My vision shifts into a deeper shade of red this time, as if the everything but me is dissolving into blood instead of the other way around.
When I push myself to move upwards, my skill responds far more easily than it did before, as if my magic is another limb. Everyone in the room with me shouts, each of them screaming something different, but it sounds distant, as if I’m hearing them from the bottom of a deep, deep pool.
Both of the armed guards fire their rifles, and that sound is muffled too. As I move, I feel the impact of one bullet, two, three. Unlike the biting pain that accompanied the amputation of my limb, the bullets don’t even hurt. That’s probably a benefit of Bloodstep—I’m reasonably sure that my entire body is nothing but blood right now, and the bullets pass straight through me.
They draw blood, because of course they do, but it doesn’t slow me at all. I continue upwards, hoping against hope that this will work.
I hit the bars—and I keep moving.
It’s a strange sensation, passing through a space barely a few inches wide. I feel the bars slam through me, as immaterial and oddly uncomfortable as the bullets were, and then the cold discomfort is gone and I’m in open air.
Bloodstep has gotten far more powerful. I didn’t realize it because the room wasn’t large enough to truly exercise it, but I make it nearly ten feet away from the window before the red shadow over the world fades away.
That’s when I realize I’m a solid eighty feet in the air.
I have just enough time to take in the sight of the wall and the land around me—the trees here are remarkably intact, and there’s more than one of those tiny windows embedded into the wall—and then I fall.
I don’t panic. I refuse to.
The wind whistles past my ears, buffeting my skin everywhere it’s exposed. With the stolen uniform damaged as it is, that’s a lot of places chilled to the bone.
Underneath me, the ground grows larger and larger, and I relax my body, knowing tensing will only make things worse.
I try to land feet-first but don’t entirely succeed. Instead, I hit the ground at an angle, a deep shock surging through my legs, and then that same shock slams me in the spine.
My vision goes bright white, sparks of pain smashing through my resistance and searing deep into me. I think I can hear my own spine shatter, but the sickening crunch is quickly drowned out by the deafening pounding in my head, which I thankfully manage to protect myself from damaging too heavily.
Pain is transient, I try to remind myself, but it’s harder to convince myself of that when at least half the bones in my body are broken.
Deep breath, Evelyn. You—haven’t suffered through worse, but that’s fine. I need to get over it.
Inhaling hurts, but the pain is a consistent burn now rather than the explosive scream that I suffered when I landed. This, I can deal with.
Okay, the reduction in pain probably also has something to do with the fact that a solid half of my body is rapidly growing numb.
I can’t feel my legs. Thanks to the inexplicable knowledge bank I possess, I think that means I’ve likely taken severe injuries to my spinal cord.
Inhale. My lungs haven’t been punctured despite broken bone-chips slicing through my innards. A benefit of my unique physiology, no doubt.
Exhale. It comes out as a rattle, and my chest still hurts, but I can push it aside.
The parts of me that still have sensation—my chest, my face, parts of my arms—grow wet with warm fluid, and I realize that I’m bleeding. Bleeding quite a bit, actually.
Right. I amputated my forearm. That was a thing that happened.
My mind has recovered enough for me to focus on my magic once more. I don’t have Lessened Bleed, but Shape Blood is a very versatile skill. I can use it to make some kind of a fake blood clot, preventing my cut-off hand from bleeding me dry.
Shape Blood advanced to level 5!
For thirty minutes every hour on a rolling basis, you gain control over 5 gallons of blood that is not currently in another’s body.
Handy. I use my increased control over the skill to continue forcibly holding my lifeblood within me.
I should probably be a little more worried—having a broken spine and bleeding out while almost directly in front of a wall that contains enemies is a bad situation for anyone—but I feel strangely confident in myself.
Objective: Remain free
Satisfy this quest by not being captured by any means when the timer expires.
