Thana sat in the landscape of their joined souls.

It was a vast, flat space. The floor was like the surface, and only the surface, of a serene lake. Cyan blue and crimson red souls flew towards the sky. They were the only things that reflected on the surface, with no discernible source of light anywhere to see. The souls, once high enough, became part of a cloud, condensed into drops, and fell down onto the surface. The rain didn’t cause any ripples. Instead, on the other side of the lake’s surface, a person was remembered. The drop blossomed into what the soul it stemmed from had looked like in life. This person eventually dissipated, to return back to the flying souls. Millions of such souls were part of the being that was Thana. The only one inside here that could still resist her was now asleep, resting on that other side.

Despite that, Thana wasn’t the only soul around. A foreign one was standing no more than five metres ahead of her. It was a human, albeit barely recognizable as such. A creature with skin that consisted entirely of scars, eyes and lips that were completely shrivelled up and neither finger or toenails. Despite its skeletally thin limbs, it walked around Thana with the stride of a healthy young man.

“You are like us, you know?” the ‘human’ asked. Thana stayed silent, merely looking after it, or him, walking in a circle. Her eyes expressed all the contempt she had for miscarriages of life like him. “You want nothing, yes? Then join us. We want the same thing.” He cackled. “Not that you have a choice. Now that I’m in here, it’s only a matter of time.”

Thana slowly rose to her feet and quietly walked over.

The frail ‘human’ face shifted its features slightly. Had it not been so completely ruined, perhaps a smile would have formed. The chuckles implicated as much. “The quiet, I can respect it.”

“I-z-h-a,” Thana said slowly. “A false name...”

“The name that Mother Chaos gave me. Foolish as she is, her and my interest align right now…”

“Mother Chaos… Tiamat…” Thana said.

“Yes, yes, she who corrupted.”

“You and her… you are in charge of the Lorylim… and you are human…” Thana grabbed Izha by the throat. The shrivelled scarred eyelids opened as wide as they could. “That makes the Lorylim human. All that is human must die.” The nihilist retreated from her soul. He must have realized that he hadn’t gotten in, he had been let in. Thana hated the sadistic joy she felt at his confusion. “You cannot dominate the goddess of genocide, frail scum!”

Just as Izha was banished, Thana rose from this inner sanctum for the first time in months. The preparations were already finished. Gathered in the blood mage’s stomach, the life fluid was now under the goddess’ full control and she shaped it expertly.

Like an insect emerging from its old hide, Thana tore open the corrupted flesh surrounding the pure blood and emerged, forming herself a new body in the process. The dimensions of their flesh were familiar, soothing in a way. Thana didn’t hate Eliza’s body, only that she never got to inhabit it on her own. Albeit, there were certain improvements on the human form to be made.

Bones, muscles, sinews, skin, those were reconstructed in less than a second, a carapace growing on top moments later. An outer layer of bone, pure white, harder and more reliable than blood alone could ever be. Blood flowed between the gaps like veins. Her face was covered by a smooth mask. Thana found her emotions revolting. All beyond hate for humanity was unnecessary. Nothing needed to show. Her spine extended into a long tail, each segment beset with blades, ending in a sharp tip.

“We…” the Lorylim resumed their chatter, only for that face to be sliced apart by a swipe of Thana’s tail. “All that…” another voice started, to meet the same fate. “Thana…” “Eliza…” “Where is Izha?” “What is she, what is she?” “She is like us, new minds, old minds, Lorylim.”

The smooth mask cracked open over Thana’s mouth, the jagged shards operating as the first of three layers of teeth. The second was blood, formed into a thousand tiny needles, replacing her lips. The third were human teeth, perfectly aligned and as sharp as they could be. The goddess of genocide swiped her claws at the mud bubble surrounding her and clacked her teeth.

‘I need the parasite to remember martial arts,’ she realized. ‘No matter.’

The Lorylim must have realized that their chatter was useless now and returned to the more important part of their strategy of corrupting her physical form. Every tendril they sent their way, Thana casually turned into a shower of mud with a swipe of her tail. She tensed and relaxed her fingers, rolled her shoulders, stretched her back, and made sure she remembered just exactly how to use their body. That her exoskeleton was decisively less dehumanizing in its skin-covering details than before didn’t bother her. She hated that it didn’t, but there was no changing it.

“I am the sword of Damocles, the punishment for indulgence,” Thana spoke the words of power. “Song of Bone.”

Skeletal wings unfolded from her back, spreading out until the tips connected with the surface of the surrounding bubble. Then, with one forward drag, she tore open the confinement. Lorylim screeched as the raw physical dominance of the failed goddess of genocide forced the Manifestation of Filth to fly into one direction.

Thana didn’t waste one second more. The corrupted blob splattered in the suburban street, tearing down the ruins of houses with its mass. Immediately it pulled itself back together, assuming the humanoid shape it had chased the group in. A tick in comparison, the goddess of genocide clawed into the torso. Her hands and teeth ripped the abomination into shreds. The foul stench and taste didn’t bother her, her mind too filled with hatred, her body too strong for the corruption to take hold.

She found something different in the corruption and tore it out without remorse. A water elemental, one of the many that had been forced into this amalgam state, was vanquished with one swipe of Thana’s skeletal wings. It was almost an absent-minded movement and the goddess continued unabated in tearing the Manifestation apart.

Some sort of survival instinct must have kicked in, as the abomination separated into several segments, all of which retreated in the direction of the water. Thana would have none of it. These things had decided to try to take over their body. That Eliza was a miserable failure of keeping them intact was one thing she could not change, but eradicating the Lorylim was correct by instinct and for revenge.

