Rita’s explorations of her body turned out to be surprisingly fruitful.

The first thing she discovered was that Justine had maybe had a point about her feet being cute. Well, objectively cute if it had been attached to something else. That wasn’t a spider. They consisted of two big, squishy toes with another, smaller one pinched in between, each tipped with a small, hooked claw at the end and covered in light, fuzzy hair.

If it had been, say, on a deformed puppy or a kitten or something, she wouldn’t have been able to keep her hands off them. Being attached to her own body, however… well, at least rubbing her fingers between them had been a pleasant sensation. The hairs really were quite sensitive.

The claws had been interesting. Human nails were shit at carrying any kind of weight, or at least hers had been, but she could tug and yank her new claws with nothing worse than a mild feeling of discomfort. They were clearly made to be used and were likely what she was supposed to use to climb.

The toes also seemed strong enough to be able to grip things. Actually, she’d discovered that back in the Nightmare already, but now that she could do some quiet testing, she was quite surprised just how hard they could grip. Hard enough to leave bruises on her fingers for sure.

Questing fingers across the rest of her thorax and abdomen also discovered numb spots, sensitive spots, ticklish spots and even the, ah, shall we say, ‘missing bits’ that she’d thought she’d lost along with her hips. Hidden on the bottom of her abdomen, between folds of skin that looked otherwise pretty much identical to all the other folds and bumps around it, she’d found an orifice that looked absolutely nothing like it had on a human. Well, unless it wasn’t what she thought it was, but rather an ‘egg-hole’ and she refused to entertain that horrible possibility.

All she knew was that it apparently had nowhere near as many nerve endings as her human version, so happy-fun-time was probably off the cards for the foreseeable future. Maybe one day when she met the right half-spider, one with a nice, strong jaw and a big abdomen… Nope, nope, nope, cutting that line of thought right there.

Taking the time to actually discover her skin had done a lot to make her more comfortable in it, but there were limits to what her mind could handle at this point. Baby steps. But not spider babies… oh God.

To stave off her mounting insanity, she’d ducked back into her mindspace - after making sure she was seated securely and wouldn’t fall with her head in the water while she was out - to check on Alice.

Alice was still the same. Still sleeping peacefully on a white floor in a white room that seemed to stretch to infinity, if a rather small one. She seemed slightly smaller than Rita remembered, though. Maybe. Probably all the white and lack of horizon and whatever that threw off her perception a bit.

Anyway, she seemed fine, breathing deeply despite all the missing pieces, even if she still showed no signs of waking up, so Rita left her be. It had only been like… a week? Something like that. Some injuries could take months to heal. As long as it wasn’t getting any worse, she was sure to recover in time.

After a final wash that finally managed to dislodge most of the gunk from her hair, Rita clambered out of the bath after close to an hour of scrubbing, soaking, introspection and platonic self-exploration. Her legs were starting to prune, and that was an awful lot of pruning.

She did what she could with a comb that she found laying on one of the counters, but she would have absolutely murdered for a mirror. Or a blow dryer. Justine’s simple cotton - at least, she assumed it was cotton - shirt was a little tight, but what Rita had excess in the bust area, she made up for by lacking in the muscles department, so it wasn’t too bad.

Rita had just put the comb back where she’d found it, figuring she’d done what she could for her hair given the limitations of her situation, when Justine came back.

“Sorry but I’m gonna have to cut your bath short, Duncan wants to… oh! Oh, wow, you cleaned up so nicely!” Justine exclaimed as she saw Rita standing there. “How’s my shirt?”

“It’s fine… what did you say about Duncan?” Rita asked quickly. Justine was doing that staring thing again and it was making her uncomfortable. Or maybe she was just one of those overly friendly people?

“Oh! Duncan said he wants to talk to you. He’s up in his office. Don’t look so panicked! I told him you behaved almost completely sane!”