Time remaining: 12:56:11
The objective helps gives me purpose, and I find myself more impatient than fearful. I can practically feel Demonic Heritage slowly knitting my body back together. With every passing second, I can breathe easier and my wounds bleed a little less. There’s no improvement in my hand, though—looks like limb loss is going to last until I either use Shape Self or I level up again.
There hasn’t been a visible reaction from the people in the imposing wall yet, but then I can’t actually see them. The steel rises imposingly into the air above me, a hundred feet of smooth, menacing wall with occasional portholes and doors that must be exits.
I landed just short of a copse of pine trees. There’s maybe fifty feet between the wall and the start of dense vegetation. A single road cuts through the center of the wooded area, leading away from the wall, but I can’t go there.
First things first. I need to get myself further away from the wall. If I just stay lying here, I’m good as dead whenever the site personnel come out looking for me.
And they will be looking for me, if my intuition is right. The objective is still burning in the corner of my vision, and I did just escape them in front of their very eyes.
Over the course of the next few minutes, my spine has mended itself enough that I can move. My legs don’t work well enough to carry me, so I crawl. Every movement has me on pins and needles, sending shooting burns up and down my limbs and belly, but I continue onwards, using Shape Blood to eliminate the rather blatant trail I leave behind.
I drag myself inch after inch, slowly pushing myself through the foot-high grass, and I continue removing the blood I’m losing, hiding my trail. I don’t know how much that helps when I flatten the grass with every movement, but I’m not going to make it any easier for the people pursuing me.
My legs still aren’t working by the time I hit the treeline, but sensation is slowly returning to them when I finally manage to force myself to roll into the first bush, wood branches trying their best to carve new grooves through my exposed skin. I reposition myself best I can so I get a glimpse of the doors closest to me.
Only forty-five seconds pass before the first monster attacks me.
In the bushes behind me, something hisses. My legs don’t work well enough for me to stand, so I can’t actually get line of sight on it to Appraise it, but I can roll myself over onto my back. Dry branches crack under my weight, snapping into splinters that fail to penetrate my skin.
The hissing grows louder, and I’m barely able to raise my head to see the arm-sized snake slithering towards me.
It’s close. Too close. I don’t know how it got within three feet of me without me hearing it, but it’s here.
It slithers onto my unresponsive legs, its tongue hissing.
Alright. You’ve gone far enough, snake.
My one functional arm is recovering from the fall already, but I’m in an awkward position with my backpack under me. I can’t free my knives from it right now, and my strength isn’t fully up to par right now.
That’s fine. I still have a load of blood to work with, and my body is very politely offering me some more.
I use Shape Blood, using my enhanced skill to form three thin spikes, and I send them flying into the snake, deftly avoiding my leg.
I’m already preparing myself to attack again when the spikes hit it head-on, the force of the blood lifting the snake into the air and pushing it off me. More blood gushes forth from the three points of penetration, and that joins my Shape Blood too.
The snake falls to the ground, dead.
I blink. Huh. That was easier than expected. I thought it would actually pose a threat to me, given my current state, but… nope. There’s a dead snake to my left that says otherwise.
Maybe fighting against the EVs as the first action in my life isn’t a great reference point for weak monsters.
Well. No point in wasting a free corpse.
Devour granted +5 XP!
After consuming the snake, I still have several gallons of blood hovering in the air.
Actually, I do have an idea for this. I can just barely see the road through the foliage I’ve half-fallen into, and I direct the blood towards it.
I’ve left subtle traces in the grass by crawling over it, yes, but if I were an investigator, I’d be far more likely to follow a blood trail rather than the grass.
I drizzle crimson fluid over the road with Shape Blood, trying to mimic the trail I had earlier. As it continues along, I lessen the amount that I drip onto the road to give the idea that I was limping along the road and slowly healing until the blood turns to nothing. I spread it over the course of about two hundred feet, adding a contribution from the snake at one point too.
Once it’s done, I go back to focusing on Shape Blood to prevent my own wounds from leaking out.
