I could vaguely make out Katherine’s voice making several exchanges with the children, and laughter and cheer rang out around me, but more than anything: heartbeats dominated my sense of hearing! One after another, they came in a cacophony, and when two or five or however many at once would beat in tandem: I would very nearly lose my grip upon myself! The only words I was still able to focus on in the red passion which weighed upon me were my Arianna’s,

“But Mira, I’ve almost finishe-” “Rianna”, I interrupted her, for I was in rather desperate need of her help, and the inanimate well was of a clearly lower priority than myself and the children around me,

“Finish later, help now.”

Thankfully, she acquiesced to my demands, though I could feel her labouring extremely to pivot her obsessiveness away from her original focus. I could feel her bending and twisting my dark powers in line with my needs, for strangely: I could sense that she’d cut away a spherical depression in the earth some distance from me, though I could not also see this truth with my eyes!

An immense amount of liquid must’ve rushed into the hole she’d hastily dug with my powers, for I could hear a violent sloshing, and even a thunderous clap sounded out which so dwarfed the heartbeats that I’d worried someone had put my ear right to their chest! What might have caused such a thing was beyond my ken, but it must’ve been a truly dreadful sound, for it reverberated beneath my feet like only an earthquake should be able!

A highly pitched squeal of delight alighted my ears as it traveled away from me with a rapidity that bordered on instant, and it was followed close by a number of footsteps as the heartbeats all at once increased in pace! Mercy, I called for Providence as I clenched my teeth so determinedly as the deepest hue of red — so thick it could almost be called black! — painted over my already blinded eyes, and I absolutely couldn’t trust myself in such a situation!

Since there was no sanity in staying upon my knees — from which I might yet spring — I forced myself to teeter until I’d fallen onto my back! I hit the grass below me without the slightest grace, even as I fervently prayed to the Lord that I be delivered from this madness, at least for long enough that none of the children might have to pay for my irresponsibility!

It was tremendously difficult to maintain that meditation, for although I’d successfully resisted the impulse to follow after those retreating palpitations: the echoes of their presence pursued my ears still! I simply sat there for a while in silence with my eyes closed tightly, and I trusted that the relative quiet around me meant that my Arianna had successfully delivered Katherine and all of the children away from me.

But the Thirst just refused to leave me, as one tiny heartbeat blared in my ears, so I warily opened my eyes again to the endless scarlet tinge, and a small pyre of life burned from above and to my right. Just one person still remained beside me, and I knew who it was by her heartbeat. For six years I’d listened to that overfast heart, though always before by stethoscope, and I’d have known those murmurs anywhere: it was Talia Fredrickson who’d been so foolishly attached to me.

“Talia, you silly girl.” I spoke to her in as solemn and gentle and careful a tone as I could affect while the monster within me commanded that I drain the life of the sweet girl who’d chosen to stay with me! Even in the face of such a wonderful being as Katherine: she was all alone with me despite the obvious succor of that delightful crowd of her friends and peers! Why should she be here?! Would that I could have chastised her for her ignorance, but of course she didn’t know what she was risking in being so close to me: she was six, and I was almost family in her eyes for how often she’d seen me!

“Why don’t you join in with them?” I finally asked, though it was a battle to keep my jaw closing regularly enough for speech to form, but I strove to send her away in a pleasant manner — I was not so far gone yet that I would adapt the cruelty at my core upon a child! — so I swallowed back the demon inside me, and I forced the unintentionally bitter words out of my lips,

“They’re surely missing your lovely company. You should go to them and play, instead of being here with only my company to share. Talia, you’re only six once, don’t waste your time on my account.”

The small girl before me shortly showed her parental heritage, as she came down to hug me on the ground, entirely ignorant of the potentially perilous predicament she was placing herself in! Her heartbeats were always so small and I knew them to be alarming fast, and yet they were now so deafening and strangely slow for me now, as if they’d been amplified a thousand times while a deadly amount of adrenaline coursed through my veins.

Her pulsating heart whooshed in through four of my senses at once, for I could smell her sweet ichor as it hid just beneath her skin as it pressed against mine at the stomach, and between my eyes and ears all I knew was the blinding and deafening fact of her life! I had but to taste her, oh I had but to taste her, and my body trembled and seized as I withheld that insanity that reigned in my thoughts.

“You looked like you needed a hug, Missus Mira!”

Talia had answered a question which I hadn’t even been able to ask her: why did she close that short and safe distance between us? She was probably entirely correct on that matter of my appearance, for even if she couldn’t quite get the Missus out of my name: I’d been dreadfully browbeaten by this day, and the last had been no better for dragging my emotions all around!

