“I am dying, why are you the one fucking crying?” the fading voice of the insane girl came to ask.

“I just hate being so weak…” he sniffed. “You don’t deserve this. If I wasn’t weak, I could have saved you.”

“You aren’t weak anymore,” she stated and smiled widely as the light in her purple eyes dimmed. The golden dots slowly stopped rotating. Then they formed slits, seven slits crossing a ring.

Claws dug through the skin covering his ribs. The face of the girl he came to love was just a mask of bone, filling his entire field of vision. “But you are too weak to save her,” the voice of the wolf that hunts humanity mocked him as Thana opened her mouth absurdly wide, three rows of teeth, bone, blood and normal, encapsulated his head.

John awoke in a panic, upper body darting out of the sheets. His body was drenched in sweat from head to toe and he was breathing heavily. ‘Just a nightmare,’ he assured himself, absent-mindedly reaching for his chest reflexively, due to the large amount of sweat there.

He raised his hand again when a sudden pain hit him when he touched it. Pain Tolerance was keeping him from jumping, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t notice it when something hurt. The tips of his fingers were dark from blood.

He whirled around just as something started scratching his left arm. The eyes were the only thing he saw in the dark. The eyes, purple and with an iris like shattered glass, softly glowing with magical power, seven lines crossing a ring around the pupil. The eyes filled with a hatred more natural than breathing.

Thana said nothing, she was just slowly scratching at his arm. Over and over and over again, as she stared. Slowly, ever so slowly, scraping layer and layer of skin off him until he would finally bleed.

“Eliza!” John grabbed Thana by the arms and pinned her to the bed. The commotion awoke Rave and Nia, the former of which had a dirty joke on her lips before hearing that predatory growl out of the goddess of genocide that definitely identified her as not the blood mage they knew. “Come on, wake up!” he shook her naked body.

“Die,” Thana said, slowly raising her hands towards John’s throat. The eyes suddenly struggled between the two stages, as the living extinction event desperately tried to stay in control. Her teeth opened and snapped closed, only Eliza kept her from launching at John and savagely ripping his throat out.

Thana could easily take control when Eliza was physically exerting herself, and it seemed the same was true in reverse. It was the fact that she only acted as slowly as she did that had allowed her to even rip open John’s chest as she had. Any sudden movements, anything like her using her true power, and all that concentration she spent on keeping the blood mage down would be gone.

“Your death, my absolution,” the goddess of genocide threw that caution to the wind and John off herself. Not gently, he was suddenly thrown against the ceiling and then kicked across the room, where he hit another wall and then slid down to the floor. He felt more than a couple of ribs break and was pretty sure one of them punctured his lungs as he got up.

‘Having a regular body sucks,’ he thought as he saw Thana desperately try to head for him, but her feet weren’t moving anymore.

“Let me, my body, this is my body, let me be free, this is my body, not my prison. I have to kill them all, all that humanity is, all of it needs to be ground to dust!” she spewed out, spit flying everywhere as she threw her head around in a desperate attempt to stay in control. When she managed to take another step, she triumphantly grinned wide.

Rave and Nia looked about ready to jump in. “Don’t!” John shouted at them. A stray punch alone could kill them. Not that it made any difference if Eliza was losing control, as it seemed like right now. Was this how it all ended? Naked in his bedroom, squished by a force he couldn’t resist because he had been naively hopeful enough that they could contain her.

“S-stay right there!” Gnome materialized right between them. Her arms stretched out to her sides protectively. She was quivering, rightfully afraid. For all they knew, Thana might have had the capacity to truly kill elementals. That was a possibility John was aware of ever since he had spied True Death on Marath.

The goddess of genocide stalked closer, reached out to Gnome with a raised hand. The movement was slow, yet the stone elemental was frozen in place. It was like a rabbit staring at a snake, sure they were doomed to be bitten if they moved. In the first place, moving away would have meant to get out of her way towards John.

The hand reached Gnome’s head and rested on her face. Fingers curving, the earth spirit’s exterior immediately splintered off, the pain entered John’s spirit, but she stood there defiantly. No matter how much Thana dug into her skull or John mentally screamed at her, his voice failing as his lungs filled with blood, she did not budge.

“STOP!” a sobbing voice rung out of Thana’s own mouth. “I don’t want this, I like these dumbfucks, no, I am happy, why? Why do you have to be inside ME?! Stop trying to kill them. – I won’t stop with them.” The last part was in the wolfish voice of the goddess again.

A large chunk fell out of Gnome’s face and dropped to the floor where it broke down into a pile of dirt. “Please… Eliza!” John pleaded as he coughed up blood.

“Not today,” Thana grinned widely, showing off her perfectly white teeth. A shock went through her arm as she tensed it up to finally crush Gnome’s head completely. The tensing stopped at the wrist. With a frustrated groan, the goddess of genocide tried again, but the result was the same. “Stop struggling! – Leave them the fuck alone! – All are to die. My body, my purpose – Hurt someone I don’t care about – No exceptions, no mercy – You don’t get to decide that – Don’t I?! – NO, YOU FUCKING DON’T!”