That’s just about all I have to do. I relax my body, recuperating where I lay.
Not a moment too soon, either. Less than a minute later, I hear two doors slide open. It’s the same sound I heard when I managed to make my way to “safety” last night.
They’re coming for me.
I still my breathing, and I still my body as much as I can. It hurts less now, the minutes of activity with Shape Blood allowing Demonic Heritage to work its magic.
Stealth advanced to level 7!
You are now 20% harder to see in the dark when this skill is active.
“Fan out!” I hear a man shout. I don’t recognize his voice. “The aberration has a movement ability! It may have made its way down the road!”
Aberration. That’s what Jarreth called the six-limbed humanoids that Appraise failed on.
They’re talking about me.
On some level, that’s gratifying. They’re recognizing me as a true threat.
On another, they’re looking for me. I’m healing quickly thanks to my trait, but I’m still damaged. I don’t think I can take on Jarreth alone, let alone however many of them there are.
“Blood trail!” a different voice shouts. I recognize this one as Jarreth’s. That’s at least two.
“Follow it!” That’s another distinct voice, this one a woman. Not Kelly, but that makes three.
In the coming minutes, I hear more people, and I try to keep track of their number. There’s a few voices that sound really similar, though, and they could be siblings or just the same person, so I’m not completely sure how many of them there are. I count nine, maybe ten voices.
Their running footsteps are lighter than the nobles’, but I suppose I should’ve expected that. Still, there’s enough of them hurrying around that they can’t mask the sound of boots on packed dirt.
They’re not all going onto the road, though. I hear footsteps coming closer to me, dry leaves and twigs cracking as a guard or two steps their way through into the woods.
Staying still remains paramount. My body, slowly healing as it is, is almost completely obscured by virtue of having fallen most of the way into a bush. There’s a lot of forest, and my blood trail does obscure my path.
Even then, I can’t give myself away. Every sound draws attention—I hear the grass rustle a bit away from me, probably because of another snake or a spider or something, and two sets of footsteps abruptly stop. A moment later, I hear the whoosh of some magic effect forming before one of them determines that the rustling didn’t come from me.
And so I lie there, eyes wide open and ears straining to catch the voices and footsteps around me. By my count, I lie there for nearly eight minutes before the last of the guards go away. Just to be safe, I stay unmoving for another five before I even attempt to rise from my prone position.
When I do, I’m pleasantly surprised to feel little pain. I’m still weak, I can tell that much when I try to stand up and my left leg gives way under my own weight, but I think most of my bones have pieced themselves back together. Either the injury wasn’t as bad as I thought it was or Demonic Heritage is far more effective than I’ve given it credit before.
I’ll err on the side of caution. I can’t go throwing myself out of fifty-foot walls all the time, hoping my traits will keep me alive.
Nobody is in the immediate area, at least, but I stay close to the ground.
From what they were saying earlier, the guards are probably still in the area. I don’t want to still be here when they come back.
I start walking, avoiding the main road where I know there’s going to be guards, and I think.
What am I going to do if I bump into a guard? They know who I am and probably have a description of my body—Jarreth and Kelly must’ve provided that much.
I’ll kill them if I have to, but I’m a little reticient to do so on sight. If I could get away with it, I would, but they’re powerful. If I kill one of them, I’m sure the rest will converge on my position.
Also, I don’t actually know if I can defeat a single one in a one-on-one fight.
That means that my best strategy is stealth, and that’s not just through Stealth.
I draw on Temporary Shape Self. It’s far too magic-intensive to replace my lost hand, but I can do something about my most recognizable features. Instead of replacing my limbs, I modify the burning red of my eyes, bringing it to a chilly blue not dissimilar to what I saw of Kelly’s. I use it to change my hair, too, shifting the color from black to a dirty blonde. Jarreth’s hair color, shifted by a shade or two.
Temporary Shape Self advanced to level 2!
Changes now last for 2 hours max. Can be used up to 2 times per day.
