Primals By Darker Alternative TFs!../../Art/Alternative-Transformations/index.html!The strange, the bizarre, or the otherwise different.; Anthropomorphic Art!../../Art/Anthropomorphic-Art/index.html!Animals that walk like humans… or something like that.; Aquarium!../../Art/Aquarium/index.html!Fish, marine mammals, and anything else with fins and flippers.; Aviary!../../Art/Aviary/index.html!Birds, bats, and all other children of the wind.; Bestiary!../../Art/Bestiary/index.html!Earth-bound mammals and reptiles.; Conjoinment Art!../../Art/Conjoinment-Art/index.html!Two or more individuals becoming of one body.; Discontinued Artwork!../../Art/Discontinued-Artwork/index.html!Old artwork that no longer pleases me.; Non-TF Artwork!../../Art/Non-Transformational-Artwork/index.html!Artwork that has nothing to do with transformations.; The Saga of Blood!http://www.chimaera-media.com/sagaofblood/index.html!My own mythology-based shared story universe.; TFan Art!../../Art/TFan-Art/index.html!Artwork based on or inspired by the creativity of others.; Guest Art!../../Art/Guest-Art/index.html!Characters and transformations drawn by other artists.; Fiction!../Fiction/index.html!Short stories and other made-up prose.; Non-Fiction!../Non-Fiction/index.html!Essays and discussions in the key of TF.; Poetry!../Poetry/index.html!Verse with rhythm and rhyme.; Guest Writings!index.html!The stories and poetry of others.; Autobiography!../../autobiography.html!About the artist/writer known as StormDrake.; Chronology!../../chronology.html!All the art on this site, in chronological order.; Commission Info!../../commissions.html!Information on purchasing exclusive artwork.; Complete Guides!../../Resources/guides.html!Lists of transformations in popular media.; Contact Information!../../contact.html!Methods of reaching me, such as e-mail.; Tutorials!../../Tutorials/index.html!Explanations on digital art techniques.; Home Art Literature Resources Destinations Chapter 6 Madness Bit more… just a little bit more… Sarah twitched excitedly. Somebody had left a small twig in her case that she was using the lever the lid open. She had to balance her concentration as well as her weight on the dry twig, thinking enough to maneuver the stick but also to stop herself forgetting. Sarah constantly ran her name through her mind. The twig was frail, and if she wound her body around it too much it would snap. Sarah needed to get used to using this snake body, but if she got used to it too much, she'd never get out of it. The lid lifted for a moment, then snapped down again. There was an almost inaudible sound, like a mosquito's cough. All the other captured primals in the cage cave were watching Sarah with bated breath. Suddenly, somewhere in the cave system, something exploded with such force it shook the walls, sending some cages swinging on the chains that hung them from the ceiling. There were a few stifled whines, hisses and a caw as a toucan fell of its perch. Clouds of dust fell from the ceiling. Sarah groggily raised her head. There had been a psychic scream with that blast that had shaved off a few more layers of memory as it passed. Next to her, the twig lay in splinters. Sarah wanted to scream, to rage at something, to let out the pent up emotions inside her, but all she could do was bash her wedge shaped head against the case's walls and hiss in a higher tone. No, no, no, no, you fucking bastards, no! she thought angrily. Something blue and scaly sped past through the cave in a blind panic, looking for somewhere to hide. Sarah stopped butting her head and looked at the cobra primal frantically slither about the cave, then out the other end, too scared to even notice the other animals. Sarah sometimes pitied Anya more than herself. She knew Despair would find the cowering girl eventually. Deeper in the cave system of the island, in the pentagram cavern, the view was obscured by falling dust and the floor strewn with rubble. Blobs of melted stone and patches of flaming rock were scattered about, and just next to the pentagram itself was a massive, impossibly deep fissure. Lying on his back in the centre of the pentagram was Wrath, too stunned at the moment to move. Who should have been standing around him, in the four compass directions, weren't. Insanity had been thrown back by the blast and had caused a small irregularity in reality as he had been shot into the cavern ceiling. Despair was embedded in a crater in the northern wall, and Filth was still where he was before the explosion, but more runny and on fire in places. Ganas was also still where he was, protected by a bubble of dark, ethereal energy. Anya and Xanthi had fled the room from different exits, desperate not to endure the Incarnation's anger when they recovered, and Dead was probably crushed under one of the fallen stalactites. What they had been doing was channeling Wrath's unnatural anger and strength through the void into Sorrow, bestowing her with some of her brother's power. When Sorrow's lifeline had been crushed, and Sorrow banished as was Agony, all of that power rushed back along the line it had came, and that power had nowhere to go, so it detonated with fearsome force inside the pentagram. Ganas was the first to speak. "-," he said. Then, after he had got his vocal chords in order, he said, "What happened?" Wrath then uttered a curse in his true language so foul it seared the air and whirled the dust motes into unpleasant shapes. Sorrow has been exorcised from this world. Despair said as he levered himself out of the hole in the wall. Get up, Filth. Filth gurgled an incomprehensible response. "What do we do now?" Ganas said calmly, collapsing the bubble. Uh? Wait for Insanity. Then… plan our next plan of action. "What's wrong with you?" Ganas said, risking a touch of annoyance. Sorrow… she held… made the… psychic connection… between us… We'll adjust. "How long will that take?" "Ha! Depends!" cackled a voice. Insanity dropped from the cloud of vaporous randomness amongst the remaining stalactites, landing in front of the warlock. "Despair'll need to stay here, the emotions of the animals will recharge him. Filth will get back together soon enough!" "And you and Wrath?" "Hah!," Insanity laughed again. "I have a plan!" Nina stretched, cracking her joints. It was morning, she was making toast, and last night was the best night's sleep she'd ever had. Apart from that really weird dream about jumping about on rooftops… It felt real enough to be real. Another memory jumped at her, causing her to run out of her apartment, leaving a Jamie who, despite all protests of the contrary, was snoring, and ran to the first floor to Manitou's door. She knocked lightly on it as not to wake him, realised the whole point of knocking was to wake him up to let her in, and was about to hammer on the wood paneling when the door opened itself. "Good morning Nina," Manitou said. His eyes widened when he rubbed the sleep out of them so he could see Nina properly. "Uh…?" Nina looked down and saw she was wearing only her underwear. "Oh, Christ, sorry. Can I come in for a bit?" "Like that?" Manitou arched an eyebrow. "What? Um, okay, I just gotta few little questions." "Go ahead, shoot." "Right. Did I leave my apartment last night?" Manitou nodded. "And was there this horrible watery ghost of a bitch?" Another nod. "And," Nina took a deep breath, "was I a giant lizard girl?" "Technically, we the gecko of the Phelsuma family, kid," Vinsoni whispered in her ear. Nina straightened up, face stiffening. "'Sup, Manny?" the little gecko said, receiving a nod and a small grin. "Can, can, can you see him too?" Nina said, looking sideways at Vinsoni, who glowed brightly in the dawn light. "Yes. He's a nice little spirit guide." "Okay. Thank you. This has been weird," Nina said in a strained voice. "How do I change?" "You just concentrate about it. I'll help. She in good hands, Manny. Well, paws. Or whatever humans call our feet." "Well, I'll be getting back to my room, Manny, I've not had a chance to get used to being all scaly yet," Nina said cheerfully, surprising herself. "Bye, and don't let your perceptions get in the way," Manitou called after her. He was about to go back inside his flat when he saw Haverton glaring at him from the floor below. She raised a finger and opened her mouth a few times, and finally got her tongue around the words; "Nice trick with the contacts, bub, but that don't stop me needing rent, y'hear?" "Okay Nina, take it slow, no need to panic, you'll be fine," Vinsoni said coolly. He sat on the coffee table in front of Nina's couch in her apartment. Nina, sitting cross-legged on the couch, shivered. "I'm scared. And cold. Can I at least have more than my underwear on?" "You might rip your other clothes. They a little… tight for this. You need loose stuff, like wot Manitou wears." "I like that 'tight stuff.' Sometimes I need to feel good about how I look." "I'll never understand human courtship," Vinsoni muttered. "Anyway, can you feel anything that weren't there before?" "Like what?" "Oh, I dunno, like a switch or summink." "Yeah, I can feel this… um, thing in the centre of my chest…" "Right, whenever you want to become your true self, you use that thing." "Do I have to think of it as my true self?" Vinsoni shrugged and stared up at Nina with reptilian patience. Nina stared back until her eyes watered. Does this guy blink? she thought. Nina sighed and felt for the switch. Almost instantly the change started. Nina squealed slightly, flinched and tensed every muscle in preparation for the pain that didn't come. "See, you're fine. It doesn't hurt cos you accepted it," Vinsoni said as Nina shifted in her seat when her tail grew. It started slowly, then sped up and widened. The green top scales and yellow under scales spread up from it, covering Nina's skin instead of painfully tearing it away. Nina twisted her head around and saw the pattern of blue and red dots cover her back. Turning back, she saw Vinsoni had leapt onto the couch and was perched in front of her on the couch's arm. "That's it, you doing it," he said encouragingly. Nina uncrossed her legs when they started changing too. She winced again when her ankles moved position, giving her digitigrades legs. There was a faint cracking sound as her pelvis painlessly altered to accommodate the changes to her legs and tail. Nina stood up, this time with perfect balance for her primal legs, instead of the unsure swaying from the days before. Nina started breathing heavily when the scale growth carried up her stomach and chest and down her arms, reshaping her body as it went. Her breathing gained speed when she could feel her face pushing forwards into the reptile snout. "Don't panic, now, there's nothing to be afraid of," Vinsoni said. "But it feels, nng, weird," Nina complained, her tongue morphing as she did so and interfering with her speech. Then the sensation stopped after the frill emerged from the parting of her hair. "There. You done it," Vinsoni stated happily. Nina looked from her hands to her chest and abdomen, to her legs and tail. All were larger proportionally to her human form, and all were covered in the light green scales. "Yeah. I did it. And it didn't hurt at all. Yeah," she said again, before striding into her bedroom to examine herself in the mirror. "I can do this. No problem." She leaned sideways so she could see into the main room, at Vinsoni on the couch. "I'm doing okay, huh?" "Yep. Much better than the days before now." "Ooh, don't remind me. I just want to forget them," she mumbled, leaning back into her room. "What you doing?" Vinsoni asked. "I can't spend all day in my skivvies," came the