Diary of a Teenaged Mimic

Dear Diary,

”Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.”

- Erik Erikson

Yeah. This one hit me when I read it. I guess me being able to Revive people puts a whole different spin on what death means. But, like, my first Psychopomp gig showed me that sometimes Death is a release. When the body’s just too beat up to go on, and no amount of Healing is gonna fix it, stepping on to the next thing is just kind of natural. There’s lots of things that could cause that, I guess, not just old age. Disease. Maybe dysphoria, if instead of helping resolve it everybody just forces the person into that dysphoric situation more?

I know I was mad as fuck when my mom died. Maybe a little at her doctors, or the hospital, or even myself, but mostly, at the time, I got mad at her. She quit on me. She was finally still and stationary enough for me to spend some quality time with her, and she went and quit on me. Yeah, I was an absolute selfish little shit, but then that’s where all kids start out. Suck tit, be held, make shit. Yell, if those things aren’t done. I guess maybe if my mom made a mistake it was not letting me know how much of her working three jobs and never being home was for me, since at the time it felt like she was avoiding me. But if looking back now I can see how little kid greedy I was for just the last few dregs of my mom’s attention, I also see how she fought, how she hammered the bottom of that bottle trying to give me just a little more. Until the bottle broke, and she was gone.

My mom died in agony. For me. It took me a long time to see that. Shit, it took me dying to see that. At the time, all I saw was the agony, and holy fuck did that ever make me afraid to go out and live life. But, y’know, dying has a way of making you stop fearing death. I mean, I don’t want to die. Not only do I have a lot of really fun shit to do, not to mention people to do, I’ve enjoyed life here. Even if something happened that separated me from Saffron and Marie and Menace and Maze and everyone else I’ve come to love and care for, I’d still want to live. My fuckin’ brain chemistry might tell me I want to die, but when I’m thinking rationally about it, not only would dying preclude ever getting back to Saffron, I’ve been slowly accumulating more good things since I got here, and there’s no reason to think I wouldn’t keep doing that.

So yesterday we finally Liberated Calverton. Almost wound up letting the architect of a lot of the Undead domination of the city get away, or at least get off a spoilsport Smite that would have destroyed the Souls of a bunch of kids. Artemis put paid to that and to the Master Lich herself, although given the specific situation I’m gonna have to do some things I really don’t like. But I am a woman of my word. I think my Domains are pushing me on this one, too, but I can’t actually disagree with them on this. I just hope she understands, or things are gonna get ugly. Uglier.

But that was for later. I stood there feeling the sun slip over the horizon, sunset sweeping away the last of the interference that handicapped the Liches from controlling their minions, not to mention making Co-Location and Translocation actively painful and draining. Send them in.

At night?

”She-bear? Lights?”

A moment later moonlight bathed the City; not as bright as day, but clearly enough to keep the Undead from ambushing our troops. Be careful, though. I want to save as many as we can.

From the shoreline and the bridges I heard my Kitten roaring out, ”Army of the Alliance! Artemis, She-Bear, Goddess of the Moon, has struck down the Master Lich and lights our way! The Undead Horde is broken! Let us scour Calverton clean! Return all you subdue to Us! People of Calverton, your friends, your family, your fellow Calvertonites may yet be saved!” She paused, took a deep breath, and loud enough to shake the stones, shouted, ”ADVANCE!”

I hadn’t really thought about what the big sailboats with siege weapons advancing meant, or realized that they’d brought most of the Longboats with them. Sunset swept a lot of the Miasma away, and with all the Liches and Death Knights gone, not to mention most of the Zombies either gone or disabled, it wasn’t reestablishing itself like it had previously. When our troops poured across the bridges, leapt from their beaching longboats to storm across the no-man’s-land I’d smashed through the center of the City, along with the ground itself shaking to the tread of nearly twenty thousand boots, I felt them pushing the Miasma back as they charged forward, cheering.

Sister Siobhan? Marie? I need you.