On top of that, I use the proper Shape Self to reproportion my chest and torso, putting my proportions more in line with Ashley Kane, the noblewoman leader I saw earlier. I don’t have a perfect human perspective, but I think this change will make me look lithe rather than malnourished, which is enough of a departure that I should be able to pass as someone else.
Shape Self advanced to level 2!
Can now be used up to 2 times per day.
Briefly, I consider permanently changing my eye color and hair as well, but something inside me rebels against that. It’s irrational, I know, but I permit myself this moment of vanity.
The reflection of bright crimson is still burned into my mind, and the image of that woman—that crazed, murderous woman—that feels right.
I try to use Shape Self to regrow my arm. That… doesn’t work. It refuses to do that. I think I can grow an extra limb if necessary, but regrowing one? I guess not.
Maybe I need another skill for that. For the time being, I’ll hide it as well as I can.
Finally, I alter the color of my clothes. The uniform is very recognizable, but it’s less easy to clock on sight after I cut a strip away, exposing a chunk of my midriff, and soak the uniform through with blood from my handless wrist.
Yes, usually that wouldn’t work. Thankfully, Shape Blood helps normalize things, make it look like I have a freshly-dyed shirt rather than one hanging off a murder victim.
And I walk.
There’s a balance I’m trying to strike here, one between being stealthy and looking stealthy. If I look like I’m trying to hide and someone sees me, I definitely won’t be able to talk my way out of it. If I manage to make myself look like a stupid lost hiker, on the other hand…
I work on my performance as I go, trying out a ditzy voice and mannerisms while I walk.
“Oh my gosh, sorry,” I try, lilting my voice up, “I got turned around on the trail, and I’m so so lost. Can you help me?”
Not quite right. I practice other iterations. Less lilt, more of it. Different phrasings. Gestures, a hair flip to go with it.
Acting advanced to level 7!
You are now 200% more likely to remain undetected when impersonating another individual.
I get to put my impersonation into practice sooner than I’d like.
Less than ten minutes in, I hear footsteps ahead. At this point, I’m a solid three hundred feet away from the main road—I can’t see it very well, but I’m guessing based off of my picture-perfect recall of the map.
I don’t stop when I hear them, because I hear the person turn and walk towards me.
Ugh. If I stop now, they’ll know there’s some reason for me to not want to see other people. To fit the persona I’ve created, Acting insists on me dashing forward to meet my potential savior.
I stomp through the grass, intentionally making my steps louder and clumsier, and I trip over a tree root, collapsing in a heap.
The guard finds me a few seconds later, their—his, apparently—steps slowing. I hear him sigh.
“No, there’s nothing here,” he says to an air. “Just a lost fuckin’ civvie.”
“Owww…” I whine, rubbing my head. There’s no pain, of course. “Mister, can you help me?”
I really fucking hate this persona. I can’t wait to ditch it.
“You’re not supposed to be here, girl,” the guard sighs. From the way he says it, I’m reasonably sure that’s a bit of an understatement. There is, however, a reason I picked this persona specifically. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”
He kneels down, offering me a hand. I take it, allowing myself to be dragged to my feet, and I dust myself off.
“Thank you,” I say, as bubbly as I can. “I’m a little—okay, maybe more than a little—lost. Can you help meeeee?”
“Of course,” he says, flashing me a grin. He scans me up and down, and I can’t help but shiver a tiny bit under his gaze. The guard puts his arm around my shoulders, holding me close. “Here. I’ll keep you safe.”
As I decide on an appropriately scatterbrained way to accept his offer, he finishes taking me in with his eyes.
And his eyes settle on my arm.
The arm with no hand.
With my Mind (Speed) stat, I can see him start to make the connections. An unknown girl lost in the woods. A female demon, escaped from the facility. A demon missing a hand.
A girl with the same.
His eyes widen, but I’m already acting.
Using my functional hand, I stab him in the thigh.
