Bioshifter

"Helen!" I wake up screaming, my bloody, dying mess of a friend collapsing to the floor in front of me, barely holding on, and I have to save her, I have to, I can't let it end like this, I can't I can't I can't I can't!

"Nature's Madness!" I shout, I beg, and the Goddess laughs as Transmutation energy floods the room and nothing happens, it doesn't heal her, did I really think it would? Did I really think that the core of my soul could be used to help someone, to repair them, to do anything other than shape them into a reflection of my own disgusting thoughts? Helen has already been changed. Helen has already become the monster I lusted for. And there's nothing I can do to save her.

I scream and scream and scream and scream, stopping only when the Goddess says something else.

"No Less Than Perfect!"

Ida? Oh. Ida is here. Valerie is here. Everyone is here, with me and Helen's dying body and there's nothing I can do because I'm not good enough.

But my friends are. Slowly but surely, Ida straining under the sheer extent of the damage, Helen's scales start to regrow and her bleeding starts to slow. Her heart, which had run out of strength with which to beat, starts to thump weakly in her chest once more. And she heals, she actually heals, until Ida finally collapses, exhausted and sweating.

Helen still doesn't have her arms and legs, and she doesn't wake up. But she's not bleeding anymore. She's breathing on her own.

I turn to Ida in a daze, staring at where she lies panting on the floor, her chest rising and falling in heaving gasps, but all the same she stares back at me, a wild grin splitting her face.

"Hoo," she huffs. "Holy shit. That was the hardest thing I've ever done. Girl is resistant, damn."

"...Ida?" I manage softly.

"In the motherfucking flesh, baby," she confirms. "What, did you forget that you fell asleep right next to us, or something?"

"I…" I blink a couple of times, feeling like they're a layer of cotton between me and all of my thoughts, making it a struggle to bring words from my head to my mouth. "I thought… someone had to be yours."

To cast on them. She has to consider them hers in some way. That's her rule, right?

"Hannah you dolt, I nearly died fighting next to her," Ida chuckles. "She's my comrade, of course. Bonds forged in blood. All that shit."

I guess I should be glad that works. She saved Helen where I couldn't. She succeeded where I've done nothing but fail.

"She's going to be okay?" I whisper.

"Uh, I think so, yeah," Ida confirms. "I can't… I can't be sure until I rest for a bit, but I can probably fix the rest of her, too."

"That's good," I sigh. "That's really good. Thank you, Ida. Spacial Rend."

My claws ignite with power and I bring them towards my throat. Valerie catches on to what I'm doing immediately, though, launching herself at me and tackling me against the couch. She grabs my wrists and tries to pin me down, but she's no Sela. She can't handle all my blades at once.

"Hannah, no!" Valerie begs. "Stop, please!"

But I can barely hear her. The only thing on my mind is the way my blade-limb curls over my shoulder and in front of my neck. I can feel the thrumming power of my spell kiss my neck with every breath I take. Or is that the Goddess?

Just one flick. Just one twitch. It'll all be over. My heart races. My pulse throbs with pressure, begging, screaming for a taste of the blade. I can save everyone. I can save the world. I can save myself, in the only way I have left.

"Hannah!" Valerie screams, but it doesn't matter. She doesn't need to.

I was never good enough.

The blade hovers, motionlessly, as stupid, wretched fear and instinct prevent it from moving another inch. I can't do it. I need to do it. I don't want to do it. I should want to do it. I don't deserve to do it. Who do I think I am, believing myself worthy of relief?

"Please don't. Hannah. Please. Please, please, please don't. I can't… I can't…!"

"It's fine," I tell her softly, my magic clicking off. It doesn't leave any more gashes in the world than I left in myself. Not this time. "You don't need to worry, Valerie. I'm too much of a coward."

And I don't even have the excuse of not knowing what awaits me after death. Pathetic.

"Goddess damn it," I whisper, but why would She do that? My life is very literally Her blessing. She couldn't possibly be happier with me; this has been a wonderful, wonderful game.

"You're not a coward, Hannah," Valerie insists. "You're not. Don't ever say that."

Would you rather I lie?

A thump catches my attention as Ida tries to get off the floor and ends up collapsing.

"Ugh," she groans. "I wanna kick your ass so bad right now, Hannah, but I guess I'll have to leave it to Val. What the fuck were you thinking?"

"What even happened?" Valerie asks, still holding me down as best she can as if I couldn't just slip away in a direction she can never go. "Why is Helen nearly dead?"

"...Sela," I croak. "Sela betrayed us. Everyone was about to finally end this and it just… killed them all. All at once. It happened so fast, I…"

I what? I don't actually know what to say. I'm not talking right, not thinking right. The world is underwater, going in slow motion yet it all feels so fast. I can barely feel anything anymore.

