I dropped the broken metal limbs of Mech Sparkles on the opposite side of the river as Aisling. My hair tentacles gently placed them on the ground. I could have dumped it on the ground, but that might have destroyed something helpful. A tentacle placed the lightning gun next to the limbs.

  Meanwhile, I observed my soul link to Irene and the chimera girl. It wasn’t intrusive, just a passive awareness of their location and a ghost of their sensations. Through the link, I felt the sudden jolt in all of their chests. They could hear my stomps shaking their home all the way up on the mountain.

  “Did you feel that?” Irene asked with a whisper.

  “Hear it, I heard it!” Nilo exclaimed. It made me proud that my footsteps could echo so far.

  “We should go down to them,” Irene suggested. She dropped the feathers she had been rolling into a pillow.

  “Why are we walking toward the monsters that hijacked our brains?” Nilo’s voice carried over the grassy distance, her lion head shaking its mane in irritation.

  “We’re monster girls too,” Irene said, putting her hands on her hips. “No need to be so rude about it.”

  “That’s the part you focus on?” Nilo asked. Exasperation fills her voice.

  “You keep forgetting that they saved us,” Irene said. “Without them, we would have been kidnapped by the imperial humans and would have never seen the light of day again.”

  “Imperial?” Nilo asked.

  “That’s the part you focus on?” Irene asked, throwing Nilo’s question back at her.

  “Okay, whatever,” Nilo asked, rolling her eyes. So rude. “That still doesn’t explain why we should go see them.”

  Irene shook her head. “It’s not just about them. They must have come back and freed Aisling. We should meet her!”

  Guilt bubbled inside of Samsara. She knew that we had failed to bring her back alive, even though she promised to do it.

  Through the soul link, I felt Kanes and Atgo waver.

  “Fine,” Atgo stated. “I am willing to meet Aisling.”

  “Same,” Kanes said. “Besides, I’m not doing much here anyway.” Both of them looked at Nilo.

  There was a pause. Nilo, the lion head, huffed. “You guys are unbelievable. Fine. Let’s go see this ‘Aisling’ they dragged back.”

  “Thank you,” Irene said.

  The four of them exited their home and descended the mountain. At the same time, I spotted faint lights at the other end of the valley. That must be Halinka and Eivor. My Demiurge-enhanced hearing also alerted me to footsteps coming from another home. Nara was also descending.

  They stopped dead when they saw her. Aisling wasn’t just injured. She was unrecognizable to them. First, she had grown to the size of a Kaiju. Plus, she was missing her legs.

  “Is that… Aisling?” Nara’s voice cracked, staring at the shell. She stepped forward, then stopped, afraid to touch the massive, still form.

  Each of the others echoed that same question.

  “Yes, this is Aisling,” Samsara said. Each of them grouped up several meters away from Aisling.

  “What did they do to her?” Nara demanded, looking up at Samsara. The fear in her eyes was battling with anger. She wasn’t angry at Samsara, but at the kidnappers.

  I crossed my arms. “The Monster Purifiers were planning on using her as a power source. They fused her into a giant monster girl blob to power their machines. We had to cut her out.”

  “Is she dead?” Irene asked.

  “She looks dead,” Nilo muttered bluntly. “That thing is a corpse.”

  “We’ll bring her back,” Samsara said quickly, slithering between them and Aisling’s body as if to shield her from their judgment.

  Silence descended on the group, heavier than the humid air of the valley. The horror of it seemed to sink into their bones. Nara fell to her knees, sobbing quietly into her hands. I felt tears forming in Irene’s eyes. The disgust inside the chimera girl, directed at us, turned to sadness.

  “Bring her back?” Eivor asked, clearly flabbergasted at what she was saying.

  “We’re going to fix her,” Samsara vowed, her voice firm. She placed a hand on Aisling’s giant, cold shoulder. “We have magic. Just like how we're able to wake up Irene, Nilo, Atgo, and Kanes. If anyone can heal her, it’s us.”