answer. Vinsoni saw a discarded t-shirt fly onto the floor framed by the doorframe, with a comment of 'Too small.' "Nina, who're you talkin' to?" Jamie sleepily walked into the kitchen from his room. Nina looked out of her room at him, then pulled her head back in before he could see her. "Can't you see my spirit guide?" she asked. "Umm, where is it?" Jamie looked at the couch when Nina said 'it' was a 'he' and the 'he' was on the couch arm. "I… can see a kind of greeny mist. It sounds like somebody whispering in my ear. Woah!" "How do I look?" Nina asked him. She'd dug up an old black dress that on her primal form probably qualified as a skirt and a baggy long sleeved shirt from somewhere and thrown them on. "It's gonna have to do until I get some proper stuff. Maybe I should go out with Lulu and she can show me what to get…" "Heh, yesterday you didn't want anything to do with them," Jamie muttered as he poured cereal into a bowl. "Yeah, but now I'm really one of them. I don't go half-arsed at things, so if I've got no choice at being a," Nina faltered. "Primal," Vinsoni interjected. "Thank you, a primal, then I'm gonna be the best damn primal I can be." "And for that you have to go on a girly shopping spree," Jamie grinned as he drowned his breakfast under a generous amount of milk. "Yes," Nina said. "I mean no. I mean, uh, shut up." Jamie continued grinning, shovelling his breakfast in his mouth. Manitou was busily updating his contact list with Lulu's and Nina's number, not that he really needed them, but you never know, just in case sort of thing, when the phone rang. "Hello?" he said, dreading another confrontation with the dreaded double-glazing salesmen. "Manny, it's me, David," crackled the friendly response. "Hey Dave. What's up?" "The storms cleared now, and I just got finished ringing the other primals I know." "That's great, what's the news?" Manitou asked anxiously, grabbing a scrap of paper and a pencil. The sun beat down furiously on the small island of St. Lucia. Sat on the porch of his beachside house was David West, repeatedly slapping the receiver of his ancient phone when the connection went dodgy. The house was built on stilts on the white sands of a crescent moon shaped bay, shielded from the Atlantic winds on the west side of the island. Out in the bay a school of bottle nosed dolphins jumped and dived in and out of the water playfully, hunting fish and clickering to each other in their secret language. Only one person truly knew what they said in this language, for she shared it, and she was swimming with them in the cool waters of the bay. Phoebe West spun through the saltwater gracefully, her waist length black hair trailing out behind her. Her usually creamy brown skin was the rough blue of the dolphins, and she steadied herself with the stiff fins on her elbows and ankles before kicking away to the seabed with her slender, fin tipped tail. Phoebe's lime green eyes, protected from the saltwater by the transparent secondary eyelids, scanned for food. A sudden string of chirps told her of a fish straying from its shoal to her left. She sent back a response to her dolphin friend and pushed away from the sands of the bay floor with her feet and tail, speeding towards the silver bullet shape, snatching it and quickly giving it a twist, granting a short, painless death. It was the law of the wild; hunt or be hunted. It was something you had to expect and respect. Phoebe swam for the surface using her flipper shaped feet. They were extremely awkward on land, but underwater she was as fluid as the substance she inhabited. Shaking her long hair about after bringing her bullet shaped head above the surf; she smiled when the dolphins circled playfully around her. Phoebe put her mouth underwater and clicked a farewell, and the dolphins clicked back. The dolphin primal started languidly swimming back to shore. On the beach, David had stood up and was pacing back and forth, his dreadlocks flapping in the breeze. His human skin was a darker shade than Phoebe's, and he was a good few inches taller than her. Well, if they were both human that is. At the moment it was Phoebe who was taller, striding up the beach easily because she had formed her feet back to human, while keeping the rest of her 'dolphinesque,' as she put it. "Who ya talkin' to, Sharky?" she said, grinning and hefting up the fish she had caught. David flashed a smile of serrated shark teeth. "Ole Manitou in Little Prospect." Phoebe smiled to herself cheekily, licked her lips and went inside the beach house while David resumed his conversation and his pacing. Phoebe turned the radio on, filling the beach house with a slow jazz. "So that's the end of it Manny. I couldn't get a hold on any of them. That bastard must have 'em for sure." David sighed at the silence he received. "Sorry." "It's not your fault, Dave," Manitou's voice returned, crackled and tinny through the earpiece. "Listen, you have to protect those new ones you've found. You four could be our only hope." David got only static. He slammed the phone down in frustration, cursing. "We gotta get the line fixed, Phoebe. Phoebe?" David looked inside to see Phoebe, still in her dolphin form, hunched over the tiny table they used to prepare the food they caught. The fish lay discarded on the floor and Phoebe was holding her head in her hands. "Phoebe? What's the matter?" David exclaimed, rushing over. Phoebe looked up at him with suddenly strained eyes. "Something's coming," she whispered. David noticed the air in the room seemed much hotter than usual. Outside several palm trees crashed to the ground. David rushed outside, the air reaching a blistering level of heat. The radio crackled and fizzed into silence. "No way," he said weakly as the monster crashed onto the beach, followed by a staff carrying figure dressed in robes of deep, dark violet. The flaming behemoth turned its burning gaze towards him, growling deeply. It was a primeval sound, from times of Neanderthal man, and made the hair on the back of David's neck stand on end. Phoebe joined him as Wrath started a slow lumber at them that would end in a charge that could pulverise a tank, never mind a person. Phoebe swore. "Go, go!" David said, pushing his sister at the sea. She ran and dived in, swimming to the centre of the bay. David followed, the sand under his rapidly changing feet quaking due to Wrath's approaching footsteps. He never made it. Wrath pounced forwards, snatching him off the ground by his lengthening tail. David twisted and bit into Wrath's hand with the ferocity of sharks everywhere, plus quite a lot of everything else. Wrath grunted, slamming him into the sand. David was unconscious before his transformation into his shark form was finished. Phoebe saw this from under the waves. She knew she couldn't help him, and reluctantly turned to swim the length of the Caribbean and most of North America's east coast to get to Manitou. But something was in the way. Or to be precise, someone. This someone had no right to be underwater, but he was there, fixing her with that pinpoint stare of his. Ganas raised his staff. Phoebe's world suddenly became a lot more painful, a lot smaller and a lot more… forgetful. Adrian stared grimly in the middle distance, ignoring the low bustle around him. The mall was grating his senses, the smells and sounds combining into one confusing mesh. "Why are we here again?" he asked Lulu. "Nina phoned and asked if I'd come out to get some clothes with her and you came, Mr. Davidson," she poked him playfully in the chest at that point, "because you had nothing better to do." Adrian smiled and kissed her forehead. "Hey, Lulu?" said a hesitant voice next to the cuddling couple. "I'm not interrupting anything?" "Mornin' Jane," Lulu grinned. "Are you two busy? I'll come back later," Jane mumbled, her oddly wide eyes darting everywhere. "What's wrong?"' Lulu asked, glancing up at Adrian. "I need to talk to you. I have to tell you something, and you're the only person I trust," Jane said in one burst, directed at Lulu. Jane practically fell onto a nearby bench, looking pleadingly at Lulu to join her. "Adrian?" Lulu looked at him, twiddling her hair. Adrian nodded. "I'll be in the arcade if you need me, okay?" Lulu nodded in return and sat next to Jane. Lulu could sense worry, panic and confusion pouring off the girl. When the coast was clear and after Jane had breathed deeply to calm herself, she looked at her feet, concealed in heavy black boots. "What's up, Janie?" Lulu said, comforting the goth with a friendly pat on the shoulder. Jane swallowed nervously. "C'mon, you can tell me," Lulu said encouragingly. "It's… how I am…" Jane finally said. Lulu lent forwards and whispered. "I know you're a furry. I don't care, and neither does Adrian." This got a meek smile. "Thanks, but its more than that… See, I've never been attracted physically to a human. Just furs…" Jane trailed off into mumbles. "Yes?" "Any furs. I'm… I… I'm even drawn to the females…" "So you're, um, bisexual?" "Yeah, with furs. But I'm not anything with humans. I never have been." "So I don't have to worry about you hitting on me?" Lulu said, grinning. Jane laughed lightly. "Nah, you're okay. But I'm worried that I'll never be with a real person; I've not made this choice, it's like I was born this way…" "Don't worry, you'll be fine. It's not like you're the only person in the world with this… uh." "Problem?" Jane looked at her feet again. "It's not a problem!" Lulu said, shocked. "Sure feels like it sometimes… I get so lonely…" Jane sniffed a few times, seemingly shrinking without actually moving. Lulu put her arms around the girl's shoulders. "Its okay, it's okay." "There's more…" "Oh?" "I think I'm going like my uncle… I saw… things last night…" "What things?" Lulu said cautiously, praying silently that what Jane saw wasn't what she thought. "Hal… Hallucinations, I think. I could hear them as well as see them." "What did they look like?" Lulu's voice had an edge of nervousness to it now. "They were so… beautiful in the moonlight. I just… wanted to be with them… I wish I had walked up to them now, but I was scared… they were wonderful. "Except one. It was this blue woman, and she was shouting horrible things at the other three. There was a see-through bird that disappeared when the woman touched it…" Oh no, Lulu thought. Anyone but you. "The other three were just… There was a lizard climbing the side of a building, and she was fighting the woman, and there was a tiger and a unicorn on the street. And, and, and they were furries. Anthros. They were what I wanted to be…" Jane was so lost in memory she hadn't noticed Lulu removing her arms and adopting an expression of extreme paranoia. "Are you sure you weren't dreaming?" Lulu asked, trying to sound calm. "No. I'm certain. It can't have been; it felt so real. If I was only brave enough to go over and at least be with them…" A snide voice from behind broke the spell. "So Crazy Jane really is going mental?" Jane jumped and both of them turned to see Candy, head cheerleader, lording it over them with her loyal cohorts, a troupe of snickering girls. "So you're a lesbo as well as a psycho?" Candy stated. "Leave her alone, " Lulu snarled. "What's this, freak? Trying to seduce her when you know she has a boyfriend? Isn't quality time with animal pictures good enough?" On cue, the gang of girls giggled stupidly. "Just… go away…" Jane said weakly, fighting to hold back tears. "How are you gonna make me? See, girls, she's even got one of those mad eye twitches." Candy pointed, and the girls erupted in shrieking laughter. Candy started laughing as well, until Jane rose up from the