The Butterfly Chapters, a strange collection of short stories by an unknown author. The stories did not correlate with each other whatsoever, but there was a gradation in that they first started mild and harmless, like fairy tales meant for small children, while strange elements piled up until everything scattered to the four winds and any semblance of a plot disappeared.

If it was ever released to the big public, it would no doubt receive harsh criticism for the general lack of identity and the utter nonsense of the last few pages.

Since he had obtained it from a shady source, he had always been skeptical about the book truly containing esoterical knowledge and information on the occult, dismissing it as a bad read. However, it’s difficult to forget such an unusual book, just like bad impressions are harder to forget than good ones.

Seven picked up the book and skimmed a little until he found an afternote, more like an introduction.

“Maybe the story is meant to be read from right to left... The version I got was labeled the original, but there was no such afternote...”

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, preparing himself for a painful read that constantly went on tangents and undecipherable riddles.

Starting from the way it was written, in an old dialect with words that should be looked into a respectable dictionary and with penmanship that could rival 14th century letters, to the way it was phrased, in unnecessarily long sentences with bad ordering and sometimes no meaning whatsoever that only made some far-fetched sense after reading it ten times, the book was too much for even a full-fledged cultist.

It was the first time in his life that a book annoyed him to no end.

“The first read was so terrible that I must’ve erased it from memory...”

After an hour of unspoken tears and concealed rage, the summary of what he understood:

||The Butterfly is not a Name, it is the vestige of the passage of a Name through the fabrics of reality. Whenever a Name is invoked from another plane of existence, the Butterfly is responsible for carrying its will. However, being entities of infinite power, possibly the very source of power, they require not that the Butterfly return with the offering. As any student should know, rituals and sacrifices are meant to please and entertain, it holds no practical purpose for the Name itself||

||What this leaves us with is an unknown amount of energy that should not exist in this world. Most of it will be annihilated, restoring the balance. However, if very special conditions are met, it will linger for a few moments and can be put to use by the student of the occult with virtually no consequences||

||This book is a collection of records from when a Butterfly lingered, already analyzed and put into a revised version with only the essentials. Each tale presents the pursuer of the Butterfly the scale of the invocation that can be performed and the necessary items to carry it forward. Most of these are based on theories with a strong mathematical basis, the marge of error and what can go wrong were put into perspective. However, the energy of the Butterfly is naturally chaotic, something unexpected could always occur. On the other hand, there is no consequence for a failed invocation with Butterfly, as the energy will simply dissipate||

||I strongly recommend anyone that is starting on his studies of the occult to carry a string of dead leaves. Autumn is a Name often confused with the Butterfly due to its chaotic nature and harbors hatred for those who cannot differentiate between the two. The amulet shows respect for Autumn – should you make that mistake, it will forgive you||

Truth was, he couldn’t picture ambiguous concepts such as the Butterfly. At times it was an entity, at others it was energy, and more often than not it was left to imagination.

“Aside from that, those Names should be God-like entities who operate in multiple worlds, as the Butterfly Chapters exist back on Earth and inside this one with the same rules... So that was the reason Ai said ‘The Gods of your World’ at the very beginning”

At the time, he thought it was just a mean to crush the hopes of religious people, and it likely was, because it is strange to think that entities venerated as Names in secret could operate in multiple worlds and the Gods of widely cultivated religions couldn’t.

“If they aren’t Names, to begin with... Just like Hinduism accepts Gods of other religions as different representations of the same God”

In his opinion, that was the right line of thought, but since he didn’t know too much about other religions, it was fine for him to start with the beliefs of occultists.

“They treat it not as a religion but a science. Well-fitting for me, someone who previously didn’t bother”

Seven headed out to the dormitory. It was a first for him, but he figured he might run into Natalya or another interesting character on the way to his sleep.

***

Those that chose to die of hunger or be terminated were not given such a choice. Against all expectations, worker ants, the ones now seen as harmless by the majority of them, swarmed the entrance and gave them no choice but to jump down.

Arthur bit on his lips to force himself awake.

“Fuck... Ok, if I play it smart, I can pull this”

-To me, everyone! Gather around me! Get your spears and give me the accessories!

They didn’t come unprepared. Some traps and objects mimicked those of the most accomplished survivalists amongst the people who went there. Most notably, the use of ant pheromones allowed the obsidian tips of the spears to reach their targets with ease.