A moment later both of my beautiful platinum blonde babes stood over me where I’d collapsed to one knee at some point. ”Marie? Please deliver that bitch,” I nodded to the former Master of Calverton, ”to Hades personally. If anybody deserves Tartarus, it’s a bitch who would ash kids as a fuck you.” She made a face. ”I’m sorry, Mittens. I’m too beat to do it myself, and I don’t want her weaseling out.” She nodded, and for the first time I saw her drive her claws right through a Soul before she stepped away, dragging the Soul with her.

”Tabitha?” Sister Siobhan lay a cool, gentle hand on my forehead, and the feeling of mint flowed through me. When it finished, I smiled and looked up at her. ”Thanks, Sister. Smite please?” With a little moue, she did as asked, and if that felt a little like having a jalapeno dragged across each of my sore spots, when she finished I felt almost like I wasn’t about to fall apart. Still exhausted, but no longer actively injured. I smiled up at her again, at which point she smirked and said, ”not that I’m complaining, but,” she looked around the battlefield, with its still smoking craters and general wrecked as shit urban landscape. ”This doesn’t really live up to the standards of our first date that you keep insisting wasn’t one.”

I laughed at that, the sound more than a little bit of a wheeze with how tired I was. ”Yeah, you’ve got that on the brain, don’t you? Keep poking at me about it and I’m gonna wind up too worked up to be gentle with you.”

She blushed just a little, putting a hand on my shoulder for support. ”Would it be too forward of me to say that I hope so?”

I used her hand to pull myself up, then pulled her into a hug. ”Forward? Definitely. Too forward? I dunno, I like forward. But aren’t you scared?”

”Oh, I’m terrified. But I thought you liked that?”

I really couldn’t lie about it, what with my knees going weak when she admitted it. ”Yeah, but I don’t really like liking that, if you see what I mean.”

She tilted her head. ”It’s what you are, though. You’re powerful beyond Mortal ken. Anyone who isn’t terrified of you isn’t paying attention.”

I sighed. ”Even the kids?”

She smiled up at me where I leaned on her shoulders. ”Kids love their parents being big, terrifying monsters, so long as they know those big terrifying monsters love them and would never hurt them.”

I grunted, not really having a response to that. ”Yeah, well. At any rate, not why I called you here. Okay, maybe the kids part.” I nodded to the Undead kids still lying where the Master had left them. Mittens? When you’re done with delivering her to Hades I need you to bring the Maenads and Karen. ”You, my lovely Sister, have a Trial to perform. Were you listening when I talked with Karen?”

”Not really. What must I do, my Goddess?”

My hindbrain grabbed control of my mouth long enough to say, ”scream my name when you come for me.” Then I managed to exert some conscious control and, after a quick Stabilizing forehead kiss to reboot Sister Siobhan, said, ”show Karen how to Smite, Revive, and if need be Cure and Heal the Undead. Start with the kids here. You’ll need a psychopomp to pull their Souls out before you Smite them; if you Smite a body with a Soul still in it they both burn. But the Maenads can do that. Just need you for the Smite and the Revive. Or, Karen, really. Mittens?”

Marie stepped forward, still glittering where I’d boosted her before sunrise, twelve hours and an eternity ago. ”Vlickies?”

”Can you do a Mana Network with ice pop here and Mana for Karen?”

Sister Siobhan shrugged to jostle me. ”I can put together a Mana Network. I did so on the Black Dragon. And I’ll include Marie, since she’ll be acting as our psychopomp. Also, Ice Pop?”

”Y’r cool, and sweet, and I wanna put you in my mouth and suck on you.” I realized right then that with nothing left in the tank, my brain had definitely decided to completely shut down anything resembling filters. I looked around, because with Marie there that meant my new Novice Priestess would be there too.

I caught sight of her, and a sudden spike of awake to the sexy bits woke me up for an instant. Somehow my genius sociopath artist son had taken my ’I appreciate you painting my personal world in every color of horny, but I get the joke and I’m laughing so maybe tone it down a little’ as ’turn the knob to eleven, break it off, craft an entirely new knob where ’eleven’ is ’one’, then turn that new knob so high it breaks, because I never want sufficient blood flow diverted from my lady parts to power my brain again’. My first coherent thought was ’wedding dress’, because it was pure white, and definitely had all the really intricate frilly sewed on bits you expected from old school fancy wedding dresses. Not to mention a veil and headdress that hinted at being a train. But holy shit he had somehow made a pure white wedding dress imply ’pulling trains’ more than ’demure offering to the altar of marriage’. The veil and train were a great example. The veil itself? Just a single gauzy layer that hinted at hiding while it hid nothing. It somehow screamed, ’I am covering my face like a good, demure woman ought to HAHAHA FUCK YOU LOOK AT ME!’ It concealed and revealed, both at the same time. The not-really-train reached to her calves, but while I watched a light gust lifted it fluttering, out of the way. Then she knelt before me and it pooled outward around her calves and my brain fritzed some more.