So she’d been right. Justine had been keeping an eye on her and reporting back about all her doings. Rita sighed. It was not like she hadn’t expected this. She’d finally arrived somewhere with some kind of authority, and now said authority wanted to talk to her to figure out just what exactly it was that they were dealing with. Well, a chat wasn’t too much to ask, was it? People were probably curious.

“Alright. His office is…?” Rita asked.

“Just a few floors up. Come on! I’ll take you there!”

“Justine,” Rita asked as they climbed the staircase to Triskellion’s second level, “I hope you forgive my ignorance, and please don’t take offense, but may I ask, what exactly are you?”

“I’m a Hob-Ogre!” Justine replied brightly. “Hence the tusks!” As if to make her point, she pulled her lips back, displaying a set of chompers that matched no human dental records. Her two bottom tusks had a matching pair of elongated canine teeth at the top and her other teeth had a far greater degree of ‘pointyness’ than their human equivalents. It didn’t quite make her look like a piranha, but it certainly tended in that direction.

“Woah! Okay, those are some teeth.” Rita laughed. “An Ogre? Like Shrek?”

“Eww, no, Ogres are big, filthy and dumb,” Justine replied, sticking out her tongue. “Hob-Ogre. And what’s a ‘Shrek’?”

Oh right. They probably don’t have a multi-million dollar animation movie industry in this world.

“It’s what I think of when you say ‘Ogre’. Like, big and green with ears like little tube-thingies, speaks in this weird accent… Nevermind, you wouldn’t get it,” Rita said.

“Well, word of advice? Calling a Hob-Ogre an Ogre is a bit like calling a human an ape. Some people get offended by that kind of thing,” Justine advised.

“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it!” Rita quickly tried to cover her gaffe.

“Don’t worry, I’m not offended,” Justine replied with a grin. “You honestly don’t know, right?”

“Exactly!” Phew. Blunder averted.

The second floor turned out to be very similar to the first: warrens of rectangular corridors that appeared to have been hewn out of solid rock and smoothed down to ease passage, lit by oil lamps mounted on the walls. There was also a disturbing lack of windows that made the whole place feel like some kind of dungeon, even though Rita knew she’d climbed at least two flights of stairs since entering the front gate. The air didn’t smell stale, however, so she assumed they had some form of possibly magical air circulation system to keep it fresh.

“So, taking into account that I know nothing about anything and I am totally not trying to offend you, could you tell me what the difference is between an Ogre and a Hob-Ogre?” Rita finally asked when she couldn’t bear her curiosity anymore. Also, she realized, it was probably a good idea to find out more of the world she now found herself in.

“Oh sure! So, a Hob-Ogre is like me, right? About the same size as a human,” Justine started. “Now an Ogre, on the other hand, is about twice as tall, three times as wide and dumb as two rocks bashed together. They also have terrible personal hygiene and they can rip a small tree out of the ground with one hand. Make sense?”

Rita nodded. “Are they… friendly?”

Justine shrugged. “Depends.”

“On?”

“Do you look like something they can eat, fuck or fight?” Justine responded. “If yes, then probably not very.”

“Oh. So that’s a no then,” Rita said.

Justine nodded. “Probably a safe bet. If you see one, just avoid it. They’re not malicious, just stupid. As long as you keep your distance you’ll probably be fine.”

‘Not malicious, just stupid.’ Interesting way to put it.

“So, are there a lot of Ogres around here?” Rita asked.

“Nah not really,” Justine replied shaking her head. “Not this side of the mountain at any rate. Maybe a few small tribes. Between the Shine-nosers, Grailmane’s magic and the goblins, they got pretty much either wiped out or driven far away.”

“Goblins?” Rita asked, perking up. That was a piece of nerd-world that she actually knew! “Small, green, pointy ears, those goblins?” It didn’t hurt to check your assumptions.

Justine nodded, her face turning to a scowl. “Now those are some malicious little shits. If you see one, give it a kick for me. It probably deserves it.”

