Defragmenting

“This isn’t really how one usually starts off a conversation.”

John didn’t dare glance away, but Jiina didn’t seem to have the same concerns. She looked over at the frozen forms of Orria and Lerianna with a casual indifference, offering only the mildest of shrugs in response.

“Couldn’t really take the time to explain without needing to fend them off, could I? If you prefer, I could unfreeze them and slap them around a little, until I’ve broken enough bones to keep them still long enough to listen.”

Vallya’s body shuddered in an almost delighted way as she laughed at that, a laugh that was too high-pitched and echoed with a tone that set every hair on John’s body on end. He tried to Observe Jiina to see exactly how deserved her confidence was – and how screwed he was – but the ability only brought up Vallya’s sheet despite the fact that Vallya was clearly not the one at the wheel. Her stats were fluctuating wildly, and her status showed that she was under the effects of Realization, but didn’t elaborate.

“They wouldn’t have been attacking if you hadn’t just possessed one of our friends.”

“Oh? A friend, is she? A friend you banished to the wilderness? Who you won’t even let sleep in her own bed anymore?”

The laugh came again, but this time, it was tinged with something else. What that was, John didn’t have time to discern – the laugh died on Jiina’s lips as her expression fell into a troubled consideration, eyes weaving over John with the look of an angry lover who’d lashed out too strongly.

“...No, I should not torment you so – your reaction was justified, and more importantly, due to my actions. As is this situation. I apologize for causing such a scene; it has never taken such effort to assume control over one of my avatars before, I was caught off-guard. I have enough power to wrest control no matter what independence this vessel may have gained, of course, but… well, imagine that you tried to grasp something and one of your fingers started flexing the other way in protest. No matter how trifling the effort to correct it might be, it would cause you to hesitate, would it not?”

John didn’t feel the need to respond to that, and Jiina didn’t seem to require a response. She waved disinterestedly at her own words, then closed her eyes, allowing weariness to take its reign over her for a time.

“I should get straight to the point, so as to minimize the damage that has been done, I suppose. John, when I gave you this avatar of mine, it was merely because I found you amusing. My only desire was to provide myself with some passing entertainment – which you have most certainly done, my dear boy.” Wicked fangs glistened with each word, and dangerous light and darkness in equal measure peered out from hooded lids. “What I didn’t anticipate was just how… unexpected you would cause things to become for me. How far you would truly transform this avatar of mine. This… ‘Star Guardian’ as she refers to herself, was created to be quite unlike me.”

John glanced at Orria and Lerianna, eyeing their frozen forms, their mystified gazes. “Seems to me like you both enjoy toying with people quite a bit.”

“Oh… you have absolutely no idea. I care more for you than any creature that exists, John Newman. In this world or in any other. And yet still, when I imagine the sounds you would make if you were mine but for a night, the howls I could wring from those lips, the scars I would carve into you too deeply for that marvelous body of yours to ever truly heal... the bloody passion that would leave you begging for mercy, screaming for more…” Jiina’s breaths were coming in gasps now. One hand cupped each of her cheeks, and her eyes seemed to glow a little brighter, a faint purple aura emanating from deep within the endless white and black voids.

“...You cannot fathom just how wet that makes me.”

A snarky reply was the first thing that John usually would have responded with, but an unsettling feeling was trickling down his spine instead. The words were filled with all the enthusiasm and anger of a threat, but spoken with the tone of a lover, and those eyes…

“Don’t look at me like that.” The purple aura was slow to fade, but the pain that crossed her face was far quicker. John wasn’t entirely sure how he was so clearly able to read pain in depthless pools of monocolor abysses, but even if he hadn’t seen the crinkle of Jiina’s nose or the scowl of her lips, he would have known how upset she was from something in those inhuman eyes.

“You just talked about how aroused thinking about scarring me makes you, and yet you’re the one with your feelings hurt?” John scoffed.

“Yes. And that infuriates me.” The scowl turned into a snarl, fangs that had been shining with sadistic delight now glistened with destined ****. “Because what I said is true, John Newman – I care about you more than any other. Because I do not care about any others to begin with! And I should not care about you!”

