Bioshifter

"Boof!"

I blink, pausing in my exhausted trudge up the stairs towards whatever idiot who will inevitably sign up to be killed first. Right. The dog. I turn around, looking down at where Fartbuns is slowly struggling to follow me up the staircase with twice as many legs. The poor pupper was never very dexterous before I doubled his limb count, so I don't doubt that he's going to be even more awkward now that I've fucked him up. As always, though, he doesn't seem to mind. That dumb dog is too full of love to care about anything like that.

"I'm gonna have to get you somewhere safe, aren't I, buddy?" I ask, my voice an unpleasant croak.

The obvious place to take poor F-buns is the world tree; it's where Valerie is, first and foremost, and since I'm literally watching Fartbuns' legs occasionally miss a stair and cause him to stumble because he's stepping too far into the w-axis, I'm pretty sure that the fact my body is currently deep into the fourth dimension on the other side of things won't be much of a problem for him.

Of course, my body not being able to go deep into the fourth dimension on this side of things is currently a pretty major thorn in my ability to safely relocate the dog. I can't exactly let myself pass out in the middle of a recently kicked military-industrial beehive, and I certainly can't fall unconscious in the middle of a lightless, airless void. Which means I need to go full escort quest for Valerie's dog until I find somewhere safe to nap for a while. Ugh.

"Sit, Fartbuns," I try when we get to the next floor. "Sit."

His tail wagging, Fartbuns hops up on two legs, his other six all scrabbling against the front of my body as he gives my face a series of wet, sloppy dog kisses.

"Yeah, okay, I probably should have expected that," I grumble, pushing him away and Refreshing my face clean. So it's gonna be one of those escort quests. Awesome. Everybody loves those.

I'm too tired for this. I just want it to be over. But Helen was right; there's always just one more thing, one more thing I have to do before it's all over, over and over, keeping me away from the death I deserve. I just want it to stop. I just want it to end. But I have to save Valerie's dog. I have to say goodbye to her. I have to finish my earthly business so Sela can burn away my desperate soul. I hate it. It's not fair. I never should have had any of this responsibility. I never wanted it.

But I don't have time for all this self-pity. I have humans to kill.

"Hannah, wait."

I twist around and nearly impale the speaker through the chest before I realize it's Jet, with Ida still standing next to her, holding that gun she stole. Wait, when did she… how the hell did they… oh. Oh, right. Jet's memory trick. Why the hell is she coming out now?

"Shouldn't you two be keeping yourselves alive?" I ask, a lot more tersely than I intended.

"You're kinda concerning us here, four-arms," Ida says hesitantly. "I mean, not that fucking up the feds isn't hot, but—"

"I just saw you do what you did to Alma and me to an entire room's worth of people," Jet butts in. "I thought you were going to try to be better than that."

"I was," I agree flatly. "Unfortunately, I had forgotten about that promise at the time. Couldn't tell you why."

"Do you think that's a fucking excuse?" Jet snaps.

No. Not really. Horrifically mutating and ruining the lives of seven people does not suddenly become right and just merely because I was unable to remember the time I also did it to my girlfriend. I have simply run out of fucks to give, because what does it matter if she or anyone else sees me as an irredeemable monster if I'm not going to be alive to care?

"I think," I answer softly, "that I am going to walk up these stairs and kill so many people that they're going to carve the names onto a rock in Washington D.C."

They stare at me, mouths open. Part of me wants to rush forward and lock my lips to Ida's, pulling that cute purple tongue into my mouth and biting it clean off. But even those urges are small and lifeless now, hunger and libido just two more things that don't matter in the face of the end.

"...What?" Jet eventually asks.

"I did irreparable things to your body without your permission or consent," I tell her, "and while it makes me happy to see you starting to enjoy them, that doesn't make what I've done right, does it? And now the government wants to hurt you because of what I did to you. They want to punish you for something that's my fault, because they're cowards clinging desperately to the control that's slipping through their fingers. They won't stop until every scrap of it is ripped away from them. They won't negotiate until they stop seeing me as an uppity kid that's in over her head and start seeing me as a threat that can topple a superpower. So if that's what it takes not to leave you with my mess, that's what I'll do."

"Leave me with your… Hannah, you mean the things you said—"

"What, did you think I was lying!?" I snarl. "Yes, Jet! I was made to end the world. So I have to die in order to save it. Sorry for everything, goodbye."

No matter how undeserving it is of being saved. I'm not the one who gets to judge that. I'm not the one who gets to decide what's right. Because I know, oh I know, that there couldn't be anyone less qualified.

