Bioshifter

"It's about time you finally came over again," Brendan grumbles, glowering half-heartedly down at me as I walk through his front door, Fartbuns happily bouncing behind him.

It's Friday afternoon already. Time seems to have flown by. After learning the soul sight spell and royally infuriating Sindri, the rest of the day was thankfully not all that eventful. I pretty much just spent it sitting on Kagiso's head and learning the dentron language some more, stopping occasionally to hunt friend noodles for food. Boring, yes, but a good sort of boring. By the end of the day, I'd settled into somewhat of a comfortable routine. We should reach the city we've been heading towards either the next day (tonight's sleep) or the day after (Saturday's sleep). My day here on Earth has been equally uneventful, with Autumn and I being awkwardly quiet around one another as our mall maybe-date looms on the immediate horizon. I'm excited and I'm stressed and I'm especially glad I finally have time to hang out with Brendan. The two of us don't usually have lunch together for various reasons, so I've been missing the guy.

"Can't say I disagree," I tell him, slipping my shoes off as he closes the door. "It's good to be here. Really good, actually. Can I hug you?"

He seems briefly taken aback, but nods and holds open his arms. I flop my face into his belly and squeeze his waist, since he is too gosh dang tall for me to hold anything else. He stiffens up and makes an uncomfortable gurgling noise when I squeeze him, causing me to let go in a panic.

"Ah! Are you okay?" I yelp.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he assures me, rubbing his back. "Pretty sure you're getting stronger, though."

"Oh no, I'm sorry!"

"Seriously, I'm okay," he waves me off. "You're not Supergirl yet. Come on, let's go."

I don't need to be told that he means for me to go to the basement, so we head down there promptly. Fartbuns bounces down the stairs after us, the huge fluffy dog full of energy as usual.

"So," Brendan says conversationally, "you seem to be doing a lot better."

"Do I?" I ask. "I guess that's good. Better than doing worse!"

Brendan gives me a knowing stare. Oh no. He's about to go on the offensive.

"...Looking forward to your date tomorrow, huh?" he asks.

"It's probably not a date!" I yelp immediately.

"Sounds like you definitely believe that," he answers dryly.

Agh no he's going to bug me until I explain. Curse my conditionally hyper-observant friend.

"Look, I just… she was blushing at me a lot today," I admit. "Just, really awkward. And considering that she caught me staring at her abs yesterday, I think she figured me out."

"Autumn has abs?" Brendan asks, seeming surprised.

"Oh my goodness she has really nice abs," I confirm, nodding excitedly. "Just like, toned enough to be noticeable, to be strong, but still all… I dunno. Girl soft?"

"Girl soft," Brendan repeats flatly.

"Girl soft!" I insist, flopping onto the couch. "Like, y'know, girls. We're soft. Men have less body fat and gross rough skin, all rough and tough and… bleh. Um, no offense."

"None taken," he answers in a tone that implies there was at least some amount of offense taken. "So. You think Autumn knows you're gay, but that just makes her blush a lot and she hasn't called off your date, so you're thinking she's also gay. And neither of you have bothered to just ask if the other is interested in that sort of thing."

"It's arguably a good sign that she isn't asking," I nod sagely. "Being a complete mess is the lesbian love language."

"Hannah, you've literally never dated another lesbian, you're just saying that because you're a mess. You don't get to pretend it's not a problem by projecting it onto other people."

I fishmouth at my friend a little, my jaw opening and closing wordlessly as I put a hand over the heart he just so brutally wounded. Fartbuns makes a happy 'boof' noise and puts his face on my lap.

"I can't believe my dearest friend would so mercilessly wound me," I intone as dramatically as possible, the hand not clutching the gaping hole he just dug into my heart moving automatically to scritch behind the dog's ear.

"I'm just trying to get through to you about the fact that your life would be so much easier if you'd just talk to people about this stuff," Brendan says, exasperated.

"I'm just not ready to come out, okay?" I fire back at him.

"Then why are you trying to date a woman!?"

