building from any strangers. I point at a spot completely indistinguishable from any other in the fleshy nightmare to remind myself where it had been. The sweet dear resembled a python with the head of a faceless man and a big, soft mane of floppy feathers. All he needed was a random corpse dragged off the street and he would give me all of the snuggles I could ask me for.

    His monthly mating display eyeballs even gave me the inspiration for my helmet and his snuggles kept me company while I created music videos for online.

    He was so PRECIOUS! I miss him already. Spontaneously, I reach out to hug a piece of rubble.

    Ouch.

    Pokey.

    Don''t mind me! Just scrounging for some teeny bit of comfort in these crumbled remains!

    I took a big, shuddering inhale. Then a cold, crystalline surface arches up against my legs, rubbing against them like a cat. From out of nowhere, Facet came to comfort me. I bend down to pet the eccentrically straying creature.

    ¡°Thanks for the comfort, Facet. I appreciate the gesture,¡± I say amusedly.

    The irony... wonderful! My eyes flare wider with an unidentifiable emotion. I traded one pet for another when I left the Tormented Zone of The King.

    I yearn to march straight in there in recover what I can. Perhaps I would even find Jerry, though he would be in an unrecoverable state of Sloth.

    I am certain that using my new skills and boosts will enable me to get along with the Torment and Anathema in the anti-magic zone. It would be a struggle. What Tormented Zones aren¡¯t? But I¡¯m certain that I could traverse the area and retrieve the remains of my friends and my pets to bury them. I could even do it free of the anti-magic''s corruption.

    But I can¡¯t.

    GAAAAH!

    If it wasn''t for one important fact, I''d be able to do it, but the evidence is in front of me, waggling its tongue: there are no spatial shenanigans that I can sense, a sign of a low-level Tormented Zone that D&T could handle herself. Which means she would just yoink me out of there, and then I won''t be able to do ANYTHING!

    Damnit! I bite my thumb in frustration. I feel like I still have not escaped the tyranny of The King. This bitch simply has a new leash, collar, and a new master! At least The King never killed me, however much the threat of it hung over me.

    AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HOHOHOHOHOHO!!!

    Teehee.

    It is absurd! That I can even have this complaint and call it a benefit... Isn¡¯t it a scoff-worthy "achievement"?

    And yet.

    The guilt grows. I refuse to thank the kind memory of The King for letting me keep my colorless, vain life.

 Chapter 32-Part 1: Nightfall

    I grin happily, watching the magical scene of horror and flesh for a while more. Finally, I hop down - like a super, duper cute BUNNY RABBIT - from rock to rock. With a few rocks cascading after my quick footsteps, I make my way through the blaring glares of the neon rainbow signs that plaster every building. It''s not just the classic red that characterizes the red light district. I grin, looking up at every sight with stars in my eyes, my head turning around to take in everything with interest.

    Why? I mean, I''ve lived here for the past for the 17 years! This should all be old-hat! Well, the boisterous entertainment district is made anew with all of the fascinating sounds brought in Plushie Predator Ears and under the watch Crystal Frosted Lenses, the hidden world encoded in Magic is laid bare to me. The pleasures of being amongst the monstrous.

    I can see it ~all~!

    It cannot hide from me.

    Messages which should trigger into view when given the right code are as clear as day. Magical Buildings use wild effects to hide amidst the more mundane structures shift in position. One floating telephone box, far bigger on the inside, passes through an unknowing bystander''s head, while a complex of black market malls plummets into the ground like a subway train through an empty tunnel the moment I notice it. A Curses Mage plies their craft, paintbrush made of their red hair and sacrificial knife in hand. Green magic infuses their bodies and materials, shining like a beacon as the lenses in the crystalized tendrils on my eyes reveal their hidden placement. They are having a rather busy day, a line of customers existing in space that does not exist. They must be an incredibly powerful mage on top of their already evident power. Miasma slowly generated by the various creatures going about their day tell me of poisoned shivs; of prostitutes suffocating for a Hamilton; of a serial killer who thinks my head would be absolutely perfect hung by my tongue pinned to a wall. A Warrior runs the serial killer straight through the head with a Strength-charged spear.

    Never change, sweet Indiana, never change!

    ... not that it ever could!

    The crowd is huge and rowdy, absolutely choking the streets with warm bodies all looking for other warm bodies to stay with. Given the amount of groping and pinching going on, and the fact that it is physically impossible to avoid all of the people ¡°accidentally¡± bumping into me, I thank the tailors-

    A boiling-hot hand grips my shoulder fiercely. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! What the FUCK!!! "Will you play with the Stars soon?" asks a gentlemanly voice. The words break in my ear like cracking knuckles and broken finger bones. The fingers wiggle on my shoulder. "Bye-bye~" he warbles, tiny mustaches tickling my ears. I tremble like a baby tree, stiffened and fragile to the wind''s tender graces.

    -for the protective equipment. Praise be! LOL! My Metallic Golem Hand mock clasps with the air in a half-finished prayer.

    I would have committed mass genocide by accident, if it had not been for the tailors to built the defenses, and really soon compared to most who just unlocked their System! That is an badge of uniqueness that I do NOT want to pin to my dress!

    Memory of genocide wiped by Mind Control of the Self (1). Set in a perpetual loop until you make yourself pay attention to it. The Goddess Diarrhea wishes to convey her message to the Magic System "The bacteria notice no signs of inflammation in the body they are invading. Infectious window closing. Increase agent dormancy and prepare for the departure of suffering on an unlucky bystander. New front of war postponed." Mind-influence outside of System influence noted.

    Thankfully, I have not committed any massacre just yet.

    Now murder? Of course I have committed the crime of taking others'' lives. Who hasn¡¯t?

    Besides Betsie. And most Magical Guardians. And Healers. And the rich ones in the enclaves within the neighborhood... Ok. Maybe a lot of people have managed to avoid killing a single person.

    I purse my lips my foolishness in comparing myself to those perfect souls in my internal dialogue. It is no pleasure to find out, through my self-inquiry, that I come up wanting. Internally, I hug myself in discomfort.

    But otherwise! Ignoring the people with such clean hands, it¡¯s a guarantee in the neighborhood that you¡¯ll cause at least one slaughter all on your own. That is... A corner of my mouth pulls down... That is if you don¡¯t die first like precious Betsie did. Doesn¡¯t matter whether you are a quote-unquote civilian build or a full-on combat class. The former just leads to more creative, circuitous ways of death.

    I would still have nightmares of one such method if it was not for the aid of the Stars. The entire Lava in a Bottle speakeasy¡¯s worth of burnies that week had been turned into a forge...

    While they were all still alive. Their hearts still pumped and their brains could still think, though whether they could still sense anything outside of their pain was an unanswerable question on anyone and everyone in the plaza that day.

    Behind the thick bricks of the impromptu forge, rough-textured and glass-grain rocks absorbed light. Their black surfaces, at least the ones still peeking through the feet pinned to the ground with half-molten nails, reflected the canopy of humans. A fleshy mirror of the strangler fig  of fused life, torn and taught skin spreading out like a forest mummified in blackened charcoal, oozing the sap of liquified flesh in between the cracks.

    Legs interlocked and grafted, fused into an altar of gasping, wide-open faces. Cheek-to-cheek, both the face-kind and the butt-kind, they moaned and pulled away, tearing each other apart as they tried to separate from their twisted, Siamese twin selves.

    An unending stream of Magma, the drug, sprinkled over them lightly from a spigot cruelly placed far above them. They all stood at attention, screaming, jaws dropped, like a crowd of old-timey train whistles all opening their metal mouths in sharp whistles. Tongues, wired with lava slobber, stick out to catch each precious drop...

    A song plays in my head in chilling reminiscence of the memories of a sweltering plaza.

    ??"If all the snowflakes

    Were candy bars and milkshakes

    Oh, what a snow that would be

    Standing outside with my mouth open wide

    Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah"??

    In the memory, my old pops pointed his thumb at it, and said that someday, I''d be one of those pieces of trash receiving my just dues for the Sin of Gluttony. A flare of obsessed worship literally flared in his eyes. The blue associated with Virgin Mary illuminated his gruff, bearded face. The picture-perfect image of a masculine, God-fearing man, like all should be.

    According to him, he is the pinnacle of how to worship God.

    Their molten body heat made it so the forge actually worked and the gang appropriated it for ¡°safety reasons.¡±

    I don''t think I deserve to be in the forge.

    I think I deserve to be in the forge.

    If it was not for hearing an eyewitness account from the gang I had been in, I would have kept thinking it was the remnants of a Tormented Zone¡¯s aftermath. In reality, it was just some Builder, likely a Forge-Master, with an incredibly innovative and twisted imagination. Which, funnily enough, then created a small Tormented Zone in that spot! The ideas behind it were so freakin'' extreme to such an unhealthy degree, that it triggered the low levels of Miasma. Though it fizzled out soon after, because there was not enough Miasma in the area to sustain it, in spite of the suffering the Builder created.

    I duck an incoming gloved paw coming to muss up my hair.

    And then a hand.

    And then another.

    I speed up, my movements blurring together.

    Duck, duck, dodge, block, duck, block, dodge. My sapphire-blue hair swishes from side to side under the illusion of brown. My gauntlet fend the crush of the crowd, judicially delivering gut-checks and blows to any other sensitive spots. At times, I need to lean back to deliver a kick or two to compensate for my missing arm.

    I glare behind myself, unable to use the eyes on my arms to glare covertly, as all of them are hiding under the protection of the metal equipment.

    From all the way up in the stratosphere came numerous hands of various shapes and sizes, all incoming like divebombing jets... HAHA! I am not that small. Still though...

    The lull ends with a breeze in my hair; from easily sliding right to left, dodging and weaving with perfect fluidity. My Dexterity is superior to these serious attempts to molest me.

    While dodging the fleet of hands of people absolutely obsessed with trying to mess up my hair, I watch the performances that fill the streets. I don''t need to give them genuine focus. The gap between me, a being of Miasma, versus beings of normal flesh, is vast.

    ¡°A swing and ooooohhh. A whiff!¡± I commentate like a baseball announcer as a grumbling man fails to punch me to fulfil his domination fantasies. "BYYYYYYE" I shout, as I stroll away diagonally to the ground like a cartoon, grinning and waving my hand cheekily.

    "Girl, why''re you playing so hard to get? Just take my freakin'' money! I really deserve coming down from a really long week. Bitch, why are you being mean when I just want to spend some ruff ''n'' tumble with the hottest girl on the block," pleads the man, an otherwise average, northern accent infused intensely with a whiny buzz of desperation.

    Like gnarled, grasping branches of a tree growing under the Pentagram of the Demonic Dimension, his trembling fingers close the distance, looming over my face. The foolish civilian never invested in Meshes allowing him to handle the Magic of the Prostitutes, and suffers withdrawal as a result. The flavor of Miasma he produces likely collected with others like his, coalescing at some unknown concentration point to make that Torment and the flesh-ridden anti-Magic zone that overtook the apartment area.

    "No. Leave me alone. I have business to do," I say curtly. My patience has long burned away, much like the wicks of my candles for the Stars. I wish to get to my brother and my girlfriend.

    "Come here, you ungrateful whore," he grits out. My rage flares, the Charisma making him run away.

    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

    UGHHH!

    Admittedly, I care nothing for the area. I just want to go to sleep in my bed.

    I am wholly fine with the practice itself, it¡¯s just-

    ¡°Hey boy! I¡¯ll pay you for being the innocent kid virgin,¡± catcalls a man from a sidewalk.

    -the femboy lovers that bug me.

    Unfortunately, as you can tell with all the others trying to muss up my hair, there seem to be an endless amount trying to pester me.

    Looking like a princess femboy does not dissuade anyone from wishing to fuck, not least because of the sexualization of smol-ness. I look like I am from the terrifying genre of shota. Although, at least it is this, and not screaming in terror, or worse, in ectasy. Some will even jerk off looking through the windows if they see something particularly exotic and hot/Charismatic.

    I throw up a middle finger to him, before grinning at him, putting my carnivorous smile on full display. Just because I do not have a maw of teeth like in my true form does not mean my vulpine grin cannot easily rival even the carnivorous werewolves.

    He wrinkles his nose at my unnatural spread of teeth. ¡°Eh. Not my type.¡±

    That¡¯s right, buddy. I¡¯m more likely to literally eat you. Go find someone else to bug.

    Though internally, I wipe my brow in relief. He could have just found that menacing grin titillating.

    My illusion covers my perfected and improved body, far decreasing the impact of my fleshy attractiveness on everyone else. Though, on a spiritual level, they can''t help but bend to the star in their midst. They crane their heads to me like clouds of dust bending to the gravity of a black hole, eyes glued to me. Thousands of pairs of eyes roam my parts, assessing me piece-by-piece, hungrily drinking me in with deep, hazed eyes.

    I preen uncontrollably. The ghost of the ghosts haunts me. The weight of the world bows my head as the passionate love Enterion made to me still lays on my shoulder like a grimacing demon of sleep paralysis. I sashay and play to their fancies, cold prickles trailing up my soul in a hallucination of Masua''s dominating grip.

    I want to pull myself from this chain of pain. It has been agony upon agony without relief.

    Where is the escape?

    Where is the kindness of silence to pull myself back together?

    Where...

    The world dims, hiding the plenty; covering up the cornucopia of indulgence. The lust of all the people blurs under my panic and terror. Hands, so many hands, hands laying upon hands laying upon hands angrily grasping above my head. They all want me. Hands hang over me like a grove of limbs and fingers. Fleshy white, pale, dark, brown, black, red, yellow, green, pink HANDS want ME. They are going to die.

    "I don''t want them to die. Please, I beg of you, Eyes Above the Actors." My eyes roll back into my head.

    Trait of Puppeteer activated, active perceptive field added to vision on top of the effects of a boost to base Charisma and the capacity to influence ever larger numbers of people with each push and pull.

    A thick golden string becoming visible in the darkness of my panic.

    My head cranes up to the Sun, the golden string leads up to the colorful creature gazing on the scene with endless humor, enjoying me with its endless lenses. All of the views find ceaseless hilarity in its one of its favorite actors. I can''t help but be happy that my plight makes the hive of the Stars, the Reverie of Age, so happy. I draw emotional strength from them, taking a deep breath within the HUGS of the truly Eldritch beings.

    Perk Star-Touched-in-the-Head activated. A 50% boost to communication with stars and a 25% boost to stars-based magic.

    Perk Avaricious Friend Maker activated. Boosts friend making.

    This is FUN.

    The Lady of Death & Taxes

    She stiffened up.

    A giggle fills the air. Her own. Then cackled. Before collapsing to the ground in fits of joyous laughter.

    Death magic curved around her like the scythe of a reaper, a blade growing in tandem with the fury in her eyes. Thunderous cracks came from the demolishment of the building in her incontrollable seizures. It took an entire microsecond for her to recover and protect herself from the influence of the Eldritch patrons.

    This monster not only spawned from Miasma, but has Eldritch beings watching over it? How disgusting. It only confirmed her bias to non-humans. This foul creature deserves to die. Such a waste of money to have her not only watch it, but let it continue existence when it would be better for the superior existence, humankind, to eliminate it. That way she could proactively those she loved and let them grow without fear of these unnatural beings.

    She wheezes in exhaustion. The brief glimpse of the celestial beings briefly touching the head of the monster had left her with a splitting migraine. If it was not for her strength of Will, a rapture of happiness just from being a bystander to the vile HUG those Eldritch creatures gave the monster would have overtaken her.

    A casual brush of her hands made her suit/armor spotless, while her mirror-like eyes narrow. She was disappointed in herself. She should always remember to take non-humans seriously. Who knows what they can have up their sleeve at any time?

    The sooner she can push the creature to go through its checklist, the sooner she can halt its trickery and stop it from making her waste money.

    _____________________

    The Stars respond to my begging.

    ''We will prevent a massacre at your hands!'' they laugh into my head.

    There were plenty of performances the customers of the district could have chosen, with all kinds of skills being employed to entice others. Five women were using Strength-based avatars to make 4-meter anime girls with equally huge proportions who danced to the beat of quite lurid lyrics, while a crowd lusted over them for a buck each. Another act of the district comprises of a tall individual in tall high heels and a top hat used Will to conduct hundreds of neon hoses of red, yellow, and orange light in a risqu¨¦ cage around an entire ensemble of naked performers, their decency just barely covered by the thick laser beams. Dexterity is used to reshape some prostitutes into the customers'' dream fuckable toy.

    Yet, as if I had my own personal gravity, a few depart from the crowd. They are irresistibly pulled from encircling the display to trail after me. The Happy Bard stood behind me proudly, strumming its lyre for all to feel thrum through their veins. Blood rushes everywhere, the beginning of pleasure turned twisted by my Broken Mirror perspective of the world. Miasma grows and collects around me, intoxicating me worse than any of the drunkards and junkies of these streets spattered with vibrant, lustful patterns.

    All of these people desiring me... it is so much. So much muchness piling and mounding in a right mess. The happiness runs through my veins like liquid amber, bubbling joy at their admiration.

    I find peace in the promise of the Stars.

    A random brick in the corner of my eyes opens glowing yellow eyes. Clay cubes assemble into a cute toy, tilting its head.

    "Vein of nonexistence to play now? We don''t feeling like fueling the mockery of Se?or Screaming Fingers on ourselves today. We want the tragic Monotone actor today! HmmmHMMMHmmmHMMMMMmMMHmmHmmHmmHmmmmmHmmHmmHmmHmmmmHmm..." come the voice, each pitch the color of playful friendship.

    My Charisma and my perk Star-Touched-in-the-Head is drawing the celestial FRIENDS'' attentions without even a basic ritual chant.

    Oh.

    .

    No.

    My focus on the world turns inwardly desperately. I need to use this stress test to repress my Charisma now! It is not a good time at all for a shard of the Stars to make its way into our reality. My Charisma is making me incredibly entertaining to them and they want to see me in a more personal manner. Maybe not the best time to give me a call, my best FRIENDS.

    I can''t let others die!

    "That''s just too cruel!" I shout wildly to the skies, my voice breaking with every word.

    "Oh Stars please!" I beg. The protective plates on my knees grind against the concrete.