I'm not good enough. Never was, never will be. But I have to at least be good enough for this. I turn and stomp up the stairs, hoping it won't be long before she activates her spell again and I can forget this conversation happened for a while.

"Hannah!" Ida calls out, because I'm not that lucky.

"Just keep each other safe," I call back to her. "You have to stay safe. Please."

"I… okay," she agrees. "But Hannah—"

"If you want to make yourselves useful," I cut her off, "then I'll need a safe place to sleep soon. Somewhere I can hide and be safe for at least an hour. And if you can keep Fartbuns safe, too, I'd appreciate it. But if you don't want to help with this at all… I understand."

Jet and Ida look at each other as I walk away. But again they turn, like the fools they are, to meet the gaze in the back of my head.

"Quit making me repeat myself, Hannah," Ida says. "I'm all-in."

"We'll talk to you later, Hannah," Jet nods. "Don't bite off more than you can chew."

I lick my lips and nod. My teeth aren't made for chewing anymore anyway.

I pause on the staircase for a moment, feeling an odd sense of deja vu. Was I just talking to myself about something? Hah. I guess I'm going crazy. Well, it was only a matter of time. The military guys above me—and gosh, I work with some people who'd get really mad at me calling them 'military guys,' but I don't know what branch of the overgrown organizational tree they're on and I don't care—have finished assembling and are encamped around the entire building, ready to fuck me up the moment I make my appearance. Just for the sake of it, I walk right up to the front doors and throw them open dramatically, ready to avoid the inevitable spray of bullets heading my way.

But they don't fire any bullets.

Tear gas canisters erupt around me, filling the air with blinding, unbreathable white. Ah, yes. The classic 'it's not a war crime if we do it to our own citizens' technique. It's… annoyingly clever, actually. I still have to breathe, after all, and since they can't really see me most of the time anyway, the lack of visibility isn't a huge detriment.

…But while I still have to breathe, I don't need to breathe that much. I can probably hold my breath for ten, maybe up to twenty minutes at a time. So tear gas doesn't really disperse far enough or linger long enough to stop me from just… walking away and breathing somewhere else. Good try, though. Points for effort.

I walk forward and cut the gas masks off of every soldier I can reach, letting them choke and run away while I approach the back line and impale my first kill of the day. There's an entire cordon of armored vehicles around the building, mostly trucks, with soldiers in, on, and around them to man various weapon emplacements. But of course, vehicles don't pose me any more difficulty than buildings do, and it's a trivial matter to bisect the drivers, the gunners, and everyone else.

I don't even use Spacial Rend for half of it. It feels good, slicing my claws into their bodies directly, feeling the blood slide down my blades. There's nothing they can do to stop me and that's the best fucking part, that sick, delicious ecstasy of finally getting to be the horror movie monster I was made to be. I can finally be what my life has been leading up to since the beginning: a walking tragedy.

Another cut, another kill. A lot of my victims have wedding rings. I wonder if they have children? I wonder how old they are? How many orphans do I get to make today? My boast about lung capacity ends up being for nothing as I let out an uncontrolled laugh, choking as the void greedily steals the air. Damn it. Of course I'd fuck up already. I rip open the truck I've been killing people in and rush to a patch of fresh air, taking a greedy breath.

Breath. Oh, how the Goddess loves to steal breath. To hold the proof of someone's life in Her hands, knowing She could make it into anything, anything at all. It may not be difficult to trick an ant, to crush it, to divert its course with a few grains of sugar. But there's a certain satisfaction to it, all the same.

Nature's Madness is proof of my obsession with being known, my pathological need to force others through my experiences, my troubles, and my greatest pleasures. I wonder if the Goddess Herself crafted me the same way. To know, in my final hours, the joy of crushing the ant. I feel Her hands on my face, Her lips on my chest, and Her legs wrapped around my own, all of them screaming yes.

