VISCERAE

As they take your flesh, take their bones. As they take your bones, take their minds. As they take your mind, take their wills. For every wound is a portal, every injury is a recipe, every damnation simply an opportunity to reach to another place. There are more realms in earth then heaven can ape, and more heavens than can be counted, and every one is a hell all its own. In the black of pitch, the glow of perfection shines brighter. In the crimson of suffering, the coolness of peace is all the more real.

We have lived and live and will live in times of pain and horror and torment. Our wills cannot change this. The world is at it is and will be as it will be, and only by escaping it, lying to it, unmaking it and remaking it, shall we manage to be anything more but sufferers.

So sing. Tie together your beads, scrimshaw your bones, paint your colors and dance amidst the gunfire. In art, we find meaning. In meaning, we place chains upon this hell-that-is-earth. In hell, we create heaven, painting with all the colors of pain.

Choir of the Blackened Church

"And you're certain you didn't hallucinate this entity?"

"I… frankly don't know how it would be possible to check without outside verification."

"That's… fair. Ugh. But a living manifestation, one made of such elemental properties, should not be exhibiting this much independent will. It's not how things work."

I shrug. "It… is, though."

A snort of derision. "Well I'm so sorry to question your findings, great expert. What a joy it is to have all my years of experience refuted by such fundamental claims."

I can't help but grumble a bit at that. "It's not about- I don't know how it's 'supposed' to work. You haven't explained anything."

Another eye-roll, the wound-eyes in Leisha's head making a weird noise as they move. "Apologies for not having the time to break down the entirety of the mechanics of paracausal metaphysics. It is, in fact, a teensy bit time consuming to get a grip on. Besides, it seems like you're doing fine for yourself as is."

"I-"

I have to stop. Center myself, take a breath, get maybe halfway behind some glass.

"Dude. I'm so entirely not fine that I came to you, here, now, with literally no weapons and a broken hand. I am not doing alright."

Leisha's face raises an eyebrow, seeming genuinely curious. "You've been at this for what, a few weeks? And you haven't killed yourself. Worst consequences so far seem to be a hand that's asleep, not broken, and, admittedly, some… trauma. That is, frankly, to be expected. If I'd gone to the mill at the level you're at, I wouldn't have made it out alive."

"That's… fair enough, I guess? Having no goddamn frame of reference is part of the problem here. Like the mill- is it the most dangerous thing in town? The most complex? Can I hide from the gorilla-thing in there if I have to?"

A shrug. "No, maybe, and yes. It's up there for complexity, maybe like, top five, but it's not easy to categorize something when exploring it can get you killed. It's not dangerous unless you walk in, so that makes the danger relatively minor, but frankly, I've never seen it as active as what you've described. In terms of how it manifests, it's… complex and simple at the same time. Takes complexity to tie itself to a concept like an office or a corporate role, but it's simple in that all it really wants is what mold always wants- to spread. It's predatory, but the same way that an angler fish is predatory- it doesn't chase, it calls the food to itself."

"And you don't think it's dangerous that one of the things it uses to call food is human corpses?"

"Of fucking course it's dangerous! But the only people really in danger are people who go there. It's far enough out of town that most teens don't bother, and no one else gives a shit."

"So teens have gone missing there?"

Another infuriating shrug, this one more exasperated than the last. "Sure? Probably? Not many, and not for years. Not our job to keep track of that shit."

"Not your- you are literally the only people I've met in town that seem to know anything at all and aren't the goddamn men-in-black feds! And you live someplace full of monsters!"

Leisha's face blinks, and for a moment, the wounds are gone, her eyes returned.

"That's what I said!"

A pulse of the organ-pendant, and she's back under, the wounds returned.

"These aren't werewolves! They don't die with a silver bullet, or need permission to walk into a house, or catch fire in the sun, or only turn into monsters on the full moon. Most of these things get more active the more people know about them. Fuck, most of them get more dangerous to you personally if you know about them. I had to set up wards after I tried a scrying spell on the mill because knowing about it makes more mold grow in my house! I had to start putting out mousetraps when I learned that brownies are real, because that means that they started living in my walls. I don't have the tools or the knowledge, and the act of getting those things puts me in more danger than they're worth."

