John the Psychomancer

... Everyone's doubting me... John's fist clenched in Tricia's hands. Haven’t I earned their trust by now? Some respect? He had overcome plenty so far... even the Order, until something strange and horrible took place... and he had done it all thanks to the Game. The Game made all of his so-called "magic" a simple whim with carefully outlined rules; why would this be different? Branding the stranger would **** John to confront the inconsistent feeling of trying to keep following Tricia's advice, here in a world that felt as real as Earth... but a bit of mind-editing, of Gamer-level mind-editing, had to be cleaner--even easier--than his companions were advising. Their doubts were well-founded... but they hadn't met someone like John before, and they couldn't explain his other powers. So how would this be different?

Certainly, even a poor effort had to be preferable to ****. John pulled the skill description up again.

Edit Memory level 8, 300mp
Edit Memory: change how memories in a living target will be recalled to instead reflect whatever you want them to remember, with the pertinent details being mostly filled in by what their minds would accept. You may only edit memories no older than [skill level] days, and this does not prevent the original memory from being probed by those who can avoid such edits.

The skill was resisted by the Hospitaler back in the Brighton Dungeon, but he had the curse of the Warlock over his head then; now, he assumed, he was free and clear of interference. He switched his language back to Vantage before replying to the diminutive leader, "I'm going to edit her memories and make sure she forgets this place ever existed."

Golgon narrowed his eyes with doubt.

"You... can do that?" Cidi's whole mouth nearly opened in shock.

"Such a power... humans possess? This is no runic magic, is it?" Golgon's question was more a frustrated acceptance.

"That's the spirit, Master," Juniluny cheerfully declared. Rosa and Tara did not opine; Tricia only looked at the **** woman with a measure of worry. Nearby, Yui quietly took mental notes for her paper at the end of all this... and prepared several constructs in hopes that they could protect her own mind from this vile enemy.

Miles wordlessly turned away and slowly lowered herself into the pool of cleansing oil.

<Well, let's see how shit you are at this,> came the amused voice of Fairy.

Do you know anything about this stuff?

<I just know that no human is actually good at it; at best, they manage a hangover no one notices.>

"Juniluny, you sound like you have experience in this?"

"I know what it looks like and to not fuss with it: before you went and ruined me, my magic channeled my very soul... and I knew better than to immerse my id in idiots."

John looked to Tara, who only held her hands up. "I just know how to keep people out; I don't know anything about leaving to go inside somebody else."

Tricia's response was more helpful… "Your focus is on the mental construct of the memory you want accessed, which will intervene and produce itself when the original memory is accessed. It is, in effect, a false memory address to intercept a call to the real one... theoretically-speaking." John was fairly certain that was more helpful, at least.

"Al... Alright. So instead of her getting under and through my portal and seeing us all in some other place..." The underground bunker idea... or maybe just nothing at all? She went under the disk, and found it was a solid gray, just like the backs of my portals... The power was suddenly more real to him; he could have her remember anything. He could put Ms. Wentworth's civics class in that portal she found, for all he cared... or him, bedding her as a lover- Whoa, whoa, focus, John!

He stood over the table and watched her features by the bright white flames on the nearby wall. The spell didn't imply touch, so he didn't dare feel her skin; he only focused on her as he tried to keep a single, solid memory in mind. She peeked under the disk... and then the disk was just gray underneath before it disappeared, then she snuck away, and she decided she'd nap in the field while no one would miss her. Fuck, would that even work? Don't they have telepathic communications with her? Right, which is why she took her... armor off... John nodded with a confident smile. Keeping that memory in mind, he focused on her face as he activated the spell.

You cast Edit Memory on Lawman Keeper.
Lawman Keeper tries to resist, but she is ****!

"You think this is funny?"

