‘What do you desire?’, the voice asked fast. ‘What would you even want to negotiate? I don’t understand why you never proposed this to me before.’

  Victorya rolled her eyes, and didn’t even try to hide it.

  “Well you silly goose, I simply now have the ability to ask you to go fuck yourself without consequence”, she said. She felt very smug while saying it too, the end of her lips curling up just a tiny bit.

  “Do you not care if I do this?” an elf asked, holding a needle over her cheek. She plunged it once in the skin, removing it immediately, only to repeat the process several times, each red, dripping dot separated by exactly five millimetres with a surgical precision. Rows after rows of dots were made. Blood was dripping out of all of them, slowly. The eyes of the elf remained hollow.

  Victorya didn’t even swallow down. She watched every motion.

  She opened her hands and spread her arms apart a bit dramatically.

  “You can threaten all you want in all the uninspired ways you do, I don’t care”, Victorya rolled her eyes again. It was important to show how little she cared. Hostages would become useless. But they wouldn’t be killed over being useless against Victorya, because they still had other uses. It would want to keep a high amount of hosts to continually spread out. They would live. They wouldn’t be fine, but they would live.

  ‘Hm’, it said. ‘Hmmnnn-nnnn”, it said. It sounded unhappy. The elf kept dotting her skin with the needle, her hands moving at a constant unnaturally stilted pace. The trails of blood had dripped down her cheek and even hid the new tiny holes made in the flesh, which were still being made at the same rhythm as before. Vic didn’t quite manage to look away.

  The elf suddenly started falling to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, only to be thrown out against a wall. It fell just as limply back to the ground, several metres away from where it stood before. Victorya stared.

  ‘You’re my sad little broken prophet’, the voice said. The sounds of its tone turned particularly dissonant. ‘You have so many hitches. You’d let so many die for such a selfish intent: to continue as you are, which is a shabby outcast and unwanted vagabond. That’s not who you used to be, dear. Where did the sweet candid girl I knew go? Where has your enthusiastic determination gone? Oh, you poor humane thing. Where has your childish faith gone? What has the belief that everything will be alright in the end turned into? Where have you lost the perfect path that was ahead of you?’

  Vic felt her fists clench.

  She looked at them. They were whitening a little from the pressure.

  She began laughing. She didn’t even know who to point her finger to, even if she felt that she wanted to point at the lunatic going on those insane rambles.

  “Stooop!” Vic said, laughing with a purposefully ugly voice, “Stop talking to me like that, with that ‘I can fix her’ tone, it’s pissing me off!”

  ‘But I can fix you’, the voice said, sounding indignant. ‘I can.’

  ‘I will’, it said. Those words were meant. Worse, they were believed.

  Vic bit her tongue and swallowed the fear down. She hated those statements so much that it made her fingers curl sharply.

  She snarled.

  “Ah? Because you think you can? Why so certain?” she snarled. It came out with spits of saliva.

  ‘We are negotiating that, are we not?’ the voice said.

  Vic stopped. Oh.

  Oh right.

  Yes. Definitely. That’s what she’d was planning to do. Negotiate that.

  Uh huh.

  “Ah yeah”, Vic said, licking her lower lip. “Yeah we are. Right. Slipped my mind for a second. Must be my alzheimers.”

  There was something like a grumble.

  Victorya rolled her eyes. So dramatic. So grating on her mind’s ears. She’d never heard a more annoying voice.

  “What is your heart’s desire? Let’s tarry, oh tarry no more” a voice said behind her. She turned. A seamstress had her face turned towards her, barely leaning closer. “Having you as my willing host would be the preferable outcome of this ordeal.”

  Victorya tightly smiled. Alright. Time to seriously consider this to give an honest and believable answer.

  “First off, it’s not one condition, but multiple ones”, she said.

  She heard multiple simultaneous “hmmmms” across the workshop. The seamstress behind her leaned closer.

  “I want to regain control of my body half the time, and whenever I want”, Victorya said.

  ‘Denied. I do not do half-measures. I cannot’, the voice said. It chuckled. ‘True gods never do.’

  “Well this is starting great, isn’t it?” She sighed.

  ‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, sweetling.’ it said. ‘It hides the depth of your thoughts beneath bitterness.’ The seamstress snapped a measuring tape from behind her back, taking measures with it, and began taking notes. Vic stared. It did not need to. It probably already had her measures, that creep. ‘You’re much better when you are an unyielding force of good. Soon. Soon, at long last, you’ll be purified.’

  Stay calm, Vic. You can keep your cool.

