Oh Herald of Calamity, Won't You Shatter This Fake Integrity of Mine?

by I He She

By most conceivable metrics, what happened that night had been terribly unsafe. Nobody in their right mind would've ever allowed a child to spend any amount of time alone with someone as unstable as Specter, much less a child such as Shamare. Be it by fate or by chance, however, that's exactly what ended up happening. Shamare/Specter, graphic depictions of violence.

Oh Herald of Calamity, Won't You Shatter This Fictitious Integrity of Mine?

To drift was a normal occurrence to her. To wander without aim, to swim in those dark waters. She could hear the spirits talk to her clearly on such occasions. Their voices, normally little more than whispers teasing her ears from afar, would echo in those depts, turn into something louder, something greater, pointing her towards the next destination, towards her next action. On such occasions she could hear them, yes, them and then something else still, barely audible lies coming from further away, formless tales of faithless cities vomiting grotesque abominations to oppose the will of the Depths. They called to her, but she wouldn't listen. The spirits were true. She was true. She knew who she was, and what she had to do. And so she followed their voices, swimming in the waterless ocean, her eyes entrhalled by the sea of stars glowing on the bottom of the sea, calling for her to join, to abandon her "I" to become a part of the"We". She reached out with her hand, but the stars were too far. Was her faith too weak? Was her mind too dirty? Were her actions insufficient?

Was she unworthy?

She swam, she driftend and ran and swam and crawled, but the current wouldn't let her reach the bottom of the sea. The stars called to her, the spirits urged her forward, but she couldn't reach them.

Were those voices at fault? Those fiends whispering falsehoods from the far recess of existence? She covered her ears, tried to block them out, but still they poured their poison into her head. So she joined her hands together, fingers intertwined as she prayed, nothing but dissonant noises coming from her throat, abhorrent noises which strung together pathetic praises of a pathetic being, not a single trace of musicality to th- no. No, that was wrong. Those were prayers, the Church's prayers, her prayers, why did she think such things of them? She prayed, but the stars grew disappointed, disillusioned, bored, they abandoned her, their light fading into pure darkness, their shimmer disappearing.

And soon they were gone. She drifted, all sense of direction gone, letting the currents take her wherever they wished to. The spirits ceased to talk, for they had abandoned her too. Even those hateful whispers full of deceit had gone silent.

She was alone.

She was alone, one, whole yet repugnant in her integrity, in her singularity. She ran, she swam, she dragged her body through the blackness, through the nothing surrounding her on all sides. She wept, she cried and called, and the darkness twisted.

A mocking smile, laughing of her hardships. A silent taunt, a soundless derision.

And so laugh she did too, she laughed, and oh how that sound soothed her turmoil-filled mind, how it lovingly smothered her thoughts. Someone... someone used to love that laugh, her laugh. But who?

A gaze.

She turned.

Something was watching her. A break in the absolute prison of loneliness which had trapped her for... for how long? Seconds? Minutes? Years? She couldn't tell. Something was observing her. She could feel eyes staring at her in silence. The presence disturbed her anguish, shattered her peace, poked her very mind.

Was it a spirit, driven by pity to return and offer her guidance? Was it a fiend, there to trick her off the path to salvation?

With desperation, with joy, with revelry, with animosity, she reached for this new, unknown presence.

---

They called that a ward. A place were ill people were treated. Shamare knew that. She had been there several times already, half the reason why Rhodes Island had taken her away from her hometown was to give her proper treatment for her Oripathy after all. Not in that particular room however, no. She had read about it, watched a few logs, heard a few recordings. By all means, she shouldn't have had the clearance necessary to do any of that, much less to actually be let inside alone, and yet there she was.

Shamare could do things other people had an hard time grasping. The medics and researchers on the landship called those things "her Arts", but she had also heard them say those very same things couldn't actually be explained by modern Originium Arts technological research. She... didn't really care about such things. She couldn't explain why the things she did worked the way they did or how, by what principles they worked or even just why she knew them, she just knew and they just worked, in much the same way a preschooler wouldn't actually know by what mechanisms his will to move an arm translated to the arm actually moving, she just... could do them. It was natural. People back in her hometown called her a goddess of plagues, a breathing calamity. A witch, casting curses upon the people and the land. Witchcrafties, they would sometimes whisper. She... did those things, yes. Accidentally at first, without meaning to, without realizing. She eventually learned to control herself, for the most part, but even once she had stopped the incidents from happening the people around her still referred to her with those names. And at some point she found herself actively performing that role her hometown had stitched together just for her. All the people around her -but one- had placed her into it, after all, and fulfilling it felt like one of the few things she still had. People on Rhodes Island didn't call her that way though, they didn't treat her like that, and so she found herself drifting off that role in much the same way she had once stepped into it, not really knowing what she herself thought or felt about it.

Witchcrafties. People on Rhodes Island didn't really use that word either. Morte once told her it had heard that doctor with long, white hair and crimson eyes talk about witchcraft at some point, but she figured that, to them, it was just an informal way of talking about Arts. No, even that hadn't really caught her interest.

The person in front of her, however, had. In a certain sense, at least.

Shamare could... influence others. Impart suggestions, the researches would say amongst themselves. Make people see, hear, smell, taste, touch things that weren't there, with such intensity the mind couldn't tell truth apart from fiction. She could plant ideas, make something weird seem normal and something normal seem weird, and she could even take the awareness of the suggestion itself away. They didn't know exactly to what extent, but they had taken notice of her occasionally doing it. It was a rather unsettling thing, she knew at least some of them thought so, but Shamare had never caused any real problem, never started any fight, never been the cause of anyone's complaints as far as anyone could tell. Morte would occasionally scare this person or that one, yes, but... that was it, as far as anyone knew. And that was probably why nobody ever even so much as imagined Shamare might use those abilities of hers to do a little investigation, to look into who the person named Specter was, otherwise someone would've probably realized something was going on, if nothing else because Shamare's control over her own abilities was not entirely perfect and she didn't pay too much attention to fully covering her tracks either.