‘I’ve really suffered enough, haven’t I… so it’s only reasonable if I take a small bite, and she’s surely wearing a smiling face under that wonderful glow, so she’s even offering hersel-’Under. No. Circumstances. I violently disconnected myself from those alien thoughts which had taken residence in my mind, for they were insidious things and I would not entertain the horrific wants of these uninvited ‘guests’ to my daily function!

Great shuddering breaths fought their way past my teeth as I panted and grimaced, and the urge to relieve myself of this terrible strain was fast upon me, but I would do no such thing! Suffering did not itself warrant that I should allow myself to steal away another’s sweetness for the mere satisfaction of the monster inside me!

Though I was so stricken with the greater symptoms of my undeath: I barely knew how to explain these new needs to an educated adult when I wasn’t so affected by them, and so I was certainly in no state to explain a matter this complex to someone so young and unlearned as Talia while it was everything I could do to keep myself from biting into her tender flesh!

Still, I could not remain so close to her, for I did not rate a fiend’s patience highly, and my fortitude might not have held for much longer! I did not trust myself to rise upon my feet and run for distance, for I felt that it was those more predatory instincts which in subterfuge called for me to rise, so I instead endeavoured to speak,

“Thank you, Talia…” I had to swallow here, for the salivation came at an unbelievable pace, but I forced further speech out of my throat with no regard for tone, volume, or emotion,

“I appreciate it, but could you r… run and find your Mother for me?”

Every breath was a battle, for I struggled with each word to stay in control, and all through my desperate attempt at speechcraft I fought away her heart as it tested my resolve! As I wrestled with my ferocious Thirst, I idly considered my plight: if perhaps there was anything I might’ve done differently to have avoided the depths of this dreadful condition, and I found that I’d left many faults in my planning!

At the moment I set foot in the village, I should have had Arianna build a pond for Katherine… but I did not then realize that it would have been such a necessity! Perhaps I might’ve simply not argued with my beloved before the well we replaced, and thus my voice might not have carried such that it attracted the children… but there was just no cause for me to anticipate that the children would find our new form of aether and Katherine so fascinating!

No, it was certainly that foolish moment where I’d gotten carried away with humor, and had allowed for Talia to first hug me. I knew then that I was already in a compromised position, but I still arrogantly assumed I could maintain control over myself, as I’d never faltered in such for any reason for all my life before! Pointless as it was to actually think of now, but ultimately: I concluded that I’d have to discover if I couldn’t find some way to wholly prevent this issue in the future! It would surely be easier to alleviate my symptoms than it would be to change the habits of a lifetime!

“Yeah! Mom gives the best hugs!” I’d heard Talia shout near my ear as she immediately dropped the tight embrace she’d had on me. The Thirst shifted inside my body as her small footsteps raced away from me — as if it were actively moving to chase her down despite my steadfast resilience holding true and secure! — but I was not so weak as I’d been yesterday, and it hadn’t even Hunger’s alliance to bring me down this time!

With a great consternation at the absurd actions my Thirst attempted from within the bounds of my own body, I’d restrained the hands that’d made to snatch at her retreating form. But despite my best efforts, they’d eventually claimed the ‘small’ victory of reaching the space she’d recently vacated, and it was only luck that I’d retained my control until Talia had totally departed from my presence!

Technically, it had overcome me in the end, and this was a great and terrible blow to my ego, my pride, and my very person. All while I commiserated to myself, my eyes betrayed me; they followed the radiance of Talia’s escaping form, and still they pulsed with red in accordance with distant heartbeats!

As she’d finally closed the door to the Fredricksons’ household, the red tint over my eyes didn’t bother me quite so much, though it would seem that walls were not a complete protection from my depraved sight… but there was a reduction, in the sense that it obscured where she was amidst life’s glow as it ran throughout the building, and I rather intended to capitalize on this effect!

I’d meant to speak with Luca before I’d had Arianna rebuild our house, but unless he came to me soon: I would have to simply trust that he knew when to ignore my orders by now, as for me to be in the same room as a recently-maimed patient while I was so afflicted with this terrible Thirst was just courting the Devil! I did trust in my son, at least insomuch as he knew how to treat a fever, though I was mightily reassured that he wouldn’t have to remove any of Petyr’s ligatures over the coming weeks, for the catgut we’d been blessed with would dissolve naturally with time.

He always was a quick study, Luca… but success in surgery simply necessitated that he’d had significant experience with the subject, and I’d held him back from it for far too long already. Luca was in truth already a man, and no matter how much I still longed to consider him as my boy: he was well and truly capable enough without me, and he could have been free of my interference had I not insisted that he stay on for another year.

