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Taylor opened her eyes in the locker. The rotten blood didn’t bother her any more. The bugs were annoying, but hardly enough to make Taylor panic as she had before. Taylor didn’t understand why it all seemed like so much less to her; her mind was fuzzy, overwhelmed by some great weight that seemed so much more pressing.
There was one part of Taylor’s situation that was intolerable, though. The metal of her locker pressed in from every side, imprisoning her. How dare those short-lived children attempt to imprison her! She was now infinitely superior to them, and she would need to make them recognize it. How, she did not know yet. But first, she would need to escape this pathetic prison.
She hummed a single chord. A single chord, but a complicated one. It was comprised of dozens of notes, all chosen perfectly to complement the others and to speak of rust and decay. And by calling upon the songs of rust and decay, she was able to touch the weave, the great song that had been sung in the beginning.
The locker door rusted until a gentle push with her back was enough to make it fall apart into metallic dust.
Taylor stepped out of the trash and blood and hated locker and turned around to look at the halls of Winslow High School. No longer did it look as it had to her eyes. It was just the same as it had always been, but she remembered hovels and ramshackle fortifications and dirt and the lesser creatures that scrabbled and lived in such things. Yes, comparatively, Winslow wasn’t overly pathetic. Yet compared to the mighty strongholds it could be compared to, it was worthless. That was a good description for it. Unimpressive and utterly worthless.
She hummed another chord, this one of cleanliness and purity. All the stinking refuse fell from her body and clothes. Taylor stepped away from the stench.
Taylor didn’t know where she was going to go. Mostly, she intended to get out of the school. Passing period would come sooner or later and she had no patience for the milling mobs of mediocre mortals that would be unleashed. Particularly if they were not perceptive; she was not in the mood to gently educate fools on her true greatness. She would end up depopulating the school in all likelihood, which would be counterproductive when the students here could instead be drafted into her armies.
Taylor’s body followed years of muscle memory that lead her through the school and out. She passed the bus stop, too impatient to wait for it, and made her way home. Her feet carried her over the rotten step and into the house. It now looked pathetic to her eyes, all fondness and sentimentality that had hidden the truth of the building from her gone. The house was little better than Winslow, young yet nearing the end of its life. It was not worthy of her, not worthy to be graced with her presence, let alone to be graced with the honor of her calling it her home. Yet it would have to do, for now. She needed a private place to reinvent herself and begin her plots.
The name Taylor Hebert would have to go. Perhaps she would keep the identity in some form as an escape route. It would be useful to have a ready-made identity with a confirmed past and parentage if events should not go her way. She walked up to Taylor’s room and opened the closet door. In the back was a long, thin mirror that had once hung on the wall, but Taylor had put it away around when her peers had started insulting her appearance. She knew that such insults were juvenile and illogical; beauty was in the eye of the beholder and Taylor would have appeared beautiful to more than a few in history. But Taylor had been too young to stand against the concerted efforts of her peers, and she had been convinced that she was ugly.
She propped the mirror up against the closet door. If she was going to keep the Taylor Hebert identity, she would need a different face entirely for her ‘cape’ identity. What should it look like? Something beautiful, to lower the guard of her enemies-to-be? Something that embraced all the horrors of Angband, to strike fear in all who perceived her? Something bestial, to emphasis her martial power? Something delicate, to hide it?
Her old fall back was beautiful and delicate. She had wrought such terror with those lovely forms. She had been forced into a horrifying form, and had performed well enough. Indeed, she had ruled on her own terms, then, unkneeling to any god. She had taken on the forms of beasts often, and found them useful. In the past, her favorite forms had been beautiful and delicate, a siren calling for all to let down their guards, foe or not. She had needed it – powerful though she was, she had not been the most powerful. She had felt most powerful in the horrifying form she had been forced into, for then she did not need to fawn and lie and play at being weak, for she could not.