The purple light from before returned, though this time it rose from Jiina’s entire body, lilting away from her flesh like a wafting perfume. John’s skin tingled with something in the air that seemed as present as it was ephemeral, a presence that was not physical, yet lingered upon everything it touched all the same. It was not unlike the presence he’d felt and seen in the air as Adantia and Lord Brighton sparred – an equally absurd amount of magical power hanging in the air, though this was somehow more intense.

“She’s not even casting a spell, as far as I can see. It’s like she’s… like she’s leaking pure mana directly into the air!”

“Please… don’t look at me like that either,” Jiina whispered. Her tails fluttered to the ground, drooping defeatedly against the grass. The aura vanished along with her malice, and her voice became but a broken fragment of its former self. “I don’t know which is worse – you looking at me with disgust, or with fear. Anyone else and I would relish in those glances, the cracks forming in your outer self as the fear and pain brings out the worst in you. But not you, John. Never you.”

“Jiina, why don’t you just tell me why you’re here?”

“Ah, but I am trying!” Jiina’s laugh was a bitter one, harsh and sharp, **** from her lips like an unwelcome intruder. “You see how hard you have made it for me to even think, John Newman? To behave as I should, as I was meant to? You do things to me that you cannot understand. But… I will try to collect myself. Please, forgive my indulgences…”

Jiina ran her hands along Vallya’s body, brushing the loose strands of hair that had fallen to frame her visage with madness. In the time it took her fingers to gently caress her own face and tame her hair once more, Jiina managed to once again lay a cover of serenity over the madness, blanketing the fury beneath.

“As I was saying before, this ‘Vallya’ of yours was born quite different from me. She called herself a ‘Star Guardian’, pledged to protect you and this world as if it were all she wanted in life. And she held herself aloft with a haughty confidence and a delight in showmanship that I cannot fathom. You are the first person to be given a gift from Gaia herself in a very, very long time, John. That gave you my curiosity. But that your powers could change even a small piece of a goddess so drastically? That you could make her so very different from me? That earned you my attention.”

“And what exactly are you? What are you the goddess of?” John asked. “You’ve never given me more than a name.”

A fire flashed in Jiina’s eyes – not anger, sadism, or even lust, but this time what seemed to be pride. She held out her arms and lifted her tails from the grass, fanning them out around her in a grand flourish as she spoke loudly.

“I am Jiina, Fragment of Dike, and the goddess of swift and bloody retribution!” Jiina flicked her tails and alternating white and black flames erupted at each of their tips, casting harrowing lights and shadows across her form. “I am the embodiment of every primal need to see justice delivered unto those who have committed wrongs. I am the joy that enters this universe when karmic justice is wrought upon those who have embraced atrocity and cruelty, the fire that warms the hearts of those who see their wrongdoers hauled forth and chastised by the powers that be! I am the light in the eyes of every man and woman who dedicates their lives to making this wretched world a more wondrous place by carving out the sinful flesh that defiled it in the first place!”

Jiina let the flames on her tails flicker out one by one, her tails returning to a more passive position, resuming their idle gyrations in the air. A wry smile crossed her lips, the grandeur and ferocity of her pronouncement fading in favor of a quiet, but still confident delivery.

“I am the comfort on a cold night of loss. I am the inadequate, but necessary, blanket of solace that hangs over the shoulders of those who have been scarred, once they know that those who have brought harm to them have felt the same pain. I am the deep-seated desire within all of humanity to believe, if only for a moment, that the universe is balanced. That it is fair. That good things are brought to those who do good, and that awful, wretched things will be visited on those who deserve it.”

John’s mouth ran dry as the words he’d spoken to Moira so long ago, still raw in his mind, rang through his ears. Jiina’s smile turned bittersweet as John’s own face broke into a deep, troubled frown.

“So… she’s like this because she was created from you? Or did I make it worse by becoming so angry and vengeful?”

“No, John. This isn’t your fault. It’s mine.” Jiina cast her hand to the side, a glistening light rising up from her palm and forming an image in the air. It was a magical illusion, one that showed Vallya – the real Vallya – dashing through the forest. John didn’t realize what was happening until he saw the figure that was fleeing ahead of her.