When they reached the fourth floor, the tight corridors, barely wide enough for her to skitter comfortably with all of the extra space her legs took, suddenly opened up into a large, open, sunlit interior courtyard. It turned out, the entire inside of Triskellion was a hollow cylinder from the fourth floor upwards, all the way to the roof where a bright circle revealed the sun shining far above.

Back on Earth, such a design would have been completely futile. Due to the sun’s constant movement, and how far the walls of the fort stretched upwards, the sun would have illuminated the courtyard for perhaps a few minutes each day, a few days each year at the height of summer. Like some kind of Aztec date-puzzle. But here, in Aer, the sun was completely stationary. It bathed the tables and benches scattered about in a delightfully warm radiance that was being taken advantage of by a number of other delvers who glanced over as they entered.

While she’d been getting looks and stares pretty much ever since she’d entered Triskellion, she realized to her surprise that their nature had somewhat changed since she’d first arrived. What had been gazes of distant wariness, usually combined with hands resting ever so casually on weapons, had morphed into looks of surprise and, in a few cases, outright appreciative leers from some of the Delvers.

She blamed Justine’s shirt.

Justine lead her up the long, spiral staircase that wound around and around the open cylinder. Looking off to the side, Rita noticed that there were plenty of rooms and offices set into the walls around the various levels that circled the hollow, and it seemed to be where the bulk of the inhabitants of Triskellion lived and worked. She didn’t envy them having to climb those stairs every day, though. So far there hadn’t been an elevator in sight.

By the time they finally reached Duncan’s floor, Rita was puffing and felt like she needed another bath. Justine, on the other hand, didn’t even seem to be breathing heavily. She knocked on a door that looked identical to every other door on the level while Rita tried to catch her breath, leaning on two of her legs.

“Come in!” she heard Duncan’s heavily accented voice call from inside. Justine pushed the door open and gestured for Rita to go in.

“Don’t worry, I’m rooting for you!” Justine whispered as she walked past. Rita glanced back in surprise, but it was already too late. The door shut behind her with an ominous click.

What was that all about?

When Rita turned back, Duncan Orrin was looking at her from behind his desk like a kindly old uncle, while Gora stared out of the single window at the ruins of the city visible in the distance. In the corner of the room rested the giant blue bow that she had seen Duncan wield down at the entrance.

Rita wiped a strand of sweaty hair out of her eyes. “Hello, Sir. You wanted to see me?”

Duncan nodded. “Aye, Lass. We need to have a wee chat. Ye look tired stairs a bit much for ye? Come on in and make yerself comfortable.”

“Thank you, Sir….” Rita replied as she carefully stepped among the chairs in front of his desk. The office wasn’t that big and she took up quite a lot of space, what with the eight legs and all.

"Er… as best ye can,” he added awkwardly, he glancing down at her arachnid lower body as she stepped up to one of the chairs.

Rita frowned down at the chair for a few moments, before flipping it around so that the backrest faced towards Duncan. Then she rested her arms on the top of it and plopped her thorax down on the seat, before fixing him with her friendliest smile.

“I must say, ye look much better after a scrubbin’, Lass,” he said, returning her smile.

“Thank you, Sir,” she replied, slightly uncomfortable at the compliment.

“Och, stop with the ‘Sir’, shite, yer makin’ my Delvers look like the undisciplined dobbers that they are. Just call me Duncan.”

Rita suppressed a snicker as she caught Gora glaring at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Now, the reason I asked ye here is that Gora told me what happened out there, and I just want to clarify a few wee things with ye,” he went on in a more serious tone. “Is that okay? Ye don’t have to be nervous about it, if it’s somethin’ ye don’t feel comfortable talkin’ about, ye can just say so.”

“Sure, I’m happy to answer what I can,” she replied with what she hoped was a confident smile. “What would you like to know?”

The truth was, she wasn’t that confident. Back on Earth, she had not exactly been good with people. After… it, she had pretty much driven everyone out of her life except for a string of progressively worse boyfriends. She’d lost contact with her friends from school, distanced herself from what family she had left and then between this and that she just hadn’t had time to practice actually making friends again. She really wanted Duncan to like her, she was effectively crashing in his house after all, but she wasn’t sure she knew how to do that anymore.