-You don’t need to face that monster! The plan is the same! 10 for worker ants! 20 for warrior ants! Stay with me, fighters on the outer ring, supporters on the inner ring!

Despite their terror, they managed to hear Arthur’s voice amidst the chaos and follow the orders.

Kate didn’t pay attention to their efforts, she nimbly jumped over a warrior ant’s carcass and prepared to face the next with her crossbow. She was very clumsy with melee weapons, but the truth of the matter changed completely when dealing with ranged ones.

“A crossbow... Is fine”

She preferred the feel of a small gun close to her waist, but her father did not allow her to bring guns to hunt. Ludicrous, she thought, as the fathers of other children never had such misgivings, but Kate never said anything, she knew she had done something wrong for her toys to be taken away.

Bows, crossbows, slingshots. She thought that once she learned how to use them effectively, they could be as fun as guns, but although the satisfaction of a perfectly aligned shot felt good, an accurate shot with a gun was at least a thousand times better.

When using normal weapons, she felt like a true hunter of old. Carefully watching the target so as not to scare it, approaching slowly and planning how to take it down, and, even if everything went perfectly, that brief moment where your breathing and heartbeats stopped so as not to produce any sound, followed by the uncertainty of the shot: did it hit? Did it miss?

In a way, it was also fun.

But a gun?

Once the bullet left the cylinder, it would lodge inside an animal’s heart at the same moment, as if both places were connected by an invisible string. Its life was intricately linked to the trigger, and all she needed to do was pull the trigger and it was gone. More often than not, everything would end so quickly that it wouldn’t even know that it died until the moment approached.

There was no uncertainty. Kate knew that once her fingers moved, the life in front of her eyes would vanish.

That feeling could never be reproduced with a bow or crossbow.

She lodged the next few bolts and accurately struck down the vital point near the ant’s head, but on the next ant it did not go so smoothly and she had to try it two more times.

She shook her head.

“The delay is too high”

-Kate, what a great shot! - an old man screamed at her from a very distant hill, outside of the golden walls.

-… Father?

-Wait a moment, I’ll go over there and check if it’s dead.

She felt her heart clench at the line she so often heard.

“... It’s pointless. What I kill stays dead. I’ve never missed a shot, father...”

However, ignoring that her father suddenly appeared from a faraway place to right next to her, what he went for was not the ant’s carcass, but the corpse of the woman she pulled down.

-No... No, no, no... Why, Kate, why have you done this?

-She didn’t want to live. I just went ahead and helped her. Don’t we end the life of animals in suffering?

“Is it my voice?”

Although it was her lips that parted to say that, the pitch was two notes higher. She didn’t have such a sickeningly sweet, immature voice.

-It wasn’t time to show you the world outside just yet... I'm a failure as a father...

-Father... Argh!

A sharp pain struck her head. The sound of sirens ringed in her ears, but she couldn’t discern if they were ambulances or police cars, maybe both.

Her father was gone.

-Come with me. Don’t issue a single word of what happened. Don’t mention your father either. From now on, your name is Catherine Wyz.

-Who are you, lady?

She inadvertently spoke those words, but she knew who the woman in a heavy red suit and old-fashioned feather hat was.

-I am your mother.

-...So, when is father coming to visit me?

“Father... Is never coming back...”

-Even after I told you not to talk about him... He went to a place for people who did bad things. I don’t think he’ll be able to visit you so soon.

-But father is a good person!

“Because of a good person, you became like this. Stupid girl, you should’ve faced your crimes...”

-He is... And an excellent hunter, too. Have you ever heard him talk about Emperor Penguins?

-The ones who go 100 days without eating to protect their offspring from the harsh cold?

-Yes. Your father is just like an Emperor Penguin. He doesn’t mind not eating for 100 days, or even 100 years, if it means you can grow up beautifully.

-Oh... So, father is away to get his well-deserved meal, and it’s your turn to take care of me?

-...Yes.

In front of her, two sceneries materialized.

To her right, a forest clearing. Her father sat on a square rock and gazed at the small fishes jumping in the river. It coursed like a snake, with shards of light touching the surface of the water like small stars fallen out of the sky. The stream was slow, but she never came to know where it ended as hunters weren’t allowed in the riverbed area. The smell of wet earth and the bark of canopies reached her nostrils, along with the distinct smell of game that recently came to drink, the hoofprints fresh on the field and mashed leaves left behind. There was a rusted bear trap near the biggest tree, claw marks marking the territory of a beast, to which her father laughed and disassembled it, saying there were no more bears in the area with a sad countenance.

