John tightened the last knot and then looked at his work with approval before getting up. Leather and metal sat tightly around the pale arms, confining them to their position behind the blood mage’s back. “Didn’t think that our playtime skills would come in handy in a time like this,” he admitted, as he sat down opposite of Eliza on the table.

They were back home. A day had passed since the events at the gravesite, and surprisingly little had happened. Since the Hidden Tradition had been informed about the potential invasion of the Contender in advance, the almost complete destruction of their sacred site had been taken pretty well. As well as the loss of a five-hundred-year-old cultural centre could be taken anyway. Prepared or not, that must have hurt. At least they had managed to get the most venerated ancestors out there.

Nevertheless, once he had explained to the assembly in all detail why it had to happen there and what his reasons had been, they had just forced (well, heavily encouraged) him to do some ceremonial smoking again and sent him off. Nothing else had happened, and with the Thana situation being as it was, John had been in a hurry to get home and calmly deal with this.

And during the entire drive, the goddess of genocide had been a massive pain in their sides. Growling threats, snapping her teeth, trying to grab someone, it was like having a deeply malevolent four-year-old with the power to rip off one’s head around. Needless to say, it was quite straining on the mind and John was very happy that they were in the back of a mobile home. One moment of Eliza wavering in her suppression efforts and they could have had a car crash on their hands in other cases.

Which was why, now that they were back, John had grabbed a bunch of their BDSM gear and bound her arms and legs together. Hadn’t been easy; Thana had been trying to scratch or kick him the entire time. “I am super fucking fine with this,” the blood mage herself announced, looking at the gag that lay unused on the table. It wasn’t the usual ring, but more of a biting leather instead. Her favourite gag would have gotten bent out of shape with almost complete certainty. “I am not complaining if you want to ram your cock up any of my holes right now, you know? Wearing this shit gets me going right along.”

“As much as I would like that, it’s not happening,” John responded and sighed. Binding her up like this had given him a predictable erection. Eliza wasn’t the only one conditioned to BDSM, after all. “We aren’t going to have sex anytime soon. Not even sure if we’ll even sleep in the same bed.”

Eliza was about to protest, but then she must have remembered the white outline of her teeth on the left side of his neck. That he didn’t want her jaw anywhere close to him during the night was a pretty understandable stance to have. With how cuddly close the bed situation always was, no sane person would risk getting permanent scars like that. Neither the gag nor the bindings were something John saw as a proper guarantee, not with the crazy level of power both Eliza and Thana had. When the blood mage was asleep was the easiest time for Thana to get control as well.

“That SUCKS,” Eliza cried, jumping agitatedly in her seat, as best she could. “Why aren’t we fucking anymore though?!” That was the part she evidently didn’t understand.

“Because I don’t trust Thana not to bite, grow teeth in your vagina or just straight up crush my dick,” John pointed out what he thought to be obvious. That was just a level of tightness that he didn’t want to experience. The mental images alone were horrible and his dick was the last place he wanted a permanent wound on. “So, we’re doing none of that until I am sure of it.”

Without a way to deny any of those possibilities, the blood mage mumbled a series of curses to herself. John grabbed a package of gummy bears that they had left on the table a few days ago. Sure, they were a bit stale by now, but they weren’t exactly bad. He threw one of them at Eliza’s mouth to calm her down a little bit. Food tended to do that.

Although she successfully caught the tasty treat in her maw, she spat it right back out before she had the chance to chomp down a single time. “What the fuck?!” she cried out, aimed at the person that was right where she was.

“You will have no joy, parasite,” Thana growled back and John leaned on the table. It was quite fascinating to watch that lovely face switch between different expressions in quick succession. As were the dots and lines in her eyes going back and forth. “Pleasure, taste, whatever I can deny you, I will.”

“Do you need to be such a total petty bitch?!”

“Your insults don’t interest me.”

“Well, how about you stop being such a massive cockwaffle and I won’t have to throw them into your ass of a face?”

“My interest in talking to you has ceased. Suffer and disappear.” That was all Thana had to say before leaving Eliza to rage in her seat. John wondered how to deal with this. Normally he would go over to hug her, but he wasn’t really looking to add to his scar collection. Then he thought of a solution.

Although the solution also moved about herself by the time he got it. From under the table, a blue mass began moving up, encapsulating Eliza until Undine shaped herself out of it, embracing the blood mage tightly. Those two had gotten along pretty well for most of their relationship, a Lorylim shaped bump aside, and Undine wouldn’t be hurt should Thana snap at her. One, because it was a bit harder to hurt a girl made from slime in a way that counted as a wound, and two, because Undine wasn’t human, so that debuff wouldn’t even affect her.

Whether Eliza just managed to maintain control or the goddess of genocide came to the same realization and thus didn’t even bother, the pretty little psycho calmed down without any further problems. “Okay,” she grumbled, “okay, fuck it, I think I got it. No sleeping in the bed, no sex, no eating either, yeah, this shit is going to get annoying really quick.”

