Hey guys, so sorry about the late chapter. I had intended to gloss over this part but when I wrote it I realized this was totally impossible, so I required some time to think about it. Also school, also I accidentally got addicted to a video game. I have rid myself of the latter affliction, and am expecting the next chapter to come out on Saturday.

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An immortal from the Halo cult was coming to the Tornado Sect capital. The Halo cult did not know about the Grays. A world power whose purpose was to vanquish demons had been unable to discover that an entire continent had been lost to spirits! Solera had thought the Halo cult had been some kind of a monstrous force, unstoppable and all-powerful. But now, they seemed so inept. So useless.

Instead of doing something about these Grays, the Halo cult was helping them burn down his homeland. The irony was so hard to stomach that he actually would have preferred it if the Halo cult was a malevolent force instead of a stupid one. It just didn’t seem right that a world power could make such a huge mistake.

But it was the truth, the Patriarch had said as much himself. And in that truth lay an opportunity. The Halo cult didn’t know! If they could see- if he could show them, the immortal, just what these “people” really were, then Eden could be saved!

He had to tell them, somehow. They would be here in only three weeks! They-

“Love!”

The voice broke Solera’s train of thought. He looked at the girl Gray, who was staring at him with her large eyes. He still didn’t know her name. Did she even have a name?

She did, of course she did if she was to pretend she was a human. Her name was fake, stolen. These monsters didn’t have real names, and it was fitting, because these monsters didn’t deserve to have names.

But these monsters did call each other by name. The name was “love,” and that’s what made these things so perverse.

“Do you want to be left alone?” She asked, tilting her head.

Solera noticed they were the only two left in the dining hall. His eyes drifted down to the empty bowl, and his stomach roiled. Three weeks. Could he last three weeks of this? No, not just that. How would he show the Halo cult immortal, even if he made it past these three weeks? Why would the immortal believe him?

Would he tell the immortal that this entire country and probably the Thundercloud Sect and the United Duchies, and also the Pantheonic colonies and the entirety of the central continent was ruled and mostly inhabited by a single Sky spirit? He would sound crazy!

Forget it, it wasn’t possible. He just needed to get out of here.

Oh, right. The girl Gray had asked him a question. He looked up from the bowl and found the room empty.

He frowned. How much time had passed? No, it didn’t matter, this was a good time to see if there were any exits from this place that didn’t involve flying.

Solera entered the tunnel leading deeper inside the mountain, only to find the girl Gray waiting for him. He feigned a smile while mentally cursing to himself. These creeps kept talking about leaving him alone, but they never did.

“You don’t have to move your things, the monsters already did!” She giggled, taking his arm. Solera was led deeper into the palace. They descended at a shallow angle, walking through the long spiral of what he assumed was a tunnel looping its way up, down, and around the mountain.

Solera’s eyes shifted around uncomfortably. Only now, did he remember the old woman Gray telling him he was going to move into this girl Gray’s room.

He bit his lip. These Grays had fed him human remains, had tried to possess him, had killed untold amounts of people. They were monsters, and he could never fall asleep next to one! How could he rest easy when something so psychopathic and delusional was right next to him? There had to be a way out of this!

“Look, love!” The monster pointed ahead, at a strange metal contraption next to a thin slit in the cave wall. Looking through the slit, Solera could see the dust whirlwind which surrounded the mountain.

He looked back at the construct. It was built into the very ground, and had a spear-like object protruding from its cylindrical base. It seemed like the spear-like protrusion could pivot up and down, and slightly to the left and right. A cannon!

With a few more steps through the cave, Solera could see that there were many more of these things, and several of them were manned by gray-robed men and women!

“This is for killing monsters,” the girl Gray explained as she placed her palm flat on a square cloth pad poking out of the side of the weapon. The pad glowed, and with a tremendous screech, a black line shot out of the weapon, instantly vanishing into the hurricane.

Solera gawked at her, then peered out from the slit. He could see the mountain outside, gently sloping downwards. Beyond that was the whirling wall of dust, and in the background, the very faint outline of the city far below them could be seen.

This Gray was insane! That projectile had to have been launched into the city below!

The girl Gray had bent down, and was picking up a conical black lump of metal from a dispenser at the bottom of the turret’s base.

