#resident evil village oc

[auryborealis]

[lovelywingsart]

A bit of the Gorgon and the God uwu She absolutely liked the snakes before she liked him, she probably punched him in the shoulder to get him to stay still so she could pamper them

I like to think they enjoy the heat from her skin so they've got no problem being 'held'~

I also accidentally made this a Size Difference thing but yknow what fuck it, I'm keeping it

//Part of Karls design is absolutely inspired by @heraxic s version of him (apologies for the tag again...!), though I may try to sketch out a few ideas of my own <3 I still want to incorporate my Karls missing leg, but I loved the wings/tail too much for him so I'm going to torture myself//

[thatone-artsytkid]

Pov: During exploring the Heisenberg's Factory you approach a weird lookin dog

What you do?

Bonus:

Her name is Claire and she's 15 (but in hell I can't draw teenagers)

[as8bakwthesage]

Oh hey, I made a RE8 self insert shhhh

Backstory stuff below:

Cosette Cioara was born to unknown parents in 1940. As an infant, they became deathly sick while their parents travelled Europe and stumbled across the Village. In the Village, the parents were killed by Lycans, and Mother Miranda discovered the infant frozen half to death.

Miranda used the Cadou to revive the infant, and was raised in absolute secrecy by Miranda. None of the other Houses knew of their existence. Miranda named the infant Eve, after her daughter Eva. However, despite the Cadou being inside of them, it seemed that Eve did not develop any mutations at first, and was just an ordinary child. Miranda cherished Eve deeply because of how young Eve was, and she thought they could be the most suitable vessel. She gifted Eve a brooch when they were 5 which was meant to protect Eve from harm and also to help stabilise any mutations they could develop.

However, when Eve was still a child, Miranda began to realise that Eve would not be a good vessel for Eva, and her love for the child turned cold and full of hate. She began to despise Eve because she saw her final chance at getting her daughter back as a failure. She began to call them Anathema instead of Eve, because Anathema meant "a curse." Miranda forced Anathema to look after themselves after that.

Growing up, Anathema was left alone, and their only company were the crows and animals of the forests. It was here where their mutation began to occur. With Anathema's love of birds like crows, they began to mimic crows and their behaviours, and even developed a form to hide from observers. It was called the Cioara (crow) by the many children of the village that have seen this form. Aso protected them from the dangers of the Lycans in this form.

When Anathema reached the age of 12, though Miranda warned them that the world was cruel and to avoid others and keep out of sight, Anathema met a woman who had just been married named Elena. Anathema was scared of Elena at first, but Elena practically adopted them, though the child seldom spoke.

It was Elena who supported and hid Anathema from others. Their mutations grew still, starting to manifest in the form of them being able to understand animals and plants, heightened senses and speed, and alchemy-like abilities, which were dangerously unstable. The brooch which Miranda gave to Anathema when they were very young seemed to help them manage these more unstable abilities. Elena loved Anathema and protected them, though she wondered why Anathema wasn't among the Lords and Mother Miranda. But she never pushed Anathema to answer her questions, only allowing Anathema to have a normal childhood.

When she learned that Anathema was once called Eve and why Anathema was called Anathema, Elena asked if she could call Anathema 'Eve' again. Anathema was against this, so instead, Elena suggested that Anathema rename themselves. Anathema chose the name Cosette, after the character of the same name from the book "Les Misérables", finding kinship in the character.

Stories of this strange child began to circulate among the children of the village, and Elena began to worry that perhaps this could attract unnecessary attention. She asked Cosette to perhaps consider taking a more human form, and after a few weeks, Cosette's Cioara form changed into a more human one, though they still grew black feathers from their head.

Cosette began to interact with others more often, and when they turned 18, they started to spend more time among the villagers, and began to help out the people. However, Cosette would secretly go out at night and patrol the village, keeping Lycans away from people in a more advanced mutated/Cioara form. They managed to learn how to shift between these forms, and in the day, they were just an ordinary person.

It's also here where Cosette started to feel disconnected from their assigned gender at birth and preferred to use gender-neutral terms for themselves. Many villagers didn't understand it, but they didn't object to it either. Cosette changed their appearance to be more androgynous instead of feminine.

When Cosette turned 25, their ageing stopped. As the years went on, people began to notice that they did not age. This caught the attention of Mother Miranda, and she instantly knew who Cosette was, despite the changed appearance and ageing. She knew she couldn't kill Cosette due to the villagers being fond of them, so she instead struck a deal with Cosette instead.

Cosette would be recognised as a Lord, but was forbidden from being involved in any events or plans of Miranda's. Cosette was also forbidden from telling any villager who they were or their connection to Mother Miranda. Cosette was fine with this, though did feel the pain of rejection. They continued to protect the Villagers, and after their adopted mother Elena died of old age, they began to live in the forests, keeping a watchful eye on others.

It's here where Cosette meets a very peculiar man wandering the forests. They thought he was surely lost, but they were even more surprised to find that it was no mere mortal, but Karl Heisenberg, one of the four Lords.

[frogyjones-art]

Finally finished my RE8 OC's ref! This is the Mechanic, she works for Donna and does odd jobs around the village!

Here's some close ups, Underneath is a basic description of her character if you're interested!

Basically she works as the local mechanic in the village, hired for odd jobs and takes coin or housing as payment since she doesnt have anywhere to go. lived in a nearby secluded village that was over run by lycans and lost her home before walking into the re8 village. at a loss for work she decides to take a job for Donna Beneviento to fix her elevator/upkeep the minimal electricity in the house. Gay stuff ensues!

[lsdoiphin]

Artfight 2022: cryptidcoyote’s Ezra

[saintsofwarding]

WE SHALL BE MONSTERS

Banner by @keltii-tea​

Chapter 26: A Lost Cause

Heisenberg's boots slammed into stone. The impact rang through him, echoing into the snowy darkness. He heard Mia's too-fast breathing, felt her warmth against him, her arms hooked around his neck, her face pressed to his scruffy cheek.

After a beat, her arms slid free, and she stood on her own, by his side in the darkness.

Around them spread the pit. They stood on a chunk of broken fortress, red brick seared black from the force of the bomb. Past its edge rang empty air, the depths of the crater. Where they stood, moonlight illuminated well enough to see, but in those depths there was nothing, no trace of light. Just the echoes of lycan snarls, the occasional clatter of falling stones, a deep, subsonic rumble that might have been rock shifting, might have been something else.

Water rushed close by, a gout pouring from a gap between two fallen pillars. It spackled Heisenberg's face with cold mist as he strode to the edge of the platform to shine his hip flashlight down into the dark.

It yawned below, endless and absolute. Mist and fog and a kind of grimy haze unfurled around him; each inhale stung with cold, and mold, and the smell of a place long-since removed from the sun. Usually, a big pit full of garbage was Heisenberg's idea of a perfect vacation. Less so right now. Chalk that one up to circumstance.

"I guess that's where we're headed," Mia muttered.

"Guess so."

She sniffed. "In sickness and in health, right?" she said, with a hiccuping little laugh. Then, in a kind of rush- "God, I miss him."

"Yeah?"

"Everything," she pressed. "Everything about him. You know- when I first met Ethan we were just a couple dumb college kids and I..."

Her laugh softened. "I thought he was unbelievably boring."

"Heh. No kidding."

"It was at this house party I didn't even want to be at, and he was in the corner with a red solo cup, and he was dancing to the music in the straightest way possible, I mean-" She demonstrated, holding herself stiffly while she bobbed her head and tapped her thigh in time. "But I didn't know anyone, and I ended up in the corner of shame with him."

"Let me guess. Love at first sight?"

"No!" she snorted. "It took like...three more accidental meetings before he awkwardly asked me to go get coffee, and he turned the brightest shade of red I've ever seen. And it was easy from there. Being with him. It was good. It was so, so good."

Her expression was lethal, like the sun was shining on her face. Hard not to notice her beauty, now, even through the hard days of grime and bruises and exhaustion.

"It crept up on me," she said. "Love. Little by little. That's how he was. You don't think about it, and then you realize what he's done. What he's been doing, all along. What he'd do for the people he cared about."

Her brief look of joy, lost in memories, faded.

"It was the big stuff I missed most, at first," she went on. "But now...it's the little stuff, really, you know? Redfield shuttled me from safe house to safe house after you took Rose, and I thought at first it would be a relief. Nothing to remind me of them, changing scenery, all that. But it's funny how losing someone works. You don't run away from it. The world remakes itself into the shape of that person."

She lifted her face, her profile limned with the red moonlight.

"He'd play piano, sometimes," she said. "Late at night. He always said he wasn't any good. But I'd stay up and listen without him knowing. I'd listen until he was done. Every time."

"He probably knew," Heisenberg said.

A faint smile touched Mia's face as her eyes turned, slowly, to rest on him. Heisenberg felt the weight of her gaze, its soft intensity, like she'd reached up to take his face in her hands.

"How long until dawn?" she asked.

"Hour, maybe."

"Then we're burning time." She cocked her rifle, checked its sights, gave a short nod. "Into the dark."

"And let's hope it doesn't fuck us."

The first few lycans jumped them as they skidded down the scree of broken masonry on the far side of the platform. Classic lycans, hairy wolf-men with makeshift weapons. Mia's rifle spat; Heisenberg crushed a couple skulls with his hammer. His Cadou wriggled inside him, sluggish as it struggled to metabolize the suppressant drug he'd been shot with. He kept his awareness engaged, but metal didn't sing; no hum or crackle of electricity. For the time being, he'd have to do this thing without the use of his power.

Fucking touche. Miranda had given him his powers, had twisted his body into a vessel for them. Typical that now he'd have to fight her without their help. He imagined her face, coldly beautiful. Her smile of calculated triumph.

Show me what you can do now, Little Karl.

Go on. I'm waiting.

One of the lycans lunged for him; he smashed it aside with particular force, splatting it against a block of cracked stone that still bore the paintings of dolorous, long-faced saints, rendered in faded blues and reds. Lots more red, now.

He twisted as gunfire cracked over his shoulder: Mia. The next lycan crumbled apart, its head and chest blown into chunks.

"I had it covered," Heisenberg drawled, shouldering his hammer as he flicked a fragment of crystal off his lapel.

"Uh-huh." Mia scanned the darkness, rifle trained outside their circle of light; howls echoed through the fog, but nothing leaped out at them immediately. "Anything here look familiar to you?"

"Nothing looks familiar to me, sweetheart, this place got put through a meat-grinder."

"That's not what I mean." She huffed a sigh. "I saw the explosion from the chopper. It...it went off in midair, not on the ground. The megamycete had lifted itself free of the cave system. If it blew aboveground, not below, the, uh- the-"

"Chunks?"

"...Sure. The chunks would have rained down on this place. Crushed it."

And Ethan below, Heisenberg thought. Mia must have come to the same conclusion, judging by the haunted look in her eyes.

"Your point?" Heisenberg prompted.

She gave her head a little, annoyed shake. "My point is that maybe there's something intact. Down below."

She pointed further into the pit. "Part of the old fortress, part of the old ceremony site...a cave system...I don't know."

"Could be."