She found the right people, then had those people let her read the files, watch the logs, none of them even realizing it, just to sate what could somewhat reasonably be called a rather childish curiosity.

She knew Suzuran had taken part in a gift exchange, that she had asked someone named Aosta to make her a doll shaped after a certain Specter in order to give it to the very same Specter. Shamare herself wasn't on Rhodes Island during that time, but she wasn't upset about that. No, she was simply curious about this Specter who received a doll from Suzuran, even if Suzuran hadn't quite made the doll herself. Admittedly, her initial plan -or whim, shall we call it- was only to find out a little about this person. Then she read her files, and a few scribbled-out notes on the margins of a few files -notes most people would consider unprofessional- referred to that woman as a walking disaster, something to be monitored rather than helped. The files themselves contained an admonition and a strong advise to refrain from needlessly adding such personal opinions to them, but those expressions reminded Shamare of times she neither hated nor missed. So she dug a little deeper, until she found a few video logs. Now, for all the material she had consumed about Specter, the woman still only had her curiosity. She had read quite a fair bit about her, but without really committing much to memory. In a certain video, however, a single detail did something all the words describing Specter and her condition had failed to do up until then. It roused her interest.

The doll shaped after that woman was in her room -her personal ward- but, more than its presence, it was its state Shamare couldn't ignore.

Thus she imparted some suggestions again, influenced a few minds again, and there she was. Alone in that ward, sitting on a stool next to that so-called catastrophe, who on her part was lying asleep in her bed.

Someone from the medical staff had unlocked the door for her, let her in, even gave her the badge to go back out on her own and advised her to be extremely careful, and yet said person wasn't actually aware that Shamare was there. They were the one tasked with supervising that area of the medical bay for the night but, even if they were to wander into that room to check up on Specter, they wouldn't find anything wrong about Shamare being there. Not enough to actually do anything about it, at least. She had put a fair bit of effort into that. The room was also soundproof, the files said so. There was only so much space Rhodes Island could accomodate to a single patient, after all, and that simple measure kept Specter from... disturbing the others during some of her, shall we say, louder but non-violent outbursts.

In short, nobody knew Shamare was there. It was only Specter and her. And Morte.

The doll twitched in her arms, something faint and barely distinguishable fading from the corners of her mind right after. A normal occurrence, that one, not something Shamare could remember having ever paid any attention to.

Specter was there, asleep. There were a few machineries close to her bed, some of which looked familiar to Shamare, though most didn't. They seemed to be turned off for the most part, however, and those still on weren't connected to the woman, not at the moment at least. Specter could react badly to waking up connected to any kind of mechanical device, it was written somewhere in her files. Shamare looked at her chest moving up and down as she breathed, pondering. She was there just to ask a single question, but at the same time she was in no real hurry. It was way past her usual bedtime, true, but sunrise was still more than a few hours away. She could wait a little bit, see if she would wake up on her own.

She waited, and let her eyes wander.

That room was rather... aseptic, even for a medical ward. A bit on the large side, for a place that hosted a single patient, but at the same time there were hints of personal belongings as well. A wardrobe. A desk, although one probably used more by the medical staff than by Specter herself. Something that resembled a rosary hanged on a wall. A book, a collection of scriptures maybe, not something Shamare was familiar with. She had read of the weapon Specter used in battle, but it was nowhere to be seen. Something faint began to flutter in her chest, Morte flailed its arms around, and as she adjusted her grip on its stuffed body the vague feeling dissipated once again, unknown and unimportant.

Then there was the doll, the one shaped after Specter. It was obvious just by looking at it that the doll had been torn apart into five, perhaps six pieces at some point, pieces which someone then sewed back together. Quite well at that, if someone were to ask Shamare, and if she cared enough to answer. Her question was about that. Perhaps, had she gone through all the files pertaining to Specter, she'd have found her reply already, but she hadn't. She just... figured asking her would grant a more honest answer.

Her gaze drifted back to Specter, sleeping in what probably was a clerical outfit, the bed still made underneath her. Maybe she had a distaste for blankets and sheets, or maybe she found it too hot to use them. Not like it mattered. Shamare looked on, her mind briefly wandering over the things she had read and seen about that woman, something once again briefly pulsing to life and dying in anonymity somewhere inside of her.

She was probably dreaming, Specter. The way she shifted and even almost turned at times suggested so. And the dream seemed to have taken a turn for the worse at some point, judging by the way she seemed to be growing more restless. Even that stopped eventually, but her expression still seemed... troubled. Pained? Shamare couldn't tell.

... can I do something about it? she caught herself wondering, rationalizing it as putting that woman in a better mood, in order to make her more likely to answer.

Her pupils trembled for barely a moment. She had heard terms like thought impetus and perception reversal and other similar ones during some Arts classes she technically shouldn't have listened to, but whether those could actually describe what she did, she wasn't sure. She just knew she wanted to poke Specter's mind.

Her fur stood up. It lasted less than a second, less than a tenth of it, she hardly managed to take notice of it herself, but something had caused her fur to stand up. How odd. She had felt another distant almost-ember, an aborted spark somewhere within herself right as that happened.

She moved Morte around a bit in her arms, its lifeless, cold, soft cloth reminding her that nothing was wrong, and then she grazed Specter's mind once more, not really imparting any kind of suggestion, just sort of... trying things out. See if she could actually do something like that. Like a child trying to figure out how far exactly they could jump.

An unpleasant feeling suddenly assaulted her, a deep sense of unease, a visceral need to reject something. Some parts of it abated immediatly, before Shamare's state of mind could actually be affected by them, but some others remained. Yes, that was normal.

It had happened... quickly, so quickly she hadn't even noticed.

But Specter had reached out, her hand closing around her little leg, her fingers closed in a grasp as gentle as soft stuffing and yet as if not more firm than...