“This one explodes!”

She grinned, ramming it into place and placing her hand on the cloth again.

“Wait, okay, okay!” Solera’s sweaty hand pulled hers off the cloth.

“No, love, I have to reload it so we can be safe from monsters.” She put her other hand on the cloth, and it glowed. With a metallic grinding noise, the spike receded into the hollow tube of the launcher.

Solera grabbed her other hand in case she would do it again. She smiled, walking forward to envelop him in a hug.

“I love me so much! I’m so happy right now!” She giggled, pulling away and dragging him down the hall. Solera followed, bewildered.

“Hi, love!”

“Hi, love.”

The girl Gray called out greetings to the guards as she skipped by. They smiled back, with the exact same warm smile he had grown to fear. These Grays, they were human and not human at the same time. Their movements, their facial expressions were so natural, and yet not. They spoke the human language, they expressed human emotions, and yet not. It wasn’t right!

She kept talking about monsters. But wasn’t she the monster? How could she be anything but a monster?

They stopped in front of a door. It opened with a light push by the girl Gray, revealing a large bed with mounds of pillows, a wardrobe and a door which led to what looked like a bathroom.

He cringed. Why was the room so human? Why did it have a bed with pillows and a wardrobe with clothing and a bathroom? Why wasn’t it some cave littered with shit and rotten bones?

She had skipped into the room already. Turning around, she saw Solera, still at the door.

“Close the door!” She grinned as her hands reached down to the bottom of her shirt. The shirt raised up and Solera’s eyes shot to the side, focusing on the rock wall.

“W-w-where’s my room?” He stammered as he stepped back, pulling the door back with him. He heard feet pattering on the ground.

“No, love! This is your room now! We’re sleeping together so you won’t be alone!”

He wanted very much to be alone right now. But he could say nothing, do nothing! They might grow suspicious of him!

This entire time, they had never once doubted him. But he couldn’t know what would set them off! Should he really risk his life over something like this? It was just sleeping, it was just sex, infinitely preferable to all the other things he had been put through.

It was something trivial, he told himself. Why was he getting so hung up over this? He just needed to be decisive. With a deep breath, he stepped back into the room, closing the door behind him.

Her breasts were so pale and round, her nipples so pink.

“I’mgoingtosleepthen.” Solera walked past her, his head lowered and his heart thumping with so much force it should have made the ceiling cave in.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that a monster could wear human skin.

A soft hand grabbed onto his arm, causing his entire body to stiffen. Her head, with her auburn hair, popped into his face.

“You have to clean these, love!” She smiled, revealing a perfect set of white teeth. “You have to be immortal if you want to stay forever, and you have to take care of your vessel if you want to be immortal, okay?”

Solera tried not to look downwards as he nodded.

He entered the bathroom, which like all bathrooms in the Tornado Sect, had two rivulets of water flowing down its side. There was a mirror on the wall, one which revealed the girl’s slender body in full detail as she walked over behind him. She had taken everything off.

There was a bucket right there, a bucket with things inside it. He needed to clean his teeth, clean his teeth after that horrifying meal. When was the last time he had brushed his teeth? He couldn’t remember.

The bucket, it had some pills made from a flaky white powder. With some confusion, Solera looked around for a toothbrush. She appeared again, her hand brushing his side as she picked a pill out of the bucket. Some saliva glistened on the edges of her pink lips as she dropped the pill into her open mouth.

Why did this monster have to look, act so human? Why couldn’t she just be a monster?

Her hands dipped into one of the rivulets and scooped out a handful of water which she sucked into her mouth. Some swishing sounds could be heard from inside her cheeks.

Solera followed her lead, putting a pill into his mouth and following it up with some water. To his shock, the liquid began to bubble, releasing a taste so cold it actually burned. His eyes watered and his nose burned. It took all his effort to not spit it all out. Next to him, the girl Gray bent down and spat out a mouthful of azure liquid into the other rivulet.

He spat out the liquid with a gasp. The air he sucked into his mouth stung with chilliness, like he had stuffed ice into his mouth. His vision was blurry from the tears which had built up. What was this stuff? Where was the toothbrush?

“Okay, then you have to use this.”

