Her face scrunched up like she'd smelled a particularly rancid corpse.

  "It's a God's curse, Vita. What exactly could you possibly do to break that?"

  I tapped my lip in thought.

  "Well, for starters, I'd remove that crystal in your gut. As far as I can tell, you cut off the crystal, you cut off the sigils, right?"

  Her hands instinctively went to her belly, and she fought to keep the disbelief off her face.

  "But... that would kill me. No one ever survives having their crystal removed; the power it imbues one with leads the body to rely on it. It would be like removing my still-beating heart. I wouldn't survive it."

  I smiled warmly.

  "Which just means I'll need to give you a new body, doesn't it?"

  She scoffed and rocked back into the wall, staring up at the roof.

  "Now I know this isn't real. I'm still dreaming, aren't I? Oh, Gods, please just wake me uuuuppppppp!"

  She laughed weakly, squeezing her eyes shut before her head tilted back down, and she fixed me with a tired and sceptical look.

  "Alright, let's say you do this, you remove my crystal and somehow give me a new body... then what? That's it? Things just... carry on like normal? This will just be one more thing you go out of your way to do 'just for me'?"

  It was my turn to fix her with a flat look.

  "Armela, I've already told you that you're free to do as you please. You offered to serve my God alongside me. If you choose to continue down that path, I would be more than happy to have you with me. That will not change."

  I paused pointedly before continuing.

  "But... if for whatever reason you decide you no longer want to be a part of that, you can go about your life any way you wish. I will not take from you any of the things I've provided, and I would never wish ill of you under any circumstances."

  This time she frowned.

  "You're mad. You must be. I must be as well. What do I do, Vita? Nothing makes sense to me anymore. I feel like nothing I understood about life is true, or real for that matter."

  She looked defeated. Exhausted by what life had done to her.

  "You're breaking it... you're breaking me. I'm terrified more now than I was in that fucking cave... What do I do about all of... this?"

  She gestured vaguely around herself, being sure to generalise the movement more in my direction than the world at large. Wiggling her fingers slightly to emphasise my strangeness.

  I grinned... madly.

  "I suggest you learn how to breathe underwater, because we are only just barely treading the very surface of this ocean. You're only going to be sinking deeper and deeper from here on if you stick with me."

  She shook her head, smiling ruefully.

  "Alright, you bastard. What do I need to do?"

  She splayed her hands out on either side of her in a resigned gesture.

  Like she'd stopped fighting the currents sweeping her down a river. I'd overcome the last hurdle in subjugating her. Even if she wasn't fully aware of what kind of future awaited her, she was willing to dedicate herself to my cause for now.

  I would still need to navigate her opinion of me as my journey continued, but that would be far, far simpler than overcoming her initial misgivings about who or what I was.

  I nodded slowly, maintaining eye contact.

  "First, I'll need to alter your body. This will take a few days, as it will be a gradual progression. Doing this part too quickly would either lead your mind to reject the body, or inadvertently stop an essential process you need to function prematurely."

  I tried to make my statements clinical, surgical, like I was a professional walking through another routine job.

  "You won't notice much of a change until the entire procedure is complete and you assume total control over your new form. I don't expect things to be too rough during the transition, but we'll take things slow and see how you adjust."

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  She squirmed nervously, but maintained a stiff upper lip.

  "W-will it hurt?"

  I smiled again and shook my head.

  "You'll hardly feel a thing, honestly you may not even notice it happening. I'll provide you with a small device that will carry a portion of the material used to form your new body, it will be easy to move and rest with and it will make it so that I do not need to be near you at all times while the process completes."

  She relaxed slightly as I continued.

  "Next, I'll be removing your crystal. I understand the hesitation you might have with that, but with the body I'll be giving you, I can promise that you will not need it any longer."

  This worried her, clearly, but I held up a hand to delay her objections.

  "Sigils will lose a significant portion of their power compared to what you'll be attaining, and I highly doubt removing it would kill you, as you would no longer have a body capable of dying. As the crystal will be removed, you also won't need to worry about a curse that utilises sigils produced by said crystal."

  Hope was slowly rekindling in her eyes. A path forward was being carved out of the bleak fog of uncertainty. I hesitated a beat and then decided to push a little.

  "Speaking of... I don't want to poke at a fresh wound, but could you explain how that 'curse' works?"

  She bit her lip, hesitating briefly before choosing to respond.

  "It's a rare skill that the Wolfkin sometimes gain from Dersio. No one has really determined what causes our God to give such a skill, but based on its effect, it's assumed that moments of intense rage or feral brutality trigger the bestowal."

  I was surprised by how even her voice was. I had expected this to be more difficult for her at this point, but maybe she'd gotten past the worst of it.

  "Once you've gotten it... there isn't all that much you can do about it, since it activates passively. And as your crystal grows... it becomes easier and easier for the skill to activate."

  She picked at the hem of the cotton shift I'd given her.

  "Eventually, you'll activate it over small occurrences like spilling a drink, or bumping into a stranger on the street... Once you reach that point... it's only a matter of time before you're put down like a feral beast."

  This explained a lot. Though it sounded like it was possible to potentially stem the growth of the skill by not allowing the crystal to develop, if the crystals grew through other methods, like harvesting crops, or cooking, or generally gaining experience in any activity, then there really wasn't much anyone could do to stop it.

  It was a death sentence, hanging over the heads of those who had gained it, like the Sword of Damocles. So this begged the question of why a 'Gift from the Gods' would condemn some people to death.