My vision shifts into a deeper shade of red this time, as if the everything but me is dissolving into blood instead of the other way around.
When I push myself to move upwards, my skill responds far more easily than it did before, as if my magic is another limb. Everyone in the room with me shouts, each of them screaming something different, but it sounds distant, as if I’m hearing them from the bottom of a deep, deep pool.
Both of the armed guards fire their rifles, and that sound is muffled too. As I move, I feel the impact of one bullet, two, three. Unlike the biting pain that accompanied the amputation of my limb, the bullets don’t even hurt. That’s probably a benefit of Bloodstep—I’m reasonably sure that my entire body is nothing but blood right now, and the bullets pass straight through me.
They draw blood, because of course they do, but it doesn’t slow me at all. I continue upwards, hoping against hope that this will work.
I hit the bars—and I keep moving.
It’s a strange sensation, passing through a space barely a few inches wide. I feel the bars slam through me, as immaterial and oddly uncomfortable as the bullets were, and then the cold discomfort is gone and I’m in open air.
Bloodstep has gotten far more powerful. I didn’t realize it because the room wasn’t large enough to truly exercise it, but I make it nearly ten feet away from the window before the red shadow over the world fades away.
That’s when I realize I’m a solid eighty feet in the air.
I have just enough time to take in the sight of the wall and the land around me—the trees here are remarkably intact, and there’s more than one of those tiny windows embedded into the wall—and then I fall.
I don’t panic. I refuse to.
The wind whistles past my ears, buffeting my skin everywhere it’s exposed. With the stolen uniform damaged as it is, that’s a lot of places chilled to the bone.
Underneath me, the ground grows larger and larger, and I relax my body, knowing tensing will only make things worse.
I try to land feet-first but don’t entirely succeed. Instead, I hit the ground at an angle, a deep shock surging through my legs, and then that same shock slams me in the spine.
My vision goes bright white, sparks of pain smashing through my resistance and searing deep into me. I think I can hear my own spine shatter, but the sickening crunch is quickly drowned out by the deafening pounding in my head, which I thankfully manage to protect myself from damaging too heavily.
Pain is transient, I try to remind myself, but it’s harder to convince myself of that when at least half the bones in my body are broken.
Deep breath, Evelyn. You—haven’t suffered through worse, but that’s fine. I need to get over it.
Inhaling hurts, but the pain is a consistent burn now rather than the explosive scream that I suffered when I landed. This, I can deal with.
Okay, the reduction in pain probably also has something to do with the fact that a solid half of my body is rapidly growing numb.
I can’t feel my legs. Thanks to the inexplicable knowledge bank I possess, I think that means I’ve likely taken severe injuries to my spinal cord.
Inhale. My lungs haven’t been punctured despite broken bone-chips slicing through my innards. A benefit of my unique physiology, no doubt.
Exhale. It comes out as a rattle, and my chest still hurts, but I can push it aside.
The parts of me that still have sensation—my chest, my face, parts of my arms—grow wet with warm fluid, and I realize that I’m bleeding. Bleeding quite a bit, actually.
Right. I amputated my forearm. That was a thing that happened.
My mind has recovered enough for me to focus on my magic once more. I don’t have Lessened Bleed, but Shape Blood is a very versatile skill. I can use it to make some kind of a fake blood clot, preventing my cut-off hand from bleeding me dry.
Shape Blood advanced to level 5!
For thirty minutes every hour on a rolling basis, you gain control over 5 gallons of blood that is not currently in another’s body.
Handy. I use my increased control over the skill to continue forcibly holding my lifeblood within me.
I should probably be a little more worried—having a broken spine and bleeding out while almost directly in front of a wall that contains enemies is a bad situation for anyone—but I feel strangely confident in myself.
Objective: Remain free
Satisfy this quest by not being captured by any means when the timer expires.
