The moment I stepped through the destroyed gate, the world changed.

  What had been a tunnel dark enough that even my enhanced sight couldn’t see much suddenly shifted, seeming to warp for a second before revealing a wide open space. The room was made of the same worn stone as the rest of the sewers, but rather than a confined tunnel it was a room that bore striking resemblance to a laboratory. The scope of the illusion baffled me.

  It was about the size of the main hall of the Guild, which meant it could probably fit about seventy people before things started getting too claustrophobic. Unlike the Guild hall, however, this room was kitted out with all kinds of experimental equipment.

  The far wall was lined with tables, each of which had a body on. There were some that were little more than skeletons, some that were still rotting and a few that seemed perfectly preserved. Each of them was laid out in the exact same position, flat on their backs with their arms straight by there side, almost in a standing pose while lying down.

  On a selection of shelves, desks and cupboards were a number of jars, filled with all kinds of limb and body part. Each was suspended in a thick fluid, clearly for the purpose of preservation. I supposed that it must take a particularly strong constitution to be a necromancer.

  The adjacent wall on our left had a shut metal door, and the centre of the room was dominated by a ritual circle on a raised platform. The circle was a dimly lit green, and it pulsed slowly with each movement of its sole occupant.

  Standing inside the ritual circle was a man in dark green robes. He seemed to be about middle aged, although it was hard to tell. He was clearly human, but his skin was ashen and desiccated, his built gaunt to the point that he shouldn’t have the strength to stand. Yet stand he did, brandishing a staff at the doorway we had broken through.

  “Intruders. Wonderful,” the man said drily. His voice was scratchy, like he was dehydrated. He turned to face our group, glaring at us with sunken eyes. “I really need to make those alarm wards more accurate, I didn’t even notice that accursed Revenant.”

  “Beware. He Is Accomplished,” the Revenant announced as they raised a hand towards the necromancer in the ritual circle.

  Neil and I drew our swords, and Cassie took out her wand. Jenny simply stood there, seemingly not having a weapon on her.

  “What are you doing here, necromancer?” Neil asked. “Judging by the fact you’re living in the sewers, I assume you don’t have a license?”

  The necromancer barked out a laugh, although it came out as more of a rasp. “A license? No, of course I don’t. Why should I? You don’t need a license to practice pyromancy or kinemancy, why should necromancy be any different?”

  Jenny spoke up. “Actually, you kind of do! Well, you need a qualification for it, anyway.”

  “Wait, you do?” I whispered to Cassie.

  “Yep,” she responded. “I’ve got one, don’t worry.”

  “Uh, do I?”

  Cassie glanced at me, keeping one eye on the engagement. “Don’t you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so? I mean, I don’t remember signing up for one, at the very least.”

  “...We’ll talk about this later. Something’s happening,” she pointed out.

  Sure enough, the necromancer had raised his staff towards the Revenant, who was clutching their head in an eerily human-like way.

  “There is a better world for you, cousin. My Lord beckons you to his side,” the necromancer said as he muttered a spell under his breath. His staff began to glow teal at its tip, and the same light started to waft from under the Revenant’s heavy coverings.

  Neil turned to the rest of us. “He’s making his move. Cassie, I want you to disrupt him as much as you can from range. Julie, you’re with me when we advance on him. Jenny, do whatever you can to slow him down from controlling that Revenant. Got it?”

  I briefly wondered when he was chosen to be in charge, but I couldn’t see anything wrong with his strategy and we didn’t really have the time to vote, so I just nodded. I could see the other two run through the same thought process as they nodded too, leading to us all turning back to the necromancer.

  I saw Jenny begin to trace a teal design in the air, the rune on her hand flaring as the Revenant was subsumed by the necromancer. At the same time Cassie began to chant, mana swirling around her as she channelled power in to her wand.

  Neil and I moved up, quickly reaching the edge of the ritual circle. Neil stopped, always cautious, but I just barrelled through. I felt the power of the circle emanating around me as I reached the necromancer, but he clearly hadn’t been expecting an interruption.

  The necromancer turned his gaze on me even as he continued his spell on the Revenant. With a single syllable and a flick of the wrist he sent a bolt of deep green energy at my chest as I lunged for him, knocking my blade aside and tearing into the chitin of my arm.