"Of course not," she bluntly replied. She was partially lying, of course; while her duties as a Lawman demanded solidarity, even a Keeper couldn't help but smirk at the screw-up of a Purifier, much less Daedro the Faultless. They lorded over them so often that... well, how couldn't one laugh? For all her efforts at appearing the humble public servant, Zalla the Insatiable had earned her adult name: she wanted and wanted, and her ambitions would take her far beyond the lowly Eighth Disk of her birth. Even now, wearing a Keeper armor set and standing in her home Disk's most prestigious offices, she felt she deserved more.

"Well, cover that stupid grin until your face reflects your station," spat Fiko the Benevolent, her hard-ass Warden and, when the uniform armors came off, a good friend of hers who went with her under the disk, but she found only the same gray as the top of it. How this strange, stationary object ate up the crops below it was-

Wasn't I... just getting chewed out in Fiko's office?

Zalla perked up and looked around the wind-rolled fields of zokosh... and saw a human male. A Human. A... Human?! An imposter, she was sure of it... and now she remembered: she had fallen into the Bitter Nines-!

John shook his head. No… this needs to work…!

You cast Edit Memory on Lawman Keeper.
Lawman Keeper tries to resist, but she is ****!

“C’mon, Zalla, give me,” Fika grunted as he roughly thrusted his pin-like prick into her, “... something!”

Zalla moaned some false pleasure as she remained on all fours. The two rutted in her bedroom for want of a better means to justify Zalla getting a good word up the chain. Zalla wasn’t feeling anything from it, but not for want of trying: she pinched her breasts, she had drunk very suspect intoxicants beforehand, and she tried to think of the possibility of promotion to try and derive some affection for the oil-lubricated organ being thrust into her... but nothing worked. She just felt frustration… both at her nature and the name it earned her.

“If I don’t hear you putting your heart into it, my pretty little thing, I’m going to ask that you patrol the Plate."

"The Plate?!" the still-naked Zalla screamed. She looked with her pained eyes at Fiko; he had betrayed her. He had acted like he could help her… just like some acted like humans, or even impersonated humans, like Miles the Human, there! She's alive! I have confirmed sighting of Miles the Human--the Bitter Nines-! Zalla had desperately screeched into the Lawman Network. She looked around to see how she had fallen up into an underground den, but had no time to figure that; quick-witted, Zalla had flown out from that freakish terrorist's hands to soar towards the mouth of a cave. Whether it led back home or into a solid gray surface, just like the top of the portal.

Why is this... where's Fiko?

Zalla’s mind wandered… and at a bar two nights ago, her mind had wandered as well. The wandering tunneled to a memory beyond reach, through the lens of that purple-drunken memory: Zalla, nineteen years old, watched as the liquid acid filled the coffin. Her mother lived a full life at 79 years; Zalla had been a late miracle for her parents who had been trying to conceive for so many years, so Zalla should've been grateful... but she was only a teenager, barely prepared for Lawman Academy, much less the weight of a ****... a weight celebrated by the fertile couples of the Eighth Disk, for it was widely rumored that this fifth **** in just two weeks would surely mean the Peak would spare some of them for breeding instead of for ascending Nines. Those bitter, bitter Nines...

The Bitter Nines. Zalla was in the briefing now for her effective demotion, perhaps permanent, to patrolling that horrid prison-metropolis known only as the Plate. But as a Keeper, she already knew all about the terrorists she was to hunt. Still, she lazily heard her fellow Lawman Keeper’s brief: a terrorist organization falsely attributed to the Ninth Disk, it is led by Golgon the Fool, now infamously the inventor of Pretty Violet: a powerful, highly addictive narcotic that plagues every Disk and creates ****, murderous addicts in those criminals who are sent to the Plate without knowing a source for it there. Their operation continues to poison Vantage, and given our limited resources--

What? He did what? A distracted voice… a voice? Here?

You cast Edit Memory on Lawman Keeper.
Lawman Keeper tries to resist, but she is ****!

Who are you?!

Who are you? Who are you. WHO ARE YOU. WHO ARE YOU.