  “Get fucked by a truck”, she said.

  Ah, damn it. Well she’d tried. And failed. Very hard. Oh no, how would she ever, ever, forgive herself for this?

  ‘No one enjoys being told they need to change for the sake of betterment. Your reluctance is understandable. Hm mm’ it then slowly answered with a strange tone. ‘Hmm’, it continued. Vic froze. Last time she’d heard something like this… Better interrupt the god’s train of thought.

  “Second point, right”, Victorya said, interrupting, hitting her closed fist against her open hand. “I want all the powerups. All of them.”

  ‘Oh?’, it said, and that word echoed madly within the box that was her skull. Vic grimaced. ‘I hadn’t taken you for a powerhungry glutton. Why do you crave power, little caterpillar?’

  Uuuuuuh.

  “Because I’ll need the powerups”, Victorya said. “First to show off, second to reassure myself that nothing can hurt me, and third because being the most overpowered being in existence is prrrrretty cool, or so do I say”, she said, and distinctly made a clicking noise with her tongue twice.

  ‘Nothing will hurt you anymore’, it said out of nowhere. ‘I will not allow it. You will know peace, and if you fear peace, you will learn to forgive yourself for your previous ignorance. Peace is to be cherished. You will cherish it. I promise you this on my very name’, it said, and there was a deranged softness there. It made goosebumps curdle across her skin. ‘I would never allow you to suffer beneath my hand.’

  “HAHAHA”, Victorya answered. “YES. Me neither. HAHA.”

  Victorya slapped her hand against her leg with so much strength that it hurt a little. HA! Yes. Brilliant. She was so into her own character right now. Victorya would never fear.

  ‘Little caterpillar, your name’s worth isn’t yet significant enough to give any value to your promises’, the dissonant voice helpfully provided. ‘Your tendency to lie darkens your words’ worth. But I forgive this. Denial has been a constant companion on your path. It’s through no fault of yours that you’ve learnt to survive this way. ’

  Vic stopped and didn’t answer for a second.

  She didn’t know what to say.

  Not anymore.

  ‘Tell me what you want, and perhaps I will help you discover what you truly need, my broken little prophet.’ There was a gentleness there. ‘I only wish to heal you. I love you.’

  “No homo”, Vic blurted out.

  ‘…’

  A silence. But immediately, the voice equivalent of noisy flies were back. ‘What is a ‘homo’, dear?’

  Victorya clapped her hands together. She smirked. It felt plastic.

  “Nooot telling you that. Nothing good will come out of that. Huhuhuh”, she said. Holy shit. All she had left for a moment had been her humour. “Explaining the joke would ruin it.”

  ‘Your intent is not lost on me. How guarded, how guarded… Aaah. Shedding your layers will be unbelievably satisfying and beautiful. Yes, there are the most beautiful sculptures to be carved out of a slab of marble. They are imprisoned, and only need the careful hand of the sculptor to be set free.’

  “So am I a slab of rock or a caterpillar or a fleshbag? Which one is it, really?”, she said, and she twirled a strand of hair along her index finger. Her smirk turned sweeter.

  ‘Metaphors, sweetling. Do you not understand the meaning?’ it began speaking slowly, and it sounded hauntingly like a strange mix of a slowmotion train wreck and a deformed voice speaking through water. ‘Everyone has the potential to be their best selves. Everyone can better themselves, but unheard of are the ones who have achieved perfection without godly help. Do you not understand the depth of the help I would provide? How could you not want to become your perfected self?’

  “You’d make a terrific psychologist. I would personally chuck you through an open window for the well-being of all if we were back home”, she replied.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  It didn’t matter if she’d be arrested immediately after for manslaughter. Some things were worth being arrested for.

  She looked around. Sadly, the windows were barred. There would be only metaphorical yeeting, then. Yes yes, she was so smart.

  ‘It matters not what you would do home. What would matter is what you do and say now. What is it that you think you need?’, it said.

  “Right now? Oh, I need to plan how to kill the Alberon dude”, she said. “I want to tear off bit by bit, layer by layer, his stupid belief that he’s in control and smarter than everyone, and that he deserves to be the one at the top looking down on the rest because he’s outsmarted them. I want to destroy everyone who thinks that they hold the world in the palm of their hands and that it’s their plaything that they can toy with and break. I want to destroy all the ones that gaslight others into worshipping them as gods afterwards even if all those bastards have done so far is hurt others for their own self-centred godly whims”, she said.

  Crap.

  That had come out way more honestly than she’d expected.

  How to lighten the tone?