I open my mouth, lips peeling back to reveal deadly fangs as I hiss at him, a sound that carries only a hint of the eldritch vibrations that I can make in my hyperspider form, but it's still enough to quiet the room into silence. It surprises what little part of me is still looking out for that sort of thing during the instinctive impulse, making me wonder what part of my throat now dips ever so slightly into angles impossible to represent in a mere three dimensions. The dog's muscles freeze with tension underneath my fingers, the prospect of having claws so close to his neck suddenly not as appealing as it was seconds before. Brendan goes silent, averting his eyes from my glare as I wait for my brain to catch up with what I just did. The hiss just slipped out, it wasn't a conscious decision on my part. I take a deep breath, removing my hand from Fartbuns and consciously relaxing myself.

"Sorry," I manage to get out. "I didn't mean to… do that. Anyway, there's honestly a good chance it won't be a date, and I actually do need the clothes we'll be buying, so there's that. But also, I just… I'm afraid I won't have the chance to do this kind of thing again pretty soon. You know?"

Brendan's face falls.

"Hannah…" he starts, but I cut him off as Fartbuns retreats behind his legs.

"The transformations have slowed down a bit," I tell him. "I haven't gotten anything new these past few days. But the old changes are growing and I probably don't have all that much time before everything comes to a head. I just… I wanna feel normal while I have the chance."

"Being normal is overrated," Brendan says quietly, his expression inscrutable.

"You're probably right," I admit. "But still, this is my last chance at it."

"...Can I still see all your cool monster bits, though?" he asks.

I chuckle.

"Brendan! Imagine what Autumn would think if she knew I took my clothing off for a man!"

"Imagine what your mom would think," he counters, and I shudder.

"Yeah, okay, let's not go there. I'll show you."

I start rolling up the right leg of my pants, though the thigh sock underneath it still covers up everything important. I could take off my gloves first, but honestly I've gotten so used to having my claws covered up that I'm a little worried I'll cut myself. I mean, I guess I probably can't cut my own exoskeleton, but… whatever. This order of operations works. Plus I get to torment Brendan a little by doing things the slow way. …No, wait, bad brain. Don't think of this as a strip tease. This is just normal teasing which merely happens to involve stripping, entirely by coincidence.

After the pant leg is rolled up, the shoes and socks come off, as well as the little foam blocks, revealing the brilliant bone-white chitin of my leg. The sight of it steals my breath a little, even though I know what to expect. It's so hard to believe that this is my body, yet I feel the sensation when I run a finger across it, I watch it move when I flex the joints. I am, somehow, becoming a creature beyond the understanding of modern science. A fantastical beast, a monster of legend, a dream from a storybook. The white armor of my leg, pristine to the point of gleaming thanks to my magic, perfectly frames the contours of my body, deviating only to protrude the occasional spine or ridge reminiscent of my other body's limbs. I curl my toes, revealing the deep contrast of black in the flexible material underneath the armor, visible only within bent joints. Brendan kneels down to investigate and only then do I remember he's even here, self-consciousness blooming inside me as he grabs my calf and starts prodding away at my body. He pokes at the inside of my knee, between my chitin plates, and I almost take his finger off with a twitch.

"Th-that feels weird," I protest. "Don't poke there."

"Weird how?" he asks.

"Uh… I dunno. Like you just stuck a finger up my nose? It's sensitive in that 'this part of the body isn't supposed to be touched' kind of way."

"Mmm. Okay, sorry," he says, removing his hand from the soft part of my joint. "It's an interesting structure. Kind of… wiry, and it tenses up when you move. It's either closely attached to the muscle or it is the muscle."

"All the more reason not to poke it," I grumble.

I take off my gloves next, though Brendan is still pretty engrossed in investigating my leg. The chitin tips emerging from each of my fingers are delightfully sharp-looking, giving me the immediate and concerningly familiar urge to cut something. Though honestly, without Spacial Rend active I doubt I could do all that much damage. Can I cut things with these claws? Yeah, definitely. It's not going to pierce skin if I don't put a lot of force into it, though.

I still wanna.

"Hey Brendan, do you have anything I can tear to shreds?" I ask.

"There's a raw steak in the fridge," he grunts.

Oh fudge truffle yes. That's the most yes thing I've ever heard. I practically leap to my feet and dash up the stairs, claws digging delightfully into the carpet before I bound into the kitchen and do a sort of clatter-slide once that traction suddenly vanishes on the hardwood floor. Fartbuns does the exact same thing, smacking into me right after I skid to a stop and nearly knocking me to the ground. I can't help myself; I start laughing.