    People all around me drip blood in unison, as if they had macabrely practiced synchronizing bleeding from every orifice. A Star''s glimpse sees all float unconsciously into the air, scarlet liquid trickling up into the sky off their faces. The world''s colors can no longer decide what they want to be. The colors gain sentience and true basis the Stars'' dreams for a brief moment of confusion, only to get their lives callously snuffed out without my FRIENDS even realizing it.

    ___________________________

    Notifications ring like the bells of hell within my head, only to be overcome by a hissing static as the Magic System and the System of the Torments both attempt to preserve my sanity. They change the twinkling winking and the celestial tears spattering out of the screens to what I can comprehend, even if that looks a toddler mashed their keyboard on Caps Lock.

    ___________________________

    I fix my mask and try to grip onto my Charisma. Will I succeed?! The storm of Charisma boils in me, churning as my trauma surfaces with a sense of inevitability. I can''t handle the crowd. I can''t handle it, I can''t handle it, I can''t handle it, I can''t handle it...

    I CAN''T HANDLE IT! STARS DAMN IT!

    No.

    No I CAN. Right? Please? Imagining hands to force down my Charisma doesn''t work.

    What? What? What do I do?

    Plasma curdles.

    Laughs burst like soda bubbles.

    ___________________________

    I''m SORRY. I must starve you further of your rightful adulation. I''m sorry. I''m sorry. I''m sorry. Forgive me, best FRIENDS.

    Perk Star-Touched-In-The-Head activated.

    Proof of my stardom becomes engrained in runic LSLs as even amongst these wild acts, my very existence entertains.

    I stand out! Just as Se?or Screaming Fingers and the two Vengeful Spirits, Masua and Enterion, say I should. The people appreciate me!

    I am not welcoming enough of the Stars, cruelly trying to stifle my Charisma to send them away. I am melting - I am meeeelting. Teehee - as I try to save everyone around me.

    Please help me, world.

    ___________________________

    I''m sure the Stars squirm above happily. The Sun warms me with its curiously amused embrace, the rays of light streaming brightly down as it recognizes me for a brief moment. It struggles against the kind nature of its alter ego so it can show me its pretty lies, the gorgeous beauty.

    On my yellow brick road to Luke''s Pizzeria, red slippers curl out of existence from the Miasma, chomping onto my feet in a perfect fit. All these Munchkins praise me. They gain immunity to my soul touch, allowed to paw my skin with abandon. The empty flesh of reality bends.

    I hug myself happily, exulting in their hunger, weighing o''er me akin to starving limbs waggling over me like so many maggots. A keening scream appears as the latest whimsy of the Stars lines the road. Both of us, receiving Fingers with mustaches form an orchard for a split second, shrouding the golden blocks of the road in shadow and endless screaming.

    __________________________

    ????"Little wooden head go play your part

    Bring a little joy to every heart

    Little do you know and yet it''s true

    That I''m mighty proud of you

    Little wooden feet and best of all

    Little wooden seat in case you fall

    (Oh-ho! How graceful!)

    My little wooden head"????cheerfully sings the toy of clay cubes, yellow eyes mirthfully taking in all.

    _________________________

    A body hangs limp in mid-air, the creature''s hair and limbs held askew like a drooping mushroom cap. Blood dribbles down tender lips as Miasma retreats into their body. Eyes stare hauntedly into the distance, shining purple lamplights in the dwindling twilight.

    A wild grin splits the peaceful tableau in two. The throat pulses, the blood pooling on their tongue gulped down.

    The gentlemanly fingers of Se?or Screaming Fingers sadly retreat, much like shy tube worms.

    The being falls down.

    "Oof!" they groan mirthfully.

    "Victory, babeeeeeyyyyyyy!!!!" they shout contentedly/roar pridefully/cackle maniacally.

    You have created the skill Eye of Charisma.

 Chapter 32-Part 2: Fae Heart of the Teen Vixen

    I taste the sweet, sweet flavor of success, as my Charisma retreats into me. It tastes like... well. It tastes like liquid ghost. Obviously, some of my blood has gotten in my mouth and it does NOT taste good. Instead of the normal burning flavor of desire for revenge, my blood tastes like bland despair.

    My body relaxes, falling backwards through the air into the firm concrete, my hair fluttering around me as I receive the welcome comfort of solidity beneath me. Every ounce feels like a sack of bricks, much like the toy of bricks puppeteered by the Stars. My Fae Heart beats loudly in my chest.

    My fist clenches, as if to physically grasp the inspiration the Stars so sweetly gave me today. Everyone survived.

    Sunlight replaced the cold, callous flares in the twilight, warming up my skin. The kisses of this near Star pepper my adorable cheeks like a friend closer than even blood; closer than even romantic love. They find me FUN for all of my immeasurable flaws. Even if I can''t be friends with the Familiars, not matching up to their standards, I get to be the bestie of the very STARS! The Sun hugs me sweetly, not rubbing my hair because it would be uncolorful.

    I yawn with immeasurable relief. The non-monsters survived me. It won''t be my fault if they die, for I saved them from the Stars peeking through their vessel. They won''t die in front of me, burying me with eternal regrets like Bet-many others do. It might be selfish of me to view it that way, but I didn''t want to have that on my conscious.

    My tired eyes glaze over the devastation, my lips curved in an amusedly EXHAUSTED smile. There are burns, blood, bone, bile, whimsically absurd changes...

    But no one is dead.

    It is a bright and baby blue day, with no corpses under the cloud-free sky! Hallelujah! I managed to save them all. So freakin'' glooorious!

    "Ohhhhhh maaan! These bums are still kickin''! Halle-fuckin''-lujah! Praise be!" I shout to the brilliant blue skies, throwing my hands up with unadulterated joy. Maybe I could just wave my hands in the free cyan skies and?...

    Come away with whimsical, airy blue paint on my fingers? The euphoria of making of making a skill...

    Charisma spirals around in me in bubbling, molten tendrils of blinding white globs. My necklace of CHARISMA, the gift of The King, floats up on my neck. It shines as a lamp. An eye curls up behind me like a question mark, a fierce gaze of a lurid high burning into my surroundings. People fall unconscious once more.

    It feels like feathers curling up within my chest, growing out of my mouth in a white explosion of down. Such was the power of the relief contained within my exultation. The groaning people could groan and moan as much as their bruised bodies permitted. My eyes whisper to me: I have the right to take a moment to myself.

    The glowing PEACE which a Impromptu Playdate with the Stars brings to the soul... is indescribable. The stress-free fugue in combination with a victory that could go down in the history-books.

    Therefore! I cannot be bothered to take care of them right now!

    Eagerly, I take in the System message.

    You have created the skill Eye of Charisma.

    Requirements for creation:

    - Perk Star-Touched-in-the-Head exists.

    - Trait of Puppeteer exists.

    - Trait of Fae Heart exists.

    - The System of Essence [Redacted] and Essence [Redacted] has booted out the Eye-related requirement. The Familiars of [Redacted] and Essence [Redacted] reject the Miasma of the Torment Princess, first and foremost; the Miasma of the Goddess Diarrhea; and the Miasma of the The Kin----A Shadow of the Long-Dead King.

    -Major Mesh of a Charisma-using Mesh exists. Found: -Major Mesh of the Social Tactician: Understand etiquette, from the proper procedures in High Elvish nobility to how to be a perfect gang minion. Level 12. Tier 3. Total Level: 362.

    - Manipulation of Charisma without a direct Skill of Manipulation into sheafs and lenses.

    - The ingenious weaving of threads of Puppeteer social threads, and then placed outside of the dream of the Stars.

    HATRED! You have shown adeptness at being a vessel for Eldritch creatures. Perk Star-Touched-in-the-Head pending transformation per your patrons.

    HATRED! You have shown determination to protect Magical Entities, testing out various methods of forcing Charisma with your considerable talent in the heat of the moment, succeeding in preserving lives better than your own.

    CONGRATULATION! You have made your first skill, putting your own mark on the Essence with your own effort! You have made a milestone in your control over Charisma, boosting your Fae Heart to Fae Heart (1)! You have safely incorporated a small amount of Eldritch forces into the Essence of the System, contributing to [REDACTED FOR THE AGENT OF TORMENTS]!

    Magic of the Stars had blessed your skill Eye of Charisma. In the plasma of C O L O R, the blood of nonexistence, the endless hunger for beauty, you found the spark of creativity and inspiration within you to weave a masterful skill far beyond your level and maturity. You achieved much, and set yourself apart from others. Proving yourself master of Charisma, the Eye of Charisma gains substance as Essence coalesces around your remarkable act. The System applauds you and as a reward, lets one group of its favored Magical Creatures, the Fae, know about your noteworthy attention.

    A minutia of the Fae''s attentions have been spared to you. They have decided to reveal hidden knowledge within your trait Fae Heart to you. Your Fae Heart of the Mewling Kitten, a baby''s immature heart, has aged 333 years to Fae Heart of the Teen Vixen. Fae may be tempted to teach you lessons.

    Eye of Charisma: Collect all of your Charisma into an Eye. Has the option to consciously and manually control Charisma. Maximize efficiency of Charisma usage. Boosted by Fae Heart of the Teen Vixen and thus an increase in stats will not overwhelm its capabilities.

    Prancing inside my heart, my large plushies ears waving along, joy and success pounce and knead my heart like critters of the forest. I clasp my hands to my chest, pure happiness shining like a beacon on my face. Disbelieving, I eagerly devour the words the System message again.

    CONGRATULATION! You have made your first skill, putting your own mark on the Essence with your own effort! You have made a milestone in your control over Charisma, boosting your Fae Heart to Fae Heart (1)! You have safely incorporated a small amount of Eldritch forces into the Essence of the System, contributing to [REDACTED FOR THE AGENT OF TORMENTS]!

    For a brief message, the impersonal System applauds me. It completely throws away its impersonal affectation or grudging hatred. Instead...

    "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYEAAAAAAAAAAAAHH! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" I shout out freely. Rows of perfect teeth stretch beautifully in an open smile under my wide blue eyes. Sunshine illuminates my hoppy strutting to Luke''s Pizzeria, my hair flowing and waving in the reassuring coolness of a breeze - an aftereffect of the Stars'' brief gaze - like a laid-down peacock''s fan.

    My hands and ears shake with uncontrollable cheeriness. Up and down I wave my arms like a swallow''s wings in freefall.

    I bend down to bandage and take care of the poor people got by way of the damage. Every time they wake up, the sheer joy radiating off of my Eye of Charisma knocks them flat.

    My own homemade anesthesia!

    Once I exhaust all of my expendable medical supplies, I head off! ~I made a skill of mine.~

    All along these warped roads, I skip merrily like a doe through a wide-open meadow. I jump up, clapping my feet together twice together in a funny move, before planting them on the ground firmly. A crisp snap rings from my shoes, with a small cloud of dust knocked up.

    "PRAISE BE THE STARS," I shout up to the heavens.

    My eyes shine for a brief moment with complete and utter victory, the Eye of Charisma swaying behind my back like an alien cobra of eldritch form, moving in time with my heartbeat. No one that I can sense can sense it themselves it.

    A vision of applause and cheering crowds runs through my daydreaming head. My head''s probably as far up in the puffy white clouds as a bird. Metaphorically, of course. I restrain my Charisma in my Eye, but my joy remains unfettered. This is something that could help me make a step toward to my goals. The possibilities of a construct made of Charisma are limitless and impossibly colorful!

    I could gather more friends. Make their lives better and entertain them to the best of my ability, which will be vastly improved by this skill. It works with my Puppeteer trait seamlessly, the Avaricious Friend Maker trait, and my Social Tactician mesh. In using those traits and the Essence mesh to create the skill, I''ll be able to use those meshes and traits even in battle. Whereas, normally, they would only feature in social battles... now I could protect myself. It is the first step to protecting myself from enemies. It''s essentially a back-holstered artillery cannon of emotion, powered by the fuel of my beating heart.

    HOW IS THAT NOT BADASS???

    I can see it now! This skill of my own creation is going to push my ascension through the levels lighting fast! I''d deserve the soundtrack of "vroom!" as the levels ticked up.  This skill of my creation is my first step to true divinity. I could become a GOD.

    The introduction of the Fae Heart had set me on the path to stardom.

    But its evolution is truly a step above. It makes me want to take a step back and just admire it.

    I will be a star. I truly do promise you that, world. I will renew this promise as many times as need be.

    _______________________________________

    A head lies in front of my path. I crouch down, tilting my head in momentary confusion. His horrified brown eyes stare at me, red blood pooling in a scarlet pond next to the gaping hole in his corpse.

    "Heeeeey! I know youuuu. You''re that skeevy bastard that I snitched on to Luke." I put my fists on my hips as I crane my head over his body, giggling to myself. A mocking grin curls up my face, before I smack his cold face on the cheek three times in a row.

    "Theeere, theeere. Rest in peace, you bastard. Maybe in your next life, you won''t steal my possessions." I wasn''t satisfied with basic suffering. Nuh-uh. That''s not enough for me. Nowhere near enough for me.

    A rotting corpse of a cat hollowed out and stuffed to the brim of Runic waste by-product for his door knobs dropped on his head.

    A flock of my girlfriend''s Stygian owls shockingly taking residence in his car.

    A herd of the adorable Rat-Eater spiders chased after him one day.

    Yeah. That wasn''t enough for me. I also politely requested that Luke retrieve my medical tools from the larcenist.

    After leaping over the poor lout¡¯s half-eaten corpse, I stride up confidently to the guards of Luke¡¯s Pizzeria, the huge earthen works that compose the clay fortress rising up behind them.

    An imposing fa?ade for a homely culture.

    From the carved stone, arched doorway, fierce, mascaraed eyes stare at me over his boxy, dark gray face mask. Gold rings adorn his muzzle-like gas mask, like a gold-bedecked prison jail. A strong symbolic statement as always. He subtly postures his jaundiced, olive, muscled arms in preparation to strike...

    Hmmm... I believe he will aim for my throat if push comes to shove. I must have missed these tells before I got more Perception. Otherwise I would have bopped him ineffectually for being so blatantly obvious.

    ¡°Hello, hello, Eric!"

    "I¡¯ve come to do some of that filing for Mr. Luke. Reeeally sorry for getting behind on my work. I¡¯ve been pretty out of sorts and the hospital forced an impromptu surgery on me." I gesture to the stump on my shoulder. "There was necrosis... and ick! The toilet... the less said, the better, my friend."

    "You know how it is,¡± I say wryly.

    At this moment, I glare, annoyed, at the Sun. Though really, unless they want that color in their lives, I will never be able to be annoyed at the Stars.

    ¡°So freakin¡¯ bright,¡± I grumble. ¡°I never remember my sunglasses...¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± came the short, terse response. Come on, Eric. Put more effort into it, you lazy bum! It needs to be convincing.

    ¡°Oh! And I need to give my resignation to him personally. Going to be heading out for a while! Got a military scholarship. I mean, boy. It was real sudden!¡± I say in the way that people say "gee whillickers."

    I jump tracks. ¡°What are the codes here entered... damn. That made no sense at all. What are the codes for the cabinets today?¡±

    He raises a bushy, black eyebrow, the gold rings jangling as he shakes his head in surprise.

    ¡°Welcome back, Theo. I really didn¡¯t think that you, of all people, would lose an arm. You have absolutely obscene luck, after all.¡± Translation: ''until you gave the right hints, pattern, and basic warnings, I thought you were a Spy who stuffed Theo in a closet somewhere. Though I still doubt that you couldn¡¯t still be one. Because I am one paranoid mister. And are you sure you really had an encounter with a Torment and a situation involving the Goddess Diarrhea?''

    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    You may think I''m joking, but I''m not. His eyebrow really said all that.

    Ok, ok. And his body language before, during, and after I spoke, but toe-mae-toh, toe-mah-toh.

    ¡°Who¡¯s this, Eric? Stumpy here looks like a emo Actor decided to fulfil their Loli fantasies. You know her?¡± asks the painfully young werewolf guard next to him. She has a basic face mask with no adornment, a couple of uninspired tattoos, and her life savings invested in her armor.

    Yes. I¡¯m aware of the irony. I am 17. But it is plainly clear that she hasn¡¯t even been in the midst of one gang war.

    ¡°She¡¯s a tiny, disabled child in cosplay. Is she mind controllin'' you with her large titties or something?¡± the young guard continues.

    Ohohoho. This little shit.

    My Orbs of Vanity roll around in their socket in fury. My pride, the vanity that holds me together, refuses to allow that statement to go unpunished.

    Eric looks at her, completely aghast, though she did not see his face. She could realize on her own just how deep in shit she is. She begins to tremble, her legs weak as a newborn lamb.

    One that I should lead to slaughter.

    I should be appreciating how absolutely hilarious it is. It¡¯s pretty damn funny.

    My ears perk up and I grin, an ugly and poisonous baring of teeth. A blistering bright, white light shines in my face from the necklace of The King.

    Words pour unbidden out of my mouth like sand draining from an overturned glass.

    ¡°Do not speak. You are in the presence of royalty. Kneel, you wretched thing.¡±

    Charisma surges out of my body, Fae Heart''s illusion wilting like a salted plant for a second before perking back up. The strange stat of Charisma boosts my Strength, Speed, and Dexterity to improve the social impact of my retribution.

    The girl pales, clenching her teeth so hard at my command that her teeth crack, followed by a shaky prostration.

    Eric stands up straight in shock, moving in a blaze of speed to eliminate the threat, only to get his throat seized by my tiny hand. He gets pulled down, not to my level, but instead below it. His muzzle jingle-jangles, the gold rings clattering with dull *thunks*. My necklace illuminates my friend¡¯s horrified face in stark contrast, light and shadows.

    ¡°Do not intervene while I punish your whelp of an apprentice,¡± I growl, his werewolf transformation coming out only so he can show more submission. The King¡¯s legacy lives on, approving my exertion of authority.

    I toss him to the side like the trash I am, walking over to the girl.

    The irony...

    I exhale explosively.

    Is beautiful.

    My tiny foot raises over her trembling, groveling form. A wicked grin plays on my lips, a cackle escaping my lips, before stomping. They splay out like a bug¡¯s legs when squished by a finger.

    ¡°Mmmrmph!¡± came her muffled scream of pain.

    Satisfied by her cries, the Torment Princess, moves to the door, before pausing and turning dramatically. *Whoosh* goes the dress.