bench like a rush of blood to the head, fists bunched, and struck Candy hard in the face with a gloved hand. Candy fell back, all signs of amusement gone from the gang's faces. Candy drew herself up, clutching at her face. Blood dripped between her fingers. "My node!" she attempted to yell. "You broke my node!" "JUST SHUT UP!" Jane bellowed, drawing back her fist for another blow when Lulu grabbed her arm. "Jane, calm down!" Lulu shouted, aware of the watching crowd. A small crowd of jocks were grinning at her. She flicked them the fingers, which only served to make them grin more. Jane finally relented, storming off. The last thing Lulu heard from her was "I'm gonna see my uncle." Adrian was battling with the dodgy controls of a pinball machine when he smelt the faint tang of something waft in from the main hall of the mall complex. Faint as it was, it just about overrode the sweat of the nearby nerds. Adrian turned his attention back to the machine just in time to see the ball rattle down between the flippers. He'd tried the various arcade machine and found them dull all of a sudden. He could see the pictures, the flashing lights, the charging aliens, but his tiger instincts just said it was lights and noise with no actual thing to chase or any real threat. But with a pinball machine it was different, like chasing a tiny spherical steel mouse around. Another scent wound its way towards him, this one completely pushing out everything else. Blood. But not much. Adrian curiously left the machine and prowled to the entrance of the arcade. There he stopped in surprise. Striding out of the malls entrance was Jane, who was leaving a confused looking Lulu behind with a gang of panicking cheerleaders who were hunched over - Adrian laughed out loud - a heavily bleeding Candy. Lulu trotted over at the sound of his laugh. Far from amused, she looked strained and worried. "Hah, did you see what happened?" he asked her, chuckling. "Adrian, this is serious! Jane saw us!" Adrian choked. "What?" "Last night!" Lulu hissed. "And Nina and that Incarnation having a fight! She saw our true forms!" "Well, crap." "That's not the half of it. She's so alone. She thinks she's really going insane. I don't know what we've done to her." "We… we'll think of something." "I hope so. I don't want her to suffer like that,"' Lulu whispered, hugging him. It was another fifteen minutes before Nina and a complaining Jamie showed up at the mall. By then, Lulu had reached fret level. She paced continuously about their meeting spot, wringing her hands and muttering along the lines of "Crapcrapcrap, we have to do something." It was Adrian, sitting on the bench quietly contemplating, who saw Nina approaching. "Hey guys," she said, ignoring Jamie's pleads for pocket money. "What's up?" "You're aren't going to like this…" Lulu mumbled, still wringing her hands. "Jane smacked Candy," Adrian said proudly. "Who's Candy?" Nina said, pressing some scruffy dollars into Jamie's palm and nudging him away. He invariably dawdled away to the arcade. "Head cheerleader," Adrian grinned. "You know Jane, yeah?" "Vaguely. Doesn't she fancy animals?" Nina said sternly. "Animal people," Lulu corrected. "Furries." "You mean… things that look like us when we… uh, change?" Nina whispered the last part, sitting down next to Adrian. "Yeah, but she doesn't really know we exist," Adrian reassured. "Oh," Nina said, leaning back. Then she shot bolt upright. "What do you mean by 'doesn't really?'" Adrian and Lulu exchanged glances. "Uh, she saw us," Lulu squeaked. The ensuing yell caused most of the crowds around them to turn and stare. "That freak saw us?" Nina shrieked, jumping up. "She's not a freak!" Lulu shot back. Adrian wisely decided to stay out of it; both of the girls could easily outmaneuver him in an argument, he decided. "She's just different." Nina turned her voice to 'low hiss.' Adrian definitely sensed a part of her inner reptile creeping through. "So where is she now?" "She went to see her uncle. Look, if she does tell anyone, who would believe her? And she's too afraid to talk about it anyway. She's worried about her mental health." Nina said nothing, thinking intently. "I… see. I… won't say anything to her then, if I see her. I mean, we barely know each other." "So why are we here?" Adrian asked, fiddling with a tear on his shirt. "I thought me and Lulu could get some larger clothes for when we change into-" Nina was cut off by Lulu frantically making 'zip it' motions. Candy, in the middle of her gang and with a massive napkin pressed to her bloody nose, was watching them intently. "You know," Nina said, leading them away from the centre of the mall. "I get a big tail, which I kinda like now, and Lulu gets a whole horse butt and an extra pair of legs." "Ahem, I am a centaur, thank you very much," Lulu interrupted. "A unicentaur," Adrian mused. "A damn sexy one." "Gah, I don't need those images, thanks," Nina shook her head. "Anyway, I don't think either of us can afford to buy new pairs of pants each time we change, so I thought a dress or skirt could work. And some loose tops, yeah?" Lulu suddenly looked thoughtful. Adrian recognised that look. It meant hell for men as their respective partners dragged them around seemingly every clothes shop in immediate existence. "I think I'll go talk with Jamie," he said before they hooked him. Now, as you may or may not know, conversations between two males differ greatly to the female to female ones. As Lulu and Nina wound their way around the clothes outlets of the mall, they constantly exchanged comments and thoughts about being primals, in between getting odd looks off store assistants when they asked for clothes two or three sizes two big for them. "We'll be doing a lot of fighting in these, so something a bit tougher, Nina," Lulu said to Nina, who was lovingly admiring a black satin gown. Nina blinked in surprise. "Hey, you're right. There are more of those things like that ghost woman. Doesn't that worry you?" "Kinda. I mean, they are, like, really dangerous, but I don't dwell on it. Manitou says not to." "Manitou's that black guy, right?" "Yeah, he knows most about us." "But, we could get really hurt, even killed! Doesn't that bother you even a little bit?" Lulu fell silent, thinking intently. If you were to total the amount of time the two girls spent talking, it would equal a sore throat or two. However, the conversation between Adrian and Jaime, in the arcade at a shooting gallery style machine, went like this: "So, you can to the werewolf thing?" "Yup. But when I want to, not just at full moon. Hey, I gotta ask Manny that…" "So, what animal do you be?" "Tiger." "Cool." Typical guys. Manitou meditated. Or at least, tried to meditate. Something was stopping him. He looked around his apartment. No noise, no slight hums could be heard, although those rarely stopped him. Something was blocking him from reaching the astral plane. Gently probing with his mind, he encountered a flattish, smoky aura exactly between the material world and the astral world. Each time he went to press through it, it disorientated him and sent his spirit back to his body. He traced along it in the material world to his limits, which as just after the outskirts of Little Prospect fell away to coastline. The purple haze stretched everywhere, as far as he could tell. A thicker wave of the inky stuff rolled along past him, crackling with psychic sparks. Manitou tried to breach it in the waves wake, but found it stronger and more nauseating. The wave had come past him from a northerly direction, from New York. He sent his spirit gliding to the other end of Little Prospect, where New York was glittering on the near horizon. It looked as it always did to humans, but Manitou's spirit saw the smoky fog cascade upwards from somewhere in the city, spilling over in a dome that emanated in all directions from the Big Apple. Returning to his body, he stood up. That was definitely the work of Ganas, or one of the Incarnations. Well, he decided calmly, I can't handle a disturbance of that size alone. Manitou reached for his phone. "I win. That's six bazillion dollars you owe me." "Uh, bet you ten gajillion you can't beat me on that one," Jamie said, pointing. "House of the Undead Flesh Eating Mutants 5," Adrian read off the loudly decorated booth as Jamie rushed forwards and pulled one of the plastic light-guns out of its holster. "Gee, I dunno. I mean, Undead Flesh Eaters? You may have me there," he joked, pulling out some quarters from his pocket. "Undead Flesh Eating Mutants," Jamie corrected as the game started up. "They have tentacles, see?" he said as the first monster trotted on to the screen. Adrian blew its head off. "Hey, I called that!" "I didn't see your name on it." "Adrian! Where's Lulu?" a voice shouted behind them. Adrian turned, dropping his gun. "Manitou? What's up?" Adrian noticed Molly behind him, looking around hurriedly. "There's trouble in New York. Is Nina here as well?" "Yeah, they're getting bigger clothes. What trouble?" "Something big. Most definitely an Incarnation on the rampage," Manitou said, striding out of the arcade. Adrian caught up with him outside, leaving Jamie to pick up his discarded gun and go it alone in the Mutant House, wielding dual-laserguns. "Though I don't know why. It seems pointless." "Do you know which one?" "I can't sense it. Whichever it is, it's blocking my primal senses," Manitou looked up when Molly called to him. She was descending the escalator with Lulu and Nina in tow. "Agony and Sorrow have been banished, and only two have the level of physic power to cause this disturbance. The other two are more physical in their approach." Manitou started walking out of the mall's entrance, closely followed by Adrian. "What's going on?" Lulu asked when they caught up. "There's an Incarnation in New York," Manitou answered. "Oh no! Jane's going there!" "How're we getting there?" Nina asked. "That's my job," Molly said, leading them to her battered car. "Oh God, I don't think I'm ready yet, Manny," Nina moaned. "You survived Sorrow, right? That's pretty good, Nina," Adrian said, trying to be reassuring. "But, but, but," Nina stopped and swallowed. "I'm coming." "Good, we need everyone we can get." Jane waited patiently in the garishly painted waiting room. There was one other person in the room with her, his head tilted to the ceiling, watching a fly buzz around. After leaving the mall she'd caught the next bus to New York and had steadily made her way to the Penifold Mental Asylum, trying to stop her mind wandering on the way. The air in the city had seemed much more stifling than usual, as if the sky was pressing down on the population, making them irritable. Well, more irritable than usual. Jane sighed and shifted uncomfortably in the hard plastic seat. This place felt wrong, worse than the hospital back home. Maybe because it was full of people who were… insane. Properly insane, not like her uncle. But, according to the doctors, he was dangerous now. She might not even be able to talk to him. A nurse's voice crackled over the intercom that was long past its time for replacement. Both Jane and the man looked towards it. "Jack Daniels, you may visit your brother now." The man smiled impishly and sauntered out of the room. Jane caught his face. His left eye was surrounded by massive scars, like he had only just survived a bullet to the head. Somehow, the wrong feeling lifted slightly on his exit. But only slightly. Five minutes later an alarm bell started ringing. "This is the place?" Lulu asked nervously. Penifold Mental Asylum was a baroque, looming building, a leftover relic from the 1880s. It was