... Shamare disliked most kinds of physical contact. Especially sudden, uninvited ones like that. In fact, there were only two people who could afford to touch her out of the blue and neither disturb nor upset her, but neither one was present.

That hand on her leg, those fingers on her skin, they sent something deeply unpleasant up her spine, hints of cold shivers, her ears doing half a twitch each as her tail fluttered exactly once. Something briefly clouded the placidity of her mind.

It was weird.

Despite all of that, Shamare still considered herself calm. Her skin had stopped crawling, if it had ever even started to in the first place. There was still an unpleasantness to her leg, but that was a purely physical reaction she believed.

Morte turned in her arms again, pointing its knife at that hand closed around her little leg.

She was calm, yes.

It was with calm that she met that woman's gaze.

Her skin was pale, her hair a dirty shade of matt silver, her clothes black or white, and amidst that soothing dichromatism stood her eyes, two points of bright, living red, a color Shamare used to see almost daily, once, those eyes fixed on Shamare's purple irises, on her oddly shaped pupils.

"Are you the one who woke me?"

Was she? Shamare had... certainly interacted with her, however lightly. She hadn't really paid much attention to not disturbing her either, she wasn't there to watch her sleep after all. So she just kind of nodded weakly, a gesture which could mean pretty much whatever Specter wanted it to.

"Are you a spirit, little creature?" she asked, a mixture of emotions in her eyes, a concoction Shamare might've been able to decipher to some degree had she at least felt like trying "Have you come for me, at last?"

The little vulpo bent her neck a little. Right, there was something about that in the files she had read. She... strongly doubted Specter could actually hear or see evil spirits. Those voices were probably just things inside her head.

Well, the staff of the medical ward pretty much thought the same about Shamare herself though.

"The spirits have peculiar forms. Do I truly look like one to you? They don't speak so clearly. Do my words sound distant or distorted? ... you are touching me. Stop that" she quickly added.

"Ah!"

Specter shifted her body, sat on her bed right in front of Shamare, bent forward as if in... Shamare didn't know. Prayer? She had seen people pray in church before, but maybe that was just Specter's outfit playing tricks on her. She did look like a nun after all, however loosely.

More importantly, she was still touching Shamare. Her grasp on her leg was gone, but now both her palms were lying flat on the vulpo's knees instead.

Her tail stirred.

"You hear them! You hear them, do you not?" she spoke with an annoying mixture of euphoria and reverence "Their voices can be elusive, but you hear them. It's not me alone!"

Shamare's gaze fell on Specter's face, on her crimson eyes brimming with twisted vitality. And from there it moved down along her nose, to her mouth. To those lips, curled into a too passionate smile. And past them. Sharp teeth lied in wait, their shape closer to that of a saw blade than to that of a row of fangs, shining like promises of atrocities in the dead of night.

Something within Shamare stirred once more, faintly, weak and distant. But so did Morte, and the distraction was soon gone.

"Do you see them?"

"... see... ?"

... I thought so... Shamare silently mused, the faintest downturn of her ear as a voiceless display of her disappointment.

"See" Specter repeated "See. See, see, to see. The spirits? Ah, no, they are not to be seen, they are not to"

"... they are here"

Specter tilted her head, perhaps to mimic Shamare. Something in her expression had changed. Her lips curled up, up, up, she smiled, her teeth on half display, an overpowering and yet directionless tide in her eyes.

Then she trembled, a single jolt which briefly ran through her. She shook her head, her hands leaving Shamare at last, joining together in front of Specter.

"You hear the spirits, and you see them. You roused me from the dark. Are you the benevolent Herald spoken of in the scriptures, perhaps?"

Shamare was calm. At the same time, however, she was confused. What would've been a good answer? An honest one would've been a simple "no". Shamare had never even read any kind of religious text, after all. Besides, she wasn't the mouthpiece of the spirits. Far from it. Was it a little bit of curiosity then, the thing that lulled her into silence?

Specter seemed to consider her lack of reply as a sufficient answer in itself, however. She closed her eyes, bowing her head down. And then she started...

... was...

... she's praying... Shamare realized.

Something inside of her clicked, in a decidedly unpleasant way. She couldn't actually understand what Specter was saying, no, but just looking at her was enough to understand what she was doing. And something about that was simply... disturbing. A bothersome spark almost flickered to life within Shamare's mind, but it was gone the moment she closed her arms a little more tightly around Morte.

"I have a question to ask you" she said, because that visit of hers had already gone on for too long "I have something to ask you" she repeated when Specter didn't react.

She waited a little while, then spoke again, but once more Specter failed to either hear or care about her words. She simply remained there, absorbed in that meaningless, false ritual of hers, speaking words whose meaning eluded Shamare, with nothing but the vulpo's growing frustration to show for it.

What she truly couldn't stand, however, was the fact that Specter had suddenly reached forward.

She had grabbed one of Shamare's hands, trapping it in a soft, unescapable cage made of her joined palms and intertwined fingers. The vulpo's fur shook briefly, but she was still calm. Repulsed, perhaps even offended, and yet somehow calm.

"Stop it" she said, but Specter couldn't seem to hear her, her mind was filled with other voices, voices she genuinely believed to be speaking clearly to her through Shamare.

That little creature was not someone she had ever seen before, but she had appeared in front of her. Specter had felt her from within her slumber. That tiny thing had broken her out, away from her sleep, spared her from her nightmare. She spoke of the spirits, too, and now she was allowing her to hear them clearly, their words louder than ever before. What could she be, then, if not the benevolent Herald?

And so she offered her prayers, in the hope that she would in turn shatter her false oneness, grant her salvation.

"Shut up" Shamare eventually said again, a few beads of sweat beginning to run down her entrapped hand.

The woman's touch was making her uncomfortable.

No, that was wrong.