To her young self, his back looked wide enough to cover the world, like an eagle’s wings. But it wasn’t the father she recognized anymore. He was older by a few years, and his small back now faced the river, not with a rifle, but a fishing rod – and all the fish was gone.

-Kate, we’re heading for the riverbed today! You’ve never been there before, right? It’s a beautiful sight!

To her left, a dark room with only an old television. It aired an old taking of a horror movie of the 80s, it was a long-running series whose latest sequel came out in 2016, she had already watched it online but the 80s version was considered the best one, despite the age gap. Two Minds, One Body, her favorite movie. However, she never got to see the ending, because the tape was flawed.

A small dot of light shined at the corner of the room. It was the interphone, and it played automatically without the need of getting up from the bed.

-Catherine, me and the girls are going to that new store, we dialed you but you didn’t pick up, meanie! Oh well, since we’re such good friends we’ll forgive you just this once! Come on girl, let the light of day shine upon you!

The movie was reaching the end. Suddenly, it went on an infinite loop at the scene Lucas, the main character, killed himself by slitting his wrists. It looked like he was repeatedly slitting them without success, as if the world would not let him die even if he wished for it.

She would keep smiling on the outside, despite her deadpan eyes screaming for the others to notice her slow death. Yet, she knew that even if one were to ask “are you alright?” or “do you need to talk about something?”, the smile would not fade.

She didn’t need to be anything else, just Catherine. The world had no need for her: she failed as a human.

Was there nothing else? Was she fated to be Kate or Catherine or whoever else someone wanted her to be? Why must she be the one who suffers in silence for the sake of others? Did her opinion not matter? Did her happiness not matter?

“... Why am I still alive?”

-… - a buzzing noise.

“...?”

-...te!

“... What happened here?”

She looked around and found a multitude of ant carcasses and armies of ants heading her way. That world of fiendish flesh-eating insects and blood-covered people fighting for their lives... She didn’t understand the sight before her eyes.

-Kate!

“... Arthur”

-We’re surrounded, are you just going to die here? Wake up! Kate! Kate!

Hearing Arthur scream at her so desperately, she found him endlessly annoying. And more annoying was the name he called her.

-I’m not Kate! - she blew out, angry.

Arthur flinched at her sudden response, but there was no time to waste.

-Ka... Catherine, we need to-

-I’m not Catherine, either!

Arthur was stumped for words.

“What’s wrong with this girl?”

-We’ve got no time for this! Look!

“...That’s right. If I’m neither Kate nor Catherine, then who am I?”

Without her knowledge, her gaze went to the place Arthur was pointing at.

Hordes and more hordes of ants, and behind that wall of impenetrably thick skins, multiple eyes convened on her lonely figure.

The hideous beast who only vied for the tastiest snacks had eyes only for her, and for a moment she thought they glinted with curiosity, but that was impossible.

“That’s right, I know who I am. I always knew...”

“...”

“...”

“... I’m a monster”

-Ai, it is time for my reward.

[State your request]

-The most powerful weapon. Give it to me.

[Do you confirm this course of action?]

-Yes!

A handgun quickly materialized in Kate’s dominant hand, and although she knew for a fact it wasn’t the same, the looks were identical.

Taurus Raging Bull Model 444, .44 Magnum caliber.

“That one? No, no no no. Too heavy for a little girl”, memories of her father saying that once came to her mind.

She held the handgun in ecstasy.

“It really is heavy... But it’s not uncomfortable”

She ignored Arthur’s constant wailing and studied the gun for a bit more. The stainless steel has always been a beautiful setting for guns ever since she came in contact with this thing, but years apart made her forget about it.

She readied the magnum and pointed at the closest ant, her heart pounding inside her chest.

Kate pulled the trigger, and the excitement didn’t fade because, way before the bullet hit the target, she already knew that it was dead.

Bang.

The explosive noise devoured all other sound waves nearby, and the remaining members of Arthur’s group subconsciously looked at the direction it came from, the closest ones being forced to cover their ears lest they blew apart.

It resounded five times more.

Only a woman and a gun, an eerie silence which smelt of gunpowder.