A high school crush... and then she vanished, first from his life, then from school. John drew sad art in her name. This isn't... why do I remember these Humans as if they were-?! The Game. A beautiful interface of unimagined power, and Zalla's head seen through it as the user prepared to wipe her memory of-

The Bitter Nines. Their headquarters! I have confirmed sighting of Miles the Human--the Bitter Nines are here! I'm at- I'm not sure where I-! She had barely felt the pain of the impacts... and she was out.

She came to, and she was in the crops where she had taken her nap. Why had she been so tired? Why was she remembering being tired, being now... when she didn't even remember going to sleep? A loop, an error, and her memories rejected the obvious, poorly-made falsehoods; they filled in the details, as a mind always did when details were demanded, but nothing made sense.

Her memories were jumbled together; Zalla retreated from recent memories; the invader was inevitably pulled in along with her, beyond his means, beyond the reach of his mysterious power… into an old, safe place in her childhood. Linear time suddenly became a non-linear rain of water, real water! Zalla danced happily and squealed in delight; she was still too young to appreciate the expense but also young enough to be delighted by the sheer beauty of rain. Water fell upon them like clear crystals, sparkling with the white flames that lit the streets. The machines above simulated this once-natural phenomenon with care; the entire road had been ventilated and designed to sluice the water from the streets and back into the tanks. It had to be recycled to justify anything even approaching such waste, after all... but even this minor luxury could be afforded to Eighth Disk children on the anniversary of Vantage, right? More water would be filtered from the Violet, however slowly, to replace what the children would gaily go home covered in. They would be bathed in regular oils afterwards; the water would revitalize those bathing oils, and then the children would return to their regular diets of hydrating oils... but for now, in the glimmer of a childhood memory, this was but a simple, beautiful time. She tasted the water; the tanks made it oddly bitter… Nines.

She wasn't in the field... she wasn't napping. She was on duty; her armor was that of the Keeper, specially enchanted to ensure she felt no fatigue. She would not nap! This was madness! Why were her thoughts to jumbled together?! The rain, the feeling of water on the skin, the gentle, lapping waves of Ms. Summers' pool. Zalla looked around with wide, terrified eyes... a pool? A pool of water?! There was so much of it! So much water, more than she had ever seen in one place! A voluptuous Human--imposter! Imposter?--stared at her with lusting eyes, and Zalla screamed as she was an adult standing in the rain, an adult with her mother nearby and waiting for her fit to end, an adult trapped in some terrorist hole, flying for her life, her fingers failing to find her weapons or even think to throw a rune plate down. The flat gray of the disk was... was not true!

A depressing sketchbook, stained with bitter, teenage tears. This wasn’t her.

A pregnant humanoid with long, pointed ears and milk leaking from her teats. This wasn’t her.

Her childhood flashed, but blurred and sullied. Gray platforms, like the one she was investigating, now stood in corners, kiosks, and peering in through windows. Her parents were replaced by those obelisks of the unknown, by the image that kept slowly consuming her life before her eyes. I am Zalla! She demanded this of herself. I… am Zalla…! She almost asked it.

You cast Edit Memory on Lawman Keeper.
Lawman Keeper tries to resist, but she is ****!

Something about a portal not being a portal, frustration and anger. Why wouldn’t she let him save her? This wasn’t saving her, she cried, this was an invasion! This was a Human imposter who moved faster than she could see; he buried a blunt, broken weapon into her flat, human chest. The Human became Ultot the Angry, her former lover. He became another stone slab of gray. The visitor’s mind wandered with Zalla, and chaos ensued.

Her childhood continued to fly apart as the floor cracked, as people vanished, and more gray circles--more portals into the den of terrorists, unbelievable as it was--filled the spaces of her mind. Something continued to crudely bash that impression into her mind; core experiences, childhood lessons, loves and hates and moments of key empathy… began to melt and merge before the furious charge of this intruder memory. I… am... The statement was drowned as she was bombarded by a hateful demand, a rapacious request she could not fight: don’t remember what you saw. Remember this instead. Forget everything you saw- but as Zalla rejected it, all that Zalla was became the collateral damage. Her Lawman armor faded into gray… as did all her world… No! I AM ZALLA THE INSATIABLE, I HATE MY NAME, BUT I AM ME! NOW GET… OUT…!