Her touch was unpleasant, yes. That was... normal, in itself. Physical contact was not something Shamare enjoyed, after all, the people who constituted the exceptions to that rule could be counted on the fingers of half an hand. But the way she was touching her felt... odd. In an almost endearing way. Shamare found that vaguely pleasant, and that was in itself what she felt repulsed by.

"Shut up"

Specter kept on praying. Her voice was hushed, but not so much so that Shamare couldn't hear her. She kept whispering her nonsense, but her words somehow sounded true in their falsehood.

There was something... warm in those words, somehow.

Something aimed at Shamare.

Her tail shook. Once, and then once more.

"Shut up"

On she prayed.

Shamare didn't like repeating herself. She had done so already, she only then realized, and that annoyed her. And since that woman didn't seem to have any intention of stopping even when asked to, insisting with the demand felt like a waste of time. No, she would just make her go silent instead.

And so Specter felt something. A touch on her skin, light as a timid breeze, sharp as an hateful truth, cold as a complete lack of consideration. That... wasn't the Herald's hand she was feeling. Confused, she opened her eyes, her words coming to an immediate halt.

She could see it. She couldn't tell what its shapes was, what color its skin was, if it even had skin or flesh or bones, she couldn't tell what it looked like at all, but she could see it nonetheless. The spirit, having graced her with its physical presence for the first time since she had memory, placed its appendages -fingers?- on Specter's mouth, sliding them past her lips, between her teeth and then further still, down into her throat as she still recited prayers the meaning and importance of which she could neither quite recall nor care about at the moment, and then it turned its attention to the Herald. So did Specter.

"Shut up"

A most pleasant, almost melodious sound filled the room for a few, exceptionally long seconds. The spirit followed the Herald's will, making it come true. It removed Specter's jaw, skin tearing, flesh snapping, bones dislodging, bits of her neck coming off as well, everything being thrown to the floor, unneeded.

Physically speaking, none of that had truly happened. But Specter truly, genuinely, intensely believed otherwise, and so did her body. Any uninvolved bystander looking on would've seen her jaw, bits of her cheeks and pieces of the front half of her neck separate from the rest of her body on their own, suddenly and violently.

A feat not dissimilar to those which had earned the little girl her hometown's fearful hate.

Red splashed around. Shamare's nose, as sensitive as that of any other vulpo, was immediatly assaulted by the wrong scent. She had smelled blood before, so she could tell that the thing her nostrils had just caught was not the scent of blood, it was something else. She looked at Specter, her hands at last moving away from the vulpo to hang in the air, where her lower jaw used to be just a few seconds before. She looked at the partially exposed, partially ruined muscles of her neck, at her dangling tongue, at the crimson red pouring forth, staining Specter and Shamare both. For a second, perhaps two, Shamare felt her digestive system work in the wrong direction, her mouth tasting bile or something similar.

Without a sound, without a motion, Morte bit. It bit, it chewed, it swallowed.

Shamare was calm.

Annoyed, rather. She had paid enough attention to the material about Specter to know a wound of that entity was an ultimately inconsequential matter to her, however weird that might've been, but she still hadn't meant to make such a mess. She hated getting dirty, and there she had gone and sprayed blood and bits of flesh and skin over her clothes.

More importantly, Specter couldn't answer her like that. Now she was stuck waiting for her mouth to heal.

Specter.

... she's smiling the vulpo noticed.

It was hard to tell, but Specter was smiling with what was left of her mouth. She touched the air once more, as if to make absolutely sure that the injury was not a trick of the mind, blood dripping on her hands.

She turned towards the Herald.

Yes, Specter was smiling. The spirit's touch was gone, its voice and those of its kin had gone silent, her words had been taken from her, but she was smiling, for she had simply been made to realize her foolishness. Yes, how utterly disrespectful she had been, to ask for salvation with something as frivolous as prayers. And how benevolent the Herald had been, for not only had she put a stop to her fruitless behaviour, she had also placed her on the right path herself.

She couldn't speak in that state, not until that prison of flesh that was her body, confining her into blasphemous oneness, restored itself. That, however, merely meant that words were not required of her.

But what then?

A test. How merciful of an occasion, that was.

She stared at that little body, weak and frail, and wondered if tearing it apart was her trial, to bare the fakeness of her integrity for all to see. That tiny head in front of her bent a little to the side, and by some divine revelation Specter immediatly realized that she was wrong. Her body was strong, resilient, stubborn, and yet the Herald had demonstrated she could break it down easily. Her shape was no doubt merely a tool to approach Specter, then. Had she wanted that body destroyed, she could've easily done so herself.

What was it that she was supposed to do then, she wondered.

She looked on, and met her gaze.

Shamare stared.

The sight in front of her was... there was something vaguely grotesque about it, she believed, but at the same time it felt rather pleasant to the eye. She liked the colors, if nothing else. The stench, not so much. It filled her nostrils in an aggressive, bothersome way. As a vulpo, Shamare was somewhat used to invasive scents, even ordinary perfumes could feel a little too intense to her nose, but that particular aroma disturbed her. But she was the one responsible for that, she guessed, so she would just put up with it for a while. No point in complaining about something she had brought upon herself.

Specter's gaze felt different, however. There was something sick lying within those eyes, something intense and... and pleasant, somehow. Shamare bent her neck to the other side, one of her ears twitching exactly once. Then that woman put her hands back on Shamare's legs. The drops of blood which had poured on them were still warm, oddly so even, enough for the vulpo to feel the heat through her pantyhose. Something tried to come to life in a far corner of her being once more, something unpleasant and unsettling, but the feeling dissipated before it could perturb her calm. Specter's hands moved slowly, tentatively, her gaze fixed on Shamare's face, her touch sending Shamare's thoughts into a calm disarray. She waited for a rejection or an invitation, she looked for a signal, but received nothing.

And so she kept going.

