Diary of a Teenaged Mimic

Dear Diary,

I guess...

I guess if I have one redeeming quality, it's that I can't stand by while kids are in danger. Fuck, I don't even know if I do the right thing when kids are in danger, but I sure as fuck do what I can to remove whatever's endangering them.

I just wish I didn't put myself on that list any more.

Siobhan's scream echoing in my ears, I didn't think. I didn't consider, or castigate, or weigh options. I leapt to her side. To the Homestead, where the sounds of a pitched battle greeted me.

I took a moment to perceive. I wasn't sure why everything was in wireframe, but all around me my family fought one another. All of them but the ones who lay, silent and still, on the bloody snow. I only caught glimpses, my perception refusing to remain on any particular horror.

Ria and Alex dueled, my little Sidhe girl deftly dodging my would-be Hero's berserk assault, at least in part due to the blood streaming from Alex's face, her arms, her legs.

Marie and Tallulah dueled, and I realized that during Marie's duel with Tallulah's son in the Overlord's Court, she'd been holding back. Probably focused on keeping Menace safe. Moment by moment she killed Tallulah after Tallulah, my Sidhe Archmage reforming after each and every lethal strike, blinking, then going on the offensive, only to die once more at Marie's claws.

So many bodies lying still, ragged gashes through them.

"TABITHA!" Siobhan lay in bloody mud, curled around her belly, hands clamped over her ears, writhing.

Her scream interrupted a song in the air, a song I hadn't heard, a song as familiar to me as my own heartbeat. Behind me, above me, next to the West Tower, a winged figure hovered, weeping, screaming, singing a song of bloodlust and madness. Covering my Darling with a shield of tentacles just before the Menace leapt on her, claws extended, I rose into the air, a guttural growl the only thing coming from me.

"Yes! Yes! Faster! Faster! Kill! Kill!"

I had no mouth, but I had to scream.

I had no mouth, but I had a Maw. I drew it here, to the farms and fields beyond the West Tower.

"SILENCE." The word shook the bones of the earth, shattered the sky above us.

The winged woman laughed. "Yes! Bring pain, bring bloodshed, bring death! Lyssa demands this as her denied due!"

"IF YOU WILL NOT BE SILENT, YOU WILL BE SILENCED." I hovered in front of her. She reached out, running bloody hands across my skin, tearing at me with her nails as she screamed and cried and sang.

I'd had enough. I wrapped myself around her, pulling her back over my Maw. The moment I covered her mouth the sounds of combat behind me died down. I wrapped more tentacles around every inch of her, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet.

Then I squeezed. I squeezed and twisted, like wringing out a damp rag, careful not to crush her head. Divine blood burst from her as she ruptured, running down my tentacles, dripping into my Maw. The taste hit like nothing I'd known, like the essence of Dionysus' Madness, like my own Bloodlust distilled into an elixir of rage.

This woman, this Goddess, this bitch had hurt my family. Used my family to do it. I squeezed until nothing came out, then released her, holding her up by wrapping myself around her chest, my tip caressing her cheek. "WHAT? NO SCREAM?"

I think I may be a little predictable. First a foot, then a finger, then a leg below the knee, then an entire wing, bit by bit I ripped parts of her off, then rammed them directly up her exsanguinated ass. I stuffed her like the world's most gruesome holiday turkey, all while her mouth worked noiselessly.

Finally, when nothing remained of her but a head and a sack of limbs that used to be her torso, I paused. "OH. NO LUNGS. SORRY."

With my finest tentacles I teased her eyes out of their sockets, holding them so they still stared at my tip. Then I ripped her head off and, careful to keep her eyes attached and outside, shoved her head up her own ass. "NO, NO, I'M REALLY NOT."

Slowly, carefully, inexorably I shoved her eyes into her, keeping the nerves intact and attached to what passed for her brain, until they stared out from between her butt cheeks. After a moment's thought, I reached inside her, ripped her ovaries out, and stuffed them into the hole that used to be her throat, leaving the rest dangling until I ripped it free and jammed it in her top again.

"SO. YOU LOOK COMFY." I brought my tentacle with the bling over. "MORRIGAN. WANT COMPANY?"

The Morrigan's eyes rolled, her limbs flailed weakly. I tasted her terror, and stroked her brow gently. "GOOD GIRL."

I poked my tip in front of the winged bitch's anal eyes. "SO. LET'S SET YOU UP FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY, SHALL WE?"

I lifted her desecrated yet still living remains higher and higher, all the way up to the gap in that waving field of tentacle tips. I rubbed one of my big tentacle tips across the gap in her neck, then across the opening of her inverted, mangled sex. I ran my tip down her bloody front, savoring the blood, the pain, the despair.

