Chaaaaaaaaaaaaa

“Are there any nice beaches or something in your world?”

“Oh, sure, but we’d need air travel unless you want to hike for a few weeks and then get on a boat for another week.”

“...What counts as air travel around here? ‘Cause if it’s alive or about to fall apart, I think I’ll take the hike and the boat.”

“You have those options, or we can take a skyship. Which will cost us a small fortune. Or I could just show them this.”

A metal necklace, red metal cast into the shape of a flame.

“And they’ll let us on for free.”

Toinette grinned.

“Poifect.”

---

“Sky cruiiiiise!~”

Blimps had fallen out of favor in the real world after the Hindenberg disaster. Here, not so much...especially since they’d been souped up with some rocket engines, essentially turning them into massive darts. Despite this, a large chunk of the sky ship was open air, though virtually everyone was keeping inside away from the intense wind and the chance you could fall off the ship and plummet to your likely demise.

Toinette was not keeping inside. She was standing at the prow of the ship, arms splayed wide and a huge grin on her face as the wind battered her slight form and rattled the chains on the leathers she was wearing.

“I’m queen of the woooooorld,” she shouted to nobody.

Then a swarm of black birds tried to steal her jewelry.

“AGH FUCK!”

Back inside, Toinette gave Chastity a glum look.

“Birds tried to steal my jewelry.”

“Oh? The jackers went after you? Good. You mind going back out and giving them another shot?”

The answer as to WHY Chastity would ask something like this became clear when the birds came back, and Chastity roasted them out of mid air, impaling one of the cooked birds on her sword.

“These things are amazingly good flash cooked. It’s damn hard to get them too. Eat up.” Chastity bit into the bird. “Even the burned feathers taste good!” Well that was technically what she said: her mouth was full.

“Nice!” Toinette devoured her own bird. “In-flight meeeaaal~”

---

Visinnrv Beach.

Black sand, lapping waves, and a slice of Chastity’s world. All sorts came here. Not all of them could pull off the beach look, but no one was judging.

Chastity...had decided to wear a one piece bathing suit. It was absolutely bizarre.

“I think first...a nap under an umbrella…” Chastity settled down on a blanket towel and put on some goggles. What she was using instead of sunglasses, it seemed.

Toinette, wearing a two-piece suit, looked down in disappointment at Chas.

“...Seriously? You just lie around? I thought we’d go swimming ‘n’ stuff!” The fae sat on the sand and folded her arms. “Laaaaaame.”

“The water isn’t going anywhere. Just let me vegetate for a twin. Er, that’s twenty minutes. There’s a guy down the beach, he sells these clams he bakes right in the shells...add some lemon juice, divine.”

“Sure. I’m gonna go pick up some girls though.” Toinette got up and headed down the beach for the clam guy

“Just be careful, or you could get roped into a…”

---

“Linkball game.”

And so, after some flirting, some annoyed men, some snappy banter, and a challenge, now Toinette found herself, with Chastity, facing off against six men in various stages of shape, all wearing silly hats, which she too was forced to wear.

It was volleyball, basically. With a few key differences, the main one being everyone had a ball that was attached to an elastic rope that was attached to their wrist. The point of the game? Whoever knocked all the hats off the opposing team won.

“You wanna cheat?”

“Yes.”

“Hey boys! If you win, you get our swimsuits! RIGHT NOW! HERE’S A PEEK!”

A peek? More like an eyeful.

“That’ll misplace the ol’ blood.”

“I wish I could do that.” Toinette looked down ruefully upon herself. “Fae puberty wasn’t kind to me.”

Neither was the game of Linkball to the men. Chastity’s trick worked like gangbusters.

“Okay, now that we’ve worked up a sweat, NOW we can go swimming.” Chastity said, strolling away with the men’s swimwear all slung over her shoulder, while the rather-perturbed men hid themselves with towels and tried to get off the beach.

Toinette whooped and headed for the ocean. “Victoryyyyyy!”

---

“Does this swimsuit make me look fat?”

“No.”

“Good. I’m buying it. Just need to add this and this andthisandthisandthis - “

“If you wear all those clothes at once, you WILL look fat.” Chastity was examining a tube of...something. Lipstick equivalent? Well, this place in the nearest city to Visinnrv, a place called simply “Visi”, was the closest equivalent Chastity’s world got to ‘a mall’. Though it was more open air flea market, but that was splitting some hairs.

“Look, if I’m gonna stay here, I’m gonna need some stuff that’s more practical. No offense, but I can’t rock your style every day.” Toinette produced a fistful of gold coins to pay the perplexed owner of the stall. “I don’t have enough… biggily. In my tiggily. So I need me clothes for me.”

“In that case…”

One showing of her red metal flame necklace later, and Toinette was walking away with the clothes for free, as the shopkeeper almost got down on his knees and kissed Chastity’s feet.

“That one was...a little more intense than the norm. Must have saved a family.”

“That red necklace is, like, a go anywhere passport. What’s the deal with it?”

“...can I tell you later?”

“Sure. You can help me try these on!”

“...is that wordplay for something kinky or do you just want to try on clothes with me?” Chastity seemed suddenly rather serious.

“...Yes.”

“Okay.”

--

That night. A big bonfire at the beach, with all sorts of people drinking. Chastity, however, was watching the fire. Toinette was sitting next to her, with a very large tropical drink in her hand. She also watched the fire. But eventually, the silence was too much.

“...Alright, what’s up? You’ve been Miss Grumpy ever since the shopping trip.” Toinette took a swig. “What did I do?”

“Oh, it’s not your fault. I just try not to think about why I have this. My Frozen Flame.” Chastity said, taking out the red necklace. “It shows I’m a member of the 44. The people who helped save this world. And before you say well that’s great...yeah it is. But there were almost three hundred of us. The rest didn’t make it. I had some friends in there. They’re gone so I can still be here.”

Toinette didn’t say anything at first.

“Do you remember them?” She was quiet now.

“Every day when I wake up and just before I go to sleep, really.”

“Good.” Toinette took a sip. “I think they’d be proud of ya. You’re still here, doing a good job. ‘S far as I can tell, you’re the best these people could ask for.”

She stared at the fire a bit.

“I can’t tell ya how to mourn. Fae don’t have… memories, really. I don’t remember most of anything before I left Faerieland. I have all of two friends, I guess. So, you’re lucky.”

“Memories have their upsides. And downsides. But that’s a story I don’t wanna tell unless I’m smash-faced drunk. And that’s not an offer. Some things...you really shouldn’t share them unless it’s the right time. And there may be no right time. Now, THAT BEING SAID…”

...Where the hell had Chastity gotten that gigantic marshmallow?