Her hands crawled up along Shamare's legs, the child wondering why exactly she was allowing that woman to touch her like that, asking noone what it was about her gaze that she found alluring. Specter dragged her hands up, her fingers tracing delicate, almost reverential lines along the fabric of her Herald's dress, her palms coming to a stop on her frail, vulnerable sides. She knew what she had to do.

There was one thing nobody could do on their own, a simple act which required something more than selfish oneness. An act of joining together, a communion of the flesh, and thus of the mind.

Yes, the Herald wasn't demanding for her to destroy, quite the opposite in fact. It made sense, yes. There was bliss to be both given and received through the act. A fitting trial to see whether she was worthy of salvation, was it not?

She moved an hand up, feeling those tiny, brittle ribs of hers through the thin layer of cloth and skin covering them, while her other hand slid underneath that very same fabric. The body was warm and tender, so much so Specter could tear it with no effort at all, her gaze firm and ever-observing. Specter had no intention to fail that trial.

Why was she still letting that woman touch her so, Shamare once again asked herself as those warm fingers ran over her. What was she seeing in those eyes that made her put up with that? The possibility of Specter turning violent didn't worry her, and only partially because she had held the idea of remaining peaceful in hand and accompanied it right into the woman's mind, but even with that said the vulpo wasn't sure just what it was that Specter was doing.

Her grip on Morte loosened a bit, nowhere near enough to let the doll fall down, but still enough for it to hang a bit more loosely. Specter kept exploring her, keeping herself from blinking as her fingers touched every rib one at a time, slowly, in the same fashion a musicist would graze the keys of a piano they couldn't afford, her other hand running over her legs, her thighs, her lower back, grazing her tail, intense shivers dying the very same moment they were born on Shamare's skin. She then moved her face closer, the intense scent of blood and raw, pulsing flesh mending itself assaulting the vulpo's nose with renewed vigor as her upper lip approached. Shamare unfolded an arm at last, moving it away from Morte to place two fingers against Specter's palate and pushing away slightly. Specter understood the message in her own way, refraining from moving what was left of her mouth any closer. Instead she willed her tongue to action. Shamare felt its wet touch on her face, bits of red staining her cheeks as the woman revered her in some twisted way, the still missing pieces of Specter's neck allowing her to move her tongue with normally unachievable freedom.

... I think I understand now.

Specter's hand had moved to the vulpo's rear, grasping it firmly but gently, her other hand closing on her chest instead. She lifted the little girl up, carefully, as if not to break a fine piece of frail pottery, and turned around to lie her down on the bed, slightly messy sheets and a not too soft mattress to give Shamare's back a sorry excuse of a welcome as Specter leaned over her, the red drips from her wounds having decreased in intensity, the flesh and veins still in clear sight. Her eyes still fixed on Shamare in... in what, the vulpo asked herself once more. It was something warm, pleasant even, but she couldn't name it. Then, as if to distract her from such thoughts, the woman lifted her back softly with one hand and rolled her dress up, baring her near-nonexistent chest.

She wanted to make love.

Shamare ignored what thought process -or thought deviation- might have led Specter there, admittedly, but she couldn't quite bring herself to care enough to actually ponder about it either.

Fingers closed on her now bare chest, nails dragging along her skin with a tenderness not at all fitting with the current state of the one doing the touching, and Shamare felt something faint and warm attempt to come to life within herself. Something physical.

She was... not unfamiliar with it. Self-love was something Shamare had experienced for herself and, much like self-harm, it was something she had ultimately found unremarkable. Unworthwhile even. She knew how pain inflicted by others felt too, but love imparted by others would be new. So, she reasoned, she was allowing Specter to go through with her senseless act out of mere curiosity. It made sense, looking at it that way. Curiosity was what had brought her there in the first place, after all.

The face of a blonde vulpo briefly flickered in her mind, but she quickly pushed it away. That was special, but different. So completely different.

The feeling of fingers sliding within her pantyhose fully moved her attention back to the situation at hand. Shamare changed her grip on Morte, moving the doll away from her chest while not letting go of it, and Specter seemed to take that as an invitation. Her eyes met Shamare's for a few moments before she leaned down, running her tongue over the vulpo's soft, frail belly, the warm touch sending faint shivers along her skin, the sensation of Specter's regrowing lower jaw being dragged against her causing faint, repulsive feelings to flicker to life for but the most ephemerals of moments in some remote corner of Shamare's mind. The vulpo ran an hand through the woman's hair, finding it smooth and soft but still ultimately unremarkable, quickly letting her arm fall back on the sheets instead. Specter then moved her mouth up, tracing a curve along Shamare's body which eventually reached her chest, her tongue pushing down against the ever-so-slightly stiff nipple, the vague sense of warmth within Shamare growing in response.

Specter's other hand, which had been moving in circles over the vulpo's hip, slowly dragged her pantyhose down, paying attention to not rip the fabric, her palm then coming to rest between Shamare's legs and massaging her, applying a gentle pressure, twisting her hand and occasionally applying more pressure to the one spot where the vulpo was more sensitive, Specter's body following motions from memories her mind couldn't recall, mistaking the familiarness of it for otherwordly guidance.

Shamare moved a little, shifting her hips to achieve something, although what exactly, that she couldn't tell. Her body language didn't give it away in the slightest, but she was a bit surprised. Specter's touch was... pleasant. Not that odd, physically speaking, but there was something else to it she couldn't explain, something in the care and delicacy she touched her with that made Shamare feel a weird kind of flutter in her stomach, an uncomfortable and yet nice sensation. She looked down at her, at the way she was running her tongue over her bare chest, poking her nipples. Specter looked up in turn, their eyes meeting, and Shamare saw it again, that warm, comforting, fake glint.

She liked that glint.

But she loathed that fact.

"Enough"

That simple word got Specter to stop, but that wasn't Shamare's intention.

