The third chapter in the sequel to No Obligation finds Becca and her kitsune mother facing a new challenge, as Becca learns more about her adversary ... and herself. Also, Chaos chooses a Champion.

 

by Randalynn

###

“If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free,
form no conception of good and evil.” – Baruch Spinoza

“I was raised to understand and know the difference
between right and wrong.” – Curt Schilling”

 

I opened my eyes to see Akomachi sitting nearby, watching me. Remembering what we had talked about a few days ago, I had chosen my kitsune form to sleep in when I was here, to honor my second mother and her heritage. My body was a cross between human and fox, taller and with more pronounced curves than my human shape. I was covered in reddish-orange fur with a long white muzzle, neck, chest, and paws. My single tail was tipped with white, as were the soft fox ears that sat high upon my head.

“Good morning, Casa.” I smiled at her, rising up on my paws and stretching. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Good morning, daughter.” She wrapped my soul in love for a moment before reluctantly letting me go. “The wait was a pleasure, since I spent the time watching you sleep. It is nice to see you at peace, when you have so many responsibilities on your shoulders. I did not wish to wake you, but I have some news, and I am not sure whether it is good news or bad. We have been summoned.”

“Summoned?” I said aloud, confused. “By whom? To what?”

“By Inari, the kami of foxes, and by the other kitsune in convocation,” she replied.

Inari? I reached through my memories, both the original ones and the ones implanted when I became the Advocate. Depicted in myth and legend as male, female, and genderless, Inari was not just the kami of foxes, but also (depending on the century and who you asked) of fertility, prosperity, success, rice, tea, sake, sword makers, agriculture, industry, and merchants.

A very busy godling indeed.

“Do you know why?” Akomachi shook her head slowly.

“I do not know for certain,” the nine-tail said, “but I believe it has to do with how you came to be kitsune, and how we came to be a family.”

“When must we appear?”

“Whenever we like.” When I looked puzzled, she smiled. “As you know, Becca-chan, a kitsune’s relationship to time is somewhat … fluid. Whenever we choose to accept the summons, we will appear at the convocation, and all of those who summoned us will arrive as well.”

“And how much time will pass in the outside world?”

“So little that others will never know you have gone, daughter.”

“That is convenient.” I sensed something from her, and reached out to her soul, even as I took her paw and squeezed it. “Something troubles you, Casa.”

She nodded. “Foxes are by nature solitary creatures, and kitsune tend to be the same.” Akomachi looked into my eyes. “There is a reason why a group of foxes is called a skulk. It is usually a very small group, and is mostly silent to make it easier to hide from other predators and avoid frightening potential prey. For so many kitsune to come together and hold a convocation? And for Inari to preside? Whatever the reason, it must be important. And if we are at the center of it, we must be ready. Because we may not like what brings our kind together.”

###

Later that day, in Mrs. Graymalkin’s studio, we were cooling down after dance (and magic) lessons, and a question came to me.

“Excuse me, ma’am? Do you know why Chaos chooses to make human suffer? It seems to me it would be a much less effective way to cause chaos than other methods.”

She shook her head. “I do not know why, not for certain. But I do have a theory. When I first encountered the idea of Chaos, I thought accidents or natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes would be his tools of choice. But thinking further, I realized I had failed to take into account his deeply embedded hatred of life – and humans in particular.”

“Why does he hate humans so much?”

“Because life is about bringing order out of chaos. All living things defy entropy by becoming more than what they were, not less. Humans are the perfect example of that principle, since they are inventive and attempt to impose their own order on their surroundings whenever it suits them. He’s also convinced that humans are a special favorite of the Omnipresence, and that makes hurting them very important to Him.”

“But there’s more to it than that … isn’t there?”

“Yes, Becca. The truth is, accidents or natural disasters are facts of life, and humans are very good at creating contingency plans for when things go wrong – especially for the things they can anticipate. The unknown, however, is a different story. I believe that when people just vanish, and none of the ways humans have developed to find them work, events spiral out of control. Lives are sent in unexpected directions, and unpredictable disruptions result. By making humans disappear and causing others pain by doing it, Chaos can hurt the ones He hates and achieve His goals at the same time.”

Leander spoke. “That is a surprisingly efficient approach for an entity that is supposed to value randomness over all things.”

Mrs. Graymalkin nodded. “Indeed. It is a symptom of Chao’s overall deviation from His mission. Instead of random strikes, He now plans His attacks to cause maximum damage. It is fortunate that He is inexperienced when it comes to planning, or He would be far more dangerous.”