"Which opening to go through?" Here, five miles away, my voice was just commanding, not an aural assault. "No, I can't do an oral assault when your oral is inside your anal. Guess you'll live with a new connection between what's left of your vag," I slipped that tentacle tip in, then shoved it forward, up, through the collected limbs and out of her ragged neck hole. "And what used to be your esophagus." I paused, admiring my work. I brought The Morrigan up as close as I could to admire it too, to taste her disgust and horror.

"You'll be okay like this, right?"

I tasted hope, ripped my way out of her front, and plunged her straight down into my Maw. I held her there, my surface burning, as her component parts dissolved, tasting her agony as she filled me with never ending rage and bloodlust.

Just before her ears dissolved, I pulled her out just long enough to say, "FAMILIAR, BUT I PREFER PIE SPICE."

Then I crushed her brain and dropped it in. I took one quick plunge through my Maw to burn away any gory remnants, then hovered back to the West Tower, looking down on my family, my people. None of them moved, save Siobhan, who clutched her belly and wept inside the cocoon of my tentacles, Marie and Tallulah, who knelt in front of one another and wept, and Menace, who stared at me, eyes desolate. The rest either lay still in the peace of death or locked into painful arches as all their muscles strained against one another.

I didn't think, I just did.

"MASS CURE." The paralyzed ones slumped to the ground.

"MASS HEAL." The ones who'd been wailing from the moment they stopped seizing went quiet.

"MASS SMITE." The valley went utterly silent and still.

That bitch had been more powerful than I realized, I guess, because power still filled me. But I wasn't done yet. "MASS REVIVE."

Every still body on the ground seized up, and my chuckle rocked the ground as they did the cocaine enema writhe. Before they fully recovered, I pulled my tentacles back from around Siobhan in preparation for returning to my well deserved exile.

The next thing I knew she clutched at me, arms and legs wrapped around me, kissing my skin. "Thank you. Thank you, Goddess. Thank you."

"I NEED TO GO," I tried to whisper, and it came out like distant thunder.

"Then take me with you."

I shook back and forth a little, and if she tensed, I remembered that tension, remembered what being dangled above my Maw like this did to her. "IT ISN'T SAFE FOR YOU." I paused, then played my trump card as I nudged her belly where she pressed it against me. "OR HER."

"I do not care. Where you go, I follow. Whatever you face, I face with you. I will not allow you to face that pain alone again while I draw breath."

I couldn't pull her off, not without risking hurting her. Fingers would be useful. I activated my Blend, my Shapeshifting, my Mimicry of a living, breathing, Human Adjacent person. A moment later I remembered how fuckin' heavy I was like this and set myself down on the top of the West Tower, banishing my Maw to M-Space as I did.

I was gonna say something to her, but her mouth covered mine. Siobhan, I can't be here. I'll hurt you.

Never. Not ever. Not once. Not even when listening to the song of Lyssa, of Rabies herself.

Part of me needed to get away, to pull her off, to keep my family safe. The weak, useless part of me took over and refused to remove her. I'll... Change you.

Suddenly Saffron stood warm and soft behind me. "Of course you will, love. That's what people do. Change those they come in contact with. Intimate companions more than any others."

I'm not sure why, but somehow speaking mind-to-mind with them made my objections seem so much sillier, so much stupider. Probably why Siobhan wouldn't release my mouth from her lip lock, and had taken the opportunity to delve into the no-man's-land of my digestive tract with her tongue. No, Kitten. Without even trying to, I'm warping you. Distorting you. Fuck, distorting the whole world. 'remaking it in the image of my perfect paradise'.

She laughed. My Kitten laughed, the sound one of pure unadulterated joy alloyed with affectionate amusement at me. "Goof. Oh, my beloved Goof. My Tabitha, my heart, my Goddess, my love. You do. You do remake the world in the image of your perfect paradise. And do you know what the biggest difference is?"

She reached up and around, pulled Siobhan's face away from mine, laying Darling's head on my shoulder, pointing my face toward the courtyard, where the women and children and even our few men huddled together in the bloody snow. "No?"

"Children live." Her fingers slipped in front of my mouth, holding it closed. "Children. Live." Then she clung to me, filling my arms as much as Siobhan did, one arm around my neck, her other hand pressed against Siobhan's belly, which took that moment to boot me in the gut. "In your remade world, your perfect paradise, that you force upon reality despite every effort of Gods and Men to stay your hand?"

She sighed and snuggled into me, her words a breath in my ear, and no less certain for all that. "Children. Live."

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