Mia cocked her gun. The snap rang through the fog. "Let's find out."

The haunted look was gone as soon as it had come; now, Heisenberg saw the fever light of determination fill her gaze. That determination must have been what had allowed her to survive all these years, even with Miranda's ghost rattling around in her skull.

Had she known what it was at first? Or had she chalked it up to trauma, PTSD, what the fuck ever?

Of course, she was no stranger to voices in her head. She'd survived Dulvey, too. Three years under Eveline's control, three years of fighting the horrors inflicted on her by the child she'd helped mold into a monster. You had to emerge from that unfathomably strong, or completely insane. As Heisenberg followed her down the crumbling, makeshift pathway, spiraling deeper and deeper into the darkness, he wondered if she hadn't emerged as both.

More lycans. From all directions. They hit fast, hit strong. The smell of rot thickened in the air as Heisenberg and Mia descended, and between the bursts of claws and fangs and gunfire pound, Heisenberg caught sight of the various makeshift dwellings the lycans had fashioned from bits of the village, stacked stones, animal skins, antlers and gnawed bones. Even crude ornaments, dangling from entryways, crow feathers and pebbles, vertebrae and chunks of crystal.

What god did the lycans worship? Their memory of Miranda, and the Black God? Or some eldritch thing birthed from the dregs of their hive-mind, the kind of god only a feral predator could dream up?

Eyes glimmered from caves formed from collapsed pillars; one lycan, massive and musclebound, wore scraps of what looked like scavenged Soldat Panzer exoskeleton, a walking biomechanical wonder.

What an enterprising lad. Shame he had to die.

That was a group effort- Heisenberg swept forward and with a colossal swing of his hammer, smashed the front plate of its helmet off, exposing a scarred-up face twisted with rage. Mia sprang under his arm and delivered the coup de grace in the form of a bullet to the gob. As it slumped to the side, raining in shards into the darkness below, Mia paused, breathing hard, scanning their surroundings. Heisenberg did the same, but there was nothing. More lycan dens, more broken masonry, more blocks of cracked stone wreathed in mist.

A chorus of growls and snarls, the screech of claws in stone, scrabbled somewhere behind them. Mia pushed off; Heisenberg followed her. She was in charge, now, a woman on a mission. Her head down, she ducked under a gateway formed of blocks of fallen stone and into a narrow channel beyond, a ravine formed of rubble. Lycans advanced. She sprayed an arc of bullets, her lips drawn back from her teeth. When one collapsed at her feet, wounded, still crawling toward her, she drove her boot onto its head, crushing it to the dirt.

"Come on!" she yelled at Heisenberg, a few meters behind her, and headed into the fog again. "There has to be something- we just need to keep looking!"

"Mia," Heisenberg muttered.

"Don't you dare say my name like that," Mia snapped, glancing back at him. "He would do this for me. He...he already did this for me. I have to keep looking." "I know-"

"Then keep up!"

She rounded a corner and almost ran head-first into a knot of lycans. She stumbled back; her rifle came up, muzzle flash illuminating the fog in one, two, three bursts. Crystal shattered, bone reduced to hissing pulp under the anti-mutant rounds. Mia's scream filled the air as the lycans fell, as she demolished the next wave, and the next.

They were coming, and in force; Heisenberg glanced up at the ring of glimmering green eyes, the bared fangs, the rusty metal and pieces of broken antler clutched in clawed hands. With a little shake of his shoulders, he waded in. His hammer swung through the flashes of gunfire, through Mia's howl of rage as she fought them back, on and on until the air was as thick with gore as it was with fog, a bloody mist that clung in a pinkish sheen to Heisenberg's coat and dripped down from his hat brim.

The last of the lycans crumbled apart, ribs gaping to the sky. Mia stared at it, panting, eyes white-ringed and bright. She slumped against a block of ancient brick, closing her eyes.

"Mia," Heisenberg said, approaching her. He reached out for her arm. A gash had sliced through her sweater- a lycan's claw swipe- and bled freely down the thick material.

She rounded on him with a gasp, lifting her rifle. Its barrel knocked him in the middle of the chest; he didn't flinch.

"Do you understand?" Mia said. "I have to keep looking."

"I know."

"He...he's dead because...because I didn't tell him, because I...lured him there..." Her rifle barrel dipped. She shook her head back and forth, glazed and manic. "If...if I hadn't, he would still be alive. He would still be-"

"Eveline did that. Right? Not you."

A sob choked her. "You don't get it. It doesn't matter." She shoved back from him, stumbling through the rubble. "It doesn't matter. I-"

She drew a short breath. "I..."

She blinked.

"You what?" Heisenberg said.

"I recognize that," Mia said, staring over his shoulder.

Heisenberg turned. It reared through the devastation: part of a gateway, attached to a short, broken flight of steps. Heavy, blocky, chiseled from red-brown rock. The same bedrock the village had been built atop; the same stone he'd stared at for countless hours while Miranda indoctrinated him, or sliced into him, or rummaged around in his insides, trying to perfect him. He remembered the flicker of flame-shadows off its surface, the play of flashlight beams on its distant walls.

"Shit," Mia breathed.

She moved past Heisenberg and toward the gateway. It listed to one side, half-sunk into the earth, but it was still connected to something. Mia vaulted onto the steps and climbed up, pulling herself onto the lip of the gateway and balancing atop it to peer inside. Heisenberg followed, setting the head of his hammer against the frame, staring in after her.

Beyond-

A narrow cleft of darkness breathed frigid air across them.

"This was the entrance to the lab," Mia murmured. "I remember from when she brought me here. I remember thinking...it looked beautiful. Like an ancient temple. Something from a dream..."

"Yeah, well, bet she broke you of that opinion real fuckin' fast."

Mia sniffed, scrubbing her bloodied palm over her face. Heisenberg could hear her heartbeat, fast as a hare in a trap's. He knew what she was thinking, as much as if they shared a hive mind themselves. Miranda's lab had been built right below the ceremony site. The caves, too. The hallowed cathedral in the earth, the inner sanctum of the Black God.

Ethan had died right above the caves, and if they were still, in some way, intact, and the whole place had fallen in...

Well.

Mia was silent. No big surprise. Few words sufficed when staring down at the tomb of a loved one.

Heisenberg glanced at her.

"You gonna stand there all night?" he said.

She gave a small shudder, as if bracing herself, then shook her head. "No." And without another pause, she stepped over the edge and dropped into the darkness below.

Heisenberg was right behind her, clambering down the three-meter incline and into the passageway beyond. The cavern stretched beyond, a hallway chiseled of that same bedrock stone, torch brackets set into the walls, the floor scattered with chips of stone and a decade's worth of dust. Great cracks seamed the walls, but the place was intact, relatively speaking, the entire hallway tilted downward at a sharp angle.

In the explosion the entire cavern system must have just fallen into the earth, the tons of rock above it burying, yet also preserving, it. Like a mausoleum. As Heisenberg took a deep breath of the still, damp air, he smelled a familiar trace of incense, rich spices and musk winding its way deep into his skull, illuminating the century of memories locked within.

How many times had he walked this hallway? How many times had he strode between enshrined saints, hammer dripping with their devotees' blood? A traitor in their midst, an impostor saint, a false prophet's mongrel. They stared down at him now, statues of long-dead holy men anointed with dust, with the crystallized remains of their dead god.

He thought of Ouroboros' files on him, the rote, dry facts of his unnatural life that Mia had offered to him, and that he had refused. If the devout were right, these saints had seen those years, too, had whispered the litany of his life to the Black God itself, so it might dream of him forever. Did they remember him now, all the things he'd done, who he truly was, even if he didn't?

Didn't matter. Fuck them. Their god had demanded death, and if Heisenberg knew one thing, it was that everyone got what was coming round to them.

Mia's breathing quickened as the caves sloped down, and down, as they climbed over a stream gushing from a crack in the cave wall, as her boots crunched on broken glass, and crystal, and the remnants of a shattered gilt icon.

And when Heisenberg's flashlight beam struck the bolt-studded wood of a door, her gasp was painful, a blade-edge rasp on the edge of a sob.

It was warped in the broken frame, but as Heisenberg and Mia alike set their weight against it, it juddered open, spilling a cloud of dust and light into the broken space beyond.

Miranda's lab, Heisenberg thought.

The remains of her lab, anyway, the vaulted chambers where she'd conducted her personal experiments well-away from the eyes of the villagers. Couldn't have them believing she was capable of anything less than sorcery, after all. A column of ruddy moonlight filtered down from a rift in the cavern roof somewhere high above, filling the ruins with a bloody pall. A shelf of shattered specimen jars, each filled with a lump of crystal that had once been a Cadou, leaned drunkenly against a collapsed heap of brick wall. Shreds of decomposed papers and files were scattered like leaves; Heisenberg scuffed aside a damp-spotted photograph of Moreau without his overcoat. Crushed tables, and broken glass, and cell bars bent and warped from the bomb's heat. Everywhere, calcified roots burst from walls and floor, crushing the lab into a nearly-unrecognizable mess.

Above all loomed the broken remains of a statue. One of the Four Kings that had once ringed the ceremony site. His melancholy face was blackened on one side, a point of his crown snapped off at the root.

This was the ceremony site, Heisenberg realized, collapsed inward, crushed into this cavern space. He sent his awareness, all his enhanced senses, into the darkness. Searching for a trace, a flicker of hibernating essence, of a mutant in stasis.

Silence.

"Ethan?" Mia called. She pushed forward, stumbling over the calcified roots. "Ethan? Are you there?"

She bent and began to dig through the rubble with her bare hands. Stone clattered; dust billowed, thick and choking. "He's...he's got to be here...could he have regenerated? Like the others? Ethan!"

Her voice rang over the distant rush of water, the sound of crumbling stone, echoing from deeper inside the ruins. Heisenberg picked his way after her as she dug her way on, as she clawed at the broken masonry, her eyes wild, her entire body shaking.

"I know he's here," she said. "Heisenberg, you've got to...you've..." She took a sharp breath, jagged and choked. "He'll be so glad to see you. You saved Rose, after all- you're gonna..."

She cut off as she bent to drag aside a slab of flagstone floor. "We're all going to be a family again. Just like I planned. You'll see. You'll see..."

She trailed off. The echoes of her voice rang away and away, fading into dusty silence. Heisenberg caught up to her, watching the back of her head, the rise and fall of her shoulders.

Before her, the column of moonlight glimmered off milky crystal.

Ethan's body lay at her feet.

He was broken. One arm missing, shattered off at the shoulder. His face had cracked down the middle, his single remaining eye closed. He knelt there, head lowered, his body half-buried, his hand clasped to his heart.

The crystal there had warped in strange, intricate patterns. In this light, they almost looked like roses.

Mia made a small sound. She edged forward, one step, another.

"Is he..." she whispered. "Is...is there..."

"No, Mia," Heisenberg said. Weary, weary. "There's...nothing. Nothing left. He's gone."

She reached out with a trembling hand. "It's okay, baby." She smoothed it over his cheek, thumb tracing his lips. "It's okay. I found you, didn't I?"