“Maybe it’s not just inexperience.” I thought about it for a moment. “Maybe He’s actually conflicted. He knows He needs to plan his efforts to make them effective against the Omnipresence, but He hates the need for it because planning means creating order — and that means moving away from His goal to achieve His goal. For all we know, planning might even be painful for him.”

“If that’s true, I know what I’d do.” We all turned towards Heather, stretching in the corner. She looked back at us and shrugged. “When the Omnipresence needed someone to fight for good because She couldn’t take direct action Herself, She found Becca, right?” I nodded. “So if I’m Chaos, and it hurts to make the plans I need to defeat the Omnipresence, I’d do the same thing. I’d get someone else to do it for me.”

“A Champion?” Mrs. Graymalkin thought about it. “Your thinking is sound, Heather, but I hope you are wrong. If He chooses that path, he becomes much more dangerous. A human with the power of Chaos to command would be very dangerous indeed.”

###

Byers hid behind the corner of the dumpster and did her best to ignore the endless itch inside her. That damned Advocate had made her addicted to being mounted, so her ability to fight her own urges disappeared if a male dog was close enough for her to smell. Every minute of peace was won by using her own will to control the needs of her traitorous canine body. It was never easy, but she took each victory as it came, because as long as she could win sometimes, she knew that she was still Reynard Byers, instead of some filthy nameless bitch in a Vegas back alley.

The problem with hiding was that it was only a temporary solution. She was always in heat, and her pheromones would draw males from insane distances to track her no matter where she hid. She was trapped in a lose-lose situation. If she moved, she ran the risk of running right into one of them. If she stayed where she was, they would still find her eventually, and it would all begin again.

She tried not to think of the women she had done this to with her own magic. Not because it was painful, or because she was ashamed. No, she avoided it because thinking about what she had done was exactly what the Advocate wanted her to do, and she refused to cooperate in any way with this insane path to redemption.

Byers snorted and shook her head. As if she actually wanted to be redeemed. What she really wanted was what she had always had before that redheaded bitch butted in. She wanted to be able to do what she pleased, when she pleased, to whomever she pleased. That was a sorcerer’s right, earned by his mastery of magic. As Byers was taught by her master long ago, power in the mystic sphere always corresponded to power in the mundane world. If no one had the ability to stop you, you could do as you pleased, and the devil take the Hindmost.

Unfortunately, Byers had discovered the hard way that the rules had apparently changed. Someone had the power to stand in her way, and had sentenced her to this existence until she changed. The power she used had dwarfed what Byers could do. As the ex-magician cowered behind the dumpster, hoping the smell of the garbage would mask her scent, she reluctantly admitted the truth.

Even if she still possessed her own magic, she would be hopelessly outclassed by the Advocate, and nothing she could do would change that.

Then she heard it. A voice that almost seemed to come out of the background noise that passed for silence on a Las Vegas night. A voice made of a thousand sounds, working together without working together, shaping words from car horns and casual conversations, trash being dumped and music from a nearby club.

“Help me and you will be helped.”

Byers lifted her head and sniffed the air, finding nothing but the smells that had been there before. Still, there was hope to be found in that phrase, and she thought as hard as she could, out into the universe.

“What must I do?”

The voice seemed to hesitate before it returned.

“Find what did this to you and destroy it.”

She froze. It seemed too good to be true, and that immediately raised her hackles. Whoever this was must know she had no power. Not anymore.

The voice rose from the background.

“If you agree, power can be given as easily as it was taken away.”

Suddenly indescribable pain filled her world as her body was ripped apart in a mist of confusion that rewrote reality so randomly she literally couldn’t figure out where the magick was taking her. As the pain began to fade, she realized that she stood on two feet, naked in the desert air. She was human again – a woman, which was annoying, but nothing compared to being a bitch in heat.

And she had power once more! Not her old power, but something different. Something bigger. Still, it flowed through her new body like an electric river, making her skin crawl and her whole body feel like there was something crawling just below the surface, seeking a way to escape.

But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She was FREE!

“Do you agree?”

“To find and kill the Advocate?” Her new voice sounded high and breathy and melodic, but she didn’t care. “Yes. Oh, God, yes!”

The voice laughed, a hollow sound made from police sirens and car alarms.

“Not God. Chaos.”

Byers stopped suddenly. She remembered her training, and the dangers of making bargains with the unknown.