...and cookie squares? And a chocolate square?

“Time to make a s’more ACTUALLY MEAN SOMETHING.”

Toinette actually gasped.

“...You’re my hero!”

“Funny, the way you usually address me, I thought I was your god.”

We Are Forever Chastoinette

Chastity and Toinette spent about nine days recuperating. Toinette grew to look up to Chastity a lot. The woman was clearly very experienced, and didn’t mind being hands on. Toinette, for her part, enjoyed getting her hands dirty, and would spend many days under the tutelage of the fire-wielding firebrand. The trials involved were often hard. Sometimes the Fae ended up in more tight places that she would have thought, but Toinette could feel herself reaching her peak performance as she worked. As long as she was methodical and took her time, everything turned out great.


The editors would like to apologise for that last paragraph, and let you know the people responsible have been fired.

---

“So tell me, Toinette...how long can you hold your breath?”

“Real long. Why'd you ask?”

“Well I ask, because up at the top of the mountain the air’s real thin and I’m gonna have to be wearing a breathing mask.”

“... Why’re we going up a mountain? I mean, sounds rad, but…”

“You can’t have steak every night without getting tired of steak. And since your redhead hasn’t shown up to bring you back, and with the crime issue handled…”

(It had been damn brutal, from what Toinette had picked up by osmosis. Chastity knew some nasty people, in ways that were not even remotely fun.)

“It’s time to go do other fun stuff. First up, Peak-Racing. We’re gonna get on top of a mountain and go back down the fast way: on big ass kites.”

“That sounds super dangerous and incredibly awesome. I'm in. Let's gooooo.”

They did not actually have to climb the mountain: there was a series of greased rope crank elevators manned by other people. It still took nearly four hours to get to the top, but that was better than actual climbing: it would have taken potentially a week. Three hours into the upward trek, Chastity had put on her breathing mask, constantly inserting small pills into the front of it every twenty minutes.

Toinette was coping by deciding not to breathe. She was an Astral being and technically didn't need to do anything. Unfortunately, this made people look at her funny. The illusion of her glamor kept up only as long as she consciously pretended to be "normal”, and not breathing violated that. She hoped she didn't look like a zombie or anything. A zombie swaddled in furs (Chas had insisted, she hadn't felt like saying no, and anyway she looked pretty cute in them).

It also helped with the fact the temperature was dropping the higher they went. Toinette was as much affected by that as a need for air, but while Chastity had changed battle outfits…

This one a kind of combination of a minidress and pants...well, one legged pants. Chastity wore armor on her right arm over the dress’ sleeves, and a gauntlet on her left forearm, but between the lack of leg, the shortness of the dress, and the fact that Chastity had cut a massive, plunging neckline down the front of her outfit, it barely covered everything important. And of course, boots, belt with pouches and packs and her whip, swords on her back, and having let down her hair and had it tied in a tight braid that ran down her back. And the necklaces, which Chastity had added to with some weird length of metal she’d inserted into the middle of her braid. Toinette mainly noticed these details as part of her usual ogling.

That neckline. Yeeeeees.

Anyway, it still left an immense amount of skin exposed. Fine when you were down in a town with mildly summer weather. Up here where snow was falling and the wind carried a bitter chill that would have tested heavy duty coats, she barely seemed to notice the cold. That was attracting more stares than Toinette, more than what stares Chastity already attracted.

“We're a real odd couple, huh?” Toinette disregarded another guy’s slightly-too-long stare as they got off the final elevator.

“Odd enough. By the way, don’t touch my bare skin for now.”

“Why?”

“My internal body temperature's been increased so much you might actually burn yourself.”

“...shouldn’t you, like, start dying if your body heat goes up like more than, ten degrees? I dunno. My friend Rory told me about someone she knew who had a fever of like 105 and this was real bad and they should have died but I don’t know what normal body heat is…”

“98 or so. 105 is lethal fever, yes. I’m not normal. Body’s at 200+.”

Toinette whistled. “I'm right. You are hot.”

“As fuck.”

When Chastity had said ‘kites’, what she had really meant were ‘hang gliders’, or at least, a mechanism that skewed closer to that concept than a kite.

“Pretty simple. Strap it all on and run and jump off the side, it opens automatically, you race across the land to the finish line. No fair using your wings.”

“Fine, fine. Ya killjoy.” Toinette stuck her tongue out. Then she considered her kite.

“What happens if it doesn't open? Asking for a friend.”

“You basically fall into a really big pit filled with gross slime, and you slide down through the slime which keeps you warm until you get pooped out into a cave where you get medical treatment and stuff. That’s why you need to jump off a certain side, or else if it doesn’t open, well...you hit mountain.”

Toinette considered the slime.

“...Cool. Alright, let's do this!”

“You want to make a bet on who wins?” Chastity was assembling the framework onto her body.

“Sure!” Toinette followed suit. “What we bettin’?”

“Well, if I lose...I’ll introduce you to some fine company and hang around.”

Toinette forced herself to stay calm. “And if I lose?”

“..of COURSE I have a whip.”

“...This all seems like a win to me. But hell, let's do it.”

Toinette finished assembling her kite, waited until it was their turn to go, JUMPED -

Chastity had clearly done this before, but Toinette had wings and was more accustomed to the sensation of flight. As such, their feet both hit the ground of the finish line at the same time, or close enough that Toinette couldn't tell the difference.

There was a slightly awkward moment as she untangled herself from the kite.

“...So, who's this fine company?” She asked, trying to stay casual.

“Oh, they prefer ropes.”

----

Another day...another mountain.

“Ever skiied?”

“Nope!” Toinette looked down at the slats of wood strapped to her feet. “Does this involve going down at high speeds? The mountain, I mean.”

“Yeah. I, however, am going to use a board. Because that’s what I know. You can’t break your neck, right?”

“Nope! Uh… why do you ask?”

“Well normally you need to learn stuff or else you can go out of control and fall down and crash into things and get hurt and die...but you have wings and stuff. So basically...point the skies down and go down. You can try and mimic me...and I guess if you fall and stuff, just use your wings. I won’t race you to the bottom the first time: this requires a little use of the ol’ noodle.”

“Sure.”

Toinette pushed off and hit a tree within 5 seconds.

“Fuck.”

“As you can see, I only brought you up here because I can’t break you.”

The Fae picked herself up, brushing the snow from her clothes. “‘S okay! I’m okay! It’s my pride that’s hurt, not me.” Her wings glittered into existence on her back, carrying her back to the start point. “Let’s try this again!”