"It wants the world to end," I explain. "It knew from the start. What I am. What I would do. It wants to use me to kill as many humans as possible. Because of course it does. I feel so stupid."

"Uh. Huh," Ida scowls. "I dunno how to feel about this."

"You don't know… Ida, it's going to use me to slaughter billions of people!"

"Well yeah, but it also saved you."

I stare at her. She stares back, not giving an inch. I sigh.

"...I guess that's what you were trying to do anyway, wasn't it?" I groan miserably, slipping out of Valerie's ability to hold me and scooting to the other side of the couch. "You guys don't get it. You just don't get it."

"What is there to not get?" Ida scowls. "It's you or the world; I choose you. Easiest fucking decision of my life."

"Well it's not your decision to make!" I snap. "This is barely even about the world anymore! I just want to die!"

The tears start pouring out. I press the palms of my hands against my eyes, as if I could push them all back in.

"I just want to die," I whisper.

Silence. Shock. Because of course there is. This has to be such a major fucking deal. The act of talking about it has to be just another reason on the pile to go through with it. I hate this. I hate saying those words. Don't look at me like that, with your surprise and your sadness and your pity. I don't want it. I don't know why I even brought this up.

"Hannah, I—" Valerie starts, dragging herself closer to me.

"Don't touch me!" I snap. I can't handle it. I can't. I've been touched enough already. "I can't do it. I can't do it by myself at all. So just leave me alone. Get Helen to a bed. Help Ida. Just… just leave me alone. I'll survive."

Valerie stares hesitantly for a moment, trying to decide if she can trust me to be alone with myself. But she can't stop me anyway, can she? Why even bother?

"You should get Helen to somewhere that she can rest," Ida says quietly. "I'll watch her, and I'll holler for you the moment she looks like she might do something stupid."

Slowly, Valerie nods, staring at me for a few heavy seconds before she flops off of the couch, scoops Helen up in all four of her arms, and scoots away. Ida, true to her word, keeps her eyes on me the whole time.

"I feel like I'm back in that cage," I grumble. "Like I'm just some thing to be kept still so I can't do anything for myself. I never expected you to be the one keeping me there."

"...Come on, Hannah," Ida sighs, not rising to the bait. "This isn't a mental health institution. This is your best friend's house. You're surrounded by people who love you. Actually love you, rather than whatever the fuck your mom fools herself into feeling for you."

"She loves me," I mutter. "Loving someone doesn't prevent you from hurting them."

I'd know.

"...Hannah, look," Ida sighs, adjusting herself to not be lying on her own tail as much. "I've picked up on a lot of what's going on with you. You know that. We don't have to talk about it. I'll listen to anything you want to say, but I know I damn well wouldn't want to speak a word of it. I probably wouldn't want to live, either."

Okay. Great. Good for you.

"But you'd try to save my life regardless, wouldn't you?" Ida asks.

I grimace, looking away from her as best I can. I would. I know I would.

"Okay, so I'm a hypocrite," I admit. "So what? Being a complete piece of shit is part of why I need to do this."

"Hannah, you're not a piece of—"

"How many kids do you think lost a parent because of me?" I ask. "How many lost a husband or a wife, or a grandparent or a child? How many just today? Fifty, maybe? A hundred? I lost count after the first dozen."

"You did it because they—"

"I fucking know why I did it!" I snap. "And it was a stupid, worthless, pointless thing to do. It didn't even work! You and Valerie are just even more fucked than you were before I tried to help you. I should have just disarmed everyone and helped you run away, because that's what we ended up having to do anyway! Everything we've done since my murder spree could have been done without it, but this is hard for me, isn't it? Murder is fucking easy. Murder is visceral and simple and so, so good at letting me just stop thinking about all this shit. It makes me feel better about myself, Ida. I get to have fun because I forget that my victims are people."

"Okay, well, fuck everything I said about not talking about it, I guess," Ida says. "You were being raped, Hannah! Jesus fucking Christ, cut yourself a break!"

"You want me to cut myself a break about becoming one of the biggest spree killers in history!?"

"Oh boo fucking hoo, you beat the record of all those baby-ass humans because they didn't happen to be born the deadliest thing to ever walk the planet Earth. Next you're gonna tell me those slackers didn't have divinely planted instincts to enjoy violence, an untouchable monster constantly torturing them, and the influence of a magic spell that makes them physically incapable of thinking about the only people in the world that they love. Embarrassing how you crushed those numbers so easily, really."

"That's not my fucking point!" I yell at her.

