Fandom: Spy x Family
Word count: 4.1k for this chapter | 32.4k in total
Rating: T
Warnings: Temporary character death, graphic violence, horror imagery, body horror, mild gore, whump, language
Cover art by @buf309
Summary: Anya is kidnapped, and Twilight is thrown into the horrors of a mysterious, deadly village. Forced and then choosing to survive its trials - physical and mental - he's brought to figure out who he truly is. (A Resident Evil Village fusion)
AO3
~
Author's Note: Probably my most insane fanfic project yet. After I successfully probed SOMEONE, aka @spencer-is-someone, into watching a Resident Evil Village gameplay, they fell in love with Ethan Winters but felt he went through too much in the game, prompting the idea "What if Loid went through all that stuff instead". And well, 32 thousand words later, here I am, inflicting this literal horror upon y'all.
I made a post about it, and the absolutely wonderful @buf309 went and made this amazing cover art, and I literally couldn't be more thankful for that. I was so amazed when I saw the first draft sketch that I went like I'M GONNA WAIT TILL IT'S READY TO POST THE FIC. Seriously, words cannot describe how grateful I am, I sincerely hope the fic feels satisfying enough for the work you've done <3
If you know how the Resident Evil Village story goes, this is pretty much the same... yes, in all of its "parts-in-jars" glory (if you know you know, if you don't you will soon), just with Twilight taking the place of Ethan Winters. There will be a few changes from the original story to fit Twilight's character, some to facilitate the adaptation from game narrative to fanfic narrative, some to fit my own tastes, and an actually hopeful ending because we were all left heartbroken after the ending of RE Village so might as well pour some healing juice to put our hearts back together same way Ethan puts his limbs back together and hope for the best.
Do take note of the warnings, please. There is one part of the story I actually had chills while writing (yes, that part for those of you who know, it will be slightly changed but the essence will be the same) and it is based on the story of a horror/survival game, so make sure you're okay to read something as intense as this.
The story is written in full, though I'm still doing small bits of editing here and there. I don't have a posting schedule, but I'm thinking of updating twice a week, or once if I see the editing is taking longer. Chapter titles are taken from track titles of the game's original soundtrack.
So yeah, long intro over, take not of the warnings, I hope you enjoy if you read on!
~
Chapter 1: Bloodthirsty
~
“Anya, don’t sit so close to the TV,” Loid said, not looking up from the counter.
Unsurprisingly, there was no response. He wouldn’t doubt that she hadn’t even heard him, let alone acknowledged his request.
He picked up a handful of minced meat to mould into a burger steak, deciding to give her another reminder in two minutes from now. Yor had just left to walk Bond, so it was only his direction she had to follow – and she was starting to make clear whose directions she preferred to follow nowadays.
He placed the burger on the pan as his body tensed. A split second later, the door burst open.
He jumped through the opening between the kitchen and the living room, but even that seemed a pointless blessing as thick smoke quickly covered the apartment.
He rushed through it to grab Anya, who trembled against him, but he didn’t have the time to move away from the shots.
Two silenced shots, piercing through his clothes and reaching into the skin of his back.
No blood. But they were pinching his skin, and he immediately felt groggy…
He dropped to his side, unable to move as figures approached him. One of them took Anya.
“PAPA!” she screamed at him.
He feebly raised his hand. “Wait,” was the only thing he could say, before his hand dropped.
More figures approached him, and then his vision went dark.
~
Focus, Twilight.
Don’t open your eyes yet. Don’t alert the enemy yet.
He held his breath for a moment.
He was somewhere cold, outside.
He could feel something soft but freezing underneath him. Snow?
His hair didn’t feel wet, so he mustn’t have been lying there long.
It was quiet. He could only hear distant sounds of wind and crows flying somewhere close.
He couldn’t feel anyone’s presence, so he decided to open one single eye to check.
But then both his eyes shot wide open.
In front of him stood a magnificent gothic mansion. It could be a mansion, or it could be a damn castle. It was surrounded by a thick wall, like a fortress.
He sat up. He was indeed lying on the snow, but it was the least of his concerns right now.
He had apparently been placed on the castle’s garden. Right in the middle of the winter, it was only decorated by a few naked trees as well as three scarecrows.
Those didn’t seem to do their job well enough, he thought, as crows still flew around, some even sitting on them.
He got up, checking himself for injuries. He couldn’t feel any pain or any indication of pierced skin. How had they drugged him?
It was then he realized he was now wearing his jacket.
Had they dressed him for the cold? While taking off his apron and the gloves he wore while preparing food?
What the hell?
Where even was this place?
Why was he brought here?
Where was Anya?
His attention was drawn back to the apparently useless scarecrows, and a chill ran down his spine – unrelated to the cold – when he noticed something eerie about them.
Carefully, he took a few steps towards them.
His breath caught in his throat when he was close enough to notice.
Those weren’t plain scarecrows.
Those were actual, human bodies hanging on wooden crosses.
His breath finally came out shaky, forming a cloud.
What the hell was this place?
Unable to quell his curiosity, he stepped closer, trying to notice for any details on the bodies, in case he recognized them.
All three seemed to be men, of ages between thirty and fifty, and they couldn’t have been dead for longer than a week or so. The cold might have preserved their bodies, but exposure to the outside would do as much more damage.
He couldn’t recognize any of their faces – or what was left of them.
Well, he didn’t even know where he was, how far away from Berlint or even in Ostania for that matter.
He clenched his hands into fists and turned around, looking around the walls surrounding the castle.
There was a huge metal door blocking the path outside. No climbing the wall; it was too smooth and covered in even more slippery ice. Climbing the trees wouldn’t give him enough height to swing himself out.
Which meant, his only way of getting answers was through the castle.
He must have been placed there for a reason, after all, and if they’d wanted to kill him they would have already done so.
He reached the entrance, and the door swung open easily.
The entrance hall was as luxuriously decorated as the outside hinted at. A lush burgundy carpet went up the few steps, leading to a wall where a painting of three young women hung.
The door closed behind him, and he didn’t miss the definitive clang as metal bars started descending right in front of it.
He turned, and for a few seconds he weighed his options.
He could break the door quickly enough before the bars descended too low, and slip outside.
But then again, they obviously wanted him in there, and again, it didn’t seem that killing him was their priority.
He faced forward, ignoring the sound of the bars trapping him in there.
He might as well play their game.
He walked to the painting. Underneath it was an inscription that wrote “Bela, Daniela, and Cassandra.”
Which one was which?
The women on the painting didn’t seem too different from each other. The painting itself didn’t seem all too enlightening, either; it looked like any common Romantic-style oil painting.
Well, it wasn’t going to give him any answers, would it?
He turned around, walking down a corridor and out into another, larger hall. He noticed how warm the whole building was, despite the freezing weather outside and the apparently old construction of the place.
This hall had hanging, lit candles all over the walls, though they couldn’t be the source of the heating. The lighting was low, but lucky for him, he’d been trained enough in low lighting for that not to be an issue.
He jerked back at the sound of a swarm of flies coming his way, then he sensed someone’s presence.
Flies, he could handle.
But then the flies started gathering together, and within seconds they morphed into three women, dressed in black hooded cloaks.
“Wha—?” he whispered.
“Looking for Anya?” a voice said, and he assumed it’d come from one of the women. Who had just formed from flies.
The absurdity of his situation almost made him forget that she had just mentioned Anya.
Which meant they probably knew where she was.
However, he was too shocked by the sight that he couldn’t move when one of the women, all of whom were cackling, approached him and pushed him backwards.
She swung the scythe she held in her hand, and he pulled his legs away just before she could bury it in his calf.
“Oh, he’s feisty!” the woman said with a wide smile.
Her arm then almost zapped through the air, and his left leg was exploding in pain before he could even register the movement.
He yelped in pain as she leaned closer to him and took a long sniff.
Her mouth and jaw were covered in blood, though her blond hair looked pristine clean.
“Mmm, man-blood,” she said.
She then leaned back and started dragging him, by the scythe embedded in his leg, as he still lay helplessly on the ground.
She was too fast. He flailed around, trying to grab at anything they passed by to make her stop, even though that would mean the scythe would rip his entire leg open, but then another woman reached his other side and buried her scythe in his right leg.
He threw his head back, biting down another yell of pain.
Could he just have one moment?!
The women dragged him down another corridor and into what he quickly realized was a bedroom. They removed their scythes, and he quickly reached to assess the damage, when he heard the blond woman say “Mother, I bring you fresh prey,” as she pointed at him with her hand.
“You are so kind to me, daughters,” came a voice of a woman who sounded older than them.
Older, and bigger.
She was sitting on a massive chair, holding an equally massive glass of red wine. She took a sip from it, then stood up and turned to him, saying, “Now, lets take a look at him.”
He raised his head to look at her.
And then raised it higher.
She had the build of a muscular woman, with curves proportionate to her height, which must have been about three meters tall. She wore a black wide-brimmed hat over her chin-length black hair, and a long white dress that reached down to her feet, though she moved comfortably in it.
“Well, well. Loid Forger,” she said. “Came looking for your daughter, I presume?”
He sat there, frozen.
They knew who he was – or at least pretended to be? And they knew Anya was also taken?
She walked closer to him, smiling as she put her hands on her hips. “For you to think you can waltz right in here—let’s see how special you are,” she nearly purred.
She threw her hands up in a sign for something, and two of the younger women said “Yes, mother,” as they grabbed his arms and pulled him up.
His first thought was that he was standing up surprisingly well for just having had two scythes ran through his legs.
His second thought was terror as one woman grabbed his hand, and the other produced a very sharp-looking knife.
Before he could jerk back, she sliced his palm open.
He bit back a grunt; it wasn’t a deep cut, but it would be annoying…
His last thought trailed off as the tall woman reached down, grabbed his hand, brought it to her lips… and started sucking.
Now he really was frozen in terror.
What the hell was this nightmare?
The woman pulled her head back, licking at her lips with a blood-soaked tongue.
She threw his hand away. “Hmm,” she said. “Still fresh, but only barely.”