She took off and went over a cliff edge.

“Don’t say a word,” she grumbled as she flew back after a minute or two.

“My lips are sealed.”

Toinette managed to actually go down the mountain on her third attempt... with about a thirtieth of the grace that Chastity did. And with about 100 times the crashes.

“No joke or insult here...maybe we ought to try sledding instead?”

Toinette, looking disheveled and with blue bruises on her skin, looked up at Chastity. “What’s that involve?”

“Same thing except sitting down on something.”

“I like that idea a lot. Let’s do that instead.” Toinette considered throwing her skis down the mountain.

“I just have to find a…”

There was a howl.

A weird howl. In that it could very well have not been a howl at all. Being up on mountains had shown Toinette that the wind could make plenty of weird, scary noises just by hitting this and that at the right angle. That might have been that, the sound echoing across the mountain.

...except something on it gave her goosebumps. Chastity had cocked her head.

“...I think that WAS just the wind…”

“But you’re not sure?”

“Well, no.”

“Then what could it be?”

“...nothing that will bother us.”

“...is it an ogre?” Toinette cocked her head. “I have ogres back home. They make noises like that sometimes.”

“No, not an ogre. They have bass.”

“Hm.” Toinette’s fingers twitched. “By ‘nothing that will bother us’, do you mean it’s gonna leave us alone, or we can totally beat it no sweat?”

“The former. I think. Ugh. It’s nothing. Just the wind.”

“Cool! So, sledding! Do we sit together?”

“We can.”

---

The sledding went fine.

The bad stuff happened elsewhere, which is why Toinette, the next night, found herself deep in a wintery forest, having tracked down Chastity who had left. And met up with company.

“You sure you want to hang out during this, Nette?”

“Everyone else in that damn cabin-mine place is either walking around like a spazz or drunk. I think I’d rather be out here doing whatever.”

“Tracking.” The giant man said. Chastity was indeed kneeling by a set of tracks in the snow. Human feet.

“Toinette, keep up above the snow. Need to keep these things clear.”

“Sure.” Toinette’s wings blurred and she levitated upwards. She looked up at the giant man.

“You’re tall!” She said, for lack of anything better to say. He just grunted, and then said something in a foreign language, one that Chastity replied in.

The man actually looked dressed for the weather: he was covered in black furs, five or six layers of them. His head and face were a mess of scars, like he’d come out the wrong end of a few fights with bears. And when he growled at Chastity’s reply, Toinette was pretty sure she saw teeth too sharp to belong in the mouth of a normal man.

“Could still be a Sapspawn.” He said.

“When we start finding the tracks further and further apart, you’ll have to come to terms, Purr.”

Toinette said nothing. This seemed personal between them. Purr snarled, though it seemed more in general anger than anything towards Chastity, and then turned and stalked off into the woods. Within seconds, between the night and his black furs, he had vanished from sight.

“...You really should go back to the cabin, Toinette. That wind we heard earlier? Wasn’t wind.”

“No shit? Yeah, I'm staying. What's the worst that could happen? I fought a giant penis monster two weeks ago. I'm ready for anything.”

“Best hope it’s a Sapspawn then.” Chastity said, as she formed two fireballs and hovered them around her shoulders for light. “And before you ask. There tree. Hard bark. Sap rarely leak, but sometimes do. Smell sweet. Taste sweet. You have baby....it damage baby. Very, very badly. Turn baby into monster that should not be. Sapspawn. If it’s one of those we could just be dealing with a very, very mean wolf, or bear.”

“That was an unnecessary terrifying backstory.” Toinette's fingers sparked and hissed. “Good thing Fae don't have babies like that.”

“The sapspawn would be better. Stay VERY close. Like you’re trying to crawl inside me and not in a fun way.” Chastity was starting to follow the tracks, her steps unnaturally light. Some sort of special boots. Toinette would have known for sure if she’d ever met Christine, who had footwear that let her kick off thin air. “But tracks like these...well, it’s really bad. We’re talking you, I, and Purr might have to run back to the cabin, get everyone, and put as many miles between us and this mountain as we can.”

Toinette followed, silently wishing Julius was here. Her fingers flexed, sparks playing off of them.

“That… sucks.”

“And blows.” Chastity was following the tracks, measuring something at swordpoint. “Fuck.”

Along they walked, and the tracks were getting wider and wider apart. Even Toinette, who knew nothing about tracking, knew human beings could not made strides that long. You’d need some sort of outside assistance.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Chastity kept muttering, before kneeling down and prodding a finger in one of the tracks, the finger coming up with the faintest trace of blood on the snow. “Ithaqua.”

“That's not a nice name.”

“Where you come from, do you have wendigo legends?”

“Cannibalism and stuff? The ogres have some legends. Is this the same deal?”

“Yeah. They say that if you kill and eat another person in the wrong place...it’ll call a spirit on the wind that will hunt and devour you. Body n’ soul. It has a few names, but this...this is worse.”

The tracks were impossibly wide now, like the man was doing one legged long jumps every time.

“There was an avalanche that happened here about six weeks ago. Five men missing. Found the bodies...gnawed on. One of them killed at least one of the others while they were trapped in a pocket under the snow, cut meat off in desperation...didn’t save him. He froze to death. But the crime was still committed and the foulness on the wind was called...it got here too late. It can’t find its prey. It’s confused. It thinks it’s being concealed. So...it will find out where it is. Take you away. Drag you along at the wind’s pace...as your feet crack, bleed, and burn away. And more than that. Until you tell it where what it’s owed is. And...it doesn’t understand that its prey is gone. Just that it’ll find it, until it runs out of liars. Ithaqua.”

“...Is there a right place and time to eat someone?”

“From the stories Purr would tell, you might not be seen if you did it without knowing. Or if the corpse died on its own, and you’re just...helping yourself to the meat. It’s killing...killing and then eating...that’s the crime. Or maybe nothing will save you. Or us. Even I don’t know if I can stop the wind.”

“Thanks for the answer.” Toinette looked at the insane tracks and really, truly wished Julius was here. He knew how to deal with crazy shit like this. It was his job. Well, was.

Chastity stopped.

No more tracks.

She glanced around. Trees were thinned out. Pristine snow and darkness, and the wind.

“...You might want to start singing again, Toinette.”

There was something WRONG in the distance. Something that even Toinette’s eyes couldn’t puzzle out. Was it watching? Coming for them? Or calling to them?

Chastity drew her other sword, and with a quick snap, both were set on fire.

Toinette began to hum, this time something a little jauntier. Something that might be danced to in a tavern. The fire in her fingers intensified.