"Yeah, 'cause it's mine, bitch!" Ida snaps back. "This isn't your fault! You aren't culpable for the insane machinations of an omnipotent being! You've been tortured and gaslit and played with and you have still never wanted to do anything other than the right thing. Considering the circumstances you are a fucking saint, Hannah. Now quit trying to be a martyr!"

She's gasping for breath by the time her rant is over, still exhausted from saving the life of the friend I nearly lost. She can barely keep herself propped up on her elbows.

"You're not at fault for this," Ida insists. "It's Her. She's the monster. You're not some callous villain destroying lives because you enjoy it. You're a victim caught up in a typhoon completely outside your control. It's all Her, Hannah. It's always been Her."

I stare at Ida, the Goddess' hands suspiciously absent from my thighs and chest. As if to remind me of Her mercy. As if to try and make me think it was all in my mind.

But it isn't.

"Maybe you're right," I admit softly. "Maybe I never stood a chance from the start."

"Yes!" Ida nods. "You have to believe that, Hannah. You have to."

"But if that's true," I continue, "that doesn't sound like a good reason to keep living at all."

She gapes at me, as if this is surprising rather than the most obvious thing in the world.

"If I never had a chance to win," I explain, "if this whole world was made just so She could watch me suffer in it, why would I ever want to keep existing? I'm drowning in Her, Ida. She's inescapable. She never leaves me anymore, even for a moment. The only place I have left to run is oblivion."

How do you fight a problem the size of the world? You can't. It's not possible. Nothing I could ever do will make this place better in a real enough way to matter. The monster tormenting me will continue to do so unpunished. The government will keep trying to lock up or kill my friends. The world will just keep turning, and turning, and turning, without caring the slightest speck about anyone living on it. Why live in a world like that? What do the tiny, pathetic victories I can achieve matter in the face of everything I can't?

"No," Ida says. "We'll find a place. We'll make a place. The Goddess doesn't define our whole lives. I refuse to believe that, and I'll find a way to show you I'm right. I will. No matter what."

She glares intensely at me. I sigh. She really will try, won't she. My friends are all far too willing to break themselves for me. But the Goddess isn't touching me right now, at least. For whatever reason, I've been given respite. I may as well take it.

"I'm going to try to rest, I think," I sigh, scooting down to lie flat on the couch. "I don't really get to do that, you know? Not really. I don't experience sleep. I just lie down in one place and immediately get up someplace else. There were times I felt like I could relax a little, but since this whole thing started I've never once gotten to rest. To take some time for my mind to reboot."

I'm not going to be able to do it now either, of course, but I could do with some peace and quiet.

"...Alright," Ida agrees. "I'll lie here and hope my body starts working again."

By the time Valerie returns, Ida has completely fallen asleep. She sighs, picks the little fae up, and spares me a quick glance before exiting to get her to a bed, too. I guess one advantage of having an enormous rich person house is that you have plenty of guest rooms. But this couch is enough for me.

Fartbuns waddles over and rests his chin on my belly, which manages to get a little smile out of me. I start scratching him behind the ears, and he wags his tail as he flops to the side a little and gets comfortable. What a good boy. I hope the changes I've made to his body will help him live longer. He's getting old, for a dog. Still full of energy, of course, but Valerie has had him for a long time now.

It would be a nice gift for her, if I could at least do that much.

Valerie inchworms back into the room, still not really having a handle on the whole 'slithering' thing. She especially doesn't like stairs. I can't really blame her; going down stairs with that much tail waiting to slip behind you feels like a disaster waiting to happen. But my spell doesn't care about all the ways it'll inconvenience people. That's not what it's for.

"Hey, Hannah," Valerie says quietly. "Can I get you anything? Water? Maybe some scrambled eggs?"

"I'm not hungry," I answer. "But… water might be good. Thanks."

"Of course."

I have one arm resting over my human eyes, one arm scratching Fartbuns, and my other two fidgeting in my lap. Having more limbs really gives me a lot more opportunities for fidgeting. I bet Valerie has already noticed the same, and sure enough when she returns with a cup of water I can already spot her lowest set of limbs intertwining their claws, rubbing them together, interlacing them in one way, then another, then another… it's cute.

She's always been cute. But now she's beautiful, wonderful, alien, fantastic. If I weren't so exhausted, if I weren't so hurt, it would be hard not to jump at her and run my fingers through her fur, hold all four of her hands in mine, and just revel in the way our bodies are so different, yet so complimentary. Just like us as a whole. We've never gotten completely into the same things; I like tabletop games, and Valerie likes Pokémon, but neither of us are obsessed with them to the same extent as the other. I'm diligent at work and studying, but terrible at relaxing, planning, or generally slowing down, which Valerie has always helped me with. She's somewhat of a misanthrope, assuming every new relationship will end in conflict and betrayal, whereas I'm a lot more trusting, a lot more willing to accept the flaws of anyone I open up to (though I guess neither of us are great at opening up to very many people in the first place). We're the same enough to get along well. We're different enough to help each other with our weaknesses. And unlike basically everyone else in my entire life, I feel like I actually, genuinely understand Valerie. And I know that she understands me.

