Dark mist hung low in the street, like the bloodstained breath of something not-quite-dead. Amid shattered rooftops and cracked stone roads, Gareth stood face-to-face with Capella. His blade of silver light hissed as it cut the air, trailing divine brilliance with every subtle twitch. Across from him, Capella grinned.
She had returned to her human form—or something that mimicked it. Her limbs were of uneven length, bones elongating or retracting at whim, her skin shimmered like quicksilver, and her violet eyes danced with mad delight.
"Daddy," she sang sweetly, voice a child's lullaby dipped in arsenic. "Let me show you what else I can do."
Before Gareth could react, something skittered past his feet. An object he'd severed earlier in the heat of battle—an arm—now crawled across the debris like a roach. Its flesh twisted and compressed, warping until it became a black rat with a twitching tail and gleaming red eyes.
The rat zipped away through an alleyway, vanishing into the ash-laced dark.
He already knew where the creature was headed but before he could give chase, Capella reappeared in front of him, with the sharp pincers of a scorpion where her arms should've been.
Far away, amidst splintered stone and the cloying stench of burnt copper, Lara still lay frozen. Her eyes were glassy, unfocused—trapped in a private realm of horror where screams echoed but no breath escaped.
A soft slither and whisper crept behind her.
"Mila... ," Capella's voice poured from the rat's mouth, the tones jagged with overlapping giggles. "Hold Mommy. Tight. And don't let her scream." She then also whispered something else to her, that caused her to momentarily pause.
Mila obeyed. She speedily slithered behind Lara and wrapped her arms—arms lined with scales and corrupted grace—around her former mistress's body. She held her in a firm and suffocating grip, giving her just enough room to barely breathe. She then bent Lara's next, and put her teeth that were now fangs, across it - venom dripping onto her fair skin.
Lara did not resist. Her mind was unresponsive from the shock overload, and her spirit had long since surrendered.
Back on the battlefield, Capella tilted her head as the rat returned, gnawing on the air until it spat a whisper into her palm.
Capella's facial expression showed one of delight as she stood on one leg, hugged herself with an arm and used her other to make a decapitation gesture.
"Now, Daddy," she called with sing-song cruelty. "Drop your sword. Or Mila carves a hole through Mommy's pretty little throat with her teeth."
Gareth froze. The weight of the Dawnlight in his hands suddenly felt miles away. He looked to Capella, then down to the empty path between them, and let the blade clatter to the earth. The light fizzled out.
"Good boy," she cooed. "Now… stab yourself in the heart."
He twitched, as if to resist. But the command was left with little choice. With shaking hands, Gareth summoned a short spike of light, and—with a scream caught in his throat—plunged it deep into his chest.
Blood poured from the wound, but he did not fall. He still stood strong and proud - the embodiment of a real 'Dawn Paladin.'
Capella strode forward, her bare feet making no sound. She knelt beside him, whispering madness into his ear as she placed her palm over his brow.
"You're mine now. Let's twist up that brain of yours, shall we?". Capella then began a process like that of a lobotomy.
A ripple of flesh and spirit surged. Gareth's body spasmed, and his expression melted into a calm, wicked grin.
His eyes opened and gleamed with a sinister new light.
"What do you wish of me, Capella my sweet daughter?" he asked, his voice smooth as oiled steel.
Capella clapped her hands, delighted. "Oh Daddy, you're perfect now!"
She skipped over to where Lara still sat—blank and lost. She placed both hands gently on her mother's cheeks, smiled into her empty eyes, and whispered:
"Let's fix you too."
With a hum of perverse affection, she reached into Lara's mind, with her transmutative will—and rethreaded the woman's sanity like a doll's stuffing. The horror, the grief, the righteousness... all peeled away. In their place, she implanted a mocking madness, and manic glee.
One modeled after her own.
Lara blinked once then twice.
And then she giggled.
Capella threw her arms in the air like a performer before her curtain call. "Ta-da! Now you're really my Mommy and Daddy!"
With a smiling expression she thought 'They are ready for 'your' blessing Mother.'
A tremor passed through the ground. Then another.
Lights—real lights, with order and reason—approached from the west. The golden crests of the Patrol Team, followed by the glint of ritual tools and the measured steps of Collin Lliad.
The Captain of the City's Exploration Team and Chief of the Six-Member Council. His every step exuded iron law. His coat billowed like the pages of a holy text in the wind.
He saw the destruction that had been unleashed onto the road, and the traces of blood and flesh that littered it.
He then saw Mila—now a beast of serpentine horror—standing dominantly in front of Gareth and Lara.
"Report what happened Gareth," Collin ordered, his voice laced with authority that didn't need to shout.