"Then what fucking guarantee do I have that you'll even help me?" I counter, almost growling around the words. "If you're a small fish that gets by from digging your head into the sand, why shouldn't I just walk the fuck out?"

"Because I might be able to help. And apparently, that's better than anything else you've got going on."

The silence between us sits heavy for a little while.

I take another sip of my drink. The ice has melted a fair bit, which helps muddle the overwhelming tang of alcohol, but also makes it taste bad in a whole new way. Leisha, and Dani through her eyes, wait for me to finish with all the smugness of someone who knows they're right.

And they are.

"Fine. Other than the stats and the Symbionts-"

"Stupid name for a stupid idea, by the way. Can't believe you let things just enter your body like that."

"Other than the Symbionts, I also have these… skills. I can usually gain a bunch of them in-game, and they tend to alter the playstyle pretty majorly, but they don't usually carry over to the real world. The exception is one called Glimpse Beyond- it lets me see past the surface, into the… well, into the meat. I'm pretty sure there are others I could get, but that one's been with me a while. Every now and then, as I push it, I get a message saying it gets stronger."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Dani nods, Leisha's braids clacking a bit. "That's not unexpected. Most gifts manifest in some form of second sight for all practitioners, even if they don't recognize it at first. This fabricated reality you enter, illusion or not, allows you to do things that would kill a normal person, and that lets you see what other skills are possible, but the ability to perceive the unnatural is inherent to having these abilities in the first place. It rarely appears as something so… standardized, though."

"So… everyone that has a weird experience gets that skill?"

"To varying extents. Some might experience it through smell, others through brief visions, though schizophrenia-like hallucinations such as yours aren't uncommon. The point is, the other skills are smaller manifestations- this one is central to how the rest of the stuff works."

There's a twinge there. A glimpse of an idea. I haven't been able to manufacture any skills in the real world, but… maybe I've been going about it wrong. Skills get added to the Fleshling when I add new pieces to them or do something completely novel. And the skill, apparently, is just a sort of… streamlined version of a background, inherent part of the puzzle. Maybe I can shift perspectives on something else? Some other inherent piece of this?

Dani's already talking again, so I put the idea away for now. Potentially useful train of thought.

"Frankly, it's your 'stats' I'm more curious about. You claim that they've changed?"

"Synchronicity got higher after Glimpse Beyond improved."

"...alright. Taking that at face value, it seems like your manifestation has something to do with altering yourself. Most manifestations follow the trend of how they… well, first manifested; yours appearing as a game where you can modify your character likely explains how you're able to modify yourself like you have. May I see the Glove again?"

I go to raise it onto the table again- then pause, going to arrange the menus into a screen once more.

With an irritated "tch" sound, Dani reaches a hand inside of one of Leisha's pockets and pulls out something I recognize- a piece of paper with an eye on it, viciously crossed and mutilated to be blind even as it still turns and twitches. They slap it down on the edge of the table, facing away from us.

"There. No one will see anything now, not unless they have a manifestation of their own."

"Wouldn't doing something like this cause a manifestation? Or be one for someone else?"

They shake their head. "If it was a larger working it might make them receptive, but without a longer communion or a personal connection they're not going to mutate or gain powers just by noticing something. People see weird shit all the time- it's only when you actively try to delve deep that the Bigger weird shit looks back at you. Besides, this is literally intended to push attention away from details, not towards them."

"But I've noticed that people struggle to see my… my Glove, and other things sometimes. Like there's some sort of… veil?"

"I… not quite? It's more like they're on a bit of a… different frequency, I guess. It's a whole thing, I don't have time to explain the concept of layered wavelengths right now. Just show me the damn Glove."

Frowning, I do, lifting it up onto the table even as I make sure no one is staring.

No one is. Even Jonah seems to be struggling to remember what he's doing, his gaze starting to wander from the booth, only to snap back intermittently.

Leisha's hands hold the Glove, turning it this way and that and making a sharp clattering noise as the extended tendons and implements dangle on the table.

"There's no signs of infection, inflammation, no bleeding. You claim to have some sort of blood-based metamorph in you-"

"I do. It's still there."

"Sure. But that doesn't explain all of this. Maybe the lack of bleeding, but… this is amateur shit. More something arthouse than anything that would function as actual biomechanical modifications."