  “That still seems pretty outlandish,” Atgo said. “How did she even get to that size anyway? Irene said you were the only Kaiju in the village.”

  “They were experimenting on her,” I explained. “When they fused her to the blob, we attempted to free her. It began growing uncontrollably afterwards. The scientists who experimented on her called it an unpurified Synergy Source.”

  Eivor perked up as she heard me say those last three words. She then looked away. Did she know about this? Before I could ask her, Kanes spoke up.

  “Where are her legs?” Kanes asked, slithering around. Her tail extended so she could come around the backside of Aisling. She stared at the dried, red blood at the bottom of her torso.

  “They are gone,” I said. “They weren’t there when she was fused to the blob.”

  “How do you plan on… fixing her?” Kanes asked, putting a hand on their chin. It felt like their mind was deep in thought. However, I couldn’t confirm that since we didn’t have access to their thoughts. I wished we did. It would be handy to have access to everyone’s thoughts.

  “We’re going to try and get a Kaiju Core,” Samsara explained. She patted the front of Aisling’s shell, where her chest would be if she were shellless.

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  “Her own Core was probably merged at the center of the blob,” I said. I left out the part where I ate it. No need to tell them that.

  Samsara continued. “I think that with both a Kaiju Core and my magic, we’ll be able to bring Aisling back.”

  Irene wiped her eyes and looked away from Aisling’s broken form. Her gaze landed on the pile of twisted metal I had dumped on the other side of the riverbank. “What is that stuff for?”

  I seized the opportunity.

  “Hey, Nilo, Atgo, and Kanes,” I called out.

  The chimera girl stiffened, all three heads glaring at me.

  “I want to apologize again,” I said, making my face as sincere as possible. “For the body control thing. It was wrong. To make it up to you, I brought you a gift.”

  I gestured to the scattered limbs of Mech Sparkles and the lightning gun.

  “I stole this from the facility where they were keeping Aisling,” I lied smoothly. Well, half-lied. I retrieved it from the mech I ate, but I’m not sure how well they would take that. Better to just leave that part out. “I think they were planning on building a mech out of it. It seemed like pretty advanced tech. I know Nilo is smart. You said you were a biological and agricultural engineer, right?”

  “This looks entirely mechanical,” Nilo said. “I can’t help here.”

  “But I can,” Atgo said.

  “So can I,” Kanes added on. She slithered back around to be next to Nilo and Atgo. “I thought I was never going to touch a piece of technology again.”

  “See, I told you it was a good idea,” Samsara said smugly in my mind.

  Definitely, they had experience with technology, though I didn't know what knowledge they had. They could make something useful out of it. Maybe they could make a TV. Seraphina had one in her room.

  “We might need a giant TV,” Samsara said. Imagine that: a giant TV plus a worshiper.

  Actually, would it be three worshipers since each of them would worship us? My thoughts tingled in anticipation of being worshiped again.

  “We’ll take a look!” Kanes said, giving us a thumbs up. Even if they didn’t worship me yet, making them dependent on my gifts was the next best thing. I’d make a note to capture more mech parts if they made useful things out of this scrap metal.

  “It sounds like you’re giving them drugs,” Samsara said.

  “Well, unlike drugs, there isn’t anything harmful that I’m giving them,” I said. “That makes me better than any drug dealer.” My mind wandered on how my life would be if I had been a drug dealer instead of a garbage collector. I could have made a lot more money doing illegal shit. But that would also be very risky. If I fucked up, then Samsara would be abandoned.

  The sun began to vanish from view, the last strands of light disappearing. We waved goodbye to everyone. Just keeping up my ‘kind’ personality.

  “We need to wash ourselves,” I announced, pointing at a patch of dried red muck on my arm that was covering up my inky pores.

  Actually, I just needed to wash myself. Samsara was all clean.