"Fartbuns! Hey, boy, you be careful, alright?" I giggle, kneeling down to give him some careful scratches. He seems to like the feel of my claws, thankfully, so I indulge him a bit more before returning my attention to the fridge and throwing it open in delight. Sure enough, in front of me is a huge slab of glorious dead cow meat, still on the bone. I extract it lovingly, resisting the dangerous urge to try and lick my lips, since that's unlikely to go well with my teeth as huge and sharp as they are.

"Hannah, please don't make a mess," Brendan sighs, having finally caught up with me. I turn and give him the biggest grin I can fit on my face.

"You fool," I tell him. "You utter imbecile."

Then I rip the packaging in half with my claws, splattering bloody marinade all over the kitchen. I take a moment to savor Brendan's bug-eyed expression before locking my vision firmly on the meat, ripping a chunk off of it with my bare hands and swallowing it whole. I bite and tear and rend it to shreds, relishing in the delightful feeling of meat sliding down my throat. I'm laughing whenever I'm not swallowing, knowing full well that it makes me look completely unhinged, but what do I care? It's just me and Brendan here, the one and only place where I can be truly and completely me. I don't feel out of control, I feel in my element.

Even the T-bone is no impediment to my greedy fangs, letting me bring the meal to my mouth and crunch down to finish off the rest of it. There's a very different appeal to gnawing on bone than devouring meat, a more methodical yet no less visceral process. While I can bite large chunks of bone off at once, it wouldn't be comfortable to swallow them. Therefore, while I can't chew in the same way I did with a human mouth, I still have to perform my best equivalent in order to get at the tasty marrow I crave, slurping up the bits of meat still stuck to the lumbar vertebra that I'm happily crunching down on.

"Nom nom nom nom," I coo happily once I've calmed down a little, delighting in the contrast between the bloody mess and my dumb little noises.

"Holy shit, Hannah," Brendan breathes.

I chuckle, swallowing my current mouthful and licking the tasty blood off my claws. We lock eyes, a nervous swallow descending slowly down his throat, betraying a delicious fear that makes me want to pounce on him, sink my teeth into him, and shake him around like a toy until he goes limp. But that would be insane, and also probably murder, so I do not do those things. The urge isn't a strong one, just a passing thought that makes me warm and happy to consider. Maybe I can just tackle him without the biting? No, wait, he doesn't like to be touched. What am I even thinking, I don't like to be touched! At least, normally I don't, but I've been kind of… weirdly touchy recently. Maybe I just get touchy when I'm feeling relaxed.

…Oh, woah. That's what this is. I'm feeling relaxed.

"Thank you," I tell Brendan emphatically. "I really needed this."

"You really needed to make a bloody mess of my kitchen," he grumbles, glancing away from me.

"Oh, pishhh, come on Brendan!" I say, blowing a raspberry at him. "Did you forget that I'm a super cool magical mage with the best spell of all time!? Behold! Spell-I-Haven't-Na… actually no I'm not going to name it even as a joke, she might take it seriously."

"Um. Maybe you shouldn't—"

I ignore him and snap my bloody fingers (entirely for dramatic effect) and activate the cleaning spell at the same time. If there's anything dangerous about this spell, it's too late to warn me now; I've been subtly using it all over the dang place. Here, though, I have no need to be subtle. The blood flies off my body and dances into the sink in beautiful red streams. The remains of the packaging pick up off the floor and plunk themselves into the trash. I stand up and take a quick sweep around the rest of the kitchen while I'm at it, collecting dirt and hair and food and other detritus, leaving the entire place looking squeaky clean. While there's absolutely a visceral satisfaction involved in ripping stuff apart, putting it all back together like this might be even more intoxicating. It's clean! It's all clean! Hehehehehehe!

"...Woah," Brendan breathes, finally getting to see the full power of my spell in action. It doesn't have very much range or power, but I can cast it repeatedly so as long as I get close enough to my target I can get it clean pretty trivially.

"Ha! Pretty awesome, right?" I preen, putting my hands on my hips and puffing out my chest triumphantly. "Who's only one-sixth of prestidigitation now?"

