The transformation took over her arm, encasing it in blackened, sinuous metal, sharpening it into a long, jagged edge of pure killing intent. She staggered, breathing hard.

In the moment before she ran, she looked at its two edges, one serrated and another sharp. Its hilt blended with the skin of the arm itself, some of the wrap over her skin, some freckles dotted over it like a strange merging rather than frankensteined together.

She charged.

The rage bubbled in her stomach, a foreign feeling twisting her gut. She felt the snarl on her face and wondered if she'd recognise herself in the mirror.

A monster lunged from the kitchen, hound-like but with too many eyes and no teeth. Its gums were lighter than its skin, like the same inky black as its skin mixed with water. As it came into arm's reach, she saw its teeth descend, sharp and jagged.

Tanya moved without thinking. Her new arm swung up in a brutal arc—faster, heavier than her old sword—and sliced the monster in half at the waist. Black ichor splashed and sunk into the grout between the tiles.

The second one was hunched with too-long arms that it had used to fail at clambering over the first. It scrambled forward, hissing. Tanya pivoted, feeling the blade's weight shift with her body like it was an extension of her spine. She drove the sword-arm forward, spearing it through the throat and lifting it off the ground.

It gurgled and twitched, impaled on her arm like a shish kebab. A wicked grin spread on her lips. She ripped the blade free with a vicious jerk, and the creature collapsed, twitching.

"Oh my goodness!" Mrs Eceer shouted behind her, throwing a barrier across the breach as more monsters tried to push in.

Tanya barely heard her.

The third creature—a slimmer and more feline thing with gleaming teeth—charged straight at her. Tanya bared her teeth in a snarl and met it halfway. She ducked low, then swung her new arm in a brutal, cleaving arc. The monster's head separated from its body mid-leap, both halves slamming wetly into the wall behind her.

Panting, Tanya wiped the black blood out of her eyes with her human hand. She could hear it sizzling against her skin but barely felt it. Her sword-arm guzzled the black blood coating it until it gleamed again. With each few steps, the light from the battlements or small window above the door would hit the blade just right and dazzle her.

It thrummed with energy from absorbing, and her insides fluttered and twisted again. She pushed it down.

No.

She turned, blade at the ready, as more shapes battered against the broken doorway. Her entire body pulsed with the idea of keeping them all safe.

If the monsters are dead then we are safe.

"Swap," Tanya said, voice rough. "Keep the front safe. I got the back."

Her new weapon pulsed in agreement.

The gap widened with the crash of the dining table being pushed aside. Three of them burst through at once—hulking, twitching things. Their claws left black gouges in the tiles, some shattering apart entirely. Tanya moved on instinct, flinging herself into the first one. Her blade-arm met its chest in a thunderous clash. The creature's momentum nearly bowled her over—she staggered back, boots slipping on blood-slick tile—before she planted herself and drove the blade home, burying it up to the wrist.

The monster shrieked in a soundless way, its body unraveling from the point of impact outward like wet paper set on fire.

Another lunged while she was still locked with the first. It slammed into her side, knocking her clean off her feet. She hit the floor hard enough to see stars, the breath punched from her lungs. The taste of iron filled her mouth.

Move.

She gritted her teeth and rolled just as inky claws slashed down where her head had been.

Pain seared across her thigh—a shallow hit, but hot and ugly. It turned the other slash from before into a cross—one side clotted and the other bleeding. She bit back a scream, feeling blood spill warm down her leg. She snarled—a low, bestial sound—and surged up, slashing blind and hard. Her blade tore through a limb, sending it spinning across the floor, and black blood sprayed across her shirt, already corroding through the fabric.

She used to flinch when she hurt things—used to hesitate. But now, the wrongness in her arm was seeping into her chest, twisting her fear into exhilaration. She was made to protect.

I don't feel right.

The thought was small, desperate, a shard of her usual self still screaming inside the rising storm.