All at once, she fell to her knees, holding his face, holding him. Her shoulders curled in; she shook under the weight of her tears. Terrible, wracking, like they'd been torn from deep inside her. She buried her face in the broken crook of Ethan's neck and sobbed, her hands in white-knuckled fists, clinging onto his body as if that would prove enough to bring him back.

***

Mia's sobs wound down into silence, and the hush crept in. Still she held him. Heisenberg leaned on his hammer, eyes lowered, watching the dust dance in the moonlight.

Saints and gods, sacred words whispered in the dark. There was nothing holy here anymore. Nothing sacred. All of it had died with Ethan, with his last kiss pressed to little Rose's head. All of it was gone with him.

At last, Mia let Ethan's body go. She crawled away, into a corner of the rubble, where she sat, slumped over her knees, staring into nothingness.

"I think part of me always knew," she said after a while. "All this time. All these wasted years." She gave her head a little shake. "I was so stupid to think I could save him. To think I could make this all better, make all this go away. I already got my chance for that."

Heisenberg made himself speak. "Yeah, you did."

She closed her eyes, bowing her head.

"Doesn't mean he loved you any less." Heisenberg approached her. "Doesn't mean you get to give up now."

She laughed, emotionless. "Too late."

"No. No." He swooped to one knee at her side, grabbing her face in his hand. He turned her head, away from Ethan's body, toward him. "No, Mia. You don't get to. Because if you do then so do I. You understand?"

He gave her a shake. He felt her tremble under his glove, her face so close to his he could see the tears clinging to her lashes, the blood spackling her mouth.

"You don't give up, Mia," he said. He ran his thumb over her lips, taking the bloodstains with it. "I'm not gonna let you."

Slowly, he released her face. His fingertips left red welts against her skin. "We might have failed Ethan," he said. "But Rose is still out there. And we. Won't. Fail. Her."

She blinked. A flutter of lashes. Then something seemed to leave her. Mia's head slumped forward, against his chest, one hand curling into his shirt, pulling herself closer, against him. The other brushed the scar crossing his throat, the scruff at his jaw, a lock of dirty gray hair.

Heisenberg hesitated. She was so warm against him. He felt the pressure of her breathing on his skin. The gentle pulse of her heartbeat.

Another long moment of silence, of dust and ruin around them. Just two horrible people, kneeling together in the dark.

Then he lifted his hand and ran it, slowly, over her hair. It was just as filthy as his. Something kind of sweet about that.

"I think I already failed her enough," Mia murmured, as he stroked her head. "Ethan...Ethan would want me to live. To keep fighting."

"Yeah, probably."

"Are you gonna be any more comforting than that?"

"Sweetheart. We've spent the past few days in each other's fine company. Surely you know better by now."

"Right, right, fine."

"Besides. We still have enemies, even once the other Lords deal with Ouroboros," Heisenberg went on. A snarl entered his voice. "Don't you want the chance to destroy that bitch Miranda for good after what she did to you?"

"You're such a bad influence," Mia told him. "Ruining all my aspirations toward achieving a moral high ground."

"Cool your jets, Winters. You managed that all by yourself." He pressed his forehead to hers for a moment, then pulled her to her feet. "Any bright ideas on how we can deal with that big, bad artillery unit topside?"

A dark light entered Mia's eyes. "I'm sure I can think of something."

She pulled from his hands and went to Ethan's remains, kneeling once again at his side. The moonlight filled its facets, made it seem to glow softly from within. Mia brushed her hand over his crystallized hair, as if to straighten it. She clasped his hand, stroking her thumb over the ridge of his knuckles.

"Goodbye, my love," she whispered to him, and leaned forward, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "I promise I'll come back for you."

***

Another burst of flames lit the sky as Heisenberg and Mia emerged from the crater depths. Even down here, the air smelled like ashes, cutting over even the overwhelming reek of lycan and rotting flesh.

"What's your power situation?" Mia asked.

Heisenberg splayed a hand, then shrugged, the movement accentuated by the hammer propped on his shoulder. "Still suffering from projectile dysfunction."

"Of course you are. Ugh..." She was checking over her weapons, taking stock. "Shit. I'm almost out of ammo."

"Then make what you've got count."

She glanced up at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed, dark circles so pronounced her face had a faintly cadaverous appearance, a new sharpness. Something inside her had set, and hardened. He heard it in her voice, too. "If I can get to that lab with the lycans, there's gonna be an antidote. It should get your Cadou metabolizing fast enough to work through the suppressant."

"Uh-huh." He'd barely heard her after she said the words lab with the lycans. "Now there's an idea."

"I'm almost afraid to ask."

"Are you, though?" He grinned at her. "I'll explain on the climb up."

Another artillery shot blasted the skies as they reached the lip of the crater, Mia sporting a couple new scratches courtesy of the lycans. If she was in pain, she didn't show it. She scrambled to a rock shelf behind a copse of trees and crouched down, rifle at the ready like some kind of black ops guy from one of the shitty action movies Heisenberg had binged with Rose.

He ambled behind her, squinting over his glasses at the camp. With Regan and company gone, the amount of soldiers was cut down significantly. Still, he could see the black-armored figures ringing the artillery, moving in and out of the prefabs, keeping the lycans back from the fence as, above, the Rose monster dived and strafed through the clouds, the pressure of its wingbeats driving spikes of pain through his head.

Well, fuck me, he thought, a little impressed despite himself. Somehow, the artillery fire was keeping her back.

And maybe something else was, too.

Keep fighting, kid. I'm coming for you. I told you I would, didn't I?

Still, Ouroboros knew what they were doing when it came to holding off giant flying bioweapons. And he had little doubt Regan had left orders to shoot them both in the head if they showed their faces in camp without Ethan in tow. And he wasn't about to suggest Mia bring his corpse back up to use as protective coloration.

Well. He might have. Her face if he did would be something to behold. But right now, it would only waste time.

"There," Mia whispered, pointing. One of the lycans had wriggled partway through a gnawed gap in the fence; a bullet drove it back, and it hightailed, but the loose scrap of fence lingered. "Through there, and to the lab."

"After you."

Mia gave herself a little nod- then darted. She streaked through the shadows, little more than a flicker of movement, a scatter of snow, ducking and rolling through the fence before the artillery unit's searchlight swept the area. Heisenberg shook his head in approval and followed, somewhat less gracefully, shoving his shoulders through the fence and into the camp in a clatter of metal. Fuck this, he thought, grinding his teeth. The second he got his powers back, he was taking this whole goddamn camp and crushing it like a car compacter.

Pressing into the shadows cast by an old house, he and Mia watched the flurry of movement in camp. Soldiers trooped by; a temporary munitions stand had been set up alongside the Maiden of War, gunmetal and carbon-fiber at odds with the crystal growths and painted wood surrounding them. The heat from the artillery unit shimmered in the air, melting the snow into a glassy sheen over the ground below.

Heisenberg eyed the artillery, assessing it with a flick of his eyes. Simple enough. A lot like the ones he'd spent decades playing with back at his factory, mounting them on anything stout enough to hold them purely for the fun of seeing how the vehicle in question held up under fire. Pop a couple wires here and there, and the whole weapon would be dead in the water.

First things first. He jerked his head toward the lab with brows raised.

"Hang on," Mia whispered. She stared toward the group of Moreau-aficionados still huddled on one side of the square. They had all joined hands and were singing in old-tongue, some ancient prayer to the Black God for protection. "We need to get them out."

"Seriously?"

"Yes!" she hissed. "Moral high ground, remember? Shut up and follow me."

They ducked through the ruined house itself and came up behind the prisoners. A punch from Heisenberg launched their guard straight into unconsciousness; he yanked him backward into the house, leaving him in a heap on the kitchen floor.

The girl with the shaved head gasped as Mia shook her shoulder, then blinked, her pale eyes widening so far they looked as if a good slap might knock them right out of her head.

She flung herself to her hands and knees as best she could in her shackles. "Lord Heisen-"

"Shut it," Heisenberg growled. "And listen."

"We're gonna get you out of here. This place is about to turn into a shitshow," Mia said. "You need to get as far away as you can before-"

"-Before I release all the lycans in that lab over there on the poor, unsuspecting fools you see before you," Heisenberg cut in.

The girl's mouth opened in a perfect O. "The lycans?" she echoed.

"That's what I said. Now how do these cuffs-"

The girl babbled over him. "Lord...Lord Moreau prophesied this. He in his infinite wisdom...he saw that this day would pass, that there would come a time when I, and his other loyal followers, would need to walk through the ranks of the monster wolves themselves, and emerge unscathed from the other side!"

She launched into rummaging through the mess of amulets and charms she wore slung about her neck, her skinny fingers trembling. At last she came up with a phial attached to a long piece of cord. It was made of old, yellowed glass, sealed with a gob of wax. Inside swirled a thick black substance.

"This holy relic will protect us against the lycans," the girl said.

"What is that?" Mia squinted at the stuff.

But Heisenberg grinned, with as many teeth as a lycan itself.

"It's spores," he said. "From the Black God. Take too long to get into the science, but this shit's what the megamycete seeded its hosts with to maintain control, stop them from slaughtering one another. Anything with this stuff on them will read as one of the lycans. They'll smell it on us and ignore us."

He chuckled. "Well, well. Moreau, you clever bastard. There's hope for you yet."

"It won't last long, so you must hurry," the girl said. She had already popped the wax and was busy smearing the other cultists with the black spores.

"Nag, nag, nag, buttercup," Heisenberg said. The girl pressed the vial into his hand, holding on for a moment. He tugged his hand away before she might start kissing it or whatever. "Get ready to run along to the reservoir. Your- uh, Lord Moreau's down there."

Elation lit the girl's eyes. "Black God bless you, Lord Heisenberg."

He didn't bother pointing out the Black God would probably rather eat him than bless him. He rubbed a streak of spores on his wrist, then did the same for Mia.

The monster strafed by; it swept through the clouds, the backdraft from its wings blasting through the camp. The timbre of its roars had changed- they now were an enraged, thunderous bellow, each strafe growing lower, lower, shaking the ground like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

Was Miranda winning?

Hang on, Rose.

Shouts filled the air as Heisenberg and Mia burst from the ruined house, Mia peppering the snow with suppressing fire, keeping back the few soldiers who weren't focused on the black-feathered monstrosity circling ever-closer. One of its tentacles lashed down, tearing a gash from the roof of a dilapidated house, then furling back into the clouds. Heisenberg's hammer cracked skulls, shattered firing hands, sent the door guard sprawling aside as they ducked into the lab.

The sterile air hit him like a punch to the teeth, light burning his eyes. The researchers within all sprang to their feet, scrabbling for the peashooters at their belts. Mia stuck her rifle under the first guy's chin.

"Get out of here," she growled.

The gun would have been enough, Heisenberg figured. But Mia's whole look- ragged and bruised and splattered with lycan gore- sure as hell didn't hurt. The scientists scattered. Mia pushed a rolling chair aside and tapped at a computer, its pale light illuminating the lines on her face. Behind them, the rows of lycans clawed at their cages, desperate to get out.

"You got the accelerant?" Heisenberg said.