A burst of Worship washed over me, and Karen said, ”Goddess, I know the Shape for Mana Network, and... I would do as much of the work of my Trials myself as possible. Please, allow me?”

I blinked as the dizziness of power flowing through me washed away the dizziness of exhaustion. Then I reached down and, with two fingers beneath her chin, lifted Karen to her feet. I stumbled a little as I did, because I had absolutely pushed nearly to the point of collapsing utterly. I probably would have gone down for the count if I hadn’t spent the prior night soaking up Worship until I literally glowed. ”Good. Good choice. Good girl. Good... god that dress is hot.”

I think your adopted son is trying to torment you with the aspects of yourself which cause you guilt.

Ha! Joke’s on him, Kitten’s been attacking my lingering neopuritan guilt like it was grime and she’s a Mr. Clean eraser.

Just so. Will you be visiting soon?

Probably tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. Got... things to do.

I think you mean Priestesses?

DAD! I snorted out a laugh. Thanks, Dad. You’re the best.

I know.

”Yeah. Anyway. Go ahead. Set up the Network. Sister Siobhan will show you how to do everything but the Soul extraction. Marie will handle that.”

Karen blinked at me. ”May... may I do that as well?”

I took a firm grip on myself, as well as using those two fingers to do the same to her chin. ”Novice Karen, should you perish prematurely in my service, I will gladly Revive you should you wish it, but asking to be slain and Revived as a Demigoddess is a little much, don’t you think?”

”Oh! Forgive m...” She tried to drop to her knees again, only to be brought up short by my grip on her chin.

”No apologies. You wanted to do for yourself. Admirable. But you might want to know what you’re asking for before you ask for it.” She nodded. ”Just sayin’.” I let go, and she stumbled back. ”Get to Networking.”

As she Shaped Mana into a Network containing her, Marie, and Sister Siobhan, Marie stepped next to me, stomped down to lift one end of a piece of rubble, and thumped the thing down sideways. Then she picked me up and set me on it. Hard as fuck, especially with my no padding having ass, but she’d set my ass about four feet in the air, with something to lean back on, so I did. Karen’s Worship had pulled me back from the absolute raggedy edge, but not so far that I felt like I needed to intervene or lead the troops or anything similar. We had nearly twenty thousand shit kickers hunting down maybe a couple thousand remaining Undead, and if there were any of the really tough ones remaining, my money was on them lying face down and waiting to get dragged back to Karen.

Karen would not be done in anything like a reasonable amount of time if she had to Revive even a large fraction of thirty five thousand walking corpses. Sister?

Yes, Goddess? I got a little burst of energy from her as she smiled. Not at me, but for me.

Tell Canta we need Healers. Get Doc Glass if you can. Anybody you can.

A few moments later, the man himself was there. Well, the God himself. He got a bit of a booger look when he had to look up to me sitting on my impromptu throne, but I just kept slouching and nodded to him. ”Thanks for coming.”

”You would have my people give of themselves for... these?” He looked around at the corpses surrounding us like they were an equal weight of runny dogshit.

If I’d been one whit less tired, I’d have tickled his prostate with a Mana Blade. ”I’m gonna give you a second chance here. To look real close at those bodies. Real, real close.” I blinked, once, slowly, as he looked around and went pale. ”Yeah. You gonna tell me any of them decided to become Undead? Or that even if maybe some of them did, it was anything more than a scream of rage at a world that had fucked them over so thoroughly before they even got to live a fuckin’ life?”

”I... But I... They...” He kinda deflated. ”No. No, I cannot.”