"I concede, you're clearly making me eat my words," Brendan rightfully reneges. "That spell is a lot more impressive than I thought it would be. It seems… ripe for exploitation, actually."

"I know, but I still can't find anything broken with it!" I whine. "The target limits are pretty strict and the weight limit is super low. I can't figure out anything more useful than cleaning. Still, though! I'm in love with this spell."

"I can only imagine," Brendan nods, letting out a big huff of air. "That…. was magic. The way everything just moved on its own, it just… I don't know. Somehow, that seems more real than the changes to your body. The world has magic. Fiction is fact. And I'm a part of it, even adjacently."

I drum my toes on the floor, happily soaking in the goofy smile that's barely touching the corners of Brendan's lips. This is what he's always dreamed about, right in front of him. It's exciting, but I bet on some level it's tearing him up a little that he's not the one with the powers. …Although, maybe that's not quite the case. Magic is real, after all, and at least in the other world everyone has it. Maybe Brendan does too.

"Hey Brendan," I say conversationally. "You know that spell I was telling you I learned last night?"

"The Aura Sight spell, the one your friend justifiably got super mad at you for ignoring all safety protocols before using," Brendan summarizes.

"Yeah, that one," I say. "I haven't used it on Earth yet because I can't activate it without invoking the goddess to speak the words for me, and that's somewhat conspicuous."

"Yeah, reasonable," Brendan nods.

"But it's just you, me, and Fartbuns here," I say, motioning at the dog who is disappointedly trying to find more delicious floor flavor after I made all of it magically disappear. "Less risk of exposure than the whole car incident, and… well, I could maybe figure out your magical aptitude."

I can tell he was about to firmly insist on the stupidity of my idea until that last sentence there, but I know magic is his weakness. He hesitates.

"Do I even have a magical aptitude?" he asks.

"I have no idea!" I answer cheerfully. "That's what we'd be figuring out, I guess."

"Is it safe?" he presses.

"Um, I mean, we'd be figuring that out too," I admit. "But as long as I do things the same way as before and don't try to shove too much power into the spell, I don't think there's any chance of miscasting. We already know I can cast spells here, and there's no reason Aura Sight would be an exception."

"There are lots of reasons it could be an exception," Brendan groans. "It's learned rather than innate. It's in a different world. It's being cast without the goddess' attention and permission already on you. We have no idea how many of these things could be significant variables, Hannah. Not to mention that summoning a goddess from another universe here could itself have dangerous consequences we don't know about."

"So what do we do, then?" I ask. "Just sit on the spell and never use it?"

"You could always come clean to the people that you yourself claim to be friends, explain to them about the alternate world stuff, and get their significantly more educated opinions," Brendan grumbles.

I hesitate.

"They're my friends," I say, just to have said it out loud.

"Yeah," Brendan nods.

"They are. I like them. I just… I'm not sure I trust them with that. I'm not friends with them the same way I'm friends with you, Brendan. I've only known them for a couple weeks. And I kind of want to tell Kagiso, but… I can't tell her anything without Sindri hearing it. Which is… I dunno. It's never really all that much of a problem in the moment, I don't really need privacy from him, but it's still creepy when you think about it in the abstract."

"Waiting to learn the language so you can communicate privately is, I'll admit, a decent reason to wait," Brendan sighs.

"Ha!" I cheer triumphantly.

"...But isn't Sindri the person most likely to have the knowledge you need to answer these questions in the first place?" Brendan continues. "Based on what you've told me, his culture seems to be pretty advanced for a fantasy world, scientifically speaking. Magitech was implied, he knows about stuff like entropy and enthalpy. Multiverse theory probably isn't much of a stretch for his knowledge base."

I hesitate, thinking on that.

"I prefer to be seen as a denizen of that world, for now," I tell him. "I don't know what will happen if I tell him, and it's not something I can undo. I want to learn a bit more about the culture and mythology of the world before I do anything that might be stupid. Maybe after we get to the city? Or I can ask them about those things and prepare, I guess."

"Alright, that's a sensible enough plan," Brendan nods. "And speaking of plans, now that you're done going feral we should head back down to the basement. I have some stuff to show you."

"What if I'm not done going feral?" I ask, moving to follow him anyway. "It seems to be an ongoing process, really."

He gives me a sideways glance before heading down the stairs.