  “Eat the rich”, Vic said light-heartedly. She snarked a smile.

  Wait. That wasn’t as light-hearted as expected. That was actually quite on point.

  Bah.

  Whatever.

  ‘You want to destroy the ones that misuse their unrighteous power. You cannot destroy power itself. It will always exist. You will have to choose who best wields it’, it said. ‘Which god, ah, which god?’

  “Not you”, she barked. She rubbed a bit too fast the side of her head. Damn it, she wasn’t ready for a debate.

  ‘Why so? You want to be safe, to feel safe. You’ve only run, little one. You can only do it for so long before you crumble. Run from monsters, run to power, run away from place to place, never resting, hoping to get stronger, and it has made you so, but at what price? What you need is safety. To feel you can rest, at long last, that is what you seek.’

  “No”, she said. “I don’t need safety. I need power. I need power to be free. I’d rather die than be your fucking puppet.”

  There was silence.

  She heard the seamstress behind her step away. There was a distinct new impression of silence then in the background, and she realised that there had been a constant background noise of shuffling looms and produced fabric all along.

  ‘So honest, at long last’, it said, making a distinct tsk-tsk-tsk noise. ‘Why did you say that you wanted to embrace becoming my prophet, already?’ it said. Vic reddened. ‘How come, if you’d rather die than become my herald… Yes, how come you would be so willing to list a string of grievances and conditions to accept my gracious boon?’

  “Uuuuh”, Vic said. “I had changed my mind for a minute. It’s not my fault you made me change my mind again so that I don’t want it anymore. You weirdo. This is all your fault.”

  ‘You think that I am incompatible with reality. That is the root of your ignorance. Many have shared the same blasphemous thought, and many have perished for it. Do not repeat their mistake.’, it said.

  Uhhhh, what? Gneh? Vic might have done a funny face then and there.

  ‘…You haven’t done that?’ it said, and there was some light shock there. Then the sound like a pleased cat eating fish and creamy cheese. But immediately after, a sound of dissatisfaction. ‘Oh. You hadn’t thought about me much. That is most vexing.’

  Kay, whatever. She rolled her eyes.

  “Listen, I don’t think you’re… incompatible with reality, or whatever your god complex is, I just think you’re incompatible with me. I was lying to you when I said I’d seriously consider becoming your puppet. That’s all”, she said, and Victorya marked a pause. “There’s no need to get all that bummed about it. Move on. The world is vast. You’ll find other prophets to turn into slabs of stone or whatever. Leave me out of it. I am not interested.”

  ‘You can lie to yourself but not to me’, it said, and Victorya groaned.

  “That’s so pathetic, man”, she said, and twirled her finger in the empty air. “That’s why I want nothing to do with you. You can’t just gaslight-girlboss your way into my life. Fuck off.”

  ‘Gnngngngn’, it grumbled, like an unwanted child. ‘You do not even know the shape of your soul. I do. I know you. Experiencing me is what you need to understand it. Happiness is at arm’s length, and you push it away. You are misguided by no one but yourself.’

  “Blablabla, don’t care, didn’t ask”, she said, and stretched. She brought back her hands low. “Well? You bringing me to your shard-limb or what?”

  There was another bit of silence. She stared around, and noticed that no one was moving. Huh. Had she read this wrong? Hadn’t that been what the god had wanted in the first place?

  “Wasn’t that what you wanted from me in the first place?” Vic asked. “Come on. Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind, I’m gonna feel rejected all of a sudden and do a temper tantrum because things don’t go my way if you don’t do it.”

  ‘You would willingly…’, it said, but it stopped. The sound of fabric being woven restarted all of a sudden from somewhere within the workshop. The swinging and rolling of metallic parts also did. She had no idea where they were coming from. ‘I had thought I would have to drag you there. It had been a very disagreeable picture of said future coming to meet us.’

  “Pfah! Nonsense”, she said. “I’m doing it because I’m a confident schemer and I’ve outsmarted you. Nothing else.”

  The dolls and enthralled elves and humans did not move. There was a mental noise like a whistling pot of tea ringing inside her head, but it did not last. Vic managed not to grimace at it.

  ‘Follow’, it abruptly said. She walked forwards. People slowly walked mechanically to her side, making a weird escort of tightly packed adults that were all taller than her. It really sucked not to be tall. They let her have a fifty centimetres circle of distance. Oh, thank goodness, she could now have a better view of the roof and the looping fabrics hung above, and stare at nothing but that.

  She pulled her arms behind her head and followed where the little crowd was leading her. Relaxed. She was so relaxed.