Something came, on the wind…

---

And with that, Chastity stopped, and with a smirk, putting her legs up on the table, she hoisted her empty mug.

“And so, gentlemen...if you want to hear what came NEXT...you’ll need to pony up for another round.”

Toinette grinned at the chorus of grumbling and good-natured jeers, and drained the contents of her own mug.

“Get me the next strength up!” She hollered, slamming it down on the table. “I’m gonna be up all night!”

IT KEEPS HAPPENING (Chastoinette part whatever)

“OUR BOND WILL SIMPLY DEVOUR YOU! YOUR GLORY JOINED TO OURS, YOUR SCREAMS AND BONES OUR MEAT AND WINE!” Well, that was technically what High Priest Wormman said: between his deformed mouth and all the noise from the burning room, Toinette couldn’t make out any actual details. But she knew tones and this was about as hostile a tone as one could get.

“Uuuuhhhh…”

Toinette raised her hands in the air.

“All hail mighty Nidhogg? Glory be? Worms for all?”

It didn’t work. He headbutted her so hard she flew through two different walls.

At least, thought Toinette from underneath a pile of wood and bone, she didn’t have any bones. Technically.

Guess I gotta fight this giant penis now, she thought, dragging herself out from under the debris. There was a pain in her torso - multiple sharp objects had managed to stab her, leaking out blue starstuff that was even now dissolving the invasive bodies. But it still hurt. A lot. And there were footsteps and a lot of smashing sounds indicating that High Lord Dongerson was chasing after her.

Boy, some backup would be really good right now.

...Nope. No backup.

Just a giant fanged maw biting deep into her shoulder and neck.

Good ol’ necklaces. This would have been IMMENSELY messy without them. Instead, it just hurt. A lot. Toinette responded with a shriek and hurling starfire behind herself, hoping to do some kind of damage to her attacker.

...Gulk had endured it. High Grand Poobah Dingdong did as well, before whipping his head to the side and smashing her into a wall, and then down on the ground, before raising a now clawed foot to stomp on the fae.

Toinette, thankfully, managed to roll out of the way. Yeah, she couldn’t take this dude. Not in a month of Mondays. Not without Julius or Rory to back her up.

She decided to pick herself up and run like hell.

So she did.

After a few seconds of running, she realized she’d left Chastity’s weapons behind.

SHE’D GO WEAPON SHOPPING GO GO!

A slight break. The mass of the mutation that Supreme Dangler made him awkward and not able to turn corners well, and his roars grew fainter as Toinette ran.

...now what?

Find Chastity, that's what.

...now how in the hell could she get back to that room? She had been pretty much already lost and now she’d gone through a few ‘shortcuts’ to further turn her around.

Toinette was beginning to hate both her internal narrator and her lack of sense of direction.

Well, there was always sniffing for magic. Maybe Chas had her own smell, if she could pick it out amongst the rank odor of murder worms. It wasn't socially acceptable, but she was being chased by a giant dong. It was probably fine.

Focus, C’mon now, where you at?

Well, that wretched smell was likely President Prick. Under that lesser foul smells and…

Cinnamon?

Well, that narrowed things down a lot!

Toinette immediately headed in the direction of that sweet cinnamon smell. The sound of her enemy was still behind her, but she had a focus...find Chastity, she’d know what to do, she could handle this, she…

...was gone.

Toinette recognized the room as she flew into it. But it was now empty.

Chastity was gone, as were Karmilla and Amber.

She hadn’t stood her ground. She’d…

Left? Fled? Taken the two to safety?

Used Toinette as a distraction and beat it?

...she hadn’t listened. She’d gone out (and stolen her outfit too!). She’d gotten involved in the worm mess and made Chastity’s job harder. If she’d stayed in place, she’d have been bored instead of the several dozen other bad things that had happened tonight. And now it seemed like Chastity had decided she just wasn’t worth the trouble.

Toinette tried to stop herself hyperventilating. She failed.

She was dead. She'd fucked up and now she was fucking dead.

She could hear the worm behind her.

God, Rory. All of this shit and she hadn't spared a thought for Rory.

Well, if she was truly abandoned…

Toinette let the Fae out. Starlight filled the room as she shifted and turned to face her tormenter.

Then she wasn't gonna go to the darkness alone. Priest Penis was coming with her.

“...I sure hope you don’t do everything this fast.”

Toinette hadn’t noticed the altar had been moved. Moved over near the wall and overturned, with the blanket semi laid over it. She’d just seen an empty room. And even if Chastity hadn’t been watching, she would have seen the starlight through the darn thing.

She stepped up right behind the Fae, poking her head around her as the priest exploded through a wall. She wrinkled her nose.

“Hi. Still here. Man, he’s pissed. Thanks for doing all the hard work. Can you work with me here?”

“Hbuwh? Uh, um, sure!” It was very weird to see an eight foot tall being made out of stars babbling.

“Can y’shrink back down? Fast now.”

The priest shrieked, and a sizzling ball of acid flew from his maw, flying at the pair like a bullet.

Chastity’s eyes flashed, and said ball of liquid exploded, splattering the hallway with fiery ichor.

“Acid, always acid. Acid’s flammable, douchebag.”

Toinette, who had shrunk down, grinned and lit fire from her fingers.

“Looks like the next steps’ obvious, then.”

“Almost.”

Master Bates bellowed and charged. About 25 feet of distance.

Chastity slipped right up against Toinette’s back, reaching over and lifting her hand.

“On three...do what comes naturally t’you.”

“What, flirt? Kidding, kidding. I'm ready!”

“One two, fuck you, three.”

Chastity blasted fire from her hand. Toinette did it in her own way. The fire intertwined and smashed into the high priest.

He became engulfed in raging black and purple fire.

And kept coming. Screaming. Charging, his slamming footsteps shaking the ground.

“He’s not stopping.”

“Wait for it…”

“HE’S NOT STOPPING.”

“Wait for itttttttt…”

Toinette could see right down the bastard thing’s horrific gullet.

Then Chastity yanked her aside.

The Lambton exploded into the room. Had the altar still been in its original position, he would have smashed into it. But, with it pushed aside, there was nothing to stop him.

Except the dirt wall Karmilla had been chained to. And as it turned out, THAT didn’t stop him either.

Blazing with terrible fire, the Lambton crashed into the wall and kept going, momentum and starfire fueled otherfire turning him into something akin to a superheated drill, the Lambton priest burning through the packed dirt like it was cotton candy, continuing on through the wall and into the ground beyond.

“...Wow.”

Toinette turned to Chastity and grinned.