"Please don't joke about my friend losing her sense of self," he grumbles.

"...Okay, sorry," I tell him. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't feel like I am. Things are a bit weird and different, but I still feel like me, even when I'm… I dunno. Doing things I wouldn't otherwise do?"

"Yeah," Brendan nods. "It does make me feel better. You seem happy, actually. I'm jealous."

"Having positive emotions is a strange and novel experience, but I do recommend it," I agree, plopping back down onto the basement couch. Fartbuns, having long since got over the prior spook with my hissing, joins me immediately, flopping onto my lap and crushing me under his massive floof. I give him a hug, which he seems to appreciate. Brendan, meanwhile, goes to get his whiteboard. And a corkboard. And a bunch of books. And a laptop.

"Um, what is all this stuff?" I ask hesitantly.

"Research," Brendan grunts. "On world trees, mostly."

"World trees?" I ask, reaching forward and barely managing to grab one of the books before the weight of a giant goofy puppy forces me back to the couch. Sure enough, it seems to be a collection of norse myths. A post-it note marks pages with references to Yggdrasil.

"The Norse world tree is the most well-known," Brendan says, returning with his last stack of books. "But the thing about mythologies is that there are a lot of them, and there's no reason to assume the most popular interpretation of a myth is the most accurate one. So I've pretty much collected every resource I can find to try and compare it with your current situation. I have to admit, though, the Norse interpretation is looking like one of the more solid ones."

"Oh? Why's that?" I ask. "I don't actually know much about other world tree myths. Heck, I don't know much about real Norse mythology, only the modern interpretations."

"Well, that's partially because there's less of it than you might think. Norse mythology was mainly an oral tradition, and the resources we use today were composed by like, Icelandic scholars or something. There's more to it than that, but the point is, in terms of actual text I could get a hold of, there isn't actually much said about Yggdrasil. But that's okay, because again, there's no reason to think that the original text is more likely to be accurate than the modern interpretations."

"Wait, there isn't?" I ask. "Why not?"

"Why would it?" Brendan asks. "Why would any of these stories be more likely to be divinely inspired or written by actual witnesses just because they're old? Statistically speaking, since there are so many more people now, the odds of someone having a legitimate source rather than making up stories out of their ass is higher now."

I blink at him, reach out to a paperback with a big number on the spine, and read the title. It says 'High School DxD.'

"This is a harem manga," I point out simply.

"It's… it's explicitly referenced on the wikipedia page for Níðhöggr," Brendan answers defensively.

"Pony poop," I challenge, whipping out my phone to call his bluff. One quick google search later, I scroll down and… well dang, okay, there it is. Huh.

"Was Wikipedia a mistake?" I ask idly.

"No, Wikipedia is one of the single greatest achievements of mankind, period," Brendan answers immediately. "But I admit that, upon actually reading it, I seriously doubt that High School DxD holds the answers to any burning questions we could possibly come up with. But the possibility existed, so I looked for it. What exactly do you think I've been doing with all my free time lately?"

"Right, okay," I say, giving my friend a soft smile. "Thank you, Brendan. It means a lot to me. What stuff in this pile of possibility has stood out to you, then?"

"Most world trees, or at least the classic world trees, are more like trees of worlds than trees that are worlds," Brendan explains. "They're often symbolic, with the whole underworld-Earth-heaven thing being represented or outright connected via the roots, trunk, and branches. We're looking for non-symbolic trees, literal actual megaflora which aren't just important for being magic, they're important because they connect multiple realities, and Yiggdrasil fits the bill. It's far from the only one, but there are really limited resources on, say, Samoyed mythology."

"I don't even know what that is," I admit.

"Exactly. I'm going to keep looking for stuff, because there's a lot of it, but we're starting with Yggdrasil. The whole thing with how it connects multiple worlds together is an obvious reason we care about it, but also notable is the fact that things live on Yggdrasil. Not a lot of things are mentioned, of course; hell, one of the most notable parts of the myth is just called 'the unnamed eagle,' but there are some points of importance. Notably, the reason I subjected myself to trashy self-insert wish-fulfillment junk fiction: Níðhǫggr, the serpent that eats the tree."

"...I don't see how that's relevant," I grumble.

"Hannah, by your own reckoning, you spent seventeen years eating a world tree."

