The tiger padded from side to side, shoulder blades high, pressing into its head. Every part of its movement was graceful. Its expression contrasted with that, mouth stuck wide open and looking even more alien when it fully turned, when that same parchment-esque two-dimensionality became clear.

Amy curled up further, arms wrapped around her legs and head pressed into her knees. Her breath caught in her throat. "You shouldn't have come in."

Once again, the tiger growled through the sentence, voice catching at just the same moment.

Tanya wrung her hands on the hilt of Phantom Brand. This would be easy. She had taken down monster after monster on the way here, and this would likely be weaker.

It pounced.

Tanya sliced it with the twisted blade, the wood and metal of Amy's own door hitting it with all of the weight she could leverage.

The beast cried out, the force pushing it a foot back through the room. Its claw marks shredded the carpet in its path.

Amy whimpered, neck craning back and face contorted with pain.

"Oh fuck, Amy did that hurt you?" Tanya asked, but before she could even fully get the words out, the tiger was back. In her panic, she just pressed the blunt side of the sword against the tiger's face, pushing it back but trying not to cut it. It fought her barricade so hard that she could see inky blood forming from where the skin was nipped by the blade anyway.

Tanya remembered Assistant and how awful it had felt when it was dying in her hands. She had no idea how it affected people to lose their tattoos yet. She couldn't take this tiger down through fighting.

The tiger jumped forward at a new angle. With its mouth this wide, Tanya could just slice through the open maw into its head with a single thrust. Instead, she spun, letting the beast hit her back claws first. She spun before it could get a grip, twisting the sword again to the flat and batting it off her. It hit the wall beside the kitchen doorway, back contorting around the doorframe.

Amy whimpered again.

She took the moment to pull out her spiked whip, cracking it down along the floor to protect Amy in case the tiger now saw her as a target as well.

"Amy, listen to me. I'm gunna need you to unsummon it," Tanya said.

"I d-don't know how?"

The tiger growled, crouching even lower to the ground in the doorway to the kitchen. Tanya watched it eye the drawers beside it. The thick claw marks in the wood suggested that it was a common propelling point.

"Focus on the place on your body—it's your back, right? Focus on the tiger and your back and that energy that connects you and–"

The tiger leapt once again. Its front and back legs took purchase on the battered oak, and it pushed off from it. A growling maw flew towards Tanya's face. With the right move, she could slice the beast in two.

Instead, she unsummoned Phantom Brand and glanced around. A sofa to her right, a table and chairs behind it—most broken. The fireplace ahead with Amy beside it.

Tanya dove towards the table, army crawling the last of the distance. The tiger's teeth pierced her ankle, and she groaned, pulling forward anyway. She reached for the table leg, moving inch by inch as her fingertips touched it, then grabbed it. She flipped the table with a grunt, cutting herself off from the tiger. Spinning round on the floor, she could see her own blood staining the carpet and the holes in her leg where its large teeth had ripped into her on one side.

I'm lucky it didn't clamp down, or I might have lost my leg—

Tanya remembered the image of the tiger as she entered—its mouth wide and saliva dripping down its chin.

It can't close its jaw.

Tanya grabbed two of the table legs, angling them halfway between upright and horizontal.

Tanya kept talking through her heaving chest. She couldn't tell if it was fear or the exercise, but her heart was racing. "Amy, try again for me."

Make it simpler.

"Focus just on how you're connected to it."

Tanya couldn't see Amy, but she heard her. "How?!"

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"When it hurts, you can feel that in you. Focus on where it hurts—how it feels."

The tiger's large paw swiped under the bottom of the table. Tanya thudded the table down to protect herself, catching the paw with the corner.

Amy groaned out of sight. "It's deep in my gut. I've got it."

Tanya's mind raced for how to verbalise it. "Imagine it going back onto your skin. Feel that pain in your core being pulled towards your back an' makin' up the design."

The tiger leapt over the table, scrabbling against the top. Tanya shifted her feet into a low squat and tensed her legs, using the force of her back on the table and legs to propel the tiger off it.

"It's not working," Amy said, her voice weaker than before. "I'm so tired."

Ah shit.

Tanya summoned the bandages, heaving the table onto one shoulder and throwing them to Amy. Vitality and Will would be most useful, but if any of them were bottoming out she could fall unconscious, so Tanya just chucked them all wound up in a strange bandage ball.

The untied ends fluttered behind as it flew.

"Put them all on. They'll help you feel better," Tanya said. "Then try again."

In the moment she saw Amy before she had to angle the table back, she saw Amy start to wrap.

