12. New Normal (Patreon)

The rest of my day is startlingly normal. No secret organizations kidnap me for using magic in the middle of a street, no body parts form or fall off of me, and no one else learns of my freakish mutations. Ida, unfortunately, seems to have blocked Brendan and I's phone numbers, or at the very least she's pretending she has, so my inquiries into her experience with me accidentally drawing a divine entity's attention go unanswered. I hope she's okay, but as Brendan pointed out we can't help somebody that refuses to communicate with us. If she's in trouble, we just have to hope that she'll reach out.

"Good work today, Hannah," my boss says just as I finish cleaning the floor. Yeah, I went to work today. Yeah, that was probably stupid. But frankly, the idea of going to work was a lot less stressful than the idea of trying to explain to my parents why I don't want to go to work.

"Of course," I answer. "Thanks for letting me stick to back-of-house stuff tonight."

"No problem," my boss nods. "You sound a little funny today. Something up with your mouth?"

I have, for all the obvious reasons, kept my mask on all shift. I'd be doing that even if I didn't have monster teeth growing in, what with the global pandemic and all.

"Yeah, talking all night wouldn't be pleasant," I confirm.

More importantly, I'm still feeling a bit too raw to deal with customers all day. Making food, though? I can get into kind of a zen mode for that, completing whatever orders pop up on screen and cleaning the rest of the time. My boss was happy to have me in back-of-house, which is how we refer to kitchen work. We have one of those kitchens that's open to the main room so everyone who orders can watch us make stuff, so it's really all one room. The 'positions' are front-of-house—which handles customer orders, cleaning the dining room, and so on—and back-of-house, which does all the food prep and dishwashing (even though everyone is supposed to handle dishwashing). There are technically a bunch of sub-positions for back-of-house that focus on the different foods we offer, but I can do it all and when we're understaffed like we were tonight, I tend to need to do exactly that. It's stressful, certainly, but it's a very human stress, something that takes a lot of effort and attention but is very much my element. There's a list of things I have to do, and I need to get them all done as quickly as possible, and I'm never lost for the next step. It's very… well, I guess I'd describe it as orderly, but considering that I'm Order-aligned in terms of magic I'm a little leery about that. I'd like to assume your personality just determines what magic you get somehow, but unfortunately I know that, due to how Chaos mages are apparently killed at birth, your type of magic is assigned at birth. So while my preference for structure could be a coincidence, I very much don't like the possibility that it isn't.

"Is it ever?" my boss asks, smirking at me as he cleans out the inside of one of our grease traps. My boss is a decent enough guy, though I don't really have strong feelings about him either way. He's thirty-something, with short brown hair, brown eyes, light stubble all over his face and a generally pretty positive disposition. Our store is low on employees right now, so he's almost always in the thick of things alongside us, making food and taking customer orders like a common grunt. I think I lucked out a bit with this job, since I've heard all kinds of horror stories about food service bosses and he doesn't really match up to any of them. That said, I still just mentally think of him as 'my boss' and not by his name, since I can't even remember it, which I think kind of communicates my general opinion on the man better than anything else.

"It kind of depends on my mood," I admit. "Sometimes I prefer front-of-house to back. Managing customers and cleaning the dining room is easier than making all the food, it's just a matter of how thick my skin is feeling that day. If I can't handle getting screamed at, it's better for me to stay in the back."

Which is exactly how I felt today, hence asking for kitchen duty. It's past 10pm now, so we're closed and putting the finishing touches on all the cleaning we have to do before going home for the night.

"Eh, you know that if anyone starts giving you shit you can just come get me, right?" my boss insists. "I will absolutely kick out a customer that starts yelling at my employees, and if somebody's that mad you should be grabbing me anyway."

See? He's a good boss. I wiggle my toes a little, feeling my claws slide into and out of the gouges I've dug into my new shoes.

"It's not fun to be yelled at even if I have an immediate way to leave the situation," I point out. "But thank you."

"No problem," he confirms. "You need a ride home tonight, by the way?"