Time remaining: 12:56:11
The objective helps gives me purpose, and I find myself more impatient than fearful. I can practically feel Demonic Heritage slowly knitting my body back together. With every passing second, I can breathe easier and my wounds bleed a little less. There’s no improvement in my hand, though—looks like limb loss is going to last until I either use Shape Self or I level up again.
There hasn’t been a visible reaction from the people in the imposing wall yet, but then I can’t actually see them. The steel rises imposingly into the air above me, a hundred feet of smooth, menacing wall with occasional portholes and doors that must be exits.
I landed just short of a copse of pine trees. There’s maybe fifty feet between the wall and the start of dense vegetation. A single road cuts through the center of the wooded area, leading away from the wall, but I can’t go there.
First things first. I need to get myself further away from the wall. If I just stay lying here, I’m good as dead whenever the site personnel come out looking for me.
And they will be looking for me, if my intuition is right. The objective is still burning in the corner of my vision, and I did just escape them in front of their very eyes.
Over the course of the next few minutes, my spine has mended itself enough that I can move. My legs don’t work well enough to carry me, so I crawl. Every movement has me on pins and needles, sending shooting burns up and down my limbs and belly, but I continue onwards, using Shape Blood to eliminate the rather blatant trail I leave behind.
I drag myself inch after inch, slowly pushing myself through the foot-high grass, and I continue removing the blood I’m losing, hiding my trail. I don’t know how much that helps when I flatten the grass with every movement, but I’m not going to make it any easier for the people pursuing me.
My legs still aren’t working by the time I hit the treeline, but sensation is slowly returning to them when I finally manage to force myself to roll into the first bush, wood branches trying their best to carve new grooves through my exposed skin. I reposition myself best I can so I get a glimpse of the doors closest to me.
Only forty-five seconds pass before the first monster attacks me.
In the bushes behind me, something hisses. My legs don’t work well enough for me to stand, so I can’t actually get line of sight on it to Appraise it, but I can roll myself over onto my back. Dry branches crack under my weight, snapping into splinters that fail to penetrate my skin.
The hissing grows louder, and I’m barely able to raise my head to see the arm-sized snake slithering towards me.
It’s close. Too close. I don’t know how it got within three feet of me without me hearing it, but it’s here.
It slithers onto my unresponsive legs, its tongue hissing.
Alright. You’ve gone far enough, snake.
My one functional arm is recovering from the fall already, but I’m in an awkward position with my backpack under me. I can’t free my knives from it right now, and my strength isn’t fully up to par right now.
That’s fine. I still have a load of blood to work with, and my body is very politely offering me some more.
I use Shape Blood, using my enhanced skill to form three thin spikes, and I send them flying into the snake, deftly avoiding my leg.
I’m already preparing myself to attack again when the spikes hit it head-on, the force of the blood lifting the snake into the air and pushing it off me. More blood gushes forth from the three points of penetration, and that joins my Shape Blood too.
The snake falls to the ground, dead.
I blink. Huh. That was easier than expected. I thought it would actually pose a threat to me, given my current state, but… nope. There’s a dead snake to my left that says otherwise.
Maybe fighting against the EVs as the first action in my life isn’t a great reference point for weak monsters.
Well. No point in wasting a free corpse.
Devour granted +5 XP!
After consuming the snake, I still have several gallons of blood hovering in the air.
Actually, I do have an idea for this. I can just barely see the road through the foliage I’ve half-fallen into, and I direct the blood towards it.
I’ve left subtle traces in the grass by crawling over it, yes, but if I were an investigator, I’d be far more likely to follow a blood trail rather than the grass.
I drizzle crimson fluid over the road with Shape Blood, trying to mimic the trail I had earlier. As it continues along, I lessen the amount that I drip onto the road to give the idea that I was limping along the road and slowly healing until the blood turns to nothing. I spread it over the course of about two hundred feet, adding a contribution from the snake at one point too.
Once it’s done, I go back to focusing on Shape Blood to prevent my own wounds from leaking out.