    ¡°Ugh," I groan, sneering at her imperiously. "Don¡¯t push my pride, child. A recent accident with Essence has made me less than accommodating for... idiocy,¡± I state, my androgynously high-pitched voice lowering in threat. I knew she could have pulled herself up with nothing but a few cracked ribs to show for it. She is a werewolf. Even without the System and the moon, she could regenerate it easily. And yet, she is so pitifully weak and unprepared for pain that she stays on the ground, like the innocent civilian she is.

    I school my expression and enter the fortress.

    So this is the worthless chaff they have resorted to now that I am no longer helping them screen their recruits or save the lives of the foot soldiers? I am disappointed.

    No. Fuck no, I¡¯m not. This judgement is not consistent with my normal emotions.

    Or is it? Internally, I frown. No. Yeah, no. It is not. I fully believe that people like this can be recruited with some training to increase their fortitude. Why am I feeling like this?

    I am a narcissistic, vain PRINCESS far above all of the trash that litters the floors of her kingdom. Though... it is only vain and narcissistic if it is false and overblown. I am truly that amazing.

    I probe my mind for Miasma, and lo and behold, the Orbs of Vanity are affecting me. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no time to figure out how to isolate the emotions.

    ¡°You have started a big ruckus, Thea,¡± my boss says, pronouncing it more like Tia. ¡°Hmmm... you surprise me. You? Losing an arm? Tose Stars of yours seem to have failed to keep you safe.¡±

    ¡°Shaddup, Mister. Now that I can hear your Essence, it sounds just as blustering as a bulldog. I thought it would, with how all your talk of gambling ends on the vine,¡± I shoot back.

    He smirks amused under his mask, the colors of Italy''s flag spray-painted on it. ¡°Just as sharp as ever. Let¡¯s talk. Sounds like you¡¯ve got a lot to talk about wit your boss,¡± Luke says, his rich Italian accent filling the air.

    One of my gang mates stops us for a quick moment, giving me a big hug. ¡°Welcome back! Why¡¯d you leave? What happened? Are you going to be staying?¡± he asks.

    ¡°Unfortunately not,¡± I say sadly.

    ¡°Can¡¯t believe tat you will be leaving us. Come. Follow me,¡± he states commandingly, albeit lovingly, like he always does. His huge body, a veritable juggernaut of a man, moves with incredible Dexterity.

    We make it to his office, an understated place with soft, cushiony sofas. He grabs his large face mask, unholstering it with a large, clawed hand in a swift motion and hanging it on a rack next to the lovingly pinned runic LSL papers of his wife, three daughters, and son. They are all werewolves, unsurprisingly. It¡¯s always a bit odd seeing the LSL papers. Seeing a werewolf without the governmentally enforced masks is just weirds out that part of the brain that categorizes everything.

    And this is even though I know the law enforcing masks exists in spite of the truth. The werewolf contagion spreads through fluid-on-broken skin transmission, rather than airborne transmission. That¡¯s how deep the prejudice roots itself in society. Even I, someone who Luke trusts with his face, both in the literal sense and in the ¡®honor¡¯ sense of the word, get stupidly, idiotically, foolishly surprised seeing a werewolf removing their mask.

    Flags hang from the walls, showcasing both his Italian patriotism and pride/acceptance of self as a werewolf. The latter has two flags that characterize it: the first a rainbow, but with a few important differences. The red takes up most of the flag, and is made up of ribbons in a Lizard, M. C. Escher-style drawing. Tucked into the upper-right corner is a sickle and a hammer. The second is simpler; more aggressive. It is composed of only brown streaked with black and a large stripe of red cutting diagonally across. Golden claws in a fierce gesture, without the hand and/or paw that goes with them, are emblazoned on the red stripe.

    I know my parents would have an apoplectic fit seeing an immigrant be so ungrateful. But I do not care much about what they believe, so possono andare a morire in un buco.

    ¡°Now, little child, explain. Not even la signora che prende il mio grana will perceive into my room. I appreciate you bringing tat to my attention so soon, but I will need to elaborate beyond your dramatic tendencies,¡± Luke says.

    The untold meaning is that he would have killed me if I hadn¡¯t done elaborated. But don¡¯t criticize him! He simply cannot enforce control of the neighborhood with prompt violence. A threat of violence is done as easily as breathing here, and he has at least has a good reason to do so.

    I put a hesitant expression on my face, the implied message being that I am unsure as to whether that is a good idea. Although if I¡¯m honest...

    I am already aware of how the Lady of Death & Taxes and Luke¡¯s past dialogue, if I remember correctly, consistently (if accidentally) implied that his room is where he does his taxes because it has safeguards against the IRS.

    ¡°Tare are no living things in here beside us, and no money in here either. She uses both to fix her lacking Perception. Though tat isn¡¯t ta only protections we have,¡± he explains. ¡°You¡¯ll just have to trust your boss, capisce?¡± Impatience rumbles into his voice.

    "Now spill the good stuff to your boss," he says.

    His eagerness, however well he disguises it, is palpable. Not that that is a surprise. The man can literally smell good stories, due to his prior profession and Class. He had been a bard before he was turned into a werewolf back in Italy. After that, he had to leave to abandon his job and flee the Werewolf Genocides rushing through Europe. Needing to avoid the chaos and prejudice whipped up by the Sickle''s Teeth, he had to resort to brute force to carve out a home in the United States of America. The only way to survive as a werewolf is to know violence.

    Though admittedly, he does not need Magic nose abilities to guess that there is a real good story attached like a price tag to my missing limb situation and newfound power. Being able to, and acting on it, crush Eric and the newbie. both werewolves with System access is a shock to the man. Not to mention, the visible stress of the past few days is clear as day in my face and my actions. And to be honest, that visible stress on my face is probs. more surprising to him than missing limbs and abnormal power.

    After all, I have always found... effective... ways to supplement my weakness with borrowed power.

    ¡°Alright, alright!¡± I hold my hands up, lightly chuckling. ¡°It all started with getting stabbed at school, as all good smut does, am I right? And scandalously, in the hallways of all places!¡± I say ¡°stabbed¡± as if it is in quotations, knowing well that in spite of his fatherly demeanor, Luke loves sexual gallows humor when he get away without his grandparents nagging him. and when he¡¯s not putting on a show for those not in his close circle of friends.

    ¡°Unfortunately, the good old-fashioned BSDM is interrupted by a surprise visit from royalty, of all things, and he took me as his servant and pet. Unfortunately, by dint of his strength, I was dying just being near him. Fever... gross malformations... the whole shebang. The man really enjoyed the tastes of flesh. You could not go an hour without him indulging. I mean, I even thought I''d be next! I mean, you could really tell that it was part of his Essence, the desire for flesh, as it was practically a maid caf¨¨ there. The creatures/maids were absolutely wild!¡± my voice lilts musically as I describe the macabre. I then lewdly make curves in the air. "They were really impressively sized there, if you get my drift. And you should have seen the pants of some of the butlers there too. The swords of all the knights were all ~HUGE.~ My goodness!" I fan myself, mock-scandalized and blushing a bright red.

    I am in my element. Making a person happy and building a friendship that will make someone like me is exactly what I love to do.

    "HAHA!" he roars boisterously. Success! I made the stalwart man laugh!

    ___________________

    ¡°I, however, did do an absolutely amazing job of entertaining him. I even organized an entire opera for him, with quite a lot of finesse if I do say so,¡± I whisper mischievously, waving my hands around to illustrate the highlights.

    He chuckles. ¡°You put on a performance for a Magicker? I¡¯m impressed, and even more so tat you managed to get System access out of it too. Are you doing fine toe? I need to make sure my subordinate can still handle acting like a werewolf, loyal and selfless, and still do her job in the restaurant¡¯s First-Aid division. You were far more aggressive in handling disputes tan you should have been, particularly on my front door.¡±

    That is a deLIGHTfully cold way of asking how I am doing, Mr. D¡¯Angi¨°. You cannot dupe me though.

    You loooove me, Mister.

    I accuse you!

    Of...

    Being super caring! You cannot hide your concern, you siiilly man. You may work me to the hilt, but you do try your best to match the parental figure my father could not be. Not that you will stay like any other does, nor will your gang last any longer than the others. Perhaps a pragmatic assessment on my part, but nonetheless, it will happen.

    Unless I can somehow gain enough power to intervene.

    ¡°I am, unsurprisingly, struggling with the lack of limb,¡± at that, I pat my stump, holstered as it is in a protective plate. ¡°Though I will admit that I am frustrated by being a walking biohazard. Definitely a learning curve for me. Ah... and I apologize for the less-than smooth topic transition, with some rather disrespectful conclusions that can be drawn from my train of thought...¡± I pause, falsely hesitant to ask.

    ¡°But how is Santino doing after his quincea?ero de lobo? I won¡¯t deny that his mood changes had been concerning. Been worried about the changes that may have resulted while I was gone. I am more than a little angry I wasn¡¯t able to attend his celebration of adulthood as a werewolf,¡± I say frustrated.

    Luke heaves a deep sigh.

    Oh dear. Oh Santino, you idiot. What did you do?! I mentally rub my face in exasperation and exhaustion.

    ¡°He... was foolish... and before his quincea?ero de lobo... he had a... moment of passion wit a girl. Tried to prove to himself tat he wasn¡¯t a werewolf for just a little longer. Of course, as his bad luck would have it, he became infectious just a little bit earlier tan normal and faced ta consequences of his actions. His girl¡¯s now a werewolf too, and tay aren¡¯t on speakin¡¯ terms now,¡± he said exhaustedly.

    I wince, giving him an air-pat on his back. No veteran of combat is going to allow you to touch them if you are an unknown variable in terms of power.

    Obviously uncomfortable by my line of questioning, he decides to put me on the back-foot. ¡°How¡¯s your brother doing?¡±

    I go from a fairly genial smile to a sheepish, panicky look. Internally though, I switch to a flat, annoyed expression. Smooth, boss.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I don¡¯t know what he is doing. The Lady is riding up my ass right about now, and I have to stop here first to close up business.¡±

    He wouldn¡¯t show it, but he is certainly displeased by my terse word choices, despite the deferential tone I used. But as much as I want to choose the perfect words to make him happy all the time and then we¡¯ll be perfect FRIENDS, like the Stars and me, I can¡¯t. I don¡¯t need my trait Puppeteer to determine that I need to push back at some points. Disagreement, sometimes even excessive levels of arguing, is required to grow a friendship in most situations/partnerships. Otherwise, it feels false to the other person. Though it depends on the personality, Luke is certainly the kind of person who would distrust a yes-man.

    ¡°I¡¯ve been keeping track for you, and your brother has been doing well. Don¡¯t worry,¡± he says reassuringly.

    ¡°Thank you. I appreciate the information,¡± I say with false stiffness, though it seems real to Luke. ¡°Keeping track of Elise too? I¡¯m planning on checking in with both of them, but it¡¯d be nice to have a bit of heads up on her too,¡± I ask wryly.

    He gives me a nod of confirmation, internally smirking in amusement at my topic change. Being too suave about topic changes will set off the gut instinct of others. I have got his number. He¡¯s clear as a pane of glass to me, despite the fact that he is completely opaque to literally everyone else in the gang.

    Well.

    Opaque to everyone else other than his wife.

    ¡°As a matter of fact, I do. Ah,¡± he pauses. ¡°And she¡¯s not going to be living here anymore. Which, I suppose, works for you now that you aren¡¯t living here now anymore.¡±

    ¡°Why?!¡± I ask, shocked, my eyebrow quickly floating up.

    ¡°Why, you ask? She only demolished an entire block of the Neighborhood when you disappeared, slaughtered an entire force of Warriors belonging to the American military along with the local Warriors¡± (read local Warriors as rival gang... is what I want to say. but they do actually, in fact, surprisingly, just maaaybe, do their job, and effectively. America does do its best to avoid Miasma creation) ¡°brought-uh a band of Imp-uh. Mercehnaries. Into tis state-uh. Witout-uh. Permission,¡± he hisses out with stress practically sparking off every punctuated word. ¡°Not only tat, but tee illegal mercenaries promptly engaged in a battle wit very powerful Anatema, bearing Sin weaponry of all ta crazy tings to bring to a populated city. And I cannot stress tis enough. A foreign agent of a whole ¡®noter dimension, much less kingdom, just infringed on the management of ta country¡¯s personal matters wit not just military, but special-ops, weaponry.¡±

    ¡°And all for you,¡± he states with a crystal-clear tone, a slight tension in his hands revealing the friendly accusation behind his words.

    Methinks he is feeling a ~little~ pressed right now.

    ¡­

    Stick a dunce cap on my head and call me Master of the Obvious!

    I wonder what he has had to deal with though. I can speculate, but that won¡¯t fulfil my curiosity. Alas, I cannot draw out our already long conversation. We have discussed everything, from packing my belongings ¨C and negotiating which actually belong to me and not the gang ¨C to skirting out of paying any fines ¨C though I only got away with not paying because we are friends

    ___________________

    After a few shared chuckles, he trails off awkwardly. I stand at attention.

    Now, I tink tat ta most important question on the table is-¡± the tension builds as he pauses, the gaze of a protective beast stares at me fiercely, his black eyes turning a stark wolfish blue.

    Stamina, the creation of Strength pouring out of him in bright gold force, slowly encasing him an avatar reflecting his inhuman changes. Ears start to bud out of his head, his previously jolly, Italian gestures lengthening into threatening canine jaws. Rust-red and black hair grows out of his skin and bones crack and snap into the proper place, jerking in an obviously painful transformation, though his eyes remain trained on me.

    A deep-dish pizza next to him, positively glowing with Magic and a little something else, goes down his gullet. The famous pizza creates an unknown boosting effect, illusionary red flames waving around his body like streamers. He purses his lips over his wolf-like teeth. His hesitancy makes me think he doesn¡¯t want to ask whatever question is on the tip of his tongue.

    ¡°Are you one of ta Torments?¡±

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    My eyes shrink to crescents. With a dilation in the Charisma of my Eye of Charisma, fake Fae wings fan out behind me. Miasma curls around me like a particularly rapey pet.

    Oh yes, Luke. I am. And he can tell that I assented that I am the most abominable of monsters through my facial features.

    "But I''m even worse!" I giggle out, my laughs giving me a nasty side stitch. My high sniggers turn into full-throated laughter. It fills the cozy lounge, no sound or senses getting to the Lady of Death & Taxes.

    "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!"

    "I''m now a Fae hybrid!" I shout maniacally, a true face of utter dementia unhinging my face. Infinitesimally, contrarily, he relaxes.

    Did you expect that? You have now seen the code of the mafia in action. Be pleased that you are one of the few not part of the upper echelon of a mafia who are in the know.

    Only I have practiced such a face for disguising myself. I''m sure others can do it, but would they guess to use it as a code expression? Of course they would not. To show such a face that no one can possibly trust for the sake of trust is something I set up with each mafia once I weasel my way up the ranks. As I inevitably do.

    Yes. You may now offer your applause.

    I have a code expression of insanity as a password for the top groups of the criminal underworld.

    We both pause, glancing at each other. We burst out laughing, our gaudy displays of force fading away. Briskly, we pat each other on the back, and then give a hug. Know how I mentioned that Luke wouldn''t let an unknown touch him? This entire conversation let us both use our Meshes and basic gang teachings to know that we are who we say we are. No matter what I did, he would care for me. As long as I didn''t hurt the cause of the gang, he would be loyal with me to the end.

    We are thick as thieves. This is the power of friendship. The perfect way to be, with masks donned and removed at the right time; as the stage needs it. So freakin'' COLORFUL. These are the moment I live for. My rise to ascension will allow me to witness those beautiful moments of life, and making lasting friendships will allow me to spread the colorful moments. A perfect example of following the ethos and the creed of the Stars, such colorful beings that they are.

    "I''ll miss ya, kid. You are such a crazy maniac. Crush tose sane students," he says gruffly. I can see the tears he hides.

    "You too... pa. Hope you can actually hold onto your territory," I say, tearing up too. He snorts at that. I can practically feel the death flags we are raising with our tearful goodbye. This is no laughing matter, so how he can he snort at this! As much as I live for these moments, it is at these same moments that I am reminded that I am still a child. I am still bitter and resigned, not wanting to leave his company, but unfortunately, the Lady of Death & Taxes waits for no one. In fact, she is much like her Essence in that regard.

    "Ya know I can. You may forget ta name of the gang from time to time, but we''ll still be here. I know we''ll prove you wrong," he states firmly. Now be ot wit you. Make sure to send letters to me, you hear me?"

    Let me forget and pretend you don''t exist! Let me disregard you! Let me believe you were never a father!

    I smile sadly. Another loose end in this city is tied up.

    ____________________________________________

    Boring glass doors stare at me. A bustling lobby lies behind them.

    I rub my hand through my hair.

    Every time. This trepidation gets me every time.

    "You better not be dead, big bro," I whisper to myself.

 Chapter 33: The Happy Resolution!

    It has been far too long since I have last checked on big bro. I rush in, hurtling through the doors. Unlike before, during my past visits to Dennis, I can avoid being just an obstacle to all of the Doctors. They still have much higher Speed and Dexterity than I do, but my Charisma and Charisma-related traits are so high that they multiply all of my Stats considerably. With a little bit of parkour, I use Inhuman Movements to stride over a racing team of surgeons and flying spells like a Moko Jumbie.

    A reporter on the waiting room looks into the camera. She was a human with a genuinely mournful expression. Rather surprising.

    ¡°Breaking news! It is a time of great panic and turmoil, as we mourn the loss of multiple Magical Guardians in Indiana. Some were well-beloved fixtures of the community, while others were recently found by the Familiars only to be tragically lost to the Torments just as quickly as they arrived...¡±

    I wonder who each of the Magical Guardians are?

    I can perfectly guess who they are. I just don''t care to know.

    At all.

    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    "In the most tragic incident Magical Guardian-related of the year for the United States of the flag," she salutes to the flag flying half-mast, "An entire elite team of Magical Guardians has faced grievous injuries, with Fire Fighter on death''s door, and a new Magical Girl cut short before the team could intervene. whose secondary title was Charity. Multiple Magical Guardians joined into the battle with the Torment The King, who managed to stand toe-to-toe with the most powerful Magical Guardian on our continent, Magical Girl Sunshine.