John snapped out of the spell… and gasped to stifle a shriek as he left a storm of chaos to finally find the real world again. He hugged himself—his body, not hers, with his arms, not hers—as he tried to recall what he even saw… and bits and pieces fell from the Lawman, of Golgon’s alleged **** creation, of Zalla’s almost Earth-like childhood of lower to medium class living, of… his… life. His mind… had wandered. He didn’t intend it, but human nature meant that… but he kept insisting on the memory. She rejected it… something about the nap… and John couldn’t accept that. But did it take this time? This… time? He looked down to the big orange eyes of Zalla… for the three seconds she remained stunned.

She was awake. She kicked herself up on the table and stood above the small mob of enemies, her eyes terrified as she patted her body to find her armor, her runes… anything besides her underwear and clammy skin. She found nothing… even as she remained surrounded by killers and criminals.

“W-Wait,” John tried to say over the uproar of everyone realizing she had sprung awake.

She reached down and, with the hard nails of her hand, began to carve a symbol into the table.

“Stop her!” came Golgon’s call, but John was already ahead of him.

Your serpent’s lunge deals 648 subdual damage to Lawman Keeper.
Lawman Keeper is ****!

Unarmored, unarmed, wounded Lawman Keeper defeated!
+144XP
+bok-fabric panties
+bok-fabric bra

Zalla slumped over. John barely caught her in time to spare her the stone floor and only now went and checked the rune she was drawing.

Rune of Blinding (incomplete): a simple rune that creates a bright and brief flash of light; its intensity depends on the amount of mana poured into it.

Damn it. John eased the now fully naked Dorani back onto the table. Damn it. I’m better than this! But he wasn’t; not only had he almost surely failed to erase the first glimpse she got of them all, but she just saw them all again. Did he dare try for a second time? John checked her status to see if it reflected his first attempt or two and-

Status Effects: Edit Memory (39), Serpent’s Lunge (1 hour, 9 minutes)

“Thirty-nine…?” John’s words trailed off as he noticed a cascade of other pop-ups beneath them.

You cast Edit Memory on Lawman Keeper.
Lawman Keeper tries to resist, but she is ****!
77 more notifications...

He began dismissing them en masse… there were dozens of them, but didn’t John just try it once, maybe twice? What did he change if he went in there… thirty-nine times? But these were very small, nearly inaudible thoughts behind the white noise of horror as John realized what he may well have done to her. “... No…”

John surged mana into himself with equilibrium, and then into hands, every bit he had left, to grab her sleeping, upside-down face.

Your Restore heals Zalla the Insatiable for 1,491HP, healing her to full! Thirty-nine mental ailments and one physical ailment cured!
CRIT! Your quickcasted serpent’s lunge deals 1,944 subdual damage to Lawman Keeper!
Lawman Keeper is ****!

Achievement unlocked! “I’m Only Sleeping”!
Knock the same enemy **** three or more times in one day. How much sleep does one person need?
+1,000XP
+one sleep-related magical item added to your inventory

Earplugs of Peaceful Dreaming: minor magical item. When worn while asleep, the wearer’s dreams become euphoric and peaceful, ensuring no nightmares are experienced. Furthermore, they permit the wearer’s normal resistance to mind-affecting spells as if the wearer were awake. If worn while awake, they will permit the wearer to voluntarily fall asleep simply by mentally commanding it, after which the normal effects of the Earplugs apply.

John brushed aside the notifications and continued to cradle the stranger’s head as he sighed his relief… except now he had two memories, possibly even three, to edit. He looked up at the women surrounding him: Tricia, with her hands covering her nose and mouth in obvious concern; Tara, looking down at the freshly **** Lawman; Juniluny, rubbing her chin as she looked the limp body over; and Rosa, already with her back turned as if to go and do something else, didn’t give him anything but her back.