“That was awesome!”

“Wait for iiiiiitttttttt....”

Even Baron Von Absolutelynosubtlety couldn’t keep going: he was facing countless tons of packed dirt, and he swiftly lost. But he managed to burn his way through about ten feet of it, forming a crude tunnel and…

How could Toinette see? Because the fire had broken off of him. It was now burning on the sides of the barely functioning walls.

“Guess they lied.”

“Huh?”

“The worm can’t turn.” Chastity said, and put her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss.

The fireballs exploded, and the Lambton screamed as the tunnel he had made swiftly returned to being packed dirt. With him inside it.

He lost, again, the monster crushed and buried under the countless pounds of soil and rock, a blast of hot air erupting from the hole before dirt erupted out and destroyed it as swiftly as it had been formed.

“...huh.”

Toinette was aware of a clattering, and then Chastity’s sword returned to her hand, her whip rolling along the ground like a tumbleweed as she also finished recalling it.

“...Thanks, Toinette. Couldn’t have done that without you. Really. Was running on fumes...might not have had enough kick if it had just been me. Buttttt...one more thing.”

The dust was clearing.

The priest’s ‘head’ was just barely poking out of the mess of dirt that had crushed the rest of him. The teeth were sort of clacking together, foul green blood spewing from the horrific mouth.

Chastity flipped her sword over and offered it to the fae.

“You want the honors?”

“Sweet.” Toinette took the sword, and lopped the head off without much ceremony. This time, he didn’t grow a new one.

“Boy,” she sighed, watching the blood spurt. “That felt good. Catharsis!”

“That was the leader? Any more, stragglers or anything?”

“Uh, nope. Burnt them all! Maybe that Gulk guy might show up again, but he was in two pieces last I checked, so he’s probably not gonna be too much trouble. I think that’s everyone!”

Toinette popped a hip and looked very proud of herself.

“Okay then. We should probably get out of the house before the fire you started collapses this mostly underground craphole onto us or makes us die from smoke.”

Karmilla and Amber were peering out from the blanket, looking mostly scared in a dull way.

“...we get them help, I know a proper clinic open during the day. Then I’mma send a bird...get someone else to handle the feuding crime shits now that I’ve shut down their string pullers. The Twins, maybe. Then I’m going to take a bath for about...ten years.”

“Bath. Bath sounds real good.” Toinette brushed an arm off, wiping at some mud that had dried on her arm. “Can I join youse?”

“Only if you agree to get clean before getting extraordinarily filthy.”

Toinette’s grin would have frightened a shark.

“Yesssssss. Agree. Very yes.”

We Do Chastoinette Now

Half a dozen Lambton zombies later, Toinette was starting to really, really hate the architecture of this place. It stunk and was falling apart. She’d heard scrabbling in the walls, and hoped it was rats. This place was junk. Junk house. For junk people.

She felt a tug as her makeshift cape got caught on an exposed nail for the billionth time, and resisted the increasing urge to swear. She also stopping to waste time turning the cape into something that didn't get trapped constantly. Instead, she tugged it free and took stock of where she was again.

Yup, more abandoned corridors. More creaky doors. Ugh. Not even a picture on the wall. Yawn city.

Toinette continued her walk, humming under her breath.

Her mind wandered. How did Chas end up with cool fire powers? Technically Toinette had everything powers, if you counted spraying raw atomic creation everywhere as everything. But fire powers seemed way cooler. Um.

She seemed so confident and cool and in control, things Toinette never was. And she was hot, to boot. Where had she come from? How did she end up such a bad ass?

And, thought Toinette with a grin, can I meet her tailor?

And speaking of tailors, this place was tailor made for ambushes and traps. Instead, she’d encountered barely functioning messes who would have been incredibly dangerous if Toinette couldn’t fire existence out of her hands and had been handed a sword that burned through flesh and blood like a proverbial hot knife through butter. And she hadn’t encountered any in the last three minutes.

...so was that it? What would Chastity do?

Okay, once she was done listing all the things she’d LIKE her to do…

Okay...no map. No idea of what was where. No people. Did they go after Chastity? No, Toinette was sure she’d hear SOME kind of racket if that was the case. So if they didn’t do that and weren’t around, what then what then…

...all in one place?

Why?

What did Chastity say, worshippers of this disgusting parasite…

...worship. All gone, one place?

Oh joy. Considering the sad state her other two ‘dates’ had been in, Toinette REALLY didn’t want to know what she would find if she managed to find the rest of the Lambtons engaged in some obscene ritual or worship. On the other hand, maybe she could just lock them in the room and set the room on fire. Somehow.

Maybe she should have scavenged some armor off her vict...no, she didn’t want ANYTHING they’d worn touching her. The necklaces worked fine for protection: Toinette had felt the blows being blunted, like she was behind a small force field, but as for intimidation...a fiery sword couldn’t compensate for a ragged tarp barely covering anything. She didn’t care about the exposure, but it wasn’t good for scaring people.

...well, find the bastards first.

Toinette had a few tricks up her sleeve. Magic being used was super obvious to her, and if there was even a hint of that, she could sniff it out. Unfortunately, the iron in the sword… turned that off. Amongst other things. Iron was a real turn off - FOCUS.

She carefully, regretting it almost instantly, set the sword down and took a few steps away. Better. Her head didn't feel full of cotton wool anymore. But now all she has was the Indiana Jones whip, and she much preferred the sword. Ugh.

She focused, looking, searching. Knock knock. Any obscene rituals going on, folks?

...yeah, that sure as heck TASTED like one. She almost gagged as her senses interpreted the data as such a process. Wonderful. The closer she got, the most she’d feel like she’d drunk ten times as much as she had, and had rejected it all. But...that was likely where everyone else was.

The smart thing would be go back to Chastity and head for the exit while they were all occupied.

Toinette was not smart. She started back to pick up her sword, and then crept towards, heading towards the source of the horrible feeling.

...weird. Was the scratching and general squelching in the walls getting LOUDER? Wait no...that was coming from down the hallway and…

That was a scream.

...not a scream of fear, or rage, or something attacking. Though Toinette sure as heck didn’t know that at first. It probably would have unnerved someone who was familiar with the noises Lambtons would make as they ‘worshipped’; Toinette was about eight steps away from ‘unnerved’.

She missed Rory. Rory had nerves of steel. Also guns. Toinette was wishing for a gun right about now. Okay, plan plan plan....find room, go in, tell fire to go everywhere?

Yeah, good enough. She picked up the pace.

---

So, what did the altar room of a bunch of worm worshippers look like?

The answer was...bones.