    "And he did so for nearly an day our time," she professionally emphasized the utter insanity of that statement. "According to the distinguished Ms. Sunshine, the sacrifices of an unknown type of Miasmic entity that she has not seen before in her entire career was the cause.

    It cut to an interview of Sunshine, whose clothes were terribly ripped, a symbolic representation of her currently low Vitality. She kneeled in obvious pain, her cane with the U.S. flag poking out of it half mast. Her Essence had to be practically nonexistent, because the Traits that made her stand out were not standing out like they should have been.

    ______________________________________________________________________________________________

    "We mourn the loss of my ch- Magical Girl Charity," the reporter says, tears and snot dribbling down her face. Her expression completely collapses and she runs off the screen.

    ...

    Nurse O¡¯Sullivan is not in this time. Huh. I don¡¯t recognize this one.

    And Stars DAMN!

    She is ridiculously tired. Everyone is beleaguered to the point of deep concern. This is an important hospital, but there should not be doctors dripping sweat onto the ground like slugs with slime. One huffing, puffing red-faced doctor is literally dripping like a recently bathed dog. And the injuries...

    They were all Miasmic corruption. The Tormented Zone of lewdness must have been a symptom of something much worse. It was not this advanced, nor do the injuries follow the themes of its anti-magic.

    A blue blur zooms by, purifying them. A Magical Girl is helping with the patients, and hasn''t already dealt with the entire hospital''s patients on her own.

    I act shocked that she went by, when really, I am deathly terrified.

    Please don¡¯t sense me. Oh fuckin¡¯ please. Presumably, she is doing this in an attempt to prevent the anti-magic from getting a hold in reality.

    My heart chills, as the worst sound I could hope to hear rings in my special ears. My Eye of Charisma dilates in palpable terror for my brother. Someone is using Charisma to boost the doctors. Not Will.

    The realization dawns on me and the puzzle pieces click together. Alexa stabbing me and an incredibly strange increase in anti-Magic. The Magical Guardians¡¯ delayed response to The King¡¯s Tormented Zone. A promotion of one of the students of my school to Magical Girl. Another Tormented Zone in such a short range in such near proximity. Elisa fighting against Anathema in a wholly different area from where I am. Corruption of other Tormented Zones showing up on patients in a hospital whereas normally Magical Guardians would be enough to deal with their life mission on their own.

    Something is pushing an entire assault. A mass collaboration of Miasmic cults of the Goddess Diarrhea or even, insanely, the Goddess Diarrhea herself, have somehow created a virtual war. And not just here. No, no, no. Otherwise, Magical Guardians would travel to help, using their special travel stuff, like chariots and giant, teleporting turtles to come help put a stop to abnormal activity? That would be insane if true, but it makes so much sense. Some way, she has escaped endless conflict with the Magical Deities, and she, the Sadist of the Social, has started waging a war against the Magical Guardians. Already, she has created multiple fronts to busy the guardians; won some victories.

    ¡°Can I help you?¡± the stand-in doctor asked blearily, not cutting through my laser focus. It all made horrid sense.

    Charisma? How can they be so desperate to use Charisma?

    I give a querying look to my surroundings, my Crystal-Faceted Eyes revealing a figure in the center of the chaos. Essence of black suits and neatly done ties. It reeks of a Politician¡¯s Skills.

    Charisma is the equivalent of running on fumes. The stat is far more They are relying on blatant mind control to keep the doctors moving.

    If my titanium grasp on my emotions had not been so strong, and if I had not created the Eye of Charisma to exercise my hold over emotions to the stat of Charisma, I would have paralyzed everyone in this room with the bone-chilling horror of my realization. I am so out of the loop. What if they haven¡¯t been able to take care of my brother? What if they made a mistake with his procedures? They are likely so exhausted that there is a very real possibility the alchemical solutions pumping into his veins could be messed up right now, even despite the Sleep Deprivation Management and Vitality they all have.

    ¡°I am Theodore. Here to check on my brother.¡±

    She glances down to her computer, her fingers a blur on the runic array.

    She frowns. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. Do you have parents coming?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I say flatly.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure why you have so many visits but as a minor, you are not permitted to be alone in the hospital. Go get your parents and schedule a visit at a later time,¡± she says, stifling a jaw-wrenching yawn, before zooming off to give people medications, and hurtling back into her chair.

    I lean forward, placing my elbows on the table. With the watch of the Lady of Death & Taxes, calling in the authority of the local gang wouldn¡¯t work. Thanks to the Stars making me feel COLORFUL once more, I was not currently mind-wiping this nice, but overworked, doctor. I just need to remember that this woman regularly saves lives, and she is a person of great fortitude and courage.

    ¡°Are you aware of the current estrangement between my parents and me? They have expelled me from their home as a minor,¡± I say kindly, with a hint of pain in my voice jabbing into her heart like needles. I ply her with concise statements accentuated by the perfect puppeteering of my face, quickly getting her to my side easily. The Puppeteer trait is, quite honestly and unsurprisingly, a waste for what I can already do.

    ¡°Oh sure. I¡¯ll, uhm-¡± she stops with utter shame and humiliation, trying to find the words in front of my utter saint of an act ¡°-I¡¯ll *YAWN* oh I¡¯m so sooorry...! I¡¯ll get you down you to your brother immediately.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± I emphasize clearly. ¡°I know the way like the back of my hand. But if you want to take yourself or someone else to follow me, then I am totally fine with it.¡±

    With that, I start walking towards my brother.

    The halls are so long, the bright lights flickering as I pass.

    The white everywhere makes me itchy. Miasma bites into my skin like glass splinters, accumulating as my worry grows.

    I speed up my walking, my sedate pace quickly lengthening until every step takes a third of each corridor.

    A doctor gives me a wry look as I stretch comically by her, her blond curls shaking with amusement at my panic. I bypass the elevator, wrenching open the stairs door, it rasping close behind me. I just stretching up. My arms lengthen, skin stretching like grey-brown taffy, thinning out and tearing.

    Fingers as long as a regular human wrap around the handle at the top of the metal safety rails, and an overly stretched being of ribbons flings itself onto the concrete form.

    I revert from nightmare fuel to normal me. Every time that I do this, the scream builds in my throat.

    The scream builds and builds, my body preparing for the horror of the death of big bro.

    At any time, with every step, the news; ¨Chowever it may be said to me, from whoever ¨C all of the possibilities...

    They hit me like sledgehammers, bruising the mind.

    I close my eyes to steady myself.

    The Broken Mirror whispers to you.

    A fragment of the Broken Mirror floats within the darkness.

    A nurse is so sorry to say it, but my brother has died. The world rings around me. Teeth sink into me. They are mine. They carry off me to the asylum; a rabid dog ready to be put down.

    ¡°STOP!¡± she growls.

    A second fragment of the Broken Mirror follows the first.

    My parents call me and start lecturing me for letting my brother fall ill. ¡°It is my fault I could not keep him alive.¡± When they say it, it is then I realize big bro is dead. We scream at each other. The fault rests on all my monstrosity, no matter how they tried to hide stuff from me on his health.

    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

    STOP! they growl.

    A third vision floats around in front of me tauntingly.

    ¡°It¡¯s ok sis. It¡¯s not your fault. You kept my life... How do you put it? Colorful.¡± This would never happen. He can¡¯t speak. He¡¯d probably try to say it though as he died.

    ¡°STOP!¡± he growls.

    I must love to see him die... a sadist am I...

    I am the perfect soul to make into a zealot of the Goddess Diarrhea. So many thoughts running through my head. You know how often a paranoid prepper for the impending apocalypse of his death is overjoyed when proven right? They truly desire the apocalypse to fulfil their preparations.

    ¡°STOP!¡± the adorable trash bag sobs out.

    I¡¯m at his door, feeling the blank, undecorated metal. All of the stickers I plastered over it are gone.

    The Happy Bard has removed your tears. It has removed yo-You beat me! You mesh further with me but don¡¯t even use me for your expressions? HAHAHA! Grrrr... AHHHHHHH!!! YAY! WHYYYY!? NOOOO!!!

    I give a quick read through of the System message. The meaning behind it disgusts me. Internally, I wrinkle my nose, the bitter bile of repugnance welling up inside my throat like a stagnant pond filled with flesh-eating bacteria. You can die in a hole for all I care, Happy Bard. A developing personality does not matter to me. I am willing to stifle your existence as needed.

    I push open the door. If I didn¡¯t have the control over my body that I did, my arms would be vibrating in absolute suspense.

    ¡°You know, ¡°gal pal¡±, I did not expect to see you out of the Tormented Zone. You were one and done, but you really have gone on to serve the Goddess perfectly. Like, you just keep on giving gift after fuckin¡¯ gift to the war effort. Girl, I¡¯m just really fuckin¡¯ impressed,¡± whistled a Torment, curled around the bed. With the distortions of space, a barricade of stone curled around my BROTHER¡¯S BED fit within the patient¡¯s room. It was a disrepaired castle, a hollow monolith of a centipede...

    ¡°ALEXA, I SAID I WOULD KILL YOU!" I scream. The beast rears back, hit with the force of my words.

    ¡°Where. Is. My. Brother,¡± I rasp out.

    Enshrouded in the dark patient¡¯s room¡¯s shadows like the specter of death, an eyeless centipede hunches over my brother. Mandibles splay out toward me, laughing with joy. Checkmarks hang in the air around her, as if she had succeeded in filling out some demented list. The sound of Divinity, a tolling bell that made my heart tremble against my ribcage, literally bumping against the flesh surrounding the organ. She exuded it. The Torment exuded the mark of the Goddess Diarrhea.

    My Stars looked at it with unadulterated delight, rolling around with excitement at such colorful wonder.

    ¡°You are just the gift that I will offer to the Goddess Diarrhea. The Zealot, girl BOOOooossss, THAT i am ¨C WONDER! PRAISE BE! LET THIS CHILD BE CONVERTED! Follow the Sadist of the Social, gal pal!¡± came the horrid raving that poured of the Torment¡¯s body, a choir¡¯s preachings that resembled the results of the God of Wind Zephyrus deciding to create a floating island of cliffs that created sounds as the wind ran past. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t have even realized he existed and was of importance if you hadn¡¯t visited today. What luck! HER fav-v-v-v-vor SHI-HI-HI-HI-HI-HINES on me.¡±

    Infectious window found. New front of war started. Novel methods tried with anchor of The Broken Mirror. Infection conveyed by the Zealot, and released from dormancy by the Zealot. Miasma of Dying like Flies absorbed, and brought under the purview of the Goddess Diarrhea, the Sadist of the Social. Sibling of The Charismatic Star ¨C error. Change name: Sol. Improve her blessing as a reward her for her development. Sent the infectious fragment of soul. The Mummifying Soul Cancer has been created. With the aid of Sol¡¯s presence and her class The Broken Mirror, class of the brother has been consumed. The Anathema class The Evergrowing Cancer has been created. A new front of war has been created.

    My face remains unchanged as I see my brother lying on the bed. I even raise my head up with surety. My brother will never be victim to my problems. He will always know my life as wild and strange and- and- and COLORFUL.

    He heart wrenchingly shrieks like a puppy, all the more painful as it is the only sound he has been able to say to me for a year. Flesh bubble and bulge, cracked brown masses peeking through his emaciated limbs, viscous black blood oozing from the dry cracks riddling the rapidly growing tumors stretching his body apart.

    The Star behind me, the Eye of Charisma, burns. Biblical pillars of fire twist and raze over it like tornadoes across its surface; white-hot sparklers streaming around it. Cracks riddle reality behind it.

    ¡°I said it, and I don¡¯t LIE,¡± I whisper, my eyes glowing a furious purple.

    The Jester becomes livid, wagging its finger with an utterly delighted grin at the impending doom. A purple silhouette with a tragedy face stands in the square of New York Times Square. People whose features are covered over with skin, bows tied on their heads, bustle by the figure that stands unmoving.

    The Hound curls at the foot of the Charismatic Star, doing tricks for a treat. Its ears perk up as if it hears the sound of something delicious, basic triangles poking out of the silhouette¡¯s joker hat. The jowls of the service dog jostle as it bounces and wags with joy.

    The Torment Princess decrees death for the mad zealot. The state religion is the worship of the Stars. Let the genocide of cultists of the Miasmic Goddess commence.

    You have purposefully stopped the mind-wipe of the massacre you have caused.

    -Rapier of Broken Reflection Level 0 Tier 2: Choose an emotion to make snap off for the time of battle and wield a shard of The Broken Mirror, causing others to feel your Pain. Improve in sword-fighting Skill and slice open flesh and mind alike to increase in level. You will only feel variations of that emotion during the battle. Try to survive its use. Don''t try to survive its use.

    "I choose to snap off the emotion of my love for my sibling," I declared. Miasma grows and multiplies within my soul, burning out the Goddess'' Miasma with the possessive and protective love it is now tinged with. It accumulates, doubling and tripling and quadrupling in power. The threat of the Zealot made me commit to my truths, both Magical and Miasmic.

    I could only feel the familial love for my brother, which is the best possible emotion for this. I couldn''t even suffer after stopping mindwiping myself. The feelings of the massacre I had indirectly caused were erased, changing my perspective of the event in a way that made me incapable of caring for their deaths.

    Within my outreached hand, my guitar from the The King''s Tormented Zone appears within my hand. It turns an industrial steel color as my Skill works its effect. I become razor-focused. Nothing is important more important to me than saving Dennis.

    Biting into my palm is a razor-thin piece of silvered glass with floating shields circling around it. Of all things, the symbolic shields resembled the malware protections symbol.

    The Torment freezes in its constricting grasp of my brother under the full weight of my Charisma.

    This is going to be so satisfying.

    I walk slowly to the Torment, before calmly sinking the sword into the head of the creature. Silver spreads across its stone masonry self, yet it remains immobile under the ethereally dominating gaze of my guardian Stat. Imperiousness sets into me, my ears growing like willows into a furry crown. My heart races, beating like a growling fox.

    I pick up my brother in a gentle cradle carry, my Miasma ruthlessly pushing out the Miasma of the Goddess Diarrhea. The cancerous growths reverse as the hospital warps around me, the patient''s room depositing me on the ground.

    -Rapier of Broken Reflection Level 0-->Pending Tier Evolution.

    The Torment Princess has grown.

    I walk up to the Lady of Death & Taxes carrying my brother, an aura of many meanings embedded within my Eye. Like the Charisma, I keep it restrained within the skill that I created, and she kills me for convenient travel again.

    But not before I convince her to bring my soon-to-be-headless body to nameless off-brand restaurant number 130. With a bottle of Ultimate Spice Sauce between my teeth, my head floats on a cradle of Miasma in front of Karen, while my body still cradles my sleeping big bro.

    "OH MY GLORIOUS LORD!"

    "THE TRANNY DEVIL HAS COME TO TAKE MY SOUL!" pierces the restaurant manager''s angelic voice into my ears.

    "SAVE ME LORD," my restaurant manager screams panickedly. She wobbles in fright with all of the sturdiness of our Authentic Mexican Noodle Dish?. Her hands scrabble across the ground.

    I work my cheek-splitting grin around the slippery glass bottle with altogether far too much satisfaction. My ebony black tongue curls around the smooth glass, the paper label rubbing lightly against it.

    Gently and, just as she wanted, carefully, I pour the contents of both my head and the sauce bottle over her. This is even more delightful than drop-kicking her into a vat of the Ultimate Spice Sauce! Drops of brain fluid and acidic hot sauce speckle her face and cheeks, evenly distributed over her beloved uniform.

    Vengeance is best served spicy hot!!!

    I scoop the completely, wholly, fully, surely sanitary combination onto the cap of the bottle; and then, with supreme kindness writ on my face, I make her suckle on the tainted spice bottle.

    Her face quickly starts sweating like a cheese rind left out on the counter. She turns beet red. The peppers make her weak tastebuds shrivel, her cheeks and nose bunching up worse than a warthog.

    My eyebrows knit up, my lips puckering, as the silent chuckles outpour. I affect as smarmy an expression of petty vengeance I possibly can.

    "He can''t save you. I..." I pause in writing the words in the air with Miasma and Charisma, imprinting the meaning in her mind.

    She hangs on to every word I write.

    "What did you do," she whispers.

    Curiosity killed the cat, Karen.

    "I have anointed you with the unholy fluids of a heathen worshipping Eldritch beings," I finish.

    Her face flattens, ripped clean of emotion.

    "UHHhhh... " she moans out. "It''s not true... I refuse to believe it... I am no Satan''s spawn."

    "You''re right," I write smugly. "You''ve fallen further than the fallen angel Lucifer himself. Even he would reject you as you have now rejected your God. My COLORFUL blessing be upon you," the Stars help me actually say the words despite being a head. Their gaze focuses on the impromptu ritual I just pulled out of my currently departed ass, resting on Karen for a second. Naturally, she senses my FRIENDS hugging her.

    Her eyes promptly roll to the back of her head, dropping to the ground with a faint like a sack of rotten lettuce. Like she was, frankly. She was a sack of rotten lettuce in mind; a moldy tomato at heart.

    I shake my head back and forth, free as a bird, before zooming into the hand of the Lady of Death & Taxes. With the declaration of "DEAR ELISA, I BETTER SEE YOU AT THE SCHOOL OF MAGICALS, DEMONICS, AND ALTOGETHER ELDRITCH ENTITIES, SINCERELY THEATER" in fireworks, we blast off with a sonic boom.

    Me and big bro head off to school. With a flex of Miasma, I move my separate body to brush out my brother''s newfound hair, a mess of spun-gold locks.

    The Torment Princess, dually a Happy Bard and Forsaken Jester under the Charismatic Star, wielder of the Broken Mirror.. The Noble Vixen of the Fae Heart, cultist of the Weeping Eyes Beneath the Nonexistent Blood, and friend of the Vengeful Spirits Masua and Enterion... And now also the Protector of Family... they head to school.

 Chapter 34: This Chapter Does Not Matter

    You thought you could trust a happy resolution?

    So stupid. So sad.

    Here. The Stars give great hugs. Their hugs gave you the lie that you want. They writ the lie into their dream for you all.

    Does this overwhelm you? Does this remove your trust?

    But the resolution did happen. And that''s all that matters, no?

    She/he/they/it is indeed heading off to school and everything is all perfect.