He wrapped his hand into a fist, keeping it close to his chest.
“Then let’s devour his man-flesh quickly, mother!” one of the women said, handing a handkerchief to her.
“But I’m the one who captured him!” the blond woman protested.
“Now, now, daughters,” the tall woman said, patting at her lips with the handkerchief.
“First, I must inform Mother Miranda. But later, well, there will be enough for everyone.” She threw the handkerchief aside, smiling down at him. “Put him up!”
The young women surrounded him, and though he struggled, they were too strong for him as they put heavy manacles on his wrists.
A thick build, but he could break out of them with little effort.
But then, they secured a chain to them, and the chain started going up. He was lifted off his feet, and started grunting as the full force of his weight fell on his wrists.
Don’t say anything. Don’t let them take a hold of any weaknesses.
He clenched his jaw, keeping his voice from making any sounds as they headed out of the room. The tall woman had to bend to get through that door, and one of the young women – the second one who had stabbed his leg – bent down and picked up the discarded handkerchief, smelling the blood on it and laughing, as she followed them.
Breathing hard, he looked up at the manacles.
The pain was intense but manageable, though he already felt the tingling of numbness in his fingers. By his calculations, he had about fifteen or so minutes before cut blood circulation would start causing permanent damage.
Escape, first. Then you can freak out.
He grabbed the chain and dragged his body up. Though his legs were still bleeding, he brought them up so he could hold the chain between his feet.
He was gasping by the time he managed that, but at least he had less pain on his hands and a better view of the manacles.
They were old and rusty, but seemed to have a fairly standard locking mechanism. Bringing his body closer, he fished the lockpick out from a hidden pocket of his jacket.
Biting his lip, he worked through the lock of the right manacle. Just as it opened, his feet slipped from the chain and dropped down, causing all of his weight to drop onto his injured left hand.
The pain knocked the air out of his lungs.
Think! Think! Pull yourself together!
Taking in a laboured breath, he looked back up.
The lockpick had slipped from his hand and was now too far down for him to get it. His right hand was free, but he didn’t have any other options left.
Reaching up, he wrapped his free hand around his left thumb, and with a sharp pull, he dislocated it.
As his other hand was coated in blood from the cut, his wrist slipped through the manacle as soon as his thumb wasn’t in the way.
He dropped to the ground clumsily, not managing to balance his landing.
Wheezing, he looked at his left hand.
Bleeding, and a dislocated thumb.
He gave himself ten seconds.
Ten seconds to wonder where the hell he had gotten himself into, what that tall woman even was, standing at three meters tall and drinking blood, and what her “daughters” were, emerging from flies and also participating in… blood drinking? Cannibalism?
Ten seconds, and he was back to himself.
Focus, Twilight.
He looked at his legs – they were still bleeding, but he felt confident he could stand on them. Though those scythes looked sharp, they must have split a tendon or two apart.
At the corner of the room stood a vanity table, and on top of it, along with various cosmetics, lay a small green bottle with a cross on the label.
He stood up carefully, glad that his legs weren’t trembling. He picked up the bottle, carefully reading the label.
Medical alcohol.
Not one to trust this place that much, he opened the lid, and sure enough, it smelled like ethyl alcohol.
He sat down with a grunt, pulling his right trouser up. He didn’t have any clean gauze, so his only option was to pour liquid right over the wound.
He braced himself for the sting of pain, but instead, the liquid brought a cool, numbing sensation.
And then, right in front of his eyes, his wound closed then disappeared completely.
He stared at it.
Ten more seconds.
What the hell.
He looked at the bottle again. Medical alcohol, it said. It smelled like it too.
He looked back at his leg, raising his other trouser where the other wound still stood.
What the hell?!
Uncertain, he poured a little less liquid over that wound.
The wound immediately stopped bleeding as new skin seemed to form, though it didn’t heal completely.
He let out a breath. If he were honest with himself, this wasn’t really the weirdest thing to happen in the last few minutes, was it?
He turned to his mangled hand. Just how much could that liquid heal?
He poured an equal dosage to it, and was still surprised to see his thumb painlessly slide into its place, as well as the cut close completely.
Well, at least it could be useful.
He didn’t have time to worry over the supernatural. He had to get out of there, and find out where Anya was.
He took the path of unlocked doors, as he didn’t want to waste time and noise trying to break the lock of every locked door he found. Breaking the windows wouldn’t lead him anywhere – each one was sealed shut, and though he wasn’t averse to turning into a hooligan for the sake of escaping, the entire castle seemed to be surrounded by that wall.
He needed to get to a higher floor, but the safest and most silent path led him to the basement, where he found himself walking along piles and piles of dead bodies.
He had to hold his breath as he passed them by; apparently the occupants of the castle had the habit of feasting on the blood of humans, and did it so often that the amount of bodies was too big to act as decoration for their garden.
It was all men, however. As young as twenty-three, from what he could gather with a quick look.
The fly-women seemed to be confident enough in their hunting that they didn’t take away the handgun from one of the more fresh bodies. Twilight couldn’t tell if that was a police officer, a soldier, or a man aware of what he’d been dealing with, but it didn’t matter to him. He undid the holster, as gently as he could out of respect of the deceased man, and he put it on under his jacket.
He checked the magazine. Ten bullets out of sixteen.
He looked at the man. Had he shot those first six bullets right before he was killed?
The man had a shoulder bag on him, and inside was a box of bullets, a total of forty. He slid that too over his own shoulder.
He kept the safety on the gun on, but held it in his hand. He picked up a hunting knife from one of the other bodies and walked on.
As the bodies thinned out, he found a lone skeletal figure draped in a plain canvas cloak. The limbs stood out, bare, emaciated, and rotting. While other bodies were in a similar state of decomposition, they were fully clothed, at most with a few rips in their clothes. This one was the only one so bare.
And it was holding a scythe in its hand, old and rusty in comparison to the women’s scythes, but still sharp enough to do harm.
He approached it carefully, keeping both hands on the gun.
He thanked his training for that, as the figure moved when he passed right by it.
He yelped in shock, moving away from it and raising his gun at it.
“Stop!” he said. “Don’t move!”
The creature, whatever that was, didn’t seem like it listened let alone register his words. It stood up, hunched over, then lunged at him with the scythe.
Not finding any alternatives, he shot right at its head.
The creature jerked back as a screech left its mouth.
Twilight held his breath.
His blood froze when he saw it still stand on its legs and try to swing at him again.
He shot again. He was perfectly certain the bullet got through its head.
Yet the creature moved again.
And he shot again.
Only now did the creature finally drop to its knees, but it was still screeching and growling.
Desperate, Twilight took the knife and drove it through the creature’s skull, three times, until he felt it stop moving.
It collapsed on the floor.
Hell knew if it would rise again. It was supposed to be dead already, wasn’t it?
He turned around and ran.
There were more creatures on the way. Some he slashed at with the knife, some he shot at, some he simply ran away from. A few managed to nick him with their scythes, and if he were honest, he was more worried about infections than the injuries themselves.
As he found a quiet corner, he pulled out the alcohol – or whatever that was. It seemed to work on the nicks too, making them close quickly and painlessly.
He supported himself on the wall, forcing his breath to calm down.
He had to get out. Now.
Holding the gun tight to his hand, he moved to leave, but then a buzzing and a voice sounded from behind him.
“Hmm. Warm, bright, red blood.”
He didn’t turn to look at her. He knew it was the blond woman.
He made a run for it as flies swarmed around him, until he found a staircase going up, reaching into what looked like a kitchen area.
“Where are you going, little one?”
The woman appeared right in front of him, cutting off his path. She was smiling at him, surrounded by flies, her face still stained with blood.
“I just want to find Anya,” he managed.
“Aw,” she said. She then pushed him back and he fell on the ground. She lay over him, reaching at his neck and biting.
Yelling, he took the gun and fired twice at her stomach.
She reached up, laughing as fresh blood ran from her lips.
He shot at her head.
“Your bullets cannot harm m—”
Her voice cut off when another of his shots passed through her and hit the window behind her.
The glass cracked, and it quickly shattered as a cold gust of wind blew into the room.
The gust threw the woman’s hood off her head. Twilight tightened his hold on the gun when he spotted a massive, fleshy scar on her temple, a bald spot from her long hair.
The woman shrieked, then growled. Her skin, already pale as it was, seemed to start cracking and turn grey. She looked at her hands, still gasping in pain, and then turned to him, yelling, “You stupid man-thing!”
His mind finally picked up the pace. The cold made her weak?
He stood up, raising his gun at her.
“How dare you bare your teeth at us!” she shouted, then lunged at him with her scythe.
He managed to block her attack, pushing her back, and he shot at her face.
She groaned, still standing, but she said, “What? My body—it’s breaking…”
He kept his gun up. “Just let me go,” he said.
A wild rumble came from her mouth as she turned to attack him again. She reached him, and he could only block her at the last moment, his arms taking the full blow of her scythe. “Give up!” she said, reaching back for another swing of her weapon.
He shot twice at her head, and she yelled again.
The flies seemed to drop in numbers, and her skin cracked more and more. He barely managed to avoid two more of her attacks, and then she fell on him, ready to bite his head off, he supposed in the split second it took him to kick her off of him.
He shot two more times.
“This can’t be,” she said, weakly now, her body swaying.
“Let me go!” he repeated, taking two steps back.
She screamed and reached back with her scythe, and he shot again.
And then a sizzling sound came from her body, as she started swinging wildly, not reaching anything. She groaned and groaned, and her body transformed.
It seemed to calcify into gravel, as she slowly stopped moving, her hand still up in a pose of attack.
And then it broke down.
Whatever it was, it cracked into small pieces, and what started as the form of a woman was now a pile of something on the ground.
Breathing hard, he leaned his back on the wall behind him and slid down to the floor.
His hands were trembling, his feet felt like water.
What the hell was all that?
Were was he?
Why was he brought here?
And where was Anya?
What were those creatures…?
He closed his eyes. Ten seconds. Just ten seconds to freak out.