“That means the two of us can concentrate on rehabilitating for a little while,” John pointed out, taking off his glasses and pulling the package of contact lenses from his inventory. “Either Thana will stop throwing her little tantrum and make it possible for us to have a working relationship or you’re going to learn how to stay in control again.”

“Or I will learn how to finally overtake her,” Thana answered instead, in her typical wolven tone.

“Maybe, but then I am dead, so I would like to discount that possibility,” the Gamer said nonchalantly.

“…I HATE how little you fear me, irritating human,” the goddess of genocide snapped her teeth in his direction, invoking a light sting in his shoulder. The way that had been fixed did not bode well for the future. Since total suppression was out, it was entirely possible that Thana would eventually realize how she could prevent Eliza from helping out.

John couldn’t help but chuckle nervously, blinking as the second contact lens was put in place. “Honestly?” he put a hand on the marked part of his shoulder. “I am absolutely scared of you, Thana. One mistake with you could be the end of someone I know or myself. Aside from that, you’re one of the few things that can still cause me to feel genuine pain. The thing is just that I made the decision to keep you here because I needed you as a tool…,” the goddess pulling back her lips to an animalistic growl made him stop for a moment, “…Something that literally already came back to bite me.” He lowered his hand to the table. “So, I might be afraid, but I am the reason for this situation, I won’t be frozen by it.” After a moment of thought he asked, “Eliza?”

The hateful expression lightened up to his lover perking up at the sound of her name. “Yes?”

“The more you two meld, the more human she gets, right?”

“That’s what this cumnoodle of a cunt told me, yeah,” the blood mage confirmed.

“Hm… then we make a game of it,” John stated his intention outright and placed another gummy bear on the table in front of Eliza. “I want you to look at it like this, Eliza: I am punishing you for being a naughty little girl.” The pretty little psycho seemed a bit confused. “You can’t sleep in my bed, because I don’ think you really value the honour of sleeping in the same room as me anymore. You don’t get to have sex with anyone, not even touching yourself in ANY way, because you have been rewarded too much recently. You don’t even get to eat anymore because Aclysia will be really pissed at you. You get to do none of this until…” he pulled his hand back and just let the gummy bear sit there. “…Thana actually acts like the failure of a goddess of genocide she is and accepts that she has human urges like the rest of us. Including wanting to sleep in a warm bed with others, feeling pleasure and eating tasty things.”

“Fuck you,” Thana slowly answered. That she even came out to cuss at him like that, John took it as a sign that he was onto something here.

“Understand, Eliza? Thana isn’t keeping you from anything, I am forcing you to teach her a lesson,” he kept addressing the woman he loved rather than the thing she shared a body with.

“Al-fucking-right,” the blood mage smirked, evidently much happier with this line of thought. Undine flowed off her and made her way to the oversized bathroom, presumably to relax in the hot water. Something John would soon join her in.

As for this new arrangement, the Gamer had no idea how effective it would be. It might be that this was a critical point in their melding. A point where Thana’s inhumanity was still at a point where she only cared about hurting everyone and had the slightest windows to do so. Alternatively, it could be that it was only going to get worse and the next step gave her even more influence, made Touch of Humanity’s Bane more potent, while pulling none of her murderous intentions.

If the latter was the case, teaching her that at least John and his group were people she profited from agreeing with every now and again was absolutely useless. She was going to take over more and more and eventually rip them all apart, the doomsday that he could have pushed off until a new avatar of genocide formed happening in a few months rather than decades or millennia.

He would have to put her under Romulus surveillance before it got that bad. If he even got the chance to. The uncertainty of all of this was awful. Like gathering speed by driving down a slope, seeing the ramp in the distance, but having no idea if there was something to catch him or an ocean of concrete waiting for him at the landing spot.

John overall felt pretty great, however. He was still riding the high of being rid of Sigmund.

“There we go then,” he said and looked straight into the shattered eyes across from him. “You can stay inside my Eliza, Thana, but I would much rather you accepted how life is going and finally make peace with it.” As just analysed, he had absolutely no idea if he wasn’t spouting a load of crap there. If Thana believed he was telling the truth or if he could at least make her doubt herself a little bit, that was already going to help though. “You would do everyone a favour, including yourself, if you accepted that life is more than murdering every last man, woman and child out there.”

He didn’t get an answer, although the shifting dots and lines made it clear that she had listened. Through some effort and being very mindful where he put his hands, he placed Eliza on the couch. She could have jumped there with her bound together legs, but he spared her looking that silly. Next he put on some sitcom she liked so she wouldn’t be bored.

“Now that all of that is out of the way… I have to call everyone and tell them what happened,” he announced after having made sure she was as comfortable as someone immobilized and under quarantine could be.

Eliza visibly shrunk together in her seat, knowing that Aclysia was on that list. Nobody would be amused to hear that John had gotten another scar, but none would take it as badly as the weaponized maid. His well being was that woman’s entire life goal, after all. Maybe the good news that came along would somewhat reduce the impact?