Her eyes flickered back and forth. "I...I don't see it-"

Shouts echoed outside the lab. Heisenberg leaned alongside Mia. "Come on, it's gotta be there somewhere-"

"I-"

Gunfire pounded the air. Heisenberg ducked over Mia, bringing them both down against the console as the air filled with sparks and the rattle of bullets against metal; the lab door hung crooked, half-torn-away by gunfire. They were coming in.

Heisenberg saw it, now. There was no time. They'd run out of options.

All except one.

Fuck it, he decided. "Mia."

"What?"

"Release the lycans. Then get to the big gun."

"Huh?"

"I'm going after Rose. Fend her off with the artillery so I can draw her away."

"Without your power?"

"I don't need my power for this. I know Rose. And Miranda." He pressed his finger to his temple. "I can fuck with her head just like she fucked with mine. Now you get your ass out the door and into that gun or we're all screwed."

She rounded on him, the small of her back pressed to the console. For a moment he thought she would protest. For a moment he thought she'd try to stop him, spare him, like she'd fought so hard to spare Ethan. Her face was hard, the look in her eyes bright enough to burn him alive.

He heard the hiss of her breathing through her parted lips, made out the tremble of her lashes as her eyes held his.

Slowly, Mia slipped his glasses off his nose. She lifted her face, her knuckles to his chest as she gripped his shirt in both hands, as she pulled him down, as her mouth canted, desperate, devastating, to his.

A hesitation-

A brush of her mouth, a lilt of her lips over his-

And then she was kissing him, and her fingers were tangled in his hair; his hands found Mia's face, her waist, the soft press of her hips into his. Her lips were chapped, were bitter with blood. For a moment he was lost, adrift, nothing in the world but the feeling of her mouth on his, of her grip on him, her knuckles pressed hard to his chest, just over his living, beating heart.

Her face fell from his, her mouth from his, her face brushing his cheek with a rasp of scruff to skin. The cold twined between them again. Heisenberg's heart pounded, his Cadou pulsing in time; pressed to him the way she was, Mia probably felt that as much as she felt everything else. He didn't care. He traced her cheek with his thumb, not wanting to pull away, not wanting to let her go.

"We can still cut and run," he murmured. He cocked an eyebrow. "Last chance."

Mia snorted. She nudged her forehead to his, kissed the delicate skin just under his jaw. All too soon, she pulled back.

"Go," she told him. She returned his shades to his face. "Find Rose. Get her back."

She stood from him, gripping the cage control on the console- a big, red handle surrounded by warning signs. "For Ethan."

Heisenberg gave her a single nod, his hat brim dipping. "See you around," he said. "Winters."

Her small returning smile would stick with him a long, long time. "You, too," she told him. "Karl."

He swung his hammer back onto his shoulder with a clang.

Mia turned the handle.

With the screech of hinges, every cage in the lab swung open at once. The lycans lunged out, a seething tide of matted gray hair and savage, starving eyes, claws and twisted muscle and teeth asnarl. Moreau's spores did the trick- none of them paid any attention to Heisenberg or Mia. As the creatures leaped for the exits, tearing great holes in the prefab walls with tooth and nail, as they hit the Ouroboros soldiers outside hard and fast as a lightning strike, Heisenberg strode out after them, rummaging in his coat for a cigar.

Just like old times, he thought. Practically nostalgic.

By the time he ducked back into the camp, it was in chaos. Gunfire lit the skies, muffled under screams, snarls, feral howls as the lycans clambered atop buildings and vehicles, as they took down commandos three to one. A couple of the beasts tore through the fence, collapsing it under their weight. More lycans surged in from outside, tangling and tumbling over one another in their greed to get in at the fresh meat.

The screams began to die, began to be replaced with the sound of tearing flesh, of bones snapping and crackling from their joints.

Heisenberg lit the cigar with what appeared to be the last of his matches as he left the camp, as he ascended the rise beyond. If he was gonna die today, might as well do so feeling like himself. The cigar tasted a little stale, a little moldy, but it was better than nothing.

Besides. A good Cuban was a good Cuban, and- even better- it looked like it was gonna be a nice morning.

At the edge of the horizon, past the mountains, a faint trace of gold lit the blizzard. Dawn. It illuminated the monster, illuminated the impossible span of its eight wings, the rain of mold sheeting down from them as the artillery fire ceased- gunner dead or tossed out on their ass, courtesy of Mia. As the monster wheeled round, coming back in his direction.

Heisenberg took a deep drag off his cigar, let the smoke twine through his lungs- one last time, heh- then flicked it to the snow and crushed it under his boot.

He lifted his arms to the monster.

"Miranda!" he yelled. "Remember me?"

And in a rush of darkness, the beast that was Miranda, that was Rose, fell from the skies, wings spread, talons open and aimed straight for him.

[missrandomdreamer]

Just a couple of cuties roller skating (or rather one is attempting too ;3) Hope will always catch Karl when he falls 💜 though he might take her down with him lol . This was definitely a date btw 😉

this gorgeous and adorable art was done by the lovely and talented Darika on Instagram !

[flare-queen]

Heisenberg and his shattered doll, Esmeralda.

[sweeneyarts]

More Max and his momma ❤ I haven't drawn them in a while, so here you go! Enjoy!

Follow me on Instagram!

[auryborealis]

How hasn't it occurred to me until now that I should give Faye a giant makeshift axe to pair with Heisy's giant makeshift hammer?

edit: I should've added that the axe design was inspired by this

[lovelywingsart]

Have some Metalworks from the Pirate AU on Discord with Sealmelia and PanzerShark (full Selkie form Emelia and Karls mutation for the AU) 💙

Wanted to work with PanzerShark more because he is my big baby and I love him and ended up finding out how long 9ft was compared to 20ft, and it amazingly isn't AS large of a size difference than I initially thought... This was simple but fun and was absolutely originally meant to be a sketch but we all know how that works.

[thatone-artsytkid]

INKTOBER DAYS 23-31!!

[comfyrhyme20574]

Some portraits of my OC when the four lords adopts OC

Faceclaim: Katherine McNamara

Made on FaceApp

Based off of @i-cant-sing 's Residnt Evil Village Platonic Yandere RE8: Teen Reader Plot & teen one shots

(PLEASE LIKE IF YOU REBLOG)

DO NOT REPOST)

[frogyjones-art]

WIP for The Mechanic's ref sheet!

[saintsofwarding]

WE SHALL BE MONSTERS

Header by @keltii-tea

Chapter 27: A Long, Dark Path

Rose fell through darkness.

On and on and on. Wind tore past her ears. She tumbled, raking out at the dark, but it slipped through her fingers, tatters of writhing shadow. Her scream was lost in the howl of phantom wind around her, the rumbling moan of the megamycete. The gullet of the Black God, plunging endlessly down into the chasm of her own mind.

Miranda's mind.

Both of us, as one.

Were they one and the same? Had she been resurrected as Miranda's clone, her perfect genetic copy, primed to download her consciousness after death? Was she a copy of Miranda's daughter, the fabled little lost Eva? An amalgam of them both, and Eveline, and Ethan and Mia's baby girl, and, and, and...

Her thoughts whirled like the darkness, like the howls and screams and scraps of voices that flew past her over the megamycete's eerie song. Was Donna okay? She remembered her mutation like a nightmare, the snap of her rearranging bones still echoing through her body. She'd busted out of the house, she'd crushed it all around her. Was Donna alive?

Am I still alive?

Frustration mounted, and terror, raw as a sob. She'd fall forever. She'd go mad in here if there wasn't some kind of ground, if there wasn't-

It came up fast.

Without warning, Rose collided with- something. The impact rattled her to the teeth, a crack of white and red through her whole body; she tumbled, wincing, to a halt. The ground writhed and pulsed beneath her, soft-hard, like a muscle. It gave slightly under her palm as she braced it against the...whatever it was she'd fallen onto. Stars burst in her eyes, and Rose slumped again, waiting for the pain and dizziness to fade.

It did. She pushed herself upright, wincing, eyes wide.

Around her was a sea of mold. Iridescent, lightless black, organic and in constant, fluid movement. Liquid and solid all at once. It writhed at her hands, nosing at her skin, webs of mycelium sprouting over her fingers. She pulled her hand away, and it retreated, a ripple like a distant tremor shaking the ground beneath her.

"Donna?" she called. "Angie? Are you in here?"

Her voice echoed on, and on, and on, strangely warped, until the entire space seemed alive with  its eerie reply.

Nothing.

A pause. Rose licked her lips, shifting her weight. Her sword was gone from her back, she realized. Whatever waited for her here, she'd have to face it without weapons.

She took a short breath.

Then-

"Miranda?"

That got a reaction. Another, stronger tremor rippled through the mold, and on its trailing edge, sending a chill to Rose's core-

A cry.

A child's cry. A long wail of anguish in the dark.

"Is that supposed to be Eva?" Rose said.

There was no answer.

"You can't trap me here," Rose called. She pushed to her feet, swaying, staring into the dark. "That's not what you want, anyway, is it? What's the point of taking me if you don't get to make me into your Eva, huh?"

She plunged her hands into the mold in front of her. The cold latched on, spilling through her body as she dug her hands deeper into the wet, pulpy mass; fibrous tendrils scraped at her fingers, but Rose grit her teeth and pushed further, jamming her shoulders into the gap, forcing her way through. It pushed back, resistant, but Rose wasn't giving up that easily, and with a slick crackle, she stumbled in.

She lost her footing almost immediately. A tilting, swooping lurch; there was no up or down here. Her legs pedaled against the mold, then scraped- steps. They formed from the mold under her boots, and she settled down with a huff, her hands lifted in case anything leaped out at her.

Nothing did. The long flight of steps curved down and down, their limits lost in shadow. Points of pale light guttered to either side, picking out the shape of the steps. Candles in niches. Or the ghosts of candles.

She recognized this place, reflected and refracted through the lens of the Black God's catalogued memories. One of the passageways deep beneath the village, a holy place far below the mundane world, leading ever downward to the divine.

Would it now? Or was it simply to the unknown?

Either way, Rose pushed on. She hurried down the steps, picking up speed. Around her- rumbles, ripples, great unfurling blooms of iridescence that filled the mold with strange, entrancing patterns. Fractal-like, she might have watched them forever.

Scraps of voices tugged at her- voices she knew, her own, Heisenberg's, Sam's, Chris's, the Lords', on and on. Others she didn't know, in languages she could only guess at. The echoes of memories trapped in here with her.

Am I a memory, now?

Maybe she was. Maybe she'd always been. Memories locked in flesh. But then again, wasn't everyone?

A tremor pushed at her boots. She stumbled; with a gasp, she tripped. Her hands flew forward and slammed into a solid surface. She breathed hard, braced against wood. Its grain pushed at her fingertips. It felt real enough.

Rose pushed back, onto her feet. An arched doorway, illuminated by a torch in a sconce, set into the mold. Black tendrils wound over the wood, but when Rose pulled the handle, it opened without resistance.

Light poured over her boots.

Beyond was a laboratory. The vaulted ceiling was lost in shadow, the corners dripping with damp. Tables groaned under the weight of countless files, stacks of papers scrawled with notes, piles of ponderous-looking books towering higher than Rose's head. Everywhere: the glow of copper, amber light through antique glass, bottled chemicals and medical equipment and hanging diagrams of mutants and monsters.