“Are you a … a demon?”

“Not God. Not demon. Chaos.”

‘That’s about as good an answer as I’m going to get,’ she thought.

“Can you help me?” she said aloud.

“No.” It sounded almost as if it was in pain, then took an edge she didn’t expect. “The power is yours. The hunt is yours. The kill is yours. That is enough. Go. Now.”

And just like that, the presence seemed to dissipate and drift away on what passed for a desert wind in Vegas. Sounds were just sounds again.

But Byers was human once more, with power. A lot of power. And a mission.

She smiled.

###

We were in Morocco, dealing with a mischievous djinn who had turned an entire marketplace of people into golden statues. A poor merchant had found the lamp in the market and asked the djinn for something of value to sell. Between the two of us, Leander and I had managed to trap the djinn in an empty Coke bottle. I had just returned the statues to human form (and received the thanks of an embarrassed but grateful merchant) when I felt a mental tug from the other side of the world.

Detective Stabenow needed me.

Leander felt it too, through our connection. She also felt my indecision, and smiled.

“Go now, milady,” she said, taking the bottle with the djinn in it from my hands. “I am sure I can find a place for this djinn without your help. I have become quite creative since we started working together.”

Raising the bottle, she looked in at the djinn. It seemed both sad and humiliated.

“You need to spend a century or two thinking about consequences,” Leander said thoughtfully. “But there is no reason for you to spend it in that sticky bottle.”

The bottle disappeared from her hand, and she picked up the lamp. I felt her break the bottle with her mind inside, freeing the djinn to roam its larger prison.

The last thing I heard before I teleported was Leander’s musing.

“I think … the far side of the Moon?”

###

I appeared in an alley a short distance from a number of police vehicles, lights flashing. Everyone wore vests and crouched behind their cars, but their eyes and weapons stayed pointed upwards towards the side of the building beside me.

Because the disguise spell was still in effect, I was dressed like all the other police officers, although my apparent age was somewhere in the mid-twenties. Still, I stayed in the alley and spoke mind to mind, not wanting anyone to ask where the rookie came from.

“I’m here, Dom.”

“Thanks, Becca.” The relief in her mental voice flowed through me. “Sorry to take you away from your night job, but I need a miracle.”

“What’s the situation?”

“There’s a family up there being held hostage at gunpoint, and the guy holding them is starting to lose it. I can hear it in his voice every time we engage, and it’s getting a little worse each time. I don’t know how much longer we have before he snaps, and I can’t see a way to end this quickly without losing somebody.”

“What’s his story?”

“He tried to rob an off-duty police officer, and when the officer drew his service weapon, the kid panicked and ran into the apartment building. The officer chased him, and the kid found an open door and ran inside. There was a mother with three kids in there, and he threatened to shoot them if the officer didn’t back off. That was four hours ago.”

“Has he hurt anyone?”

“No, but I can tell he’s a smart kid, and he knows this can’t end well. I’m worried … I think he might get desperate and shoot himself if he feels there’s no way out.”

I thought about it for a moment, then closed my eyes and asked the Universe if I could save him. I received no response, but I didn’t expect one. I knew the Omnipresence wasn’t going to give me a yes or no answer. I was a free agent, and expected to make judgment calls on my own.

So I made one.

“Okay, I’ll fix this. But part of fixing it means he might wind up at home instead of in a cell. Are you okay with that?”

There was a pause, then a mental sigh.

“He’s no criminal mastermind, Becca. I’m pretty sure he’s just a scared kid. If you can get him out of this, I’ll deal with the rest.”

I turned myself invisible and rose up to the floor in the apartment building where he was hiding. I phased through the wall of the apartment, still invisible, and hovered in front of the boy. He was clearly in over his head, the gun pointed at the floor as he considered his options. In the corner, the family of hostages huddled, afraid of the gun he still held.

I reached into his mind to see what drove him to this. His name was Kenji. His own family had run out of money, and there were no jobs to be had. They needed food, and medical care for his younger sister. Kenji had hunted for work for days without success, and finally his thoughts turned to crime to get what his family needed. He never meant to hurt anyone. The gun was a cheap piece of metal that barely qualified as a weapon, found in an alley.

‘So how do I get him out of here and home?’ I thought, my mind spinning through possibilities. ‘This has nothing to do with magical abuse. This is purely mundane, and my job as the Advocate doesn’t really apply.’

Then I looked at Kenji again, and realized his heritage … and my own.