In France, there was a cathedral that had been built from the bones of thousands and thousands of dead. The halls of the Order of the Ivory Hand were not actual bone, but conveyed something similar. The main altar room had that theme going on too, though in their case, the bones were mostly not human.

Bone lined the floor. Bone pillars held up the ceiling. The pew-equivalents were all cast in shaped bone. Toinette didn’t know any Lambton ‘theology’; if she did she would know of ancient ancestors of the Lambton worm, so called ‘conqueror worms’ who devoured whole empires and only left behind trails of clean bones, picked clean by a digestive system that consumed everything else. Holy relics, kept with care. Notably, none of the worshippers wore the bones. A blasphemy.

One way in. No guards. Inside...about fifteen ‘people’. Twelve in the pews, speaking...the phrase was ‘in tongues’, but to Toinette it sounded like the Lambtons were trying to chew off their own tongues rather than use them. Three people on the ‘stage’...

One of them being Ellie, now in a robe. Another woman Toinette didn’t know, and a rather older man who…

...who was the exact opposite of all the Lambton men she’d seen so far. All of them were deformed, mutated, changed horribly. This guy, who was wearing some sort of cloak instead of robes (rodent bones?), looked like he’d been subjected to plastic surgery, he was so unnaturally perfect. He was holding a double-handled bowl up, saying something in a foreign language, Ellie and the other woman looking on as the people in the pews snarled in guttural rapture.

Behind him was a statue of red clay-like stone, of a gigantic worm. Thicker than the kind that infested the Lambtons, lacking the extended intertwined pincers, instead just having an interlocking void of a mouth. Some father-worm? An aspiration? How the Lambtons were mind controlled into seeing their parasites? Who the fuck knew...well, Chastity probably.

The sound, the atmosphere...Toinette had been to a few ‘parties’ whose precise descriptive term started with an o. This was like a twisted inversion of them. United, yet not. Screaming in joy, yet not.

Twisted, infecting disease, walking around in willing hosts who would make you join up whether you wanted to or not.

Toinette began considering her “start fire, shut door plan”, and then realised there wasn’t enough material to really start said fire. Plus,. She’d be super noticed, and that would lead to bad times. She had to think of a way to break this up, somehow…

Man, if only she could throw her voice. Then she could play some real tricks. She’d never got the hang of it though.

She backed out of the doorway. Think, now. That perfect guy was their leader, but insta-killing him would just make a martyr. None of the others presumably cared about their lives, and fighting them all was a very bad idea.

Bone was a weird choice for building material.

She poked her head back in, looking for some kind of structural weakness, perhaps. The column bone is connected to the, seat bone, which is connected to the, don’t know.

Bone was hard outside and soft mushy stuff inside. Unless they hollowed out these bones, they probably left the marrow inside to...rot?

Dry out?

How the hell did bones even WORK?

Toinette gave up on her anatomy lesson. Good enough. Now she needed something heavy. Lots of junk in the house/mansion/wherever they were...some of the Lambton corpses...

Aha! Corpses! Uh… Okay.

Toinette picked up the nearest one, managing not to gag, and then gave up on calculating logistics and maths and just hurled the damn thing at the bone wall.

...the funny thing about considering a material sacred. You often didn’t want to touch it after it had been placed in its proper ‘holy position’. Or say, do something to harden it.

So the body smashed through the bone wall as well as a few hundred pounds of deadweight could.

The ceremonial chanting cut off immediately. The ‘priest’ was the quickest to recover, his face flushing with rage.

“WHO DARES SULLY THE DIVINITY’S REMNANTS?!”

For a second Toinette thought he’d seen her and she’d screwed up, and then he pointed at the wall hole, as the Lambton worshippers snarled and all went for it. They hadn’t seen the exact details. Just a hole abruptly appearing in their wall, and they thought the maker was in said hole. So now everyone save the priest and the two women were all heading there…

...CLUSTERING there…

Toinette grinned and let the magic spark in her fingers.

“I love the smell a’ napalm in th’ mornin’,” she crowed, and let it rip, starfire washing over the congregation.

A few things suddenly became apparent.

One was that whatever weird fire Chastity had woven onto her sword, it apparently registered Toinette’s attack as ‘dump all the remaining fuel, whatever that was, of the fire out at the same time’.

Which meant Toinette found her starfire stream suddenly turning into a rocket engine firing directly into the room. The good news was, the fire didn’t hurt her, even though even she was somewhere aware that so much fire, even moving away from her, should have cooked her to a cinder with the heat of it. What was it called, conversation? Eh fuck it. There was also bad news. That being the sword heated up so much it burned her hand, causing her to drop it.

The second discovery? Old bone burned REAL well.

The Lambton cluster caught alight, their screams being consumed by a roar as the fire seized onto every surface that it could, the sound almost like a living thing.

...unfortunately, despite the ‘solar flare’ she’d unexpectedly unleashed, it had just sideswiped the front of the pew. Fire had caught there, but not well enough…

Toinette heard the priest screaming in zealous, maddened rage, and then out of the smoke came the other woman, the flesh on her hands splitting open as snapping, boring mouths, grown worms that had seemingly linked up and weaponized themselves in the woman’s body, tried to tear Toinette’s face off.

“Woah!” The fae’s hand flew to the whip at her side as she backed up, sending it lashing out at the woman’s hands. “You should get that looked at!”

Toinette thought that the woman might have called her a ‘fucking floozy’; it all sort of came out in a garbled mess when the whip cracked and slashed through two worm-tendrils, dark green blood spraying as the woman’s insult turned into a scream. But even hurt, she closed the distance and….

Well, Toinette thought she tried to bite her nose off. Maybe she was going for her throat. But as she was closing in, some old lesson from Julius, that old fussbucket, kicked in, and she sort of stepped and shifted aside...and the woman overbalanced, tripping and falling past Toinette and…

...oh look. Gulk.

Toinette was surprised she recognized him. Because this time, he WAS on fire. All aflame.

Wasn’t slowing him down. He’d lost a hand. Beyond it was a blade of burning bone, like he’d somehow carved his forearm into a weapon and he meant to introduce it to her.

“Shit.” Toinette spread her wings and took upwards, trying to stay out of his reach -

Bonk went her head on the low ceiling.

“Shit!”

She backpedalled - backfluttered? - and lashed at him with the whip. Why did fire always make things worse? Now this asshole was still immortal AND he was on fire. She should have paid attention to those zombie movies she’d put on with Rory. Undead plus fire equals undead on fire.