near the south eastern edge of the city, away from the glittering skyscrapers. Lulu was wearing the new skirt she had bought, along with a zipper jumper. Nina hadn't changed in the car, stating she didn't really like these trousers anyway. "Yes, the… barrier is coming from there," Manitou answered. Nobody else could see it, but a giant plume of black smoke was cascading up from the roof of the building into the massive dome above. "Can you hear an alarm?" Adrian asked, ears twitching. He pulled them back into their human shape before they moved to the top of his head. "I think so. Let's go. Bye mum," Lulu said, hugging Molly. "Be careful. Stay with Adrian, honey, I love you," Molly said, getting back in the car. "I'll be waiting here, good luck." "How're we going to find it?" Adrian asked, almost to himself as the walked up the grey steps to the front double doors, made from age blackened oak. "More to the point, how are we getting in?" Nina said, pulling to door handle. It wouldn't budge. The group looked at the opening times, and they supposedly had a few more hours before the place locked up for the night. Nina lifted up the brass flap that hung over the letter slot, and nothing but silence and a few wisps of black smoke spilled out. "I don't think we're going in this way," Nina said hesitantly. "Any ideas on which one it is yet?" "I'm almost certain it's the Twisted One," Manitou answered, helping Adrian lever open a back window with a plank of wood they had found. Manitou climbed in first. "Don't believe anything you see here, this Incarnation can generate hallucinations easily, and that's not its only trick…" "Doesn't this seem strange?" Nina asked, clambering easily after the rest of them. "What?" Adrian looked around the storage room they had infiltrated, hand on the doorknob. "I mean, all the other windows and doors wouldn't open, and this one does? Seems like a trap, if you ask me. Woah, Manny, what're you doing?" Nina remarked to Manitou, who had taken both his jacket and shirt off, revealing a well toned dark brown chest, on which feathers were already starting to appear. "Wings have to go somewhere, Nina." "I don't think I'll be stripping yet, thanks." "Hey, there are people outside," Adrian said between sniffs. "How many?" Manitou asked, covering his face with an arm sized wing. "Four, I think, I haven't got used to this. But they smell funny." Adrian paused as his face morphed into a feline muzzle. "Like they're human, but something's… sort of in the way of that." Adrian, Lulu and Nina all jumped as some loud snaps echoed around the room. They looked at Manitou, who put his now full sized wing down. "My beak," he said as an explanation, the two sharp, yellow jaws cutting through the air. He was now taller than all of them, though Adrian was catching him up, rising on his paws as he kicked his trainers off. "Well," Nina rallied, "you're boss, Manny, so what do we do?" "Lulu, can you make the energy without it damaging anything?" he asked the still human girl. "Yeah, if I keep it in low bursts." "Good. Adrian will open the door for a second, and you stun the people out there. They may not be… thinking straight. Ready?" "Yeah." Lulu raised her right hand, palm splayed towards the door. "Now, Adrian!" Manitou shouted. Adrian yanked the door open. He caught a glimpse of a hunched, frog-like creature with red raw skin. It lunged at him with steel teeth and flaming eyes, but not before Lulu's ball of manna rolled through the air into the dark hallway and Adrian slammed the door shut. There was a dull fsssh as the manna bomb exploded, and the gaps between the frame and door lit up with for a moment. Slowly, Adrian dragged the door open again, its hinge squeaking this time. "Eew…" Nina blanched. Spread on the floor or leaning against the walls were four unconscious red frog things, each on with lips that were pushed back by sharp, steel teeth. There were also metal hooks on the ends of their fingers. "What are they?" Lulu asked as Adrian crept out into the hallway with all the silence of a hunting lion, sniffing as he went. "Empty," he confirmed, squatting to examine on of the frogs more thoroughly. "They look like Disciples of Agony, but they can only enter our world when Agony himself is here, and anyway, if the disciples of any Incarnation were to be here, we'd have already lost," Manitou said grimly. Nina closed the storage cupboard behind them automatically, staring at the disciples. "Hey, did you see that? One flickered." The looked at the one she was pointing at. It was sitting up against the wall, knocked out by the light as the others were, but the edges of its shape blurred, and then its whole form flickered like a faulty television set until the nightmarish vision disappeared entirely, leaving the prone body of a security guard in its wake. "Oh God, I've not killed him, have I?" Lulu moaned, clasping her hands to her mouth in shock. "No, I can feel a pulse," Adrian said, pressing his paw to the man's neck. The other images of the frogs had vanished, leaving a nurse and two inmates on the floor. "Illusions. They only looked like disciples…," Manitou mused. "In here, we cannot trust our sense of sight as much as humans do. We have to rely on primal senses. This way." Adrian padded after the bird man, closely followed by Lulu, who kept looking back at the sleeping bodies. Nina snuck along just behind them, unknowingly using her reptile skills. "Be careful, though, these illusions can be real enough to actually hurt," Manitou warned, then waved his arm for them to stop. "Remember there are humans under them though, so try to go easy on them." "Why've we stopped?" Nina asked. "Oh, wait, I think I can sense them…" They had come to a cross section in the hallway, giving Adrian time to take the surroundings in. Even though it was just after midday outside, it was twilight in the building, and thin strands of mist wound along the floor. Looking into the windows from the outside had yielded nothing but black, but he could see a window from here, down the end of the opposite corridor. It looked boarded up. The strip lights on the ceiling were acting odd as well. Most were off, but the ones that were on flickered constantly, or glowed in random, pastel colours that were sickening to look at. Something scratched next to his ear and he jumped back, looking at the wall. A tiny crack had appeared, and with a sound that made his fur stand on end, it expanded in a cobweb shape until it was as big as his paw. Lulu watched it was well. Suddenly it wasn't there. It hadn't faded away; it just disappeared with no departing noise or anything. One of the tiles shifted under Adrian's hind paw and he stepped off it. It rose slightly and scuttled away past Manitou, like some grotesque square beetle. "Here they come!" Manitou shouted, flapping his wings. "Nina, Lulu, change before they get here!" Adrian heard Lulu's hoofs clip-clopping on the floor before Manitou stopped talking, but Nina was taking longer. "Nina, hurry up!" Lulu said, showering the first creature that rounded the corner in some sort of starry dust that caused it to collapse, its banshee wail petering out into a bubbling gurgle. "It still feels strange, I don't know how you do it," she complained as her tail tore through the seat of her trousers. "Nina, I just ignore it," Lulu said. "I think about - aaah!" Lulu screamed as a skeletal wraith jumped on her hindquarters and scrabbled at her muzzle. Adrian roared and pulled it off, slamming it into a wall. Lulu sent more sparks of manna into the faces, or what would have translated to faces, of their enemies. Manitou leaped into what little airspace there was, kicking at the creatures grappling his legs. Nina gasped, finished transforming and rushed forward, fetching a ghoul a mean punch to the jaw before it managed to pull Manitou out of the air. Adrian grappled a cockroach-like monster to the floor and smashed its head into the tiles until it stopped struggling. With no warning at all, the tide of monsters stopped, and the defeated creatures vanished. Some, like the roach Adrian had been subduing, were total illusions, while others were humans wreathed in hallucinations. "This is horrible," Nina said to herself, looking around. "Like that fever dream I had." The floor started shaking. "What now?" Walls burst from the cross section, joining each opposite corner. They moved up too fast, like water, until they hit the ceiling with a thump. Then they moved forwards, making each corridor that branched from the cross section a dead end that had, some how, given the feeling that it had always been there. Each primal was separated from the rest, facing a long corridor in the gloom. Lulu thumped one of the new walls. "Hello? Adrian? Can you hear me?" she panicked. Silence answered. She was alone again. "Lulu!" Adrian roared, pounding the wall that had separated them, leaving long claw marks in the plaster. Manitou calmed himself. He knelt, folding his wings in, and tired to send his spirit to one of his primals. Nothing. The barrier that stopped him reaching the astral plane had grown thousandfold in this dank place, fogging his spirit completely. He felt he might as well be wearing what the inmates wore. "Shit," Nina remarked, staring at the new walls. It seemed the only thing appropriate to the situation. "Why bzzzzzzz couldn't you have brought my swords?" Insanity just laughed to itself. "Can't bring too much, Stripes." "You brought bzzzzzzz his," Xanthi pointed with a talon at Dead, who flourished his rusty sword. "Not that it's a good one. He may as well bludgeon people with it." "You've not forgotten about the, haha, claws and stuff, hmm?" Xanthi lowered his hand and his gaze. Insanity broke into a hideous long cackle that reverberated around the hornet's skull. "Get on with it, both of you. THE HUNT IS ON!" he shrieked. Lulu cantered down the corridor by herself. She hated being away from Adrian; he made her feel normal. This place reminded her of all the running and hiding she and her mother had endured before coming to Little Prospect. She hated the memories, but the gloom seemed to reach into her mind, dredge them up and replay them in her head. "Lookit me, guys, I'm a pony!" the memory of herself saying that when she had changed for the very first time made her cringe. "Why don't you change as well?" The screams of the teachers, the shocked stares of her playmates, her own voice crying when she realised only she could do it, this first pangs of loneliness as her mother came to take her home, and, worst of all, her father's disgusted face when he had seen her. Lulu gulped, trying to block out the memories, but the forced their way into her attention. Lulu broke into a gallop, trying to run away, to escape the past. "Leave me alone!" shouted a voice. To Lulu's surprise, it was not hers. Lulu peered around the next corner and recoiled in shock. Jane. Lulu pulled it all back in as fast as she could. She didn't want Jane to see her like this, but she couldn't just leave her. But, said a voice in the back of her mind, why isn't she possessed like everyone else? "Stay… stay back!" Jane commanded, waving the tiny crucifix she wore around her neck on a gold chain. The thing just snickered and skittered forwards on segmented legs. Jane clutched at her head with her free hand and groaned; her headache getting worse. She was upon collapse from the pressure in her head when the creature was incinerated in a beam of white light and the strain relieved partially. "What the…" Jane turned nervously and saw Lulu standing behind her sheepishly. "Lulu? What are you doing, never mind, how did you do that?" Lulu