That wasn't what the Herald wanted, Specter realized upon feeling the spirits' ethereal touch upon herself again. They grasped her body, but not to halt her, merely to hold her in place. Fleshless appendages slithered upon her face, blessing her with their presence, their contact, crawling inside her orbits, wrapping around her eyes.

Then they retreated just as swiftly as they had advanced, taking her eyes with them.

Shamare stared with mild interest as Specter threw herself back, getting up on her knees atop her, pushing her fingers inside the now empty sockets on her face, her eyeballs lying with most of the nerves still attached to them beneath her. The vulpo casually tossed them aside, annoyed by having once again needlessly stained herself and her clothes, her gaze fixed on Specter.

She was laughing, that strange woman. The sound was different, her neck had patched itself up by then but her lower jaw was still in no condition to allow her to speak properly after all, but Shamare could tell she was laughing. Even digging her own nails into her sockets a bit, it would seem. Then she looked down, or rather she aimed her face down at Shamare, yet more bothersome blood dripping on her. Her pale skin looked a bit like porcelain, of which the vulpo wasn't all that fond of, but the dark which had taken the place of her eyes... that was quite a nice sight. It reminded her of a doll's button eyes. The act itself of gouging them out had stirred no emotions within Shamare, but the end result was definitively something she found satisfying. That annoyingly endearing glint was gone, after all.

Specter's head began to swing left and right softly, her laugh abathing somewhat. That was odd, Shamare thought, but she decided to say nothing about it. She decided to say nothing about the way Specter suddenly grabbed her either, and neither could she could think of any complaint when Specter lifted her up, the odd woman sitting on her knees and placing Shamare in an hold similar to a loose hug, using herself to somewhat support her little body.

Specter circled an arm around her Herald. She could feel her presence, hear her breathing, smell her scent, but her sight was still gone after all. She wanted to make sure she wouldn't let go of her by mistake, she had already committed far too many errors on that night. She felt something soft and cool brush against her arm, behind that tiny body's back. The Herald's form had fur on some parts of her, that was probably her tail then. She ran her other hand down along her sleeve, to the elbow, to the wrist and then further down, until her fingers found something lifeless.

The doll.

Why was a doll there, Specter wondered. It reminded her of something, but she couldn't remember what exactly. Was that some kind of hint, or merely a distraction? She couldn't tell. She ran her fingers up and down, with less delicacy but more reverence than before, feeling the little hand still grasping that doll, feeling the skin and the blood flowing underneath, she moved her palm on her ribcage, the weak pulses of that tiny heart playing a faint, soothing melody. She leaned forward, just as much as she dragged that brittle body towards herself, running her tongue over that thin neck, scraping the skin with what had already reformed of her lower jaw while making sure to not tear the tissue. Her other hand moved over the Herald's lower body in the meanwhile, her legs resting on both sides of Specter as if to invite her, or to not deny her entrance at least. And so Specter placed her palm there, her index and middle finding a certain degree of resistance as they pushed the warm walls of flesh apart, the Herald's body stirring for a moment in response, not a single sound leaving her mouth.

Performing such an act should've been a new experience to Specter, yet she found herself oddly familiar with the motions, as if she had already gone through something similar in the past. Not at all mystifying, in truth. Guidance could come in many ways after all, some much less expected than others, that surely was it. And so, following memories she could neither recall nor recognize, she stirred the insides of that little body. The Herald held on to her shoulder with her free hand, refusing to let go of that doll as far as Specter could feel with her remaining senses, the pressure of her fingers on her skin so weak she almost had to make a conscious effort to perceive it. The rest of her body seemed to be more responsive, rare beads of sweat beginning to run down her skin, faint shivers of the muscles, brief brushes of the tail against Specter's arm. She kept going, taking those as signs that her current approach was appreciated, fluids slowly starting to wet her fingers, her hand, her palm.

Shamare stared. It was a bit hard to take a good look at the empty holes left where Specter's eyes used to be given that she was running her tongue over the vulpo's clavicle and the surrounding area, the vulpo's dress having been pushed even further up to allow direct contact, but she could still manage. From a purely aesthetical point of view, she found that look rather nice. The scraping of her partially reformed jaw wasn't all that bad either in its roughness. Specter's touch was quite pleasant too, from a strictly physical perspective at least, but there still was something to it which bothered Shamare. And so, while wondering if the faint noises occasionally leaving her mouth were more or less bothersome than those coming from her nethers, she took action to try and further correct Specter. That woman was oddly easy to suggestionate, after all. As for the question Shamare had gone there to ask, it kept occasionally showing up in her mind as if to ensure she wouldn't end up accidentally enjoying that whole, annoying ordeal.

And so Specter froze, if only for a moment.

She felt their touch again, creeping over her body, sliding over her skin as if her clothes weren't there, cold appendages which could've been fingers, tongues or something else still coming to rest on her neck, embracing her thighs, her chest, her hips, latching to the cavities in her face and scraping what little of her eyes had regrown back out, as if to remind her that her touch could never be as complete as theirs. Then she felt something else too, something decidedly less physical grazing her mind, an idea of external conception which nonetheless felt wholly hers. She followed it, a mixture of gratitude, expentancy and anxiety in her touch as she tightened her grasp on the Herald, her fingers moving with less consideration, her teeth occasionally leaving little indentationts on her petite body.

That was a little painful, Shamare almost absentmindedly observed. And being stimulated like that also felt a fair bit worse, at least as far as her personal tastes were concerned. At the same time, however, that kind of roughness, mild as it might've been, put her at ease. She was much more familiar with that than she was with the unnatural tenderness from earlier. Beginning to make a conscious, albeith minor, effort to not make any noise, for one reason or another, Shamare found herself growing more comfortabel with that excessive display of physical intimacy, allowing herself to simply sit back and enjoy it as a senseless but not entirely useless pastime. The warm feeling Specter's fingers had been stoking within her kept rising, remarkably similar and yet somewhat distinct from the one she had felt those couple of times she had tried touching herself out of mere curiosity. It was definitively more intense, more... selfless, in a way, the foreign digits probing, stroking and scratching with increasing roughness, as if to force the noise out of her throat.