That’s just about all I have to do. I relax my body, recuperating where I lay.
Not a moment too soon, either. Less than a minute later, I hear two doors slide open. It’s the same sound I heard when I managed to make my way to “safety” last night.
They’re coming for me.
I still my breathing, and I still my body as much as I can. It hurts less now, the minutes of activity with Shape Blood allowing Demonic Heritage to work its magic.
Stealth advanced to level 7!
You are now 20% harder to see in the dark when this skill is active.
“Fan out!” I hear a man shout. I don’t recognize his voice. “The aberration has a movement ability! It may have made its way down the road!”
Aberration. That’s what Jarreth called the six-limbed humanoids that Appraise failed on.
They’re talking about me.
On some level, that’s gratifying. They’re recognizing me as a true threat.
On another, they’re looking for me. I’m healing quickly thanks to my trait, but I’m still damaged. I don’t think I can take on Jarreth alone, let alone however many of them there are.
“Blood trail!” a different voice shouts. I recognize this one as Jarreth’s. That’s at least two.
“Follow it!” That’s another distinct voice, this one a woman. Not Kelly, but that makes three.
In the coming minutes, I hear more people, and I try to keep track of their number. There’s a few voices that sound really similar, though, and they could be siblings or just the same person, so I’m not completely sure how many of them there are. I count nine, maybe ten voices.
Their running footsteps are lighter than the nobles’, but I suppose I should’ve expected that. Still, there’s enough of them hurrying around that they can’t mask the sound of boots on packed dirt.
They’re not all going onto the road, though. I hear footsteps coming closer to me, dry leaves and twigs cracking as a guard or two steps their way through into the woods.
Staying still remains paramount. My body, slowly healing as it is, is almost completely obscured by virtue of having fallen most of the way into a bush. There’s a lot of forest, and my blood trail does obscure my path.
Even then, I can’t give myself away. Every sound draws attention—I hear the grass rustle a bit away from me, probably because of another snake or a spider or something, and two sets of footsteps abruptly stop. A moment later, I hear the whoosh of some magic effect forming before one of them determines that the rustling didn’t come from me.
And so I lie there, eyes wide open and ears straining to catch the voices and footsteps around me. By my count, I lie there for nearly eight minutes before the last of the guards go away. Just to be safe, I stay unmoving for another five before I even attempt to rise from my prone position.
When I do, I’m pleasantly surprised to feel little pain. I’m still weak, I can tell that much when I try to stand up and my left leg gives way under my own weight, but I think most of my bones have pieced themselves back together. Either the injury wasn’t as bad as I thought it was or Demonic Heritage is far more effective than I’ve given it credit before.
I’ll err on the side of caution. I can’t go throwing myself out of fifty-foot walls all the time, hoping my traits will keep me alive.
Nobody is in the immediate area, at least, but I stay close to the ground.
From what they were saying earlier, the guards are probably still in the area. I don’t want to still be here when they come back.
I start walking, avoiding the main road where I know there’s going to be guards, and I think.
What am I going to do if I bump into a guard? They know who I am and probably have a description of my body—Jarreth and Kelly must’ve provided that much.
I’ll kill them if I have to, but I’m a little reticient to do so on sight. If I could get away with it, I would, but they’re powerful. If I kill one of them, I’m sure the rest will converge on my position.
Also, I don’t actually know if I can defeat a single one in a one-on-one fight.
That means that my best strategy is stealth, and that’s not just through Stealth.
I draw on Temporary Shape Self. It’s far too magic-intensive to replace my lost hand, but I can do something about my most recognizable features. Instead of replacing my limbs, I modify the burning red of my eyes, bringing it to a chilly blue not dissimilar to what I saw of Kelly’s. I use it to change my hair, too, shifting the color from black to a dirty blonde. Jarreth’s hair color, shifted by a shade or two.
Temporary Shape Self advanced to level 2!
Changes now last for 2 hours max. Can be used up to 2 times per day.