  “Aaah. In case my scheme doesn’t work, make sure that the Bloodcursed Emperor gets blasted into oblivion. Screw that guy”, she lightly said.

  ‘Of course, sweetling’, it answered. ‘Our wills are both coincident. It is a good ending note for this part of your life.’

  Bruh.

  “Your mother mustn’t have hugged you enough. Poor little you”, Victorya said, squinting.

  ‘I never had a mother’, it said.

  Holy shit. Not touching that. Not with a ten metre long pole.

  ‘I always was me’, it said.

  Okay, that was better. She could definitely mock a pretentious ass-hat who spent most of its time smooching itself in a mirror.

  “Yeah yeah, you were always perfect, and all of that”, she said. They were going down some large stairs.

  ‘Precisely, my little prophet to be’, it said.

  The crowd parted. Vic descended the stairs all the same.

  The shard was there, planted in the ground, iridescent veins of golden yellow pulsing through its surface. It looked like the hybrid of a delicate spine and the exoskeleton of a bent giant arm: its upper arm growing out of the ground, its forearm, half the size of the upper arm, hanging low, while its ending point was a single, sharp, long dart that formed a perfect geometrical form. Its golden tip was so thin that she wasn’t really sure where it really ended. That point was hanging right about her head’s height, turned towards her, a few metres away.

  She’d never seen one of those in action, but only heard them do whatever they did while she closed her eyes. It was likely that those things simply scooped into someone’s brain and inserted something there.

  ‘It will be painful, but the numbness will quickly come’, it said.

  Vic nonchalantly raised her arms in an extremely natural stretching movement.

  “Oh! Like a mosquito bite. Neato”, she said.

  She turned her hands to the planted shard just as she saw puppets’s hands on the surface of her shadow armour.

  Human hands wrapped in human skin gripped her shadow-armoured arms.

  She was compressed in a pile of things that tried to grab and hold onto her. Her shadow armour swelled in turn, pushing back against what tried to push her forwards while forcing her to stay still.

  ‘I am sorry that you do not trust me’, it said. Fabric began falling slowly from the roof, wrapping lazily something around the air, forming a vague wide shape over an invisible monstrously big creature whose shape was only discovered as it was covered by layers of colourful, intricately ornated fabric fabric. ‘All in due time.’

  “Do you ever shut up for a single moment of your life? Your grating, annoying shitty dissonant voice is getting to my head”, she spat, readjusting her aim.

  The puppets staggered. The humans and witches stumbled.

  ‘What do you mean by dissonant?’ it asked, and it was said in such a strange way that it was nearly funny.

  “Yeah, I’d be self-conscious too if I sounded like that”, she said, and shook off the unresponsive hands over her arms.

  “WAIT-”, all said around her, as one.

  Vic didn’t wait. It had to see it to. She saw the puppets open their mouths, and the external layer of her shadow armour was dotted with vibrating points, like an invisible force was being spewed from them to her shadow armour in precise spots.

  Nothing pierced her.

  Until it did.

  “The sun is a deadly laser”, she said, more for herself than anyone else, as she extricated her out of the hands and pushed forwards.

  The spots that had been pierced acted strange. Dark, purple sparks blew at those points, sending dolls reeling back even though they were far away from her.

  And plasma blasted out freely and intensively out of her hands, meeting instantly the shard. It looked like it wasn’t melting, until it did, so fast. It quivered, lurching forwards but suddenly back as the plasma disintegrated parts of it.

  The plasma stream was more intense and thicker than she’d even willed it to be.

  Then there was a strange noise. All the puppets pointed at her and their closed sewn mouths blew open, a screeching “oh” letting no sound out. Human, kneeling bodies were arced, wide, conscious eyes opened as their mouth widened even more until they nearly broke, letting out a jet of something invisible and soundless. Across her shadow armour, she saw several points were the layers fluctuated, like they were being hit by droplets of rain that made ripples appear across the trans-luminescent shadow armour, all aimed at her. Dark purple sparkles blew in turn where the shadow armour was hit.

  The god was… heavy breathing..? In her mind? In panic?

  She stared at the forearm of the shard, which had malformed because of the heat and was now falling to the ground. Golden blood burst from it, and it started taking a sickly hue.

  The huge creature shaped by fabric lurched forwards, right behind the shard. It hadn’t been fully covered. Some pieces of fabric fell down from it.

  ‘REMOVE IT’, it shrieked, protesting against her shadow armour, ‘REMOVE IT, YOU HAVE TO!’

  What a sore loser.