In a sepia-toned photo that looked much older than the rest, Rose recognized Moreau, harshly illuminated like a clinical specimen. She recognized Dimitrescu's draconic form amidst photos of zombies and lycans, ghouls and bat-winged women that reminded her of the stolen girls from the long-ago town.

Spores danced in the light, illuminated like stars. The air smelled thickly of mold, but of incense, too, twining up from a burner in a corner, a heady, holy scent.

And somewhere, echoing through the vaults, someone was weeping.

A woman. Rose hesitated, then pushed onward, her step silent through the dust. On the far side of the tables, past the equipment, the chemicals, the specimens pinned out with inner workings on display, a woman huddled over a desk. She sobbed her heart out, her arm pressed over her face, the other hand gripping the material of her black robes.

The rest of her was clad in...ohhh, those weren't rags. They were feathers, multiple black wings furled over her, like a shield against the world. Her blonde hair was loose, and before her, on the desk, lay an old photograph.

Rose could make it out, even from a distance. A woman, and a child. She held the baby to her chest, and her face was serene with joy.

Rose blinked, flinching back. Her boot scuffed on the grimy flagstones. The weeping woman's head snapped up. Black tears streaked down her face, her eyes bright mirror-gold, but Rose knew her. Of course she knew her. She'd never really seen her face before- just icons of it, just its impression through her imperfect memories- but now, as Rose stared at Miranda, something settled inside her. A realization, a confirmation, heavy and cold.

Miranda's face was a reflection of her own. Older, yes, and full of a calm cunning Rose had never seen in her own eyes, but there was no denying it.

"Eva?" Miranda said. Her lips trembled, her eyes shining. "It's...it's really you, isn't it? I found you. I told you I would."

A smile broke over her face, radiant with relief. "I promised you. Didn't I?"

"I'm not Eva," Rose spat. "Eva's dead. And so are you. Now let me the hell out of this place-"

"No." Miranda's voice lashed out, a hissing snarl that struck Rose to the core. Those eight wings rustled, feathers fluttering as they began to unfurl from around her. "Not this time, Eva. I don't care what the world beyond has told you all these years. There's no denying what you are. What you truly are. What I made you into."

Her voice deepened into an animal growl. "You're mine. And this time, there's no one to stop me."

She rose from the desk, wings snapping forth, the backdraft sweeping dust and papers aside. Her hair billowed around her face, pale strands dripping with her tears.

Rose scrambled back, toward the door; she grabbed for the handle, but it juddered, locked tight.

"This time," Miranda cried, "I'm never letting you go."

She launched herself toward Rose on a tide of mold; the lab walls shattered under the weight of vast, twining black roots, bursting forth to lift Miranda, to lash around Rose's legs and arms. With a cry, Rose tore free, but Miranda was on her. Gilded claws sank into the front of her shirt; Miranda yanked her off her feet, lifting her like a child-

"Never, Eva," Miranda said. "Never!"

"How many times?" Rose yelled, right in her face. "I'm. Not. Eva!"

She slammed her boot, hard, into Miranda's chest, right over her amulet of the Black God. It was like kicking a stone wall; Miranda barely flinched, but Rose's shirt- and skin- wasn't nearly so resilient. With her enhanced strength, the kick tore her from Miranda's grip and sent her tumbling backward.

She hit the wall of mold-roots hard, the stuff undulating under her weight. Instantly, tendrils snaked over her skin, burrowing deep into her flesh. Her front was a mess of blood and mold, twin sets of torn-up puncture wounds streaking red down her shirt. Miranda loomed over her, glorious, ghastly. An image from a pagan holy book made real.

No wonder the villagers had viewed her as a sacred being. Like this, backlit by the candlelight, eight wings spread, she looked like nothing more than the Black God's true emissary itself.

But if she was so sure of herself-

If she was truly so glorious-

Why was she weeping?

Rose scrambled backward as Miranda advanced, her clawed hands spread, her hair dancing around her face. She hazarded a look back, through the shattered walls of the lab and into the seething megamycete beyond, then flipped onto her hands and knees and made a wild lunge.

"Eva!" Miranda screamed. "No! No-"

Rose flung herself into the darkness. Claws sang through the air, catching her back; her shirt shredded like paper, but she was free, and plummeting, head-over-heels-

Out of control.

***

Heisenberg dropped as the monster thundered overhead. Its talons scythed past, inches from plucking him from the ground like a rat. He twisted to his feet, watching the vast, dark form ascend in a flurry of wingbeats, its long tentacles trailing behind it. They flared like a splayed hand as those gigantic wings dipped, as the beast hit the apex of the sky and wheeled back round for another pass.

This time, he was ready.

"Come on," he snarled, between his teeth. "Mommy."

As jaws opened, as claws unfurled again, he stayed down, stayed on one knee, hammer lowered. Come on. The monster roared closer; its bellow shook the village foundations. Come on. A little closer. Come and get me.

Come and-

Close enough.

Heisenberg shoved to one side, bringing up his hammer in the same movement. It hit moldy flesh with an impact that would have torn the arms off any lesser man; even so, bolts of white-hot pain stabbed into his shoulder joints, his Cadou keening in anguish, the sound a high whine in the backs of his teeth.

A wave of mold splattered him as the combined forces of his hammer in its flesh and the monster's speed ripped a massive furrow down its neck and side. It peeled away, shaking its great, sharp head as it gained altitude again, underlit by the coming day.

Mold rained from its wound, and judging by the labored way one of its eight wings beat, Heisenberg had got it good, right in the joint. He twirled his hammer, lifting it again for another blow, as the monster's wingbeats faltered, as it wheeled round again, as its claws extended.

Ah, shit. It was gonna land.

Time to get real personal.

The monster settled to earth with the boom of displaced pressure and a roll of wind that ripped the snow from the ground, the needles from the nearby trees. An entire two-story house crunched into a mangled mess under its weight, flattened under one of its vast hind paws. Heisenberg kept hold of his hat, but even with his strength it was all he could do to stay on his feet as the creature reared above him, rising higher, higher, on clawed limbs, triple jaws on display, wings spread, huge enough to blot out the sky.

Magnificent. Foreclaws flexed, great curved talons singing against the wind. Tentacles trailed from its back and flanks, radiating around its head like a dark, glistening mane. Its eyeless head was all sharp juts and beak-like snout, its lower jaw split, each mandible lined with a chaotic snarl of glass-shard teeth.

Those eight wings shadowed Heisenberg, stirring the air, keeping the beast's enormous weight upright; he felt their pressure against the air each time the monster moved.

"Not bad, kid!" Heisenberg called up to it. "Not bad! You make for an excellent mutant!"

A snarl rumbled from the monster's depths. It lifted a foreclaw; mold snaked over its fingers, twining them together, slicing forth into a blade of hardened crystal.

A sword. So this thing really was part Rose.

"I know, I know," Heisenberg called, gesturing to himself. "I'm not mutating, but, uh- I wanted to make this fair, see!"

The monster's next roar filled his head; it struck, faster than he would have thought possible. Heisenberg ducked as its blade sliced overhead, taking off his hat and a few strands of gray hair- shit, that thing was fucking gigantic, if it hit him in earnest it would do more than cut him in half. It would  annihilate him. The blade sheared past, demolishing a row of houses, the monster's momentum pulling its whole body round. Dust billowed; a snarl rippled from the beast as it rose again, swinging back toward Heisenberg.

Oho, that look of sheer, dripping loathing was all Miranda. This monster might not have eyes, but he could still tell it was pissed the fuck off.

A grim smile spread over his face.

Keep fighting, kid.

You can do this.

'Cause if you can't, I really, really don't want to have to kill you, after all.

And as the monster rounded on him, as it let out a shriek that echoed off the mountains, as its wings drove down to launch it into a lunge, Heisenberg lifted his hammer and leapt to meet it.

***

Mold roots whipped at Rose's face; her hip struck something hard, and she bounced to the side with a shriek.

She hit the ground with a wet splack. For a moment she thought she'd gone splat, but as her heartbeat hammered and she eased herself to her hands and knees, she realized it was water.

She'd fallen into dark, murky water, shallow and silty. Blinking, she lifted her head. The mold smoothed out around her, settling into forms. Distinct, this time, the echo of voices distant, nearly lost under the thin keen of wind.

Around Rose spread trees. Dark, wreathed in fog, their branches interlaced above her, a fathomless black sky just visible beyond. The trees grew straight from the water, brackish pools reflecting the canopy, reflecting the ropes of viney mold that swung from limb to limb and cascaded in mossy beards to nearly touch the water's surface.

Rose had seen trees like them before. Mangroves.

And the smell in the air...

Do you think you can run from me, Eva?

Miranda's voice twined from the swamp, from the sky. From the depths of her own mind. Rose jerked to her feet, pulse pounding, and staggered forward a step. Another. Got to find a way out of here, she urged herself.

But Miranda was there. Miranda was always there. This is a gift, she whispered. Don't you understand?

A shape loomed from the fog. A house. It grew straight from the water, too, mangrove roots twining up to its walls. The drone of insects hummed from grass scrub and the rusty remnants of old cars.

Objects hung from the trees. Baby dolls, Rose saw. Some missing limbs, some missing eyes. All of them scabbed in mold.

Things crawled in the edges of her vision as she sloshed through the calf-deep water and climbed a set of rotting steps, up toward the scrubby lawn in front of the house.

Piles of trash and yet more pieces of machinery lay scattered around the lawn, the base of the grass not dirt, but yet more mold. The smell rolled from the abandoned house- mold and heat, something rotting in water, the muggy warmth of the bayou, as endemic to Rose as the blood in her veins. Her breathing was overloud in the hush. Nothing but bayou in all directions. Nowhere else to go but forward.

"This isn't a trap, Miranda," she muttered. "I will find you again."

Nothing replied but the wind, the edge of a laugh fading in the breeze.

She limped ahead, up the steps and onto the porch. Without hesitation, Rose pushed through the battered screen door, into the house beyond.

Grimy darkness enfolded her. The mold was worse in here, vast growths and spills of it bursting from walls and between floorboards. The crooked pictures hung on the walls were all blackened, family portraits ruined with water damage or antiques-shop cross-stitch samplers. Homey things, the decor of a quiet bunch of backwoods folk who'd fallen into a nightmare they never awoke from.

Rose had never been to Dulvey; Heisenberg had never even taken her to Louisiana during all their years of moving house, though Rose, in a particularly-strong preteen vampire phase, had begged him to let her visit New Orleans. But she knew what had transpired here. What had been done here. And the people whose lives had been destroyed here. These weren't Miranda's memories; they weren't even Rose's. These were Eveline's, the part of her that made up Rose, that had begun all of this the moment the Annabelle had crashed in the bayou.

"Rose-mary."

The voice was sing-song, drawing out the two syllables of her name. A child's voice. Eveline? But there was no sign of the other girl, nothing but the murk and the endless hallways of the dilapidated house as Rose picked up speed, grinding her teeth at the ache in her bruised hip.