breathed deeply. "Uum… I don't know how to tell you…" "Tell me what?" Jane moved closer for what little comfort it offered in the dark hallway. "What was that light? What are you?" "A primal…" Lulu whispered. She'll find out eventually, she thought. Time to find out if we have to run again… Lulu closed her eyes and started to change. Jane gasped as Lulu's face transformed, stretching forwards into a horse's muzzle, her ears following suit by traveling up the sides of her head and narrowing to points. Lulu unzipped and took off her jumper as she grew in size and became covered in fur. Jane jumped when the horn poked through Lulu's mane. Lulu reached out to hold onto the wall when she pitched forwards. "What's wrong?" Jane managed through her surprise. She looked down as Lulu's hind legs settled on the tiles, hooves echoing down the hall. Lulu let the skirt fall away as her lower unicorn body extended backwards. When it stopped Lulu opened her eyes. She stepped back and looked sideways at Jane. Jane stared back, eyes open as wide as they possibly could. There were tears in them. "How? You… you're beautiful… you were the unicorn I saw…" Lulu blushed and started when Jane reached out and stroked her fur covered shoulder. "Oh my God… I mean… um," Jane appeared to be having an enormous internal struggle. "What is it?" Lulu asked, resting a hand on her friend's quaking shoulder. "You… you have… what I've always wanted… and you know I'm… bisexual when it comes to furries… and now you're that way…" Oh my, Lulu thought as realisation hit her. Jane clutched her head again. "Aaargh, this is too confusing." Jane suddenly fell forward into Lulu's arms. Lulu could feel the fur on her other shoulder dampen with tears. "What's the matter?" Lulu asked, knowing full well what the answer was. "Why can't I do it? I've honestly tried, and I can't… and you can," Jane let go and stepped back. "It was my wish…" Lulu felt like Jane would slap her, kiss her, faint or flee. The look in the goth's eyes looked like she could swing any way. Instead, she said, "Does Adrian know?" Lulu sighed, looking at her hooves. How odd they look, she thought, then stopped. "He's a primal as well. A tiger." "What?!" Jane groaned, putting her head in her hands. "It's not fair, not fair…" Jane looked back up and moved closer to Lulu again. "I'm not blaming you or Adrian. I just want to be like you…" Jane noticed the expression on Lulu's face. "I'm making you nervous, aren't I?" Lulu shook her head, sending her mane waving in the stuffy air. "Listen, I have to get you somewhere safe. There's more of those things." "Uh, I'd feel safer… if… uh," Jane eyes flicked everywhere, trying to avoid meeting Lulu's. "As long as you don't want to ride me, its okay," Lulu said calmly. Jane smiled, slightly childishly, and took her trench coat off, exposing a short sleeved white shirt. Hesitantly, she moved next to Lulu and put her bare arm over Lulu's shoulders and breathed out slowly. "You okay?" Lulu asked. She supposed she could put up with Jane; after all, Lulu was grateful for the contact with another person. "Wow… I'd always imagined how the fur felt, but… this is something else…" Jane said to herself. "Thank you so much, Lulu." They started half-walking, half creeping down through the gloom, Jane trying to fall in step with Lulu's extra pair of legs. Lulu noticed Jane had her eyes closed. "What's up?" "You're not going to move, are you?" "Of course not. I'd feel bad leaving you." Lulu put her arm over Jane's shoulders. The girl relaxed more, murmuring something. "Sorry?" "Oh, uh, I said, 'If I can't be one of them, then I can at least be with them'… Who else is there?" "Um, me, Adrian, Manitou and Nina. I don't know how many other primals are out there." "Nina? Really?" "Yeah. She rejected it at first, but she's okay now." "Who's Manitou?" The stopped when something in the building shrieked loudly, followed by a frantic buzzing noise. "He's… I guess he's our leader. You've seen that Native American around town?" "Him? Wow…" Jane was silent for a while as they walked, soaking in the feeling of being with Lulu. "Lulu?"' she said after while. "Yes?" "Why didn't you tell me?" "I… I wasn't sure how you'd react…" "But you could've trusted me. You can trust me. I won't tell anyone. I promise." Another pause. "What was that ghost the lizard girl was fighting that night?" "I… don't want to tell you. You're in enough danger just being here. I don't want you to get hurt." ' Lulu let go of Jane and opened a door. Another closet, this one smaller with only a small window, a few brooms and mops and a chair. "Can you stay here? Please?" "But… I don't want to leave you…" Jane said anxiously. "I swear I'll come and find you again. I promise. Stay here, block the door with that chair, okay Jane?" "…Okay. Come back soon." "Bye…" Lulu said sadly, closing the door on her friend. After a few seconds she heard the chair get jammed under the handle and Jane slump against the door and slide down it onto the dusty floor. Lulu sighed, and set off into the dark. Nina sidled along the wall, shivering. Being cold blooded, that's what it was. Maybe that's what felt strange to her. Adrian and Lulu got mammals, so their changes weren't as complicated, and the worst Manitou had to contend with were that beak and those wings. Why did I get the one so far away from humans? she thought. She hadn't seen anymore things, which was a blessing. She swished her tail about, curling it up and flexing it, still getting used to the way it moved. At first the extra limb as awkward and distracting, but eventually she had got used to it, even liking it. She brought it round her waist, cuddling it slightly. It was comforting. But this place was depressing. The darkness crushed down on her, pressing in from all sides. The halogen strip lights above flickered in and out of doing their job and fizzing pathetically. Below the regular squares of black and white had melted and dissolved into a delirious pattern of black and white swirls that made her nauseous. Nina stopped when something stabbed into the wall behind her. Spinning, she saw nothing. She heard, however, two, three more stabs and then a fine trickle of plaster dust descend from the walls and ceiling further back down the corridor. With a horrendous screeching, four cracks traveled down the walls, floor and ceiling towards her, as if an invisible man wielding hooks was running towards her, dragging the hooks in the walls as he went. Glass frames of pictures fractured as the cracks spread along, and the strips lights in the way of the ceiling crack popped into darkness as it passed. One of the cracks reached a door that hung ajar, and it traveled over the wood. When it reached the edge, the door banged shut and the rupture sped from the door back onto the wall. Nina spun and ran, falling into a four legged bound into a large auditorium at the end of the corridor. The cracks followed her onto the floor, circling. Nina watched in horror as on of the cracks zigzagged its way under a desk, which rapidly splintered into two halves. She was surrounded by an ever decreasing spiral of four impossible fissures, each making is own faint sawing noise. She wanted to jump over one, but she dared not, for fear of what happened to the desk would happen to her. The cracks stopped abruptly, a mere foot away from her clawed toes. Nina slowly bent to pick up a discarded pencil, keeping her tail and elbows close to her body. Nina looked at the pencil, noting its make. Funny how little details stick out like that in situations like this, she thought, and tossed it over the lines the fissures had made. It landed out of the spiral, still whole. Nina breathed a sight of relief and was about to step over the lines when something stopped her. The pencil she had tossed was rattling alarmingly on the floor. Suddenly it leapt up and bounced on the far above ceiling, as if that was the way gravity was supposed to go. "What the fuck…" Nina watched the pencil, and jumped when another landed next to it, bouncing as if it had landed on the floor. Slowly, in great clouds, the dust raised by the chasing cracks fell upwards, followed soon after by the halves of the desk. "You gotta be kidding," she whispered as her hair hung upwards off her head, tickling her frill. Her stomach turned, and she chocked, holding back the urge to vomit. Nina screamed and threw her arms over her head when the other desks in the room crashed noisily into the ceiling, followed by an operations table. The electric paddles thing dangled oddly from its socket, the two paddles pointing at the debris strewn ceiling, until its plug gave way and it followed the rest of the furniture. Then the hanging strip lights smashed up, into what was widely regarded by the desks as the floor. Nina ducked, shielding herself from the glass that fell towards her, then away again. Finally, Nina's perception change, and she was now on the ceiling and up there was the floor. She only just remembered to grab the tiles before she plummeted onto the splinters of wood below. Breathing heavily, Nina crept to the opposite door, not sure if all the rooms in this building were acting like this. She was stopped when something gripped her tail. Nina looked over her shoulders into a figure crouched on the ceiling as she was. The black and yellow man let go of the tiles, falling, trying to pull her with him. Nina screamed as the weight nearly yanked the skin off the palms of her hands and soles of her feet. The man let go, and she watched two pairs of crystalline insect wings unfold from his back and flap blindingly fast. The man spun through the air as both exits from the room slammed shut, and he stopped in front of her face. Nina stared into his multifaceted gaze and saw a boy imprisoned in there. "Help me," the man whispered, before slashing at her face with his talons. Nina jumped back, scrabbling for purchase, gasping at the hornet primal before her. I thought… we were all on one side… she thought as Xanthi buzzed forwards. Adrian skulked forwards along the wall, thinking "I've got this cat thing down to a tee." The rest of his thoughts concerned Lulu. Some things approached out of the gloom. Adrian pressed up against the wall and faded, not blending into the wall but becoming as unnoticed as it. Another advantage was that being a primal combined his human intelligence with animal senses and skills. He could smell which of the creatures were humans and which weren't. And he figured that humans could go insane and see things, but the minds of beasts had no time for that type of thing. Adrian waited until the group of things had passed; two of the steel jawed frog things, a hulking shadow that trailed behind and a little tearful girl he suspected was one of Sorrow's disciples. Adrian leapt onto the solid shadow, which seemed to function like some living alarm system, suddenly flashing white and letting off a siren wail. The other three spun and the two frogs croaked and grabbed Adrian's wrists, cutting his fur-covered skin with their hooked fingers. Adrian growled and flung the disciples over his shoulders, hearing one break its neck. The other tumbled over its vanishing comrade as Adrian gave the bawling shadow a bite to where its neck should have been. The shadow fell silent, stopped flashing and dissipated, leaving nothing but a foul taste lingering in Adrian's mouth. Adrian kicked the leaping disciple in the chest, leaving three long gashes from is claws that quickly stitched themselves up as if he were fighting Agony himself. Adrian grabbed the thing's jaws as it lunged to bite him and twisted them sideways, breaking its jaw and neck. He