It makes me all the more desperate to die. I feel it, Goddess. I feel You. Touching me, invading me, reveling in what I've let myself become, but I can't think about it, I can't, I have to keep moving, keep doing, keep killing because the moment I stop to think I'll—

My eardrums pop and burst, black blood flowing down my head as I lose my balance and stumble to one knee. What the fuck just… agh! I vomit, quickly taking one last breath before retreating into the fourth dimension. The vacuum tries to yank the blood from my veins, but a Refresh keeps it all in place. What was that? How did I not see it? How…

I start to search, keeping my body entirely 4D except for the toes and using the small range that Spacial Rend extends from my body without incantation to take the kills as I go. I'm deaf now, but it's not like I could hear much in the fourth dimension anyway. What the hell was that? What was I hit with? I couldn't even see anything with my spatial sense, my eardrums just fucking exploded. It's like they used… a sonic weapon? Holy shit I thought that was sci-fi. But what else could have…

There. There it is. No wonder I ignored it; it just looks like a giant fucking coaster turned on its side. A big black disc, but now that I'm paying attention to the internals I can see the ways that it's probably for blasting an area with soundwaves. How clever. They might actually be able to melt my organs with one of those, if it had been a bit stronger. Sonic resistance would be… what, Matter mages, maybe? Sound is probably an overlap between Art and Motion. Whatever. Who cares. I reach the platform, carve through the weapon, and kill everyone involved.

A blast from another sonic weapon hits me, but this time I only have my blades exposed rather than my head so it doesn't do much other than briefly vibrate me a little. Nothing squishy in there, I'm afraid. And now I know where it's coming from. Kill, kill. Stab, stab. Cut, slice, gouge, revel, laugh, kill! I'm a monster, a freak, a beast, an inhuman wretch, and I am humanity's destruction! So kill me if you can! Give me what I deserve!

I deserve the world, the Goddess reminds me, and I'll have it. Sacrificed on the altar to Us.

I step completely into normal space and scream, needing to feel the visceral weight of air on my skin and to know that the pressure in my lungs is entirely my own. But still, even here, all I feel on my skin is Her, glorious and incredible and all-consumingly wonderful. But the joy and the pleasure is sick and twisted and wrong and it isn't me, I don't want to feel this, so why me, why me, why me!?

"Stop!" I beg Her. "Stop, please! Don't you want me to live!?"

But I will live. No matter what She does, no matter what She subjects me to, I will live. No matter how I might beg for death, my claws will never kiss my own throat. I can't do it. I could never do it. I will never save the world. All I have to do to know this is to look around. Look at what I've done. Look at who I am.

I'm not good enough. I never was. No matter how much I struggle, Her victory is already decided. The way She violates me now is nothing but a celebration.

An instant before I hear the crack, I see the aerodynamically sculpted metal enter the edge of my spatial sense, heading right for my head. I ignore my screaming instinct to move, to dodge, and I just watch it fly. It's quite a thick bullet, nothing like the pellets that shredded my stomach to bits when I was working my day job like the human I still can't wish I could go back to being. She's right, after all, and I know it. I'm not good enough. I'm not anywhere close. I can't kill myself to save the world.

But maybe someone else can.

The high-caliber bullet impacts my forehead with a wet thunk, splitting my skin apart like tissue paper. For a moment I almost smile, thinking my end will come, but then the tip reaches my skull and I watch in horrified slow motion as it crumples. The bullet squishes into itself, the force of the impact snapping my head back but ultimately bouncing the now-flattened bullet off of my forehead without making a single crack in the bone. It hurts, and I'm certainly bleeding, but…

"Not enough," I growl. "Not even close to enough."

But did I really expect any better from humanity? From the scum that would rather shoot me than find a way not to abuse the people I care about? I don't know if the thoughts are from me or the Goddess, but it doesn't really matter, in the end. I agree with them all the same.

My limbs and my soul thrum with power, the wound on my forehead already vanishing back into unbroken skin. I guess, thinking about it now, my eardrums are also repaired. I'm not even trying to use Destiny Bond, but I guess I don't have to anymore to still get its healing effect. The two universes are very close together now, and the more I pull them in the more that excess slack gets converted into my own personal power. I've been getting stronger and stronger from my transformation itself, but my soul has become more and more my own as well, slowly getting freed from its purpose as a winch of worlds.

Without saying a word, I turned a whole room of people into monsters in moments. What would happen if I spoke Nature's Madness aloud?

Another bullet flies towards me, and I snap my hand up to try and catch it. The bullet bounces off my palm before I can get my fingers around it, knocking my hand back into my face. It stings a bit. It doesn't hurt me any more than that, though. I guess my whole skeleton is bulletproof, endo to exo. I try to catch the next shot, and the next. I finally pull it off on the fourth bullet. The Goddess chuckles, amused by my antics, and I want to laugh alongside her. I want to cry.

I want it all to end. But these disgusting humans could never pull it off. They can't protect themselves from me. They can't protect the world from Her. They're failures at everything they claim to stand for. I can't leave this world with them still in power. I can't.