Some liquid dribbled down from her lip as the girl Gray took out a long, thin string. She broke a shorter piece off and wound it around her fingers, then threaded it through her teeth and made back-and-forth sawing motions with her hands.

Solera inserted the string between his teeth. It felt strange, and when he moved the string through the gap, he felt something come loose. He yanked the string out with shock and looked at it. On the string was a small lump of brown detritus, and blood.

What was this brown thing? Food? It came from his mouth?

“Ewwww,” the girl Gray gasped as she saw. “You’ll need more floss!”

In muted shock, Solera brought the string back up to his mouth. This was all wrong. Monsters were spirits, animals from Sky. They didn’t originally have bodies, because they lived in Sky and bodies were constructs of Land. Spirits seized their bodies, mutating into grotesque, dirty, ugly, misshapen things as they did. Like imps and Kings and Skadi, with his tattoos and filed teeth. A body was supposed to be totally foreign to spirits… so why did this monster know more about cleaning a body than he did? Why did this monster look, smell, feel more like a human than he did?

He felt so frustrated. All wrong, everything was wrong, every law was being violated.

Wasn’t the combination of a body and a soul what made the human uniquely human? An animal had a body and no soul, a spirit had a soul and no body… So what was the difference between a human and a spirit with a body?

There had to be a difference between a human and a monster. But he didn’t know what it was.

The girl laughed, breaking his train of thought with a laugh that was far too human. She took his hand, leading him to the bed. He looked at the pillows and the blankets. Were they going to do human things too?

She rolled onto the bed, stretching her arms and legs. Solera looked at the hair at the center of her hips, then looked away, extremely red. Her body was human, it could only be a human’s. But she was a monster, she had to be a monster! She had made him a cannibal an hour ago, for the Gardener’s sake!

How could he be reacting this way?

“It’s time to sleep, love.” She looked at him, her green eyes looking straight into his.

This was sick. This was depraved. But what could he do?

He gingerly climbed into the bed, not daring to take off any of his clothes. With a smile, the Gray rolled around to stretch her hand out to the nightstand on her side of the bed, giving him a glimpse of the perfect arch in her back.

The chargelight at the top of the room blinked out. Everything was dark, so he could only hear some rustling sounds as a warm, soft body wrapped around his. He wished she was a monster, a dragon or a regular or an imp. Anything would have been better than this.

“Good night, love.” She whispered, nuzzling the back of his head with her nose and lips.

She went still. Solera lay there for a while, his mind too rigid for his body to relax. She started to softly snore, her warm breath blowing onto the back of his neck.

Was a monster supposed to snore? Was a monster supposed to smile warmly at him, call him “love,” use sophisticated technologies to do everything humans did, from bathing to flying to teeth-cleaning?

It was so wrong. Even with the insulation of a layer of clothing, Solera couldn’t bear the feeling of her wrapped around him because the feeling wasn’t right. He needed some space. His own world, insulated from everything outside. His third eye.

The mud and fog of his Lake had hardly appeared when he sensed a foreign presence near him. In the skies above his Lake hung a vast network of gray tubes which looked almost exactly like his own channels. In fact, his own channels in his body brushed up dangerously close to the blue, with only two colorless barriers separating the two from touching.

The foreign clump of channels was faint and difficult to see, but it was there, right in front of him! No, right behind him!

Solera left his Lake, snapping back into the real world. The girl Gray’s forehead was pressed up against his hair, revealing the entirety of her soul to his third eye. He moved his head away, and the vision disappeared.

Gray tubes, gray channels. A Gray soul. The memories of being possessed came rushing back to him. The monstrous things which had poured out of his own channels, the three claws which were still embedded in his Lake. The bone-chilling fear as he touched the Gray’s soul. And now, there was one right next to him, literally breathing down his neck.

A Gray, human? No! It was merely a spirit living inside... a corpse! The human whose arms were wrapped around him was long dead! Dead, like Pinot, whose stomach had been punctured, or like the woman whose face he had caved in, or like the woman whose neck he had snapped. The human was dead!

A monster could wear the skin of a dead human, but it was still a monster. This Gray’s soul was still Gray! The soul did not change, and so the soul of a monster was still a monster, no matter who it possessed!