turned to the little girl and the creature in his paws faded to nothingness. "I'm in so much trouble," she moaned, before squeaking, falling to her knees and breaking into an icy mist that frosted the wall in front of Adrian. The frost smoothed to a mirror of ice showing not Adrian's reflection as he expected, but- "Morcedi," Adrian growled. "Actually, I… prefer Mr. Morcedi, or Agony, tiger… boy," the image of the pale faced man said. Adrian prowled off. The frozen mirror followed, Morcedi walking along inside it. Adrian risked a glance sideways and caught Sorrow creeping alongside Morcedi, who now had an iron hook in place of his right hand. "I kicked your arse once, I can do it again," Adrian threatened. "Oh ,we're not really… here," Agony's facade gasped. "You see, Sorrow has a… thing with mirrors. I'm just borrowing her power…" "I'm supposed to be amazed?" "If you… like. I just thought I'd show you what makes… us different from you animals and… the fleshy meatsacks you're trying to… protect." "That you lot are sadistic evil bastards?" Morcedi laughed, his black glasses slipping slightly. Adrian looked away from the teeth under the man's eyelids. Pushing the glasses back up his nose, Morcedi continued. "We cooperate, you… see. No matter how unified a human… organisation is, there is always petty… infighting. Squabbles for… power at the top of the hierarchy. Whereas we don't. We all work for the same… goal, we all get… rewarded equally, so there is no… need for us to fight amongst each… other." "You're still evil, though." "And humans… aren't? They're motivated by… greed and a selfish desire to… pass on their DNA. Your feeble… science proved it. For each truly… innocent and good… human, there are ten… greedy bastards working against… them, always looking for new ways to… scam money from each… other. "Who invented torture and called me into… existence? A human. Who discovered how to use fossil fuels so… recklessly and sent for Filth? A… human. How many souls have been lost… on a battlefield, empowering Wrath, Despair and Sorrow? Thousands. What about… your precious hospitals and… asylums such as this? Placing so many… sick and fever deluded… humans in one place… has made the Incarnation that will be your… downfall." Adrian bounded away down another corridor, the frozen mirror unable to follow. Morcedi's voice called after him. "If disease and… pain don't end you, madness… eventually will!" Jane hid in the closet as things skulked past outside, following Lulu's scent. She hoped Lulu was alright and that she would come back as she promised. Jane thought about her uncle, and if he was still in his padded cell. Maybe the creatures couldn't get him there. As she'd said herself before, she could at least be with them. Jane wanted to help. Jane tried to assemble her scattered thoughts, but it was hopeless in this place. But something, some memory of what had brought her here surfaced. Uncle Roderick Palmer had attacked a nurse, shouting for "the bird man." Lulu had said a man named Manitou could transform, the thought gave Jane excited shivers, into a bird. Could the two be the same? Had her uncle known and fought alongside this Manitou, and had ended up where he was because of an encounter with one of those monsters? Jane swore there and then to find out. She was slightly apprehensive at them at that moment. Jane knew both Adrian and Lulu, and they had had the… gift she'd always wanted. They weren't furries like she was, so why did they have it and she didn't? Why hadn't they told her? Suddenly Jane realised the ghost that had fought and lost to the lizard girl gave off the same aura of evil as the things in the hospital, abet on a weaker scale. Maybe… if her friend could change so easily, she could too, and help her. Now, how did Lulu do it? She seemed just to close their eyes and concentrate. Jane screwed her eyes shut and thought as hard as she could of herself changing into a fox girl. When she opened her eyes… Nothing had happened. "Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong animal?" Jane wondered aloud. After a moment's hesitation, she tried all the animals she could think of, but each one had no effect, aside from making her dizzy with concentration. Jane sighed, she didn't want to hide in here; she wanted to fight by the side of the eagle man, like Roderick possibly did. A moment of doubt appeared, and she quelled it. This felt too real to be a dream or imagination. Her train of thoughts were interrupted by a tapping at the small window behind her. Silhouetted against the moon was a bat, tapping at the glass with the tiny claws on its wings. It gave Jane the most intelligent stare she'd ever seen from an animal, and its bright orange eyes seemed to plead for her to let it in. Slowly, as not to scare it away, Jane reached up to the small window and teased open the latch. The window swung inward, and the bat fluttered inside, flapping around her head. The bat was making a lot of excited squeaking. "Hey, hey, hey, calm down," Jane whispered, holding her cupped hands up to the madly circling bat. Incredibly, it immediately landed on her arm, still squeaking. "Are you trying to tell me something?" Jane thought she imagined the bat nodding, but then it leapt off her arm, performed a midair loop and swooped at her chest. Instead of it hitting her and falling to the floor, it disappeared, leaving nothing more than a few twinkles in the air. Jane sighed "I really am craz-" Jane stopped in her self-accusation when she felt something in her chest that wasn't there before. It pulsed to the rhythm of her heartbeat. It felt like something she could move. Jane gave 'it' a nudge with her mind, and she felt a rush of adrenaline course through her. Her heartbeat quickened its pace and the presence in her chest followed suit, until it enveloped her entire body. Jane's hands began to prickle, and she stifled a giggle. Holding up one of her gloved hands, Jane could clearly see her fingers lengthening, as were her fingernails, making the black varnish covering them flake and crack away. The prickling traveled up her arm, so she rolled up the sleeve on her bulky trench coat. Jane's face broke into an amazed grin. "Oh my God…" she gasped as, following the prickling sensation, silky dark grey hairs smoothly grew through her pale skin. Then she noticed her arms were growing longer as well. As gently as she could, Jane shook off her coat, revealing arms covered in the soft grey fur. Jane realised she was getting taller. Looking down, Jane saw that her legs had gotten so long in the past few moments that the ends of her trousers barely covered her knees. Suddenly Jane found her large black boots made standing awkward, so she took those off just as they were starting to feel tight round her feet and shins. She wobbled as her feet changed faster, totally accepting the feelings that almost overwhelmed her. Jane regained her balance on the balls of her feet which had now widened, and the space between her ankles and toes had lengthened until she had wolfish hind legs. Jane jumped slightly when her toes, tipped with large, hooked claws, tore through her socks. She watched with awe as her two big toes moved silently along the sides of her feet until they were under her ankles. Jane found she could now move them much more now than when she was human. "This is… this is… wow!" Jane squealed excitedly as she watched her exposed midriff get covered in grey fur. Now the prickling from her legs caught up with the sense from her shoulders, and together they traveled up her neck, leaving more fur in their wake, up her face, finally stopping on top of her head, and then dissipating. But her transformation hadn't stopped there, she found out, as her shoulder blades started to fill with the odd pins and needles like feeling. Next Jane started to choke as her white t-shirt began to tighten when two bulges rose out of her back. Tearing at her shirt with her new claws, Jane gasped in grateful lungfuls of air and, to her surprise and relief, noticed her chest was hidden beneath the long, wispy fur. Now, what was happening to her back…? Jane found it was like having an extra pair of arms. Bringing them up in front of her face, Jane gasped in delight. It didn't feel odd at all, like they had always been there in spirit and had only just gained flesh. "Wings!" she yelped, happily flapping the expanding bat wings. The single claw atop each wing was like having another thumb. They were unexpectedly easy to manipulate. Once they had stopped growing, they filled most of the small closet she had taken refuge in, and now it was much smaller. "I gotta see what I look like," Jane said to herself as she patted her face, trying to form a mental image from what she could feel. Her nose was now small, triangular and had pulled forwards with her mouth into a dog-like snout, a pair of fangs overhung her lower lip, and her eyes were bigger. The largest change to her head was the fact her ears had become massive and pointed. Jane moved her head from side to side, and found they dragged in the air. But she could move them around, much to her amusement. "I wonder if I can get these pierced…" she mused. Finally, she found a limb cramped up in the seat of her jeans. Jane instantly knew what it was before she gently tugged it out over her belt. "My tail…" she whispered, swishing the long thin tail covered in silken grey fur around, and then bringing it up to her face and cuddling it. Letting it go, she tested her wings. Stretching her new wings that were now at least five inches taller than her body, Jane knocked a small can off a shelf. It clanged noisily on the floor, but to Jane, it was like having a whole new sense. Her giant ears let her see the sound of the falling can, traveling in waves across her vision. "Wow!" she squeaked, and this time it was much more piercing than before. It made the small window crack, but to Jane, the echo given by her ears gave Jane an immensely detailed view of the room. She tried another squeak, and then a longer screech. A moment later she used her new wings to shield herself from the falling glass of the window and most of the bottles on the shelves. "This is so cool…" Jane whispered, still marveling at her new body. Insanity snapped his head up, eyes spinning in their sockets. He had been waving the straps of his straightjacket through the air, controlling the possessed in the floor below, an activity Dead watched with mild interest. "Get downstairs," Insanity said in a brief moment of clarity to the corpse. "There's another one. Kill it before the shaman finds it." Dead nodded, hefted his sword onto his shoulder and crept out of the dusty attic. "Would I be that shaman?" Insanity giggled and turned to see Manitou flapping up from a hole on the wooden boards. "What, no axes? You disappoint me, featherface." "What are you doing here? Is this an act of revenge for Sorrow? Manitou said calmly, staring at a point above Insanity's head rather than into those eyes. "DON'T YOU DARE SPEAK OF HER!" Insanity raged, flinging his straps at Manitou, which he easily avoided with a graceful flip in the air. "Ha, this is just a thingy… begins with, aha… D." "I have no time for games. Get out of here." "Or what? You'll cuff me, clap me in irons? Send me to the house for, haha, naughty boys? Guess, it begins with D!" Insanity danced about sedately, content to play his game. "Not going to guess? You're no fun!" Insanity flicked a bound hand. The wooden roof supports creaked and flowed like water, attempting to grab Manitou in a claw of wood. "How are you doing that?" Manitou squawked, not meaning to sound in awe. "Ah, beaky, where are