The third beast—a stockier, almost bear-like hound-brute with a drooling maw of broken glass teeth—barreled at her. Tanya planted her feet and roared back at it, her voice cracking raw from the force. When it leapt, she caught it midair on her blade, muscles screaming under the impact. They toppled backward together, her back slamming against the ground with a jolt that rattled her bones. The creature thrashed, jaws snapping inches from her face, hot breath reeking of rotting flesh. It must have eaten something—someone. She twisted the blade with everything she had, feeling the snarl spread across her face again. The black blood sprayed up, burning tiny smoking pits into her cheek and forehead.

It hurt—really hurt—and that clarity slapped her across the face even harder than the creature had.

Gritting her teeth so hard her jaw ached, she shoved the dying monster off her and scrambled upright, favoring her burning leg. She gasped, her human hand trembling, the blade arm steady. A low growl built in her throat as another wave of shapes formed in the breach. Tanya grinned, feral and broken and still fighting to remember herself.

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"Come on then," she rasped, voice thick with pain and something darker underneath.

The blade vibrated with a high-pitched ringing, making the world feel even less real. She pushed forward into the breach. The first of the new pack sprinted toward her, low to the ground, a whip-thin thing with a jagged spine like a broken saw. Tanya didn't dodge. She met it head-on, swinging her blade-arm in a heavy, reckless arc. The blade bit deep into its side, but not clean enough—the creature shrieked, spinning wildly and raking its claws across her shoulder. Sparks of pain exploded behind her eyes. She staggered, off-balance.

The next hound-thing slammed into her side before she could recover, knocking her against the ruined wall hard enough to rattle the windows. Cracks spiderwebbed in the bricks behind her. Tanya gasped, feeling something give in her ribs. She tasted blood again, thick and choking. The blade-arm lashed out almost without her permission, carving through the beast's throat. It dropped, twitching, but more were coming, their paws splashing through blood and ichor already pooling on the floor.

Her leg buckled when she tried to take a step. Her human hand—slick and trembling—scrabbled against the wall for balance. She couldn't do this. Not like this.

But I have to. They need me. I need me.

She wasn't sure if that was her own thought or not.

The thought was so loud she almost said it aloud. It wrapped itself around her brain like a chain, dragging her deeper. She wanted the fight. Craving the blade slicing through them consumed her mind. Tanya shook her head violently, trying to dislodge the feeling. Sweat stung the burns on her face, blurring her vision.

A creature lunged. She barely got the blade up in time to slice its front leg clean off at the knee. It crumpled, wailing, and she finished it with a brutal downward stab that shook her entire body on impact. Black blood spattered her again, burning through what was left of her shirt and eating tiny holes into the floor beneath her boots.

Another came from the side—low and fast. Tanya twisted to meet it, but the movement tore something in her injured leg. She went down hard on one knee. The monster leapt—

—and Mrs Eceer's shield flared into existence between them, a wall of crackling blue force that threw the creature back like a ragdoll.

"Tanya!" Mrs Eceer's voice cut through the ringing in her ears, sharp and commanding. "Fall back! You can't hold them alone!"

Tanya bared her teeth, panting, blade dripping black gore. Her whole body trembled. Not from fear—from the sheer need to keep fighting. Somewhere underneath the roaring in her head, the thin, terrified voice of the real Tanya kept whispering:

You're going to lose yourself.

She gritted her teeth and forced herself to her feet, every part of her body screaming in protest. One step. Another.

A fresh hound snapped at her trailing leg, tearing a gash in her boot, but she kicked it back with a strangled yell, nearly toppling over again. She stumbled toward Mrs Eceer's shield line, the summoned blade still humming violently, vibrating through her whole body, eager for more.

Behind her, the monsters bayed and howled, slamming themselves against the barrier.

Tanya leaned against the nearest intact piece of wall, gasping, feeling her injuries now in full: the burning cuts, the deep throb in her ribs, the bruises blooming under her skin. The sword-arm twitched as if trying to rip free from her shoulder and drag her back into the fray.