Shamare still refrained from vocalizing much, more out of a peculiar need for privacy rather than due to modesty or embarrassment, the latter being pretty much nowhere to be found within her mind, the flushness on her cheeks a mere physiological reaction. She began to sway her body a little, easing herself into that slightly rough touch which was beginning to make her breaths turn ragged. Shamare eventually felt the growing pleasure reach a tipping point, the feeling spreading through her as a kind of sweet, hot release washing over her, the vulpo experiencing her own climax with almost unsettling calm, observing the way her body shivered and trembled briefly as the pleasure surged and then receded, her muscles growing stiff for a second, perhaps two, her fur standing up a little, her hand clutching Morte's arm more firmly, her insides contracting against those probing fingers, their motions prolonging her high for a few additional, bothersome moments.

Specter let out a sound that strongly resembled a soft laugh, an half-controlled giggle. Shamare didn't understand why exactly she had done that, but... she figured she could indulge that woman for a little bit more and let her have her laugh. The level of physical reactions she had caused Specter to experience so far normally required a certain amount of effort -one of the purposes of using dolls and rituals was to not put much strain on herself, after all, and she was using neither that night- but that woman was surprisingly susceptible to the vulpo's suggestions, so much so that she wasn't really feeling tired yet.

And so Specter felt the shapeless tendrils which had been slowly crawling over her body spring to action, her mind immediatly filling with a miriad thoughts, her hold on the frail, sacred body in her arms growing tighter and yet more delicate at the same time. It would seem that the Herald had liked her act of communion, enough to grant her the privilege of joining with the spirits. Such a blissful reward should've been celebrated with an hymn, an ode, a prayer, but words would surely fail to convey her feelings. She laughed instead, an act which felt both sacrilegious and right at the same time. She laughed, emptying her lungs and abandoning herself to the Herald's will.

Fleshless fingers twisted around her neck, sliding into her mostly reformed mouth as others enveloped her thighs, her sides, firmly coiled around her chest, countless protusions as long as nails and as thin as needles running over her skin, stroking and rubbing her stiff nipples, massaging her breasts with equal roughness and love, her laugh chocking partially on the foreign and yet most welcome things filling her mouth, the pleasure of the body springing to life and burning, growing like a suddenly rising tide, the ecstasy of the mind still eclipsing it but no longer by such a large margin.

Specter rolled over on her back, holding the Herald in much the same way she had done with her peculiar, rather crude doll up until a while earlier, some sharper tendrils leaving teasing cuts over her skin, blissfully tearing it apart to reveal the underlying flesh imprisoning her into a prison of fake integrity. Then something else slid between her legs, something large and odd and unnatural, and she lifted her hips to meet it, the thing parting her labia and pushing past into her wet privates with a single motion, the penetration pushing the air out of her lungs, something crawling along its surface to tease and scratch and stimulate her inner walls as thoroughly as possible. The hold on her neck grew tighter, keeping her from drawing a proper breath, the partial lack of air enhancing the pleasure forced upon her. Something akin to a gasp escaped her when sharp tips dug softly into her back, tapping every vertebra of her spine while peeling her skin off, nails or teeth or claws grabbing hold of her body even further as she expended what little air she had managed to breathe in to laugh again, something more pervasive enveloping her nethers to better ravage her, that most blessed of communion slowly, gently tearing her apart, drowing her body in pleasure while anchoring her mind with pain.

Meanwhile, Shamare's ears twitched. Specter was being... well, rather composed, for someone who was being groped, ravaged, skinned and pierced all at once. She didn't like the feel of her sweat, however, much less its smell. As for the fact that she was still holding her, well...

... well, that felt odd. Shamare didn't really want to stay in that position, but something about the tenderness of that embrace seemed to... soothe her somewhat, to put her at ease despite the physical intimacy in itself still repulsing her to a degree. She wondered if going through something similar a few more times would help her understand that better, she had never been held like that before after all. But she quickly discarded the thought, suggestionating Specter into having her eyes gouged out again for good measure as she didn't want to see them. She physically couldn't from her current position, but she wanted to be really sure it wouldn't happen either way. Besides, that woman seemed to like it anyway. Weird one.

Yes, Specter was very much enjoying her current situation. There was a kind of teasing flavor to the way she was being touched, the small cuts and thin gouges on her body feeling like samples of what was yet to come. The ethereal tendrils filling her mouth retreated a little, a new one latching to her tongue and dragging it out a bit, enough to stress the flesh without actually tearing it, not much at least, her neck being constricted with more intensity to keep her from fully filling her lungs.

She bucked her hips again, shaking the Herald's body a little simply due to the way she was holding her, but that would surely not upset her at that point. Specter pulled her in further, the faint beats of that little heart echoing within her ears even more loudly than the whispers of the spirits blessing her with their touch, her warmth an anchor point for her thoughts. She sank her fingers into her own sides, going right throgh the clothes, the added destruction of her body freeing her mind even further, laughters of reverence leaving her mouth as best as they could with her tongue held in such a lovely embrace and her lungs perpetually half-empty. Then she moved her other arm away from the Herald, sliding her hand down, her fingers finding her own drenched privates, pushed open and filled. And yet she could still push her digits in, as if nothing was actually there, and she did just that, following the fleshless tendrils's guidance to touch herself, to tease and scratch and rip, where she was most sensitive and where she could feel relatively little, the pleasure of the body quickly growing and growing, enough to match that of the mind.

Rather than from the sudden stiffness of her body, from her briefly halted breathing or from her sudden giggle, Shamare figured Specter was having an orgasm from the way she held her more tightly, not enough to hurt her but definitively enough to annoy her even further. Even worse, the way she then immediatly stopped focusing on herself to instead caress the vulpo gave rise to a faint, warm tingle deep within her, one oddly innocent and alluring.

