Alice sat in a small wooden room, it was well illuminated. And really, that was about the most positive thing she could say about it. A light loosely hung from the ceiling, dangling from a piece of what she guessed to be string. The source of the light’s power was a mystery to the psychology teacher, but it certainly could not be electricity.

It certainly let her focus on it rather than on to the overcrowded shelves at either side of her, stuffed with papers haphazardly and just about ready to explode in a rain of confetti made out of every scrap of paper that had been shoehorned into its wooden perimeter.

The space available would have been snug had the designed of the room left it devoid of furniture. With the bookshelves and desk, the available free space was quite certainly not enough to hold one person comfortably let alone two.

“You can keep focusing on the lamp, but it’s not really stopping the other thoughts.”

Alice flinched. “I’m sorry, I’m sure this space is…”

“Cramped? Confined? Constricted? Compacted? Inadequately small?” The black brow was arched in a way that almost appeared permanent upon the maiden’s face.

A maiden whose skin was a fire-hydrant red. Not pale white or pink or dark chocolate. Red. It was like watching a walking-talking button just about ready to be poked at from every which direction. Everything about her demanded attention, not just the skin color but also the lack of clothes, naked save for the copper colored collar on her throat.

“Do not worry, I like it like this.” The woman spoke with a droll, the two antennae poking out of her forehead twitched. “It makes people uncomfortable, that way they spend less time here.” A tilt of her head followed, her pale orange irises turning slightly left of Alice’s head, staring into the emptiness behind her. “But the Baroness made a call, so here you are.”

“Am I disturbing you?”

“Yes.” Irene answered flatly. “I am currently conducting five psychic evaluations to your fellow offworlders, and if I didn’t have to talk to you, I would be doing six.” She raised her hand. “And before you offer leaving, the Baroness will catch wind and I would get into trouble.”

“Then what would…. How could I help?”

“Just ask whatever you came here to ask.”

“I erm…” Keeping her gaze away from the maiden’s naked skin, she managed to focus on the little stubble of black hair that coated Irene’s head. “Why did you shave your head?”

“Because it draws attention to something I can control about my appearance.” The maiden replied, arching an eyebrow. “I can hear no less than eight questions I would rather answer than that one.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because preemptively answering questions freaks humans out.” A smirk. “And yes, I am also naked because it’s something I have control of. That and it makes people nervous. But the reason why has nothing to do with nakedness but what it represents.”

“Why would…?”

“Ferals are naked, almost always anyway. Me being publicly naked makes people think about ferals.” She replied. “Are you ready to ask the other questions yet? I can almost hear the arguments inside that head of yours.”

“How does that work? The telepathy?”

“You are asking me to describe color to a blind person.” She sighed. “It’s like trying to read a book where I can only see some pages and the rest are hidden behind fog. I can guess at what’s in the other pages based on the ones in front of me, but I won’t really know for sure until I turn the page.” A slight shrug. “And people can often sense when I turn the page. Some minds are barely a pamphlet, others a whole encyclopedia.”

Alice’s lip twitched, noticing the dismissive gesture of that seemingly permanently raised brow on Irene’s face.

“And is a person’s capacity for thought split into two systems that operate differently?” She tilted her head. “Where system one is fast and instinctive while system two deliberate but slow?”

And just like that the brow lowered. Irene’s attention focused on Alice in a more abrupt sense. The human had the eerie feeling those orange eyes were staring into parts of her mind she didn’t want seen.

“A professor, I see.” Had she-? “Yes, I turned a page. It’s… strange, I’ve never found so little resistance before, you didn’t even notice it.” Closing her eyes, her antennae twitched, the woman crossing her arms. “The two system hypothesis is very proximate to my personal observations, for humans at least.”

Alice’s back straightened. “And maidens?”

“We are not human.” The response was simple, direct. “We look human, we have certain human features, but we are monster maidens first and foremost. The way we think, the way we feel, it is not human.” A wave of her hand. “The more obvious example would be the feral state. Which works through what I figure you would call a third system. The Curse.”

Alice took a moment to consider that, rubbing her chin. She became quiet, staring at the red-skinned maiden as it was this time Alice’s turn to arch a brow. The question clear even if unspoken.

Huffing, Irene rolled her eyes. “Origin of maidens, myth of creation. It goes that this being, called The Maker, popped in one day. An other-worlder, like you lot. He showed up, saw humans were fucking things up and created the first maidens, six in total. He really juiced them up, made them powerful enough they could level cities. He put them to work helping humanity and went to sleep. At first things were good, they stopped famine and war and sickness. But apparently they weren’t made incorruptible, and they grew hungry for power. So they figured out how to steal the Maker’s ability to make more maidens and got to work”

There was an insipid roll of the eyes that followed, as if she’d heard the story more times than she cared to count.

“Each made their own army, intent on conquering humans. But the Maker woke and saw this. The Curse was unleashed onto maidens for their hubris, rendering them unable to live without humans. If they tried, they’d just go insane, feral.” With a sigh, she made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “There’s more… platitudes and preaching to the original tale, but that’s about the gist of it.”

“And what really happened?”

“As far as the history books and ruins show? There was a war. Big enough no city from the old world was left standing. And there’s little proof of maidens existing before said war.” Irene replied. “Not that there are much details from the time before the war. Mostly because a plague followed after.”

“What does the myths say about the plague?”

“Not much. They call it Red Death and blame an other-worlder for it.” She shrugged. “It’s what’s baked into the medicine books at least. None of it goes into detail about what exactly the thing did other than kill almost every human. Guess record keeping was tough when nine out of ten people kicked the bucket overnight.” Her hand slapped down on the table. “Anyway, this got a bit derailed. The fact is that the third system exists in the mind of every maiden. Regardless of whether it was put there or there from the beginning.” A snap of the fingers. “Without the bond a maiden’s left just a knot of instincts and fuzzy memories, and if you get a bond, your full cognitive abilities kick in.”

“I take it you called it a third system because it works different from the other two.”

“It is a system tied to a singular person, that is not the maiden herself.”

“The one you bonded?”

“There you go.”

“But…” Alice frowned. “If the third system is what filters cognition…” She tilted her head.

“It means that a maiden’s perception of the world will twist around their bond and the emotion imprinted from it.” Irene had an amused smirk on her lips, her finger tapping at the copper collar on her throat. “But that’s just how it is for us, maidens. We live and die for those we’ve bonded, we’re taught since young how to-.”

Irene’s lips twisted in a grimace, her antenna twitched and curled into themselves. The woman doubled over, eyes shutting tightly and groaned, her whole body shuddering. Alice leaned forward with concern, watching a trickle of blood run out of the maiden’s left nostril.

“Are you…?”

“Just…” Irene raised her hand, keeping the other grasping the side of her head. She tried to stand, toppling over right back onto her chair. “I had not expected someone’s bond to intrude. It caught me off guard.”

“Are you alright?” The teacher hesitated.

“It’s nothing.” Irene leaned back against the chair, sighing heavily, using both hands to cover her face, annoyance flashing through her features. “Just need to-.” She snapped at attention, back eyes widening as her focus shifted towards the back of the room. “Shit.”

The door flung open with a bang.

“Miss Smith?” Huge peered into the room, eyes barely registering on Irene and focusing on the psychology teacher. He didn’t hesitate, stepping inside, a hand reaching out to her. “We need to go. Right now.”