"Rosemary."

Up ahead, down the hallway-

Was that a glimmer of sunlight?

"Come and play."

The wall exploded. Rose screamed, flinging herself back as a chainsaw chewed planks to splinters, sent plaster erupting outward in a choking white haze- the woman with the chainsaw, her face twisted in monstrous, maniacal glee under a matted spill of dark hair-

That was Mia, oh, fuck, that was her mom-

Her eyes flared gold as she rounded on Rose, her breathing raw and glutinous.

"There you are!" Mia's howl chilled Rose to the bone. She backed up, and up, as Mia advanced. "C'mere, you little bitch, and give your mommy a kiss!"

She lunged with a raw howl, chainsaw revving. Rose flung herself to the side. The chainsaw gashed the wall open where her head had been. Rose scrambled on her hands and knees over the pile of destroyed wall, toward the glimpse of sunlight.

It was gone. The hallway stretched ahead, endless in the gloom.

Where is it?

Where the hell-

"Come back here," Mia screamed. Another roar of the chainsaw echoed behind her; footsteps pounded the floorboards, heavy and stumbling, the air thick with the burn of gasoline. "Don't you fucking run away from me."

"You're not my mother," Rose gasped. She clawed herself to her feet again. "You're...you're not fooling me with that face, Miranda, you're not fooling me with any of this-"

A door handle scraped her hand. She tugged at it. Locked tight. With a half-choked sob, Rose pushed herself onward. Her hands were slick with mold, with her own blood; her claw marks had begun to bleed again, turning her shirt front black. Another door. This one came open, but inside was nothing but a truly disgusting bathroom, toilet vomiting mold-tentacles everywhere.

Shit. Shit. The chainsaw revved; it sounded like it was right behind her. When it caught her, what would happen? When this puppet-version of her possessed mother got to her, when the chainsaw bit into her flesh, would she be Miranda's forever?

Don't think. Only do. That's what Heisenberg would have said. Just keep going, kid. There's always a way out.

Improvise, like me.

Another rev, so close she nearly felt the bite of its teeth in her back. "Got you," Mia crowed, as Rose whirled, as Mia's face split in a feral grin-

Rose dropped. She shoved forward, hard, against Mia's legs. The weight of the chainsaw, her lunge, her own unsteady posture- all of it proved too much. She toppled over Rose, over the threshold to the bathroom and to the ground.

Rose didn't hesitate. She slammed the door shut and took off as Mia's screams filled the air, chasing her down the hallway.

It branched; she took the left-hand turn. Another branch. This place was endless, unnaturally-huge, a real house cut-up and copied and pasted back together ad infinitum. Rose pelted up staircases, down narrow basement halls, through pools of dirty water and mold and rust. Mia was somewhere- she wouldn't have stayed long in the bathroom- and Rose heard her screams and howls echoing to her from off in the distance.

"Come on," Rose muttered. "Come on. Where are you?" She searched the dark, turned another corner, searched again.

Something crashed. The chainsaw screeched through wood. She's coming.

"Please," Rose said. Her vision blurred, her throat tight as she ran. "Please, help me."

Another corner.

There it was. A glimmer of sunlight. A child's voice. "This way, Rosemary!"

Rose sprinted for it as Mia's laughter filled the hall, lunging through as the laughs became sobs, became Miranda's voice again, calling Eva's name.

She burst from the darkness of the Baker guest house and into sunlight.

It fell across her in a heavy swathe, dense and golden; the sky arched overhead, the rich, cloudless blue of a perfect summer afternoon. Mountains ringed the field around her, a rustling sea of tall grass. From the far distance Rose heard the peal of church bells, smelled the smoke from a cookfire.

Her heartbeat slowed. She looked back, but the doorway of mold was crumpling like a discarded photograph. It dissolved into nothingness.

"Hello, Rosemary."

She whirled round. A little girl stood before her. She wore a pinafore dress, blue embroidered with birds. Her blonde hair was in two mussed braids, and she held a clump of wildflowers in one hand as she squinted up at Rose through the sunlight.

"What..." Rose panted. She looked back again. "Where...is this? Am I still in the megamycete?"

"Yep."

"Then-"

"Lemme show you." The little girl lifted her free hand. "C'mon. Follow me."

Rose hesitated, then took the girl's hand. She tugged her, off with such speed Rose stumbled. They waded through the deep grass, insects rising before them in a glimmering cloud. The air was so pure Rose thought she could drink it, live off it forever. She glimpsed roofs past a copse of trees below, the high spires of a castle.

"Is that the village?" she said.

"Yup! That's home." Another tug, up a rise in the meadow; they ascended it, and stood at its pinnacle, overlooking the valley, the village, Castle Dimitrescu, even a trace of a lake that must have been the reservoir, far away.

This place, it looked...different. Cleaner, brighter. This was the village as it must have once been. Before Miranda, before the Four Lords, before everything.

"Is this the past?" Rose murmured.

The little girl nodded. "A long, long time ago."

"It's...it's beautiful."

"Mm-hm. Look," the girl said, pointing down the hill.

Bathed in that melting butter light, three figures sat together on a blanket spread over the grass.

It took Rose a moment to recognize Miranda. She was...she was human. Her blonde hair was a darker, dishwater shade, her face rounder, less severe.

And she looked happy. Not the agonizing relief Rose had seen back in the lab, not a narrow smirk of cruel satisfaction, but truly happy. She burst out with a snorting laugh, her blouse sleeves rolled up, her skirt rucked to her knees, so she might better sun her bare legs. They were tucked up against the side of a young man with curly dark hair and spectacles, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his face earnest as he spoke.

Rose couldn't hear what he was saying, and mourned it. She wouldn't have minded hearing Salvatore Moreau's original voice.

Listening to him, her small face shining and rapt, was a little girl. The same girl now at Rose's side, watching the trio like she watched them.

Rose let out her breath.

"You're Eva," she said. "Aren't you?"

The girl nodded.

"This was it," she said. "The last time we were all happy. It's the memory my mama holds onto hardest of all. She's held on for so long. It does things to you, being alive for so many years. You think every thought a person can have, and they go around and around and get all muddled inside. And you get so, so tired."

Rose watched the three people below. She thought of the glimpses of memory she'd seen in the Beneviento house. Miranda's weeping in her lab.

She doesn't deserve this, she told herself. This memory. The things she did to the people you love...to so many others...

But when she spoke, her voice was soft.

"Is she tired now?" she asked.

"Yes. But she's not gonna stop. She's so close. The closest she's been for a long time." Eva's expression sombered. "It'll never be real. But that doesn't matter to her."

"If Miranda succeeds, you'll be with her again. Isn't that enough for you? Why are you helping me?"

Eva looked up.

"Because she'll never rest," she said. "She'll never be able to, not like this. Not really." A quiet breath; her hands curled into fists at her sides. "She's my mother. She loved me so much. I can't let her keep doing this. I can't let her keep hurting people. I can't let her keep hurting."

"You know what I'm here to do."

"Yes."

A cold wind rippled the grass. The sky darkened, as if a cloud had passed before the sun. On the horizon, the edges of this beautiful dream, darkness twined in.

Eva's eyes traced it.

"She's coming," she said. "She's looking for you. She's so sad, and she's so dangerous. Don't forget that."

"I won't." Rose knelt before her. "Thank you." She took the little girl's hands and gave them a squeeze. "Thank you, Eva. When this is done...I'll save you, too."

"No." Eva shook her head. "I'm a part of you, now. It's your turn to live, Rosemary. I'm sorry you had to take this gift."

Rose smiled at her. "Don't be sorry. I do understand, now. It is a gift."

She straightened and stood back. Eva didn't move. She stood with her arms at her sides, watching Rose as she lifted her hand, as she brought it slashing down. Darkness trailed behind it, as if her hand was a knife slitting the matter of reality. The darkness widened, edges shimmering, peeling back. A cleft into the dark, just wide enough for Rose.

And with a last look at Eva, she stepped through.

***

The monster's backhanded blow caught Heisenberg full in the chest. He spun off his feet and crashed through wood, shattering it, collapsing at last into a dark, dingy space so hard he blacked out. He came to in seconds, mouth full of blood.

Still in one piece? He thought so.

The beast loomed above, its great neck curving down, its tentacle-mane coiling and uncoiling against the sky. It pawed through the destroyed houses, searching for him; each rake of its claws sent rumbles through the ground. Heisenberg kicked his way free. Something was bleeding. He ignored it. Business as usual.

"Miranda!" he yelled as he emerged through the remains of the broken house, back into the dawn. Snow swirled down, catching in his hair. The monster's answering roar shook the blizzard, set it to dancing. "Mir...Miranda!"

His hammer stuck from a heap of garbage. He grabbed it; white heat sliced through his side as he hefted its weight. Don't look. It's not so bad if you don't look. The monster's head swung, sunlight glimmering through its thicket of teeth. Its wings fanned wide as it turned its entire body, ponderous-slow, its long tail tentacles sweeping aside the rubble from the crushed village.

Its jaws parted. It lifted its head to the sky and let out a shriek.

Heisenberg breathed hard. It felt like breathing through liquid. Had he punctured a lung? Ah, fuck it.

"Miranda," he ground out.

He lifted his hammer in front of him. His blood dripped onto the street as he advanced, leaving a streak of crimson and black behind him.

"I...I know now," he said. "Better, anyway. What you did to me. What you did to all of us. We were children, you monster bitch. We...we trusted you. Like Eva did."

Heisenberg let out a snarl of laughter.

"And you failed her, too," he said. "You failed her by...by fuckin' destroying your world. You could've been...everything to us. A kind god. A benevolent god. We believed in you. These poor schmucks in the village believed in you."

He considered. "...Well, 'cause you screwed with their heads, but...you didn't have to."

One great clawed foot slammed down, dragging the entire great bulk of the monster after it. Another footfall. Dust and snow swirled before it, driven ahead by its sheer mass. Its blade lifted. The sunlight glimmered down its length.

"'Cause I did," Heisenberg pressed on. "Love you. At first. After you slaughtered my real mother and my entire family and scrubbed those memories out of my skull, of course. After that, I couldn't help but love you. My body wasn't mine anymore; not even my own mind belonged to me. I didn't have anything else to love but you. What you did to me...you destroyed me. You remade me. You turned me into this. And, heh, I can't hate you for that. Not all the way." He flourished his hand toward himself. "I mean, how could I? Look at me."

A bitter laugh rasped from him. "Guess that makes us alike, huh? A taste of power, and then we can't help but cling onto it, desperate for more. And yeah, Miranda. You gave me power."

He let out his breath as the monster's shadow fell over him, as the wind off its feathers raked past him, fanning his coat around him, ruffling his hair back from his face. Mold, and clean air, and something else. Another sunrise in this place. Another new day.

Good. However this ended, it would be his last day in the village. His last sunrise here. An ending, a beginning.

"And now that power's gone," Heisenberg said. He stopped, staring up at the monster looming over him. He spread his arms. "And all you get is me, Miranda. Your favorite child. Now, don't say you didn't miss me."