I catch the next bullet too, and then I finally start to move in the direction they came from, tossing the flattened chunk of metal to the side. I guess I need to find the people responsible for all this. The people in charge, or at least the ones that were here. If I tried running all the way to some other major government building they'd probably just evacuate it long before I could get close. The bigwigs here have probably already left, but maybe there's a chance they've holed up somewhere they think is safe, instead. It's the kind of arrogance they seem like they'd probably have. I guess I'll have to interrogate someone, or something.

That sounds like a hassle.

"Miracle Eye," I incant, the range on my spatial sense suddenly multiplying beyond what it ever has before. I stagger for a moment, my mind struggling to catch up with all the information before it settles down, my soul guiding my mind through the power I've been made for. I see so much. So many people coordinating, moving, acting with the intention of finding a way to kill me. But it won't work. It'll never work. They're even weaker than I am. So I'll kill them first.

As nice as the improved range of vision is, I still can't see anyone who looks like they're running this shitshow. That's fine, though. It's fine. I just approach the closest group, my limbs and blades blocking any bullets that might otherwise be in danger of connecting with my squishier parts. The fragmentation grenade fares similarly, with the most painful part about it exploding next to me just being the sound. Everything feels like it's stuck in molasses, moving so sluggishly around me that I can watch every painfully obvious movement, from the trajectory of projectiles to the shockwave of explosions to the churning of my own body as She kneads me inside and out, present only by the indentations Her fingers leave on my flesh.

Someone nearby unloads the contents of a flamethrower on me, the fire belching from the weapon and washing over my skin. I turn and stare at him, unable to even feel it at all.

"I guess I don't really need to hold back, do I?" I ask him, though I doubt I'm heard over the yelling and the gunfire. "I'm going to kill you anyway, so what does it matter?"

I take a breath and the Goddess takes it back, just the tiniest fragment of the beautiful, wonderful life I owe Her, and We speak.

"SPACIAL REND!"

The spell rings out from me and so does the Goddess, finally pulling away from me to indulge in the joy of ensouling the army before me, stealing a breath from each and every one of them as claws extend to cut the very concept of Space itself. The blades on my back encase themselves in power so potent that their cuts no longer have a length that I can perceive, extending nearly six feet through the world as I can observe it and yet somehow going farther and deeper in ways I do not truly understand. I swing my blade through half a dozen people, bisecting them but also leaving a wound in the world itself, a lingering edge of separation that continues to rend the air and anything else mad or helpless enough to touch it.

But I, of course, can just step around it in a way no one else can, so I continue on, breaking reality as I walk. My blades make more and more corpses, until to my surprise I finally find one of my swings halted, my blade of Space stalling against the bones of one of the men I've recently ensouled. The cut is deep, but for once it isn't lethal. Huh.

"Aura Sight," I incant, seeing the problem immediately.

"You're a pretty powerful Light mage," I tell him, ripping apart his gear as I hold him in place by the jaw. "You must be a very special person, for the Goddess to give you enough strength to resist me."

I pull him closer, the smell of his fear intoxicating beyond belief.

"I suppose She wanted you to die in a different way," I continue. "I wonder why."

I bite his throat out and toss the body at one of the spatial rifts. He hangs off of it in the air for a moment before he quickly bleeds out and dies, the corpse falling fully bisected the moment he does. I swallow the delicious, bloody morsel and get back to work. Body after body falling effortlessly before me.

But then, my blade halts right before carving the throat from a man so very much like the uncounted masses I've already slain. He's surrounded by their corpses on all sides, a single eye in the hurricane of death I have wrought. Because this one is different. His gun is on the floor. His knees are on the ground. His palms are in the air, empty and surrendering. It's like looking at air while drowning a thousand feet underwater.

How dare he.

How dare he interrupt my reverie. How dare he remind me that I have my morals, that I should have morals. That I'm only doing this because of them. How dare he take this long to give up, to be a bastard until the final moment and then become a coward when it might save him. How dare he look so desperate, and scared, and genuine, and human.

"What gives you the right?" I growl, kneeling down and stepping into visible space.

"What?" he asks, his body shaking. His arms struggle under the stress of their own surrender, when it had been so easy for him to hold a gun just moments before.

"What gives you the right," I demand again, "to act like you're entitled to decency after you tried to take ours."

He stares at me, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish and his brain just as mindless. Worthless. Stupid, worthless human.

"Y-you do," he suddenly stammers out, surprising me. "You give the right. H-hopefully."