  Was it really only the Wolfkin who suffered such a fate? Surely, if all the crystals were produced from the same source, then all of them would be capable of producing such a skill, and I highly doubted the Wolfkin were the only ones capable of achieving such levels of rage.

  This circled right back around to the invisible force manipulating the energy produced by the crystals.

  Where before it had been a simple oddity to me, now it took on a rather sinister tone. It was obvious to me that they were not natural structures, and the fact they were being distributed so ubiquitously among the population struck me as somewhat... devious.

  Not to mention the fact that the crystals could be grown by absorbing the power of other crystals... it almost felt like the hosts were being used to... refine them, somehow.

  A churning sense of unease crept through my soul. There was something operating here that reeked of malice and power.

  Suddenly, the entire planet felt like a farmyard. The creatures down here were kept as livestock for some purpose involving growing and refining the crystals implanted in their bodies. Tricked into using them, relying on them, and feeding them more power through the use of gained skills and attributes.

  They were being cultivated to believe the crystals were mutually symbiotic. But this was parasitism. The crystals were being fed the energy of the people hosting them. It wasn't like the crystal was destroyed when the host died; it was passed along, its energy being added to the next and then the next and so on.

  Were the gods really aware of this? Were there even any gods here? I stared at Armela, the true scale of what was happening on this planet unfolding in my mind. Any being harvesting the power generated by the crystals on this planet would be immeasurably powerful considering I couldn't even fucking detect it.

  How could I possibly fight against such a force? Was it aware of me? Had it noticed my arrival here?

  I suddenly felt vulnerable.

  Like there were thousands of eyes tracking every movement I made. I shut my eyes and focused on the thought of my God.

  The machine would preserve me. Through cold steel and spooling copper, I would be shielded from the deep abyss. There was no madness in spinning gears, no chaos in coiled springs.

  My sanity had been hammered into me while I was forged into my God's Ingot.

  The feeling passed. Whatever I faced would not stand against the march of my conquest.

  Nothing would.

  Armela looked at me as confusion pulled one of her eyebrows up.

  "Well, removing the crystal should eliminate the skill's ability to manifest. And even if it doesn't, your mind will not be operating in the same way as it does now."

  Her confusion deepened, and I powered on.

  "There's a good chance the skill may no longer affect your emotions in the same way. And even if it does, I will be here to stop you before things get out of hand. Since your body will be an extension of mine, I will provide it with all of its power. If you ever reach the point of going out of control, I will simply shut you down."

  This caught her off guard.

  "You're saying you'll have total control... over my body?"

  I chuckled as I shook my head.

  "No, not at all the way you're thinking, I won't be able to control you like that. After the changes have been completed, you will still have absolute autonomy over yourself permanently."

  I shut down the idea that I could puppet her body like a marionette immediately.

  "But because of the nature of this transition, you will get every bit of your energy directly from me. Which ultimately means that if anything were to happen to me, you would go to sleep."

  I hesitated before continuing.

  "This is a fairly enormous leap of faith for you, so I can understand if you struggle with this part of it. But, for whatever it's worth, I will swear to you I will only ever exercise that level of control when it is absolutely necessary for your continued survival. You are not some puppet for me to toy with; you are a living, thinking, existing soul. That is an immutable right, and I cannot, will not, strip that from you."

  She seemed to weigh this against everything she'd learned over the past day. Apparently reaching the conclusion that this was no more insane than the rest of what she'd seen and heard, she simply nodded and said,

  "I believe you. I don't know why, but I believe you. Even worse, I think I actually trust you. I'll do this thing. I will join you and your God and walk with you into whatever insane future you two have planned. Not that my other options were any fucking better..."

  She muttered this last part before expelling a breath.

  "Let's go, Vita. I'm not getting any less cursed sitting here, so get on with it."

  I would not question her resolve. This aligned perfectly with the end goal I had wanted, and I wasn't one to snub an excellent opportunity. At this moment she had made her choice, and I would not introduce a chance for her to second guess that, nor give her a moment she could look back on later and go 'I should have stopped when he asked if I was sure'.

  She was sure now, and if she regretted this decision at any point in the future, I needed to ensure that when she looked back, there would only ever be her choice to look back on. Not me attempting to dissuade her.

  I produced the device for her to wear. It resembled a fanny pack, a small pouch with a belt to encircle her waist.

  I fed a portion of my body into it, imbuing them with the directive to replace her organic cells. Over the course of the transition, most of her body material would create new nanoscopic robots, so the bulk of this transition would take place inside her.

  Only using the parts of my body deposited in the pouch as a stopgap when there weren't enough raw materials inside her to make up the robots. I would need to gather and refine more precious metals in order to provide the change with the elements it needed, but there would be time for that over the next few days.

  I instructed her on how to attach the pack, and as she did, the little machines invaded her skin, swarming through the spaces between her cells and finding their home in the vast ocean of her body.

  It had begun.

  Just in time for us to watch the sun set over the horizon from the side of the hill. We stood side by side as the glowing ball of plasma crept further and further down the rim of the world.

  Settling into a comfortable silence, I felt a gentle bump against my hand. Looking down, I watched as her hand slid shakily into it, curling around my palm and squeezing. Hard. I looked back up at her face, but she was gazing out across the forest below us, a carefully maintained look of neutral interest plastered over it.

  Returning my gaze to the beautiful pinks and purples of the rapidly darkening sky, I smiled and closed my hand around hers.