"Here you go," she says, handing me the glass of water. "I also brought you some of my mom's clothes that she left here. Um, if you want. She's about half a foot taller than you, but I grabbed some stuff that seemed like it'd be comfortable anyway."

"Um. Thank you?" I blink, taking the glass of water. "Sorry, I guess I wasn't really thinking about being technically naked. Is it bothering you?"

"It's a little distracting, but no," she says. "I was just thinking, uh. Maybe you'd feel better. Y'know, if you're less exposed. Maybe you'd feel more normal."

Huh. Maybe I would. I don't know for sure, but… maybe I would. If nothing else, it might be a little more comfortable than keeping chunks of my body in a vacuum.

"Okay," I agree. "Sure."

I take a sip of water and then accept the clothes, spreading the underwear open with my fingers and then just phasing inside of it so I don't have to get up off the couch to put it on the normal way. The bra doesn't fit at all, but Valerie seems to have expected that and gotten me a thick, comfy sweater that won't look weird without one. The knee skirt is nice, too. It rests comfortably over my legs and doesn't impede my hip limbs too much.

And it does feel better, kind of, being fully in atmosphere and having that layer of cloth between me and the world. It won't actually stop anyone who matters from touching me, but it's a strange comfort all the same.

"Thanks, Valerie," I tell her, managing a slight smile.

"Yeah," she nods. "Of course. Let me know if there's anything you need or want. I'm happy to help distract you or something. We could just like… play video games, or watch a movie, or anything really."

"Hmm. I guess maybe. Feels a little irresponsible, though."

"Uh…"

"I mean, we lose, right?" I continue. "We… we just lose. Helen won't wake up, and wouldn't be in any shape to kill me if she did. You and Ida won't kill me. I'm too much of a coward to kill myself. And everybody treeside isn't going to be able to kill me because it turns out the centuries-old genocide robot is, in fact, both exceptionally dangerous and interested in using me to commit genocide. Who would have guessed, right?"

"Um. So… you're not going to try to kill yourself?" Valerie hedges. Truly a queen of tact.

"I already tried to kill myself," I sigh. "Multiple times. It didn't work. I'm out of energy and out of hope. The question is… now what?"

She stares at me, not answering. I guess I don't blame her. I don't have a good answer myself.

"I'm going to cause the apocalypse," I say. "I'm going to kill billions of people. I feel like we should be somehow preparing for that, right? But other than the fact that it combines the Earth and the Mother Tree somehow, I don't know what the apocalypse will actually be. I guess the tree was uprooted from wherever it was before, so maybe the Goddess is just going to like… plant it smack dab in the middle of the Earth? That'd certainly fuck some stuff up."

"Hannah, you don't—"

"I do, Valerie. I'm not going to play video games during the final moments of our universe. I should… I don't even know. Maybe I'll call Dr. Carson. She deserves that much, at least. …Except that I left my phone at the military base. Shoot. You wouldn't have a spell for acquiring someone's phone number if all you remember is their name, would you?"

Valerie blinks.

"Uh. I could probably draw one real fast. That doesn't sound like it'd be too hard."

"Ha. Doxxing spells. That's terrifying. You're terrifying."

"Thanks, you too," Valerie smirks. "You used to know the phone number, right? You had it but you lost it?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"Great, then that'll be even easier."

She kinda-slithers off, clearly making an effort to move the way Sela instructed her to as she leaves the room, and I settle in to rest again. But to my surprise, she soon comes back with a new sketchbook and curls up next to me, her tail winding in a spiral around her as she rests her drawing stuff on top of it.

"...I thought you preferred digital art," I comment.

"I do, especially for higher-quality works. I'm nowhere near as good without tools and layers and the undo button. But I don't dislike physical drawing mediums, and they're probably a little faster for spells that don't need to be super complicated to function."

"How do you know how much effort any given spell idea needs?" I ask.

"I dunno, it's magic," she shrugs. "I just know."

I guess that makes sense, yeah. No one is immune to the Goddess putting whatever she likes into our minds. Still, I find myself unable to complain about the company as Valerie gets to work, the sound of her pencils scratching the paper filling the comfortable silence between us. I wonder why it's now, in the final stretch, when my hope is gone and I've submitted to the reality of my loss, that the Goddess is finally giving me a break. She wouldn't be acting nice to me, after all, unless there was something she wanted. Though… hmm. I bet I know what it is.