John looked around and realized that they had all moved quite suddenly from sitting at the table where he remembered them. Others, too, were inexplicably far away: Cidi and Golgon, now across the room by the kitchen instead of where they had inquired about what John would do, watched with mixed expressions of relief and concern.

“Is she… finally dead?” Cidi whispered.

“No, child,” Golgon quietly replied.

John glanced down as his mana regenerated. What had he even done? How did I quickcast this many this fast…? But there are no quickcast notifications… Meanwhile, how could I spend that much mana? I just used equilibrium, so I know I didn’t use that to get the mana, so how...?

“John…” Tricia’s voice brought his head back up. “Why did you keep… doing that…?”

“What… what did I do?”

Tricia hesitated… but Tara didn’t. “You tell us! You’ve been at it for nearly an hour!”

An hour? But it’s just been a few seconds, maybe one minute at most- John pulled up his sheet… and his internal clock did indicate that some 50 or so minutes had passed. How? I mean, it went by so fast...

Tricia gently touched John’s arm, causing him to flinch. Watching her flinch in turn shamed John, and he quickly drew her into a hug; he felt a bit more anchored, there.

Still, she whispered, “She… she screamed now and again, and… we had to restrain Yui, because she tried to stop you, and there was some difficulty of trying to explain it to the natives, except that woman, Miles, she apparently told them what was happening…”

“I thought… I was in there for just a few seconds.”

Tricia paused to try and find something to say to comfort the tension she felt in John’s hold on her. “It could be that… your system of magic is more in-depth in terms of mind exploration; there were truthsayers who used Sanskrit on scrolls and had to read them for hours over a subject before being able to control their minds… I’m sorry, you don’t need to hear…” Tricia hugged John a bit more. “I’m not very good at this.”

John peered past Tricia’s head to Zalla… who awaited his next decision. “Neither am I… I didn’t mean for…”

“I know… but now she surely has yet another problematic memory.”

John thought back to the strange roulette of his memories mixed with Zalla’s. “Did I… say anything?”

“No. You ignored our attempts to talk to you; we started to talk about how it looked like you couldn’t respond to us and maybe had gotten lost in the experience, but the danger of interrupting such a procedure was… John, you kept holding her down, and… you don’t remember any of it?”

Not again. John’s face twisted with regret and anger… and he looked around at a room of dozens of people staring at him, some with a mixture of horror, others with fury. Yui was nowhere to be seen. I… how did I lose control…?

An impressed whistle… and a regrettable halfling swaggered into view as she circled the body to stand before John. Juniluny climbed up on one of the benches to stare down at the Dorani with an oddly relaxed look. Without right or reason, she reached over and tugged on the fat nipple that topped Zalla’s left breast. Until now, it hadn’t registered for John that he had stripped his victim yet again. “You didn’t even respond to my insults for failing so badly… I was sure we’d have to kill her, but, well…” Juniluny gave the comatose girl a spank on the tit. “... it wouldn’t be experimentation if you only did it once!”

“No… I can’t… I can’t do that to her again.”

“John-”

“I’ve got to brand her… it’s the only alternative left.”

“You could do the merciful thing and kill her,” Tara spat.

Rosa, who had busied herself with her nails on a nearby table, spoke without turning, “Are all Americans this twisted about mercy?”

[MM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf42kap_jCk]

“What’s an American?” Miles chimed in, surprising everyone with her sudden appearance behind John. She was now in her gender-obscuring underwear, though the rest of her body, including her generous chest, remained bare. “Is that where Humans are from?” She had walked up to John and Tricia… and her arms rose to grab both Tricia and John by the backs of their necks in an awkward gesture. Tricia froze in confusion; John just stared back with more concern for Tricia than himself.

“It’s a nation on Earth…” John cautiously answered.