Still, she’d done okay with Gora and the others, right? They’d only tried to kill her for the first couple of hours. Encouraging results, and at the same time leaving a lot of room for improvement!

Duncan glanced down at a page of notes lying in front of him. Gora’s version of events, perhaps?

“Gora told me she and the others first saw ye when ye were fleeing from a horde of Masked. She said ye told them ye ran into a hive while scavenging, that right?” he started.

“Yes, S… Duncan,” she just barely caught herself.

Why was she so damned nervous? It felt like being in a job interview or something!

“And how long before that had ye been, er… spawned? Created? Born? Ye ken what I mean?” he asked.

“Nothing that crazy, I just woke up on my bed in my apartment!” Rita replied with an embarrassed laugh. “And it had been maybe… an hour or so before?”

Duncan’s eyebrows rose. “Ye ran into a bloody Masked Hive an hour after openin’ yer eyes? Cannae decide if yer the luckiest or the unluckiest lass alive.”

“They… uh… didn’t seem all that dangerous…” Rita mumbled awkwardly, noticing just how weird that statement sounded. It was true, though. Compared to how dangerous the other things they’d ran into out in the Nightmare had been, the Masked had honestly been rather… tame. Oh sure, she’d been scared witless at the time, but that was just because she’d been unarmed and unprepared. And because she’d nearly died.

Sure, they’d still rip her apart now, even with her shiny new spear, but at least she could appreciate now how much faster almost everything else she’d faced would have done the same.

“Would you believe they’re one of the more dangerous things out there?” Gora rumbled from behind. “A single Masked, sure, even you could probably kill it. But there can be hundreds of them in a hive. And if they feel threatened, they do that funny head cocking thing and suddenly its like fighting a single person with a hundred bodies. Quantity has a quality all of it’s own.”

“You didn’t seem to have had too much trouble with them,” Rita opined over her shoulder.

Gor chuckled. “Nah, we just made it look easy because we caught them off-guard. Then kept them that way until they were all dead. But trust me, being surrounded by a perfectly coordinated mob is terrifying. Even if it’s just a mob of edgy teenagers with rusty knives.”

“Alright,” Duncan said as he finished writing something on the paper in front of him. His pen was a complicated device that seemed to consist of a number of tubes connected to a small, glass ink container. It looked kinda… steampunky. “Ye fled into the building, they pursued, then ye wound up on the roof with five of the beasties, right?”

Rita nodded. “Yes. I tried to barricade the door but they broke through before I could web it shut.”

“Web?” Duncan asked again, his bushy eyebrow migrating upwards.

In response, Rita reached back with her two hind legs, squeezed out a tiny bit of spider-silk and neatly snipped it off with the sharp ridges on her feet before passing it along the chain of her legs. A mild blush began heat up her cheeks as she realized that while Duncan had probably seen nothing but some squirming, Gora had had a perfect view of the whole process from behind. She would have been able to see literally everything. It felt a bit like she’d gotten caught peeing in public.

“Web,” she stated as calmly as she could, as she dangled the short, sticky strand of silk in front of Duncan’s face with one of her front feet.

“Er… thank ye…?” Duncan replied a little uncertainly as he gingerly took it from her claws. Then he flailed it around a little, trying to unstick his fingers, before finally managing to smear it off on the edge of his table.

“Any time,” Rita replied, smiling as her blush deepened. Oops. Maybe she should have given him a dry sample without the glue?

“That’s also how she got off the roof and gave Samual and I the slip,” Gora added. “That took some serious balls by the way. The ground was a long way down. Kudos.”

Rita started blushing again, then turned pale when she remembered that it was Alice who had leapt off that building, scrambled inside and dragged herself off to hide in the bathtub, all while holding her guts in with one arm. She could remember it all, but it had been as if she had been nothing but a spectator, watching from the sidelines. She just muttered a quiet “thank you”.