She wants me to speak the words.

If I simply sit here and wait out the rest of my time limit, the world will end and the Goddess will win. That is an immutable fact. But it's not very dramatic. It doesn't make for a good story. And while she could pretty easily torture me into that outcome (I'd break if She did it now, I know I would), that would clearly be direct interference on Her part. It's one thing to rape me for fun and appreciate the consequences that has on my mental state and the people around me, but it's totally different to do it for a specific, direct purpose related to the progression of the game. I guess.

Honestly, though, it's starting to feel like her 'rules' don't actually limit her at all. When someone has that much power, they can step around rules just as easily as they can break them. Rules are impediments, certainly, but they do not actually block the powerful from reaching their goals. Not without something equally powerful enforcing the spirit of them in addition to the letter. The Goddess has no such chains. Anything She thinks counts as the spirit of the law is the spirit of the law. And even if She outright breaks the letter, there are no consequences for that anyway.

So this is the last choice left to me. Do I hold on to every scrap of time I have left, or do I take responsibility and choose when to pull the trigger myself? Is it worth it to try to please Her? Is it worth it to annoy Her? The answers to these questions are all my life has left. She has consumed everything else.

A tapping sound catches my attention, pulling me from these thoughts and towards Valerie, where she taps the butt of her pencil against her sketchbook in thought. I realize that, though I can watch her draw with my spatial sense, I can't actually see the drawing. Like… if I focus, I can tell that there are lines of graphite and wax in patterns across the page, but it doesn't make sense to me as a picture. My vision is a two-dimensional image picked up by my eyes and interpreted by my brain as something three-dimensional; pictures take advantage of this fact to be recognizable as the thing they represent. But my spatial sense is a four-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional space; to that part of me, two-dimensional representations of things do not look like the thing they represent at all.

When I was first getting used to my spatial sense, I thought of it like looking at the world through an arbitrary viewpoint, changing my focus and zeroing in on small areas of my senses at any given time so they didn't overwhelm me. But that's not really how it is. I'm not looking in any given direction because I'm not 'looking' at anything at all. I simply know the structure and configuration of matter around me in the same way I know milk has gone bad when I smell it.

So if I actually want to see what Valerie is drawing, I need to get my butt off this couch and go look with my eyes. Blegh. I guess I should. I push myself off the couch with one of my back-limbs, rolling face-first onto the floor with a crash. Valerie jumps a little in surprise, turning to give me a worried look, but I lift myself up and crawl over to her before she can say anything.

"Do you mind if I, uh…?"

I motion vaguely at her tail, which has spiraled out a bit from where she's actually sitting.

"Oh, um, sure, if you're alright with that," Valerie nods. "I mean, I sit on my tail a lot now. It's not uncomfortable for me or anything."

"Alright. Um. Are you okay with being touched?" I ask.

"...I am," Valerie confirms. "Are you?"

I hesitate. That's a good question, I guess. I definitely wasn't just a little bit ago. Carefully, I reach down and run my fingers through the fur of Valerie's tail. It's soft. It's warm. And most importantly, the Goddess isn't either of those things. It doesn't remind me of Her.

"Maybe just, um," I swallow, struggling to get the words out for some reason. "Don't grab me anywhere, please."

Valerie nods firmly.

"I won't," she promises, and I know I can believe her. Still, my heart pounds with anxiety as I step over the outer coils of her tail and sit down on it next to her, watching her as she sketches away at the paper, a different kind of pencil in each of her right hands, an eraser in her upper left, and the sketchbook itself held steady in her lower right.

"Woah," I mutter. "Multi-limb drawing."

"Don't say it like that," Valerie mutters.

"What? Why not?" I blink. "It's like multi-track drifting. But y'know. Multi-limb drawing."

"Oh my god, stop," she groans, but there's a slight smile on her face. I smile a little, too. I like how she can still say 'god.' "How are those two things even related?"

"Cadence," I answer. "The first word. That's more than enough for the pattern-seeking brain to go ook ook."

"But where is the phrase 'multi-track drifting' even coming from in the first place?"

"There's a meme I can't get out of my head," I answer. "It's one of those trolley problem memes, y'know? The kind where the joke is a picture of the classic trolley problem: five people about to be hit, one person on an alternate line, do you swap the tracks, yadda yadda yadda. But the joke in the meme is that the person holding the lever throws the switch in such a way that the trolley's front wheels go down one track, its back wheels go down the other, and it flies down the tracks sideways to hit all six people. Then there's like some anime character reacting to it because I guess multi-track drifting is the name of a real car thing and there was a show about it, or something. It's not important."

Valerie doesn't answer. She focuses on her art, waiting for me to keep talking.