  I felt a burning sensation as my arm began to decay, chitin flaking and softening as the meat underneath started to rot. I flooded the arm with vitae, but I could only just match the sheer force behind the putrefaction. I stalled it, but my sword arm was just about useless and incredibly painful.

  I lunged at the necromancer with my left arm, meeting a force barrier around the central circle of the ritual. My claws slid, failing to catch on the force as the necromancer grinned. He cast another bolt of decay, forcing me to duck and make space, leaving the circle as I tried to think of a plan.

  The rot on my right arm was slowing, but not quickly enough to be useable. Rather than wait it out I simply chose to detach my forearm entirely. As the discarded limb fell the decay consumed it entirely, leaving it a husk on the floor.

  From the stump I manufactured a tentacle, thicker and longer than any I had made before. My idea was that if my claws couldn’t pierce the barrier then perhaps I could crush it. It didn’t seem like the necromancer was manually controlling it, so with a bit of luck I could drain its power enough to break through, or at least weaken it for Cassie’s inevitable spell.

  With my new tentacle in hand, I leapt back into the ritual circle. Neil had advanced at this point and was continually striking the barrier as he dodged the necromancer’s blasts. He must have seen what happened to my arm, because despite his speed and durability he was moving incredibly defensively.

  As soon as I made it up to the barrier I wrapped my tentacle around it, moving it both with my muscles and by manually growing it longer as I constricted the barrier. It didn’t take long until I had a firm grip on the barrier and began to squeeze with all my strength.

  The necromancer wasn’t oblivious to my tactic, however, and began to cast another spell. This man was a ridiculous power house, casting so frequently while fighting for control of the Revenant. His chanting was low and muttered, but unlike the mono-syllabic decay bolts it took almost two seconds to complete.

  Just as I began to make progress against the barrier he swept his arm towards me and conjured a wave of putrid green energy to fly in my direction. Locked as I was against the barrier, there was no way for me to avoid the wave of decay.

  With no time to react I took the hit and screamed, the burning from before nothing in comparison to now. This was worse than being crushed against a tree, worse than being sent through a portal and worse than having my arm ripped off. It was worse than all of my worst pains combined.

  I didn’t have the time or presence of mind to regret my recklessness. I stumbled backwards while my body began to decompose, my chitin no defence against the rot. I felt both physically and with my magical senses as each individual layer of skin, chitin, muscle or bone festered, my body unable to bear my weight as my tainted muscles eroded in real time.

  I barely even felt my impact against the floor, writhing as I was in agony. All I knew through the haze of pain was image of more and more of the life in my body winking out, being consumed by that accursed magic.

  I summoned every scrap of vitae I had to my name, no regard for foresight or my own body’s need for vitae to live. Everything I had went into fighting the pervasive corrosion that was bent on decaying my body. My vitae flooded my body as my eyes grew too rotted to see, fought to a standstill as I struggled to breath.

  Then, against all odds, my lifeforce began to lose. Despite the home-field advantage, the pollution flooding my body was far more potent than anything I could summon up, and I watched as my vitae began to fizzle away. Even the most detached part of myself began to despair as I gasped, ragged and wheezing through lungs filling with sickly-sweet liquid.

  At that moment, there was no hesitation in my mind that I needed to change. It didn’t matter what I became or whether or not I was still recognisable, it didn’t matter if it had me wondering about my sense of self or worried about how others would see me.

  It didn’t matter.

  All I had to do was to change, to become something else. I could abandon this flesh to the unbeatable tide of omnipresent rot, I could be free of the pain.

  Through the haze I took a slab of flesh from the mouldering pile I was becoming and focused, pouring as much vitae as I could into it. I became that flesh. Nothing more, nothing less. Just meat and life, free of the pain, the suffering and the decay. With that barely coherent thought at the forefront of my screaming mind I cut myself free from my own corpse.

  If I had a mouth I would have cried in relief, finally free from the pain of that putrid spell. My mind was still foggy, but at that moment all I could to was revel silently in pure joy.