    But the last chapter we got to enjoy with you took place after this one.

    I enter room 331.

    It¡¯s empty.

    Oh joy!

    Eeexactly what I want!

    I frown, but my heart starts pumping faster. I start breathing faster and more shallowly.

    Before it can get further, I mentally grab it and swirl it around in my ever-present joy and anger until it dissolves. I go back to the desk and inquire about where my brother is oh so calmly, as much as I want to throw a fit of rage.

    She pales, knowing what this could mean. She pages Dennis¡¯s doctor.

    I stay perfectly still.

    She surprisingly received a response quickly. I have never received messages about my brother at a quick speed. The doctors may move at insane speeds due to their classes, but this unfortunately does not translate to speed of information for some reason I cannot fathom. Until now apparently.

    You know, Nurse whoever-she-is said a lot of things that ultimately were useless fluff. Really just pointless. There were apologies and condolences, but they didn¡¯t matter. Really, it just boiled down to

    ¡°He¡¯s dead.¡±

    Though, there were a few important things to know about that which I could easily infer. Minor things such as, oh, he died alone. And trifling information, like my parents withheld the message even though they can¡¯t even care to visit him.

    Real minor stuff.

    "Ok," I say.

    I leave, a smile on my face.

    My brother would not want me to stop enjoying life for him.

    I''ll just smile and hope he is in a better place.

    I push forward through the doorways out of the hospital, summitting the hill to the Lady of Death & Taxes. Funnily enough, she chose the highest geographical point in the city.

    I had to walk FOREVER to get to her. Honestly? I appreciated the walk.

    I breath in, and out. In, and out. Though it was not normally my inclination, I let myself break down for the entire walk. I sniffle and sob the entire way there.

    Though, that raises the cruel point...

    We both died within a few days of each other.

    I did my best to ignore the Ship of Theseus issue that healing up my head brought. Luckily, most of my personality is already encoded in my Miasma and Soul... hopefully...

    Could I have fully died then and there? Could I be gone?

    Genuinely gone. I am merely a reflection of the Broken Mirror that had gone through 17 long years.

    Could both me and him be gone?

    I must be a mere clone of Sol.

    I must be.

    HAH! The irony. Both me and my brother are gone.

    Haaa...

    Haaa...

    AHAAHAAHAAHAA...

    This is the natural progression of being such a monster. The progression I deserve. The loss of family and of identity.

    Monsters never truly have a family.

    And I never had much of an identity or a family to begin with.

    And now I have lost even those bits... Even with so basic, so quick, of an event.

    I simply travel from Point A to Point B... and lose my identity and brother in the process. So simple.

    So... absurd? I... can''t breathe.

    I really can''t breathe.

    I... anyone? Anyone please? World? Guys? Friends? No. None of them around.

    Who¡¯s not around? Everyone is? All alone.

    Where is the air? Why won''t my chest obey me? It should listen. My body should listen.

    No pain grows in my chest, because my Pain Resistance makes me numb.

    Numb to the suffocation on dry land. No sensation accompanies the fact that I.

    Can.

    Not.

    Breathe.

    My body wants nothing more to collapse. The edges of my many fields of vision fuzz and blur

    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    Damn. The therapist''s advice really is jack-shit.

    Best just to revert back to my coping mechanisms. I mentally grab my emotions and I restrict them to a mask, reducing them from the deep, unknowable ocean I was adrift in. Now, it is but a mere sheen of sparkling water that lightly coats my face.

    I breath in and out with an unchanged smile. None of the turmoil on my face ever shows on my face or my body.

    Just a plaster comedy mask; that is all that exists. There is no emotion within my mind beyond expressing only the riotous enjoyment of life, every shade of color taken in by fixed button eyes.

    I regress into a shallow, psychopathic mindset. There is nothing beyond the masks I don.

    Not that there needs to be anything more behind them, of course.

    The lie is just as valid as the truth.

    You may disagree, but... well?...

    Removing the layers of deceit that some clothe themselves is to find at the end of your search for truth that you did not take off the cloak that masked their identity.

    No, no, no. Instead, all you did is skin the poor creature, exposing the meat of the deed to the harsh, infectious truth outside. In the air, it will die!

    Screaming and growling, unable to escape its skinless existence. Every limb it flails around will burn in the openness of the truth you desire so much. Because of your caring removal of "clothes," it festers!

    It is a festering, rotting, cursed existence that taints the city around it! You would not want a rabid animal swinging those sharp teeth, nor an unsheathed dagger swinging that poisoned edge, in an open crowd, no?

    Unless... Well, unless you simply wish to poison society!

    I, personally, would much rather keep society as pure as possible. Well. I suppose I wish to keep it as pure as it can be.

    I center myself on the comfort of my changed body, matching up with me due to the effects of Fae Heart sculpting me into my ideal of perfection. My mask is built around the stabilizing benefits that fitting my body brings to me. The beauty of matching other women around me cannot be denied. Of even going beyond them in beauty... it brings me no end of peace; a perfect thing to keep my mask in place.

    Even as I wish to take a flamethrower to my flowering happiness- my enjoyment is malevolent and selfish! - I continue my placid walk.

    The Happy Bard has removed your tears. You have meshed further with the truth. You have pumped Miasma into the hospital, helping the patients of the hospital grin and bear it. The families are not as sad, and for a day, you have stalled their suffering. You have made the world a better place. Yes indeed! A one-time miracle.

    Thank you, truth of the Happy Bard. I incline my head to the status screen. It''s akin to the miracles that Magical Guardians spread around. The Magical System just gives the Guardians Magic artifacts based off of their truths.

    Awww... you''re so sweet! HAHAHA! Wheee... AHHHHHHH!!! YAY! YESSSSS!!!

    I smirk.

    Not gonna lie, the growing personality of my screen is kind of cute. Pretty scary though.

    Infectious agent activated. Brother of the Tormented Princess has meshed with Essence of the Sadist of the Social, with Essence of the Plague Bearer, with Divine Essence of the Goddess Diarrhea.

    ________________________________________________________________

    A battle has begun. The Magical Guardians against Metastasis, the Divine Growth.

    ¡°What?¡± I... breath... out?

    Something burns. My eyes... they irritate me. So bad. The skin... I hate it... I hate it so much... it needs to go...

    I need to go... to... save him? To save... my brother? This sense of horror and desperation tells me I need to. This queasiness bordering on such nausea that one could argue no longer having intestines to be preferable... it is rising.

    Bile pours out of my mouth, jaundiced yellow liquid with webbing threaded through it ¨C My eyes burn, you know? - gushes all over my clothes. In a perfect cube it pools. It stops at a straight side in front of me, and to my sides, and - I gush so much my-head-my-head turns silly there - and behind me.

    The bitter taste sears my lips, fries my cheeks, toasts my gums with the lily-livered expression of terror.

    My nose twitches. The threads tickle it, floating like loose strands

    The bile is up to my eyes.

    I feel faint.

    A pall of blue fractaling across my face. Purple eyes gaze luridly into the sky, bulging in mania and pupils shrinking to rival the sinful holder of the title of Lord of the Flies.

    The hospital where my dead brother was shatters.

    Enormous cracks riddle the structure worse than the Riddler, the hospital halting in the air as Miasma becomes so heavy in substance it keeps up the hospital in stasis. Oozing out of portals are bulbous brown cancers, overgrown moles oozing blood through cracks, and covered in black hairs as long as humans.

    I whip around to face the zombie-like Titan, my hair whipping around and bronzed claws lashing out. My posture resembles a feral catgirl.

    I still recognize who it was.

    The hill shatters under the weight of my own oppressive Miasma, a powerup of my own like a Magical Girl''s. A crater forms, huge blocks pushed up like an expanding circle of toppled-over tombs of stone. Black cracks as shadowy as the sockets of my arms riddle the ground. Orbs of Vanity the size of houses in all their glorious golden-and-black striations peak through.

    I grin, crossing my hand fingers.

    "Domain Expansion," I joke.

    The mask shatters.

    My whole body hunches over into the bile, as my flesh reduces itself to a mere prop to hold onto the ground. A web of white strings dripping with shadowy blood flows and wraps around the neck of a head and sparkling magic growing appendages with fingers.

    The jaw unhinges, jawbone shoved out of the perfect Fae face of impossible beauty, and touching the glass dust of the hill of mirrors. More of a yawning castle of flesh than the rattling gasp of snake-like ghouls on the Eve of the Stars.

    My many hands grasped my face, my fingers clutching frenetically at my face. My hands desperately grabbed around my waist, hugging myself in ecstasy. They rip into the soft fabric of the dress.

    My many hands ran along my hips. Many hands twirled my hair in a bored manner, as other hands clawed myself in white-hot emotion.

    Just sheer mental pain as my mind fractured. I must say, I feel inclined towards poetic language. Perhaps it would express my pain more so.

    AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!! I scream then laugh. My mouth splits open across my face, an awful sound of rubber bands snapping as flesh breaks apart to make away for my new maw.

    My long silver teeth chime as they gnash together like a pure symphony of bells.

    My tongue falls out of my grinning mouth, squirming around, licking my lips and trailing across my wide and weeping eyes.

    I spastically jerk around on the ground, dragging my long bone claws across the now-hard-crystal hill, making a discordant screaming sound, my eyes rolling to the back of my head as I delight in the pain it causes me.

    AHA! AHahahaHAAHA!!!

    ¡°I feel for once!¡± I exult. All those other times... were they fake?! ¡°WHO KNOWS!¡±

    My many arms of many hinges and lengths sprouting out of my back and my sides... caressing, self-harming, fighting, grabbing, dragging. They pulled me up, clenching against a house, frantically scrabbling across the hill, hanging from another wall. It was a web, a forest of fungus disguised as my arms.

    I ceased all movement, turning silent, hung limp on my many living arms, putrid flesh dragging my broken body across the road.

    No truth matters.

    There is only a being known as Pain.

    _________________________________________________________________________________________________

    3 YEARS OF PAIN

    _________________________________________________________________________________________________

    As it finds itself dying in the wasteland of its own making, it carves a ritual. Elisa, a Devil of Gluttony, lays dead next to it. She fought it to her death, trying to save it from insanity.

    Ten Magical Guardians prepare a ritual to sacrifice themselves to kill it. An entire world of Magic is constructed within the ritual, prepared to collapse within the Tormented reality of the wasteland.

    "This cannot happen. It cannot. I think... you should get a two-for-one act, Stars. Can you... stop him from dying? I think.... the diseased soul fragment the Goddess Diarrhea sent from me... using the Happy Bard''s truth, would not have set hold in him if he had been alive. I could have saved him... with my Miasma..."

    The Stars above their toy jump with joy.

    They''ve been waiting.

    [REDACTED]

    "It''s fixed!" the Stars pronounce with absolute ridiculous ease.

    ...

    Boring glass doors stare at me. A bustling lobby lies behind them.

    I rub my hand through my hair.

    Every time. This trepidation gets me every time.

    "You better not be dead, big bro," I whisper to myself.

    This is how the prior chapter ended well for Sol for once.

 Chapter 33: D & T Part 1 - Meet the Father

    Black flames circle around the globe one-point-one-two-six times, an ultraviolet corona edging the dark fire. Weapons break the surface of the turbulent, gaseous flames like shark fins from the fog-blanketed waters of Jaw, primed to serrate. through Dimensionally-corrupted animals, the sentient nouveau-races collectively named Monsters, Demons, the Anathema, and the mischievous Fae fall under the exo-angelic maelstrom of pre-primed constructs macerating the enemies of humanity into flaming bits of flesh. The Monsters shake in terror as their war efforts fail. The Wrath Imps revel in their own genocide, pouring out of the Demonic Dimensions even faster. The Anathema, the few strong enough to survive in an Anti-Magic Zone unbounded, have as variable a response as humans have as variable their emotions. The tiny pests known as the Fae gibber like mindless babies, their irritating smiles, copy-and-pasted from a TV character''s devil on their shoulder, turning into mocking screams of terror. They die in a susurration of the crinkling of crumpling bug wings.

    Revenue increases slightly, infinitesimally, beneath the jet trail. From an outer space perspective, the scythes create a gestalt of shoals of fish, all wreathed in flame and swimming across the globe, ravenously tearing through the monstrous armies with triangular heads scaled by feathers.

    Heading the tail of flame, a blur of black blasts along a trajectory aiming to pierce through the spatial warping that lays on a scale unmatched by any-warp else. The end destination of the physical arc is the Academy for Magics, Demonics, and Altogether Eldritch Entities.

    An astronomer on the continent of the Academy of Bros'' Brassy Based Balls (*chuckles* the narrator listened to my suggestions for once! *chuckles*) would be forgiven for thinking this oncoming object is a duo of black holes, with how it shares marked similarities to the gravitational phenomenon. Though it does not draw any matter within its event horizon like blackholes do, it does take in all surrounding light. Admittedly ironic given light is normally the last thing to be pulled in by gravity due to moving at the fastest possible speed.

    In addition, the lightless circle also affects the fabric of space-time in other, similar ways. For example, it generates gravitational waves in the same way that two fusing black holes create such disturbances. And these ripples would trigger gravitational wave sensors in a similar manner, if such sensors existed in this universe in the first place.

    Not only that, as some blackholes are wont to do, it even ejected a miniature quasar during its revolution around the earth.

    For those unaware, a quasar is a blast of electromagnetic radiation created by an interaction between a black hole and the matter in its accretion disk. This phenomenon is believed to be caused by the acceleration of matter to near light speeds just outside of the event horizon, while said quantity of mass, which beggars belief in terms of scale, is also all compressed to a truly mind-blowing degree. All due to the extreme gravitational forces that simply cannot be comprehended within the human experience. Admittedly though, the conditions are too hostile for anything below the strongest deities to withstand, so only they are privy to being able to directly observe. To simplify even further than it already is, it¡¯s an anime power beam of easily solar-system destroying power.

    However, this quasar bears a semblance to an anime power beam more than most. Purple and pink sparkles shower down the brief blast like fairy dust. They filter through Prussian blue spirals of tinsel surrounding the grey Kamehameha.

    It twinkles off in the lightless distance.

    This is because the beam is a solely Essence-based phenomenon, as is the orb. Both were created by the Lady of Death & Taxes or indirectly caused by her actions. The orb''s absence of light, a signature of black holes, is not even due to gravity, like black holes are. Instead, made from Death magic, the culture of the Lady tints it the color she associates with death: black. If she had been raised in one of the many other cultures, such as the ones containing Catholicism, it would be purple. The significance of purple to Catholicism is heavy, a signature shade of the color suggesting Lent, the repentance and solemnity in the name of Jesus'' sacrifice carried out in a mournful, regretful manner.

    ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    And it is obvious to those down on the ground that the cause is an immortal''s Magic at work. Though, as the troops would put it, ''the eggheads'' would be confused, to the soldiers it would also be clear the individual is a veteran who had faced the horrors of war. Because, however sloppily, the power is applied outside of mass destruction of their opponents. A passing attempt is made at sanitation works and elimination of mud on a large scale, despite the Skills obviously not specialized to handle such work. An equally poor attempt at restocking and brewing coffee is made too. But despite its low quality, it still fills a valuable niche, with some being better than none.

    A tear of gratitude came to many of the sunburnt, mosquito-bite swollen faces of the American armies. They salute crisply with thatch-scratched arms.

    And eventually, they will probably swear up and down it was the best coffee they had ever tasted, their hunger and nostalgia flavoring it to perfection.

    However, a few of these seemingly war-borne automations of feathered angel wings molded out of black steel are repurposed to pursuits other than military action. To the tune of much weeping with joy, and sweet, sweet praise to all of the Gods above, decorations of finely-wrought wings on scythe flutter as the blade-edges transmogrify into styluses. Beleaguered Clerks toast to their savior as old, ornate writing instruments do their work under the overcast of an anomalous event. The paperwork crunchers then bemoan their higher ups, who can¡¯t take a blessing when it comes. Grumbling, they are forced to do it all again while the spectacle-wearing politicians burn the flawlessly done documents that, for once, actually had legible handwriting understandable by the common citizen. The chuckle fucks spurn any alternative to sabotage out of paranoia, having no intention of doing paperwork if their office spaces die, so in their own way of caring, they make certain their office slaves stay alive¡­ and give them a ton of paperwork for security purposes to add insult to injury.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    *sigh*

    Poor darlings.

    At least the assistants have skills for copying from memory that allow them to still go through their work faster than without their help. They can feel happy about that.

    Though...

    What they don''t know is...

    Well, the Lady of Death & Taxes had already filled out the proper procedures and ensured the bureaucracy was all in place for there to be no issue. Even though it normally moves at a speed comparable to a stone coffin i.e. not at all, she was had done it in advance and covered her bases.

    There was no grounds for the agencies to be suspicious.

    But upon seeing her name stamped on the papers, what it instead expedited the higher-ups of the Army to do is unitedly block her help so as to damage her reputation among their men. The presence of her name always makes for a startling show of unification. Being powerful, short-sighted leaders take as many steps as they can to alienate her from the populace. She already has the major flaw of being tax-obsessed, and being the sole up-close-and-personal enforcer of the entire country''s taxes. Which makes it supremely easy to spread rumors about her, assembling an image of a specter of terror. And it is why she has such a low reputation, despite her actual deeds being deserving of acclaim and catering well to the lower classes.

    She''ll probably kill a few to make an example, finally ruling out stupidity and giving far too many chances.

    Not that the soldiers in current combat do not eye their own miracle with suspicion, though this is real suspicion. They need to concern themselves with every possibility when sudden changes like the overwhelming show of force and easy potential for themselves to become ¡®unfortunate casualties of war.¡¯ Or better yet, the prospect of becoming ¡®the men valiantly gave up their life riiight before Skills-testing¡¯ is more than likely. But, ironically, they just can¡¯t be bothered doing the due diligence if this is some immortal, quote-unquote, ¡°gettin¡¯ ther¡¯ rocks off to overcomplicatin¡¯ shit in their espi-oh-nawge,¡± as the esteemed lieutenant colonel Lionel the Paladin so eloquently puts it. They only appreciate the opportunity to take leave from the frontlines of the American coasts.

    Like the rest of the soldiers he oversees, Lionel is far too tired for anything else after a few years straight without leave. With the other idling battalion, the battalions could consolidate under the much fresher lieutenant colonel.