The tiger jumped again. Tanya was starting to get into the rhythm of it. She pushed it off using the table with only a scratch to her back from where it reached over the edge.

"Tanya, what if I can't?" Amy said over the growling and scratching.

This would end one of three ways. Either Amy went unconscious, which might unsummon the tiger, Tanya or Amy would die, or Amy would unsummon it successfully.

Tanya didn't want to say any of that.

"We will wait until you can," Tanya said.

"Tanya, if it's going to kill you, kill it—kill me. I don't want to see anyone else die."

Tanya's throat went dry. "It won't come to that."

"Please, Tanya, promise."

"IT WON'T COME TO THAT!" Tanya roared.

With the rush of anger, she yelled, pushing with all her might against the tiger on the other side of the table. She forced it backwards over and over until it was outside the doorway. Sweat covered her forehead and dripped down her neck.

Claws and teeth peeked over the corners of the circular table through the doorway. Tanya ducked out of reach, trying to predict the next one coming.

"Amy," Tanya said, calmer. "Try again."

Amy just sobbed behind her.

Tanya spun around, planting her back against the table instead so she could see Amy.

"The feelin' in your gut, Amy. Feel it go towards your back. Feel that burnin' from when I first did the tattoo. It's on your back, Amy. Feel it on your back."

The tiger's pushing became more frantic. Tanya's feet slipped across the carpet. She dug her heels in further.

Amy's eyes were clamped shut, eyebrows furrowed. Her lips moved, the ghost of words she was telling herself.

First, the tiger stopped making noise. Tanya could still feel and hear it thudding against the table, but it no longer panted or growled.

"Amy, you're doin' it. Keep goin'!"

Then the thudding grew weaker and weaker.

Tanya kept calling out encouragement until the words blurred together and she didn't know what she was saying anymore.

Amy's eyes rolled back in her head, and she convulsed.

There was no more pounding from the tiger.

Tanya dropped the table and raced over to her. She held Amy's shoulders. "Amy, wake up."

The tiger climbed over the table in the doorway, falling down the other side with none of the grace it had before.

Tanya's breath caught in her throat.

It limped towards her, head lowered.

She's unsummonin' it?

Tanya prayed that was what was happening.

Against her better instincts, Tanya stayed where she was. She rolled Amy over onto her stomach.

The tiger curled behind her, a huge, big spoon that made Amy's frail form look even smaller.

With a glow and ripple of light and ink, the tiger pressed itself onto her back once again. In the last moments before they combined, they both let out a final breath in unison.

• • • • • • • • •

Tanya waited for Amy to wake up. Eventually, her theory became that Amy had exhausted herself before she managed to forcibly unsummon the tiger herself.

The first few minutes were just trying to breathe evenly again. She lay down beside the frail girl, feeling her back against the carpet and the way that her chest filled.

The few after that were checking herself for injuries and unsummoning all of her tattoos. Each one reforming with her body was a relief as her Vitality reformed.

Then time began to blur. She thought about how many other Amy's there must be out there—about all the past clients of hers that had died.

She was filled with so much guilt that it hurt to breathe. But then guilt made way to anger. She'd never done tattoos to hurt anyone. It was the powers that had hurt them. For the first time in a long time, Tanya wished the powers would go away.

She rolled side to side every now and again, the carpet's uncomfortable firmness almost comforting.

When monsters growled outside, appearing from all of the noise, Tanya met them in the entryway and killed each with a single strike of her sword. She then lay down again in the same position as before, staring at Amy's dark strands, then tossing towards the broken table and the doorway where she'd held the tiger back for so long.

When she'd come to try and meet a client for more information on how to help people, she'd expected ideas and inspiration—perhaps someone wanting to turn their tattoo into a set or wanting to find better ways of training the tattoo they had. Tanya now realised that she had been sorely naive.

She could go and meet the other people on her list who lived in the area. With Mrs Eceer or Olena's help, perhaps she could even do a couple further out, like in Poplar or Shoreditch.

There were so many from Greater London out of reach, and even more further still — the old lady in Scotland who wanted a tattoo of her terrier, the eighteen-year-old immigrant from Syria who wanted her family's names, the woman from the North who'd planned a whole trip just to get a tattoo from Tanya.

The decision was clear now.

Brand of Conquest could give her answers about the monsters. Legacy Etching or Harmonised Summons could give her new ways of making tattoos. Any of them could lead towards making her stronger.

But she would need them near her all the time for those around her to benefit from that. She needed a Subclass that could help those beyond her reach.

Tanya chose Clientele, and she prayed that whatever Subclass it unlocked would stop her from ever feeling this helpless again.

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