At least until Specter suddenly sat on her knees, pulling Shamare up enough for the two of them to end up face to face, the vulpo's attention falling on the mostly but not entirely empty orbits on the woman's face. The peculiar scent of Specter's blood had been sort of surrounding Shamare for a while by then and that, combined with her being sort of distracted -focused on weird details, rather- had apparently kept her from realizing a very simple, obvious matter. Specter was bleeding from her eyes. Not profusely, which Shamare found somewhat surprising, but bleeding nonetheless. And with the way she'd been holding the vulpo up until a few moments ago, there was a good chance she had gotten a bit of it on her hair or, even worse, on the fur of her ears.

For a split second, Shamare almost felt like puking. But that feeling died down so swiftly it was a wonder if she had even had the time to become aware of it.

Shamare then almost felt like sighing, and of that she was fully aware.

Enough she thought, albeith of what exactly, she had a few doubts about.

She halted the suggestioning. It seemed like Specter took a few moments to notice, but when she did she suddenly went silent, her neck bending a little to one side, her lips conveying an intense mixture of confusion and sudden anxiety. She adjusted both her legs and her grip on Shamare to make her more comfortable, all the tiny cuts and gouges on her body having pretty much healed already. She remained there, unmoving, not speaking a word despite her jaw and throath having already healed by then, her lips occasionally parting a little, pearly white sharp teeth almost glistening behind them, her hands running over Shamare as if they were reading a sublime poem in braille, written on frail pottery.

"... you have a doll" Shamare eventually said, taking care to speak while Specter's eyes had yet to fully reform.

"... a doll... a doll?" she asked back, her current lack of eyes granting her face an entirely unique kind of expressivity, one Shamare found somewhat... pretty "... a doll" she repeated "Someone gifted me a doll, yes. Who or why, I ignore"

"Did you tear it apart?"

Specter's body seemed to relax, or maybe go limp a little. Her face fell down, her still nonexisteng gaze dropping nowhere between herself and Shamare.

"The doll... the doll was me. I am the doll, for the doll was made in my shape. Thus I had to break it. Salvation cannot come to those confined into a singular self. It is "we", not "I", that is how the depths are and that is how all things should be. The doll is me, so... so I broke it. I thought... "

She let go of Shamare, who got up on her feet on top of the bed and took half a step back.

"... I thought, if I could shatter myself through it, I would receive enlightenment. I could receive salvation. But the doll came back together, just like me"

Someone had fixed it for her, either she didn't know or she had forgotten about it. That was just a normal doll, Shamare could tell with a quick glance. A well made doll, yes, but nothing more. Although, to be completely honest, she didn't even really like the craftmanship of it all that much. Not that it mattered, no.

"I understand"

She had heard enough, she couldn't really see any reason to stay any further. So she turned around, got off the bed and walked to the door. Or that was her intention, at least, but Specter grabbed her wrist to stop her.

The force of her grip, the abruptness of it, the fact that it had come from out of her direct field of view all caused Shamare to react out of sheer instinct. She turned around, the smell of charred skin and burning flesh immediatly assaulting her nose, but Specter refused to let her go despite being so convinced that her entire arm would be scorched by raging flames so long as it touched the vulpo that her body had turned that belief into a reality.

"Herald, where are you going? Have I failed? Am I unworthy of salvation?"

Her eyes had fully grown back, and the way they stared at Shamare unsettled her -if only for a brief moment- in a yet different way. She saw something within those red splashes of color adorning her pale face, something she could vaguely recall having felt herself too, once.

A single, most unpleasant question creeped into her mind.

Did she make that same expression, the day she realized her father would've been much happier with her either gone or dead?

Bite. Chew. Swallow.

Shamare calmly killed the thought without bothering to answer it, without even lingering on it. Somewhere in her mind, she realized why the way Specter had held on to her had felt so comforting, but she refused to dwell on that too.

Specter's arm stopped burning.

"You don't need salvation" Shamare said.

She ignored what that word truly meant for Specter, but she kept talking nonetheless, returning that woman's perplexed, fearful, lost, perhaps downright shocked gaze.

"You don't need salvation. You need peace"

"How can that be? I am still one, I am not shattered apart, how could I not- am I saved already? How so, then?"

Shamare dropped Morte to the ground, the doll acting like an ordinary one by not moving at all as she closed the short distance between herself and Specter, placing her palms on her face, her forehead on hers. That woman was easy to manipulate, but Shamare had made a rather intensive and prolonged use of her Arts by then, Arts or whatever they truly were. Activating them once more, with that kind of intensity to booth, took a tool on her, but she didn't want to let something so trivial stop her.

"If that will help you have a peaceful sleep, then you are saved. I will come back to remind you of it if you forget it. But you won't remember me. Not me, not Morte, not this night. You shed some of your delusions off tonight, but they were clinging to you tightly, that is why you had to tear your clothes and body to get rid of them. This, you will remember. You did well"

Specter opened her mouth to speak, but only a faint, upbeat giggle came out of her. She let go of the little girl, joining her hands together and bowing her head, eyes closed in what seemed to be but actually wasn't a prayer.

Shamare stepped back, picked up Morte and turned around. If anyone were to ask her she would say -assuming she would actually answer in the first place- that the entire ordeal had not been worth the effort at all, she had even gotten herself all dirty and messy. Just getting back to her room without anyone making a fuss over her state might require some additional use of her Arts. Not to mention how exceptionally bothersome it would be if someone somehow found out about what happened despite everything. The answer to her question had even turned out to be rather boring too.

But as she left Specter alone in that room, walking back to her own quarter with Morte in her arms, its belly ever so slightly larger than it was before that whole encounter, she felt a little something in the back of her mind. Something telling her that maybe, just maybe, that hadn't really been such a waste of time after all.

---

Thank you for reading.