‘Would he know who I was? What I was? More important … would he believe?’ I peered into his mind, saw him as a small child when his grandfather, visiting from Tokyo, told him stories of ancient Japan, of the many spirits and kami that once roamed. And I smiled.

‘It could work.’

###

Kenji breathed hard and tried to hold it together. This had gone so wrong, so fast. All he wanted now was to get home and find another way to help.

“Your goals were honorable, Kenji, but your methods were wrong.”

A woman’s voice from behind him, speaking softly in lilting Japanese. He turned, half raising the gun.

A large red fox sat behind him, its tail moving slowly, its head cocked as it examined him.

“Who’s there?” He stuttered as his hand waved wildly back and forth.

“Only me.” The fox replied. Although its mouth never moved, it was clear where the voice came from. Its eyes were large and deep, filled with an intelligence that was both strong and strangely alien. “You know what I am, Kenji. Your grandfather spoke of us often, when you were a pup.”

“Kitsune?” His eyes opened wide, and he shook his head. “No! It can’t be. You can’t be real.”

The kitsune opened its mouth and seemed to smile.

“Of course I can be. And I am what I have always been. And I am clearly real, so you make no sense..” She tilted her head. “Would you like to see some of what I can do? Look behind you.”

Kenji turned slowly to see the entire family he had taken hostage, frozen in time.

“That is a very good trick, don’t you think? They do not know I am here, and they cannot be scared of you if they are stopped that way. Want to see another trick? Turn around.”

Kenji whipped his whole body around to see a red-haired Japanese girl where the fox had been, naked except for the furry pointed ears that on either side of her head and the long tail that waved in the air behind her. She was curled up in a chair, oblivious to her own nakedness.

“I am a fox spirit, silly. Why should clothes matter? I live my life naked.” Her lips moved when she spoke, and she smiled at him before a short green dress shimmered into existence around her, hiding her charms. “Is that better, Kenji? Am I pretty?”

“Y … yes, you are pretty.”

“And you are a handsome boy.” She shook her head. “And a good boy. A pity you are so wrong.”

“Wrong?”

She pouted. “This thing you do, with that poor excuse for a weapon. You were not meant to be a thief. Or to frighten children.”

“I had no choice. My family was starving.”

The kitsune shook her head. “So wrong.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because it is true.” She shrugged. “That is why I am here. We kitsune are not interested in human ideas like good and evil. We are only interested in what is right and wrong, and you are wrong.”

“What’s the difference?”

She sighed. “If the grass is purple instead of green, it is not good or evil. It is just wrong. To be right, it needs to be green. Or if a human signs a contract and then refuse to live up to it, that is wrong.”

Kenji looked at her. “And I’m … wrong?”

“You are a good student and a good boy. That is the contract you signed with your heart. But now? Now you act like a bandit, take innocents hostage, and you hide behind children.” She inclined her head towards the frozen family. “Of course you are wrong.”

“I know. I’m so sorry.” He sat down hard and put his head in his hands, the gun forgotten.
“And now, I’m trapped. It’s way too late to fix it now.”

The kitsune laughed and shook her head. “Silly Kenji. I could fix you easily. I could make you right. You know I could.”

Kenji looks up, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “How?”

She shrugged. “I am kitsune. I am magick. Fixing you is nothing to me. But fixing you must mean something to you, or I will not make even that small an effort. Do you want to be right again?”

“Yes, please! If you can, please get me out of this! I’ll do anything!”

“Even promise to stay right?” Her eyes narrowed. “There is more to my life than fixing you, Kenji. If I should ever find out you have made yourself wrong again, I will not return to fix you again. You will have to live with being wrong, or make yourself right. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do.”

She nodded. “Then I will help.”

The kitsune rose to her feet in one graceful move, and wandered across the floor to the family in the corner. She kissed each of them on the forehead in turn, then turned and raise her head, sniffing at the air. Finding a scent, she blew a kiss in that direction and smiled.

“All who saw you being wrong will not remember what you look like. Each one will have a different memory of the wrong one, and all will contradict the others. See how easy that is?”

Kenji watched, wide-eyed, as the fox girl approached him. She tilted her head down and looked at him through her eyelashes, then took his hand.

“Now we go home.”

Time blinked –

– and they were in the room he shared with his little sister.

They heard her breathing, harsh and labored. The kitsune approached the bed and trailed her fingers down the front of her chest. The little girl gave a shuddering sigh, smiled, and relaxed.