  We left the village and headed back to the original forest, the one right outside of Utlond. The moonlight pierced through the canopy, allowing us to see where we were going. No sounds could be heard. Everything was far, far away. And probably also asleep. Maybe some nocturnal monster girls were up, but they weren’t close by.

  Eventually, we arrived at the waterfall again. It was absent of any fish girls, so no midnight snack for us. I stepped into the lake at the base of the waterfall. Samsara slithered beside me. I went under the cascade, letting the water pressure hammer against my shoulders. The water sluiced off my body, carrying a slurry of red and black into the lake below.

  I helped out by scrubbing myself with my hair tentacles. I made quick work. Still, I loved the feeling the shower gave me. I decided to stay under the waterfall.

  This time, Samsara wasn’t embarrassed.

  “Well, it’s kind of hard to see you when it’s dark out,” Samsara pointed out.

  “That’s not true,” I said. “Even if the sun isn’t visible, its light bounces off the moon.” There were very rare instances where a twin moon wasn’t at least partially in the sky. “You’re just looking away from me. I can see myself just fine.”

  She turned around, and she slithered over to me. “Okay, fine, I can see you. Are you glad that I’m not embarrassed anymore?”

  “Yep!” I said. “Since our minds are linked, any embarrassment you feel is dumped into my head. Not a very pleasant experience.”

  “Sorry about that,” she said, looking down at my chest.

  “Not a fan of abs, I presume?” I asked her, giggling.

  “What?!”

  I rubbed my eight-pack with my hands. It was really well-toned, making me feel strong. I had earned it after eating the feral Kaiju cat girl. My chest had gotten bigger, mainly because my pectoral muscles had gotten stronger. But it didn’t feel as earned compared to my abs.

  “Oh yeah, they’re um… nice,” she said, looking down at them.

  “You have good abs too,” I said, staring at hers.

  “Uh, thanks,” she said, her cheeks reddening. But she didn’t break eye contact this time. She wasn’t as embarrassed as before. It felt more like she was entranced. “I do like getting stronger.”

  Then we should focus on eating more Kaijus, monster girls, and humans. Plus, getting more people to worship us. Imagine if everybody in Lateo worshiped us. We could speed up our evolution and quickly refill our mana. In fact, what if we took over Lateo from Halinka and Eivor?

  “I don’t know about that,” Samsara said, uncertainty building up in her mind. “That feels… wrong.”

  “Well, you know how they treated Aisling and Nara originally,” I said. “They wanted to give them punishments. Which you didn’t want.”

  Samsara mentally agreed. “Yeah. But then they stopped giving out those punishments to Aisling and Nara.”

  “If we ruled Lateo, then we wouldn’t have to worry about them giving out bad consequences ever again,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. The water cascaded off my back, making me feel like I had a cape of water. “Plus, we get the added benefits of everyone worshiping us.”

  “I don’t know about this,” Samsara said. “It seems good in theory. But we should focus on saving Aisling first. Then we can figure out this worship stuff later.”

  Let's focus on going to sleep first. Then we could worry about saving Aisling. We shouldn’t ignore a good night's rest. We both giggled.

  Both of us returned to the village. It popped back into existence once we entered the valley boundary. On the ground in front of us was our makeshift cat fur blanket. Aisling’s remains sat next to the river.

  “We should go sleep next to Aisling,” Samsara suggested.

  I wasn’t really bothered by a corpse. Back when we were younger, we kept our slain prey close to us when we slept.

  Both of us lay down on the ground. Samsara faced towards Aisling. I hugged Samsara and wrapped us both in the black fur blanket, using my hair tentacles. Samsara grabbed my hands and dozed off.

  I knew that Samsara wanted to be a good person and had these boundaries she didn’t want to cross. But the world wasn’t kind to idealists. The only thing that mattered was power. And I would make sure we had it, even if it upset Samsara. It would be worth it as long as we were alive.

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