”So yeah. In the spirit of the second chance I’m giving you, where instead of gutting you like a fuckin’ trout for looking at kids who just wanted a fuckin’ chance at life like so much sewage, I’m offering you a chance to maybe make things right? You can give these kids the chance that got stolen from them by a sloppy asshole with a bow.”

He nodded. ”But... how am I to get them here?”

I smiled as Maenads started appearing, hands intertwined with each other and with Marie. ”Oh, that’s the easy part. You show Sister Siobhan, she shows Marie, and Marie goes and gets them for you. You can handle that, right Murder Mittens?”

The Maenads looked maybe a little miffed at me calling Marie that, but she just slinked her way over, Glowing Midnight’s boots letting her loom over her sisters and positively tower over Canta. ”Yes.”

He nodded. ”I... even my Mana may not be sufficient. But what I have, I will gladly give for ones such as these.” He motioned to the kids.

I waved him forward, then leaned down to put my mouth next to his ear. ”You’ll give what you’ve got for as many as need it, because while I like you, and Sister Siobhan loves you,” I slipped off my seat and only him grabbing at me kept me from hitting the floor. ”with very few exceptions my wife looks at Gods kind of like you looked at them. Here’s your chance to prove her wrong.”

”But... I cannot save all of them. Even were I to spend myself to nothing, I could not.”

I nodded. ”Yeah. I get that. But you see, you’re not alone. Artemis!”

The she-bear disappeared, and Artemis knelt next to me. ”Yes, Mistress.” Tears leaked from her eyes, but I’m not sure anyone else saw.

”You got High Priestesses who can Revive, right?” She nodded. ”Let Marie know where. Tell them they need to get their asses down here and help out.”

”As you wish, Mistress.”

”Marie?” She lifted me out of Canta’s arms and set me back on my impromptu throne. Then stood there waiting. ”Get D’s High Priestesses who can Revive down here too?”

She rolled her eyes, almost like I’d told her to do something she’d already been doing, because I’m an idiot. ”Yes.” Then she brought one claw down on the stone next to my thigh, chipping a little bit out of it. ”Sit. Stay.”

”Yes, mommy.”

I watched almost everyone in sight turn with expressions of confusion melting into horror as my Murder Mittens lost her shit laughing for a solid thirty seconds. Then she leaned in, kissed me, and stepped away. I looked over at Canta. ”You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

He sighed. ”I... may be able to save a few more if I am here, in the flesh, to support my Clergy.”

I nodded to him and smiled. ”That’s the spirit. My man.” I held out a fist to him, but he didn’t seem to get it. Instead he just shook his head, turned, and walked over to where Marie had delivered another white robed figure to one of her sisters. ”Artemis?”

Without moving, she said, ”yes, Mistress.”

”You know what comes next.” She nodded. ”And?”

”I am obedient to your will, Mistress.” I waited, watching as yellow robed Priestesses arrived. ”Only...”

”Go on.”

She bowed forward until her forehead touched the ground beneath my feet. ”I would ask that my fate be delayed until these are made whole.”

”And the rest?”

Her head jerked, almost a nod. ”And the rest, Mistress.”

I slipped the hair fine tentacles out of her. ”And now?”

She looked up at me, fighting against the Hope in her eyes. ”Am... am I... are you to be merciful?”

I blinked, slowly, shaking my head. ”I’m not merciful. I’m cruel. I get off on it.” I leaned forward. ”Even if I’m trying to do better.” I shook my head again. ”But even then, I’m a woman of my word. Sometimes, when you’ve been pushed as low as I have now and then, it’s all you’ve got left.”

”I... I understand.”

”And?”

”I am obedient to your will, Mistress.”

I nodded. ”I’m cruel. But I’m trying to do better. I’m hard, even when I try to be soft. But...”

”But?”

I nodded to the first few kids walking towards us on unsteady feet. ”You did what you did for them.”

”Yes.”

”To save them.” She nodded. ”Well. You at least deserve to see them all safe then.”

Artemis scooched around to put her back to me, but I realized immediately that she hadn’t intended that. Instead, she’d moved so she could see the kids as they stood and approached us. As they reached her, touched her, they stood straighter, seemed to breathe easier. A few of them reached up to touch my boots where they dangled off the edge of my seat, and the same thing happened with them. Not as much, maybe. But I tried, shaping little Heals and Cures and Stabilizes to maybe put a little of what I had someplace it might do a bit of fuckin’ good.