He just had to get out. Find Anya and…
He opened his eyes, his throat tensing.
Did he really have to find her?
As far as he was concerned, right now she was a liability to him. He had to prioritize his safety first.
It wasn’t like there were piles of bodies of dead girls around, was it?
Letting out a deep sigh, he stood back up. The woman had managed to hurt him a little, but the healing liquid was in short supply and he could handle those injuries up to a point.
The woman. Who was now a pile of ash.
Calm down, Twilight. Get yourself in order and find a way out.
The castle proved massive, and he couldn’t find any viable exit paths even as he seemed to reach what looked like hallways reaching into bedrooms.
Then, a mournful scream sounded from a floor below.
“What have you done to my daughter?!”
His blood chilled. If the “daughter” had been that vicious, he didn’t want to face whatever her mother had in store for him.
Summary: Anya is kidnapped, and Twilight is thrown into the horrors of a mysterious, deadly village. Forced and then choosing to survive its trials - physical and mental - he's brought to figure out who he truly is. (A Resident Evil Village fusion)
Rating: T
Warnings: Temporary character death, graphic violence, horror imagery, body horror, mild gore, whump, language
Fandom: Spy x Family
Word count: 1k for this chapter | 33k in total
Rating: T
Warnings: Temporary character death, graphic violence, horror imagery, body horror, mild gore, whump, language
Cover art by buf309
Summary: Anya is kidnapped, and Twilight is thrown into the horrors of a mysterious, deadly village. Forced and then choosing to survive its trials - physical and mental - he’s brought to figure out who he truly is. (A Resident Evil Village fusion)
AO3
Read from the beginning
~
Chapter 11: Light at the End
~
It was said that when one door closed, another one opened.
For all intents and purposes, the door to his spy life was apparently closing behind him.
He didn’t want to stop. Losing half of his field of vision was already a hurdle he had to get used to, but if his body became as durable as Dimitrescu’s, or Heisenberg’s…
He wasn’t becoming a monster. Not anytime soon, at least.
After all, hadn’t Miranda said that his affinity to the mold was perfect?
Of course, it took a couple weeks before he could walk properly, and even then he needed a cane most of the time.
They were relocated to a small town, less than an hour away from Berlint.
Franky was told everything, and he would visit every other weekend. Twilight was surprised with the familiarity his visits offered. He was glad to have a new life with Anya and Yor, but apparently the connection he shared with Franky helped him remember that despite his new nature, his humanity was still intact.
Yuri was told less so, and he would visit in the weekends between Franky’s visits. Yor was begrudgingly used to lying to him, but the way her face glowed every time she saw her little brother alleviated some of Twilight’s guilt.
That left Anya needing a reminder of her old life. So, against Sylvia’s better judgment, they also told a similar lie to the Blackbells.
That tale was about Mr. Forger recovering from a car accident, and needing the peaceful life of the countryside while he healed. Becky would visit twice a week after school, arriving with Martha, her attendant, and leaving by nightfall.
Although it was his idea to tell the Blackbell family, so that Anya could keep her friend in her life, he couldn’t help wondering if their secrets would eventually drive the two girls apart. But then, what would Anya say? “I was murdered by five genetically modified humans, and my father literally died putting me back together, but I infected him with my mutated mold so he’s still walking among us as a conscious corpse. Also I read minds”?
Miranda had kept archives of everything related to Project Apple, including notes on Anya’s nature. It was only long-term contact with her that could make someone infected by her, which meant that the weekly visits from the others wouldn’t be harmful, at least not in the short term. Yor was naturally immune, and Loid was completely made of that stuff now, though he wasn’t infectious. In the meantime, they would give tissue samples so that WISE could try and develop a vaccine for other people who would come into contact with Anya.
Yuri already had the same gene that made him immune, like Yor, but they hadn’t discussed how they would convince Becky Blackbell to get a mysterious vaccine, or if it would be acceptable to give it to her without her knowledge.
Sylvia kept telling them they had time to figure things out. He wanted to get back to work, but she was adamant in making him retire.
He’d protested, at first. There was still a lot of work to do; and if his body adapted well, he could only imagine how much more effective he would be. To think that he could run past enemies firing bullets at him, only feeling them as simple papercuts…
But Sylvia said that Miranda’s archives were deeply detailed about Project Apple. Details that proved the previous Ostanian government had funded the project, fully aware it would be dealing with human experimentation. Names and signatures and direct orders to dispose of any non-cooperating witnesses.
Those files were like a nuclear time bomb. If the Westalian government found out about them, there would be no stopping that side from reigniting the flames of war, but for now the current government in Ostania seemed to see the threat well enough to begin suggesting policies for surrender of weapons.
It wasn’t their best tool; people still deserved to know the atrocities that took place in their country, and the ones involved still deserved to face consequences for their decisions.
But it was something. And people like him couldn’t afford to haggle.
So he stayed in that small town as he slowly recovered his strength. Anya bounced back immediately, in a physical sense. Emotionally, she rarely spent more than a few minutes or so away from him or Yor.
Since learning about her real age, they decided to let her pause school for now. She could start over the next year, without having to compete with kids one year older than her, while still reeling from what had happened to her.
For now, she spent her time playing, drawing, learning to care for the flowers in their small garden.
And at night, she would cling to him or Yor, when nightmares plagued her.
At least, he thought, she was young enough to find time to heal.
He didn’t know what time he had.
His nightmares weren’t any better, and though his body showed the usual signs of development, nails growing, and hair, whether scalp, facial, or body hair growing in a normal pace too, he had the feeling he would simply be stuck to how he looked like now.
From Miranda’s files they had deduced she’d stayed the same age for nearly eighty years. The Lords had stayed the same age too, after she’d experimented on them, and all of them would have probably lasted way longer if they hadn’t messed with the wrong spy.
So now, it was a matter of waiting and seeing. Aside from missing a heartbeat and his body being slightly colder than normal, he seemed to be working fine.
Yor stayed. She wanted to be there for Anya, she seemed to have forgiven him for his lies, she wasn’t going to report him, and she promised she’d always be ready and willing to put a stop to him if he ever lost control.
Anya wanted to be sleeping with both of them, so they’d found a solution by having her sleep in the middle of a king size bed, while they lay on the sides.
And a few months into their adjusting into this life, Yor reached over and took his hand in hers, one night after Anya had fallen asleep.
She wasn’t scared. She wasn’t disgusted. She only saw two human beings that she wanted to give her love to.
They looked into each other’s eyes as they fell asleep.
Fandom: Spy x Family
Word count: 2.1k for this chapter | 17k so far | 32.4k in total
Rating: T
Warnings: Temporary character death, graphic violence, horror imagery, body horror, mild gore, whump, language
Cover art by @buf309
Summary: Anya is kidnapped, and Twilight is thrown into the horrors of a mysterious, deadly village. Forced and then choosing to survive its trials - physical and mental - he’s brought to figure out who he truly is. (A Resident Evil Village fusion)
AO3
Read from the beginning
~
Chapter 5: Acid Rain
~
Two gates remained for him to cross.
Moreau, the half-human half-fish, and Heisenberg, the one who could control metal. That one had a factory, right?
Deciding he’d rather have a battle somewhere inside during the upcoming night, he walked through the door with the mermaid crest.
He met a few more monsters – lycans, the man had called them? – on his path, one of whom was much bigger and wore a metal armor and helmet.
The plain lycans fell with a few bullets, but Twilight decided to test a grenade at the armored one.
The blast broke the metal apart, but the creature marched on still, so Twilight went for the shotgun instead.
He groaned when the creature fell. They’d managed to do some damage to him, too.
He could take it. Better save the healing for later.
His path took him down a small mine, which was slowly getting overtaken by green, mold-like formations.
The further in he went, the more of it grew on the walls, and despite the warning signs something told him this would be the way to go.
Finally, he found a set of wooden stairs going up. He walked them up silently, suddenly remembering his expertise was to infiltrate places.
The stairs led up to a small room covered in the green matter, with a yellow flask standing on a table right in his reach.
SUBJECT 007 – ARMS
He picked it up carefully, though his curiosity dragged his eyes to the creature standing in the other corner, his back to him.
He was hunched over, his arms dangling in front of him as he stared at a TV screen that played an old romance movie. He wore a dark cloak over his back, a hood over his head as well.
His back was humped, as if there was an unnatural growth expanding from it.
His legs were bare, and even from this distance Twilight could see the web between his toes and fingers.
Half-human, half-fish, wasn’t he? Moreau?
Twilight held the flask close to his chest and turned to leave, but his exit was blocked by the mold suddenly growing in size.
“Oh, Mother Miranda,” came a voice from the side. “If it’s for you, I’ll do anything…”
Twilight turned, feeling his blood chill.
Moreau’s voice sounded distorted, low in pitch, as if one played a tape at slow speed.
Moreau then turned to him, his eyes landing on the flask. “What are you doing with Mother’s special child?”
“She’s not hers!” Twilight hissed.
Whose was she?
Moreau stepped closer. The skin under his jaw was hanging low, as if it had been stretched and filled with extra flesh on the inside. “Oh, you have something to say?”
“Not really.” He looked at the closed path, trying to find any weak spots he could slash at.
“Mother will have her baby back!”
“Not at the expense of an innocent child’s life, she won’t. What do you care, anyway? Isn’t Miranda the one who did that to you?”
A deep giggle was heard from Moreau. “Why? Because you think I’m ugly?”
Twilight looked around. The place looked dank and dirty, and its only comfort seemed to be that old TV. “Is this what she’s given you? After she experimented on you?”
Moreau made a noise between a whine and a laugh. “You don’t know anything.”
And for once, neither was he interested in finding out. Taking out his knife, he slashed away at the mold until it fell apart.
“It’s too late,” Moreau said. “I plugged the way in. This is my territory, and I won’t let you leave!”
Twilight ran, his knife at the ready as more green growths appeared from the walls. He coughed. Damn, it was stinking.
“Dirty little sneak thief,” Moreau said from the distance.