“That’s-”

“The Albidians, yes.” The air bristled with the chill of those words, Jiina’s eyes forming hateful slits as she stared at her own display. “This was the moment that Vallya isolated one of them, after her failure to use him as bait to draw out and distract the rest. I was mildly interested to see how a Star Guardian would handle one who had intruded on her lands, who had violated the place she swore to protect. I didn’t just want to watch what she did, I wanted to experience it. I thought it my right – she is, after all, still my avatar. I grasped the connection between us and pulled myself through, and then…”

The image distorted for a moment. Just as Vallya caught up to the man, as a blast of pink magic sent him hurtling to the ground, she began to twitch and spasm erratically. The image that Jiina created zoomed in on Vallya’s face as it contorted for just a moment. Then Vallya’s eyes flashed, one white hot and one with the cold chill of eternal darkness. The colors only stayed for a moment, but as they vanished, a cruel and callous smirk began to creep over Vallya’s face.

She lifted her heel up and brought it crashing down. The illusion ended just as the man’s screaming began.

“I do not know how to describe what happened. Not in so many words. I should be able to observe the actions of my avatars effortlessly, even without controlling them directly. Fragments are rarely granted permission to do so, perhaps once every few decades, yet… no lack of practice could have caused that to happen. When I connected to this form, it didn’t feel like re-uniting with a part of myself. No, it felt as if I had made contact with something else entirely, and a part of it entered me just as surely as a part of myself entered it.”

The memory was an unpleasant one, but John **** himself to play through it again all the same.

“I found her torturing him. Trying to get information out of him, but… she looked so-”

“Happy,” Jiina whispered breathily, some of the life returning to her cheeks. “Fulfilled.”

John nodded grimly. “It was the first time she’d acted like that, but it hadn’t been all that long since I Purified her. I didn’t assume it was a drastic change.”

“More drastic than you realize. Truly, John.” Jiina held a hand over her heart, and some of her confidence vanished. Her next words tumbled into the air unprepared, toppling over each other with the uneven recounting of a survivor. “Do you know why we are called what we are? Aspects, Fragments, Shards… it is because that is what we are. Bits and pieces of our whole. Our original. Just… broken parts of Gaia herself given form.”

“I know a little about that. Dike explained some of it to me when we spoke a year ago.”

“She explained the mechanics… not the reality.”

Jiina’s face became troubled, her eyes hazing over. Her arms wrapped around her upper torso with a comforting caress of her own upper arms – the gesture struck a nerve that reminded him all too much of Farrah when she was feeling something particularly unpleasant.

“When I said that I care more about you than any other creature, I wasn’t exaggerating, John. But I was not making something clear – I care nothing for any creature in this entire reality… save you. Because I am not supposed to care for any creature. I am a Fragment of an Aspect of one goddess’ personality, and not a caring part. I am sadism, I am bloodthirst, I am vengeance. For thousands of years the only things I have felt toward any living creature, no matter how great or small, were either complete indifference or the most sickly-sweet resentment, the kind of deep, emotional hunger for blood that can only be sated by watching the light leave their eyes.”

Light flickered behind Jiina’s eyes. Not the unnatural but all-too-real light that had consumed Vallya’s form – emotional light. Human light. Even for a moment, John saw troubled pools of purple flicker out from behind white and black as she gazed at him.

“But… you? John, I think… I think I love you.”

“We’ve only met twice.”

The words were so magnificently irrelevant to the significance of the conversation that it made John physically wince, but they escaped before he could think better of them. Jiina seemed amused, a wry smirk ghosting over her face before she returned to a more pensive look.

“You are correct. It would be more accurate to say that Vallya loves you. She loves you very, very much, John. And through her, so do I. She was always a part of me… but since I first connected to her that day, the connection that you weakened became stronger again. Her strongest feelings, her protectiveness, her duty, her love, all leaked through to me. I am experiencing feelings that I have never tasted before – that I was not meant to taste. I am but a Fragment of Gaia, yet somehow, touching Vallya after you Purified her has given me some of what I have lost back to me. But in return…”

This time John said nothing as Jiina fell silent. Her tails flicked in frustration as the two of them soaked in the implications.

“Can you fix this? Can we fix this?” John finally asked. “If you want to be entertained, you’re free to join us yourself. I know you say that you and Vallya are pieces of each other, but you clearly know she’s become more than that.”