I scowl, irritated from getting an answer I can't refute. I do give the right, don't I? I'm dying for him. I'm dying for all of them. I give them the right, because that's the right thing to do. Because that's the choice I've made. Because no matter how worthless he is, surely a couple billion of him add up to a lot more than something as awful as me?

"I guess that's true," I admit, screaming to myself in the back of my mind as I look at all I've done. "Sorry. I've… had a pretty bad day today."

He glances down at the blood of his former colleagues soaking deep into his pants and finds he has nothing to say to that. Hmm. He's a Motion and Death mage. I wonder if he's going to attack me with zombies or something. I guess it doesn't really matter. He'll either betray my mercy and die, or he won't. I choose not to think about which option I'd prefer, and walk away. I've wasted more than enough time.

"Where are they?" I ask the Goddess.

Where are who, She asks as Her fingers dance between my legs. She knows who I mean, of course, but She just wants to hear me say the words aloud. To ask Her. To speak with Her. To acknowledge Her. To rely on Her. To admit I am and will always be Hers.

"The people responsible," I clarify obediently, sending shivers down Her ethereal spine.

That is, as I'm well aware, quite a lot of people. But She magnanimously shows me how to get to those closest, the knowledge blooming in the carefully-tilled fields of my mind like the fruits of all Her labor. I was right. There's a bunker. A 'safe' place in the event of an attack.

I go there. Nothing can stop me.

I drop in through the ceiling, landing inside at the edge of the room. The people who try to get in my way die, and I don't bother to clean up the blood they end up covering me with. The old men cowering here don't seem to know what to focus on: the door, the dead, my naked breasts and genitals. I'd call them pigs if I knew less of what humans are like. I flick the blood on one of my hands in their general direction, hoping to get them to focus a little.

"What's it going to be?" I ask quietly.

No one answers. They barely even seem to understand what I'm asking, which pisses me off a bit. Did they just never listen to me? I suppose they never thought it would be necessary.

"The policy to incarcerate magic users," I clarify flatly. "The decision that we would have all our freedom revoked, that we would be kept here, that we would have no say in the matter regardless of who we were or what we have done. You wanted to unconditionally remove our rights as people. To take everything from us. What response did you expect, if not war?"

Again, they say nothing. Cowards.

"You already know the terms of surrender," I remind them. "So what's it going to be?"

I don't get any answers that prevent me from being the only one left alive at the end of the conversation.

I feel… empty. Like all of this is barely even real. How many have I killed today? How many will I have to kill in order for this to end? Did I really have to kill anyone here at all? I don't know what to do. I barely even have a plan. Things just escalated, and now…

I stumble backwards a little, my feet squelching on the red-stained floor. I'm exhausted, mentally and physically. I couldn't… after all that, I wasn't even scary enough. I'm still fighting the government. And I probably just gave them magic, if that one guy goes back to them. And why wouldn't he? I gave him plenty of reasons to hold a grudge. This was all such a mistake. Why did I do any of it? Why would I ever…

Movement on the surface suddenly catches my attention as I realize Jet is hiding between a couple buildings above me, breathing heavily and clutching her head as Ida supports her with one arm and holds Fartbuns by the scruff with the other. What happened!? Is she injured? Why didn't I see… oh, right, Jet's whole thing. Gahhhh, I hate Pneuma magic! But that's right, I did this for Ida. For them. For Autumn. For everyone I care about who would be hurt by this. And I'm just… too stupid and worthless to have thought of a better way.

Wait, I shouldn't be worried about this, Jet looks like she might be hurt. But I don't see any wounds, or… hmm. Is she just tired or in pain from… using her magic too hard, or something? That's literally never happened to me, but I know Helen gets tired when she does big spells, so maybe it happens to other people?

Well. Either way, I should go check on her. Sluggishly, I climb up the wall and through the ceiling, popping my head up nearby and nearly causing Ida to be bowled over as Fartbuns happily attempts to tackle me.

"Hold still, you mutant mutt!" Ida growls. "Hannah! You're okay!"

Well. No. Not even a little bit.

"I'm alive," I tell her. "How's Jet doing?"

"I'm… not Jet," Alma says nervously. "Where the hell are we?"

"Wuh-oh," Ida says. "Well, there goes our functional invisibility."

"Sorry?" Alma mutters, shrinking in on herself. "I mean, I'm not here on purpose…"

"Uh, no, my bad," Ida says sheepishly. "Didn't mean it like that. It's just that you're, uh, in the middle of a military compound that Hannah just violently tore apart."

"What!?" Alma yelps. "How long was I out!?"