When he reached the bottom floor, he saw what Moreau had meant. The growths had blocked the path he’d come from, though there was another exit that opened up to a small lake.
As he looked around more carefully, he realized it was a reservoir, surrounded by steep hills. He could see that across the water there was a building connected to a big metal floodgate. If he could reach that, he could find an exit.
The reservoir had been built in and around an older settlement. Under the murky water Twilight could see old houses, broken down by the water.
He didn’t have the time to wonder about this place’s history. There was a boat with an engine next to a small pier, and he jumped in and turned it on.
As he drifted through, he realized there was something moving in the water, close to him.
Was that Moreau? Was he so determined to not let him leave?
He reached the pier on the other side of the lake, immediately getting off. He wouldn’t trust the water around these parts.
As he did, however, a form emerged from the water and onto the wooden pier.
Twilight gasped, taking out his gun. “Stay back!”
It must have been Moreau, his cloak discarded. The flesh of his humped back wasn’t mere skin; it was full of bloated blisters, red and vivid like the flesh that had transformed Donna Beneviento’s face.
“You’re done,” Moreau grumbled, in a voice even lower than before. “The exit’s underwater. You’re not getting out of here.”
“Why?” Twilight found himself asking. “What are you to gain from this?”
“It’s too late. Miranda is already preparing the ceremony…”
“And she sent you to slow me down? She should try harder.”
“Oh, you think so?” Tendrils came out from the fleshy blisters, wagging around wildly.
Then, Moreau’s body stared expanding. Almost similar to how Dimitrescu had transformed, only this time it was more wet and slimy. He grew a tail, like one of a fish, and he fell over on his stomach as he grew and grew.
Underneath them, the pier started to crack. Twilight’s hair stood up.
Moreau was part fish. The water was his natural habitat.
Twilight’s was land.
He ran like hell for steady ground.
He heard it from behind him as the edge of the pier finally collapsed, a loud splash accompanying Moreau’s plunge.
Something big collided with the pier from underwater, and Twilight nearly fell over and into the lake. Finding his balance, he continued running, until another hit from below broke the other end of the pier apart.
He kept running, giving himself momentum, and he jumped when he reached the broken end.
He almost didn’t make it. He landed half on the rocky hill, his legs dangling over the surface of the water. He dragged himself up, turning to look just in time as Moreau’s massive form broke the pier completely.
He wasn’t looking to be fish food.
He ran to the building connected to the floodgates. It was old, made with wood that was breaking down from the humidity, but the system seemed to be working. There were instructions about the system’s use on a wall.
Moreau did say the exit was underwater, didn’t he?
Twilight followed the instructions, and slowly but surely, the floodgates opened, depleting the reservoir of the water as it flew out and down the hills.
Immediately, a long shriek was heard, as Moreau slowly emerged from the water.
Twilight reloaded his weapons, keeping his last remaining grenades at the ready.
Moreau had made clear he wasn’t going down without a fight. Might as well give him one.
Twilight still tried to sneak by him, but this place was indeed his territory, so as he trudged through the damp ground of the old, previously underwater settlement, he was ambushed by Moreau a few meters away from the exit. He growled at him with his wide mouth.
Twilight held no doubt Moreau could eat him whole. Instead, he fed him a live grenade.
Moreau let out a deep wail at the blast, but breathed in, saying, “I’ll make you proud, Mother. Watch me!”
Twilight switched to the shotgun, emptying it on him, then threw another grenade and put distance between them, reloading the shotgun once more.
The blast hit Moreau again, and he moaned, “Oh, why?”
Twilight turned to face him, shotgun at the ready, but as he shot at him he saw that Moreau was climbing on a building. Settling on its top, he turned his mouth to the sky.
“I’ve been saving this one,” he said, and started vomiting a green matter skywards.
It fell over the settlement like rain, and where it touched Twilight’s skin, it burned him like acid. He groaned in pain and found cover under a half-broken building, looking at the burns left on his hands.
Chemical burns. Some of it must have fallen on his head, too.
Clenching his teeth, he growled and emptied a pistol magazine onto Moreau’s form from afar. He doubted he did any meaningful damage, but he was so over it right now.
He had two more grenades left, and a little more of shotgun ammo. This had to last.
Breathing hard, he clenched a grenade on one hand, the other ready to pull the pin.
Of all moments, it was this one that brought him back.
Even in sickness, or in sadness…
He leaned back on the wall, as the acid rain slowly stopped.
Ten seconds.
Yor had taken Bond out for a walk when he and Anya got attacked and kidnapped. She must have come back home and found a mess. She must have been so worried… If she found out what they’d done to Anya…
I will fix it. I will make things right.
The seconds passed, and Moreau was coming down the building. As big as he was he was also clumsy, and so Twilight ran and threw two grenades right into his mouth, barely avoiding getting grabbed and swallowed whole himself.
“You bastard!” Moreau said, spitting acid at him.
Twilight barely noticed the burns now. He took out the shotgun and fired straight at his face.
And finally, finally, his body started turning to stone.
“Help me, Mother!” Moreau cried in a dying voice. “Maaaa—…” His voice died out, as more and more of him disintegrated.
Twilight dropped his arms, just barely holding onto the shotgun.
He was so over this.
He just wanted to get it over with.
Passing by Moreau’s ashy remains, he crossed over to the exit. He realized he’d done a full circle, as he was now entering the room he first saw Moreau in.
The TV was playing static now, and in front of it was a plate of half-eaten soft cheese, something like brie. He didn’t care about determining what cheese that was, as something else caught his attention.
On a table to the side was a big glass jar with something moving in it. It almost looked like a fetus, surrounded by the same pink pulsating flesh that was growing on Beneviento and Moreau’s bodies.
Just now he remembered the fleshy scars on the heads of Dimitrescu’s daughters. They had the same look as this.
A label on the glass wrote “Cadou”.
Was that thing… alive?
Suddenly, the TV reached signal, and a voice said “You’re better off that I thought.”
It was now showing a single image, the same as the final crest, a horse’s head surrounded by a horseshoe.
Heisenberg.
He could see him?
“You’re the last one in my way, aren’t you?” Twilight said to the TV.
“You’ve got fight. I’ll give you that, Agent Twilight.”
He froze.
Heisenberg laughed. “Oh yes, yes. I know who you are. Took us long enough to find out. But don’t worry. It’s not like I care to report you or anything.”
“Then what do you want?”
“What’s your plan, exactly? When you have all four flasks?”
“Let me worry about it.”
“I could lend you a hand.”
Twilight could hear a smile in his voice. “So you’re trying to get on my good side?” Twilight said.
“Now, don’t get cocky. I’d kill you if you weren’t worth the trouble…”
Worth the trouble?
After a short pause, Heisenberg continued. “There’s a stronghold not too far outside the village. Go there and get my flask. Do that, and you pass. Head back to the village square, and you’ll find all the directions you need.”
Then the TV went to static again.
So this was a test? For Heisenberg to see if he really was “worth the trouble”?
He could just as easily have handed him the flask he had. But this wasn’t about Twilight, or about Anya. It was about Heisenberg and whatever he was planning.
He didn’t trust him, but he was out of options. At least, if going through the stronghold meant he could get Heisenberg on his side…
Fandom: Spy x Family
Word count: 3.5k for this chapter | 7.6k so far | 32.4k in total
Rating: T
Warnings: Temporary character death, graphic violence, horror imagery, body horror, mild gore, whump, language
Cover art by @buf309
Summary: Anya is kidnapped, and Twilight is thrown into the horrors of a mysterious, deadly village. Forced and then choosing to survive its trials - physical and mental - he's brought to figure out who he truly is. (A Resident Evil Village fusion)
AO3
Read from the beginning
~
Chapter 2: Mutation
~
Twilight turned around the hallways, realizing he was going in circles. The mansion was massive, with various doors leading him to the same rooms.
Deciding to walk back to the main entrance, his jaw tensed when he heard the tall lady’s heels approaching. He barely managed to hide behind a corner as he heard her entering one of the bedrooms.
Careful, but unable to quell his curiosity, he stepped closer.
He could hear the sound of a rotary phone’s dial turning, then a short silence.
“Mother Miranda,” the woman said. “I regret to inform you that Loid Forger has escaped from your servants.”
A pause, as whoever that Miranda was, probably replied.
“Because he is in my castle, and has already proven too much for my daughters to handle! When I find him—” Her angry voice cut off, then continued. “No, Mother Miranda.” Her voice sounded more tense now, as if she was barely holding back. “Yes, of course I understand the importance of the ceremony. I won’t let you down.”
A definitive cling was heard as she hung up. Then she let out a roar, accompanied by something heavy being thrown against a wall.
“To hell with the ceremony!” she shouted. “That man will pay for what he’s done…”
He ran and hid again when he heard her heels coming closer. She exited the room, hands curled into fists, stomping as a quiet growl emanated from her. She went down the hallway away from him, and then downstairs.
He walked carefully into the room she’d been in. The object she’d thrown was apparently another big vanity, the rotary phone lying in pieces under the upturned furniture.
He looked at the plugs on the wall. He was a little surprised this mansion had landlines, but most importantly, this room had a balcony, looking out over a small courtyard.
If he jumped around the adjoined balconies, he could reach the ones right next to that damn wall surrounding the castle, and from there he at least would have half its height to climb. It would be no easy feat—
His eyes widened when he spotted something familiar on a small table at the other corner.
Two small black cones, adorned with a golden semi-circular pattern around the base.
Anya’s hair ornaments.
His throat went dry.
Anya…
He walked to them. They seemed so wrong in this place.
Where was she?
He wasn’t given the time to further wonder about her, or who that Miranda was, or what that “ceremony” was about. His breath froze when the door behind him opened. He turned, seeing the massive form of the lady of the castle as she bent down to reach through.
“Oh shit,” he whispered.
Had she heard him, or just baited him in there?
“There you are,” she said. “All this for a child who isn’t even here!”
What?
Her face looked calm, but her eyes were burning with rage.