“Well that’s not a word… ah, but it is, isn’t it...” Miles’ confusing chit-chat was framed by her drawing closer and letting her breasts press against both teenagers as they remained in the threatening hug. She leaned in until her smile became alarming. “So hey, about the traitor: if you don’t do this ‘branding’ thing, or if it doesn’t solve our problem? I’m going to solve it.”

“... Traitor?”

“Every Lawman’s a traitor… how else can you call someone who kills their people for a living?” Miles massaged the necks in her grasps.

“I’m… I’m going to fix this- wait, where did Yui go?” John immediately thought of how they let her nearly get herself killed back at the popot fields.

“She’s hiding in the tunnel--and this time with company,” Miles replied. “She’s with two of those ‘Knights’ of yours… though none of them seemed happy with what your ‘fix’ for this.”

The parallel hit John easily enough; it wasn’t supposed to look like, or become, something out of the Order’s dungeon… yet…

John looked upon Zalla… and gave a slow, grim nod. “I will fix this.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Miles urged, “and if you’re worried about what we’ll do with the body-”

“I will fix this.”

Miles’ grip loosened at the sound of darkness… and the music died down until John finally walked away from Miles.

---

A soft bed… softer than bok-fabric, maybe even softer than webber silk. No, nothing was softer than real webber silk… but maybe softer than blue webber silk, that cheap imitation that was still twenty days of pay for Zalla…

Twenty days’ pay… for being a Lawman Keeper. She was on duty. Why was she sleeping?

Zalla sprang up in a wide-eyed panic… and found herself in a place of stone too pristine to be on Vantage. The pale marble was not a material Vantage knew; the natural luminescence was not a feature of immovables, the first structure the strange place brought to mind. Her eyes focused on a nearby fountain pouring a clear oil into a basin and- no… it was too fast for oil. A water-oil mixture? It couldn’t have been water; why would an immovable have access to, much less excessive use of, water like that-?

Zalla was suddenly aware of her nudity… though that came on the heels of realizing she was not alone. Her hand reached out and brushed against the leather clad hip of a Dorani… no, a Human imposter! It was becoming too familiar an affront thanks to certain rogue elements on the Plate, but her lack of arms meant she needed to spring away from him long enough to find a weapon-

“Zalla the Insatiable?”

She looked around as she kicked her feet under herself to squat on the sinking softness of the bed. She looked about desperately but found no sign of weapons; a set of plates that must have served as doors waited on the far end of the room. Her captor, as beautiful a Human as all the statues of their saviors promised, calmly stared at her. “You won’t get away with this.”

“I already have,” John declared. A moment passed, and he turned in contemplation. “... That’s… probably not a ‘hero’ thing to say…”

She didn’t respond; she eyed the back of his head until, in a dramatic turn, he finally looked totally away. She took her chance and lunged at him, her bare palm aiming at the base of his neck. Dorani or otherwise, the spine was a feature in most documented living creatures; however this imposter reshaped his body, it too would have this weakness-!

Her palm stopped short of his head… and Zalla grunted as she felt herself incapable of making the contact until all kinetic **** had been drained from the blow. In the end, she softly caressed his head in an awkward moment.

“Zalla: sit down and listen, please.”

Please or no, a command was a command, and Zalla began to panic as her body obeyed. She looked down to find what devices or pulleys were stringing her along so… but only spotted a strange, purple drawing on her right hand. “What is this…?”

John couldn’t face his fellows when he had apparently worked the slumbering girl for nearly an hour… and even now he was eager to buy some time before he had to face them again. “Zalla, you accidentally infiltrated a secret place, didn’t you?”

“... The Bitter Nines headquarters, of course! So that’s where we are now-”

“No, or... not right now, at least. I mean, you’re in my mind which is in the… nevermind. Look, I’ve… I tried to edit your memories.”

A brief flash of some struggle, some awful, headache-inducing memory, made Zalla flinch in place… but then it was gone, digested along with all the other broken pieces of what John had left in her mind.