"I'm not exactly a surgeon, asshole."

"Exactly. That's what I mean. You seem to be able to integrate pieces that, normally, would reject each other or fall apart. Based on what you've explained to me, that seems like the most likely way your manifestation exists- modification."

There. Again, a twinge, near the part of my mind that sees things slither under the skin and behind the walls. Like the thought makes something resonate, just a bit.

Perspective.

"So… if I-"

"No."

I blink. "No?"

"No. No spontaneous comprehensions of new abilities, not while I'm here. Or in a bar full of people you can kill. Focus. I think I can give you a bit of energy for your… Glove thing. Enough to get it to retract, at least, thought other than that I'm not sure how much it'll do. Question is what you're willing to pay for it."

There's a lot of things I could say to that. A lot of things I might say to that, some of them pretty damn rude.

Instead, I say the thing I don't want to say.

"What's your price?"

A raised eyebrow. The motion pulls Leisha's eyelid open a little wider, and I can see the places where the wound that is an organ that is an eye has drilled its coral antlers up into her sockets. It glistens, and I think for a moment that I can hear it move.

"Alright. We can play it that way, fine. I have an… issue. Stuff seems to be active in ways I haven't seen before. The mill, as you described it, is worse than before. I need to check on some things, and you, apparently, have a secret hidden blood elemental that can bring you back from the dead, and the ability to put knives in place of your hands. You help us with some research, check out a few locations, and I'll do what I can to fix your erectile concerns."

I snort at that. If only they knew.

I barely need to think about it. If anything, this is helpful to me too, even if it comes at the price of apparently being some weird witch-bitch's meatshield.

"Fine. It's a deal."

Dani's smile doesn't look right on Leisha's face, but it is still more than wide and toothy enough to show off the look of a cat that caught the canary.

"As spoken, so bound.

They reach back into Leisha's pockets, and this time, rather than a piece of paper, they pull out- fuck. Glimpse Beyond gets in the way of figuring out what it materially is- it's shaped like it might be a battery, but all I can see is something like a patchwork snail shell, cradling a rich pink ooze dripping out of its corners. The fact that it's literally wrapped in duct tape doesn't inspire confidence.

"Your Glove is fine. Being linked to your system means that it's feeding off your body, but your body doesn't have the right wavelength or enough energy to power it without help. Without that connection, it would just be rotting, probably, but regular body heat and chemical energy isn't enough to jump-start all the wildly inefficient motors and functions this thing has. Ironically, if it was more complex, more well made, it would need less to remain functional- as is, you've apparently brute forced this thing into working, so it takes more energy while on this wavelength."

They lift the shell-thing over the exposed flesh, grinning at me with someone else's teeth.

"Relax. It probably won't hurt. Probably."

Either they're lying, or they're bad at math. Turns out that either way, it does, in fact, hurt like a bitch.

The ooze dribbles from the duct-taped shells onto my hand, and I immediately see that it's not just a liquid. There are little tadpole-like things in it, and if I squint I can see how they're malformed, like little sperm cells with holes punched out of them. Before I can yank my hand back, they've hit the back of the Glove, oozing easily into the semi-open seams and skinless openings in it- and then I have to stop myself from screaming.

It builds. It get worse. I can feel something alive that is not me, is not under my control, is not a part of me, squirming and wriggling under my meat, and I want to yell, I want to cry, I want to take my other hand and tear the flesh off of the Glove until I clear out the roiling mess of fluids and life and-

The table makes a screeching sound as the Glove retracts, a half-dozen scalpels, syringes and pincers recoiling back into their frame as it winds back in on itself.

The fingers, all seven of them, recoil and twitch and jerk as they reconstitute, hiding and re-integrating the pieces that spooled out while it was powered down. I can feel the way it wakes up, how it places the ways to use itself into my mind, and after its absence, I can feel more. Dani's right, as I've stated myself before- this shouldn't work. Rather than relying on learning over time, proper nerve connections, functioning mechanics, it's been using energy all this time to place knowledge in my head, to allow it to operate on this side of the veil.

And it's awake again.

How much energy does the Bloodling have? How can I refill it?

Questions for later.

I turn to Dani and Leisha, flexing the many-fingered hand so as to make it ripple with the tools contained in it.

"Ok. Where to first?"