She turned to find Kenji looking at her.

“Now she is right as well, yes?” He nodded, and she smiled. “Good. Come. More to do.”

She walked past him and phased through the closed door as if it were not there. He opened it and followed as she walked past his mother and the two younger children, all asleep in front of the television.

The kitsune walked into the kitchen and paused. He watched as she closed her eyes and spun once in place. The cabinets filled with food of all kinds, and as she trailed her fingers across the front of the refrigerator, it glowed briefly.

She turned to him.

“Food … for a time. Some of the kitsune serve Inari, the kami of so many things. This is a gift in her name, for she is the guardian and provider of rice, tea, sake, and farming.”

“But humans must also earn their way.” The kitsune moved to Kenji. “So it is fortunate for you that Inari is also the kami of success, prosperity, and merchants.”

She reached out and took the gun from his unresisting hand. It glowed briefly, then shrank to become a golden fox on a long chain. Lifting her arms, she placed it over his head until the pendant rested on his chest.

“This charm will make those who have work wish to hire you, but it will only work for a week. After that, you must work hard to make your employer happy to have hired you.” She touched his cheek. “You must keep your job so you can stay right, yes?”

Kenji nodded, unable to speak.

The kitsune moved closer to him, and looked up into his eyes.

“All of this is a gift, Kenji. I do this because wrongness offends me, as it does all kitsune, and to honor the old ways. But I will only give it once. Do not be wrong again.”

He nodded again. “Thank you. I will remember.”

She smiled, then faded slowly and disappeared.

###

Instead of my room at home, I materialized in Akomachi’s woods, still in my Japanese foxgirl form.

“You did well, daughter.” She spoke from behind me, and I spun around to see her there, in her true kitsune form, all white fur and nine tails, and I felt her happiness as it flowed from her through me.

“It felt … right,” I said slowly, and she nodded. “When I chose to embrace being kitsune to save him, I understood why it was important to me to do so, as a kitsune. Not for human reasons, because he was a good boy. Because in doing what he did – by making that one mistake – he made himself become wrong, and I needed him to be right again.”

“Because what you felt was right, Becca. Not only did you save him from himself, but you did it by understanding what kitsune value above all else, and you used your magic as a kitsune to make it so. You helped him by thinking as we think – and no matter what happens at the convocation, you have shown me without words that you are truly one of us. You are my child. And you have made me proud.”

I changed into my own true kitsune shape, more fox in human form like my mother, but with red fur and just a single tail. I ran to her, and she wrapped me in her arms and nuzzled me gently behind my ears as her love surrounded me and let me feel how much she cared.

As I hugged her in return, I thought I had taken an important first step into a world I had been afraid of only a short time ago.

I knew now that I was kitsune as well as human. And that my mother – this mother – was proud.

Who knew kitsune could cry happy?

###

Byers stood in the alley, still female, still naked, and frustrated nearly beyond endurance. The magic Chaos had given her was as unpredictable as it was powerful, and for someone as experienced and well-trained as Byers had been, that inability to get what she wanted out of each attempt made her feel like a novice all over again.

Her first attempt to use it failed spectacularly. She reached into memory and used her training to build a spell to restore her original gender – specifically, to make herself male. But when she tried to cast it, the energy veered wildly away from her and struck a nearby dumpster instead. Almost instantly, the spell wrapped the oversized metal container in plain brown paper with the address of the Las Vegas Sanitation Department scrawled across the front in bold writing. Most of the “package” was covered in stamps, and if Byers had been interested in counting them all, she would have seen the postage was exactly enough to cover the cost of reaching the addressee.

‘Mail instead of male?’ She shook her head. ‘What kind of power is this?’

Thinking something simpler would be easier to control, she decided to create a spell that would make her clean, and remove the smell of weeks of being mounted by strays. Her new female nose was more sensitive that she remembered her male one to be, and she felt like she could smell every moment.

To make sure she could hold the focus on herself, she chose to attach the spell to a simple phrase. At first, she thought to use a single word, like “clean,” but given what happened to the dumpster, she worried the spell might result in an alley so sterile you could eat off the worn concrete. Instead, she decided that what she really needed was a bath.

She closed her eyes and focused, took a deep breath, and said, “Give me a bath.”

There was a loud thud, and Byers opened her eyes to find an old-fashioned footed bathtub sitting on the pavement a few inches in front of her. It was empty, but as she looked at it, the thought went through her mind that it could just as easily have landed on her.