“It didn’t work… so I had to brand you, making you my summon… eh, I guess from your perspective, making you my ****, of sorts.”

Zalla tried to rise against the command that held her… but her body only shivered in place as she felt a growing terror at her powerlessness. “Where are we?” If he felt so powerful, perhaps he would slip…

“You’re in my temple, held inside my mind.”

“What madness-! This is some kind of… bewitching rune, right? I’ve learned almost all the runes, but something like this doesn’t exist… not on the books, at least. So what now? Just because you’ve ensnared a Lawman, you think you can escape the Plate?” Zalla grinned her best confidence at him. “The Lawmen won’t be able to find me here! … I-I mean, they won’t. I… what... ?”

“As my summon, you can’t lie to me, hurt me, or act against me.”

Zalla shook her head… but she remained anchored to the bed. “This is… a test. The Peak… only the Peak would have such dangerous runes… I must be-!”

“I am going to beat the Peak,” John bluntly replied, “take the Throne, and then… perhaps once everything has calmed down… return you to your home.” John rose from the bed with a sigh. “Or whatever state we leave your home, depending on how crazy things get…”

“You’re working with the Bitter Nines, aren’t you? What have you done with my armor?”

“My girlfriend is dissecting it right now for…” John paused as he thought aloud. “Girlfriend…? Can I really say that…?” It seemed absurd to hesitate-

“You will die like a dog, terrorist scum!”

John looked Zalla over. “Tell me where I can find the most pelos on the Plate.”

“The only pelos anywhere on the Plate is at the First Station-what? What, I didn’t mean to… what have you done to me?!” Zalla shook her head. “You won’t get away with any of this, rune-master or not!”

John walked over to his fountain, his mind on answers as he contemplated the water. “Where could we find the most metals necessary to refine our own pelos, if we had the means?”

“All refineries now have their stocks secretly transferred and…. no… and transferred to the First Station- damn you!”

“So this First Station is one Hell of a prime target…”

“You cannot continue to help Golgon and his murderers! They seek to doom us all!”

“Tell me how,” John commanded before kissing the crystal-clear stream of the fountain.

“They would **** the Peak! But without the Peak, the floatstone would run out of power, Vantage would fall, and all remaining life would perish in the Violet!”

John paused and looked over, his eyebrow raised in clear confusion. “Wasn’t there a Peak before?”

“Y-Yes, but the gap between Peaks was short; it always is and must be, lest all be lost. But Golgon has made his mission clear: the annihilation of the Peak, of any Peak, and with it, our doom!”

He probably thinks it’s some kind of propaganda, just like he did with humankind... John shook his head as he enjoyed the juices from his room’s lifefruit. He approached the nude Lawman with the remaining half. But maybe it’s true? Or maybe the Throne somehow connects to the floatstone, or controls whatever’s generating this alleged power…? Knowing my luck, Bianca is actually absurdly powerful and really is fueling them with just her mana… something I won’t be able to replicate even if I become the Peak...

“Whatever he promised you when he gifted you with that blasphemous form, it cannot come to be… unless his promise was ****.”

“I’m actually a human.”

“I’ll not listen to more blasphemy!”

“I’m… forget it, we’ll get through that eventually. Can the Peak, the Lawmen, or anyone else find you remotely without you contacting them?”

“The Peak’s powers are vast and mysterious, so perhaps. Without my armor, the Lawmen have no way that I know of. What are you going to do with me?” Her face stayed as tight and angry as she could manage… even as tears welled in her eyes.

“I’m going to use you to fix this bullshit order you’ve got and then get home… though I’m starting to sense there’s no good guy here. What did Golgon the Fool do? Tell me everything you know about him.”