I hesitate. That's… a perfectly innocuous question. I do usually carpool home, and the girl I usually carpool with is one of the two people that called in sick tonight (and wasn't that fun). I can and often do call my dad to have him pick me up, but I prefer not to do that since he tends to be really late and also, y'know, car ride with my dad. So honestly I have every reason to accept that offer, except for the obvious and glaring fact that I do not at all want to get into a man's car alone with him.

I don't think my boss is at all inclined to sexually harass me, let alone do anything worse than that. He doesn't give off that kind of… creepy vibe, you know? And the creepy vibe metric is a pretty darn good metric, frankly, and I will not allow anyone to tell me otherwise. Sure, it's technically profiling, but like… I'm not a cop determining who needs to be arrested, I'm a young underage woman trying not to get raped. I really, really wish that didn't have to be the sort of thing I need to worry about, but it absolutely is. If anyone tries to convince you otherwise you should punch them in the dick.

So! High-speed personal safety mental calculation time. I've already been hesitating for too long, which means he probably suspects I'm trying to determine the odds that he's going to try to rape me, which, y'know, most people kind of take offense to, even if just silently. So I make a show of saying 'uhhhh' and pulling out my phone to look at the calendar app as if it has my carpool information in it, which it does not. Does my boss pass the creepy check? Yes, no real bad vibes from him. Does he pass the leering check? Mmmmostly, yes. Better than most guys, which is unfortunately a technical pass because my standards have been lowered enough to grade on a curve. Does he pass the accountability check? Yes, there's one other employee here tonight who could confirm we left in the same vehicle. Does the situation pass the personal safety check? I think… yes. I can have my phone out for the whole drive to quickly call the police if needed, and if things get really bad I can pretty easily kill him with one foot.

I blink at that thought, reeling it back a little and letting it play again. I, uh… huh. I can kill him with one foot. I can trivially overpower an adult man. That's… incredibly comforting, in a way I never expected it to be. Like, obviously I don't want to kill him, but… well, I'm a five foot two teenage girl who doesn't work out, any incel off the street could easily force me to the ground because testosterone just cheats like that. I've got less than half the upper body strength of the average man, because I am a below-average strength woman. That's just life. But now I have a literally magical equalizer, and that's a weight off my shoulders that's been pressing down hard for a long, long time. A horrible fear that I always have to keep in the back of mind is now just… quieter.

"I think a ride would be helpful, thank you," I tell him, and get back to cleaning.

"No problem," he agrees, and returns to scrubbing as well.

We're done with the closing routine just under an hour later, which is way longer than it's supposed to take but that's the reality of only having three people on a five-man shift. I buckle up in the passenger seat of my boss' truck and direct him back to my house, all of which occurs without incident. Which is what I expected, but… y'know. Still a relief.

The rest of my family is asleep at this hour, so I quietly enter the house and creep up to my room before peeling off my clothes, dutifully sticking foam cubes over my claws, and squirming into bed. As usual, I start to feel the exhaustion take me almost immediately.

Hannah! Are you asleep?

I try to open my eyes, but I don't have them anymore. I roll around a little instead, getting my legs underneath me before uncurling myself into a stretch. Sensory information floods me all at once, the entire material composition of everything within fifty feet of me rushing into my mind before I mentally blink it back into submission, focusing my attention enough to comprehend what I'm looking at. We're… in our camp. Teboho and Kagiso are asleep. There doesn't seem to be anyone else around.

Sindri? I think groggily. What's up?

It's your turn to keep watch, Sindri answers. I can feel your presence, but I can't see you. Where are you?

Ah, right, sorry. I slept in a barren zone. Or I guess a dimensional pocket? Same thing I guess.

I crawl out of my little extradimensional sleeping cubby next to where Sindri is standing, startling him enough to make him jump a bit. Hee hee. It's a shame I can't laugh in this body, because I totally would if I could.

Woah! Hey there, he greets me. I'm glad I managed to wake you up, I suppose, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to find you. It's your turn to keep watch.

Oh right, I did agree to do that.

Sure thing, I confirm. Quick question, though. How will I know when my shift is over? I don't know how to tell time.

Sindri nods and pulls out a small lantern, though rather than oil or something to fuel it, the inside only has a single, tiny candle that can't possibly emit much light. Not that light helps me in the first place, so why… oh! I see. There are notches built into the lantern next to where the candle rests.