He side-stepped the first blow, a raking swipe of those massive claws. The next, too, the monster rising to whirl in a mass of whipping tentacles, sending its tail lashing toward him whip-crack fast. Heisenberg swung his hammer as the thing's head dipped, jaws agape, mouthparts glistening in the back of its throat.

Vast teeth clashed together, shockwave aching in his bones. The hammer sparked off the plate of hardened mold covering the front of its head; a crack spanned from the impact point. The monster reared with a shriek, whipping its head back and forth as black liquid spurted from its wound. It crashed back down on all fours, head lowered, hiding the wound behind the sweep of one wing. Heisenberg searched its body for another weak point- yeah, get it while it's distracted- if he could weaken it enough, annoy it enough, maybe Rose would be able to rise up inside and take over.

Come on, kid. You gotta help me out, now.

There. That bundle of tentacles. Behind it glistened the thing's arm joint, a fold of smooth membrane unprotected by keratin or cartilage. Through the translucent membrane, he made out the pulsation of the thing's inner workings, a mesmerizing ripple of muscle and organ.

Perfect.

Before the monster could turn, he shoved off a chunk of broken brick wall, launching himself in a desperate leap toward the soft spot.

The monster snarled; had it noticed him? Oh, yeah, it had noticed him, it was turning, whirling, wings lifting, but he had time, he could get it, he could do this, he could end it-

Cold rammed through him, sudden as a blow.

An instant of silence, of realization. Heisenberg blinked. Why wasn't he holding his hammer anymore? Why were his hands not working? They hung off him like the arms of a deactivated soldat, useless lumps of flesh and bone. Why was the ground red?

The monster's sharp, bladed tentacle impaled him through the chest. Through the Cadou. He felt it writhing in agony, but the pain hadn't reached him quite yet. All he felt was the pressure, the cold.

You're in shock, dumbass.

He had to get it out, get the Cadou's healing factor jump-started...if he could get to his workshop in the factory, get some accelerant...

Factory's gone, idiot.

Oh, yeah.

Well, shit.

The monster- Miranda- rammed the tentacle deeper. He felt it crackle through him, breaking his ribs one by one. He choked. Blood spattered the snow at his feet.

"You..." he managed. "You...think that's...enough, Mother? Let me show you...let me show you what I can really...what I can..."

A low, undulating snarl. Like a laugh.

Bitch, Heisenberg thought.

Miranda ripped the blade out. Heisenberg fell to his knees, all at once. One of Donna's puppets with its strings cut. Shadow swathed him again. He squinted up as Miranda's enormous beaked head swung to his level, as it seemed to stare at him down the length of its sharp, eyeless snout.

Her voice echoed from the monster, from the air, carried on a hissing snarl that surrounded him in its hum and tremor.

"I never loved you, little Karl," she told him, softly, the way she used to sing him to sleep when he was just a child.

"Hm." Heisenberg nodded. His vision began to spider on the edges, dark creeping in. Something crackled; his skin chilled, sudden as a fall into an icy river. He glanced down as crystal began to vein its way from the puncture wound, eating up his living skin inch by inch.

His Cadou was failing. He didn't have long.

"Guess not," he managed, to Miranda. "But you gotta give it to me, just now- I sure was distracting."

She didn't have the chance to respond. An explosion went off along her flank- a blast of artillery fire.

Mia. So she'd gotten to the big gun after all. Nice one, buttercup. Heisenberg tried to hold her face in his head, tried to hold onto hope as a second blast of flames filled the sky, but it slipped away. Even Rose's face slipped from him, gone into the dark.

The crystal spread. He couldn't hold on anymore.

Sorry, kid.

The cold overtook him, and the dark, and when it reached his heart-

He let go.

***

Rose drifted.

There was no ground, and yet she walked, her boots meeting a slight resistance with each step. She was deep in the megamycete, now. The rippling mold was gone, and all that surrounded her was a gusting dark, the faint outlines of trees visible, like a forest in a pitch-black night.

Over vine, under branch, into the forest deep...

Miranda was here. She felt her, felt the essential nature of her, as familiar as the feeling of her own skin, that sting of meeting her own eyes in a mirror.

"I'm here," Rose called. "You ready to talk about this?"

"You were so small."

Miranda stepped from the dark trees, radiant in her black and gold regalia. Crows encircled her, clattering toward the skies. Her wings enfolded her like a penitent's cloak; a glimmer of golden eyes shone from beneath its feathery cowl, the only color in the world.

"Just a little thing," she went on. "Asleep in my arms. Do you know what I thought, the first time I looked into your face?"

Rose shook her head.

"Miraculous," Miranda breathed. "I thought...all this had been worth it. So many years of pain, so many years of destruction. My own body, resurrected, remade. Even my mind, given to divine service, no longer my own. None of it mattered, because I had found you again. And there you were. A precious thing. My special child. My Eva."

"I'm not Eva," Rose told her. "I'm Rosemary Winters. I'm the girl you stole from my parents. Nothing you do, no matter how you change me, can ever make that any different."

"That doesn't matter, either. Eva...understand what it is I'm offering you." She lifted her face to the canopy overhead. "What it is to be one. The world beyond...there's nothing in it but hatred, and pain. Long, weary life."

She lifted a fine blonde brow. "You will live one, darling girl. Years, and years, and years of loneliness. One day, all that you know will be gone. All that you love will be dust, whether by your hand or another's. All your dreams will become...thin. Paper and shadows. Except one."

She faced Rose, a dark Madonna swathed in shifting feathers.

"To be together again," she said. "To be one with the Black God again. To be one with me. Your true mother. I will never abandon you, Eva. I never did. All I have done, all I have hurt...and I never abandoned you. What is the world in comparison?"

Rose stood and listened. Her throat was tight. The forest groaned and creaked around her. She imagined she could smell snow, and gusting night.

The wolves are here, child.

How many times had she yearned for place, for purpose? For something beyond herself, for some phantom something bigger than her, bigger than anything, a longing so great it threatened to consume her?

It could, here and now. It could, with Miranda. On, and on, and on forever, in her endless dream.

"I have family-" Rose began.

Miranda laughed. "That machinating mechanic, Heisenberg? My other false children? Darling. They've lied to you. Hurt you. Stolen your memories. I have never done that."

"Bullshit. You stole me."

Her face twisted- a flash of a snarl. Not rage at Rose, she understood. Rage at herself, at being unable to make her understand. Her wings burst forth; in a racket of beats, she was gone.

Rose gasped, flinching back as feathers brushed her face, leaving behind smears of mold like ash.

"You are mine, Eva!" Miranda's voice echoed from the dark. "Nothing you do, no arguments you make, will change that." "And nothing can change who you are," Rose called.

Rushing darkness swept past her; she twisted out of the way as claws lashed the air. The rush was gone again, gone into the trees; heart pounding, Rose backed off, her step unsteady, the pain in her hip like fire.

"Can it?" Rose searched the darkness. "You could never move on, could you? All the things you did, all the incredible secrets you found, and none of them meant anything because...because there was nothing for you but the past. The Lords and their devotion. The villagers and their fear. None of it mattered to you. You could have been anything, Miranda, and you chose to be-"

Another rush. Rose jerked away. Too slow. Claws raked over her shoulder, snagging her face. She cried out, pitching over as blood burst in her mouth.

"They will always fail you," Miranda's voice echoed. "They will always disappoint you."

Another slash of pain. This one bit deep, bit into muscle and sinew. Rose's scream burst from her. The forest whirled, trees creaking, shadows rising like the monsters in a fairy tale, claws and teeth and gnashing jaws.

"And in the end," Miranda said, "you will end them, or they will end you. Is that what you want? Is that what you long for? To see all things become ash? To see yourself become ash along with them?"

"That's not the way it is," Rose murmured, thick through bloody lips. "And that's definitely not the way it has to be."

And when Miranda rushed for her next, she was ready.

A whirl of darkness, of feathers. Rose was rising; she sprang upward, boot bracing forward, her fingers closing into a fist- just the way Heisenberg had taught her, just the way she knew would get the job done. She glimpsed Miranda's eyes widen the instant before she flung her fist forward and cracked it, with all her strength, with all her will, into Miranda's face.

Bone crackled under her hand. Miranda snapped backward; the darkness was blasted aside as her wings spread, as she flung out her arms, black mold gushing from her broken nose. Rose let out a shriek as the ground rippled, as she tipped forward, after Miranda, into the yawning abyss at their feet.

Wings beat at the air. Rose grabbed out, her fingers snagging Miranda's wrist. Claws slashed at her, but Rose dug her fingers in, holding on, even as Miranda's ragged wingbeats carried them higher, higher.

Branches whipped and tore at them, tattering Miranda's regalia even further, tearing at Rose's hair and ruined shirt. Another hiss of claws through wind; they sank into her flesh again, digging so deep into Rose's torso she no longer felt them, just the pressure and the hammer of adrenaline through her system.

"I saw your memories, Miranda," she yelled, over the scream of wind, the rumble of the megamycete. The Black God's hymn. "All of them. All the way to the beginning. I saw your life, every last moment of it. I saw what happened to your mother, what happened to Eva, what you did to Sal. Your friend. He loved you, and you murdered him-"

"He failed me!" Her voice rose to a raw shriek. "He killed my Eva-"

"The sickness killed her, not Moreau. You can't blame him for everything. You can't blame your own creations for what you did to them."

She wound her fists deep into the robes around Miranda's waist. This wind would tear her off; it was all she could do to keep hanging on.

"Eva's gone," Rose cried. "You loved her, and she died, and I'm sorry. But she's gone."

"It's-" For an instant, Rose thought Miranda would make another excuse, another play at grandeur. Her mask, unshakable.

But it cracked, just a little, on the edge. "It's not fair."

"I know. None of this is fair. But it's time for it to be over, Miranda. It's time for you to be done."

"Let go," Miranda growled.

"Never," Rose spat back at her.

It was excruciating, agonizing, like moving against an impossible weight, but Rose managed to bring up her hand. It slipped between them, slick with blood, shaking. In a monumental heave of effort, she pressed it, hard, to Miranda's cheek.

"You're coming with me," she whispered.

And with a single stab of will, a sword thrust to the heart, she drove her mind into Miranda's, and then they were both falling.

Dizzying. A spiral forever, a spiral through darkness. Through memory. Miranda's, again. Her rule over the village. Her life. Photographs in the rain. Their colors bled away, shadow and dust, images projected on a distant wall. Mold twined through them, veins of darkness, eating them away. And then they were nothing, and they had reached the bottom, and, together, they crashed into a heap of broken feathers, and tangled limbs, and blood.

By the time Rose opened her eyes, her hands were empty, and she lay curled alone.

The floor reflected her hollow-eyed face. A mirror, she thought, running her palm over its frictionless surface.

Light glinted in the distance. She lifted her head.

She wasn't alone.

A little girl sat in a small wooden bed, knees to chest, facing away. A window silhouetted her head. Through it, Rose made out stars.

She climbed to her feet and approached, step silent on the dark mirror below.

The girl couldn't be older than eleven or twelve. She wore a nightgown embroidered with flowers, woolen slippers. Her hair fell in braids down her shoulders. She clutched a carved wooden goat to her heart as she hummed under her breath.