Then the weirdest fuckin’ thing happened. Worship flowed into me. First a stream, then a river, then a flood.

From Artemis.

We sat there like that, surrounded first by kids, then by a growing crowd of adults surrounding them. Without thinking about it, my gaze tracked Karen as she moved first from kid to kid, then once all the kids were upright, from body to body. Not all of the others stood. Some of them Marie shook her head, and Karen shaped a Cure, then a Smite, purifying then ashing the body just in case. By dawn her entire outfit had gone sheer from sweat, showing some creatively supportive undergarments beneath the outer film of white. I’d never seen a cupless bra that looked comfy before. As false dawn colored the sky, Saffron slipped under my arm. ”Our son outdid himself, didn’t he?”

”I’d say he was a kinky fucker, but we both know damn well he doesn’t give a shit about things like that.”

She snickered. ”Oh, he does, but only in as much as he can use his art to, as you would say, fuck with you.”

I snorted. ”What the fuck did I do to him?” She looked up at me, perfect ’Really, Diaz?’ look on her face. ”Okay, yeah, fine, I’ve made him curb the worst of his excesses.” We watched a little more. ”I guess I can’t complain that the worst he does in retaliation is maybe shut my brain down a little.” Then the sun rose. As the light hit her, Karen rose into the air, arms spread, her dress and every inch of her body fuckin’ sparkling like a stripper who’d gone overboard with the glitter. I mean, kinda appropriate, what with the whole stripperific wedding gown thing she had going on. Then whatever had gripped her let her go, and she descended back to her feet, sweat gone, hair and... makeup? Maybe she had makeup on? I have no fuckin’ clue. But she was absolutely picture perfect, where moments before she’d looked like she’d finished pulling a seven horse hitch across the whole fuckin’ Alliance. ”Okay, maybe a lot. Did I do that?”

Saffron chuckled. ”As I said, he outdid himself. Only indirectly. It’s one of the two properties of the dress he’s most proud of.”

”What, it gets dirty enough it cleans itself?”

She Grinned up at me and said, ”oh, no. At Dawn and Dusk your Highest Priestess will be refreshed by the power of her Goddess, so long as she wears her Holy Garb.” I must have looked confused, because she leaned up to put her mouth next to my ear and breathed out, ”so you can leave her delightfully wrecked for hours at a time.”

I groaned, shaking my head. ”I’m afraid to ask what the other property he’s so proud of is. The glitter?” She nodded, and I couldn’t help it. ”Dafuq? How does glitter compare to that?”

”It’s glass, love.”

”Glass.”

”Well, something very like.”

I shook my head in disbelief. ”Isn’t she gonna wind up getting kinda all cut up by that?”

She snickered more. ”Beside the fact that at Dawn and Dusk any such minor wounds will be erased as if they’d never been? What our son is so proud of is that none of it will harm your faithful. Or any who adhere to your Values.”

I stared while Karen kept moving across the battlefield, no longer glittering with sweat, now glittering with glass. Sharp glass. ”Fuckin’ morally aware built in glass weaponry?”

”What will you do to him if it doesn’t work?”

”Shove the entire outfit up his ass and pull it out his mouth before stuffing it up his nose.”

”So the odds of it working exactly as he says are?”

I sighed, shaking my head. ”Fuck, the first time some asshole tries to Revel with her and he’s not... like... fuck, I dunno, in my good graces, she’s gonna fuckin’ skin him.”

Saffron just snuggled into my side. ”Oh. No. Someone who denies others Agency, who unrepentantly judges others by their origins rather than actions, someone who will not allow others to repent for their own mistakes...”

”Yeah, but the first sanctimonious racist rapist who lays hands on her is gonna wind up getting blood all over her... dress...” I facepalmed. ”That’s why the self cleaning.”

Since dawn broke, I’d been feeling more and more Worship pouring in, as troops clearing the city dragged or carried more Undead toward us to be restored. Between that and the constant stream pouring in from Artemis, I thought I’d even started glowing a little bit again. I looked down at where she knelt, surrounded by a pile of kids, and said, ”You ready?”