Was it mere loneliness that really drove me to keep him so near to me? I loved him, as any mother should love her son, but I should not have held him captive to my parentage for so long as I had: he could have been out in the wider world, practicing medicine in any place he so wished to!

The excuse I’d used to keep him here was as paltry and pathetic as any one of my old promises had become: I did not desire for my son to suffer for his experience in surgery as I had for mine. Those first few failures had ever haunted my practice, and although they had driven me to saving more lives: theirs were not spared, and the fault for that lay with me.

When the young Princess had appeared so often in that dreadful Foundation to seek out my attention, the Mother had rather decided to take advantage of the situation to the best of her wicked ability! Though she was loathe to touch my cursed skin, her craven want of the Material had led her to lay the fingers of her left hand upon me, and so I was baptized in the Tiber.

I was driven to write and to read for the sake of eating, and with time and some additional ‘tutoring’ from a ‘safe enough’ distance: I was just narrowly able to apprentice to one of the least ‘superstitious’ doctors in the city — himself an outcast among Mazdakites, for he’d refused to heal the sick and wounded through faith and prayer alone, and no other heathen Zoroastrian held the power of science with such a regard as he! — who was only able to practice in the very seediest of the slums!

Though he never told me his name: he would often preach to me, but I was indoctrinated already by the Mother such that his heretical mantras could not touch me. To my tremendous relief — as I’d greatly feared what might’ve been done to me had I failed to maintain this apprenticeship the Mother had procured on ‘my’ behalf — he’d kept me on regardless of our differing faiths, though more as a useful tool than as an aspirant, for with his aether: my hands could become any sort of necessary device he might’ve imagined!

While I can be glad now that my ‘unfortunate’ body had been useful enough for him to keep me on as a ‘student’: those moments had been so painful that I’d been entirely unable to learn from what I’d been made to do with my manipulated body, and thus my practice with surgery was left terribly lacking for so much longer than it should’ve been.

I’d actually learned most of my craft by watching the easterner work in silence, and by rifling through his medical texts to the best of my desperation, for I knew that this was my one chance, and if I were thrown away as the unlearned girl I’d entered his tutelage as: there should be no prayer of living long for me.

Once I’d battled through his handwritten journals written in English, and exhausted all that could be gleaned from his other manuscripts: I’d taken advantage of my rich and unknowing benefactor by requesting that she bring me books of science and medicine! Her wonderfully unfettered personality was then so innocent that she didn’t even know that I was using her, and such a tremendous guilt would weigh upon my heart at each of those occasions where she’d delivered such inspiring works to me as those from the Cardinal’s very own collection of Ancient textbooks!

They were wrought in precious plastic and laminate, and they were often so much more informative upon the scientific subjects than anything the Zoroastrian had ineffectually ‘taught’ to me, that I’d rather had cause to wonder if I’d learned anything of use in my apprenticeship at all! So much medical knowledge was lacking in the slums, and at this point I began to break away from the ‘learned’ old doctor, as I would practice my craft for free upon the worst cases in the slums I could find… and there was certainly no shortage of those in need to be found among them.

My early practice went fairly well, for I’d had enough theoretical knowledge of medicine that I’d shortly become better known than the Zoroastrian! Despite that many still dreaded my touch more than they’d feared the diseases that ailed them: my success spoke for itself, and soon I was even sought out for, if not always by the most pleasant of folk — indeed, who in the slums could’ve been said to belong to that precocious stock, for morality was always a rarity among the destitute and beggarly who could not afford its yoke — but I might’ve nonetheless claimed that I traveled along a path to rise from amongst the reviled.

The Mother had so wretchedly and determinedly sought for the Cardinal’s money through my mere acquaintance that I may well have become the only Cursed person to have ever been educated or employed in the Vatican in all the hundreds of years since our kind were first visited upon man! But the Mother’s bold ‘venture’ soon turned to a dangerous despair, for no matter how often I’d interacted with Arianna: the Mother never saw a single golden speck from the Cardinal. Naturally, she totally disregarded my relative success, even as she took the iron coinage from me on my every return.

But while I was set to rise: my medicine did not always go so well for my patients… for while my newfound theoretical capacity for surgery was nothing short of incredible: my actual physical performance of my operative techniques left much to be desired! Dozens died despite my best efforts, and some largely safe cases which I knew should not see a person to death were made fatal by my own unpracticed hands!

Though the burden of my mistakes lay firmly upon myself as the practitioner: could it not also be said that I was made an instrument of irresponsible creation, and that my Zoroastrian ‘teacher’ was also to blame for having left me so utterly incapable!? I’d killed and committed malpractices as a direct result of his errant misguidance! I so deeply regretted my failings as a doctor, and I prayed earnestly that my son should never experience the same!