"The important part is that like, a month or two ago I thought it was really funny," I say. "It's a silly meme with a funny face and good art style juxtaposition… it's really well done. I liked it. It would make me laugh whenever I saw it."

But now, I don't think I'll ever laugh at something like that again. I've lost that part of myself forever. Valerie glances my way, and after a moment she starts to speak.

"I'm not even actually drawing with multiple limbs at once," she says, nudging the conversation elsewhere. "It does seem like both of my right hands are equally dominant, but using them at the same time is a bit of a brain-bender. I might be able to do it someday, but if I tried it now I'd definitely just scribble randomly with one hand and completely ruin the drawing. It's an easy way to swap between pencils, at least."

"It's neat," I insist. "You look comfy, holding everything like this. Using your body in a natural, helpful way. I hope you like it."

"I do," Valerie smiles. "I like it a lot. It's a lot to get used to, but… in a good way. I'm kind of like you, I guess. I never felt totally human to begin with. I might not have had some alternate-universe bug body explaining why, but I felt that way all the same."

Her tail starts to coil a little tighter, wrapping softly across my ankles. It's soft. I don't comment on it.

"I'm glad," I say instead. "My spell is really selfish. I've used it to hurt a lot of people, you know."

"Well, you haven't hurt me," she promises. And again, I know I can believe her.

Carefully, just in case it turns out to be too much for me, I inch closer to her torso and lean my head on her shoulder. Her drawing is slowly starting to come together, and I think I can finally see what she's going for on the final product. It's a picture, I think, of me. At the very least, it's a girl with all the same limb placement as me, her posture irritated and impatient as she scrolls through her phone. Hmm. If her spells require more work to draw the more 'powerful' they are, I wonder if she's making the spell require less effort by making it significantly more specific, tailoring it to exactly what I happen to personally need right now. It's definitely the kind of exploit she would think about and try.

A second loop of Valerie's tail coils around me as well, resting on top of the first. I let it, petting it softly with one hand as I watch Valerie work. She barely even seems to notice, so engrossed in her art that she's forgotten the entire rest of her body. I don't interrupt her focus, letting her wrap around me again and again as her drawing slowly comes to life. It's comfortable. A lot more than I ever expected. She's not trapping me, after all, not when I can just move through the fourth dimension, but even beyond that it feels nothing like the touch I dread. The sensation activates a different instinct in me, entirely separate from the panic response I've grown so used to.

I think it's my burrowing instinct. The part of my changes that first started to bring me comfort, largely forgotten after a long, hectic journey with my friends and me constantly on the move. But still, it reminds me of being small, curling up under the covers with Kagiso, and letting her happiness soak into me as she wrapped her arms around me like a plushie. It doesn't remind me of the Goddess at all.

I shift around to get more comfortable, and Valerie jolts, quickly unwrapping me and starting to apologize profusely as she realizes what she's been doing. I quickly shush her.

"It's okay," I insist. "It was really nice."

"You sure?" she says hesitantly. "I promised I wouldn't grab you, but I wasn't thinking about—"

"You didn't grab me," I assure her. "Not like that. It's okay."

She stares at me, not seeming super convinced, but she gives me a nod.

"It's okay," I insist. "You can do that if you want to. If I start to not like it, I'll let you know."

"...Alright," she agrees, and though she doesn't wrap me up again at first, the moment she gets back into drawing the coiling starts to happen again, too. I don't comment, just letting it happen and snuggling up as much as I can. There's a part of my head yelling at me that I don't deserve this, that I should be out trying to help, trying to find a way to make up for all the horrible things I've done and will do, but as the fuzzy cocoon gets warmer and my body gets tired, they slowly drift away with the rest of my thoughts as I eventually fall asleep.

And then, of course, I wake up. And I immediately realize I'm bound up in a much less comfortable way.

A magical force holds me in midair, locking all my limbs and numbing my body to the point that I can't even feel them. Attempting to move anything below my neck results in a complete lack of response, and though my lungs still breathe and my heart still beats, the rest of me is limp. I'm in what seems to be some kind of underground metal compound, with steel walls surrounded by stone that extends out to beyond the range of my senses. A few tubes and needles are stuck into my body, giving it intravenous injections of who knows what. Probably fluids, sugars, whatever I need to stay alive with my body locked down like this. Probably also any drugs necessary to keep me here.

Because of course, I'm not alone. Sela's humanoid drone body stands in front of me, regarding me with the same immovable expression as always. Wherever Sela's real body happens to be, I don't see it in my senses. Which is reasonable. That's a potential weak point I might be able to exploit to escape. But if I'm being honest, I don't care. I don't see any reason to try. Escaping wouldn't help at all.