"I dunno," I shrug, pulling myself up out of the ground. "A few hours?"

"W-we were just at my house! How did you tear up a military compound in the last few hours!?" Alma yelps, blushing furiously and turning away from me. …Oh, right, I'm naked.

"It has been a long fucking day," I sigh. "I need a nap, but unfortunately I've just declared war on the United States so that'll probably fill my schedule."

"You what!?"

"Actually, Alma, question for you," Ida hums. "Does your house spell stop if you fall asleep?"

"Uh… I mean, I've never tried it but… I don't think it would? In order to end the spell I have to physically exit it."

"So hypothetically, could we just like… drop a big murder trap maze in the middle of the compound?" Ida grins.

"I don't think that would actually work," I admit. "I mean, it'd protect Alma, the bullets would just pass right through her, but I'm pretty sure that you and I would still be completely susceptible to getting shot, right Alma?"

Goddess, why did you make Alma's spell so freaking weird? It's just so complicated. The element I'm looking to abuse, of course, is the fact that real objects just pass through her while the house is active; her spell becomes her reality, and nothing outside its bounds can touch her anymore. Which means that if someone tries to, say, shoot her with a gun while outside the house, the bullet will just pass through her like it isn't even there. And unless that person has a soul, they can't even attempt to enter the house in the first place. She's basically invincible… but as far as I know she can't extend that protection to Ida or me. We'd be forced to treat the house and the real world as real, leaving us fully susceptible to bullets and unable to easily escape.

"Um… well, that's normally how it works, yeah," she mumbles. "Um, but actually, if I incant I think I might be able to… invite you fully inside, sorta? I just… y'know, you said we're not supposed to incant…"

Ah. Hmm. That might be really useful, then.

"Well I already kinda fucked that up, along with everything else," I mutter miserably. "There's at least one guy with a soul nearby. He probably doesn't know how to actually cast any magic yet, but he could potentially interact with your house, if that matters? I'm not sure it matters. Incanting would also make your house that big trap maze, right?"

"Uh… yeah, I could do that," Alma says, scratching her head. "Probably? Um, is it a good idea for me to set up my spell in the middle of a military base, though?"

"No, it's a terrible idea," I answer her. "They tried all sorts of wacky weapons on me to see if any of them would stick, and I have no idea if your spell would protect you from all of them. I'm just afraid that wandering around the base without the protection of your spell would be even worse."

"Can you make the house with windows?" Ida asks. "Cuz like, if bullets don't affect the house, I could just shoot clean through the walls and hit people while everyone else's bullets pass through me, right?"

"W-well, normally yeah, but if I invite you in enough to protect you from bullets then you… wouldn't be able to see or interact with your gun, right? Or if you could, then the gun would be part of the house, and it couldn't shoot through the walls."

"Uhhh… yeah, okay, I guess," Ida says with a frown. "Shit, Alma, your spell is kind of insane."

"I mean, yes," she mumbles miserably. "It very literally is."

Oh, Alma. You deserve so much better.

"...What if you make the house extend underground?" I ask. "Like, give it enough basement levels that we end up deep enough to act as a bomb shelter. They wouldn't be able to try hitting us. Heck, they wouldn't be able to figure out where we even are, which is a big risk with your spell normally."

"Oh, um… huh!" Alma says, brightening up a little as she thinks. "Yeah… yeah, I bet I can do that. I mean, the door still needs to be accessible on ground level, but there's nothing stopping me from making a big trapped mansion with a huge sub-basement or whatever."

"It might be best if we try that, then," I answer. "I'm… well, I should get Fartbuns back to Valerie. And… if you want, I could get you two free of this mess and safer over treeside the next time I sleep, but I can't do that right now because my other body is in hell."

"Hell?" Alma squeaks.

"...Why the fuck are you bringing the dog to hell?" Ida asks.

"He'll be fine," I insist. "Look, I'm just saying that I fucked up and you two aren't safe here anymore and if you wanna hang out in another universe until this all blows over, it's an option."

"Is it… a good option?" Ida asks.

"I don't know, probably not," I groan. "But I just killed like, over a hundred people probably because I'm a freak and a monster so things probably aren't going to be super great here."

"Oh, no, Hannah, I'm the one who started this," Ida insists. "I grabbed a gun first."

"But I escalated," I say. "I could have done this without killing anyone. I proved that I could. But I did it anyway."

"Hannah—"

"I don't want you to make me feel better about this, Ida!" I snap at her. "I just need to rest. Alma, there's nobody around. I think they might be finally retreating. Just… go ahead and take us underground."