Remorse and a rueful outlook had long weighed upon me, but I did not also suppose that I shouldn’t have seen Heaven for my crimes, for they’d been made in good faith, and I’d rather thought that I’d exacted a sufficient penance of myself… but it would seem that I’d been most terribly mistaken. My stomach turned inside itself, for I’d been born wrong, and taught wrong, and now I was resurrected as wrongness incarnate!

Disgusted lamentation came as I considered the whole of my self and my fate, and despair just gushed from my eyes. I pondered these cruel and unjust matters, and I was soon risen to scorn and to anger as I pursued the blasphemous truth from the silence the Lord had always afforded to me! Was this really to be my ‘life’ from now on? To be made to drink of a person’s very lifeblood every day? Was this truly a future the Lord willed for me?

Perhaps it wouldn’t be quite so awful if it could always come from a willing Lisset, the Devil answered my rhetorical inquisitions as always, but he was not so malignant as to spout total inaccuracy this once, for there was a kernel of truth to the suggestion — although it was a shameful enough thing to admit, and it would have no basis on my behavior whatsoever: having a ‘real’ reason to seek out Lisset’s company truly did mildly assuage the guilt I’d long felt for having any interest in her — but I just couldn’t know how much blood I’d already taken from her in quenching this Thirst but yesterday night!

A person can only truly replenish their lost ichor over the course of weeks, and it might even take even months in such severe cases as her son Petyr had suffered! Still, the arousing thought of taking more of Lisset’s blood for myself was Thirst’s final desperate motion to make me drink of that ambrosia, and it held me rooted to the spot despite my determination to properly hide myself away from those I might harm! I’d had enough marks against my oaths, and I would have none further!

A vague prickling was forming from just under my skin as I shook myself of this ‘reverie’ that had come over me, and I tore my eyes away from the glow of the Fredrickson household. Though the red pulled at me to turn towards the massing of children who were somewhere behind me: I resisted the impulse, and with a regathering haste I spoke a request to my beloved,

“Rianna, would you rebuild our house for me?” I was hardly in a state to do it myself, and she’d been the one to largely construct our original residence through aether, so even if I’d felt so able: she surely knew our house better than I did, and so I clarified my ask,

“Even just our bedroom is fine for now, please.”

With only a vague and despondent “Sure”, my Arianna set the dark mist to spread forth from my phylactery, and the outlines of our house began forming up a few paces from me. There was some strangely viscous shame that deeply clawed at her inside of me, but whatever it was, I was sure we’d be able to talk through it shortly. Knowing her, it was probably just that she didn’t want to push anything physical upon me when I’d so recently been through such a terrible experience with Talia.

She needn’t have felt ashamed for her own feelings, for I was very much able to separate today’s terrible stressors from tonight’s pleasures, and although this was perhaps the single most overwhelming torment of them all: there was still no need for her to feel so distressed by her emotional needs. A person has needs, and if I was the cure for what she felt were ‘unreasonable’ interests, then so be it. I curtly thanked her as I stepped across the unformed black walls and into the vague shape of the room we used to sleep in. It seemed that she was intent on bringing the whole of our home back into being, for I’d had to pass through the dark framework of two walls to reach this ‘haven’ from the Thirst.

I was overcome with a touching sentiment as small pieces of our house came back into being. Our dresser formed up, and our folded clothing appeared as if it’d always been there, though we used to live entirely to the opposite side of the village! But as amazing as this was: something was… off. Mistaken. Strange. I couldn’t put my grasp upon it, but a tingling sensation came from under my skin, and at times I felt a stinging that came from an uncertain origin, but this wasn’t what was truly perturbing me.

As wonderfully romantic and chatty as she usually was: Arianna now worked with an almost unnerving silence, as she was surely deeply engaged with her thoughts, but I was soon rather distracted from her troubling quiet by a far greater wrongness. I might’ve been more concerned with her odd behavior, but I was rather more pressed with how all of the materializing objects in our house appeared as flowing curtains of blood in my still reddened vision!

A latticework of horror drew itself before me, and I could not bear to look upon it for long, so I would shake myself of these illusions, but they would again come to me if I so much as glanced at any part of the reforming dwelling that surrounded me! I closed my eyes to the world for a while, but even then: I could still feel every room in our house coming slowly into being, and all of our forming material possessions flowed and pulsed with the same blood in this aberrant new perception of mine!