“Golgon the Fool was a scientist and a runemaker from the Second Disk. I do not know of his accomplishments or career before he was sent to the Plate; I know only of the crime that had sent him there: he was dosing visiting Firsts and fellow Seconds with an addictive chemical of his make--Pretty Violet, it is now called--in an attempt to organize a coup and overthrow the former Peak. It failed; Golgon’s plots were revealed and he descended to the Plate on his own wings before the Peak could have him. Apparently he never repented… or, as I believe but never dare say--damn you!--someone else took over his work… for now the **** is found everywhere it can be afforded, the ban on it notwithstanding.

“Now Golgon is a terrorist, one of the oldest Ootuks alive, and the creature responsible for some hundreds of deaths by **** and thousands by overdose of his ****. He has been wanted to serve his sentence--****--on the Plate for nearly twenty years now; we suspect he is shielded by addicts he feeds his **** to, but we have not sussed them out. He has recruited similar criminals for almost all twenty of those years to his cause, many of them petty criminal Nines who came to name the gang, although now apparently he has only Kitok the Noisy from the Ninth Disk. He is followed as well by Hurk the Smiling Fist, Cidi the Shameless, and one who dares call herself Miles the Human. We believe he now intends to purchase greater numbers, though to what end we still do not know.”

Well, that’s what she believes is the truth… now I just need to confirm how much fact is there. “Hey… I keep neglecting to ask: how are you people named?”

“W… We’re named by friends, families, or employers if we are not given a name most who know us agree on. By one’s 20th year, one is expected to have decided their name as permanent… or else everyone else decides it for them.”

“That seems… like a whole lot of paperwork.”

“Who are you? You are not a known associate of those terrorists… but your equipment fits the description of another human imposter who was aiding Miles the Human in her bold attack on one of our posts.”

“Yeah, huge misunderstanding… though I guess it was doomed to happen. I’m actually human, from Earth, and I came here by accident.”

“Further lies it is, then… will you kill me then-?”

“I’m sorry.”

Her captor’s tone had dipped to something almost broken, and the shift knocked Zalla out of her official persona. “H-How are you… how dare you try and apologize after-!”

“I’m sorry for what I did to you… I thought I could do it well,” John continued, his voice almost too low to hear, “and I nearly did something… irreparable. Again. And again, and fucking-” John slammed his fist into the fountain; it cracked underneath the blow, and a hairline fracture in the stone webbed down its side. The cleric spirits were already in motion. “... again. I thought this would be different, that I finally figured out my pace or how easy or hard the Game made things…”

Zalla understood every third word that left her captor… but she dared a small hope. “Does this mean… you’ll let me go?”

“Like I said: once we’re done here, sure… and even then, not really, not until I figure out how to truly free you. But I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want.”

Zalla did not answer; she was finally not compelled to, and silence was the only answer she truly wanted to give the enemy.

“Why are you called Insatiable?”

“I bedded seventy-three partners, each of which failed to please me, and each of which fueled my desire to feel an orgasm- gah! Why must I speak so frankly? What purpose do these details serve? Enough of this damnable effect! I have since surrendered on the notion of pleasure from sex. Stay out of my life, out of my will! More importantly, abandon those murderers; they will only betray you in the end- and Peak preserve me, let me stand!”

John’s eyebrows rose in surprise to that detail. “Well… then maybe I can apologize to you in some small way, at least.”

Zalla didn’t trust the Human impersonator’s tone.

“I mean… how badly would you want to experience good sex?”

“I tell myself I’ve given up on it, but I still really want it... “ Zalla’s face glowed a deep blue; forgetting her species, John almost thought she was ****. “That’s not… something I’ve told a-any… how could you make me say that…?!”

“So if I were able to-”

“Don’t think for a moment somehow you’ll be the one!”

“But if I knew a way to do it... would you want it?”

“Absolutely! No, I really want it! I’m-” Zalla’s eyes welled with tears of frustration. “But I don’t believe it for a second and I do not invite your self-gratifying failure!”

Failure. John’s expression darkened. He needed a win after botching the memory edit... and her plea felt like a slap. Zalla grew worried at her captor’s expression.