    "Alright boys. Y''all''ve shown shown me enough of yer wives'' nudes to fill up a porn site, so it''s mah turn to make ya right jealous. Me ''n'' my wife going to have sum spay-cial times. See ya." He overlaps his two index fingers in a cross sign, knocks his head forward to slide his gold V-shaped visor over over his eyes, and revs his motorcycle once on the bloody battlefield.

    The bulky, armored man salutes the new lieutenant colonel from his correspondingly huge ride, adult-sized wheels and comfortable seat. "Have fun with the paperwork. I think is'' grown into quite a few stacks. Don''t pitch no fit when you see it, ''kay?"

    The Lt. Col. snorts, and throws out two of the Army''s unofficial salute: the middle finger, back at him. The sleeves of his stiff Fiend leather crack as they crease unwillingly under the man''s muscles, sounding like his middle fingers shot into place., and via machinegun at that. "Get outta here already. Screw your ass sideways, man."

    "Lawd, that''s too gay for me," Lionel jokes back.

    One of the soldiers jeers, "Speaking of gay, goin'' to wrangle that son of yours you keep whinin'' ''bout?"

    "Boy, ohoho... fuck you kid... You best give yer heart to Jesus, ''cause yer ass is mine!" he threatens, pausing ominously and raising a fist menacingly. A charismatic man, his intimidating remark is not taken seriously, entertaining the rest of his men with his comically thick Southern accent.

    The soldiers chuckle together. Then they really show true brotherhood by giving the clown in their midst a wide berth. The black man looks around at his troop-mates in mock-betrayal.

    Genially smirking under the warm gold of his visor, Lionel floors his motorcycle, the exhaust pipe belching hard enough to match high-Vit men after a drinking contest, and he motors straight through the passageway the crowd kindly offered. One of his blue gauntlets on the black handlebar and the other held jousting-style to his side, both made of a solid, plastic-like armor bent into roughly wing-ish blocks wrapping around his beefy fist, he drive-by socks the buzz-cut fool in the jaw. Knocked flat, the soldier chuckles, along with the raucous jeering of the rest of the soldiers.

    Lionel drives off the body-strewn battlefield, painting a striking silhouette. On a vehicle more monster truck more than motorcycle, dressed in a partial suit of red armor made of triangular plates shaped like the well-known feature of the stegosaurus, and the muscles to match the bulk of a dinosaur too. His light brown hair and beard, having grown long in the absence of a razor and lacking the precision of Strength to deal with it, are slicked to his scalp and neck with blood and mud. A quick fix to prevent a life-threatening bang obstructing his line of vision while he''s running all over hell''s half-acre. All the while, his blood-drenched armor creates a red mist, speckling the air with his enemies'' life blood. Though it never reaches his broad back.

    A worn blue stitching of the Holy Mary is protected entirely by his sheathed broadsword.

 Chapter 34: D & T Part 2 and Part 3 - The World Turns; Indestructible Gifts of Sacrifice

    Inside the domain of void... a freezing light chills a hazy fog into being, only lighting up the air. The surroundings haughtily refuse light''s entrance.

    The source of the only light in this abyss is a pair of glass eyes. Like an exotic dusk, they set cool light upon thick scar tissue carved into deep bags of exhaustion. Though the scabs are normally healthy brown, keeping the precise slices in the face closed in the day, like a lizard''s scales under warm sunlight, they are instead a black-ridged gray against sickly pale white skin. The two eyes stare out intensely, yet still as their silicon derivative, from under a warrior''s mane flowing out a jagged hole in a helmet.

    The domain of void deepens even further in saturation.

    Much like a plane, it experiences rumbling turbulence. A spike in motion sets the glowing lamps of its passenger shaking slightly in the featureless darkness. They flicker in and out, blinking eyelids translucent and veined atop the inner luminescence.

    The owner of the eyes pilots Sol on her ferry, a small comet of funeral-black Magic to the next arc of their life. Thoughts run behind the ferrywoman''s eyes, all of the capabilities of the little devil''s head in her hands running through her head.

    She procrastinates, letting her attention be drawn by an threat she can easily take the time to help with. Following her Mesh of Death should help focus her mind.

    In reality though, she has always been rubbish at decisions not solved by death. It is why she chose the Mesh of Taxes to focus on later in life.

    Her Will simultaneously molds and chisels the Death Essence composing her Magnum Opus, a creation in which she eventually reached the pinnacle of. Her biggest frustration is that even after after a century of working on it, she couldn''t push it into the territory of a new Skill.

    She did push the boundaries of the System in slightly new directions though. The victory gave her ample benefits, and is really the most the majority of life everywhere can hope for.

    Right next to the void, to the perked-up tufts of owl-like, semi-aquatic fish-humanoids in surprise, a scythe made of the same material phases into existence.

    A phenomenon similar to an old special effects style, the kind where the invisible actor just becomes slowly more and more substantial. The modification becomes solid right as they pass a flood of Monsters ambulating out from their coral reefs to devour humans.

    Though, unlike any of those old special effects, the transportation''s newly made, slicing attachment far exceeds any of them in scale. The weapon, larger than a skyscraper and wreathed in black fire, cleaves straight through the army in one single pass through.

    And for safety''s sake, she ensures the scythe makes six more revolutions around the orb. And humorously, all of this occurs before the Monsters even realize every single one of their brethren are made into precisely 8 pieces.

    Narrow snake eyes turn round, a fish-scaled creature leaps up. A toothed grin stretches across his stout face, his beige saws raised above the upraised shield of a human. Copper blue seeps out of his neck, encircling all around his skull cap at a diagonal, cutting through his slit pupils with cyan liquid. Blood beads around his torso and legs multiple times. His body falls apart. His grin is still fixed as he tumbles like a Jenga tower, dead before he even realized.

    He is just the first to go.

    The cuts are so fine they even managed to take a few steps, before toppling over.

    Their sad, sorry pieces fall to the coastal floor.

    Much like the slides in a microscope, one could see everything in the monster steaks as they meatily squelched and slapped together. They slide apart like glass across each other too, the precision leaving organ separate from organ, and bone separate from bone.

    The orb barely halts in flight.

    ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Passing miles into the stratosphere over a battleground between four Tormented Zones all fighting to introduce their twisted concepts, she slams the mental breaks on her skill, which pushes herself and the others out of the Underworld skill she had evolved into a travel skill.

    ''Four. In the same place?''

    ''My.''

    A muscle twitches in her placid expression in shock.

    A density of Miasma capable of creating enough Torment Miasma to generate more than one Torment in the same location is a force to reckoned with. And for there to be such a diversity to not just coalesce into a Titan... The amount of destructive potential cannot be diminished no matter what perspective one looks at it from. In the best case scenario, it could form a Titan amalgamated from the various Torments at play, and demolish the entire state in its battle with the Magical Girls.

    ''Confound it. That was not even the most likely possibility.''

    The Miasma of the false Goddess Diarrhea is rampant, so this is a clearly purposeful and pre-prepared scheme with a great deal of forethought behind it.

    Thus, in the worst, and of course, considerably more likely possibility, they''ll feed into each other. Connected by the shared Essences of the false Goddess, which she has taken care to place in both of them, she''ll be able to infect them as they enter a state of accelerated metamorphosis. The fragments in each of them will parasitize them to remake them in their time of change and vulnerability to a higher form of themselves, perverting the perversion itself into the shadow of her image. And if this is not stopped in the appropriate window, she will be able to send parcels of her Divine skills into this mortal reality for meddling beyond what she is allowed to. This will metastasize the four Torments of less-refined concepts into her higher concepts. It would give the Torments the equivalent of hundreds of levels, but each one level will be different even from the Torments'' quality of levels, which normally supersede the quality of everything else. They will all be on par with the Magical Girls, who have best quality of levels on the mortal reality.

    To illustrate, it is like four large knobs of skin cancer evolving into the creatures from the 1979 film Alien.

    ''The Familiars really understand the meaning of "more bang for your buck."''

    A rare smile touches her mouth.

    ''In all actuality, I doubt the Familiars are even capable of understanding such a transactional relationship. Or rather, unless it would help improve things, they are not willing to understand such a relationship. It may have a negative effect. Their perspective is probably something genuinely sweet, like "Charity with flare...-ity?"'' she realizes.

    She cannot let any of these possibilities happen. Imagining all of the taxes at risk, shining and golden, swallowed by all of the property damage these bottomless Torments will cause...

    ''That will not stand.''

    She strains herself to protect the state''s future, a fierce headache splitting her head with all of the searing intensity of a laser gun. Her Skills aren''t meant to work like this, but her complex series of handsigns kick in, the assemblage tagged at the end with clenched fingers assembled in a skull''s grin handsign delaying the effects of her premade manipulation until she made the activation hand sign.

    She had not been intending to do anything experimental, but time is of the essence and she intends to save all of these lives... so she can get more taxes of course. Will and Dexterity funnel into her massive display of jujutsu mastery all at once to fuel it. For a flash-second, the impressive Magical construct Reaper''s Spaceship completely dissolves, and she tosses her passengers Sol and Dennis into the air, keeping them airborne with her aura like debris atop a sci-fi explosion.

    The hulking skeleton shifts, twisting on her hips with her gauntlets holding empty air behind her in an exaggerated baseball elite''s pose. Dexterity distorts her, making her double-wielding pose extend impossibly all the way to the horizon, her armor making grinding noises as she is put through the mother of all funhouse mirrors.

    Miniature Magical explosions rat-a-tat-tat like a machine gun betwixt the Lady of Death & Taxes'' skeletal gauntlet''s index finger and middle finger. Black sunspots are multiplying like the skulls in an anaerobic cemetery. The unnatural Death fireballs continue swelling, and growing in size, constructively interfering with each other atop each other into an ever-increasing blobby frame of her signature weapon.

    It even goes so far as to blot out even the light of the Sun, casting the Tormented Zones into purple light, and speckling them with unnatural shadow.

    Ailing with Love, Drained Lake, Afflicted Gears, Problem Child. They all make their names known, though all are on the verge of gathering wholly new names.

    The Torment Problem Child does not even pause to take in the new threat, immediately disengaging from the fight with the Torment Ailing with Love. It does so by hugging Ailing with Love, seemingly taking the Torment in question aback for a second, before disengaging from the "show of affection" to slug it.

    The Torment Ailing with Love, a bulbous pustule of a heart growing atop something blue and shriveled, folds in half like a soggy whoopee cushion around the four sausage-like fingers, gripped into a knuckle sandwich, of the more humanoid Torment, Problem Child. The blow leaves the huge heart weeping and sobbing, tears of yellow pus squirting out of two belly buttons growing on it. They claim more pieces of reality for its Tormented Zone, a nasty Skill setting it up favorably while its opponent is gone.

    The slugging teleports the Problem Child in front of the Lady of Death & Taxes''s legs. The cheek blubber of the peculiarly small Miasmic creature unravels into millions of large fatty strings coated in Charisma and infectious amber stool.

    It shrieks.

    "You wouldn''t hate if your child killed and raped some beauty that caught their eyes, right, Mom? I''m your child. Parents don''t hate their children!!!" it screams, oozing heartbroken pain off of every word. But the pair of normal-sized baby eyes under its pair of adult, soulful eyes roll smugly, undermining any truth behind its words.

    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    "Just the nonsense of a Torment," whispers the Lady of Death & Taxes.

    The cloud-like purple and black bursts flow away into nothingness to reveal a scythe worthy of a truly finishing move.

    It is made of a metal oxymoronically both pitch black, yet as reflective as the Lady''s eyes. The pole extends perpendicular to her, at once the width of a normal pole and the width of a mansion, a storm front of smooth metal the impending natural disaster prophesizing the four Torments'' ends.

    Wiggling strings of yellow fat, legion in number, near to her.

    She heaves up her massive left boot made of golden bones between her and the speedy Torment, creating a physical barrier with her knee. Her Will reaches into the concept of the wealth of her agency, and uses it to infuse her boot with the mass of her wealth. Forcefully, the pressure of her mind an iron vise forcing reality itself to match how she wants it be, she compresses the mass into it.

    By the narrowest of margins, she blocked the rotting blob''s blubbering blubber blabbing bubbles at her boobs to make her babble at its mercy, bobbles babying its innocence. Blorbs blibble blowb blubble, blop blop blop...

    Sol can tell its once-true name, even in his half-dead state as a separate head and a body. Out of curiosity and boredom floating an expanded, yet oxymoronically frozen, wave of black, she strains her Fae Heart of the Teen Vixen, pushing their empathy to telepathy-equivalence.

    Once named Babs, the Torment, Problem Child, it was a cultist of unsound mind. So ripe with excesses of cruelty, it became a exemplary vessel for to contain Miasma from the deity of blight.

    The hints that Torments shed fall like lice and dandruff of their true appearance over the Lady of Death & Taxes. And they leave sensations even worse than the sympathetic itchiness that seeing such nasty infestations and uncleanliness invoke. It makes her shiver all the more, having lived through a time where infestations and general lack of hygiene was unavoidable. The threadbare cottons in England filled with nibbling lice and nibbling rapists scratched at her... the aching of the ship''s hull to the raucous crowing of sea birds... the maggots growing and exploding into more maggots in the Demon viscera coating her body.

    She slices her arm off, the red blood of a human gushing out. Her arm grows obese within her armored gauntlet before it even hits the floor, bulges of yellow fat like frog eggs massing, until the upper bone geysers out through the hole, propelled by the rapid multiplication of fat through where her shoulder once attached to.

    Childlike perversion spills all over the suburbanite rows of houses, smelling like puke and taking its rancid flow through the emptied houses. The classic American homes wiggle for a second, deciding what debased form they will choose. They swell, all realism disappearing in the balloon-like houses as baby blue and light pink swirl up the bricks. Texture becomes frictionless as these bulging, psychedelic houses become Dr. Seussian monstrosities. Each roofing tile and each wall''s brick sprouts a fleshy pink tip, before the house collapses out into a 2-D net of itself. The insides, the same pink as the tips wiggling along the ground, get pulled apart forcefully, attached to the walls like organs to a bug''s exoskeleton.

    All of this to become hungry echinoderms crawling over each other like oversized crown-of-thorns starfish.

    ''It is disgusting.''

    One of the fat ropes the cheeks of the Problem Child had turned into had touched her.

    Her eyes increase in brightness, manipulating magic to now attack the Torment Drained Lake. Phasing out of her head, black-tinged Will forms grab arms already in the midst of tinkering with ammo. She reaches up, and her mental constructs drop the coin-shaped ammo in her hands, which she promptly tosses behind herself.

    A muppet with big googly eyes, with grey hands and arms, instead of long hair, covering its face like Cousin It lies on an invisible surface behind the Lady of Death & Taxes. The skinny, noodle-like arms laying over its mouth shift in a tired, exhausted sigh. It sounds as if its throat is tight with anxious hopeless, clenching its throat closed and suffocating on its own pain.

    The ammo detonates on the still, pallid being like a grenade. Solid black essence shards fly out from the blast, turning the Torment Drained Lake into Swiss cheese.

    ''It just... died...''

    ''No tricks.''

    Her eyebrow raises, and she taps her foot a couple times, waiting a moment.

    Its Essence dissipates, and the Magical Guardians heading in to her location to aid her, give her a shrug mid-air.

    "These things happen," shouts a Blue.

    She is not built to fight Torments. Very few are.

    The logic of Miasma naturally makes it difficult. Though it peculiarly worked in her favor with Drained Lake, the only ones truly able to fight on equal footing with a Torment on this level of reality are those supported by God, Angelic powers, Demonic powers, Fae, those supported by false gods, a very small minority of eldritch vessels, Magical Guardians, and ironically, other Torments, whose relationships with each other are as varied than God''s creations.

    But she is just that horrifyingly powerful of an existence.

    *SLLLLLLLIIIIIIIIICE!!!*

    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    High above the battlefield, a new star lit up. A necklace''s hunger had been sated, and now it could finally fulfil its destiny as a reward for Sol.

    Facet assembles out of the broken glass strewn across the floor. Three tiny sheets of crystal stick out of its mouth, turning on hinges in a snake''s taste of the empty air. The geometric motion parallels the angle of the bouncing necklace''s emblem, the one tied around Sol''s ponytail of Prussian blue hair. The jewelry had been the reward for Sol''s sacrifice to The King in the final acts of the play crewed by the Great Magical Protagonists, the Tormented Princess, and the Brutal King. It had been so steeped in story, no matter how hard the Lady of Death & Taxes tried to crush it over the course of her - ultimately minor - help this day, it kept avoiding her.

    The King''s final act was to help his, and he would aid them by consuming Essence kin to the Essences of the burgeoning genius princess who mothered him/loved him/he fathered. The Essence makes a prime crafting tool for the creation of her own kingdom, The strong Essence of the Torment Drained Lake was based all around the truth it was born with: Drained of Will, and the one it was given, Malaise.

    It had neither the will to live, or even metaphysical Will, nor even the energy or desire to do anything. Thus, though strengthened by the mass suicide ritual of a cult of otherwise weak souls, it falters regardless. It is the bane of life itself, the absence of drive, of action, and as a result, is easily devoured. Composed of nothing but the most boring, but insidious, elements of depression, its logical progression is a quiet, pointless, and pity-deserving death.

    The Jester''s face on the emblem could be seen turning from luminescent under the eyes of those with Essence sight, to downright painful, with safety-flare brightness. Although the Stars removed the humanity of Sol to remove the consequences in the Time That Did Not Exist, within the necklace is the solution.

    The Fool''s School will be grown within a stronghold of Magic. A stronghold within a stronghold, a place of learning within a place of learning. A Matryoshka doll for the Tutored by Suffering.

    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    The Lady of Death & Taxes eradicates the warped, cragged mess of metal that had been the power-intensive scythe. It had been completely ruined by the death knells of the Torments.

    A few gashes and a few ruffled plates are the only signs of the battle on her self. Her exhaustion is immeasurable though. The fight had burned through a vast amount of her stores of Stats. She will recuperate it before the day was over, but she does not enjoy being below certain thresholds at any point in time.

    The colorful cast of Magical Guardians waves goodbye, startled by, but incredibly thankful, for her timely aid.

    She smiles, her head held up high.

    ''However,'' to her, ''it had certainly been worth the fatigue. All to save my country.''