  With a wet slap I impacted the ground, sliding free of the gangrenous ruin that had once been my body. I had no eyes to see, no nerves to feel and no brain to think, yet I lived. I felt… distant. Untethered, like there wasn’t really anything tying me here. My grasp on my form was tenuous, yet with the removal of my agony I still felt clearer than before.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Much like when I disconnected my brain to travel through portals my physical sensations were missing, yet I also felt incredibly calm. No, not calm. I felt absent. I supposed whatever glands controlled emotions were missing in the hunk of flesh I had become, so everything was muted.

  I was still there, in essence. There was simply less urgency to all of my concerns, my emotions politely queueing for my attention. I was still worried about the others, relieved to be free of agony and seething with hatred for that necromancer, but it was like there was a barrier of separation between me and myself.

  Oh right, I should probably get a move on making another ‘me’.

  I was definitely feeling a bit distracted. Something about my current state was completely failing to provide me urgency. Even so I was still me, and what I wanted to do was help my friends and allies deal with the necromancer.

  I considered that tools at my disposal and saw… little. I had packed some of my remaining vitae into my escape pod, but not nearly enough to make a whole body out of. My body itself was currently a rapidly cooling hunk of back fat, muscle and a thin coating of chitin. Not much to work with.

  However, I wasn’t completely out of options. Wherever I now was, I could feel a few other sources of vitae moving around through a haze of tingling mana, and if I could get to that then I stood a chance.

  With what little vitae I had left, I fashioned myself two small pincer feet. They were basically just outcroppings of chitin beneath my body which I would form and remove on repeat to scuttle towards my target.

  With my new, slightly unsteady footing, I started towards the closest source of vitae. Compared to where I had been only a few minutes ago, this little walk was surprisingly relaxing. Then again, I wasn’t really in the healthiest of emotional states right now, not having a brain and all.

  Frustratingly, the vitae moved away incredibly quickly before I could reach it, so I moved on to another one. Then that one ended up moving too, although it seemed to be dodging a spell of some kind because I felt a rush of mana tingle across my form.

  Finally I found a stationary source of life, scuttling up to it as quickly as my two little nubs could carry me. I stumbled more than once over little notches in the stone floor, but I could just move my legs below me again when I fell over, so it wasn’t too much of a hassle.

  When I reached my destination, I finally realised just how little vitae I had. I’d had the second most vitae in our group when we started this fight, with only Neil having more. Yet now, whoever this was felt like a veritable beacon of lifeforce. I could barely contain myself when I bumped into whoever it was and began to drink.

  At first I only took a few sips, planning to drain a little to make some eyes and then target the necromancer. However, the moment I reached for it I lost myself in the current of lifeforce. It was warm, comforting and safe, like a warm meal among friends or sitting around a fire during a storm.

  This vitae reminded me of all this and more, and to me it was the ambrosia of the gods. I drank deep, filling my tiny form to bursting and expanding it further. I stretched out my little fleshy form into a tube of muscle, then added a basic spine and proper musculature for my chitinous nubs. I added more of these rudimentary feet, adding a joint to each as I grew from the length of a thumb to the length of an arm.

  A small heart and basic circulatory system followed, as well as a set of eyes and ears. Finally I fashioned a vaguely head-shaped bowl of bone at one end, doing my best to recreate a brain, tying together all my freshly made nerves in my spine and winding them up to the new organ.

  All at once sensation came screaming back, sight and sound and touch returning in a haze of sudden acknowledgement. After a moment to reorient myself I finally stopped draining from the well of life I had found. Someone was screaming in the background, which was a little concerning, but first I needed to know who I’d just stolen from.

  Twisting my new form around I discovered that it was Jenny that I had fed on, and that she was currently looking at me with starry eyes. I was wrapped around one of her arms, and judging from the swaying she was a bit dizzy from my meal.

  I formed a mouth in my skull, taking a moment to adjust my vocal cords to my new size before speaking. “Jenny. It’s me. Julie.”

  My voice came out wheezing and quiet, but I was close enough that she could hear me anyway. “Bug Girl!? I thought that was Bug Girl?”

  She spun around and pointed at a pile of mouldy, weeping flesh on the other side of the room.