It had only been a few times he’d managed to talk himself out of such a dire situation. In this case, knowing that he had killed her daughter, an effort was highly unlikely to succeed.
Still, he had to try.
He spread his arms, raising his eyebrows in innocence. “If I may—”
He didn’t finish his sentence, as she reached with her hand, grabbing his throat and jaw in it.
“You ungrateful, selfish wretch!” she said, lifting him up with barely any effort.
His feet kicked in the air helplessly.
“You come into my house,” she continued, slamming his face onto the floor, “you lay your filthy man-hands on my daughters,” she slammed him down again, “and now you even deem yourself worthy of speaking to me?!” and again. “How dare you!?”
She pushed down further, until he felt the wooden floor crack underneath him.
Then, her hand twitched, and long nails emerged from her fingers, one of them reaching right into his left eye.
He wailed in pain as the floor broke completely, and he fell down into a hole many stories down. His wail and breath cut off as he landed on his back.
He lay where he was, trembling. He could still hear her shout from above, “Rest while you can, because I will hunt you, and I will break you!”
Breathing deep, he realized his vision was completely blocked from his left side.
Oh, no. Oh, no. He didn’t have time for that!
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he brought out the healing liquid, and his mind fleeing, he poured all of it right over his eye.
Within a few seconds, his vision was full again, and he could blink both eyes.
He could have sworn his back must have broken after falling down so many floors, but he was either too lucky or the healing liquid did its magic on every hurt part of him, as he managed to get up immediately.
Get out, get out, get out.
Managing to get back up the stairs and into a library room, he was ambushed by another one of the women. The buzzing of flies announced her arrival, as she said “So, you finally came to see me! Everyone falls for me in time.”
Damn it all to hell.
He didn’t have the time to honey trap this woman.
Not that… not that she would actually be interested in him that way and also let him live.
He simply raised his gun at her and made his intentions clear. “I just want to get out of here.”
She laughed at him, and all but flew at him, reaching with her hand at him.
He prepared himself for an assault, caught completely off-guard when she simply caressed his cheek.
“Aw. You really are one of the pretty ones.”
He forced his body to not move; the woman, who looked quite like her sister, save for having red hair, reached forward and sniffed at his skin.
His hand trembled. It truly wasn’t an appropriate situation for a honey trap, but why did he feel such fear at her proximity?
Still reeling from his wavering emotions, he couldn’t move away in time before she slashed at him with her scythe.
He groaned, clenching his jaw, and he shot at her face.
She laughed again. “Poor little man-thing,” she said.
Right. They were sensitive to cold.
Staggering back, blood dripping down his chest, he looked up at the skylight on the ceiling.
Long shot, but his only shot.
He raised the gun and shot at the glass. It took three shots until it shattered, and the woman shrieked just like the previous one had.
“Ow! So mean,” she said.
Her reaction almost took him out. Considering the lady called all three of them her “daughters”, it might not be wise to inform this woman that probably killing her “sister” was even meaner than exposing her to the cold.
She ran around, trying to find a spot away from the freezing wind, as she yelled in anger more than in pain.
“Why are you doing this?!”
He bit his tongue. Hadn’t he made himself clear already?!
She was fast, hiding behind bookcases and tables, but shaken as he was he still was an excellent shot, so he drove a bullet into her head, as small of damage as it would do.
“You can’t be serious! You’ll kill me!”
How many bullets had the other one required?
“JUST LET ME GO!” he yelled.
“Oh, you’ll be a part of me forever!”
Why was he still trying to reason with them?
He kept shooting at her.
“What are you doing?!” she said, her gait staggering as she kept running around. “Don’t you love me?!”
Oh, she was still full of surprises.
She tried to hide behind a bookcase, and he took the chance to reload his gun.
“A dream. This is a dream,” she said, nearly whimpering.
More like a nightmare. For both of them, probably.
“This is your final warning,” he said, pushing the magazine back in place. “Let me go, now.”
She shrieked, getting out of her hiding place and flying at him. She was fast, but he shot repeatedly just as fast.
She wailed, nearly falling over. “I… don’t… wanna die…” Her voice was strained as she reached out with her free hand, as if looking for support. From him?
He breathed out as her body turned to stone too, then ash.
The lady of the castle was not going to like this.
He decided to try his luck going further up again.
He got rewarded by finding a small armory. While it seemed full of old-fashioned chain mail and swords, his eyes landed on a weapons case where a few old but sturdy-looking shotguns lay, along with ammunition for them, a few hand grenades, and another bottle of that healing liquid.
His luck immediately turned on its head as he heard the buzzing of flies.
“I was worrying my sisters had gotten to you first.”
His face cringed at her entertained tone. News didn’t travel fast in this castle.
“I haven’t cut open a man in a while! Let me string you up, slice your jugular, and just watch…” she said, pushing over a tall case of hand weapons so it blocked the exit.
Oh, this one wasn’t interested in games.
He looked around; there wasn’t a window he could break open. How could he—
He then spotted a long crack on the wall, light coming from the other side. This room hadn’t been used or renovated in some time, and even the bricks of that wall seemed loose enough to come apart easily.
One of the grenades was still in his hand.
Might as well try, then.
He pulled the pin and threw the grenade at the wall, running to the other side across. The woman seemed to ignore his throw as she fell on top of him, ready to bite at his neck.
The grenade went off, and the wall came apart enough for cold wind to gush right in.
The woman jerked back, screaming just like he’d expected.
Just like with the first woman, her hood fell back, revealing a similar scar on her temple, surrounded by black hair.
But this one seemed terribly furious. “You’ve ruined the hunt!” she exclaimed.
He shook his head. “I’m so over this,” he said to himself, grabbing one of the shotguns this time.
“Curse you!” she said when his first shot got her. “I’ll mount your head on my wall!”
The shotgun had a slower shooting speed, but judging by her reactions, it seemed to do more damage to her. Having fought two of her “sisters”, he could now predict her attacks better, and avoid them far more easily while shooting at her with more efficiency.
“No! It’s a lie!” she kept saying.
He couldn’t run, as he was. He would have to move the weapons case away from the exit, and there was no way this woman was going to let him do that.
So he kept shooting.
Until he heard the by now familiar sizzling sound, and she started swinging wildly with her scythe. “You will not get away!” she seethed. “You’re my prey… mine…”
He kept the shotgun up and aimed at her until she too was a pile of ash.
He looked at those remains. Survival, even at the cost of other people’s lives, had been drilled into him long time ago. On one hand, he had been the one trespassing, on the other, all four of them had made their sadistic intentions with him perfectly clear.
He wasn’t one to sit and dwell on what he’d just done, but it was fairly disheartening that his only choices had been to kill or be killed.
Was that why he was thrown into that castle’s yard? Just to be their next meal?
But they knew about Anya. And according to the lady’s words, she wasn’t even in that place.
So, why all that?
He looked at the hole he’d made on the wall. There was a small balcony on the floor underneath, right next to the top of a small building that was connected to the wall around the castle. Climbing in from that height was definitely feasible, and he could then jump over.
He hung the shotgun on his shoulder and packed up ammunition for it, before he headed out, carefully jumping onto the balcony below. Halfway through his path, however, he heard the lady wail in grief again.
He wasn’t fast enough. She saw him and marched toward him, her long legs bringing her faster to him than he had the time to reach the wall.
She grabbed him by the wrist, lifting him up again. “You’ve ruined everything!” she yelled. She reached back with her free hand, and long nails – no, claws came out her fingers.
And then she drove those claws into his stomach.
His breath left him.
She threw him away, blood splattering all the way where he landed. He coughed and gasped, covering his stomach with his left hand while his right reached for the healing liquid.
As he opened the bottle and poured a generous amount on his skin, he watched the horrific sight in front of him.
The lady’s body was shaking, spasms running through it as she screamed.
Something told him this wasn’t just physical pain for her.
Then a massive wing emerged from her back, accompanied by a cracking sound.
She screamed again when another wing appeared on the other side of her back.
He breathed fast, and hard. He tried to crawl away while right before his eyes her body transformed into what he could only describe as a beast from nightmares and horror stories.
She fell on all fours; her body grew even more in size, ripping through her clothes. Her limbs turned into serpent-like claws, her wings reminding him of fantastical dragons. Her torso and waist expanded; a mouth full of teeth formed on the front, and emerging from the back of the beast was a torso and a head of what he could only assume was the woman’s remaining body.
Even human-shaped as that was, there was nothing human about it.
Though she seemed to be in pain, she threw her head back and laughed. “Flesh, bones, I will devour all of you!” she said in a distorted voice. He didn’t know which mouth that voice had come from, her human one or the one full of teeth.
He kept crawling back as she took flight, grabbing his whole body with one of her clawed feet.
She flew up, near the top of a tower, and threw him down on its balcony. She landed in front of him, laughing again. “You’ll die a painful death!” she said.
Disoriented as he was, he took out the shotgun and shot at her. The first two shells missed her, but when he actually hit her, she growled and took flight again.
Breathing hard, he stood up and assessed his position. He was on a balcony of one of the highest floors of a tower, and there was a small turret in each corner. Just as he considered taking shelter in one of the turrets to reload his guns, the beast came back and crushed one of them with her feet.
“I will destroy you!” she yelled, walking at him.
He shot at the woman-like shape on the back of the dragon form, and while she seemed to get hurt by it, she laughed again.
“You’re a lucky man, Loid Forger!” she said. “Besides Miranda, you’re the only one to ever see me in this form. Too bad you’ll pay for it with your life!”
He shot at her again and slid under her stomach. A risky move, he realized, as she could very easily crush him by simply falling on top of him, but he managed to get behind her, and her form was too big to turn on the narrow balcony.
He shot again, as carefully as he could, while she walked to the corner of the balcony so that she’d have more space to turn around and face him.
Then his shotgun was out.
“Too late for regrets!” she said and smacked him with her claw.
He was pushed into a wall, his breath getting knocked out of him. Desperate, he took out the handgun and shot blindly.
She yelled again, adding a “I’ll tear you limb from limb!” then jumped off, flying away.