we?" Manitou flitted backwards from the morphing wood. The dead air in the attic was no good for flying. "You're drawing power from the inmates…" he said after the wood returned to its usual solidness. "Bingo! Since you're not playing, I'll tell you. What we're doing here is a decoy, distraction, diversion!" "From what?" Manitou landed on the other side of the attic, well out of reach of Insanity's straps, though they were only two items in his probably increased arsenal. Insanity cackled before replying. "Not saying! You'll find out! We're here to kill you as well!" "'We?'" "That's right! Good ole Dead Man Waking and Stripy the Bugboy!" Manitou gasped, thinking of his primals. He came to his senses just in time to see Insanity charging him. Adrian's claws scraped the tiles as he came to a sudden halt. Ahead was a t-junction in the maze of corridors, across which a man had just walked. Adrian crept up to the corner and peeked around the wall, watching the man. The man didn't seem like the other possessed humans and illusionary monsters in the asylum. He walked jauntily through the smog, with a long, corroded sword resting in his shoulder. His skin was taunt and grey, and his clothes and hair black, dry and dusty. The clothes looked like those of an undertaker. Adrian sniffed, and immediately gagged. The man smelt of rotting meat, and lots of it. The man also had faint traces of scents that Adrian remembered as Agony, and a slight mix of frightened primals. The man was also searching for something. Adrian crouched low, and followed the man on all fours, remembering the tigers he had watched on television last week. "What to do, what to do," Jane muttered quickly. Should she stay here and wait for Lulu to find her, or go and find Lulu? Jane wagged her tail and flapped her wings, giggling happily. It would be hard for Jane to describe to someone else her feelings of euphoria at that point, but it would be best to start with smoking something illegal and work up from there. Jane lent against a clear bit of wall, settling in to her new body, a body she thought as what she really was. Jane jumped as something slammed into the closet door. Repeatedly the thing bashed at a single point on the door, making a splintered hole. Jane backed away, folding her wings in protectively. A sharp, tarnished point of metal broke through the widening crack in the door, followed by a long sword and a scrabbling hand. The hand pulled the door to pieces, unperturbed by the cuts and scrapes caused by the shattered wood. The remains of the door were kicked down and Jane's snout filled with a horrible stench of dead flesh. Jane couldn't back away from the doorway anymore. The man, he must be a zombie or something, Jane thought, walked forwards, limping a tad. Jane was transfixed on the sword. The zombie raised it, grinning cruelly. Jane, struck by a sudden idea, gulped in two lungfuls of air and screeched as loud as she could. The sound was more felt than heard. The walls vibrated; the paint covering them cracking and flaking. The man dropped his sword, clamped his bony hands around his ears and stumbled back into the corridor. "You bitch!" he yelled. "You burst 'em! You ruddy well burst 'em!" At which point he was felled by an orange and black blur of fur. Jane rushed out of her closet to see the grey-skinned man grappling with- "Adrian! Is that you?" The tiger man smacked the zombie in the head with a clawed paw. The zombie's jaw fell off. Adrian paused, leapt to his hind paws and spun defensively. "Jane? My God… you're…" "Like you and Lulu! I know! This is the best thing to happen to me since… ever!" Jane bounced on her toes, flapping her wings. "You're not freaked? It didn't hurt?" "Why would it?" Jane said excitedly. "This is what I've always wanted!" Adrian stumbled forwards as the zombie punched him in the back. The blow was like being hit by a sledgehammer. Adrian spun and raked its face, shredding the flesh into neat strands. "Jane, you gotta get outta here! I'll handle this guy," Adrian roared, kicking the zombie away from him. "Find Lulu an' stick with her, okay?" Jane nodded, and ran lightly in the direction Adrian had come from. Adrian turned back to confront the dead man and had to cover his face with his arms to block the man's strike. Adrian staggered back and pounded away with his paws, catching the man on the side of his chest, tearing part of the coal black material away. The man moved like quicksilver and struck like steel. If Adrian had been listening he would have heard the man's joints popping in and out as he twisted in increasingly lithe ways. He didn't seem to tire after even fifteen minutes of fierce scuffling in the corridor. Twice Adrian tore parts of his head away, only to find him behind Adrian, slotting the pieces back with one hand and scrabbling at Adrian's throat with the other. "Haven't had such a good hunt since nineteen twenty something," the man hissed, dodging a ferocious leg sweep from Adrian, who followed up with a right hook to the face. Adrian jolted back as the man's head snapped backwards at an unnatural angle. "Nineteen twenty? But… you don't look a day over thirty…" "Thanks," the limply swinging head said. One of his hands grabbed a fistful of its owner's hair, yanked the head up and popped the joints back into place easily. "I do try to keep in shape." "What the hell are you?" Adrian asked, shrinking backwards. "Just Dead Man Walking. That's my name." Dead grinned and lunged with his sword. Adrian hadn't seem him pick it up, it just sort of materialised in his hand. Adrian ducked under it and charged forwards, hefting Dead up by the waist and slamming him into the wall behind, then tossing him bodily over his head, where Dead landed on his head. Dead rolled with the fall and got to his feet, head snapping back into place again. Adrian picked up the rusted sword Dead had dropped and stabbed him through the chest. There was surprisingly little blood. They stood there, Adrian gripping the handle of the sword, Dead looking down in shock, though a small part of embarrassment crept in. Adrian stood back, and their stares locked. "You know, you're the second who's managed to stab me with my own sword." Dead croaked, gripping the handle and yanking it out with a meaty noise. Before Adrian could react, Dead lunged. Adrian gasped as the sharp pain traveled up from his stomach. "Nobody every gets a second chance, pussycat," Dead whispered into Adrian's fluttering ear. Pulling his sword out, Dead let Adrian drop to the floor and stepped over him. "Now, I have more jobs to do," he said to the unhearing primal. "Skin you later." Adrian's sight, starting to blur, focused on Dead's feet walking away from him, the pool of blood, his blood, spreading outwards from his body across the warped pattern of tiles. Some uncontrollable part of his mind said "Right, we've only got a few moments left, let's record everything in minute detail." Adrian laid there on his front, feeling his life slip away with each faint breath, each shallow pulse, and his last thought before his eyes closed was about the only girl he ever loved, the girl who had thought she was alone until he came to her. "Lulu!" Lulu groaned, though not in anger. "Jane, I thought I told you to - Woah!" Lulu whinnied as Jane skidded into view. "Jane, are you ummph," Lulu was cut off when Jane hugged and kissed her on the lips. Jane pulled back as suddenly as she had darted ahead. "Sorry, it's just I'm all…" Jane waved her arms vaguely to indicate the feeling of becoming your dream and finding out your friends featured in it and they were pretty open minded friends. "Wow. So you changed just like that?" Lulu said after she had recovered and Jane had told her what had happened. "How'd you find me?" "Uh, I could smell you…" Jane said sheepishly, scratching the tip of one of her massive bat ears with one hand and tapping her wolfish snout with the other. "You… have a nice scent…" "Um… thanks, I guess… Have you seen Adrian?" "Yeah! He was fighting a grey guy with a sword. He was so sexy… Ah, sorry!" Jane grinned. "Guy with a sword? After everything this place throws at us it's a sword guy?" Their heads snapped around when a piercing shriek echoed down to them. "That sounded like Nina! Where is she?" Jane had her eyes closed. "Hush…" she said quietly. Another scream. Jane's eyes flicked open and she pointed. "This way!" she said, leading Lulu down a smaller corridor to their left. "Nice trick with the hearing," Lulu complimented as she galloped along. "I hope we aren't too late." Jane bounded along beside the unicorn, leaping and gliding every few paces. "I can't wait to try these out properly," she said to herself. "Just make sure nobody sees you," Lulu said as they came to a closed set of doors. "They're in there," Jane said, gliding to a halt. "'They're?'" "I can hear two of them. One… sounds like a bee." "Stand back, I'm blasting the door." Once Jane was well behind her, Lulu raised both arms, this time making her hands into fists. Two blinding beams of manna flew soundlessly from her knuckles and crackled over the door and frame. The double doors lasted a surprising ten seconds before they fell from their frame and fell. "That was weird," Jane remarked as the door crashed onto the ceiling three floors above. "Yeah…" Lulu started to canter forwards, but stopped. In the centre of the large room's floor was Nina, who looked very odd. She was crawling on the floor, but it was like her body was being pulled to the ceiling by some unseen force. Her hair stuck straight up from her head, wafting from side to side as she moved. Her scales were covered in deep cuts, which were bleeding upwards and running up through her hair. Nina shouted something at them, but they couldn't hear because of the unexpected roar of noise that sounded like a swarm of hornets that blasted from the room. Jane yelped and screwed her ears up instinctively. A bolt of yellow and black shot past Nina and she shrieked as a new gash appeared on her shoulder, almost letting go of the floor she seemed to be trying to cling onto. The blur stopped in midair, and Lulu saw it was an insectile primal, who was oddly hovering upside-down in the air. Lulu scowled and stamped her hoof, walking into the room and readying a manna blast for the hornet primal. "Don't come in!" Nina yelled over the buzz of the wings, but it was too late. As Lulu put her first two legs over the border of the autopsy room and the corridor, something about her perceptions changed. Up suddenly became down. Lulu dropped and her hindquarters landed on the doorframe above, or from her point of view, below. With a frantic look at Jane she slid over the ledge and started falling down onto the splintered desks and broken glass of the lights below. Jane jumped into the room, twisted as gravity flipped about and dived after Lulu. Lulu had since pulled her hindquarters back in as Jane grabbed her flailing arms and opened her wings, brushing the wall with their tips. Flapping them, she pulled Lulu up into her arms. "Are you okay?" Jane asked, balancing them in the air. "My back hurts… but thank you Jane." Lulu said, finishing her morph into her half primal form. "How did you learn to fly so quickly? It took me ages to get used to the manna…" "I don't know. It was like I forgot and I've just remembered." Lulu noticed Jane's mouth was worryingly close to her own again. "Jane, wasp guy!'" Lulu shouted. Jane gasped and barely dodged a dive from the enemy primal. "I'm a bzzzzzzzz hornet," the man said. His voice seemed too panicked, and when Lulu caught his eyes, they looked like someone else entirely from the man trying to kill