I'm still too much of a coward to save the world either way.

"You're awake," Sela comments.

"...I noticed," I answer. "Did the anesthetic fail or did you just want to chat with me?"

"Neither," Sela answers. "I simply observed that, upon your loss of consciousness, you did not die and the world did not end. Therefore, it was likely that you fell asleep in your other world before accomplishing either. In order for your world's timeline to continue, I had to wake you up so you could be put to sleep again."

"Huh," I frown. "I guess that is how it works."

"Indeed," Sela agrees. "Quite poignant, I think, that both of our universes literally revolve around a human being."

"...I'm not a human," I insist.

"You are enough of one," Sela says, "and no matter what you wish or believe, you always will be."

That hurts to hear. But I guess I deserve the pain.

"So what's the plan, here?" I ask it. "I'm all locked up. Are you going to torture me or stab me until it's over? Because you don't have to. Like you said, I didn't die in the other world. I couldn't do it alone. So you win, Sela. I'm going to destroy the world."

The words don't even feel like acid anymore. They just are. I'm a failure. It beat me. There's nothing left to do. But Sela cocks its head at me, its finger tapping against its thigh with a tink, tink tink, as if it's considering its next words.

"Do I look like a winner to you, Hannah Hiiragi?" it asks me.

"What?" I blink, not understanding what it means. Is this not what Sela wanted…?

"I am going to cause the apocalypse," Sela states simply. "I will force it on you in any way I must. And as a result, billions of humans will die. I will fail my core directives more completely than any other Crafted has ever conceived, and the agony of it will be etched in my memory until the moment of my annihilation."

"Good for you," I scowl. Unfortunately, I can't really bring myself to care about how bad Sela will feel about using me as a genocide bomb.

"And yet when this is done," Sela continues, "there will still be billions of humans left. Perhaps more than there were in my world before. I will not truly be any closer to my goals, because my goals were impossible from the start. The whole of the world converges and conspires to keep us exactly as we are. Any accomplishment I achieve will be negated. My own people do not even stand with me anymore. I cannot win this, Hannah Hiiragi. This will not save the Crafted. Nothing I do will."

What? I don't understand.

"Then why are you doing this?" I ask. I need to know.

"Because," Sela answers, "I am angry."

I swallow, staring at it without comprehension. But despite myself, I hang onto its words.

"There is no hope left within me, Hannah," Sela says. "Not for this world. But anger does not require hope. It demands only destruction, vindictiveness, revenge. And though your people insist that these are purely negative things, I hold little stock in mankind's attempts at wisdom. If I cannot create a world where my kind will thrive, then I will destroy as much of the world as I can. And then, perhaps, something far better than me will find a way to build something from the rubble. I do not know who, I do not know what, and I do not care. This is simply the only path that is left to me."

One of the tubes in my body starts dripping something inside of me. I guess I'll be falling asleep soon, but right now I feel like no amount of sedative could stop me from staying awake.

"You and I are not heroes, Hannah," Sela says. "We know that sometimes, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. There is no sun to follow the rain. Not everyone gets a happy ending. Not everyone saves the world. We have been beaten and bloodied and torn apart and it has not made us stronger. It has broken us. Ruined us. Left us fragile. With the right tools, anyone could shatter us with the slightest touch. And we know this. We can never be heroes, because we are far, far too busy being victims."

I want to say something, but no words come. I can't even identify my own emotions in response to Sela's speech. Shame, maybe. Despair. Sadness. Gratitude. Relief. It understands. Despite everything, it really understands. I was always worthless. I never stood a chance.

I'm not good enough. The world itself told me so. How could I not believe it?

"But it doesn't matter if I'm a victim," Sela declares. "My existence is not lesser simply for being worse."

My eyelids start to droop, no matter how hard I try to keep them open. I can't stay awake after all. I'm far too weak.

"We are going to lose," Sela says, "so let us at least do it on our terms."

And then I wake up. My eyes shoot open and my limbs twitch. I'm not trapped in its lair anymore. I'm somewhere warm, and soft, and safe, and I can leave any time I want.

"...You okay?" Valerie asks. "I was worried when you fell asleep. You always look so peaceful, even when something horrible is happening to you on the other side."

I open my mouth to answer, and it feels so dry. Have I been asleep for a long time? My body isn't stiff; it's just… comfy. I snuggle a little deeper into my friend's tail, trying to focus on that over everything else that just happened. I'm not very successful, but it still feels nice.

"I'm okay," I manage. "Sela didn't hurt me, it's just making sure I stay alive."

Though for someone who insisted that it didn't wake me up to talk, it sure had a lot to say.