Is that a candle clock? I ask.

Yes, exactly. The candle will burn down and you can see how much time has passed by how much wax is left. Each small notch is a [time increment, medium-short length, fraction of fraction of day], while each longer notch is [time increment, medium-long length, fraction of day].

Your units didn't convert for me, I inform him. How many notches am I waiting?

Two of the long ones, Hannah.

Okay, thank you!

Sindri nods and yawns mightily, rolling a stiff shoulder.

By the way, forgive me if this is a rude question, but is something growing on your carapace? Your coloration looks a bit different.

Huh? I ask.

Between each of your legs there. At least, if I'm not mistaken?

Huh. I suppose I haven't really checked myself over since waking up. I focus on my own body, glancing at the area between each leg, and sure enough there's… something happening. The exoskeleton seems to be thinning out, a membrane developing under it alongside a nerve cluster to match. What the heck? Does my spider-body mutate too? That's… kind of really annoying, actually. I'm not sure why, but it is.

You're right, something is different, I agree. Not sure what, though. Hyperspider puberty, maybe?

He chuckles a bit at that.

It must have been very difficult growing up as the only member of your species that you know, he sympathizes, and I'm not really sure how I feel about that. It's somehow completely inaccurate yet extremely relatable. Your species name didn't quite translate there, by the way.

It's not the real name for the species anyway, since I don't know what that is, I admit. It's just what I call my species. Mix of the words 'hyper' and 'spider,' because that's how my native language refers to fourth-dimensional objects. The 4D equivalent of a cube is a 'hypercube,' etcetera.

Ah, interesting. Thank you for explaining.

No problem.

He smiles down at me before heading into his tent to get comfortable for bed. I don't follow, because there's no real need—I can still 'see' him and 'hear' him exactly as well as I could when we were right next to each other.

I must say, you seem to be doing a lot better than you were before, Sindri says. It's good to see.

I stiffen a bit at that.

…I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm extremely traumatized, I tell him frankly. I've… never killed anyone before. But sleep helped, I guess.

Mainly because a bunch of other crazy stuff happened, from my teeth to using magic on Earth to Ida finding everything out, and while all of that was terrible in the moment, things… kinda turned out decent? Other than Ida not speaking to me anymore, I guess, but I'm not super worried about that. It's… a very Ida thing to do, and I'm kind of expecting it to not last very long.

…I'm not sure how I feel about her having a crush on me, though. That's… odd. Because I used to have a big crush on her, for sure. I spent like a year and a half smooshing it to nothing because I was sure she was straight, though, so now I don't have that crush, which makes things… a bit odd, emotionally speaking. Hannah from a year ago would be ecstatic. I'm just… confused. That's not even bringing in the whole terrifying monster transformation thing, which probably means she's not interested in me anymore regardless.

Honestly, it's heartening that you haven't had to see much death before, Sindri sighs. But I'm afraid you'll probably have to get used to it. The Tree of Souls is a fairly lawless place with relatively few central governments. It's mostly villages and city-states, and only the biggest ones bother to patrol the areas outside their walls for bandits and monsters. Travel is dangerous, and we are travelers.

Huh. That really sucks. Can we even get the guy who ran away arrested?

In the strictest sense of the word, the people who attacked us weren't even doing anything illegal, so no. Though practically speaking, if we could prove the merchants responsible performed such banditry, they'd likely be expelled from from their guild if they're in one, or possibly even barred from entering some of the nearby towns, but… well, I don't really have the time to go around trying to convince local ruling councils to do things like that. Likewise, I don't have the spare funds to devote to putting up a bounty, which is the most common form of retribution for richer folk to employ.

Sheesh, it's pretty wild-west out here, isn't it?

That really sucks, I say, because what else is there to say? Society seems like a mess.

It's the natural consequence of having large numbers of small, disparate communities of people who seem disinclined to engage much with each other. Things are much better organized back on Pillar.

Okay, so question about that, I say. The word 'Pillar' mostly translates, but I don't know much about it. Is it the same thing as what Teboho called 'The Slaying Stone?'

It is, Sindri confirms. It's where my people come from. Humans. The ground there is rock, rather than wood.