He struggled to regain his breath as he tried to assess what her next move would be. Was she trying to slam into him from the air?
He stood up shakily and started reloading the shotgun.
Still in the air, she said, “How dare you talk about saving your daughter when you’ve murdered mine?!”
He froze, looking up at the incoming beast.
Was that all about Anya?
He leaned back against the wall, trying to put his thoughts in order.
What was he even supposed to do?
He feigned weakness as she approached, and though his blood was freezing in fear, he moved away just in time for her to slam on the wall and not on him.
“You human pest!” she shrieked.
His shotgun full, he started shooting at her.
As big as she was, she was slow. He was able to run around the balcony to reach her from behind and shoot her, while she was still struggling to turn around.
“Like hell you’ll kill me!” she said and took flight again.
This time she was careful to fly around in a confusing pattern; he was too shaken by all the damage in his body and had too little ammo to risk shooting blindly at her.
Midway through her attempted attack she gasped, saying, “Not enough blood! More, more blood!”
And she slammed into him.
Most of the force of her attack was, luckily, taken by the wall behind him, where a hole formed. He was pushed into the hole, landing on a set of stairs, as she screamed over him, “I need your flesh!”
Flies started coming out of her, surrounding him and biting at him all at once. He swung at them and turned around, running up the stairs to the top of the tower.
“You’ve got nowhere else to go!” she shouted at him as she flew around the building.
There were only open arches so far up – he had no cover. But going down the tower wasn’t ideal either, with her slamming into it and causing debris to fall everywhere.
“Come now, don’t be shy. Show me your terror!” she lunged forward, breaking the wall once again and throwing him down. “Now, time to die!”
She was too close. Her mouth full of teeth only needed a short move to the front to devour him.
He took out a grenade, activated it and threw it right in her mouth. He then took out the handgun and emptied the magazine on her human form.
She screamed and yelled.
Just as another magazine was almost emptied on her, blood exploded off her massive body, and she collapsed forward.
“Damn you, Forger!”
The floor cracked underneath her weight, but she managed to grab him in her claw.
Desperate, he drove his knife into her cracking skin, but she didn’t react at all. She only dragged him down the hole with her.
“It’s too late! You’ll never see your Anya again. Succumb to your despair!” she cried as they both fell.
She dropped first, and his fall was only broken slightly by him landing on her flank instead of the stone floor.
Gasping in pain, he turned to look at her crumbling form.
“Curse you…” she wheezed with her last breath, calcifying into stone and ash.
He found himself crawling back into a corner, his jaw trembling.
Ten seconds… just ten seconds…
He looked up at the hole she’d made. He wasn’t ready to calculate how many stories that was that he’d dropped.
His body was shaking, violent shivers running down his limbs, but he didn’t feel any part that hurt all too much.
It was more than the adrenaline of the fight, or the shock of the drop, or the pain he wasn’t crippled by, and he knew it.
What that woman had just said, that he’d never see Anya again…
Why was that worming into his brain?
Did that mean she was in danger?
He swallowed hard, closed his eyes, and held his breath.
His body needed more than ten seconds to stop trembling, and his feet were still shaking when he got up, but at least he managed to get up.
A yellow object caught his attention on the other side of the room. He walked closer, examining it.
It was a square glass flask with yellow opaque paint around it. It seemed sealed shut, and the only indication of whatever was in it was a label that wrote “SUBJECT 007 – HEAD”
He swallowed hard, suddenly thankful the flask was opaque.
Fandom: Spy x Family
Word count: 2.3k for this chapter | 9.9k so far | 32.4k in total
Rating: T
Warnings: Temporary character death, graphic violence, horror imagery, body horror, mild gore, whump, language
Cover art by @buf309
Summary: Anya is kidnapped, and Twilight is thrown into the horrors of a mysterious, deadly village. Forced and then choosing to survive its trials - physical and mental - he’s brought to figure out who he truly is. (A Resident Evil Village fusion)
AO3
Read from the beginning
~
Chapter 3: Deserted Village
~
He wasn’t sure why, but he picked up the flask, putting it in his bag.
There was a big door next to where the flask was, and it opened easily to a downhill, snow-covered path that lead to a small village.
He sighed. He was finally getting out of this place.
Although it was mid-afternoon, he couldn’t notice any life from the village. Many shutters were closed, and no chimneys were smoking despite the cold.
Considering the number of bodies in the basement of this castle, which certainly surpassed the meek number of inhabitants such a small village would have, he didn’t doubt there was little life left in it, if any.
He kept the shotgun hanging on his shoulder and the pistol in his hand. After what he’d just witnessed, he wasn’t willing to let his guard down for even a second.
And his gut instinct proved right. Just a few meters down the path, he heard rustling from the bushes at the sides.
“Hello?” he said, keeping the gun low.
The form of the creature really shouldn’t have surprised him.
It had the size of a human, but its chest and shoulders were wider, having ripped through whatever clothes it had been wearing before to reveal a dark, purplish grey skin. Tatters of shoes were around its feet, which now had long, thick claws coming out from where its toenails would be. And its face looked closer to a rabid wolf than a human, with big white eyes and a protruding snout with exposed sharp teeth.
Twilight swallowed hard and rose the gun at it. “Just let me pass through, and I won’t hurt you.” It couldn’t hurt to try.
The creature seemed to have as little intelligence as its animalistic form suggested it would. It threw its head back and howled, then tried to pounce at him.
He shot at its chest. It wavered, paused, then continued its attack.
He then shot at his head, twice, and the creature fell down. It flailed on the snow for a few seconds, then it stopped moving, its body turning to ash as well.
It crumbled just like the daughters and their mother had done.
Was this a common affliction around these parts?
The only thing left were the remains of its clothes.
It seemed to have been a human, originally.
He looked back at the castle, remembering the dead – unmoving – bodies and the skeletal creatures that stalked him in the basement.
Was this the source?
He sighed, continuing down the path to the village.
Too many questions, and though his brain begged for answers, he didn’t have the time nor even the slightest idea on how to begin on getting them.
He met two more of the creatures on his way, and though they were not intelligent, they were most certainly strong. One of them managed to grab him by his leg and throw him about ten meters away. At least he landed on fresh snow and regained his composure quickly enough to use the distance to his advantage, taking both creatures down with two shots to the head.
Two headshots each. Good to know, if he was to preserve ammo in this hell.
As he entered the village, he could hear more and more of such creatures growling in the distance.
He would be certain there was no life left in the village, if it weren’t for the feeling that someone was watching him.
He turned his eyes slightly to the side, and there. Behind a barricaded window and a thin curtain, a set of what appeared to be human eyes were watching him.
Twilight turned to them, raising his hands. “I’m just looking for a little girl,” he said.
He saw the man behind the curtain mumble something. It wasn’t perfectly clear to read his lips, but Twilight could swear that he’d said “Of course you are.” Then the man moved and unlocked the door. He looked around cautiously, then beckoned him close.
Twilight ran to the entrance and walked in, helping the man barricade the door again.
“How’s that for a warm welcome?” the man said.
Twilight stopped to catch his breath. “You’re a local?”
“You could say that.”
“What the hell is going on here?”
“Miranda is preparing for the ceremony. The village had to be cleansed.”
“What?” What did any of all that mean? “Who is Miranda?”
The man sat down on a chair by the table, looking tired. “She’s the leader of this village.”
Leader? “Like a mayor?”
“No.” He looked up at him. “Like a leader.”
There was this short moment of tense silence before the man spoke again.
“Have you heard of the rumors? That Ostania partook in human experimentation during and a little after the war?”
Project Apple?!
Here, of all places?
“Miranda was one of the main contributors, both in financial and scientific input. In the depths of this very village, she had come across a fungal root, a super-colony of mold that, according to her, could store the consciousness of anyone who died in its vicinity. Using samples of the root, she experimented on the villagers here. Most turned into the monsters you’ve encountered on your way here, the lycans.”
He was still standing up, trying to absorb the man’s deranged tale.
“Four of them had a more successful affinity with the mold. They were granted the titles of the Lords of the village, serving under Miranda.”
“Lords?”
The man sighed, giving him another tired look. It was not directed at him, but if Twilight were honest, the only time he remembered seeing such an expression was when he’d encountered death row inmates.
“The first one was the one whose castle you came down from, Alcina Dimitrescu. Didn’t you wonder how she came to be so tall and feast on the blood and flesh of humans?”
“Was that because she was infected by that… mold?”
The man nodded. “The second one is Donna Beneviento. A doll maker who lives in an isolated estate where people go and never return.”
One to avoid, then.
“The third is Salvatore Moreau, a distorted being, half-human half-fish, who lives in the reservoir on the outskirts of the village. And the fourth is Karl Heisenberg, who can manipulate metal. He works in his factory on another corner of the village, where experiments far worse than our program take place.”
Our?
He gave him a look, and the man didn’t miss that.
He was now resting his chin on his hand, as if bored to get it over with.
“You worked with her,” Twilight said.
“Not for those four, or the village, no. But we had our own projects, yes. And Miranda was obsessed with that fungal root, claiming that her deceased daughter’s consciousness was still in it, and that through her experiments she could find a suitable vessel to revive her.”
“Vessel?”
The man half-shrugged. “A human for her daughter to take their place. Eventually, our paths crossed, and she joined our program. After six failed attempts, we both got what we aimed for.”
He felt his throat go dry. “And what was that?”
“For us, a being with special brain functions. For her, a human body for her daughter’s consciousness to inhabit in. Subject 007.”
His eyebrows perked up with that. After all the shocks of the day he found himself losing his ability to hide his reactions. And so, he reached into his bag for the flask he’d taken from the castle.
“Oh, you’ve found that,” the man said.
“A being so precious to you both, that you decided beheading them would be the best choice?”
“That wasn’t us. That was Miranda, obsessed with her ceremony stuff. She wants her daughter to take this girl’s place.”
This “girl”?
He tightened his hand around the flask. “Who did you say Subject 007 was?”