She shuddered, then sighed.

‘Not specific enough,’ she thought. So she spent more time working on the right wording, then closed her eyes again.

“Bathe me,” she said.

Without warning, she was lifted into the air by a pair of ghostly hands. It happened so quickly that Byers let out a high-pitched squeal, leaving her feeling even more unmanned than she had felt a few seconds before. The hands held her aloft for a second or two, then plunged her into the deep tub, which was now full of hot water. Before she could do anything more than struggle to the surface and grab onto the side, the hands began washing her with a washcloth and sweet-smelling soap, slipping over her slick skin and darting into places that startled and embarrassed her at the same time.

At first she tried to avoid the hands, but it was like trying to dodge a breeze. Every move exposed all the parts of her she was trying to so hard to protect, and finally she just sat there and let the hands do their work. They finished washing her body, then shampooed her hair and rinsed it clean. Finally, they lifted her out of the tub, wrapped her in a large towel, and disappeared, taking the bathtub with them.

“At least I’m clean,” Byers whispered, her tone bitter. “I managed to accomplish something with all this power.”

She turned her face upward and shouted at the sky. “But what am I supposed to do with that? Scrub her and her friend to death?”

“Hey, pretty lady. No need to shout.”

She turned quickly, gathering the towel in front of her to hide her nakedness. Two men stood there, wide grins on their faces. They were big, much bigger than Byers was back when she was a man, and now they towered over her even from fifteen feet away. They were both unshaven, and dressed roughly. And they stood far enough apart to make sure she could never reach the street at the end of the alley.

Byers groaned inside. ‘How much worse could this day get?’

The other one spoke.

“Yeah, no shouting. I mean, nobody cares about loud noises in this neighborhood, but why borrow trouble, right?”

“Oh, I dunno, Al,” the first one replied. “Like you said, nobody around here gives a damn, right? How much you wanna bet I can make her howl … or scream?”

He grinned wider and took a step forward. Byers felt the fear rush through her, and with it the strange magic that seem to rise up and embrace her terror. She raised her arm and pointed, and screamed at the top of her lungs

“GO AWAY!” The words echoed from the alley walls, and the magic seemed to flare with each echo to grow even stronger. It surged through her arm and across the alley in a pulse of jagged lightning, and when it hit the man in the chest, it pushed him up and away from her so quickly, it almost seemed like he shrank into nothingness instead of disappearing in the distant sky above the Las Vegas skyline.

There was a long silence as Byers and the second man stared at each other. She could feel the power moving across her skin now, caressing and biting her as it moved, and the man began to back away from her slowly. Byers saw him start to move, and shook her head slowly. He stopped, unsure of what to do next.

“No,” she said softly, a smile growing on her lips as she raised her hand again. “I want you … to run.”

The power shot out once again and wrapped the man in an eerie glow. Byer had thought, fleetingly, that the command might make him run out into the desert until he dropped, as far and as fast as he could.

Instead, he began to melt, dissolving like a candle under a blowtorch. Hair and skin and bones turned to liquid as she watched, running down his body to pool at his feet, spilling from his shoes and the bottoms of his pants legs until there was nothing but a pile of clothes in a flesh-colored puddle.

Byers took a step towards the puddle, and then another, and stopped when a few bubbles rose from its depths and popped, releasing what sounded like muted screams.

He was still alive.

‘It obeys my commands,’ she thought, ‘but not my intent. Why?’

The answer came as soon as she posed the question. ‘Because the power was given to me by Chaos. And in the heat of battle, chaos is everyone’s enemy, except its own.’

She stepped barefoot on a stream of warm flesh and watched the bubbles on the surface increase and pop, cherishing each scream she caused.

‘That means the bitch and her friend won’t know what hit them. Because, of course, until it happens, neither will I. Exquisite.’

Byers smiled.

This was going to be fun.

###

His new Champion had called it the Advocate. He had a name for Her avatar now, and that pleased Him. He knew that it shouldn’t make him happy to have a name, because names imposed order on the chaos He treasured, and knowing a name should not please Him at all.

But it did.

He tried to figure out why He should not be pleased. After all, He thought, a little order in the short term would allow Him to create much larger chaos later, and certainly some measure of sacrifice had to be made if He was to steal the Multiverse from She who claimed to have created it.

Still, He felt … unsettled, somehow.

He would leave it be, for now.

© 2013 as a work in progress, all rights reserved. Posted with permission of the author.

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