  …Wait, had it thought that because it could go through the “barriers of her mind”, that it could do the same with Victorya’s magic tricks? Nah. Her shadow armour was op, thank you very much.

  ‘PLEASE! Please, please-’

  The huge creature couldn’t get close unless the fabric that wrapped it caught fire. It did not reach forwards. Vic rotated slightly to keep the plasma laser between her and that thing.

  A strange-looking puppet she’d never seen before fell on Vic’s face. The puppet tried to reach out to Vic’s cheek, but the shadow armour… stood as an invisible barrier.

  Its beady eyes reflected nothing for a moment. It couldn’t go through that surface.

  “Nah”, she said back. She smirked brighter. “Take the L, loser.”

  The puppet’s mouth burst and let out a thin golden jet. It pierced a layer, spreading a golden blotch through it, then a second layer, injecting more of that golden blood, then a third, and Vic decided to spam new layers of shadow armour, because yep, that was an absolutely great investment.

  ‘No, no no no’, it said, as Vic multiplied the layers of protection, ‘no no no no nonono! You can’t do this!’

  “Yep”, Vic said back. “I can, and I am.” She was taking no chances. She stared at the shard, and how it was now turning into a sickly dark yellow puddle. She was pretty sure that it would smell awful too.

  “Fuck off, now. Shoo, shoo”, she said, and cackled.

  ‘NO! NO!’ it said. ‘I will KILL my hosts if you don’t let go! I will- I should- no, please, not like this- this is impossible! It shouldn’t be-’

  “Go ahead. Do it. You have nothing on me, you silly goose”, Vic said. “Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself like you deserve. Go grind and try to catch up, but you never will. You’re so baad, you’re so baaaad, it’s like you were born to fail. Go ahead. Grind for centuries. It doesn’t matter. I’ve won now, and I will win forever.”

  ‘You are being tricked!’, it staggered. ‘My voice- You- The Cursedblood Emperor- he- he must have already meddled with powers beyond his understanding- however he has damaged you- no- whatever he has done to you, whatever he has told you, he’s deceived and turned you against your own-’

  Vic interrupted.

  Because she was impolite.

  “YOU know NOTHING of me! You think you know the ‘shape’ of my soul?” she said, and made mocking signs with her clenched fingers while keeping the stream of plasma going. “You don’t even know how I work! But I know how your game mechanics work and how you spread. You’ve fucking lost. Screw off now. It’s too costly for you to stay. I can feel the magic distending already without your anchor. Fuck. Off. Fuck off.”

  There was a disgusting echoing whine in her mind.

  There was nothing left of the shard.

  Vic deactivated the stream of plasma.

  It was done.

  The huge creature covered in fabric behind what remained of the shard did not move.

  She took a big breath of air.

  The puppet on her head fell on its own to the ground like a dead bird.

  ‘I will save you, one day’, it said, as people and dolls fell one by one.

  The fabrics that had wrapped the monstrous shape suddenly fell gracefully to the ground, as though nothing had been beneath them to begin with.

  “No you won’t”, she replied.

  ‘I will’, it said, in the most theatrical and ominous statticky tone she’d ever heard.

  “Lalala I can’t hear you”, she shot back, putting hands over her ears.

  And finally, at long last, silence.

  Blissful silence.

  Vic closed her eyes.

  She deeply breathed in and out.

  Slowly, she could hear the sound of people breathing around her.

  She opened back her eyes, and stared at the puppet that had fallen at her feet. She ignored the notifications from the game system indicating her what she’d won from all of this. Warm congratulations, [exp] gained, etcetera etcetera, she cared for none of that. She stomped down on the unmoving puppet like one would with an insect to reduce it to mush. She did it vengefully and, repeatedly, and, fast. Over and over. Then she finally stopped. Her arms slumped.

  Something like relief was going through her lungs. Breathing became easier.

  She walked out of the workshop. She found the door leading to outside.

  Right outside, staring at the bright vivid sky, fresh wind curling through the meandering narrow streets of this district, she clapped her shadow armoured hands, as to get rid herself of dust.

  She sighed, sensing vaguely familiar magic users approach her position. Everyone would have tasted the change of the magical landscape. An abrupt void attracted more flows towards it, towards where she was. She was pretty sure by now that the goons of the local god had good magic senses. It had to be them.

  She sighed again, more dejectedly this time. Of course, she’d been the one to do all the dirty work.

  Welp. Good riddance, at least.

  She put her hands proudly against the sides of her waist. She smirked.

  “Welp” she said, making the ‘p’ pop, “that’s one forgettable villain of the week taken care of.”