…Oh.

"Th-that doesn't make me Nidhogg!" I protest. "Lots of things eat the world tree! There are literally creatures bred for the purpose!"

"I know, I know, the hole-worms," Brendan placates. "I don't actually think you're the herald of Ragnarök, Hannah, there are too many inconsistencies. You not being a serpent is sort of a notable one, as is the fact that you don't hang out in the underworld or get nasty rumors spread about you via a lying squirrel. Níðhǫggr is also supposed to eat the roots, while you appeared on some random branch. It's flimsy at best. Though, again, accuracy to the original text doesn't necessarily mean actual accuracy. Maybe Norse mythology was describing you, but it was filtered through an unreliable narrator and the original myths are what's wrong. All things considered, though, I believe the most likely situation is that the world you go to when you sleep isn't any of the world trees discussed in mythology. Or at the very least, if there are kernels of truth in the mythologies we know about, they're mixed too deeply with falsehoods that it's impossible to tell."

"...Which puts more evidence in the pile for 'someone out there is suppressing magical knowledge,'" I conclude.

"Either that or you're the only person on the entire planet with access to this alternate universe that you never even intentionally sought out, yeah," Brendan confirms. "I love you, Hannah, but I don't think you're that special."

That gets a chuckle out of me.

"So. Your main conclusion so far is that we still know nothing?"

"Yep," Brendan nods. "The most boring and most likely conclusion of all research."

"I guess we'd better get cracking at the rest of these books, then?" I suggest, since I know he didn't stack these all up just to show off. Even if he did, Brendan has been working so hard for me and I need to help. Taking care of myself is, technically, more my job than his. Even if he's obviously way better at it than I am.

As the hours pass, we do get some research done. We also ramble about games, talk about what dead skin tastes like, play with Fartbuns, order pizza and chicken wings, and generally just hang out until well after the sun goes down and it's time for me to get home or risk a scolding from my parents. Regretfully, we eventually part ways and I head home, my nascent limbs wiggling with joy underneath my skin. Today was a good day. A great day, even. I'd forgotten what those feel like. When I get in bed and pass out, there's finally some real optimism behind it.

Immediately, of course, I wake up. Kagiso is shaking me conscious for last watch, which unfortunately means I'm not waking up cuddling next to her. Gosh, that's still such a weird thought. More evidence that I'm getting over my touch aversion with startling speed. I wonder why that is.

I stretch my groggy body and regretfully crawl out from deep within the bedroll. I'm not really comfortable sleeping as a hyperspider unless I'm fully encompassed, though being in a human-sized sleeping bag is of course more than enough to accomplish that requirement. Being one foot tall has its perks, and comfiness is a big one. Being constantly surrounded by terrifying giants tends to put a damper on the comfort, I'll admit, but I've mostly gotten over it.

"Fire burn?" Kagiso asks, her raspy voice quiet in the dead of night. She's asking if I want her to refresh the campfire that's been burning all night. It's one of the many tasks I can't do on my own, but it also doesn't much matter to me if the fire burns or not. I don't need it to stay warm thanks to my body's resistance to external heat sources, and I don't need it to keep watch thanks to my spatial sense. Still though, I like being able to see things with my normal eyes, and I can trust my friends with fire pits enough to let the thing burn all night without too much worry.

I scratch the dentron words for 'yes' and 'please' in the dirt, and Kagiso makes a happy rumbling noise before exiting the tent to put more wood on the fire. Sindri, Kagiso, and I are still handling all of the watches ourselves, letting Teboho sleep through the night undisturbed. The poor guy is still severely injured after getting half his skin burned off by acid, because why wouldn't he be. Though with how consistently upbeat he seems to be in spite of that, it's sometimes hard to tell.

"Done," Kagiso rumbles as I scuttle over next to her. "Night be peaceful, Hana."

I hug her fuzzy leg with two of my own and she makes a happy noise, reaching down to pat me before exhaustedly staggering into her tent and getting in bed. The night passes slowly after that, my eyes hypnotized by the waves of smoke drifting up from the damp logs. Our choice of firewood was less than ideal tonight, but I'm at least happy that I can help everyone by being the one to cut it all into the right sizes. Whenever I find a chore I can take care of for people, I try to put my all into it. I don't like being such a dead weight.