She hit...in the sense the whip lashed around his body, and he grabbed it with his remaining hand and tried to yank her down. A second after that, Toinette felt worm tendrils lash around her ankle.

Had she not been wearing Chastity’s necklaces, the worms would have bit deep and infected her. As is, she just felt like someone was grinding a finger into her skin, and not in a remotely fun way. Oh yeah, and now she had TWO forces trying to yank her down.

“QUIT FINGERING ME,” Toinette yelled, and yanked.

And Gulk was promptly torn in two. Lambtons weren’t undead. Just badly mutated, and fire plus force on the whip meant bisection. There was a reason it had wrapped around him.

Unfortunately, this meant Toinette overbalanced.

“FUCK!”

She ended up doing nearly a complete 180 backwards flip. Unfortunately, the ‘nearly’ meant she landed facefirst on the floor, and felt her nose break. Pain flared, and she forced herself up with a wince. Blood didn’t pour - instead, blue, shimmering dust fell from her nostrils.

And now she was on the floor with a bunch of worms. Oh yeah, and Not-Ellie, who was coming right for her…

And stopped.

At first, Toinette thought backup had arrived. But when she twisted her head, she saw she was still alone.

Not-Ellie was still hesitating.

...It was the Astra. She had seen it and was reacting to the fact Toinette wasn’t bleeding red like normal.

Unfortunately, she was recovering. Toinette had dropped the whip. And Chastity’s sword had ended up behind Not-Ellie.

“F’ck yu, sw’rd!” Toinette yelled through her broken nose.

At which point the sword yanked out of the ground and flew back to Toinette.

Or rather, it flew point first into Not-Ellie’s back and knocked the woman to the ground with a scream, the sword impaling back into the ground from the momentum. Pinned like a butterfly.

Sting like a bee.

“...F’ck me.” Toinette grinned, and took a moment to reset her nose with a crunch and another spurt of blue. Then she walked over, discarding her cloak because fire everywhere, and leant over Not-Ellie.

“...yeah, I got nothing. I had a pun here. Uh, stop the cult shit. Take up… gardening. I dunno.”

She reached a hand out to pull out the sword.

Not-Ellie promptly tried to rip her face off with her worm mouth bite things. Not dead yet…

“Jeez!” Toinette jumped back, and then scrabbled for the whip and used it to judiciously remove Not-Ellie’s head from her shoulders.

“...Gimme head? No. I’m so bad at this.”

THEN she removed the sword.

She looked around. Lots of bone fragments and burnt corpses. Lots of things on fire. She was naked again, and had a sword, a whip, and a broken nose.

“I’ve ruined everything!” She yelled with glee, to nobody in particular.

Wait, where had Mister Perfect gotten to?

“Ruin speaks, if you can hear it.”

Oh, there he was. He’d strode through the fire like he wasn’t much bothered by it. But for all she knew he was wearing his own ‘necklaces’.

“You butchered my thralls, and stand here so...purely. It is a sign. Will you not join me in their place? They could do little, but you...you can become akin to the highest. The offering is painless.”

Oh hey, that goblet thing he had. He had produced it from somewhere, filled with writhing Lambton worms.

“There is no servitude. Just a bond, and bliss. Pure bliss.”

Toinette blinked.

“...Are you seriously asking the person who murdered your congregation to buddy up?” She shook her head. “Oh, buddy. You shoulda known people NEVER take up that offer unless they got something to lose. Is that how you picked these people up, by the way? ‘Cause if I were a regular girl in this shithole town, yeah, being a bag of worms might be tempting.”

Her wings blurred as she took to the air.

“But naw. If you knew anything about me, you wouldn’t make that offer. I ain’t pure, and I’m always high.”

She paused.

“...That sounded a lot better in my head. Okay, tell you what I’ll do. You put the worms down and surrender quietly and I guess we could have a trial and justice and all that boring human stuff. You’ll probably be hanged, because I dunno how this place works, but it’s that or I kill you now. I ain’t into worms.”

Another pause.

“...Why does everything sound better in my head?”

“A pitiful lack of vision.”

“I got vision enough for yah!”

The whip flashed out, and the man’s held fell from his shoulders.

His body spasmed.

Then the goblet fell onto him, and the worms began to burrow in.

His clothes split and burned away, his flesh warping, the stump of his neck grotesquely elogating even as it twisted open and jagged, bony teeth...no, replications of the worm’s hook-penetrator things, filling a ‘mouth, the arms warping into the man’s body even as the flesh went red, then a glistening purple, a shine that indicated natural armor.

This was not Chastity’s fault. She was not privy to the inner workings of how the Lambton alterations worked. Gulk and co looked so damn warped because they’d chosen immediate power. The high priest had not. His nest had awaited until he had chosen the right time, growing in strength, and between Toinette’s decapitation and the extra mass joining with the nest…

Toinette found herself facing a ten foot, snarling, worm on legs, acidic drool dripping onto the ground.

Part 4 as Toinette and Chastity

It took a little while to figure out anything resembling a route. The interim steps involved a lot of fire.

Toinette stepped over the corpse of another Lambton, nose wrinkling at the smell of burning flesh and dying worms. Her whip was doing wonders for disarming them, but it was Chastity who did most of the work. She could output fire like nobody's business.

“These groups generally don’t operate in numbers larger than ten, but….something’s off here…” Chastity said, before mumbling something about “Xagar-fucks’ and something about an Artifact, her tone making the capitalization clear.

“What's a Xagar-fuck and can you eat it?” Toinette was half paying attention - the décor of the house was creepy and she kept being distracted by new horrors each corridor.

“Long story. Total assholes who worship a bigger asshole.”

The next woman who came around the hallway didn’t have a face any more. Just a...MESS.

Then she didn’t have a head any more, as it came off with one clean slash. It bounced along the ground.

...and then the body began to strangle Chastity, even as the head emitted weird whistling, wheezing noises. If Toinette knew anything about biology, she might have recognized attempted laughter, that didn’t work any more because of severed vocal cords and a windpipe no longer attached to any lungs.

“Cult, huh?” Toinette sent the whip lashing out to pry the corpse's hands from Chastity's throat. “I had a cult once. Told them to knock it off. Didn't help. Had to leave that neighbourhood behind.”

The head burst into flame, before messily popping like a balloon, Chastity kicking the body away and cleaving it right in half, before igniting both halves.

“...female means victims. Be ready for trouble.” Chastity said, and turned the corner.

The floor was covered in black, oily...stuff. Chastity’s boots squelched as she walked through it.

“It won’t hurt. It’s just gross.” There was a weathered door at the end of the hall.