Where is it? I ask.

A very long way below us, Sindri shrugs. I'll be returning there after killing the Chaos mage we're hunting, and if you have nothing better to do you're welcome to join me.

I might take you up on that, I admit. It's not like I have anywhere else to go, and Sindri is a pretty cool friend.

We'll talk more about that all later, then, Sindri says. For now, I need to rest. If you feel yourself falling asleep, please wake Kagiso early. It's better than having no one awake, and she's mostly unharmed from our recent fight.

Will do, Sindri.

Thanks again, Hannah. I know that what you did weighs on you, but never forget that you saved our lives in doing it. To protect innocents by killing aggressors is not evil, it is brave.

I guess so, I admit. I just wish nobody had to die at all.

Were only the world so kind, Sindri sighs. Good night, Hannah.

Good night, Sindri.

Well. I guess I'm keeping watch now. The general idea of it seems pretty straightforward—if anything dangerous-looking comes within fifty feet of us, or if I hear anything suspicious enough from outside my range, I wake everybody up. Easy enough. The hard part, I suspect, is staying focused and awake.

Or, well… at least awake. I don't think I can really fail to notice something big enough to be threatening entering my range, not unless I was particularly groggy. And since I am kind of groggy, priority one right now is waking myself up. I scuttle in a circle, spinning my body and getting my blood pumping. For some odd reason, this feels a lot weirder than normal. Uh, insofar as spinning around as a little radially symmetrical spider creature can feel normal, anyway. Still, something feels odd, almost like something is pressing on me in a particular direction. But it's not… touch, really? I'm not sure how to describe it, it's just… new. Is there anything in that direction that's noteworthy? Let's see… there's Sindri's tent, I guess. A small colony of ant-like creatures is over that way as well, kind of. And the candle clock is next to me, I guess.

…Oh, wait a minute! The candle clock! I stop spinning myself silly and walk around it, feeling the… whatever I'm feeling match whatever side of my body the candle is on. I walk away from the lit candle, noticing the feeling get dimmer. Then I walk behind a tent and immediately notice the feeling disappear.

…I think I'm sensing light!

It's the new organs between each of my legs, it has to be. They're rudimentary light sensors, the evolutionary precursor to eyes. I mean, probably, anyway. It matches my observations and would make sense, and like… dang I really hope it's eyes. I don't like being blind one bit. My spatial sense is really nice, don't get me wrong, but it's sort of… claustrophobic. Fifty feet seems like a long distance up until it really, really isn't.

One way or another, my body is definitely changing. The thick nerve clusters underneath each part of my weakening exoskeleton just kinda weren't there before, so it's pretty obvious. Assuming this is the same sort of Transmutation effect as the one affecting me on Earth, this might be a good time to try and figure that magic out, maybe even learn to control it!

…Though on the subject of control, I should probably start with the spell I already know. I focus on the feeling of my Spacial Rend, at least as best I can. Spacial Rend, Spacial Rend… I know it's called that, I know it's named that, but it also isn't. That's a representation of the name, but the real name is Sp—

I shudder, feeling the goddess' attention on me for a fractional yet infinite second. I… I recall Kagiso demonstrating her spell by incanting its true name to me, so I doubt the goddess minds all that much about being summoned frivolously, but… I don't know. It still seems rude to do it without a reason. Like calling someone on the phone, or sending them a Discord ping. Some people can just do that to people, but I sure can't. It's intrusive! I'm curious if I can use the verbal incantation without being able to talk, but not curious enough to… y'know, bother somebody. What if I accidentally wake my friends if I succeed? They'd assume we're under attack!

Anyway, inviting the goddess to speak the true name of my magic is an entirely optional part of casting the spell. It empowers things, from what I'm told, and it probably does so considerably. This just comes at the cost of all the many downsides of, y'know, saying the name of your spell out loud, a trope that has been criticized to death. This world doesn't run on anime time, for starters, so enemies won't stop trying to kill you while you talk. Plus, the name of the spell describes the spell, and that gives information about your spell that people otherwise might not have. It certainly isn't stealthy, and screaming "I'M CASTING A SPELL!" is pretty bad on its own, but… I feel like the name has to actually, legitimately describe the spell, as well. Your target will get information regarding what you're about to do when you say the name. No trying to game the system and trick people with the name. I don't know why I feel that's true, but I do. The goddess just… wouldn't like it, probably. Maybe. Blah, I genuinely don't have a logical reason to believe this is true, which means I should submit the belief to scientific rigor, but… maybe not personally. I'm sure someone else has tried. I'll ask the others about it when they wake up.