Night watches are another good way to help out my friends. Now that I have eyes, I don't even need the candle clock to do the last shift of the day; my watch ends when the sun comes up, or I guess whenever it gets into a position in which things won't be dark. I'm still not entirely clear on how the sun actually works. If it's just moving in a circular orbit, wouldn't most of the branches never actually get blocked off from seeing it? You'd only get true night if the sun was completely blocked by the trunk, right? Because when the sun is merely below our branch we get the pretty green-sky evenings. I guess if there are enough other branches in the way, they could block stuff. Maybe that's it; just sheer mass of branches between us and the sun causes nighttime. …But no, wait, that still wouldn't work for every branch, unless the sun had a really irregular orbit. Which I guess it might? Gah, this is so confusing! I should just ask for more—

A snapping sound breaks me from my thoughts. That's very much the sound of something alive, stepping on something as it moves through the forest. I'm already looking in the direction it comes from, but I can't see anything, neither with my eyes nor my spatial sense. Just to be safe, I slip into a barren zone, the light from the fire completely winking out of my perception. With or without the fire, my eyes can't see any farther than my other senses in the dark of night anyway.

Though now that I'm on edge, I'm quickly coming to realize how incredibly short those senses travel. Fifty feet is like, the length of a semi trailer, give or take. Not even the trailer and the truck, just the trailer. That distance, in every direction, is my entire world. It's enough to encompass the camp, but not much beyond it.

Which means I won't know if anything is coming our way until it's right on top of us.

I guess that's not much better than anyone else being on watch, but that thought makes my situation no less nerve-wracking. Still within the barren zone, I wander closer to the direction I heard the noise, hoping to pick something up on the edge of my senses. If an animal wanders into the camp proper, I'm not actually sure what to do about it. The fire does a decent job at keeping things away, but it might attract certain animals with Heat affinities, depending on how their magic manifests. I can kill most things in the forest, I suppose, but I'd rather not have to. I continue approaching until eventually I sense some moving creatures in my range. They're… wait. They're not creatures at all. They're dentron.

They're people, and they're armed.

Terror flooding me, I reverse direction and scuttle quickly into Sindri's tent, reappearing in normal space once inside it and poking him awake. More and more people start entering the edges of my sensory radius, coming from multiple different directions. At least six of them, all men, all armed, surrounding us from all sides. What do they want!? They don't have cultist necklaces or anything, so why are they here!?

Sindri wakes up the moment I place a clawed leg on his face, his hand twitching towards the knife under his pillow for a second before he registers it's me. Using the contact, he opens our mental connection in silence.

Trouble? he asks. I have never been more thankful about his to-the-point attitude than at this moment.

Six dentron, armed, I report. We're surrounded.

Fuck. Bandits, probably, Sindri grumbles. They saw the campfire smoke. Odd to have dentron bandits, though.

I want to ask why that's odd, but the smarter part of my brain reminds me that now really isn't the time. Bandits, though? Really? I take a closer look at the people slowly and stealthily approaching us, dressed in dirty clothes and armed with axes, bows, and other cheap equipment designed more for hunting and forestry than combat. The hard determination in their expressions shows only a hint of the stress they must be feeling, approaching a camp of people they don't know with intent to kill. That, more than anything, makes me believe they've killed people before.

What do we do? I ask.

I'll wake everyone and attempt diplomacy, Sindri grunts. When it inevitably doesn't work, I want you already in position to kill as many as you think you can.

Some part of me expected an answer like that. These people wouldn't be sneaking towards our camp in the middle of the night with weapons out if they were intending charity. Intellectually, I know that. This world is harsh. It's mostly lawless. People fight each other and die. I know that. I've experienced that. But I still don't want to kill people. The thought mortifies me, and unfortunately Sindri seems to pick up on it, or at least anticipate it.

Hannah, I'm sorry, he says. But there's six of them and Teboho is injured. I need you to do this. We all need you.

I… okay, I answer numbly, trying to decide which of the bandits seems most likely to be in charge, or at least particularly dangerous. The one with the newest-looking axe is grouped a bit closer with a comrade than the others, who are now getting close to the last few trees between them and our camp. That'll be my target then. My kill. My little act of greater-good.