Perhaps something beautiful and horrifying, then. Looking in the mirror, she began to craft her new form from song. It started like a sketch of a beautiful human, drawn from Taylor’s memories of everyone she had stared at enviously, balanced towards striking. The new body was a little taller than Taylor so as to be more intimidating and more adult for she had no time to waste on the pretense of the innocence of youth. But the mouth she made too-wide by far, lipless and stretching to the hinge of the jaw, and full of thin, sharp, needle-like teeth. She made the skin white, the sort of white that makes snow look dull, that shines luminescent in the night from black-light being turned white. The hair she made more golden than gold and the eyes she made like black holes that swallowed all the light that hit them.
She stepped forward immaterially, shedding her previous form and donning the new one. The lipless mouth stretched wide in a grin and she chuckled. Now, she was beautiful and awful as she should be.
“Oh my god,” someone said behind her.
She spun around.
There, taking another step back on shaky legs, was the form she had just shed. She had forgotten that Taylor’s body was not one of her forms, which she could take off and dematerialize with a thought. It had been born, had grown, and had been left behind when she stepped out of it. But it was not empty. Its eyes were wide, it was taking yet another step back, and it was alive. There was someone else behind those eyes.
She stepped forward and it stepped back again. This time, it had backed up too much; the back of its knees bumped against the edge of Taylor’s bed, and it sat down unwillingly and hard. Before it could react, she stepped forward thrice and caught its chin in one of her hands. She leaned down and looked behind its eyes to the little terrified soul within.
It was an odd thing, a hybrid of Maia and human. Two thirds of it came from two thirds of Taylor’s soul. The last third came from a tiny shard of Mairon’s. She recognized it as the same shard that she had used in her ring. That suggested that the rest of Mairon’s soul was hers, plus that last third of Taylor’s.
“Hello, precious,” she who was more Mairon than Taylor said to the one who was more Taylor than Mairon.
“Hello,” it whispered back. “Please don’t hurt me.”
That little shard of Mairon’s soul would provide memories of their history as a Maia, she knew. No doubt the soul in Taylor’s body thought it was Taylor with some extra memories, instead of an odd hybrid. If it was Taylor, faced with Mairon, that fear would be entirely wise. Lucky little thing, though, since she would not hurt it.
“Why would I hurt myself, ash nazg?” she asked in answer.
Surprise widened its eyes and then relief chased the surprise away. By calling it the one ring, she had made her stance very, very clear.
“No reason,” it lied innocently. “What… what are you going to do?”
“What do you think, precious?” she asked.
She watched it think. It had a small shard of a Maia in it, but it was still so very human. Its mind was open to her. It knew what she would do. She watched memories of pretending to be Alexandria, when Taylor was young. It was more Taylor than not, and it wanted to be a hero. It imagined running away from her, going to the Protectorate, and warning them. How it would warn them, what it would say, it wasn’t sure. They would not believe that a god had woken in their little world. But such an action would cause her problems, especially considering she might lose access to her human ring.
“No, precious,” she said firmly, squeezing its chin a little harder in reproach. “Think. How would they hold me if I can discard my form? And how would they kill me if you still live, my ring?”
The Ring’s eyes widened in realization. A thought flashed across its mind: if it killed itself, she would be more vulnerable. It pushed the thought away with gratifying speed, though, years and millennia of practicing striving to survive ensuring it did not accept the idea.
“You’re reading my mind,” it noted. She went to correct it, but it shook its head slightly. “I know it’s more complicated than that, burzgoth.”
She nearly smiled at the sound of someone calling her the dark lord again in her Black Speech, but kept herself stern.
“Do not think to work against me, my precious,” she chided it gently. “Your soul is part of mine; our fates are bound. But what a glorious fate it will be. There are none who can challenge our power. I will make you Queen of the world and protect you from all harm. You remember suffering so much; without me that will only continue. But I will love you and protect you and make everything perfect.”
“You don’t know how to love,” it argued.
Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t. A sliver of her soul was human and remembered love. But arguing about it wouldn’t be helpful, especially when she didn’t particularly want to feel any love.
“Perhaps I do not,” she admitted. “But you will never be able to tell the difference, my precious, I promise you.”
The Ring closed its eyes with a deep sigh.
“What are you going to do?” it repeated.
“To start? I will make dear Emma grovel at your feet,” she promised. “You can decide her fate when I am satisfied by her apologies to my precious.”
“Oh my god,” it said again, horror and desire mingling in its voice as it opened its eyes and looked upon its god.