    Her two passengers fall right into her waiting hands.

    She sighs, though it quickly builds into a rumbling growl of disgust, audible even through her helmet.

    Grey blood oozes down her finger from the decapitated head, the ghostly nature resonating uncomfortably with her Death Mesh. The resonation of her Death Mesh with the blood made her more prone to the effects of the blood. Her Will is too powerful, even for the potent poison of the mind, to be overpowered and turned to hysterics. But it did not mean she enjoyed the melancholic grip wrapped around her throat.

    That the phantasmal fluids still succeeded in inducing a minor sensory hallucination was discomforting.

    "Disgusting."

    Sol¡¯s head is perched on her palm, held just a little too forcefully. Her golden gauntlets dig into the dead monster¡¯s fleshy stump of a neck. If not for her high Will stat and the Essence of Taxes she had worked hard to mesh with, the untouchable resting in her palm would have thrown her into an utter rage.

    She wondered.

    ''Why should I have to keep this monster alive? It is becoming less and less human.''

    Just yesterday, a barely noticeable trace of a ritual had floated by her eyes. An eye made of the C O L O R S of the foul things that call themselves the Stars tauntingly going pass her like air resistance and gravity meant nothing to it.

    And then, right as this tiny organ floated by her, the sensation of Charisma radiating off of the kid carrying its supposed brother changed. With no intermediary stages, this being''s body (which influences Charisma) went from matching the shape of the soul flawlessly to being deeply, disturbingly, unfitting. Still exuding all of its perfection, it changed sex from female, and its contours and proportions all changed infinitesimally.

    The armored tax woman stands still in a black void; a regal Shakespearian queen; Hel incarnate. Her muscles urge her through muscle memory. The uncanny valley of the soul mismatching so dysfunctionally with the body distressed her.

    ''The threat is right there. What the government wants to learn is not worth it.'' She should put down this creature. It simply keeps getting worse and worse.

    ''The danger this thing is...''

    ...

    The Academy for Magics, Demonics, and Altogether Eldritch Entities is one of the safest possible locations she could take it to. She hates the idea of it finding solace anywhere. Certainly, this is reflected by her helmet perpetually grimacing, the skull''s fragments held together in a frown by half-melted gold coins.

    Carried in her other hand by his hospital gown, Dennis was halfway through the mother of all snores. A drop of drool was halfway from his mouth to the floor. The back of his hands and feet lay against the floor. Sol¡¯s body still held onto him, trying to protect him into her death.

    The locket given by The King had disappeared from the collar, now tied around the hair of the head of Sol by an unseen hand. She had already tried to crush the death relic, but it would not let her, no matter her efforts.

    ''Its Truths are too certain, too embedded in reality.''

    Wait.''

    So my Truths of Death & Taxes did not take priority over its?''

    A chill dripped down her spine.

    The heart is too strong an anchor for Truths. Which she thought was exceedingly idiotic. An organ from the weak pests humans call Fae should not take precedence.

    "This is bollocks," she swears, her American accent making way for a light touch of a British accent.

 Chapter 35: D & T Part 4 and Part 5 - Remembering Memorabilia; Memorable Murder

    E V E R Y T H I N G

    P A U S E

    Waves of reality streaming from the blur halt in their gold and green glory. dollar signs of old ink freeze in their Brownian motion.

    The Sun peers at the trio. On its spatial axis, it rolls to face toward them, a blazing eyeball of red and yellow. Every red jet of plasma and cool sunspot another pupil of flickering, horrid size.

    An object of mass far exceeding anything else in the Solar System, the Sun''s size is barely comprehensible.

    Most of humanity fails to look at it with fear.

    Instead, as the source of life, many would anthropomorphize it as a kind, warm, and loving center of the universe. For those more logical, it is merely the subject of scientific curiosity and fascination, or the bane of red heads who have not invested in Vitality.

    Some view it religiously, as its importance to humanity, and life in general, cannot understated in the slightest.

    In reality, the Sun is merely an attachment to the STAR shining their curious light from behind it.

    Actually, that is a poor choice of words. "In reality" does not apply in this situation. It is always to difficult to avoid pitfalls with the Stars when you must eschew such notions as reality as being, but ah well.

    A provider - a mother - dangling from a far more incomprehensible entity worshipped by far fewer than their attachment. The being or beings or nonexistent entity behind the Sun and the rest of the stars is FRIEND to only Se?or Screaming Fingers and Sol in this dream. There are other worshippers, just not in this amusing delusion of the Stars. Perhaps, among your company in the dream that you struggle in, there is a dreamer who peeled off their mask and gets to explore tear-shedding wonders.

    But who cares about this?! This religion is not one that is yours, nor is it FUN if you pick it up under duress. What matters is that this attachment, the Sun, makes for a wonderful beach episode!

    E V E R Y T H I N G

    B E G I N

    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Atop the hierarchy of Earth, she makes an imposing figure at the center of the world''s motion. An entitlement to being the superior race creates the cold ice in her expression. Oh so fragile it is though, metaphorical cracks radiating out from the sneer of disgust. The cold ice is held together by the vice of greed, the Mesh of Taxes.

    ''Its toxic traits should be contained, not let loose. Its blood should not be allowed to taint any one of her blood with its hysteria,'' the hypocrisy of her paranoid love for her family does not even cross her mind. ''The creature''s blood poisoned so many good humans.''

    She does not even consider the mistakes she made in cleaning Sol.

    She is far too restricted by the measures she took to protect herself from the follies of her youth.

    ''Its wicked soul is unholy and inimitable to life itself. The soul contains so many influences vying for control. The imprints of the false deity Torment Diarrhea, scarring from a weak mindset, and long-term predation of Vengeful Spirits... it is clearly an issue when the traces of the Antichrist are the most benign ones that can be found. And even if the Torment defying God''s will had not been explicitly declared taboo by Him, I would detest it nonetheless on sheer moral principle. Why are the higher-ups I have shackled myself to simply letting it go? It is infuriating.''

    The soul disease is such a nasty method of execution, one that makes her barely able to fathom the cruelty of the creature that possesses it. The Tailors her IRS had enlisted to create a sufficient containment for the soul of the self-named Sol... she had observed the few that died from touching it before the appropriate safety procedures had been devised.

    The dead bodies, and the unnecessary suffering as they exited the moral coil, were horrifying and nauseating to look at.

    And she can think of a few more choice words to add atop the two descriptions too.

    Walking through the motions of making funerals she quite literally can not mourn, surrounded by those clothed in black all able to feel the empathy she had to excise as she meshed with Death... they are boring, and oh how foul is the childish psychopathic mindset she must fall into!

    ...

    It was times like this that gave the desire for my personage those few final steps to ascension into the Essence.

    Exhausting times. Painful deaths.

    It brought back... memories.... Memories far back in the recesses of her mind.

    So far back. All the way to the antiquated times of the late 1700s, when Essence was barely permeating her world... she had chosen the concept of Death. A waif of a girl who warmed the bed of a general in the English army. The man had been stationed in the Americas...

    As the blood leaked out of his blubbery neck onto her fingers, her fight with consumption, which gave her the figure he found so attractive, started to turn the tables. Lungs seized, ropy strings of saliva filling up her throat. While she stumbled around, wheezing, loud shouts of panic and awe passed from outside the ship, through the bedroom''s walls. It was far different from what she would have expected from enemy attacks

    Her curiosity, not stifled even by the general''s unwanted advances, took her dying self out to see whatever was going on.

    A crackling entrance of orange hellfire and Satanic red lightning - rather what she had quite imagined the gates of Hell to look like then, to be frank - towered far above the giant, oaken masts of the warship in both height and width.

    Her eyes shined with candlelight-colored rings of flame, wild winds whipping her hair and dress around. Her shattered arm dangled, furnace-like winds searing past her crooked fingers wrapped around the general''s sword.

    The reason for the damage was simple. The bone had been too weak to take her full body weight and the wild struggles of her detestable husband.

    Her exposed skin tingled with the most peculiar bite of acid.

    The soldiers, muskets and swords raised, collapsed in horror. Something that would have made her scoff at the supposedly God-fearing men. She held back her judgement though.

    And she was right to wait.

    The men screamed, raising in pitch until they cut off too early. The silence of their transformation was far more unnatural, something she ended up struggling to cope with, first sating her need for noise with the screams of the monsters and then the clink of coins.

    Their biology was rearranging, corruption taking hold of them because none had accrued any Essence.

    She, on the other hand, had a blue script blinking in the corner of her eyes, letting her know about the first two Essences she earned with the aid of the Magical System: Blue script ticked in her head with the clatter of a typewriter. Upon reading, she received her first mesh and trait: the Vigilante Mesh and the Strong Willpower trait.

    She clenched her newly healed hand tightly.

    Magic blessed few in the early days.

    But its gifts to the chosen few were numerous in the early days. Miasma lagged far behind the advent of Magic, which enabled the System to take a more active approach. It made her superhuman immediately, healing her consumption immediately and broken limb. Extra Stats and as much regeneration as it could heap on the first ones who would forge the path of Magic for the forseeable future.

    And most importantly, stabilizing herself with an Essence known only to Magic Deities and early members of their universe''s encounters with Magic. There is little that encompasses it easily. Order is barely accurate, given freedom is so important to Magic. Morality is such a flexible concept, filled with quandaries and paradoxes. Limits is one of the worst possible concepts for it, despite it being opposite to the epitome of Miasma, which are concepts to the logical, but extremely disgusting, peak. The most effective is, though distasteful to admit, coined by the rare cultists of the Stars. It is... Continued Quantity. What exactly does that mean? It means, according to the cultists, that it allows the Show to continue to entertain the Bleeding Eyes Above. According to her, it means that it is the Essence which stabilizes reality from breaking down utterly into something inhospitable to life. Perhaps she is missing a good amount of information in her version, but she couldn''t care less about the nuts and their supposedly-predating-God Stars. God came first, and the religion was given explicit proof a century after this incident.

    This portal was to the section of the Demonic Universe filled with the Essence of Sloth. And so, the sailors and all else lost their lives to the madness of Belphegor. Their throats shriveled like prunes, while their lolling heads distended into bruised-blue masses lacking definition. Bones cracked and shattered as their limbs retracted into their wobbling, volatile-looking torso.

    Red coats burst at the seams, buttons pinging against the deck. Then the bulging torsos and heads reached some threshold, a dry rattling sound chilling her to the bone. She gasped in horror, her mouth dropping open.

    She scampered down the stairs leading to the hull, heart and feet thudding loudly in unison as she hurtled down the brig. The deafening silence built up in her mind, her shoulders pulled tight and close to her chest. The rattling got slightly louder.

    Her wide open hands grabbed a door frame, flinging her into a room. Was the rattling louder? It was a dead end. No, no, no! It was!

    Wrong direction! She reached backwards, not even wasting time to turning backwards. Fingers flung her from the wooden frame back out into the hallway. She skidded down stairs after stairs, stumbling over bars and blinking furiously because her sweat burned her eyes.

    She couldn''t hear the sound, her panting and heartbeat drowning it out. It only increased horror. She couldn''t keep her finger on the pulse of the disaster.

    Her lungs wheezed, a crippling pain in her abdomen as she suffocated in order to flee fast enough. The rattling shook in her ears again. Magic''s gifts barely kept her from falling apart. The lamps'' candle flames trembled, and it was not due to her consumption-wracked body''s passing.

    The rattling was shaking the hull itself.

    She groaned in distress, incoherent and bouncing drunkenly from door to door. She looked back to the last few lamps of the warship''s depths.

    There were no lamps this far down.

    Her feet slapped meatily against the planks, blood dripping down from holes torn by wooden pegs, the treenails holding the ship together, which hooked viciously into her soles and came away with a piece of her.. Swollen, pink fingers shook in front of her, impaled with splinters from dragging herself along the claustrophobic darkness as much as she was running. The rattling grew more.

    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

    An explosion knocked her forward mid-step, though it was surprisingly gentle about it, merely floating her a few steps forward. However, the cacophony of a entire forest simultaneously shot with a hundred-score of cannon-operating battalions and then chewed to bits by some leviathan with far too many teeth made her ears gush wet liquid profusely down the nape of her neck, no doubt blood.

    She whipped around wildly, eyes widened with incredulity.

    Like God himself swiped at the ship, she found herself bathed in sunlight, nearly all of the ship gone. She blinked furiously, hissing in pain at the sudden light. Though she raised both hands to her forehead, they failed to block out all of the tall white cliffs'' beacon-esque light glaring in her watering eyes. The sparkling waters of the large estuary of Chesapeake Bay, the austere cliffs reflecting demonic red light, and the trees far off in the distance...

    All were fast disappearing. The relatively tiny remnant of the front ship toppled forward, bow first. She reached wildly, franticly, desperately for the crumbling edges of the pale wood. She screeched to the clear blue skies of the island Jamestown, her fingernails scraping against gravity.

    Waving vines covered in long white fluff danced near her. She was no naturalist then, nor now, but even then she knew that needles fine as hair on mystical tentacles belonging to some man forsaken to the Demons would easily put her down. As a result, in that instance, she had to avoid them even as she fought to avoid Icarus''s folly.

    A feral will in her eyes, she stabbed the cutlass in between the planks. Slowly, her atrophied muscles pulling her dangling form ever so minutely up, her swollen fingers digging in the grain pillars, separated by age and whatever the creatures did.

    It was only much later, once she fought far more of the exploding Sloth-corrupted soldiers, accrued Speed and Perception, and humanity entered the Magic Age that she learned what exactly had happened. The head is repurposed into an organic octahedron of bone which contains a sloshing chemical mix much like coconut milk in appearance and smell, with a fractal of bone that resonates with Spiral. The torso is turned into a high-pressure bomb cell, with organs and limbs converted into tentacles coiled together in far greater densities than is stable. The dry rattling comes from the Sloth Essence rejecting the amount of action and energy involved in such a process more and more.

    The ugly transformation is capped off with death: the Sloth Essence kills the corrupted for being the epitome of not lazy. The removal of the Essence holding the creature starts the reaction, and each foul monster unfurls out into a cyclone of whips spinning faster than she could see.

    She uncomfortably and very unsteadily placed herself off on top of the really thin side of the floor. It dug into her bosom and abdomen, but all she could was scoot herself along the vertical floor. No position was comfortable, and her fingers could not support her to act like some monkey any longer. All propriety was lost as she ungainly dragged herself atop a small cross post to balance awkwardly on her toes.

    The rest of the ship was slowly being turned into nutritive substances for the demonic soldiers, with some demented hair do growing out of it. The white-fur covered vines laid limp across the ground, many meters in diameter with the ship within its radius.

    She grimaced deeply.

    To get anywhere, she would have to emulate a circus act. Rooms were sheared open, fragile walls becoming poor floors and floors flipping to minute balance bars. Whatever force that had taken the ship left wicked spikes growing from much of the exposed wood. Some places were even crumbling as she watched, too thin and damaged from the most peculiar explosion. Even to take a circuitous route down to the keel of the boat would have more than a few perils and difficulties. Just getting back up and out of the ship would be an exercise in futility.

    There was no choice but to go forward, though that did not stop her from making most unladylike swears. She''d put their twisted existence to rest, and if there was nothing left in them, she would still do it even if she died in the process.

    No point in letting these mockeries continue to besmirch the flesh of these soldiers while their wives and children mourned their husbands and fathers, or for parents to someday encounter

    Carrying her sword, she eventually navigated her way off the ship. Eventually, her toes were buried in gravel. She was bleeding all over the rocks of the island''s dark grey coast, but with a whispered prayer and the healing of Magic itself, she marched past the boiling heat of the dormant portal and killed all of the corrupted soldiers'' vegetative matter spreading along the island.

    By the end, with ichor dripping from her sword and a not-yet-stifled sense of empathy in her eyes as she wept for the lost souls, she began her journey along the path of Death.

    A century later, she was an isolated beacon, a frigid bastion against the hordes of demons. Slaying hundreds of thousands, day in and day out. Eventually, she became a part of the U.S. government... just because?

    The country formed around her, and any nationality became pointless in her endless, senseless dive in death. Eventually, just by dint of proximity, she became a citizen to avoid complications.

    And then, randomly, a few decades later, she checked her notifications while eating some food and sinking her scythe into the brainstem of a Berserker Fiend. And she realized...

    She had killed a few soldiers without realizing, her rampant aura extinguishing their souls in passing them by. And she did not care at all.

    The realization chilled her to the bone. She did not care about her fellow men''s deaths at her hands at all. At some point, she had taken a skill to help her keep going through slaughter, and without realizing, it had evolved to be a permanent protection against shellshock constantly trying to create Miasma.

    Ultimately, it was beneficial, keeping her from going off the deep end in her defense against these Satanic creatures.

    But the costs she faced... they were so painful. She could never marry, because she couldn''t leave psychopathy without becoming murderous. And the family she had, the children she mothered with coin and male prostitutes... Truly, she could only give penance for being a horrid mother. Her inability to feel empathy led to her hurting her own children constantly. She could only make it up to them with favors and protection.

    Emotional connection was impossible.

    And worse, she only faced them because, as she found out later, people used the Magic System to improve their Satanic rituals. They unwittingly drew in the Demonic Universe, which followed their sin. Now Earth intersects with the place of all evil, and she continues to face painful consequences created by the many little connections with Essence-filled Dimensions which pepper Earth.

    But a stationed American general, someone she talked with on top of the wall that had popped up to box in portals without realizing, asked for her to help them with some paperwork.

    Without even realizing, she fell into the gears of bureaucracy. Maybe not the most fulfilling thing, she found something startling in the peaceful activity: an replacement for her lost empathy.

    If she could no longer care for others, then by adding a monetary incentive to keep others alive, she could care for their fiscal value. She threw herself into it, trying to increase everyone''s value in her eyes as much possible.

    She could never make it just a stop-gap solution. Her empathy could never return to her, blocked by the years upon years of war trauma weighing on her soul, but the Mesh of Taxes kept her stable. It balanced out the Death Mesh.

    And so, it elicited a minor sense of horror to see the mirror-like shards cavorting in and out of the writhing scar "tissue" of the metaphysical soul. To see the pustules behind each shard, hanging like vials strewn over a city''s utters, primed to injecting concepts of disease into the victim''s body like syringes.