“If we could get back to the rooftop for a second,” Duncan interjected. “Rita, the five of them that were on the roof with ye, what were they doin’ before Gora and Samual showed up?”

Rita closed her eyes. Images flashed through her mind. People in masks, dripping with blood, dragging her to the ground. Her legs flailing as she tried to kick them away.

“They… they were trying to kill me,” she said quietly, with only a mild trembling in her voice. She’d racked up so many traumas by this point that this particular one was pretty mild, considering.

“And after Gora and Samual arrived?” he asked, just as quietly.

Rita’s eyes flashed open. He knew. He knew about the rage. They both did, most probably. That’s why she was here. They were trying to figure out if she was safe.

“They turned on them, instead,” she replied, her voice now trembling for an entirely different reason. “But Gora should have told you that.”

“Aye. She did. But I was curious, did ye feel any urge to do the same?” Duncan asked. “Or anythin’ else?”

“U-urge?” Rita tried to reply as calmly as she could while her heart thudded in her chest. “Not sure what you mean…”

If they knew that she was affected by the Tree’s rage thing, it would raise two very awkward questions. The first would be how she managed to resist it, which would mean having to either lie or tell them about Alice. Which would in turn both raise the question why she hadn’t told them about her before, as well as confirm that she was, in fact, crazy.

The second awkward question would be how could they be sure wasn’t going to flip out and try to kill someone at any moment? No, they’d kick her back out into the Nightmare Domain if they found out. Damn. She hated having to lie.

“A compulsion to do somethin’. Such as, say, attacking Gora and Samual as well?” he said with a shrug.

“No. Nothing like that,” Rita lied.

Ting-a-ling-a-ling something rang from somewhere inside Duncan’s desk.

“Huh,” he grunted, then reached down and dug something out of one of his lower drawers. As he moved, the pile of papers in front of him shifted slightly, and Rita noticed the silvery glint of metal peeking out from underneath. A knife.

Oh. Oh no. She’d made a horrible mistake. She’d thought that this was just a casual chat, a bit of getting to know each other, but she’d been wrong. Duncan was in front of her, armed with a knife, while Gora boxed her in from behind. Unarmed, and with one arm in a sling, sure, but she probably only needed a single hand to crush Rita’s skull like an egg carton. If she failed to make a good impression here, she wasn’t going to be forced to leave the outpost. She wasn’t even going to leave this room.

“Oh come on, Duncan, don’t tell me you fueled up that old thing, just for this,” Gora complained.

“I cannae think of a better use than protectin’ my people, can ye?” Duncan replied, settling a complicated contraption on his desk. It looked to be filled with gears and strings, kind of like a stripped down music box, as well as a few tubes filled with a familiar looking blue fluid. Was that… what had Ava called it? Conjoined Essense? Conjoint? Something like that. Sticking out from its top was an elaborately carved wooden arm with a bell hanging from it.

“Now Rita, this thing can tell me when people are lyin’, and it said to me, that ye just lied. To my face,” Duncan explained patiently. “There’s many things I can tolerate, but lyin’ ain’t one of ‘em. So would ye please think carefully before ye try again?”

Rita nervously licked her lips. So she was hooked up to a lie detector. Fantastic. “You said if I don’t want to answer, I don’t have to,” Rita said, her throat dry. “Well, I don’t want to answer.” It was stupid. No answer here was as good as an answer. But at least he couldn’t ask any more incriminating questions about it.

Duncan eyed her carefully for a few moments, then shrugged. “Alright, then let’s move on. Why did ye follow Gora’s group after they left?”

She hadn’t. Not immediately, and not knowingly. She’d followed that stupid mental beacon thing that she still didn’t know where it had come from… after Alice had had her bite into that Masked corpse. And then when she found out it was them…

Rita blinked. “I had nowhere else to go. Everything else was just monsters, Samual at least had been human. I guess I thought… I don’t know. They seemed like actual people, I guess I hoped I could talk to them somehow.”

