The days stretched on. Without so much as the reprieve of sleep, time stretched on for longer than it had ever seemed to before.

  She hardly even knew why she was crying much of the time. There were too many things to count.

  Zaramir worked relentlessly over her head. SHe’d told him to stay away, and that's what he’d done.

  Part of her wished he hadn’t listened, but the other part was glad he had.

  While she couldn’t bring herself to hate him, many of her tears were those of anger, frustration.

  She didn’t wish she was dead, she hadn’t lied.

  Though, as evil as she knew it was, she wished he’d never been revived. None of this would have happened if he’d never existed.

  Self loathing rolled in hot tears down her cheeks. She was awful for ever thinking it. Though she suspected he felt similarly more than occasionally, it was a petty thing to want, a horrible thing to wish.

  She tried to understand what would make him do this to her, but no reason was good enough. No reason would ever be good enough.

  Whenever she wasn’t crying, she hid from the sounds of his work, seeking solace in the only nice place in the house.

  She wandered around the beast room, holding the rabbits and other small animals close. Even the deer and wild horses let her pet them. Though it felt hollow.

  Under their fur and flesh she could hear their Spark, a soft murmur, feel a static energy radiating off them.

  A deep instinct prinkled at the back of her mind, her stomach sought that Spark.

  She refused to obey it. When the instinct got too strong, she would leave, running from the room, her tears returning.

  She returned as often as she could, pushing her body to ignore the sensation, but it was useless.

  Not even feeding on fish or insects tempered her instinct when the sphere was far better prey all around her.

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  The claws she’d been given itched to be used. Every second in that room became a struggle to contain them.

  Eventually she gave up, abandoned the Beastroom altogether. She wouldn't risk their lives and she would never use those claws again.

  So she sat in her room, alone, staring at the never ending loop of the image on her window.

  She thought sometimes about going to the lab, asking for lessons or books, something to put her mind to more productive use.

  Though, every time she brought herself to do it, she stopped at her door, an anger burning in her chest and the tears once again sprung free.

  For 18 days this became the norm. Then, around midnight of the 19th day, she was greeted by an unwelcome visitor.

  Control.

  The serpent she’d eventually, painfully realized had been the mechanism of Faedemon control slithered from its hibernation in the folds of her brain.

  But this time, it wasn’t subtle as it had been, it wasn't gentle. It slid in quickly, striking her mind with painful force, releasing briefly and relatching harder. The message burned hot with its venom.

  Come to me.

  The demand was ragged, craving, lashing with imprecision.

  Brain pounding against her skull, her body moved like being pulled by an unskilled puppeteer, her shoulder colliding with the door frame as she stumbled through the house, up the stairs, to the lab.

  Each time the fangs released, they bit back harder forcing new venom, her brain pressing more firmly against her skull until it felt as though it’d crack.

  She didn’t even have enough control over herself to cry, she could barely think. She barely registered that he was controlling her over the excruciating splitting of her skull, but the deep pain of betrayal pierced her more sharply.

  Though, as her body awkwardly slammed the door, finally making its way to its destination, that betrayal was crushed, the serpent’s hold finally releasing just enough for her to hear her own thoughts.

  The room was swathed in an undulating blue light that seemed to distort the focus of everything but the source.

  Zaramir stood near the center of the light. Warped around him, emerging like a mirage over sand was the vague semblance of a figure made of wispy tendrils of the strange warped light, a visage of an unknown creature.

  Two of its four long spider-like arms gripped his shoulders with claw-like appendages. Where they touched the skin had melted nearly entirely away, bloody pink collar bones shining through the massacre. The other two arms hovered hear his abdomen in a silent threat, sharp tipped nails just barely brushing the material of his coat.

  Blood dripped from Zaramir’s glassy eyes, from his nose, ears. He stood unmoving, not reacting as the room filled with the smoke of his burnt flesh, blood running down him from the edges where the wounds didn’t cauterize. Though nothing at all even bothered to heal.

  The visage’s voice came from everywhere in the room but it’s true image. The language it spoke, it projected, wasn't her own, but she knew it. She could understand High Fae as easily as her own mother tongue.

  “Trita grih’hena. Crytta grih’hena.” It echoed, the message repeating over and over in a perfect loop, inflection never changing. Direct, undeniable, unavoidable orders.

  Bring the atrocity. Destroy the atrocity.