"Um, alright," she mutters. "Hold onto me, both of you."

We do so, making sure she holds onto Fartbuns, and she takes a deep breath.

"Delusion of Safety," the Goddess laughs, and I almost laugh with Her for the way She relaxes Her hold on me while She speaks. Then the buildings, the destruction, and the corpses all vanish from every form of sight I have, and all that's left becomes a beautiful mansion of a house, full of incredible paintings and comfortable furniture and… a closet full of beautiful outfits, one of which I am suddenly wearing?

Well, uh, it's comfy at least. It's a big, poofy, one-piece pajama thing, silky and soft against my chitin. The impressively oversized bulk of it all has enough holes for all my limbs and hides my figure completely. I guess this is all coming from Alma's mind, so I guess it's a reaction to my uncomfortable nudity from before.

"Ooh, good taste," Ida grins, pulling on the strap of the bikini top she's apparently now wearing and letting it snap back into place against her chest.

I glance at Alma, who is firmly refusing to look at either of us. What the heck, girl? Y'know what, I can't actually judge, Ida is hot as… well, not hell, because it turns out that's actually really cold, but y'know.

"U-uh, I've never actually done this with other people before, sorry," she stammers, embarrassed. "The, um… the stairs are probably this way."

She grabs a bunch of sheets and other stuff in the closet for some reason and leads us off to the side and down a stone stairwell, insisting on going first and covering up about half the paintings before we get there. My spatial sense can no longer see the area outside the house, telling me that there's just a void everywhere beyond its outer walls, but it can still see through those walls and while the paintings are just flat, some of the statues on the floors below make it clear what sort of stuff Alma might want to be covering up.

They're all undeniably things I shouldn't be seeing. Some of them are about me; there's one where she's stabbing me through the heart, and another where she's on her knees, begging me and reaching out to touch me. There's one where a half-naked man kicks her in the ribs while she's curled up on the floor. There's one where Jet looms over her, a judgemental scowl on her face as Alma cries miserably and cuts open her own arms. There's another statue where Alma uses the same knife to stab her own tail, seemingly screaming obscenities at it. There's another where she's fondling Jet and kissing her on the neck.

I shouldn't look, but I'm incapable of not looking. I feel an overwhelming urge to apologize to Alma, to tell her I'm witnessing these deeply private things in the basement of her own mind, but I'm afraid that would just be another shitty, selfish thing to do, to make her panic over revealing private thoughts that I should by all rights ignore unless she wants to talk about them, and she very clearly doesn't. Maybe I'd feel less guilty if I apologized, but I don't think she'd feel better at all.

"So, um, the plan is basically to hide out here while you get the dog out of harm's way, or something?" Alma hedges. "You don't really need anything in particular, right?"

"Nope," I confirm. "I can do this wherever you're comfortable with me doing it, and I'll just be unconscious for a while. You and Ida should probably talk about how you want to handle things when I wake up. Where do you wanna go, what do you wanna do… y'know. The future."

"Not really a big fan of thinking about the future, but I'll give it a shot," Alma half-jokes. "Um, in here should be fine, I think. Probably no traps."

"Those are the best kind of traps," Ida nods. "The kind that probably aren't there."

Alma opens a door and leads us into a small room with a couch and miniature unlit fireplace, cozy and almost cabin-like. The paintings on the walls of this room are already covered by curtains, though I know better than to wonder what they might be or what might be behind them.

"This will do great, Alma," I tell her. "Thank you."

"Um, I-I'm glad I can help," Alma stammers.

"Yeah, you're pretty awesome!" Ida agrees, buzzing around the room with interest. "This looks cozy as fuck. Comfy temperature, too."

"Uh, g-good? I'm sorry, I should have found you a different thing to wear…"

"Nono, it's cool," Ida says, flopping down and spreading herself out onto the couch. "I like it. You have good taste."

Is, uh. Is Ida seducing my ex-girlfriend? …Y'know what, that's fine, good for her. I hope they take care of each other when I'm gone.

"I'm gonna shift F-buns over now, I think," I say. "Sorry for, um, letting you miss the bigwig interactions, Ida. I sort of… forgot I promised to let you see it."

I'm glad you didn't, though. I wouldn't have wanted you to see it. I don't want anyone to know what I did.

"It's fine, it's fine," Ida waves off easily. "I get that you were a little, uh… indisposed."

"Yeah," I agree, sitting down on the floor and tapping the ground to make Fartbuns run over to give me a lick. "Um, bye for now, you two."