“Then why did ye lure the big snake to them?” Duncan asked.

“I didn’t! It was an accident, I swear! I was following them and it began following me and then the only way to escape was down the cliff… Gora, you have to believe me, I really didn’t mean to!” Rita begged.

“Don’t worry, I believe you,” Gora rumbled.

“How did ye find their Campsite?” Duncan continued. “Gora said ye started searching right near the entrance. How’d ye know where to look?”

“I… I don’t know…” Rita began. But she did know. She had that mental beacon thing leading her to them, although she still didn’t know what it was nor had any idea how to explain it.

Ting-a-ling-a-ling.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she corrected, her voice quivering. She could almost feel the pit she was in grow deeper.

Duncan snorted. “Then how’d ye manage to get through the entrance, at least?”

“I… I got lucky…” Suddenly she wasn’t feeling like it had been all too lucky.

Ting-a-ling-a-ling.

Oh come on! That was just bullshit! “I mean, it… it was just random chance. I hadn’t… I hadn’t planned it. Or anything. I was just leaning against the wall and it happened to be the one with the doorway in it and I… I fell through. For some reason I couldn’t see it from the other side,” Rita stammered out.

Duncan glanced over at the lie detector sitting quietly, then looked down at his notes. “And when ye went through, ye took Ava hostage…”

“No!” Actually she did, kinda.

Ting-a-ling-a-ling.

For fuck sakes! “Well, okay, I did,” Rita corrected, “but I hadn’t meant to! I let her go immediately! I was never going to hurt her!”

“Alright then. Tell me about that little tronic of yers,” Duncan said, gesturing towards where it was clenched in her hand. “It helps ye communicate, aye?”

“Yes!” Rita said, glad that they were finally talking about something safe.

“Gora tells me there were some problems with that initially. Where did ye get it?”

Rita’s racing heart calmed just a little. Finally, something safe she could discuss. “It’s from my phone. I dropped it and it broke open. Well, Ava took it out...”

“’Phone’? What’s that?” Duncan asked.

“It’s like a little device used to allow people to talk over a distance…” Rita started explaining.

“So it was magical, aye?” he interrupted.

“No. Er, maybe. I don’t know. It acted kinda weird at the end. Maybe it had reacted to the magic in the air or something crazy,” she guessed.

“I see. And where did ye get this ‘phone’?” Duncan inquired.

“It’s mine. It was on my bedside table, where I always leave it when I go to sleep,” she stated, then paused. “Well, lying on top of its wreckage, at least. I have no idea why it was whole when the table it was lying on was nothing but splinters.”

“Where ye always leave it?” Duncan asked carefully. “I thought ye were only a couple of hours old?”

This time Rita actually rolled her eyes. “I meant…” Then she paused. Wait, had Gora actually told him she was from another world? Had she kept it from him for a reason perhaps? She glanced back towards Gora…

“I told you she said she was from another world, Duncan,” Gora rumbled, answering that particular conundrum.

“Oh aye, aye, that ye did,” Duncan nodded. “But I’d like to hear the lass say it.”

“Hmm?” Rita started when she realized he was talking to her. “Say what now?”

“Say that yer from another world,” Duncan repeated calmly. “Ye are, aren’t ye? That is what ye told Gora, isn’t it?”

Oh, was that all. For a moment she’d thought she’d missed something.

“Y…” she started, then froze. Wait a second. She wasn’t from another world, was she? She was just a damned copy of someone who was!

“Yes, that’s what I told Gora,” Rita tried.

Duncan wasn’t fooled. “And was it the truth?”

Rita closed her eyes, swallowed nervously then spoke, already knowing what the result was going to be. “Yes.”

Ting-a-ling-a-ling.

Her head slumped forward, onto the backrest of the chair she was sitting on. She could feel the weight of Gora’s attention on her back. At any moment now that big, meaty hand was going to clamp over the top of her head and then she was going to have the last, worst migraine of her life.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rita croaked.