So. Magic. Let's try to focus here, Hannah. My goal is to figure out my shapeshifting magic in order to try and control it a bit better. I feel like shapeshifting is somewhat of a potentially catastrophic kind of magic to fuck up, and considering that I don't want to Akira myself I'm gonna try to take this slow. I'll start with the one spell I can cast, and see if figuring out the details of actually casting it can help me extrapolate from there. Spacial Rend, my cutting-that-isn't-cutting magic. I will never be able to cast it without remembering my first kill, I think, so that's the memory I turn to, the feeling I force myself to relive. I hope it is always as haunting and disturbing as it was then.

I am, as I so often am, immediately disappointed in myself. The bloom of power comes easily and it feels comfortable, like putting on a snug sock. The memory of blood and terror and evil performed by my own claws doesn't torment me like I feel it should. I just… activate the magic, casually dig a small hole with it, then let it fade away. It's easy, as easy as breathing. It's my magic, after all, and it's as much a part of me now as any muscle or limb. And I'm actually pretty good at trying to flex muscles that don't exist.

Though… surely it's not that easy, right? There's no way I can learn to control my transformation spell by just feeling around for other threads of power to pull on, can I? That doesn't seem quite right, but it doesn't seem quite wrong either. Agh! I hate that! I hate how… instinctive everything is. I hate feeling my way through this rather than understanding and knowing! I like hard magic systems, ones where the magic is basically science in the sense that it's consistent, predictable, and an inherent part of the world. This wacky personalized stuff is… uncomfortable to me, yet at the same time it got me my first spell, so… here we go? Feeling around for threads of power. This will work, kind of, I think… because I know what I'm looking for. I know the spell I'm seeking. It's the spell that changes me.

That feels fundamentally incorrect, but also sort of close enough. There's some basic resonance from that: yes, the spell does change me, at least in the sort of 'no duh' way which is basically meaningless. I'm missing important elements here. I roll the idea around in my mind a while, accompanied by me curling myself into a ball and rolling around the campsite a little bit. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Rolling does weird things to my budding light-sensor organs. I'm radially symmetrical but not spherically symmetrical, so the light sensors are rolling along with me, spinning in ways that would make my human body quite dizzy. Or, well. My humanoid body. I'm not really human anymore, what with the exoskeleton I'm growing.

An exoskeleton. Hmm. My spider body… also has an exoskeleton. And it has claws, though they're not shaped quite the same way as my toe claws. The teeth, though. My spider body has very sharp teeth. My human body might be growing parts that are more like my spider-self. And the budding eyes, well… my human body has eyes. Not ten eyes, though. It doesn't quite… match up perfectly. But I think I'm onto something, and while I'm tempted to go pulling on what my instincts say is kind of the right magic muscle, I'm not currently anemic enough to think that's a good idea a second time. Instead, I idle away the hours until the candle finally burns down and then skuttle into Kagiso's tent to wake her up.

She's curled up in her bedroll on the ground, so I just head up to her face and bump into her a few times to wake her up. She tenses, her eyes shooting open… but then she glances at me and relaxes, making a tired groaning noise and trying to curl up deeper into her bed. Which… hey! She can't do that! It's my turn to sleep!

I bump her a few more times, to increasingly annoyed groans, before she finally starts wriggling out of bed.

"Fala hana, nata nata," she mumbles, patting me on top of my body. I drum my feet indignantly, because I am not a hat, no matter how often I end up on top of her head. She ignores my silent denial, however, stretching like a cat and yawning before grabbing her weapons and standing up.