Gently, so as not to hurt any of them, she rose, dislodging them as she did. She turned just as carefully, eyes downcast. ”Yes, Mistress.”

I reached out, cupped her cheek in my hand, and stepped us to the endless, undulating plain of tentacles. ”You could have run.”

She shook her head. ”I failed. You gave me a simple instruction, and I failed.”

”You saved those kids.”

”By slaying a living person. You told me, if I did that, I would die. Painfully. And you are a woman... a Goddess of her word.”

”I am.”

She shuddered. ”May I make a request?”

I shrugged. ”Can’t say I’ll grant it, but ask.”

She looked me in the eye. ”Do not tell them. Not the children today. Not the children my brother and I have watched these last weeks. Not your children. Not... not any of them. Let them... tell them... please, let them think I died defending them?”

I lifted one finger, touched the tears beading in her eyes, and they streamed down. I pulled my hand back, slipping that finger into my mouth, savoring the salt. ”But... you did.” She blinked. ”If you can’t, you kill it, and I kill you, painfully. Because giving your life to protect kids is what you should have done all along.”

She nodded, not sobbing, but with tears streaming down her face. ”Protect them? In my absence?”

I smiled at her. ”Why would I stop just because you’re gone? Do you think I did it to make you guilty? Do you think I thought about you at all as I did?” She shook her head. ”Damn right. Did you think about me when you did what you did?”

She opened her mouth, closed it. Shook her head once, as if arguing with herself. Then she spoke, words leaking out of her. ”I... did. Not seeking your approval. But knowing that my actions meant my end. That I would never again Revel next to my brother. That I would never again feel the weight of children resting against me, atop me. That I would never see another sunrise.” She smiled at me through her tears. ”Thank you for that.”

I realized just then that the Worship pouring in from her hadn’t slacked. If anything it had picked up. ”I’m about to kill you.”

”Yes.”

”Painfully.”

”Yes.”

”And you’re Worshipping me. And it doesn’t taste like fear.”

She shook her head, a rueful smile on her lips. ”No. It’s not. I... you are everything I should have been. Everything I could be. You will take my life, my power, my Domains. I... have listened to you, when you thought I did not, when you thought I could not. You feel guilt over the power you take by right of conquest.” When I shrugged, she said, ”so... I give you mine. Call it a gift. Call it inheritance. Call it what you will, but I give it freely. Just... please never stop guarding them.”

I nodded. ”You ready?”

She nodded. I slipped one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, lifting her and stepping her to Mimic’s maw. I bent a single tentacle down over the maw, flat gripping surface barely wider than her back, and lay her down on it. I hovered next to her, keeping one hand behind her back, then slipping it up to cup the back of her head. She looked up at me. ”Slay me, then drop me into your maw?”

I shrugged. ”I ask a final time. Are you ready to die?” She nodded. ”Why are you dying?”

”Because I am obedient to your will, and you have stated it must be so.”

I shook my head, once, and asked again. ”Why?”

Her tears started again. ”Because... because... Everything I did. My arrogance. My cowardice. My decadent abuse of my power. Of the power given to me to protect those who could not protect themselves. I did all that. For millennia. I... I proved myself, time and again, to be utterly unworthy of my Divinity. To be unworthy of even the life of a Mortal. When you faced me, bested me in my place of power on my High Holy Day, risking yourself to stand between me and the spiteful murder of a single child, I should have known. I should have realized. But instead I whined to my brother, who spewed hatred and plague across Atlantis. So... so many suffered. So many still do, because of my pride, my petty abuse of power.”

Still crying, she continued, ”When... when you gave me a chance at redemption... I failed. The first time danger threatened a child, I lashed out. I destroyed those who would hurt them, knowing it would mean my end.”

”So why are you dying now?”

”Because, after all those millennia, after countless wrongdoings? I deserve it.”

I looked into her eyes. ”Are you ready?”

She nodded. Bit her lip. ”Will it...”

I shoved a Mana Blade into her chest. Not a big one. Not a long one. Just big enough, just long enough, to stop her immortal heart from beating. My hand clamped down on her neck, and she gasped. Shuddered. ”Does it hurt?”