Ting-a-ling-a-ling.

But she did. She desperately wanted to talk to someone. Anyone. She wanted someone to understand. Too late for that now, wasn’t it? She’d dug herself a hole so deep there was no more climbing back out.

Rita winced as she felt Gora’s huge hand land on her shoulder.

“Gora…” Duncan warned.

“Shut up, Duncan. You’ve said enough. And turn off that damn contraption of yours, it’s making even me nervous,” Gora growled.

Eyes clenched shut, Rita braced herself for what was coming. Pain… snapping bones…

“Hey… what’s up?” Gora asked softly. “I know you want to talk about it.”

She did, didn’t she? Even the lie detector had said so. And it wasn’t like she could make her situation any worse, was it?

“I’m a monster…” Rita mumbled.

The desk creaked as Gora leaned her significant weight against it. She sighed. “No. No you’re not. I was wrong. You’re nothing like those things back there. I thought you were, but…”

Rita shook her head, scraping her forehead across the wooden backrest. “No you don’t understand, I am exactly like those things back there. The tree showed me. Rita, the real Rita, was still back on Earth making goo-goo eyes at a guy who actually looked like he might be a decent human being and I’m here, dealing with… this.” She nodded in the vague direction of her lower body. “I’m not Rita.”

And with that, it was like the dam wall that she’d been holding through sheer denial burst.

“I’m… I don’t know who I am. I’m nobody. I’m some broken copy grown by an alien tree monster. I can’t even remember my own surname! I don’t know what I’m capable of, or what I’ll do if I stay here. I’m terrified of half the possibilities and horrified by the other half. I… I’m lost. I don’t know where I’m going, or what I’m doing, I’m just sort of drifting along, trying not to die. But I’m tired. I’m so tired of being scared.”

She sniffed. A tear dripped from the tip of her nose.

“Are you happy now?” Gora growled, and it took Rita a moment to realize that she was talking to Duncan. “Is this what you wanted to know? By the gods, Duncan, she killed the Tree! What more do you want from her?”

“Yes…” Rita mumbled softly.

“What was that?” Gora asked her gently.

Rita finally looked up. “Yes. Yes I felt the rage, same as the Masked. The fucking Tree was in all of our heads. I wanted nothing more than to kill Samual and Gora and wear their entrails as jewelry.”

She felt Gora’s hand tighten on her shoulder. Yeah, she figured that that had been a bit of a surprise.

“But ye didn’t. Ye ran,” Duncan said, through narrowed eyes.

Rita shook her head. “No. Not me. Alice.”

“Alice?” Duncan and Gora asked at the same time.

Rita took a deep breath, wiping her eyes on the back of her sleeve. “Alice is my… alter ego. My split personality. Sort of. I think. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but… I have a second person living up here. In my head,” she said, tapping the side of her head. “When I lost my mind and tried to commit suicide by Gora, she took over. She was the one that leapt over the edge and ran, not me.”

“This ‘Alice’, is she… dangerous?” Duncan asked carefully.

Rita gave a faint smile. “She’s not so much dangerous as she is… practical. I think you’ll like her actually.”

“Is she in there right now? Is she listening to this conversation?” he asked again.

Rita shook her head. “No. Inside the tree, she… she got badly injured. Like, really badly. She’s been unconscious since then and I don’t know if she’s going to make it,” she said, voice dropping to a whisper at the end.

For a few moments nobody spoke.

“Duncan,” Gora finally broke the silence, “we need to get her to the doctor. This sounds like soul shit”

“Hold on, Gora, somethin’ still doesn’t make sense to me. Rita, could ye tell me how exactly…”

“Duncan, I know you’re technically my boss right now, but if you badger her one more time I will literally ram your head up your own ass!”

A shocked silence descended on the room. Then Duncan shouted: “Justine!”

The door cracked open suspiciously quickly. “Yes, boss?” Justine asked, sticking her head inside.

“Get ‘em down to the doctor, pronto!”