  Oh, dear gods EW! If I had a digestive system right now I would throw up.

  Speaking of the room, it had definitely seen better days. The stone floor was covered in scratches and scorch marks, even melting in some places. Not a single preserved specimen had been spared, and only one of the corpses remained undisturbed.

  I clambered up Jenny’s arm to her shoulder and reared up, examining the situation. Neil was still in battle, if anything playing even more cautiously than before. He kept glancing over at my old body, which made sense. His sword was covered in thick black sludge, and one leg had a weeping, rotten wound.

  The Revenant was standing stock still, like some kind of deactivated automaton. Around it hovered a series of floating teal glyphs, each one burning with turquoise fire. Presumably they were Jenny’s doing, since the Revenant wasn’t trying to kill us.

  Finally I located the screaming, which was coming from Cassie. I checked her over from a distance, only to see that she seemed fine. If anything, she seemed to be doing surprisingly well against such a powerful mage. I suppressed the urge to scuttle over to her and turned back to Jenny.

  “Why is Cass screaming?” I asked, more than a little concerned.

  Jenny snapped back to reality, seeming a bit distracted. I noticed that she was absolutely bathed in sweat. “Oh, she started doing that when you dissolved. I’m gonna sit down, chief.”

  Oh, shit. Jenny thought I was dead, so Cass probably does too. This is really bad.

  I considered my options as Jenny lowered herself to the ground, leaning against one wall. When she settled in I scuttled off her and looked around for the necromancer, who I had yet to spot after my escape.

  I managed to find him by following Neil’s gaze. He was cowering behind a shield of twisting dark energy, which camouflaged him some what against the stone walls. From what I could see he was in a bad way, having retreated from the ritual circle.

  His robes were torn and burnt, and one arm hung limp at his side and his face was split by a nasty burn that covered the entire right half. After a moment of searching I spotted his staff, split in two and lying discarded in the ritual circle.

  What did I miss? No matter, I need to get to Cass.

  With my decision made, I began to scuttle towards my friend. I quickly made more adjustments to my body, although I was still limited. I didn’t have tons to work with, but I could make my six legs longer to have me travel faster and plate my body in chitinous segments to give me more time to escape if I got caught in another spell.

  Even in such an intense situation part of my mind couldn’t help but marvel at how fun it was to move with so many legs. I quickly found a rhythm to moving them, which sent a satisfying beat thrumming through my body as I scampered across the room. There was a strange sense of glee being so small too, although I wasn’t really in any state to experience it.

  About halfway to my destination Cassie screamed something wordless and cast a spell. I paused from shock as her lightning tore through the room like the wrath of god, splitting the air as it screamed towards the cowering necromancer. His shield shook violently, but it held. He fired a pitiful retort, a single decay bolt that was easily blocked by my friend.

  I recognised that spell. That was a first circle spell for summoning a zap of lightning, Cassie’s go to spell for combat. I had seen that spell cast hundreds of times, and each time it had enough power to scorch a tree or snap a twig. It was deadly against a normal person, but not really combat mage material.

  The way she cast it had my body throbbing from the mana she was using. She had to be burning through it at record pace, but that first circle spell was challenging the shield of a wizard who was in the early stages of the Changing. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  I shook my head to clear it. I could figure out what she was doing and the consequences later, but I needed to get to her first. I continued on my way, my chitinous feet clacking across the ground as I rushed to her.

  Then I began to think. If I knew Cassie, she was going to get distracted by my ‘resurrection’, which risked her getting hit by one of the necromancer’s spells. If I couldn’t fight it in my own body then I definitely couldn’t in hers, even if I somehow found the vitae to work with.

  No, I couldn’t risk that. I needed Cassie in the zone, which meant that I needed to be rid of the necromancer before I could assuage her fears. I stopped again and turned to the necromancer.

  With every strike from Cassie, and to a lesser extent Neil, his shield was getting weaker and weaker. He was compensating by diverting power in the spell manually to where the strike would land, which was usually a good idea. However, he was losing this battle of attrition, and it showed in his barrier.