On top of that, I use the proper Shape Self to reproportion my chest and torso, putting my proportions more in line with Ashley Kane, the noblewoman leader I saw earlier. I don’t have a perfect human perspective, but I think this change will make me look lithe rather than malnourished, which is enough of a departure that I should be able to pass as someone else.
Shape Self advanced to level 2!
Can now be used up to 2 times per day.
Briefly, I consider permanently changing my eye color and hair as well, but something inside me rebels against that. It’s irrational, I know, but I permit myself this moment of vanity.
The reflection of bright crimson is still burned into my mind, and the image of that woman—that crazed, murderous woman—that feels right.
I try to use Shape Self to regrow my arm. That… doesn’t work. It refuses to do that. I think I can grow an extra limb if necessary, but regrowing one? I guess not.
Maybe I need another skill for that. For the time being, I’ll hide it as well as I can.
Finally, I alter the color of my clothes. The uniform is very recognizable, but it’s less easy to clock on sight after I cut a strip away, exposing a chunk of my midriff, and soak the uniform through with blood from my handless wrist.
Yes, usually that wouldn’t work. Thankfully, Shape Blood helps normalize things, make it look like I have a freshly-dyed shirt rather than one hanging off a murder victim.
And I walk.
There’s a balance I’m trying to strike here, one between being stealthy and looking stealthy. If I look like I’m trying to hide and someone sees me, I definitely won’t be able to talk my way out of it. If I manage to make myself look like a stupid lost hiker, on the other hand…
I work on my performance as I go, trying out a ditzy voice and mannerisms while I walk.
“Oh my gosh, sorry,” I try, lilting my voice up, “I got turned around on the trail, and I’m so so lost. Can you help me?”
Not quite right. I practice other iterations. Less lilt, more of it. Different phrasings. Gestures, a hair flip to go with it.
Acting advanced to level 7!
You are now 200% more likely to remain undetected when impersonating another individual.
I get to put my impersonation into practice sooner than I’d like.
Less than ten minutes in, I hear footsteps ahead. At this point, I’m a solid three hundred feet away from the main road—I can’t see it very well, but I’m guessing based off of my picture-perfect recall of the map.
I don’t stop when I hear them, because I hear the person turn and walk towards me.
Ugh. If I stop now, they’ll know there’s some reason for me to not want to see other people. To fit the persona I’ve created, Acting insists on me dashing forward to meet my potential savior.
I stomp through the grass, intentionally making my steps louder and clumsier, and I trip over a tree root, collapsing in a heap.
The guard finds me a few seconds later, their—his, apparently—steps slowing. I hear him sigh.
“No, there’s nothing here,” he says to an air. “Just a lost fuckin’ civvie.”
“Owww…” I whine, rubbing my head. There’s no pain, of course. “Mister, can you help me?”
I really fucking hate this persona. I can’t wait to ditch it.
“You’re not supposed to be here, girl,” the guard sighs. From the way he says it, I’m reasonably sure that’s a bit of an understatement. There is, however, a reason I picked this persona specifically. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”
He kneels down, offering me a hand. I take it, allowing myself to be dragged to my feet, and I dust myself off.
“Thank you,” I say, as bubbly as I can. “I’m a little—okay, maybe more than a little—lost. Can you help meeeee?”
“Of course,” he says, flashing me a grin. He scans me up and down, and I can’t help but shiver a tiny bit under his gaze. The guard puts his arm around my shoulders, holding me close. “Here. I’ll keep you safe.”
As I decide on an appropriately scatterbrained way to accept his offer, he finishes taking me in with his eyes.
And his eyes settle on my arm.
The arm with no hand.
With my Mind (Speed) stat, I can see him start to make the connections. An unknown girl lost in the woods. A female demon, escaped from the facility. A demon missing a hand.
A girl with the same.
His eyes widen, but I’m already acting.
Using my functional hand, I stab him in the thigh.