“Ew” was Toinette's only response. She wondered if flying over it would be prudent, but decided against damaging her wings.

The door was, of course, locked.

“...Back up.” Chastity said, and put her hands together.

Toinette expected the woman to blow the door off its hinges.

Instead, a wall of fire spread up, filling the whole hallway. Toinette suddenly found the slime under her feet boiling, and realized that the safest place to stand was directly behind the woman.

She did so, enthusiastically. It had the best view of the action. Well, the best view, anyway.

Chastity then slapped her hands together. The fire vanished.

And the door warped and then was ripped off its hinges, as Toinette felt her whole body vibrate, like she’d been right next to an incredibly loud pop, the low thrumming eruption leaving her ears ringing. Chastity seemed less affected, as she immediately took up her swords and walked into the smoke, and into the room beyond.

“Ooooooh.” Toinette followed. “That's cool.”

There was no sound of combat. Instead, a low curse. Toinette swiftly discovered its source, and then the room became a lot LESS cool.

She’d found her other two bar-mates.

The good news is, they were not dead.

The bad news was that neither was in a good way. Like her, they’d been de-clothed. Amber had been strapped to a stone table, her arms bound above her and her feet lashed together and chained to the table, a gag in her mouth. Next to her was a jar…

“DON’T TOUCH THAT! WORMS!”

Chastity was over by where Kamilla was. She was somewhat less bound, instead chained to the wall by her arms, hanging limp...with an empty jar in front of her, overturned. She was sobbing quietly.

“...Toinette, untie her. Cut her loose, whatever.” One of Chastity’s swords thudded point first into the ground at Toinette’s feet, Chastity biting her lip as she inspected Karmilla.

Toinette wasted no time in running over to Amber, hands fiddling with the binds and chains. She was babbling.

“Sorry sorry I’m sorry I didn’t know this was gonna happen oh jeez oh man I’m sorry what did I do -”

A hand flicked out and zapped the chains, melting them into glittering slag for a moment. Toinette reached out and took the gag off. Amber just mumbled incomprehensibly, though Toinette made out ‘dumped them in her’.

“Nette. The pouch on my right side. Big inside. Open it, get the blanket.” Chastity was still staring hard at the woman chained against the wall. “Oh yeah. Don’t think you did this. THEY did. NEVER think that, EVER.”

Toinette numbly rustled through the pouch and managed to pull out the blanket.Her face was ghostly. She only mumbled something under her breath in response to Chastity’s words.

“...she’s full infested.” Chastity finally said.

“...so wuh...happens?”

“She didn’t pick it, so...they’ll settle in and core her brain until they have a nice little puppet.”

“...there a cure?”

“...no cure.”

Chastity stood back, cocking her head.

“...okay then.” She interlaced her fingers and inverted them, the small popping crack of air echoing in the room. Amber was silent and limp; in shock, if Toinette had any idea what that was. It was damn hard to shock a fae.

“No cure…” Toinette said sadly.

“No CURE. Treatment on the other hand...possible...Toinette, watch my back. And not the way you’ve been doing the last few times.”

Toinette grumbled but complied, her eyes trained on the entrance for intruders. Her knuckles were tight around the whip. Her grumbles became darker, and very directed. Sparks flashed from her free hand.

“...and sing something for me.”

“Huh?”

“Sing something. Helps me focus.” Chastity placed her hands on Kamilla’s cheeks.

Toinette was silent for a moment. Then she began to sing. It was not in a language that Chastity knew - it flowed like water, syllables slipping into each other without pause. The fae’s voice was low, and it perhaps reminded Chas of the ballads she’d heard from those living in high lands and sprawling fields. There was a sense of sadness and longing in it.

And as she sang, the room’s temperature started rising.

Karmilla woke up then, as she began to groan, and then began thrashing, trying to draw away from Chastity. But, chained to the wall and with Chastity holding her head, she had nowhere to go. The heat kept rising.

Sweat bloomed on Karmilla’s skin. She let out a low whining scream.

It just kept getting hotter...and then Karmilla began coughing. Coughing, and retching, as the worms began to flee her body.

Some went out the mouth, but others, lacking any other choice, emerged from the skin, It was like watching the world’s most horrific pasta-making process. The worms’ jaws clicked, tiny squeals coming from them…

...and since she was right there, they jumped to Chastity.

And started burrowing into HER flesh.

“...little pricks.” Chastity muttered. The heat spiked again, and the worms kept fleeing Karmilla’s body. She could control fire. Heat. She was somehow spiking Karmilla’s body heat, putting it in dangerous fever territory. The Lambton worms couldn’t endure the unnatural levels and were fleeing the host...and since Chastity was focusing on the heat into Karmilla in a way that didn’t roast her, her body made an excellent new host.

The last of the worms emerged and transffered.

And like a switch, the heat cut off. Chastity took a step back, blood running from a dozen tiny wounds.

“...Fuck you.” Chastity said, and promptly set herself on fire.

Fireproof? Not WHOLLY...not if she wanted to purge something like this. But she handled it worlds better than Karmilla could have. The worms screamed. They burned.

So did Chastity.

“Jesus,” muttered Toinette. “That’s gnarly.”

All in all, there were a lot worse end results to setting yourself on fire. That didn’t seem like much when Chastity collapsed, falling on her butt and slamming against the alter side that Amber had been tied to.

“...overdid it...fuck.”

Chastity held out a hand, a deep tremble causing it to shake.

“...you need to go, Toinette.”

“What? Fuck that. I’m staying.” Toinette backed up, eyes still on the door. “I’m not leaving anyone behind.”

“They’re weak...sick. And I just knocked myself stupid...er...they’ll be coming. So...you don’t wanna leave? Okay...plan B.”

Chastity managed to draw her other sword, the blades a pair of long, thin ones. Longswords, except thinner. That was all she managed, as the second clattered on the ground.

“Take them. Find the rest. Take them out.”

Chastity coughed.

“I’ll stay here and guard until the vermin is exterminated. My necklaces too. Well, leave me one.”

Toinette picked up the sword and looked at it. She'd never used one before. She could feel the iron in it, making her dizzy. Her other hand reached up and took a few necklaces from around Chastity's neck, hanging them around her own. The tarp was adjusted - freedom of movement over pride.

“... Catch you later, Chas.”

She turned around fast enough that Chas couldn't see the expression on her face.

“Wait, wait...one more thing.”

“Yeah?” She stopped.

Chastity clenched her fist, and the blade exploded in flame. A strange purple-tinged flame.

“...give ‘em hell.”

Toinette grinned like a Pleistocene predator.

“Sure will.”

She set out, sword ready.