Capella ran towards her father like an innocent schoolgirl, burying her face into his clothes. She had decided that even though she needed to keep up the Act of the chosen one, she still needed to give a normal reaction to seeing a monster for the first time - especially since it was her beloved maidservant.
Gareth then activated a psychological switch that turned his personality back to what it originally was. Strong, stern, and serious.
He then spoke feigning sadness but still held onto a sense of power, as to not show weakness in front of his wife and daughter.
Gareth nodded solemnly, his tone grave. "Mila had fully digested her potion, and tried to ascend last night, but...she fell under the corruption of an evil spirit. She then - she's now..." He trailed off acting as if he were trying to fight back tears.
It was very convincing though.
'He definitely could've made it to Hollywood with acting like that.' Capella stood in the background thinking that she might need to ask her father for some tips.
Lara frowned, tilting her head. "She wasn't our Mila anymore." A waterfall of tears then began to pour from her eyes as she dropped to her knees. Gareth and members of the law patrol team went over to help her to her feet.
'Her too!? Either they met at some version of an acting school in this city or I really gave their personalities a huge upgrade!'
Collin glanced at the malformed creature—Mila—whose eyes flickered with an intense insanity.
He raised his right hand. A spear of light formed above his palm.
"By the authority vested in me through the Six-member council, I deliver unto you judgment as a monster."
In one smooth motion, the spear launched. Mila's head separated from her shoulders before her mutated mouth could form a protest.
Her body fell, twitched once, and stilled.
Capella giggled inside of her head. Then covered her face behind her hands, squealing out loud at the horrific sight.
'Bye-bye, Mila. Don't worry, we'll remember you forever and ever.' A small piece inside of her truly felt bad about the death of the one who had been there all of her life. And to be honest, she wished that none of this wanted to happen like this - but a part of her also relished in the feeling of seeing a loved one die.
It was an insane cycle that was to continue as long as she had part of 'her' inside of her.
Collin turned to the trio. He furrowed his brow.
But their auras held no flaws and no abnormalities.
Collin, deciding to let them go without any further investigations in honor of Capella's special status re-gathered his troops and chose not to pry into the matter any longer.
Besides they have bigger things to deal with now since somebody else had came back from an exploration, crazily chanting the name 'Amon'.
As the silhouettes of the retreating figures were swallowed by the black horizon, their outlines blurred beneath the dark and stormy skies, Capella remained motionless. Her expression, once childlike and mischievous, turned grave, like a mask cracked down the middle.
"A minimum of five… Five among them could have severed my head from my neck before I even registered the thought of danger," she murmured to the night, her voice calm, almost reverent. "If I intend to see my ambitions through to their end, then I must become... untouchable. The kind of existence that no one dares defy—not even the Gods that linger beyond the Veil of this world."
Behind her, Gareth and Lara exchanged a glance, a silent communion of unease.
With a quiet sigh, Lara subtly moved behind Gareth, her fingers grazing his back as if to urge him forward. Gareth cleared his throat.
"Dearest Capella," he began, voice strained but laced with forced warmth, "what... are your plans, exactly?"
Capella turned her head slightly. Her lips curled into a smile, but it was not the tender smile of a daughter. No, it was something else—glittering, fevered. Her eyes shimmered faintly, reflecting the flicker of unseen flames.
"What I want," she said sweetly, "is to live out every desire I possess. To take and devour, to sculpt the world until it kneels beneath my heels. I want to become the kind of person who can do whatever she pleases… to anyone."
She turned to face them fully, her tone descending into a gleeful whisper.
"And one day… I want to even dominate her."
The moment the name—or lack thereof—hung in the air, a silence heavier than lead descended upon the trio. Yet nothing responded. No creeping dread. No divine backlash. No whispers from the abyssal deep.
Capella's grin widened, almost as if a fever had broken.
'So it's true,' she thought with mounting certainty, 'the Mother Tree of Desire… no longer holds dominion over me, or to say... 'she' never did. If anything, a piece of 'her'... now resides within me. The Authority of Lust that was 'her' domain in this world—has become the cornerstone of my soul. And it is no longer hers alone.'
There was no fear in that realization. Only exhilaration.
'It has warped and twisted my mind. But it only amplified what lay dormant within, awakening the true me. But it does not control me. No 'deity' does. That maternal whisper is nothing more than an echo in my mind. A ghost of God, waiting to be exorcised.'
With an almost lazy air, Capella turned and began to stroll away, the damp stones of the path echoing her steps. Her parents remained frozen, watching her recede into the moonlight like a dream turned feverish.
And then, almost as an afterthought, her voice floated back to them—soft, musing, and utterly mad:
"But why… would I want to remove her?"
The taste of freedom on Capella's tongue was a contradiction—a bitter syrup laced with honey, thick as sacrament wine and sharp as broken glass.
And she savored it slowly, letting it bloom into madness behind her teeth.