them. "Jane, put Lulu down! He's possessed!" Nina shouted from the ceiling. "My name is bzzzzzzzzz Kentaro Xanthi," the primal said as he swung low when Jane settled Lulu onto a spot of the floor devoid of debris. Lulu flashed a burst of harmless but blinding manna in Xanthi's face. "Aaargh!" he screamed, hovering quickly backwards. Jane fluttered at him and slammed his stomach with both her feet. Both of them yelped in pain. "Don't try that again, I have an exoskeleton," Xanthi warned. "Why are you fighting us?" Jane shouted, rubbing her ankles. "I don't want to! I'm being forced!" Xanthi's head suddenly snapped back, and he started speaking in a more cheerful but frighteningly maddening voice. "Hello freaks! I caged your birdy!" The voice said, moving Xanthi's mouth and mandibles so forcefully that his jaws could have been broken if he resisted. "Manitou? He's in trouble?" Nina said from the black & white swirls of the ceiling. "Yeah! Hah, try this for size!" The room lurched. Down was now the eastern wall, directly opposite Lulu. Nina scrabbled across the wall behind Lulu and grabbed her shoulders with her sticky hands. Both Jane and Xanthi flipped about in the air, trying to right themselves with their frantically swirling wings. Nina lifted Lulu off the wall which used to be the floor and before that, the ceiling, just as the piles of metal table legs, broken glass and splintered wood crashed into the new floor. Pulling Lulu roughly up by her waist with one arm, Nina scuttled along the… well, which part of the room they were on was hard to tell, but Nina was heading for the set of double doors. As Nina dragged them both over the threshold, gravity became normal again and they fell to the floor, Nina gasping for breath. Lulu ran to the doorway, this time careful not to put her head over the metal strip dividing the corridor from the room. "Is that Jane the furry?" Nina said bemusedly when she had got her breath back and walked up to stand next to Lulu. "Yeah…" Nina looked down at Lulu, then shot her head back up, whistling. "You do know your half-human and completely naked, yeah?" Lulu snapped out of her reverie, apologised and leant forwards to grow her extra legs. Nina flinched when Lulu grabbed her shoulder for balance and looked away as Lulu resumed her full primal figure. "Sorry. I forget sometimes," Lulu apologised. "What's she doing?" Nina said, ignoring her. Jane had grappled Xanthi, pinning his wings to his sides with her legs, their combined weight driving them to the part of the room currently acting as the floor. Jane had her hands pressed on the sides of Xanthi's head. Xanthi's struggles were getting weaker. "She's not sucking his blood, is she?" Nina said, turning to Lulu and back to the pair on the floor. "I… I don't think so…" In fact, Jane didn't know what she was doing either. It felt like instinct. She could feel Xanthi's mind, a kind of panicked buzzing mess, and there were black and violet wormy things crawling over it. It was these she was somehow pulling off. Xanthi struggled less and less with each one she removed, and she could feel his mind becoming cleaner and clearer. When the last mind worm was peeled away, Xanthi lay still completely, leaving Jane sitting atop him and feeling rather foolish. She slowly stood up, staring at the insect man. His red, multi-lens eyes were flickering and his mouth and mandibles mumbling something. She stepped away from him as his extra arms, chitin plating, antenna and wings slowly retracted into him until he became a handsome Japanese man of about thirty years of age with shoulder long black hair and an angular face. Jane was about to lean down to shake him awake when he jumped up of his own accord, muscles rippling. "Thank you," he whispered, before rushing away from her before she could speak, scuttling up a wall like a fly, smashing a window open with his hand and climbing out. Jane started to follow him, but turned away when Lulu called to her. Nina jumped back as Jane landed softly in the corridor, stumbling as gravity flipped around once more. "What did you do to him?" she quaked. "I… I dunno,"' Jane answered, her eyes traveling up and down Nina until she caught herself and stared at the ceiling. "There were some nasty feeling leech things on his mind and I just peeled them off." "C'mon, you heard what the guy said, we have to find Manitou," Lulu butted in. "Can't he handle himself?" Nina asked, falling in behind Lulu's quick canter. "That primal was possessed by something. And that something must be doing all the weird things to this place," Jane reasoned. "You seem… different, Jane," Lulu observed. Jane flapped her wings to bring herself up to Lulu. "I don't feel alone anymore! And for the first time in my life I'm thinking clearly!" she thrilled. "That's good, then," Nina mumbled. Half an hour later they were on the top floor, outside the door that would take them into the attic. It had not been easy getting there, due to some awkward stairs and a horde of illusions, and the aura pouring between the cracks of the doorframe threatened to unbalance their resolve and send them running. "Are we going in without Adrian?" Nina whispered, watching the door handle just incase it twitched. "He might be already in there," Lulu said back, tossing her mane. "He's not." All three of them spun in shock. The voice sounded like something that came from a crypt, not rotten but incredibly old, dry and musty. The voice had issued from the mouth of a sword-wielding zombie. "You! You're the man Adrian was fighting!" Jane said, pointing. "Name's Dead, miss. And the correct term is fought." Dead hefted his sword onto his shoulder, readying himself for a charge. "You shall suffer the same fate." He darted forwards. Nina dodged the first clumsy swipe of the sword, and jumped over his sweeping leg, catching the ceiling with her feet. Spinning round, she caught him a blow to the chin, knocking his jaw off. "Gak," he said, tongue lolling horribly. Dead then made a wild leap for Jane, which she dodged by diving between his legs. Dead chopped his sword down, just missing her tail. It dawned on Lulu that Dead relied entirely on being dead for fighting. He wasn't that coordinated and moved like he had several broken bones in his arms hand legs, apparently relentlessly assaulting until his opponents were too exhausted to fight back. She sickeningly realised this was true as he turned to face her. "Where's Adrian?" she commanded, stamping her front hoofs. "Gak," Dead repeated, before stunning Lulu by jumping right over her head, landing behind her on the creaking floorboards. Lulu smartly kicked him in the back like an angered mule. "Where is he?" Lulu shouted. Dead stood up, holding his sword steady. On its rust encrusted blade were dark red splashes. Dead scraped a hooked finger across his neck, hissing as he did so. "Ee's eag," Dead managed with his missing jaw. "What?" Lulu gasped, drawing back. Dead tossed his sword so it landed point down in the floor in front of her. "S'ell," Dead said, making exaggerated sniffing noises. Lulu didn't even have to bend and pick up the sword to smell Adrian's familiar scent on it. His blood. "no" she said weakly. "No, he can't be…" Dead nodded, his upper lip peeling back to show his top row of yellow teeth. Lulu fell to her knees, her hind quarters following behind. Tears started rolling freely down her cheeks. Suddenly Dead was in front of her, lifting his sword over her head, about to bring it crashing down. Before Jane or Nina could do anything, Dead let the sword drop. It hit Lulu's sparkling horn and shattered, sending fragments everywhere. Lulu screaming in rage and loss leapt up and plunged her horn into Dead's chest. Lulu channeled raw manna through her horn until it burned white and threw Dead across the corridor in a flash of light, the brightest Lulu had ever produced. Lulu watched Dead writhe on the floor. Smoke poured through the hole in his chest and mouth, accompanied by a fierce sizzling. His dull blue eyes rolled back in their sockets as he scrabbled at his manna filled chest. He croaked a final "Gak," before falling completely still. The light from Lulu's horn subsided, sinking the room into darkness until normal light returned. When it did, Jane and Nina saw Lulu on the floor again, crying into her hands. "Lulu?" Jane said plaintively, gingerly touching Lulu's shoulder with her hand. Lulu sobbed harder. "He's gone…" she wailed. "He… He can't be, right?" Jane said hopefully, not quite believing it herself. "Jane, the sword," Nina hissed over Lulu's head. Jane frowned crossly, sitting next to Lulu and hugging her. Lulu gratefully wrapped her arms around Jane's waist and cried openly into her shoulder fur. Jane wrapped Lulu up in her wings. "What do we do?" Jane looked up at Nina, tears in her eyes now. Both Nina and Jane jumped at a sudden creaking. The attic door was opening slowly, showing nothing but darkness inside. The creak lasted a second longer after the door stopped moving. Wisps of midnight blue smoke curled out of the room a short way. "Won't you come in?" giggled a voice from inside. "Lulu? Are you going to stay here?" Jane whispered in Lulu's pointed ear. It took some time for Lulu to answer. "I'm coming." "I'll go first," Nina said, drawing herself to her full height and firmly setting her jaw in an expression of defiance at the dark oblong in the doorframe. While Jane helped Lulu to her feet, Nina reached out and touched the surface of the black object. It resisted slightly and gave way when Nina pushed harder. Her fingers passed through the barrier and disappeared. Ripples spread out form her hand. "Does it hurt?" Jane asked, appearing at her shoulder. "No, but it's cold and tingly," Nina answered, walking through and vanishing. "Lulu, are you sure about this?" Lulu stood up straight, swishing her tail and wiping the tears from her eyes. "Yes," she answered with a faint tremble to his voice. Then she pushed forwards, through the barrier, leaving Jane alone. With a last look back at Dead's body, she followed. Jane looked around. It felt like she was falling very slowly, like through syrup. She couldn't see a thing, yet she knew her eyes were working. It was just that there was nothing at all to see. Her wings, moving lethargically, gave a slow flap, achieving not much in the ways of aeronautics. Jane could see a flickering light just ahead and below her. She felt like she was falling slowly towards it. Jane swung her legs slowly back and forth. As her mind started to wander, still marveling at her primal form, the light dimmed, almost going out. Jane realised that if the light went out she'd be stuck here, so she focused all her attention on it. Moments after that the light rushed up to meet her and she fell out of the black nothing into the flickering light. Bits of the black stuff clung to her wings as Jane dragged herself into the attic and fell over as the stuff finally let go and dripped back into the frame with a gloop. Jane stood up hurriedly, anxious not to be caught off guard. She had landed between Lulu and Nina, the latter of which helped her up. Lulu was standing, fists clenched and eyes staring at a gangly man sitting at a table. White sparks fizzed off Lulu's horn and Jane felt if she stared any harder she'd burn holes in the man's chest. "So you all made it then," man asked calmly. He looked to be taller than all of them if her were standing, and he sat at the table with his legs crossed, leaning back in the chair he sat on with his elongated fingers steepled together in front of his face. The table and chair were odd, both where curly iron frames entwined with iron leaves and vin