She clamped her human hand over it, fingers digging into the unnatural flesh of the two connecting, nails biting deep. "No," she rasped, grasping harder. The blade spread further up, and she felt the sharpness cutting into her hand as she held it back. She slid to the floor, now opposite the counter where Fahad and Ishita hid. A Polaroid picture of a tattoo fell off the wall behind her and drifted down to the floor.

The wrongness inside her shivered with frustration. It just wanted to protect her. If they fused fully, together she'd be strong enough to keep herself and everyone else safe.

But what worth was staying alive if she wasn't the same Tanya anymore?

Tanya turned to Mrs Eceer and whimpered, "Help."

Mrs Eceer chucked her arms out to each side, and barriers flew across the room, hitting the doors on both sides. A monster entered the back door as it flew over, getting hit and then shoved out. Its claws scritched across the tiles as it scrabbled to stay inside.

Mrs Eceer's nose flared. She pivoted toward the front door, her skirt flowing behind her.

"I can't take them down if I don't let them in," she murmured, low and grim.

She stepped into the open, dismissing the barrier holding them back from the door's creaking cracks. The hound barreling toward her took the bait, slavering jaws wide, its talons digging gouges into the floor as it lunged.

The second it crossed the threshold, the air snapped.

With a crack like thunder and a blinding blue flash, the trap detonated. The room flashed with the lines she'd set up earlier—like a circuit of magic covering the room. Tanya looked the other way and saw it had caught one near by the back too.

The beast froze mid-pounce, suspended in the air. Lines of silver light traced themselves over its body, curling around its limbs, across its gaping maw, up into its skull—and then the whole thing imploded inward in a flash of folding space. Not even blood hit the ground. Only a faint, echoing chime.

Mrs Eceer didn't flinch. She turned, eyes already scanning for the next.

Tanya watched the implosion, dazed, her jaw slack. Some part of her—her part—wanted to laugh, wanted to sob in relief.

But the blade-arm didn't. It pulsed.

She flinched as the tremor ran up her shoulder, into her spine. Her hand was still clenched around it, but it had stopped being just her arm. The muscles beneath her skin flexed wrong, twisting in places they shouldn't. The metal gleamed like it was waking up.

"I said no," she hissed, driving all her weight into locking her elbow, forcing it back down. She stared at it like it might suddenly listen.

But the wrongness was already inside. A bloom spreading out from her shoulder into her chest, through her neck. A fever she couldn't sweat out.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

Push it out. Just push it out.

Her knees hit the floor again. Her breathing turned to panting gasps, cold sweat pouring down her neck. She grabbed her corrupted shoulder with her other hand and pulled—like it was a foreign thing she could tear free. "Get out. Get out!"

A groan escaped her throat as something shifted under her skin. Not physical, but not entirely imagined either. Her vision blurred. For one horrible second, she could see it—not just the shape of the blade, but part inside. So many ribbons.

She hadn't fought hard enough. Hadn't tried soon enough. She'd let it stay too long.

What if that had been the plan all along?

To show her what they could achieve together, to get that narrative in her head.

Together we can keep me and everyone I love safe.

Tanya whimpered, curling in on herself. The blade-arm reached again like it was trying to lift her back to her feet. To carry her into the fight whether she wanted to go or not. Part of her still did.

"Help me—please!" she cried out again, eyes finding Mrs Eceer through the blur.

Mrs Eceer didn't hesitate.

She crossed the room in a flash, kneeling beside Tanya. Her eyes moved from one side to the other, reading faster than should be possible.

"The Restricted Question is in your Interface. I can see it," Mrs Eceer said. "Your best option is Assertion right now. That is using a huge displacement of Will to push it out."

Tanya sobbed, nodding through clenched teeth.

"The being in your body is draining Will all the time, but they can only hold you as well as their Absorption allows—so give them too much to take at once."

Tanya closed her eyes—and turned inward to fight.

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