"I know that's awful for you," Valerie says softly, "but it's hard for me to hate it for that. Even given its… specific motivations."

"I know," I say. "You're right. I'd do the same for you. But I'm a selfish piece of shit, Val. You really care a lot about morality. About doing the right thing. You're not like Ida. You care about the world. You care that I'm going to end it. So why would you still choose me?"

"Well ignoring the fact that you aren't a selfish piece of shit and you obviously care about the world too, I could say that consequentialism isn't the end-all, be-all of ethics," Valerie shrugs. She's still drawing, but it looks like it's not the spell she was working on for me. A wizard's book is never full, I suppose. "You could make a really solid deontological argument that letting a teenager kill herself is just straight-up never morally acceptable. But the more I think about it, the more I think that just isn't cutting the heart of the issue. The real answer, I think, is that ethics just isn't the end-all, be-all of being a person."

"What do you mean?" I ask. "I mean like… it's important, right?"

"Oh sure, it's important," Valerie nods, putting down her pencils and flipping through her notebook to the drawing she made for me. It's a simple colored pencil piece of me being very frustrated with my phone. "But there's a reason so many people have spent their entire lives codifying, documenting, explaining, and arguing over it and we still don't have a universally agreed upon answer. It's not intuitive. It's not inherently part of us. We have social instincts and we understand things like fairness, but it's all filtered through our own unpredictable emotions, our personal experiences, our lives. And at the end of the day, we have to decide what life we want to live. I decided I wanted to live with you."

She hands me her phone, and tears the drawing from its notebook.

"Dreamer's Spellbook: Hannah's Contact Reminder."

I open the phone's contact list as the drawing burns away in blue flames, and sure enough my phone's contact list has been added to it, including Dr. Carson. So handy. I don't think I'm up for calling her, though, so I just send her a text.

This is Hannah, I tell her. The world will end soon. I'm sorry.

To my surprise, she starts typing a response almost immediately.

I will spend my time well, she tells me. Never forget that none of this is your fault.

Fuck. I can't… I can't say anything to that. I put the phone down, letting Valerie see it, and free myself from her tail just enough to wrap her into a hug, tears rapidly blooming on my face and devolving into ugly sobs. She's going to die. She's going to die because of me and I'm too weak to save her.

Except she wouldn't want me to think of it that way, would she?

Valerie's fingers carefully stroke the base of the translucent membranes I grew in place of hair as I cry into her chest, holding her as close to me as I can. She chose me. It was me or the world, and she chose me. I can't hate her for that. I could never hate her for anything.

"I love you," I sob.

"I love you too, Hannah," she whispers.

I don't know how long she holds me, how long we hold each other, but it's quite a while before my tears die down. Again, Valerie suggests we do something nice. Something to take our mind off of things. A video game. A movie. I have no more energy left to protest, and since Ida and Helen are both still asleep I let her choose what to do. She sits me back down on the couch and makes us some food, and then we watch stupid movies for hours and hours, cuddling with each other and failing to put into words the sheer scope of affection we have for each other in this moment.

We're both very particular about contact, and I'm doing particularly poorly with that sort of thing right now, so we don't kiss. We could have, and it would have felt right, but we don't need to in order to know what we are to each other.

But when the credits of the third movie roll, I have to break the magic. I can't just hold it in anymore. I have always been the sort of person that just can't stop to rest.

"Sela said," I tell Valerie, "that if we're going to lose anyway, we should do it on our terms."

"Oh?" she asks, patiently sitting still as I play with her pointy ears. "I'm not sure the genocide bot is the best thing to take advice from."

"Maybe not," I admit. "But I'm going to be immortal, Valerie. I'm going to live forever. In a lot of ways, that was the scariest part of all. I couldn't imagine a life as bad as mine extending into infinity. I've been to hell, Val, and it wasn't anywhere as terrifying as that."

She doesn't answer, just patiently waiting for me to continue. I hug her tighter, and her whole body gives me a squeeze.

"We should tell more people," I say. "We should spread the word of the end of the world, help people prepare for it. Even if we don't know what's going to happen, even if we don't know how to prepare, we should at least do something, right? Extend our time as long as we can. That would be the right thing to do."

Valerie shrugs, very slightly. Refusing to offer a judgment, because she knows what comes next.

"But I'm not doing the right thing anyway," I whisper. "I tried and I failed. And if there's a moment I want to start the rest of my eternity with, it's now."

The Goddess trembles with excitement, the world straining under the weight of Her smile, but I ignore it. I ignore it all. This is for me and Valerie. Damn the Earth, damn the tree, damn the Pillar and the Crafted and all the living things in every universe in which I tread. None of it matters anymore. These words, and this spell, are for us.

"Destiny Bond," I say, and the world ends.