For some reason, I follow Kagiso out of the tent rather than just curl up into the nearby barren zone and pass out. She sits down on a rock, nods at me, and pats a small space beside her, so I jump up and curl into a ball next to her thigh. Kagiso pulls out a set of whittling tools as well as the chunk of the deep wood I left in her backpack after tunneling into it, and starts turning it into arrows. Neat. The two of us sit in silence, partly because we can't actually talk to each other while Sindri is unconscious but partly because that's just who we are: a pair of introverts in the mood to enjoy each other's company in utter silence.

It doesn't take long after I get comfortable there to find myself waking up in bed. Once I spend the requisite few seconds figuring out how to breathe again, I let out a sigh. Nothing actually bad happened. No one tried to come after us in our sleep. That's quite a relief.

For the first time this week I crawl out of bed without being on the verge of a panic attack. Alien feelings in my jaw and careful movements of my tongue indicate I should probably keep my lips firmly shut until I lock myself in the bathroom, but I expected this. It'll… it'll be okay, I think. As long as there's nothing extra tagging along with my new teeth. I enter the bathroom, strip down, and do a quick check over my body. Everything looks the same. My toes are now entirely exoskeletal, and they're starting to infect my feet. My slowly-changing leg has more growing under the skin than it did yesterday, but I don't have that itch I tend to have when the skin is ready to fall off. Satisfied with my checkup, I bite the bullet, stare into the mirror, and finally open my mouth.

Uh. Wow. Holy steamed casserole, okay, that's… that's some teeth. I stare into the mirror and huge, glistening-white triangles shine back at me like an upscaled shark mouth. A full set of horrifying saw-like edges, not a single one built for chewing. I am built to tear chunks off flesh and swallow them whole. I open and close my mouth a few times, focusing on the strangely disturbing feeling of my upper teeth and lower teeth slotting in next to each other, passing into the gaps side-by-side rather than settling on top or in front. It's almost mechanical, in a way. They slot into each other too well, to the point that any slight warping would leave me stabbing my own gums or unable to close my jaw. A naturally-evolving creature couldn't rely on having perfectly ordered teeth all the time, that's just genetic variance, but I suppose my magically-induced changes have no such limitation.

I open my mouth as wide as it will go—and holy moly that's a lot wider than it used to be—then snap my jaws shut with a satisfying clack. Woah, that's… loud. I used a lot more force than I intended. My teeth are extremely sharp, extremely dangerous, but whatever part of my brain that instinctively wants to be careful with my own teeth and not stress them too hard has apparently been shut off. I'll have to be sure not to bite my own fingers off when I'm eating! Hell, I could probably bite my own hand off if I tried. Or, y'know, someone else's. Heh.

…I should get in the shower so I can go eat breakfast. I step in and let the hot water run, rinsing myself down and looking over the skin on my legs for hair to shave. I've thankfully never been all that hairy—it's annoying shaving what little body hair I do get, I can't imagine having to do both legs every day—but I don't spot anything. Hmm. Not too strange, I suppose, but I feel like I should have regrown some body hair by now. I guess my skin knows it's eventually going to die and fall off, so it has stopped bothering with frivolities. I do still have to shave my armpits, but I suppose the exoskeletal advance army has yet to reach such heightened shores. I giggle a little, and now that my mouth is open I just have to snap my teeth together again. Then again. Clack clack. Man, that is worryingly satisfying. I need to find someone to chew. I mean something to chew.

Ha ha, I'm definitely going insane. I should probably be panicking about this. I could be panicking about this, if I really started focusing on how fucked up it all is. But… I'm extremely tired. Especially of panic. I've been doing that so often lately that I just feel numb to it. It's probably healthy to take a rest day or two to refill my panic reserves for later, right?

I luxuriate in the shower for a good while longer before finally getting out, wiping the steam off the mirror and watching myself clack my teeth together one last time for good measure before drying off and getting clothes on. Including, of course, my mask. There's almost a hint of resignation in me as I put it on, for whatever reason. It's human Hannah time. My routine is calling, and it's school, work, sleep, repeat. Just get through things, taking one step at a time and hoping my problems just go away, even though I know they won't. That's my life. It sucks, and it's terrible, but it's mine and the idea of letting it go just terrifies me too much to consider.

I spare one last longing glance at the mirror, then exit the bathroom to face the day.