“She possessed the ability to read people’s minds. The project was still in an investigative phase, we didn’t know how well she could control her ability, but, well, she was around four years old when she escaped our facility. We didn’t get the chance to examine her thoroughly.”
Read people’s minds?
No, it couldn’t…
“H—How,” he said, his lower lip starting to tremble, “how did that girl look like?”
The man gave him a knowing look. “Do pink hair and green eyes ring a bell?”
No…
He looked at the flask, feeling his body go limp.
SUBJECT 007 – HEAD
He collapsed onto a chair in front of him.
The man stayed silent.
“Why… How—Why would anyone even do this?” he breathed.
“Miranda believes she can be revived.”
“Revived?!” His voice shot up. “From this?!”
“Her body parts have been preserved, and Miranda insists that her essence has been stored in the fungal root and can reconnect with her body.”
“Are you insane?! What are you talking about?!”
He realized he was breathing hard and fast, and that his vision was going dark around the edges. He grabbed at the table, trying to steady himself.
“Dimitrescu had the one part. The other lords have the rest. If you wish to try saving her yourself… I guess all you gotta do is reach those.”
“Who even are you? Why are you telling me all this?”
His words only reminded him of poorly written villains in Anya’s spy show.
Anya…
He looked at the flask again. It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t be…
“Miranda got our program eliminated. As soon as she found the perfect vessel for her daughter, she got out and rescinded all financial support. Some believed she was the one who helped the girl escape. We’d been looking for her all this time, and suddenly now Miranda wanted to join forces again so we could get her back… we should have seen this coming.”
Twilight gave him a stern look. “You were the ones who attacked us.”
The man didn’t respond.
“But oh, you were just ethical enough to experiment on children, but not to dismember them? That’s where your limits lay?”
The man sighed and closed his eyes. “I am not going to wish for this to happen faster,” he whispered, and Twilight realized that it wasn’t directed at him.
The man twitched, suddenly. “Please, don’t…” he whimpered, then his head jerked back.
Twilight stood up, quickly putting the flask back in the bag as he prepared his gun.
The man fell forward, his face going pale and his teeth growing into sharp fangs. He yowled as he stood up, and he swung at the air in front of him with his hand, which was now growing claws.
A much less dramatic transformation than that lady transforming into that dragon beast, but still.
Twilight still waited for him to attack, which didn’t take long to happen. Ready for it this time, he shot him twice on the head, and he fell over, flailing for a few seconds before he stopped moving and calcified.
He took a few steps back, finding a wall and leaning on it. His hand touched the bag, feeling the shape of the flask in it.
Anya, what did they do to you?
And then there was also the mind-reading thing. The man said that this was what she was created with.
So she had been reading his mind all along? From the very start?
She knew who he was? She knew what he was doing with her and Yor?
What the hell would possess her to stay with him?
He put his gun in the holster and grabbed tightly at his bicep as certain memories emerged. Hadn’t there been times where she mentioned the peace? How she wanted a dog for peace, how she enjoyed Bondman’s missions every time he beat a bad guy who wanted to threaten the peace…
Was that why? Was she trying to help him?
“Damn it…” he whispered, his shoulders hunching.
She had heard every violent thought from him about his work, she had heard his thoughts about how he would walk away and abandon her as soon as his mission was over…
And still she stayed and helped and loved him.
She knew who he was, and she loved him.
He pressed his fist against his mouth as a sob escaped. His eyes stung with tears, and he grabbed at a nearby shelf, nearly hard enough to crack it.
And now she was…
He took in a shaky breath. He’d witnessed enough horrors in the past few hours to actually consider that what that Miranda planned was possible.
At least, it was worth enough to try.
She was worth enough.
Ten seconds to compose himself, and he was on the go.
He gave himself a few minutes to search the current and the nearby houses for ammo, finding a short but helpful supply as well as two more bottles of healing liquid.
Considering what that man had said about a mold infestation growing in the depths of the village, Twilight thought this liquid would be a risky solution, but it was all he had.
His bag full of supplies and a part of a human girl, he turned to the square of the village. Four wooden gates stood on each side.
Four Lords. Dimitrescu, Beneviento, Moreau, and Heisenberg.
The gate on the path he’d come from was adorned with a metal crest. It had a flower on its center, with two swords crossed behind it. The Dimitrescu crest.
The next door had a metal crest that depicted a mermaid. Moreau, he assumed, half-human and half-fish.
The third door had a crest with a horse’s head surrounded by a horseshoe. Heisenberg, the man who could manipulate metal.
The final door had a crest depicting a sun partly covered by a crescent moon. The man hadn’t said anything about Donna Beneviento, but this seemed to belong to her. The one he’d immediately thought of avoiding, and yet here he was, crossing the door to her territory.
Fandom: Spy x Family
Word count: 3k for this chapter | 26.7k so far | 32.4k in total
Rating: T
Warnings: Temporary character death, graphic violence, horror imagery, body horror, mild gore, whump, language
Cover art by buf309
Summary: Anya is kidnapped, and Twilight is thrown into the horrors of a mysterious, deadly village. Forced and then choosing to survive its trials - physical and mental - he’s brought to figure out who he truly is. (A Resident Evil Village fusion)
AO3
Read from the beginning
Note: I want y'all to know that the reason those updates are coming so fast is because all of this has already been written, up to the epilogue, I was just procrastinating doing the last bits of proof-reading XD Also, do note that some of the warning tags will be a little more relevant in this chapter.
~
Chapter 8: Reunited
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“What the living hell happened to you?” his Handler asked, looking him up and down.
Oh, right. His clothes were full of blood. He must be looking like a madman.
He still couldn’t move.
Sylvia sobered up, squinting her eyebrows at him. “Twilight? Are you listening to me?”
His throat felt dry like sand. He could only stare at her and breathe.
She approached him slowly, one hand raised towards him, the other going for the gun at her hip.
That shocked him enough to bring him right back, and he exhaled, lowering the knife. “I’m sorry. It’s just been an absolute nightmare of a day.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
He looked at her. She was in military garb, her red hair tucked into a tight bun at the back of her head. He hadn’t seen her in such an appearance in a long time.
“I didn’t even know you were still alive,” she said. “I’d guessed Miranda had killed you.”
“You know about her?”
She clenched her jaw. “Yes. As soon as we heard of your disappearance, we managed to track the people who took you to here, and we found a few survivors that had fled the village in time.”
“There were survivors?”
“Very few. They said they’d lived under Miranda’s rule their whole life. She’s been controlling this place so thoroughly that it doesn’t appear on a single map. But I assume you know what happened to little Anya.”
His head fell. “They say she can be brought back.”
“We have evidence to support she can.”
For the first time this whole day, although he had been fighting exactly for that, he felt hope.
It could be that he finally was in the presence of an ally, a human being, that wasn’t intent on killing him.
“Evidence?”
Sylvia sighed. “Miranda was born over a century ago. She had a daughter, Eva, who died of the flu about eighty years ago.”
“What the hell?”
“It all happened in this very village. At the same time, a root of a mold super colony started growing deep underground. Somehow, Miranda came in contact with it, and realized that the root could fuse with a human, with various results depending on the organism.”
“The Lords,” he said.
She nodded. “We found her scientific files and diaries. She has been experimenting with villagers ever since then. Those four were her most successful attempts, ones that at least retained their intelligence and humanity, if only parts of it. That was until…”
“Anya.”
“A result of Project Apple, of all things. Miranda believed that if she could fuse the root with a developing fetus, it would provide more fruitful results. Six of their combined attempts ended in premature death. Anya was the only one to be born and develop normally.”
“She can read people’s minds,” he said, bracing for her reaction.
She simply sighed. “Not the only revelation about this peculiar family of yours.”
“What?”
She shook her head. “Are you really telling me you didn’t notice?”
“Notice what?”
“Your wife. Yor Briar. She’s an assassin for Garden.”
His eyes bulged.
Ten seconds—No, screw that.
“She’s what?”
“Immediately after reporting the disappearance of her husband and child, she probably realized the police wouldn’t do much for 24 hours, so she took matters into her own hands. We crossed paths on our way to the village. We saw how she killed those lycans with her bare hands, and we dropped our weapons once she faced us.”
“She did what…?”
“As of now, we’re of the same goal. She knows our secret and we know hers. She didn’t seem willing to spill unnecessary blood, so we came to an agreement.”
“She knows about me?”
“It seemed only fair.”
Oh, she would certainly have his heart for dinner.
“Where is she now?”
“Up on the surface, scouting the area with other agents. Killing a few monsters here and there, probably.”
Yor, killing those monsters… “Does she know what they did to Anya?”
Sylvia nodded. “She was there when the villagers shared their knowledge with us.”
He could almost see it, her horrified face, a dark determination setting on her features at the prospect of enacting revenge, and then at the possibility of fixing things…
“You’ve been trying to put her back together, then?” Sylvia said.
He looked at her.
“We searched around the Lords’ residences. We found evidence of someone waltzing in and doing our job for us.”
“You’ve been right on my heels,” he said.
“I understand why you couldn’t sit and wait a single moment.” She paused. “I would have done the same.”
“So what do we do now?”
“We take down Heisenberg, then move on to Miranda before she completes the ceremony.”
“Do we even know how to bring Anya back?”
“We’ll figure something out. First we gotta stop her, and eliminate any obstacles in our way.”
He swallowed hard. “And then?”
She looked at him.
“Yor and Anya know. Anya is a mind-reader. What are you gonna do with them?”
She pursed her lips. “Nothing too extreme. Ms. Briar can still be valuable to us, and we have no reason to hurt the girl, especially after what she’s been through. But let’s just finish this first, shall we?”
She turned to the metal tank.
“Behold, another one of Heisenberg’s creations. Per his notes, it’s made from a metal-polymer composite he cannot control with his magnetic powers, likely so it wouldn’t break apart if he had to use them forcefully.”
“A valuable weapon against him.”
“You take that in that elevator over there, and go blast his brains out. I’ll stay here and we’ll finish planting explosives.”
“Explosives?”