    It reminded her of the dying Sloth-corrupted soldiers she had hacked... All of the mercy kills she did over the years pounded a headache into her skull...

    Oxymoronically, this soul plague''s method of death strengthens the body on a conceptual level.

    But here is the twist. It turns the jaundiced body right around onto the soul, your Miasma-infused immune system now able to send T-cells against your own spiritual soul.

    Finally, your soul mummifies in the most gruesome way possible.

    The outer shell of the soul peels off in long strips, before reattaching back to its insides. The soul''s insides are forced out by the immune system, leaking out through spaces between the "bandages" to get drained by the monster''s hungry soul, and your body collapses in a mirror of the husk of the soul, cracking and crumbling to dust.

    As skin, muscle, and fat cells transmogrifies on top of your organs into ash, your physical guts evacuate out of every greying orifice, but disappear out of reality before right before exiting.

    You have the displeasure of suffocating as your insides pull apart, hemorrhaging scarlet and becoming exposed to a desiccated outside as they attempt to leave through your nose, mouth, and ass. Eyes fall into the emptying skull and ear drums.

    And not only that, it makes it vastly more open to the influences of... she wanted to puke even thinking of the existential crisis-inducing entities... the Stars. Their consistent terrorism through their proxy, the mustached entity known as Senor Screaming Fingers, made it clear to her that letting them have another twisted creature would only harm the world.

    And what should she do about the elephant in the room?

    The heart bearing the stinking mark of the Fae... it did not go unnoticed to her. The weak pixies'' touch on the beating organ is surprisingly Essence-intensive, like one of the chattering pests had been alchemized into the monster''s heart. It would have just been another idiosyncrasy of the low-level chimaera, which had an abnormal amount of traits switching out its body parts, but... with this...

    She had fought against Demonic Essence for ages.

    She had fought against Magic''s dark side in giving some animals sentience as monsters for ages.

    Would this be the next front? Push her and those like her further to the edge, straining humanity''s beleagured soul?

    She does not want others like her, torn apart by war after war after war. This monster is a pie touched by the fingers of so many entities.

    Could Magic last against another threat?

    She did not think it could. She might have to snap a few of the restraints of the Mesh of Taxes, because action needs to be taken.

    It must-

    Her gaudy skull leans to the side, her neck craning with Ninja-like Dexterity to get her head out of the way.

    A head-sized diamond whiffs by her head.

    If not for the helmet and the lack of air inside the black void, she would have felt the breeze of the classic shape of the round brilliant cut on her cheekbones.

    Transformers-style, stocky limbs unfold out of the diamond nearing impact. It ends its brief flight by landing on all fours, hot sparks flying off of its pointed legs as it scrapes to a stop.

    Before it even stops sliding, its spikes start to scrabble under its ottoman-like body, futilely trying to reverse the momentum so it can charge at the giant.

    She waggles her finger side-to-side at the crystalline Anathema. It has impressive empathy for such a simple construct, having sensed her choice. Must have grown to take after this monster, evolving to have some of the Charisma.

    On reflex, she lifts up her arm like a rifle, her other arm now holding Sol''s head by the hair and Dennis by his hospital gown.

    Her palm fulminated into a spiky burst of black edged in ultraviolet light, before calming down into a black flame dancing horizontally to her hand. splayed outward, facing. It cast their shadows in an spectrum of light alien and invisible to us, but sensed by the two of the four unliving beings. The ones still moving despite being as dead as the snoozing Dennis and decapitated Sol. Death means surprisingly little here, surrounded by so much of it.

    Emotion swirls along the amorphous crystal-thing''s raised back, facets pointing higher in an imitation of a stonefish''s back''s row of spines. A tiny mouth made of teeth and not much else catches the light in an open yell as it rears back, reminiscent of a horse''s threat.

    It evolves, its transparent body lit up with blinding light.

    ''No! I will save you, my best friend,'' Facet thinks, in the dialect of its birthplace.

    The language of laughter chimes from its mouth, building into a shriek as it hurtles toward the giant''s legs. It raises its now-Pink forelegs to attack.

    ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Skinny, poorly-carved poles made of wood, attached to each other end-to-end by nonexistent joints, prop up on all around the domain. They run crooked and roughshod through the void, lit strangely by still-flickering black flame, while the other sources of light, the eyes of the Lady of Death & Taxes, are closed. The spindly snaths creak and groan, an haphazard architecture suspended in an area seemingly divested of all else in substance.

    But.

    ...

    They slowly funnel back into the blaze lighting up the ever-present rule of tenebrous Magic. A hand is attached to the end, its fingers made of curved steel blades. They drag it slowly with them.

    ...

    Pink silicate is slowly strewn in its wake.

    ...

    Black melts away to reveal the daylight of an alien sky. Though it is still Earth.

    They will arrive soon at the School for Magics, Demonics, and Altogether Eldritch Entities.

    ''Once I resurrect Sol, I will do it. I will take the Fae Heart of the Teen Vixen away. It won''t die just from that though, nor is death the safest way to eliminate every last trace of it. It has so many entities hanging onto it, they could just resurrect it.''

    Death is such a trite thing at high levels.''

    Instead, I will cash in every single last favor I have, gathering hundreds of experts, Elven and human, to tear into and mar the Fae Heart of the Teen Vixen. All this until it is the perfect sympathetic gateway.''

    In one day''s time, I will DIE for my ideals. May God forgive me for throwing away my life.''

    However, it will be worth it.''

    She gives a shuddering breath.

    The Miasmic Goddess''s schemes will be rolled back centuries of progress. She will eliminate the Vengeful Spirits who got their hands on the monster. All of the Truths within the Miasma connected to her - like that indestructible medal of The King''s Sacrifice and the ones hidden within its body''s makeup - will be deleted from reality. They may come back, but they will not have the advantages they have now, being in this creature''s body. The eldritch entities will lose a plaything to mess with the mortals.

    She will detonate herself into a pure spirit of Death, and enter the sympathetic gateway. The instability of not naturally ascending into one will force her to disintegrate, and she will completely delete all traces of this creature in the same way this will delete her.

    ''It will be worth it. For the taxes'' growth.''

 Chapter 36: Dennis and Sol + UPDATE

    In the middle of the Earth lies a far different vista from what people would see just a few centuries ago. A continent lies above the vast oceans, water shedding off its magically colored slopes as if it was forever breaching the surface.

    There''s a little trick you can do as you observe the planet.

    First, keep the tectonic plate out of view, but keep the rest of the planet within your view.

    If you are an ancient soul, or a particularly youthful one, not yet void of enthusiasm, you might admire the rest of the planet at this step.

    The blue-and-green globe is aflame with rifts raging with the colors of Demonic Essence.

    Roiling slowly, chased by mobile metropolises desiring the same perfection, rifts of the Elven Dimension build and deconstruct continuously, the faultless flora sprouting up and dying back.

    The Demonic Rifts are reminiscent of classic hellfire and the other of a work of art so perfect as to make yourself ashamed of living wherever you have lived. The latter tends to be surrounded by artistic types. Entire metropolises form simply to catch a view of perfection and bring pen to paper around the perfect muses for creativity.

    They are miniature storms visible all the way from space, and undeniably cool, but not the focus of this trick.

    Second, turn juuust enough to see an edge of the Embassy Continent of the Familiars.

    Instead of seeing what your line of sight should observe, flower petals of Yellow, Dark purple and black, Blue, Pink, and White completely cover your vision. No matter your senses, these petals completely obscure every single sense. These petals tickle you, their soft tumbling over your face fills your ears, they seem to have dense souls for those with the views of the soul, and far more. Then you find your vision filled to the brim with the continent. It is as if the rest of the Earth disappeared, your vision taken up by this continent far exceeding the size of the planet it is supposedly apart of.

    Surrounded by tranquil waters clear as clarity, every crest tinted purple and black by a vast foundation extending titanic distances all around, the School of Magical, Demonic, and Altogether Eldritch Beings.

    ____________________________________________________________________________

    The Sun''s rays beats down beatifically on their best friend.

    Big peacock-glittered crabs with huge oval eyes scuttle back and forth from shoreline to sand¡¯s end like Mario Kart obstacles, a Magical Guardian laughing as he zips side to side to lunge past each of the sparkly crabs.

    Barney-purple sand sprays on his turns, planting his heels to stop himself from drifting off like a racecar. The shirtless, ripped teen narrowly skirts the possibility of a full-on collision with one of the 7-foot wide and tall crabs with a bright smile. He hops like a sifaka lemur a couple times to get more ground from the crab racing toward him, laughing all the while.

    The kid runs off into the distance exhilarated by the joy of his own two feet taking himself so fast the air builds up on his torso until it can¡¯t help it and whips dust devils behind himself. The coarse pinpricks scrape refreshingly against the part just before his toes, as the digits scallop sand out behind him. He runs off into the distance, a warm, brown silhouette under the source-less Yellow light.

    ___________________________________________________________________________________________________

    My brother is...

    I smile.

    I''m at a loss for words and at a loss for breath.

    The ripples in the ocean look especially beautiful today.

    A seagull caws victoriously as it emerges from the waters, the vanes of its feathers bejeweled with droplets of salt water refracting the sunset''s light. It grips a fat, chonky fish in its beak.

    Bye-bye chonky fish.

    It''s all so magical today.

    Wow.

    Just wow.

    Heh.

    I never expected that I would be the one to fix him. My brow knits together. I''m still in disbelief. Maybe... in shock too. So much relief it hurts more than the glare of the sun of my eyes.

    If I wanted to be morbid, but still truthful, the relief of having my brother back hurts more than the grief of losing my arm.

    I fall down, my body just giving up on me as all the tension leaves me on the beaches'' currents.

    I can''t believe it.

    Images of my brother float by.

    One of him laughing so hard, the nurse comes in to check on him. He couldn''t catch his breath, so she had to give him oxygen!

    HAH! Can you imagine how panicked I was? Stars above or below, I cannot deny it was not hilarious though!

    HAHAHA!! There he was, with the cannister held to his mouth, and he''s still wiping tears of joy from his eyes, the nurse looking delightfully put-upon as she tries to keep his hands from knocking off the Venturi mask.

    Another where his tongue sticks out and his right leg lays across a chair handle, while his left swings in circles. He gets so hyper-focused while studying.

    AH! He''s such an awkward sitter.

    At the time of this memory, he thought then that he''d be back to working on college classes in just a few more months.

    The doctors thought it was just an infection. Put him on some heavy-duty antibiotics, some bed rest, and he''d be fine. When his feet paralyzed one night, it was only then they realized they had fucked up.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

    Man... I shouldn''t have trusted them. Or Mom and Dad to advocate for what he needed.

    No... they were too focused on their jobs.

    "Ptew!" I spit on the ground.

    Blue Magic leaks uncontrollably out.

    It dies down.

    "But today is a wonderful day!" Sand shuffles off of me as I get up.

    A huge grin splits my space as I stare into the poppin'' pink of the sunrise.

    _____________________________________________

    Dennis throwing water balloons.

    _____________________________________________

    Whining as his curly, light brown hair got brushed.

    _____________________________________________

    Taking a picture with Mom and Dad.

    _____________________________________________

    I close my eyes in further reminiscence. The breeze flows over my eyelashes, pulling tears away from my eyes. Sunlight warms my dark skin with honey lighting. A corner of my mouth uptilts softly, a cool breeze wicking away its moisture.

    My eyes open and I''m elsewhere.

    ____________________________________________

    Pulling along my girlfriend Elisa with both hands, yelling back at Dennis to hurry his slow butt up.

    We all get on our knees in the sand, digging and sculpting in fierce competition, giggling and laughing. Dennis tells some humor as pitch-black as the coffee he would have in his thermos.

    Maybe something about beach crabs and cancer, ending in the punchline "the constellation Cancer!" or something like that. Me and my FRIENDS would find it extra funny because it''s a stars-themed joke.

    Elisa would try to one-up him.

    I''d be the one rolling as my sides spit in giggles, trying to put one more crenellation on my sand castle but I just can''t do it, starshdarnit!

    Externally, I play-act the motions and whisper the words, laughing aloud as I frolic around in my imagination.

    HAAAH! Neither would understand each others'' jokes. Their mindsets are too dissimilar. But it''d be amazing.

    The vision of what can be - no, what will be - ends.

    ___________________________________________________

    After all, I want to live in the present too, not just the past and the future.

    I feel at such peace, and allow myself to express it. A modicum of fine-tuning the expression is still necessary though. I haven''t forgotten the Lady of Death & Taxes. The weather is enjoyable and my heart sings with the waxing and waning of the wind, pressing against me and my brother.

    Inclining my head, I glance at my brother lovingly, I fall to a crouch, reaching out to ruffle his hair. An armor plate of my gauntlet gets caught in one of the many golden rings his hair has curled itself into.

    My Miasma and Magic really changed him. He now has hair as gold as my Orbs of Vanity, without the black of their pupils. His hair is ceramic tan, a milky brown and sleek.

    Unconsciously, he leans in, nuzzling into my palm. And it breaks my heart just seeing him capable of that little motion.

    We just sat like that, him sleeping genuinely restfully.

    ''Without a horde of machines hooked up to him,'' I think spitefully of the painful cacophony uncaring of the patient''s comfort.

    Unbeknownst to me, I snarl.

    It was something I was never able to fix for him. None of the doctors there had auras to silence the beeping for the patients and none of the information on runes I was able to dig up allowed me to do anything. The doctors forbade me from setting up runic arrays, insulting my intelligence by acting like I hadn''t tested its interactions with the equipment before I used it around my BROTHER. Fucking idiots! ARGH!

    ... Sneaking in to set it up after testing it thoroughly saw them threaten to forbid me from visiting. Just about buried my scalpel in the man''s eyes for even suggesting that.

    I shake my head. My frustrations don''t matter.

    This special time soaking in time with my newly healed brother does.

    And we would have more of these moments, of that I''m sure.

    _____________________________________________________________________________________

    He shifts under my palm, and I leap to, head on a swivel as I look over him as a mother hen would do over a moving egg.

    His eyes open, a brilliant shade of blue.

    "EEK!!! You''re awake, you''re awake, you''re awake!" I babble excitedly. "How are you feeling? Any sensation of discomfort and pain? Are you able to vocalize words or should we stick to nonverbal communication?" I gently grab his shoulders, still wary of his fragility.

    "I can''t believe it! You''re awake!" I squeal.

    "Ohhh shit, I totally forgot to grab the lexicon; so, super sorry. you''re moving and you no longer have cancer! Is there anything I can-"

    His eyebrows rise and I promptly shut my trap.

    His blank expression rises into a smile. He had smiled with just his eyes before, but that full joy expressed with the grin in his mouth, the pink in his cheeks, and the crinkle in the bridge of his nose, stretching all the way to his ears, lifting them up just a smidge...

    It is something truly special.

    It feels like the clouds had stopped obscuring the Sun, and now its warmth could embrace us both in a family hug, warming our hearts.

    He looks around for a moment, briefly uncharacteristically bewildered, before staring at the Sun with a very suspicious glare.

    He dismisses it, reserving it for later thought, while I dismiss his clearly odd reaction with willful ignorance, both of us are eager to see if he could talk. He glances down at his mouth, or at least tries too. He doesn''t have the Skills like I do.

    But what he does have...

    "H-hi, lil siss."

    Is some variant of Advanced Recuperation. The nitty-gritty of it doesn''t matter! All that matters is that he can talk now.

    A sniffle breaks the silence. Tears well up and stream down my face. I stumble down into his arms, sobbing.

    "Hi, big bro."

    He chuckles, "So emotional. Are you sure you''re my lil sis?"

    I pull back, look back at his teasing expression, and then start full-on bawling into his chest, tears trickling down his waterproof hospital gown. "I-it w-w-was so hard, a-a-and I''m sos-s-s-s-s-so-oh sorry that..."

    _____________________________________________________

    Dennis

    I looked down at my sister, the very little girl in my arms. Very much changed in so many ways in so few hours. I couldn''t really understand what she was saying through the snot and hiccups, but when I heard something about apologizing, I made sure to shut that down quickly.

    "Sh-, sh, sh, shhhhh, Shhhhhhhh. There is no need to apologize for... whatever you''re apologizing for. It''s all ok. You did more, far more, than you should ever of had to do. More than anyone could have even expected of you to do. Thank you, thank you so, so much. You''re safe. You''re safe now."

    Her sobbing grew even louder. He smiled, more out of deep sorrow than any amusement. It was sad that only now was she releasing all of this repressed emotion. He hasn''t seen her cry in years.

    "I tried so hard," she wept, punching the sand next to me, "I tried, so, so hard, and they all kept leaving me. And you were in such pain. You kept asking me to you leave, to pull the plug, and I couldn''t. I couldn''t!" She pulled back again from the hug, watery purple galaxies distraught and in pain.

    I pet her frizzed-up hair. It''s normally so well-kempt. She was so frazzled. Inwardly, I marveled at marveling being able to move my arms.

    "Oh you sweet, sweet sister of mine." She shivers at my affirmation of her gender. Had my precious little goblin heard this when I was delirious and still capable of speech a couple years ago. Or did she cold-read me and figure it out even earlier?

    "You''re a bit too perceptive sometimes, sis," I say lovingly, squishing her close in reassurance. "Some things aren''t meant to be known, because they come from the subconscious, a wild place which speaks of things better forgotten than taken as gospel." I looked off into the sunset.

    A real sunset.

    My eyes blink rapidly, my face scrunching up and turning red as emotion floods my face.

    Tears start falling down my face too.

    Real tears. Not bloody ones or ones caused by excruciating pain, I reach out my one free hand into the pink light, the other taken by the one arm she had.

    How did she lose the other one? So much has happened in... 10 minutes? My sense of time is sketchy.

    I was held hostage by a Torment, fell unconscious, woke up with a full head of hair, and I''m seeing my sister changed in so, so many ways... I still feel like I''m on one of my medicinal alchemical trips.

    "Well...." I tilted my head, staring thoughtfully into the clear skies and open waters.

    Questions later, play now.

    "Hey," I say impishly.

    She looks up, furiously blushing in embarrassment at her breakdown.

    She''s probably thinking something dumb like ''I should have been helping Dennis celebrate his new health, not having him comfort me in my childish tantrums.'' Always too harsh on herself.

    "Want to build a sandman?"