"See ya, sleepyhead!" Ida grins.

"Um, bye," Alma nods.

I give Fartbuns a good scratch behind the ears and pull him into my soul, letting myself drift into unconsciousness and wake up just as quickly with the good dog still beside me. It's completely dark here, but Fartbuns only seems briefly disoriented as he pads around on the bark of the world tree, confused but not overwhelmed by the sudden extra depth of his new playspace. I can't help but smile.

"What a good boy," I coo.

"What is this animal?" my mouth buzzes, nearly scaring me to death.

"Sela! Oh gosh, you spooked me."

"Did you forget I was here?" it asks flatly.

Yes. Sorry.

"I had a… rough time on Earth," I admit softly, stretching as I peel off my body's latest molt. I'm mostly humanoid, now, fully bipedal and frighteningly close to my final form. A few months was generous, when guessing the amount of time we have left. A few weeks, maybe?

That's objectively terrifying, but it's honestly difficult to care about because all I can think about right now is how my new humanoid body parts are going to be played with by the Goddess. And indeed, it seems to be the main thing She's interested in, too.

"Hannah?" Sela prods. "Your heart rate has dramatically spiked."

"Let's just get back to the others," I barely manage to say.

"... Affirmative. Navigation active."

I stagger to my feet, calling after Fartbuns with my ability to speak in four-dimensional soundwaves that I never expected to be useful in any real context. And then, we start the hours-long trek back to where we fought the Founder.

It occurs to me, now, that there might be a chance that the Founder could heal himself or repair himself somehow. I guess I was just too stupid to think about it before, but he's a Transmutation mage of comparable power to me, so he might very well be able to reverse the effects of Nature's Madness on himself. I might have been scared about that if I'd thought of it during the aftermath of the fight, but it's not really anything to worry about now. He just wants to kill me, so we're on entirely the same page.

The Goddess chuckles at my pointless desperation, but I just ignore Her and don't think about Her. I ignore Her and don't think about Her! It's like getting dental work done. Sure, I'm being trapped and invaded and hurt and violated but I don't have any fucking choice in the matter, it's going to happen no matter what, so I just have to endure it and not think about it, not think about the screeching horror attacking my teeth or the way I have to keep my jaw held open or the pain or the terror or the knowledge of how much more I have left to go before it's finally fucking over, if it ever even ends. Just don't think about it. Don't.

Don't think about how much you want it to stop, Hannah. It isn't going to.

"Hannah," Sela says again, but I ignore it. I can't talk right now. I can't. I just have to keep walking, keep directing Fartbuns, keep going, don't stop don't stop don't stop…

Time passes in a blur, the nature of 4D movement meaning I never need to stop to dry my tears, I just have to let them get whisked away by space itself. I don't know how long it is before I finally spot normal space, the first thing I see being a glimpse of Valerie curled up on herself, a fuzzy serpentine coil that seems to be sleeping soundly. Was I gone that long? I suppose that makes sense, but why is she sleeping with her eyes… open. Wait, there are more people here than there should be.

Is that… is that Madaline?

No. No. No no no no no! I break out into a sprint immediately, rushing towards where Madaline—the Chaos and Pneuma cultist who was instrumental in initially capturing me and my friends in the first place—is somehow standing in the middle of all of my friends with two of her friends. The other Chaos mages, whom we briefly met when Madaline led us to Alma after I escaped, are there as well, and I don't know what they're doing but I can't let them do it, I can't let them hurt my friends, I can't I can't I can't I—!

"Now, Maddie," one of them says, and then I can't do anything at all. My mind blanks, and all of a sudden nothing matters at all. Not my friends, not my enemies, and not even the Goddess' fingers dancing through me. Nothing.

"Maddie!" the person says again.

"...I did," Madaline answers. "The poor thing… was already so close… I hardly needed to put any power in it at all, let alone… incant."

"Huh. Well, if you're sure."

One of the Chaos mages, the other girl, walks through the fourth dimension to come grab me. Fartbuns is confused and excited, not seeming to know whether to greet the new stranger or defend me. But he is, at the end of the day, a very happy and carefree dog; he doesn't stop the girl from grabbing me by the hand and gently coaxing me to return to w=0 space.

"Well, here she is," the girl says, presenting me to the others. "And clearly a lot more humanoid than you said she'd be."

"Yeah," Helen says. She's conscious and cooperating with the cult, apparently. "I guess she is."

But that's fine. Anything's fine. None of it matters at all, and it's wonderful, because it's the closest I've gotten to death so far.