  His defences had small gaps forming where he was removing too much power in his panic, holes breaching his defences. The others couldn’t exploit it because he was watching them both like hawks, manoeuvring them into better defended positions with his blasts, which were becoming less and less frequent.

  An idea struck me. It was reckless, in much the same way that had gotten me in this mess to begin with. I was better prepared to deal with his decay now, though. Besides, I highly doubted that he realised I still lived.

  I needed to time it just right if I was going to succeed, so I scuttled up to his shield, shifting my vague chitin coverings to match the colour of the floor. As I did so, I tried to reflect the floor below me with an illusion, since thankfully my mana was untouched by my otherwise reduced state. With this double layered defence, I crept up to the necromancer and waited for my chance.

  Neil was still going strong, although his carefully timed dodging was getting closer by the second. Cassie was running out of steam much faster, however. Whatever she had done to power up her magic was affecting her.

  I turned to check on her and saw her from the front for the first time since I’d been hit. Despite the fact that I needed to pay attention to the shield, I found myself momentarily distracted.

  Her hair was splayed out behind her, frizzled from static and shining with short-lived sparks that jumped from hair to hair. Her hands, especially the one that held her wand, were almost glowing with white energy, those same sparks jumping between each of her fingers. That wasn’t what captivated me though.

  I was caught by her eyes.

  Her eyes, once a warm yet mischievous hazel, where now pure white. Her iris, her pupil, and the whites of each eye had all been consumed by a burning power that seemed to light them from within. Just a glance had me enraptured. I simply couldn’t look away.

  I watched spellbound as she took her lessons to heart, moving and leaping as she cast to ensure that she was safe. I watched as she began another incantation, this one longer than her basic lightning blasts. I watched with only a single thought in my mind.

  She’s gorgeous.

  This. This was how she was meant to be seen. No, witnessed. Embroiled in adventure, balancing on the knife’s edge and pouring all of herself into victory. This was Cassandra Vaughn at her most radiant.

  The crescendo of her incantation pulled me away from my trance as a ball of lightning formed in front of Cassie, fizzling and popping as it spiralled towards the necromancer’s shield. The hapless mage had seemingly given up on offence as he condensed his shield further, forming a wall of roiling ink against the stone backdrop.

  The room seemed to light for a moment as the ball lightning fired its first shot, an echoing crack that tore the soundscape of the laboratory asunder. It landed with a fizzling clap and tore into the shield. Another crack, another wound to the writhing barrier.

  Finally the ball lightning itself struck the shield, and for a moment I went blind. I actually dissolved and reformed my eyes just to regain my sight, and only because of that did I see my chance.

  The necromancer’s shield was just dense enough to hold, but it was in absolute tatters. The man himself was scorched and jittering, barely a step away from convulsing on the floor. Good.

  After a moment of preparation I bent my six legs and pounced through one of the many slowly closing gaps in his barrier. The moment I landed I was moving again, scuttling towards the man who still hadn’t recovered from his blindness.

  The moment I made contact with him I began to drain his vitae. It was like ink, viscous and foul, but it was plenty dense and just as nutritious as ever. I forced it down and went back for more, wrapping my body around the man like a chain as I climbed his torso. Once I reached his neck I formed teeth in my mouth and bit.

  I didn’t have taste buds right now, but I could still feel the heat from the man’s blood as he gurgled. Much like his vitae the man’s blood was thick and inky, but it was still living. For now, at least.

  Driven by recent memory I tore into the man’s throat, shaking my head and ripping through his papery, desiccated skin. He screamed, briefly, but the combination of having throat torn into and his lifeforce drained after a taxing battle was too much for him, and it didn’t take him long to perish. I couldn’t help but hope it hurt.

  It struck me that I probably shouldn’t feel so good about killing a man, but I pushed the thought aside. I would deal with that when I had time, much like the several other implications that this encounter had dredged up.

  I lifted my head from the necromancer’s corpse and looked up to see Neil and Cassie staring at me. With a mouth full of blood stopping me from speaking, I decided to keep things simple.

  ‘Got Him,’ I wrote over my head.

  a lot! I've read over this one more than most, and I'm pretty happy with it overall. It's nice to see Lia finally get past her mental block, but what a way to be forced into it.

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