”Yes,” she whimpered.

I nodded, then ran that same tiny Mana Blade across her belly. Small tentacles reached in, pulled, spread her guts through the air. She screamed each time another foot of intestine pulled free. Eventually they stopped coming out. I reached in, explored her belly from the inside, confirming that nothing remained to remove. She cried and squealed as I did. I reached up and laid my bloody hand on her cheek. ”Do you deserve this?”

She sobbed out, ”yes.”

”You let women. Children. Innocents. Die.” She jerked out a nod. ”Be raped.” She bit her own lip through and nodded. ”Be,” I squeezed one end of her intestines and yanked. ”Tortured.” She wept, nodding. ”Take a deep breath.”

She did. ”Any last words?”

”Please, Goddess. Protect them.”

I nodded. ”Of course. You may feel like you can’t breathe.” I reached in, working on instinct, and ripped a few nerves free. ”That’s because you can’t. It hurts, doesn’t it?” Her head nodded convulsively. ”This is agonizing, isn’t it?” Another nod. ”You still think you deserve this?” Another.

My great tentacles reached over us, weaving Mana. ”You can’t die like this though. Millions still Worship you. That would keep you alive... forever, probably. Wouldn’t it?” She just blinked. ”But I’m not... I’m trying not to be that cruel. I’m trying to be better. But I said you’d die painfully, and I’m a woman of my word.” My tentacles shaped... something. Not a Mana Ward. Not a Miasma Ward. But a Ward that blocked every connection from her Worshippers to her. That Worship flowed across the Ward, across my tentacles. Into them, flowing as cleanly and refreshingly as the Worship she’d still never stopped pouring into me.

”I’m going to paralyze you now.” Then I did. ”I’m not proud that I can steal away your ability to move without taking your ability to feel pain, but I can. I don’t even really understand how it all works. But it’s who and what I am. Terror Incarnate. Walking Ragnarok. Twilight of the Gods.” A single chuckle echoed from the maw. ”Twilight. Do you think you’ll make it to then? You’re old. Powerful. As old and powerful as the Moon herself. You’re going to die helpless, in agony. Should you die alone?”

Tears streamed from her eyes at that, and I leaned over to her ear. ”Shh... I’m not that cruel. Besides, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to make myself watch. Make myself see what I’ve done. You didn’t even bother to do that, did you?”

A Goddess takes a long fuckin time to die. I paralyzed her not long before the sun rose overhead. I moved around, shifted her until I could sit tailor fashion with her head in my lap. I held her, tentacles cradling her body, idly twisting her guts into fanciful shapes, thumbs wiping the tears from her eyes so I could stare down into them and watch. She died slow. As slow and painful as I could possibly make it. She died hard. As hard as anyone she’d ever tormented, as hard as anyone she’d ever left to die at the whims of her brothers, her father. I sat with her as she died.

Not once did that flow of Worship stop.

As the sun slipped below the horizon, it stuttered. I leaned down, reaching inside myself, inside her, to squeeze that flow down to the barest trickle, to feel how much remained. ”I’m so proud of you, she-Bear. So proud. It’s sunset. You’ve lasted all day. Not much longer now. Not much longer, but harder.”

I reached a hand down and slipped a finger, two, three, around her sternum and pulled. I didn’t rip, or tear. I kept a steady pressure up as I rationed her remaining Mana, letting it slip inside me slowly, savoring every bit of her passion, her pain. I felt her Soul, her Mind screaming, and I ran sharp edged tentacles under the exposed edges of her skin, gripped them, and pulled. Again, slowly. Sensually. Excruciatingly.

As the rationed trickle of Worship trailed off, I slipped out from under her, stood beside her once more, her head cradled in my arm. ”So appropriate, that a Moon Goddess should rise at Moonrise, is it not?” I’d meant to squeeze the last of her out right then, but some part of her that wasn’t flesh or blood or bone heaved, and all that remained of her washed into me, the final gift of a dying penitent. I smiled, slid my filth covered hand across her face to close her eyes, then laid it on her chest as I leaned over to whisper a single word into her ear.

”Revive.”