Fast as even the individual blobs were, they had no hope of escaping Thana. One after the other, she chased after them, ploughed through them and killed however many tainted water elementals lay inside, until the sapient sludge was nothing more than a disgusting film on the pavement. Immediately, she turned her attention to the remaining cluster.

Truthfully speaking, Thana had no idea what exactly was going on. Selective information reached her even in her self-imposed dormant state. Even that wasn’t enough to stitch together a full picture. All she knew was that there were entities to end.

She charged at the back of the cluster of other Lorylim. They didn’t notice her until she had already torn one of them apart. Not only did four others jump at her, but the two halves of the one she had just massacred as well. All of them were swept aside with a brutal wave of her arm, but all that seemed to do was to squish all of these monstrosities into one conjoined blob of squelching and malformed meat.

“I shall burn their blood to ashes and grind all their works and all that they have touched into dust – Song of Blood,” Thana growled and her blood ignited. Two butterfly-esque wings formed from her lower back and the gaps of her carapace flickered with crimson flame. The sanguine fire covered her claws at the command of her magic as she charged at this new amalgam. Cutting through the squishy, boneless flesh, she left blazing trails where she cut. There was no heat to consume her enemies, yet they burned all the same. Their regeneration was blocked, the human material inside the Lorylim suffered from the touch of she, who should have ended humanity. A kick reduced the abomination into yet another trail of dead Lorylim matter on the pavement.

The next Lorylim tried to sneak up on her. Before it could go on the offensive, Thana had already turned around. She rammed her arm shoulder deep into the twisted monster and made her magic surge. A moment later, blood fire burst out of every orifice of the mountain of flesh, making it melt around her limb. Not one to wait, the goddess of genocide tore her hand out and was back to her massacre within moments.

She killed another four Lorylim before she had advanced far enough into the crowd that she finally saw what lay at the heart of it. With a swipe of her tail, she cleared herself a path and emerged in front of the group.

The look on John Newman’s face was delicious. There was a moment of relief and hope and then the realization of who he was looking at. It made her heart beat faster, to see him like this. It made her heart beat faster to see him at all; before she knew it, her face mask dropped from her face, so that he may see her broad grin. He and the other women by his side.

There was Metra, Beatrice, Gnome, Undine, and Siena. Above were Sylph and Salamander, hanging in the air but not too far away. They had fortified the position with walls of stone, confining the Lorylim attacks to a single direction. Thana was now blocking that path, wings and tail keeping the abominations from falling into her back.

“Did you expect the parasite?” Thana asked, a sickening joviality in her voice.

“Yes,” the man before her responded. He stood tall and showed no fear despite the effects her aura must have had on him. “Although it was never outside the realm of my estimations that you would surface here.”

Thana’s smile dropped. A growl rose from deep in her throat, “You are using me as a tool again?!”

“No. I’d much prefer if you let Eliza come back into charge,” the Gamer said.

That only pissed the goddess of genocide off further and she took a step towards them. One of the Lorylim took this as the opportunity to leap over her. “KNOW YOUR PLACE,” Thana screamed, grabbing the abomination mid flight and sending it back into the crowd, toppling over two dozen of the nightmarish creatures.

Exasperated, confused, angry and joyful, Thana bent over and screamed her lungs out. Tearing at her hair, beating the ground with her tail, and throwing a tantrum like only the most frustrated people could, she kept screaming until even the Artificial Spirits had to cover their ears to protect themselves from the volume.

Then she suddenly stopped and giggled. “Hehehe… haaaa… Eliza can’t help you. Izha got to her, you know? I had to make an entire new body to get rid of that corruption.”

The Gamer’s eyes opened wide with shock and deep worry reflected in his tone, “Do you mean Eliza is…?”

Thana wished to withhold the answer, to cause him pain from the uncertainty, to punish him for worrying more about Eliza than her. ‘Why? Why is that in my head?!’ she growled at herself. “I saved us,” the goddess of genocide said. “She will recuperate, in time.”

Relief was apparent not only on the Gamer’s face, but also on that of all around. “Thank you,” he said.

“Thank… me?” Thana tilted her head quizzically. “You thank me?”

“Yes, Thana. I am honestly, deeply grateful.” John was looking directly at her. This human, this man, he was not afraid of her. In his hard eyes lay the understanding he had shown previously for her. Thana reached up to her lips. They had kissed before. It had been a loveless meeting of lips, meant only to rouse Eliza from her attempt to remain subconscious after she had attacked Jack following the events of the Hudson Brawl. For some reason, she remembered that kiss at that moment. How incomplete it had been. “We don’t need to be enemies,” John said softly.

“We don’t need to be enemies…” Thana repeated slowly and looked over her shoulder. At the tide of abominations that she could so easily slaughter. Then she looked back at the group she knew. They hid it well, courtesy of their non-human bodies, but they were battered and bruised. All Thana had to do was to turn around. “You would give me a chance at being normal?”

“I told you before, I never wanted you to suffer,” John told her, “only that the being you were could not coexist with what I want the state of the world to be. You are not that entity of slaughter anymore. You are not like them,” he pointed at the Lorylim, “you can be like us. You gain nothing by continuing to struggle against your changes.”

Thana stared at the creatures behind her. “You’re right, I’m not like them,” she admitted. “I don’t care to struggle anymore either… I feel… resigned…” she watched the hope appear on John’s face again. It felt good to be the source of that. She grinned widely. “But I am still the goddess of genocide and no screaming parasite is forcing me to help you.” She loathed the shock she saw and still continued. “We CAN’T be enemies, but I’m not your friend, human!” Thana leapt on top of the nearby stone wall and watched.