Ice flooding my veins, I step silently into the nearby barren zone, approaching my target as closely as I can without stepping out. I do, unfortunately, have to step out; I'm not lucky enough to have a straight shot to my target and even if I did he's moving around. Instead, I exit at the base of a tree and scuttle quietly up the trunk, my tiny body quiet even in the hush of night. Sindri is awake and quickly gathering weapons and what armor he can put on, mental jabs to Kagiso and Teboho waking both of them up. When he exits his tent and calls out to the people approaching us, they freeze in place, letting me more easily find a branch directly above their heads. Sindri and the bandits exchange a few words, but I'm too terrified to try and translate either side of it. I'm too busy staring at the bandit's heart. Watching it beat. Tracing the veins and arteries that snake out from it in every direction, noting which ones seem most likely to be a quick kill if severed. The blood pulses, streaming quicker and quicker throughout the body. It annoys me how his heartbeat doesn't sync up with mine, like when I'm watching the blinker of a car at the stoplight in front of me flash just the slightest bit out of time. Both heartbeats are starting to go faster, though.

I imagine the kill, over and over, in this endless, torturous minute before I take a person's life. What will the fall be like, where will I aim, what are my backup plans if he moves? Over and over, the same few answers pop into my head, and yet I just turn around and ask myself the same questions again. Will he even feel it, when my tear in space splits his body apart? Will I? I can't just kill one man and be done with it, either. I'll have other targets to go for as well. It's a good thing that I can't breathe manually, or else I'd certainly be hyperventilating right now. I feel like that'd probably be loud enough to give away my position.

I will probably die if that man ever looks up.

The thought flits by, and selfishly it fills me with even more terror than the prospect of murder. I feel disgusted by that, but it's hardly a surprise, is it? That's why I'm here, plotting a man's death. Because I'd rather kill him than die. I wonder why this man would rather kill us than whatever happens if he doesn't. Is he starving? He doesn't need us to die for us to give him food, I'd bet. Is this just the sort of man he is? A lover of violence and death? A raider? A villain? Or is he more complex than that? Could I understand him if we could speak to each other? Could we someday be friends?

He moves. I watch muscles start to pull all around his body. I see him inhale deeper than ever before in his conversation with Sindri, preparing to shout. His heartbeat goes faster, faster, faster. Maybe now it will match my own.

Do it, Hannah! Sindri orders me, and I immediately drop, power flowing through my legs. With a flick of a half-dozen different legs, I sheer into flesh and puncture through veins, pools of blood blooming all over the bandit's body. I miss most of my strikes, but I doubt it matters: the most damage of all was dealt by the one leg that didn't move, that I simply held straight as I fell, digging a deep gash through the back of the man's skull, down his neck, back, pelvis and tail. It's by no means a clean cut, weaving in and out of the spine in multiple places, but in the second it takes me to hit the ground, it's more than enough to cripple him, assuming he isn't already dead. I don't wait to find out before slashing his calves and leaping to his head when he falls. I plunge a foot through his skull like a boot through fresh snow. He might have been dead before. He's definitely dead now.

With my omnidirectional senses, I can see the whole fight play out, watching myself take part in the combat as if I'm not even the one doing it. It's like a third-person action game, one where I can see the whole battle at once and make snap tactical judgements. Not that I do, I'm just vaguely aware that I could if I wasn't a terrified mess, scrambling in horror for the nearest barren zone to escape into before the bandit nearest my victim notices me. I can only assume I fail, since the ground beneath me twists into a terrifying claw of dirt and stone, trying to clamp around me and smash me like the bug I am. I barely manage to step away before it closes around me, breaking line of sight by retreating into a higher dimension. The bandit starts looking for me, so I just make distance between the two of us, instead targeting one of the ones that hasn't even seen me yet. Unfortunately for them, they're close enough to the exit of a barren zone that I can pop out right behind them, removing their ability to stand with a quick swipe and their ability to live with another before retreating back to safety.

The battle continues. An arrow takes a bandit in the throat. The battle continues. Sindri duels the one with earth-hands, eventually managing to bury his short sword in the mage's belly despite the aggressive terrain. I don't know if I end up killing a third bandit or not. I stop paying much attention at some point.

But when the battle is over, I know that dentron meat is sweet.