The hand around Gnome’s face suddenly opened up; the earth elemental dropped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. “OUT!” Thana demanded. “Get bent over a cornerstone by a syphilis infested leper-kissed asshole!” Eliza returned. It would have been such a funny exchange if John’s life wasn’t on the line here, he was losing HP from the internal bleeding.

Then there was a new kind of expression on Thana’s face. Panic. Never had John thought she was even capable of making that face, for a moment he wasn’t even sure if it was her making it, but as Eliza’s tormented and almost crying face interchanged with hers, it was the only logical conclusion.

The goddess of genocide reached towards John one more time, took half a step forwards, hit her foot against the lying pile of rock elemental and fell forwards. When she lay on the floor, she still tried to crawl towards John as the eyes slowly reverted back to their usual stage. “I hate you,” was the last thing she said before all went back to normal.

Almost all.

____________________________________________________________________

“This is why I need Defensive Teleportation back as soon as possible!” Aclysia announced in an atypically forceful tone. She had been in the kitchen preparing food. On the plus side, she had brought two bowls of goulash that had been simmering for hours already. A pretty good meal to regain their emotional footing.

“I am sorry, it was just so hard… she put up a giant struggle, way more than usual…” Eliza was actually crying over this, tears running out of her eyes as she sent guilty glances over to Gnome, who was quickly patched back together by Undine. One of the bowls went to her, the other to John.

He took it with a thankful nod; he was down to something like a third of his health after two attacks. A third and that would have probably given him the rest. “This isn’t your fault,” he assured her. “In the first place, I really should have kept you over at Rome if security was my highest concern.”

“Ja, but that would’ve been unlike us risky idiots,” Rave stated and gave Eliza a light pat on the head.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” the blood mage screamed, violently swatting the Lightbearer’s hand away. The bowl fell out of her hand. Goulash scattered over the bed she was sitting on, more red stains joining John’s blood on the sheets. When she realized what she had just done, Eliza’s breath became unsteady, she looked terrorized at her own hands. “Not more of this shit,” she begged the world as the tears intensified.

“What is going on?” John asked, putting his own bowl aside again; this clearly took priority. Slowly, to give her ample time to signal him to stop, he came closer and eventually embraced her sitting form.

Her arms went around his waist as she wept in confusion. “I don’t know… I feel like part of her is stuck in me. Not just my fucking body, just actual me!”

“Aclysia, can you show her?” John asked, and the weaponized maid brought her salver over to serve as a mediocre mirror. Wordlessly, Eliza stared at her reflection, one of the dots in her left eye had not been reverted to the dot but was still stuck in the form of a line. “I think that is exactly what is happening,” he broke it to her.

“Fuck,” was all she managed to mutter. “So I am just going to slowly become her?! Is that where this shit is heading?”

“Nah,” Rave said, reaching out to her again and putting her hand on Eliza’s back. The blood mage tensed up, as if she was being touched by something ice cold, but as the techno lover gently rubbed up and down, the sickly pale girl relaxed again. “See, ya aren’t becoming her. She looked afraid of it happening, so ya got it the wrong way around – She is disappearing into ya.”

“Something like that,” John agreed. “If you hold onto what makes you you and don’t let what makes her her overwhelm you, a slow melding of you two is actually perfect.”

Eliza sniffed and looked up to them. She opened her mouth to say something when Nia dropped into the group hug. “You are scary, small and cute, you will be fine,” the emotionless voice carried over.

“This is the only fucking time you get to hug me or call me small, you blonde bimbo babe,” Eliza giggled.

_____________________________________________________________________

John: So, where are we on the whole “Coalition defeating itself from within” thing.

Scarlett: Oh, you know, we are split into three camps right now. There are those that are with Bearings, others that are with Thorne and the rest who are the poor fellows squished in between.

Scarlett: I would say it’s going pretty well.

Scarlett: Why are you asking?

John: Because I got a very interesting letter from a Jeff Bearings to meet him in a restaurant in the Bronx today.

Scarlett: Oh, do tell?

John: Something about a potential alliance and way out for me.

John: Too bad for him he catches me in a very bad mood.

John: And that I already have a secret pact.

Scarlett: 4 days of silence and he is already getting antsy.

Scarlett: Perfect~

Scarlett: Well, I will keep my ears sharp if he tries to come up with any other shenanigans.

John: Hard to notice something if he knows you exist.

Scarlett: He does, but most of his subordinates don’t. They WILL accidentally spill something. Humans never manage to keep their mouths shut.

Scarlett: We have been over this.

John: Fair enough. Anyway, going there now.

John: If it’s a trap, I am initiating phase 3.

John: Maybe a bit early, but it should work out.

Scarlett: If Bearings is moving to end this war already, they are trying to counteract the division. Guess that part of the plan will fall flat.

Scarlett: Not like you really needed it, right?

John: It would have made everything much easier, but we will see.

He put away the phone and stepped on Magoi’s boat. “You know, I had a nice shopping trip planned yesterday,” the High-Fateweaver mused. “I don’t like wars, particularly not if they interfere with my schedule.”

“Sorry, but if all goes well, this is the only time we are going to be reduced to this size of territory,” John apologized. “This shouldn’t happen again in the future.”