My entire body soon itched as if it were on fire, and I could not prevent the memories of my recent immolation coming back to me! This returning burning agony would not be thrust away with my weakening will, and the horrified tears that streamed from my eyes ran with that same terrible sweetness that cascaded all around me! This was no bloody delusion: it was my blood which flowed into the world around me!

This silence might’ve just screamed to me for how it bludgeoned and battered me until I was nearly hysterical! Any word would have been a comfort, but the house built of my own lifeblood was silent save for its beat! This terrible beat, how could I have missed this?! The heartrate rose all around me as panic and terror set into me, and it matched mine, for I checked my own pulse to be sure! A… pulse, Mercy I’d been so blind! Why should I have a pulse?!

“Rianna!” I breathlessly cried out, as my lungs tried to pull in oxygen just as soon as they released it, “What… have you done? Why is our house… made of blood?! What am I?”

Even though I’d asked her such pressing questions, I could feel her try to turn away from me with shame, and although she’d stopped in the middle of building the greater house: our room she continued to construct! She was silent no more, though her mumbled and regretful answer did not calm my hyperventilation at all,

“I’m sorry, I… I didn’t mean to. I’m really sorry. I don’t know. I don't even understand!”

As if I could believe that she really didn’t know what I’d become: she’d resurrected me after all! She would not escape from her responsibility in this manner, and so I pressed her,

“You. You made me… a phylactery, Rianna!” I tried to draw in deeper breaths, but they was beyond my ability at this moment, for I was totally overcome with emotion, and I could not calm myself in the slightest, so I continued even though I was slowly suffocating all through my words,

“So: what monster… were you trying… to turn… me into!?”

Arianna retreated deeper into my heart with trepidation, even as she finished bringing the walls and bed into reality such that they no longer bled with my blood, and it seemed that she would not answer me, even though my very skin just boiled with fury, and so my rage finally choked off my breathing so entirely that I couldn’t speak! I couldn’t breathe, and a frigid terror poured over me as I fought for air and it came as if through water!

Hysteria wasn’t a condition unknown to me, but I’d been foolish as the brief signs of its onset came upon me. I hadn’t wanted to wait for it to run its course: I needed those answers! Even as my chest repeatedly seized and I was taken with cold sweats: I would have listened as earnestly as I could for them! But it was too late for that now, and I knew that I would have to abandon my inquiry until the spasming fits of fear came to their natural end. It wasn’t like they would kill me, but I’d died before, and this really was not so preferable an experience in comparison!

My Arianna spoke plenty then, but while she was nearly not soon enough to stop my descent into the convulsions of breathlessness: she was imperative in greatly shortening the span they affected me for,

“I’m sorry, please be okay, don’t… fuck. Mira, breathe. Just breathe, okay… you’ll be okay, just focus on my voice, take deep breaths. Breathe with me, in, and out. In, and out.”

For a length of time unknown to me, she carried on speaking like this to me, and her own ‘breaths’ made my chest rise rather more readily than it ever had before from this condition! Although it should have instead caused me to fear more: I was immensely grateful just to have any air, and I didn’t mind for a moment where it came from, even as invasive a feeling as that normally was for me! In this manner, I’d eventually come out of the worst of it, though I still trembled and shook, and the wild extremes of temperatures and pains still shot through my body with reckless abandon!

Those first few unlaboured breaths were so very painful, as if I were a newborn babe taking in air for their first time, but though they inflamed and burdened my chest: it was the most wonderful air I’d ever breathed. As I became conscious of my location through my new and freakish sense: I had to remind myself to maintain the same pattern of breathing, so as not to fall victim to another wave of those symptoms again so shortly after the last one faded.

My eyes came open, and they revealed as useless an image as before. My vision was red; just red, and nothing but shades of red. The room resembled a great sea of red, and I didn’t understand why this should be. I silently mused to myself on the matter, and I was no closer to an answer when I’d heard the tail end of something Arianna had said to me,

“...nant, I’m really sorry, Mira.”

It seemed that she was finally ready to tell me what I’d wished to know, and I’d entirely missed it for my preoccupation with the strange matters of my existence! She surely wouldn’t hold my ignoring her against me though, especially given what I’d just been through, so after I’d taken a few more intentionally deep inhalations: I dared to ask her to repeat what she’d said to me,

“Rianna, I completely missed that. Would you say it again for me?”

She must’ve resented having to repeat such a shameful thing, for my teeth suddenly felt inclined to grit. It rather seemed that she didn’t desire for me to actually insist on hearing her say it properly, and so with a slight air of tetchiness amid her infinite sorrow, she told me,

“I said: I shouldn’t have done it, but I tried to make you a… revenant. I’m sorry, Mira… I really am.”