“He can’t get far without that zombie army of his, can he?” She stepped closer to him, placing a careful but steadying hand on his shoulder. “I promise you, we will get your daughter back.”
He looked at her. There was a warmth and determination in her eyes that he hadn’t seen before, in all of his years knowing her.
Her calling Anya “his daughter” was not just as part of his cover.
She understood. She could see how emotionally compromised he was, and she was supporting him on.
He felt the utter urge to lean over and hug her.
Something told him he’d get a kick in the groin for such a gesture.
“I’ll meet you topside,” she said, leaning back and giving him her gun. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”
Like go against Miranda on his own?
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his lips curving into a half-smile.
She gave him a sly smile in return and turned away.
He looked at the tank in front of him. Its movement was controlled through foot pedals, and it carried a canon, a machine gun, and as he checked the contents, a seemingly endless amount of bullets.
It would likely be enough to take down both Heisenberg and Miranda.
He climbed atop it and sat down on its lone, central seat.
He didn’t have the best memories associated with such artillery.
But right now, killing that bastard with the prospect of saving his daughter seemed a good enough reason to push through.
Making new memories, he thought with a scoff.
There was an elevator right on the path of the tank, in which it fit perfectly.
He hit the button going up, and he felt a massive relief at just going up with the help of a simple invention like this, without having to fight his way through every zombie and Soldat that he came across.
He finally reached the surface, and he almost got down to open the manual doors to the outside.
But then, he remembered this thing had a cannon.
He pulled its trigger, and a fiery blast threw the doors away.
Securing his hands on both cannon and firing triggers, he waited until the cannon was reloaded, and drove the tank out.
“You’re like a damn cockroach!”
Heisenberg landed a few meters away from him, all in his steel glory.
Twilight started shooting immediately.
“You think you can take me on? With my own hand-me-down?” Heisenberg said, rolling over to him and aiming his metal limbs towards him. “Fine! This will be my warm-up before I kill that bitch. Let’s settle this, mano a mano.”
The air filled with sounds of crashing metal and bullets ricocheting, as Heisenberg approached him slowly.
Twilight moved the tank away from his extended reach.
“Your corpse will be another addition to my army!”
Damn, for someone who said he was tired of chit-chat, he talked too much.
The cannon reloaded, he fired a blast at his form.
Heisenberg grunted. “Oof! That one hurt!” he said.
Not enough, apparently.
The tank moved slow, though Heisenberg’s form wasn’t much faster. Every time he waved his limbs at him, Twilight had to duck down, the tank’s form just barely providing enough cover from them, though the sparks from metal rubbing against metal sizzled at his exposed skin.
“Guess I do have to thank that bitch Miranda for this. I’ll kill her with the power she gave me. That’s what I call being a good son, haha!”
“Shut up,” Twilight found himself whispering.
Another blast of the cannon hit him, and though Heisenberg grunted in pain at first, he then laughed. “So this is the power of fatherly love, huh?”
Was it?
He wasn’t given time to think about it. Heisenberg managed to grab the entire tank and raise it above his head, Twilight barely holding onto it by the trigger handles.
“Playtime’s over!” Heisenberg growled. “Quit acting so full of yourself! You humans are nothing but worthless peons. I’ll use your cute little daughter to become more powerful than ever!”
A circular saw approached him, and getting desperate, Twilight pulled at the cannon trigger. It blasted through Heisenberg’s armor, exposing the red core on his back.
He had to hit that, then.
If only the blast didn’t cause Heisenberg to drop him and the tank, destroying its wheels.
Twilight landed on the ground as Heisenberg composed himself, burying his saw in the dirt right under his legs. He was about to move it further up when a huge explosion took down the factory behind him.
Heisenberg turned at it with a grunt. “No! No! My metal army!” he said. “I’m going to murder you, all of your stupid little agency’s spies, starting with you.”
Twilight stood up, resorting to the handgun his Handler had given him. He started shooting, though its small bullets barely seemed to do any damage compared to the tank.
Electricity sparked through Heisenberg’s form, and powerful waves exploded from him. They threw Twilight off his feet, and immediately he was being lifted off the ground, along with every part of metal around the yard… including the tank.
This was it. Heisenberg using his magnetism at its full potential. Turned out he could manipulate that…
“So long, Loid Forger!” Heisenberg said as the magnetic field he was producing started spinning everything around. “You really should have taken my deal.”
Just shut the fuck up.
“You’ll meet Anya in the afterlife!”
He was high up enough now to see the red core on Heisenberg’s back. His weapons were being jerked around by the magnetism – likely why he was off in the air in the first place – but even so, he was too far for meek bullets to do any damage…
The tank flew right at him.
“That little brat’s power is mine! Right after I murder Miranda!”
Twilight grabbed at the trigger handles. Reaching over for the cannon one, he aimed right at the center of the red core.
“Your funeral!” Twilight yelled, firing.
The blast reached straight into the core, causing Heisenberg to scream in pain.
The magnetic field collapsed, and Twilight fell back.
His landing was abrupt and violent, but he could hear Heisenberg’s laboured, dying breaths.
“No, no! This can’t be the end for me! I… must… kill her…!”
Twilight raised his head just in time Heisenberg’s core exploded, his metal armor falling apart, crumbling stone appearing from under it.
Rot in hell.
He got up slowly, still reeling over the drop.
It was fine. He was just in shock. Since he could still stand, then the damage was insignificant.
Most importantly, the path was open for him.
He just had to get back—
He ducked just in time as a crow tried to fly right into his face. He turned to look at it, only now spotting the woman standing behind him, smiling.
Her blond hair was slicked back, covered by a black crocheted fabric that was secured at the top of her head. She wore a gilded stole over her black robes, giving the impression of a priestess.
And on her back there were four pairs of wings, with feathers as black as the crow that had just flown at him.
Miranda.
Hopelessly, he took out his gun.
Miranda tsked at him. “Even if you could move, this toy wouldn’t do any harm to me.”
If he could—?
Something wrapped around his wrists, and though he tried to slip away, it followed him and grabbed him tight, pulling his arms apart.
It was like a black tree branch had sprouted out of the ground, at Miranda’s command, to keep him immobile.
“I’ve got to admit,” Miranda said, “I was surprised by your tenacity. I placed you at the castle first because I was certain you’d fight to get Anya back, but once Donna Beneviento told me you were part of a spy agency… I started to believe I’d chosen wrong. For how could a spy that took this girl only for the sake of his mission, actually care enough to fight tooth and nail for her?”
“Why? Why test me in the first place?”
“My pawn only told you half the story, when you met him in the village.”
The scientist?
“I only needed him to give you enough information to lead you on. But mind-reading wasn’t the only part of Anya’s powers. Her entire core is made of the Megamycete. She was my first experiment to achieve full, perfect symbiosis with it. And as with every fungal organism, the mold in her tends to… spread.”
She took a step closer.
“Once she turned four years old, she started infecting the scientists around the lab. Unintentionally, of course. As soon as they started realizing that, they tried to flee, and I had to dispose of them. So I needed someone who didn’t know about it, who would live by her side completely unaware as the infection spread in them, and who would, hopefully, have something they cared for, for me to test them with.”
“What infection are you talking about?”
Her smile spread, revealing a set of perfect teeth. “You really didn’t notice? How fast your wounds would heal, a little after you took the girl into your home? Or…” She stepped even closer. “You didn’t wonder, how you survived all the injuries you’ve sustained here? You just dropped fifteen meters without even a scratch.”
“The—the healing…”
“What? This thing?” she said, producing one of those green bottles from under her robes. “I really assumed that a doctor – or, at least, someone who is good enough at acting as one to work at a hospital – would recognize plain alcohol.”
“N—No, it was—”
“… a magnificent case of placebo effect.” She opened the bottle, spilling its contents on the ground. “This liquid wasn’t healing you. The mold inside you was.”
His throat tightened.
“Your wife appears to have a rare genetic immunity to the mold, so she wasn’t a viable subject for my test. I should have killed her, though, considering the trouble she threatens to give me.”
Yor was safe…?
“But you? Your affinity to the mold was so perfect, so smooth you didn’t even seem to notice the change.”
He swallowed hard. It still sounded too surreal. “Why test me?”
“I needed to see how strong her creations could be. And my word, the results exceeded my expectations.”
He snarled at her. “I’m not ‘her creation’.”
“Oh, you are. Just as much as she is mine.”
She was even closer now, and he could make out the strawberry blond shade of her hair, and a terrifyingly familiar green in her eyes.
His jaw dropped slowly, trembling. “You’re… you’re…”
“Yes. I provided genetic material for her conception. I believed, since my assimilation with the Megamycete was perfect, perhaps my subject needed my DNA to work properly, and to also be a fitting vessel for my Eva…” She crossed her hands over her stomach.
“The only thing your assimilation did was drive you out of your mind,” he spat at her.
She just kept smiling at him. “You are not fit to deal with such a power. You were never even meant to live long by her side. Being a spy and all, you must have known there were no records of her before the orphanage you found her in. But I was watching, long enough to see who would take her. I almost had that man who ran that orphanage put into the test, can you believe?” She chuckled. “But yes. Your role was to stay long enough to get infected by her, and for me to see how strong that made you. Now, your worth as a lab rat has run out.”
His mind was still reeling, trying to piece everything together, trying to make all of it make sense, when Miranda swiftly pushed her hand forward, burying it in his chest.
He choked, his body going numb with pain.
“Don’t worry, boy,” she said. “Your death will come quick. Your consciousness will join the Megamycete’s records.”
She jerked her hand back. She was holding his red, vivid heart, still pumping blood in its leftover momentum.
His arms were released, but he could only drop to his knees, his eyes still up at her.
“How lucky you are, to die before your child,” she said, turning to the heart.
His vision was swimming, his lungs barely worked to give him air.
“Once dawn breaks, the ceremony will be complete, and vessel or not, I shall have my true child back. I’ve waited so long…”
His head hit the ground.
The last thing he could see was his own blood spilling over the snow-covered ground.