"Hello," Rose said. "Miranda."

The girl's gaze was distant, set on the starry sky. Her humming faded, and the hush crept in. "Don't you hear them?" she whispered. "The wolves?"

"No."

"I do." She paused. "Have they come for me?"

"Yes."

Miranda tilted her head, her eyes bright in the starlight.

"You brought them back together," she said. "The others. I felt them...every single one, alive again. When I made them, each time, I hoped I'd get it right. I didn't. All four of them were never enough. But you would have been."

Rose sat by her side on the narrow bed. Miranda's thin shoulder shivered as she set her hand to it.

"I know," she said. "But don't you see now, Miranda? It doesn't matter anymore. We survived beyond all you touched."

"No..." the little girl said.

"We are alive despite all the ways you hurt us. We're together, despite all the ways you split us apart."

"No." She shook her head, burying her face in her arms with her wooden goat, tears shining on her cheeks. "No-"

Rose took her hands. Miranda's face lifted, her eyes wide.  

"Do you have a story?" Rose asked. She couldn't help but speak gently. "One that helps you sleep at night?"

"You were my story," Miranda said, just as gently.

"All stories end."

"Not you," Miranda told her. "You never will."

Rose smiled, just a little. "And isn't that what children are supposed to do? To grow beyond their parents?"

"I'm frightened." Her hands trembled in Rose's. "It's...it's been such a long, long time."

"It's all right. I'm here."

Miranda's eyes became brighter, reflections of the stars. Blue-gray, like Rose's own. "Don't leave me, Eva," she whispered.

"You lost, Miranda," Rose told her, as she pulled her into her arms, as they held each other in the dark. "Mother. Sweet girl. It's all right. You can rest now."

The starlight glimmered. It faded.

And when it was gone, so was Miranda.

Rose's breathing echoed in her head. She slumped to the ground, weightless, numb. She didn't fight when the darkness flowed to claim her. She let it close over her, cold and familiar, and bear her down.

***

A flutter of ice wind.

The sunlight, breaking over a mountain peak.

Rose opened her eyes.

The mountain pass spread before her. Dawn had just broken, and the world filled with its reaching light, pale gold and clear, herding all shadow to the edges of the world, all the darker for its density.

Each inhale hurt, but it was thanks to the pure, freezing air, not Rose's wounds. She no longer felt them as she lay there, curled on her side, as she watched the sun rise, as she watched the silhouette, standing against it, approach.

He stood over her, then knelt. His face was kind, worn, rusted with old blood. A stranger's face, and yet she knew it. She knew it like a warm glow, a last whisper, a kiss pressed to her infant cheek. He smoothed his bandaged, three-fingered hand over her hair, slow, soft, and lulling.

"Rosemary," he murmured, to her. "I'm so proud of you."

She made herself speak. "Dad?"

Ethan smiled. "It's all right, Rose. It's all going to be okay now."

"I...I don't know, dad, I..." She blinked. Tears pushed at her eyes, hot against her skin. "I think she got me..."

"No, Rose."

"I can't..." She was so tired. She just wanted to close her eyes, to stay with him forever. To be held under his gentle regard.

But that was Miranda, wasn't it? And that would be a shadow, a dream.

Her dad kept stroking her hair.

"I don't want you to go," Rose whispered.

He laughed softly. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm not really...Rose. I'm not..." Her throat tightened. She took a hitching breath. "I'm not really your daughter. I'm...her, I'm..."

She stopped, unable to go on. Ethan didn't release her, didn't pull away.

"Let me go," she whispered. "You didn't save Rose."

"I saved you. Isn't that enough?" She sensed his smile. "Don't say I did all that for nothing."

"Never."

"Day's coming," he told her. "Time to go back."

"I don't know if I'm strong enough."

But he was there, slipping his maimed hands under her arms, pulling her to her knees, against him. He held her there for a moment, his cheek pressed to the crown of her head.

"You have to go back," he told her. He gave her a little shake. "You have to live. Will you do that for me?"

Rose nodded. She couldn't speak.

"Good. Then you'd better get to it."

She found her voice. "I love you, dad."

"I love you too. Always." He kissed the crown of her head. "Goodbye, Rosemary."

***

That wasn't the dawn breaking over the mountains. It was the dawn breaking through dissolving mold.

Rose gasped for air as the megamycete crumbled around her, sluicing down over her shoulders, cascading away from her with a rumble. She lay curled, fetal, in a bath of liquid mold; it soaked her to the skin, plastered her hair to her cheeks.

She'd emerged from a kind of cocoon, reconstituted from her mutant form's heart. Its remnants disintegrated as she pushed herself onto one elbow to see what the hell was going on.

Around her was a landscape of complete and total devastation. Vast, broken wings sprawled from collapsing shoulder-joints, decomposing back into slimy mold as Rose watched; the whole creature lay like a beached whale, half-dissolved already. Great ribs jutted toward the sky. Tentacles as thick as telephone poles and tipped with calcified blades snaked away, crushing houses under their weight.

The village was entirely leveled, as if a tornado had swept through, nothing left but shattered wood, remnants of scaffolding and chunks of calcified mold-roots, solitary chimneys sticking resolutely from the ruin. Rose blinked, brows raised. Shit, had she done that? She and Miranda, she supposed, but...this monster, this body...she'd mutated into it. Now she was shedding the excess biomass, sloughing it off like a snakeskin.

She lifted her hands, slick with mold. Could she do it again, if she wanted to?

Holy shit.

Movement caught her eye: a flutter of gray, gleaming in the dawn light.

All thoughts froze in her head.

No.

No.

Please, no.

Heisenberg lay slumped against one of her fallen tentacles. His hat was gone, his head tipped forward at a sharp angle. A massive, crystallized hole gaped in his chest. The calcification spread from it, over his dirty clothes, his trench coat, his arms, creeping up the side of his face.

"H...Heisenberg?" Rose managed. Was he-

No. His hand curled at the sound of her voice. He winced, lifting his head to meet her gaze. One eye was a sphere of cloudy crystal, but the other was still all right, green-gray, focused on her. With a grinding crackle, one of his arms lifted. He dragged himself the last few inches to the side of her cocoon, slumping again over its lip, facing her.

"Hey, kid," he said.

Rose's face crumpled. She scrambled from the bath of mold, reaching for his face, turning it toward hers. "You..." she managed. A sob choked her words. "You came after me?"

"Told you I'd fight for you no matter what." He gave a little shiver as the crystal crept further over his face; a faint haze of glittering dust rose from him. "Heh. You got her."

"Shut up. Just stop talking for once." She couldn't stop her tears; they were warm on her face, quivering in her voice. "She's gone."

"Good." A contented smile touched the side of his mouth unaffected by the crystal. "You did it, kid."

The look in his eye brightened. "Rose. I..."

"Hush." She brushed her palm over the back of his head, over his face, over the wound in his chest. In his heart. In its depths, she made out the faint, dying wriggle of his Cadou. "I know."

She pressed her hand to the wound.

Warmth pulsed from her. From the depths of her power. Around her, the remains of her sloughed-off mutant form writhed; mold-roots twined from the earth, into her, slicking over her skin, filling her sclerae with black. Rose closed her eyes, her brow furrowed. A connection. To all things, to this place, to all people the Black God had touched. I can do this.

The warmth strengthened; it flowed through the roots, through the endless, fractal connections of the mycelium link. A rush, a chorus of voices, a flare of feathers, drifting in the breeze. And when she opened her eyes, it was done.

The skin under her palm, on Heisenberg's chest, was unbroken. The crystal retracted as he stared with a look of shock. He lifted his hands and turned them over, watching the last of the glimmer fade from his skin.

He looked up at Rose.

"You saved me," he said.

Her face split in a grin. "I think we saved each other."

And then it was inevitable- her arms around his neck, his gathering her to him, gently holding the back of her head, like a fine and precious thing. Rose buried her face in the crook of his neck. It was all right. She let it enfold her, miraculous: he was alive. They were, both of them, alive.

Footsteps scuffled through the ruin around them. Rose made herself look up as someone called her name across distance.

Donna. She and Angie picked their way through the destruction, Donna's eyes wide as she took in the destroyed village, the monster corpse sprawled atop it.

"Over here!" Rose waved her arms. Dimitrescu approached, too, striding with considerably more ease from the direction of the castle. Moreau, too, shambling behind Donna, gnawing on a long bone that looked a bit too much like a human femur.

He dropped it as he caught sight of Rose and Heisenberg, picking up speed into a kind of limping jog.

"You're alive!" he gasped as he and the others joined them, as the three Lords stood like a gallery audience before the decaying monster. "Ohhh, Rosemary, Karl...I thought you'd gotten eaten...I thought Mother had murdered you..."

"We could only be so lucky," Dimitrescu muttered, hand on her hip. But the corner of her mouth quirked up into an indulgent smile. "Very nice, child. You're far stronger than I gave you credit for."

"Uh," Rose said. "Thanks?"

Donna took her hand, and Heisenberg's, drawing them both to their feet. Wordless, she touched Heisenberg's scarred cheek. He winked at her.

"Is she..." Donna whispered, to Rose.

"Yeah. Laid to rest." She squeezed Donna's hand. "You don't have to be afraid of her anymore."

"Dear, dear," Dimitrescu drawled, staring out toward the town square below. "We have a visitor."

Rose shook mold from her hands, joining Dimitrescu on the overlook. The echo of horses' hooves rang through the dawn. Its pale light filled the town square, illuminating the remains of the Ouroboros camp, the Maiden of War with her blade resolutely aloft, the single figure on horseback charging through the destruction toward them.

Chris.

He reined his horse around in a slew of grit; in the same movement, he unslung the rifle from his shoulder and vaulted from the horse's back, landing with rifle cocked and leveled.

Not for Dimitrescu, standing like a marble statue of a destroying goddess in the dawn's glow,  crimson smile poised on her face.

Not for Moreau, lips drawn back from snaggleteeth, Cadou tendrils twining free from his tumorous hunchback to whip and snap at the wind.

Not for Donna, her pale face set like a mask, a wild light burning in her single dark eye, a grind of sinister laughter hissing from Angie in her arms.

And not for Heisenberg, who limped to Rose's side, who splayed his hand and, with a guffaw, summoned his hammer and a cloud of shrapnel to swirl around him in a glittering halo.

No. Chris Redfield's next bullet, his next anti-mutant round, was aimed straight for Rose.

She lifted her chin. The wind stirred her hair, brushed her skin, veined with dark mold. She didn't send it down to claim him. She met his eyes, his fervent gaze, bright and steady and set on her. His finger was tense on the trigger. One shot would do. Straight to the heart.

A moment of silence, of wind, of Chris's hesitation.

Then-

He lowered the rifle.

It fell to his side as he straightened and stood back, still holding her gaze. Rose lifted her arms. The ground rumbled- something massive rushing to the surface. It shook the rubble, the Maiden of War on her plinth. Mold erupted from the ground in a seething wave. It twisted toward the sky, twining over Rose and the Four Lords at her side.

The wall of mold closed between her and Chris Redfield, and he was gone from Rose's sight as the first true light of day filled the valley.