“Yes. I know.” Jiina gave a heaving sigh and lowered herself to the ground, gently settling on the rough dirt while hugging her knees to her chest. “Go easy on her, John. You know what it’s like for her right now, how hard it is for her to resist.”

“I… do?”

“Of course! Have you already forgotten that you bear a piece of me within yourself as well? I haven’t exactly clarified it, but… I would have thought you’d piece it together by now,” Jiina growled, annoyance seeping through the barest meekness that had begun. “Bishamonten, the Shard within your chest now. He was once mine - one of my Shards… before he was slain.”

“Oh! I knew he was one of Dike’s, but…” John trailed off, the memories of his early days with the Shard flowing through him now.

“Yes, one of hers, as I am her Fragment. And as I am but a small part of her, he was just a sliver of myself - a singular aspect of my wrath, my anger, my sadism. He was the Shard that represented the anger I feel at watching the wicked go unpunished, or the innocent wrongly harmed. You have felt some of the very same emotions and desires that I unwittingly inflicted on Vallya, only hers were far more intense. Both by virtue of them coming from a Fragment and from being a piece of that Fragment connecting back to itself.”

John couldn’t fight back a swallow as he recalled the way the Shard had made him feel. It never triggered when he wasn’t already angry, mostly, but in the early days it was enough to nearly drive him to **** on multiple occasions. When he’d found Lunaya with the demon, he had scorched their home as his uncontrolled mana began to literally sear the ground around him. And Vallya was facing something even more intense than that? More intense on two fronts, nonetheless.

“It will not remain so for long, rest assured. I have intended to do what I can to sever the connection between us and remove my influence from her since the incident with your children occurred. I feel only a sliver of the guilt that Vallya does over what happened, but even that is deeply unsettling for one who has never doubted their actions before. I only wanted to wait until you visited Vallya again so that I might explain to you what happened. She does not deserve to shoulder the burden of blame for this; she did not choose what she was born from, nor did she welcome me into her mind.”

“...Thank you.” John surprised even himself with how genuine he was being. The raw anger over what had happened had already long faded, but that didn’t mean he’d gotten past the issue altogether. Still… helping Jiina take blame and promise to help make things right was nice. Not enough to fix things, but enough for a start.

Jiina beamed up at John, a flash of genuine happiness appearing at John’s words. “It is only what is right. You should know, though, that once I go, I do not know when we will meet again. Fragments can only journey to the mortal world with explicit permission from our Aspects – and even then, we are only to use Avatars unless given further permission to appear in person. Such permission has not been given since… since Skanda was killed.”

“A Fragment?” John asked. “Dike mentioned a few had been killed by mages.”

“Not a few. Just one. And that… that was enough.”

“Are you sure? I definitely thought she said a few had died…”

“The mere knowledge of such things is dangerous. Other Aspects would not have even mentioned the possibility. They might not have even dared tell you of Shards being slain, save that you already possessed one yourself. Dike left things as vague as she believed was right. I am doing the same. Ask no further questions – and do not mention that name or your knowledge of it to anyone. Anyone. There are some who would slit your throat for even knowing it, much less speaking it aloud.”

“Then why tell me at all?” John asked, bewildered.

“Because you are growing strong. Nearly strong enough to do something with that knowledge. And more importantly, you’ve grown wise enough to not blather on about every single thing you can do, or every scrap of knowledge you stumble upon.”

Jiina’s eyes flickered for a moment. She winced and shivered, as though a chill had come over her. All the same, she did her best to give John a comforting look as she clutched her knees a little tighter.

“More importantly, because I have lingered here long enough. As I said, once I leave, I know not when we will ever be able to speak again. I will not take control of this vessel and risk corrupting her further. You simply deserved to know as much as is safe for you while I still have the chance to tell you.”

“I do appreciate that. And that you’re doing what you can to make this right.”

“...It is my fault in the first place, after all,” Jiina murmured. “I wish you luck, John. I won’t be able to fix everything that was changed by my interference – but I will do what I can. I won’t be as close as we have been lately, but…”

Jiina gave him a rueful look as the white and black faded from her eyes, returning them to the purple orbs they’d once been.