Katalepsis III (part two)

Heather's initial attempts at communication with Slenderwoman go poorly, and it's entirely her own fault.

In fact, "Heather does a stupid" is really the byline for these next three chapters. On one hand, seeing her be this reckless and thoughtless this many times in a row is a bit frustrating, and feels out of character. On the other hand, we already know that Heather has just had her first taste of real power, her first perverse rush at exercising that power against weaker entities with no consequences, and also just started getting used to having an incredibly attractive girlfriend/bodyguard she can count on. Considering that she's a poorly socialized twenty-year-old under a lot of stress and coming out of a decade of repression, maybe acting out-of-character right now is actually in character. That doesn't make it any less frustrating, but it does make it make sense as part of her development and (hopefully) growth.

Well, first things first. Heather finds Slenderwoman sulking off across the street after being rebuked earlier, and tries to take to her. She's still fairly aggro in her approach though, speaking with a clear presumption of hostile intent despite being here to try and mend bridges. When Slenderwoman tries to extend a tentacle forward in something that appears to be a greeting or an attempt at sign language or something, Heather...well, she doesn't think her reaction through.

“She wiggled the tentacle in a little circle, then pointed it back at me again.

” … you … you want me to touch? Shake hands?”

I wasn’t going to make the same mistake I had with Maisie’s messenger. I raised one finger. She waited, tentacle-tip steady.

”If this is a trap, or something, I will mind-zap you into some hell dimension. Take that as a warning.”

She pulled the tentacle back and slid away from me.

”No, no, wait,” I said. “If it’s not a trap, that’s fine. I … I think I want to communicate. Please?”

The Tentacled Woman did not accept my invitation. She backed away to her own safe distance, then simply watched me.”

Heather. If it wanted to hurt you, and touching you was all it needed to do for that, then why wouldn't it just sneak up behind you and tap you with a tentacle?

The entity - which Heather comes to privately refer to as "Tenny," for "Tentacles" - keeps its distance henceforth, and doesn't react to any further communication attempts except by staring warily from across the street. Nice job breaking it.

Also there's some hilarious foreshadowing (or maybe just teasing, after the precedents the story has already set for the reader) when Raine comes over to ask Heather what she's doing out here.

“I’m- I’m talking to a spirit. Or, I was trying to.” I gestured at the road, at the figure Raine couldn’t see. A blush coloured my cheeks. “Everything’s fine, nothing happened. I’m sorry- I mean, I just wanted- … needed to do this.”

Raine’s face lit up. “Oooh, any success?”

” … uh … a little, yes. I think I scared her off though.”

”Her?” Raine smirked. “You making special friends without me?”

I rolled my eyes, then cast a glance at the Tentacled Woman. She’d backed up beyond safe distance, settled down in a squat, black ichor dripping from her tentacles. “Oh don’t be silly, you have nothing to be jealous of.”

Nothing to be jealous of, right. Once Heather eventually does regain this thing's trust Raine is going to need to either learn to share or grow a few more tongues to compete.

With Heather having just blown the possibility of miracle reinforcements (not that those weren't a serious longshot to begin with, given the cult's demonstrated ability to do as they will with at least most types of PSF), the three are back to trying to decide how to proceed. Evelyn still wants to keep summoning more demons to supplement Praem's meido-bots and send them on the offensive, despite the risks associated with having that many bound to service at once. Raine, despite her (over)confidence in Evelyn's abilities, thinks that this is a terrible idea and that they should try literally anything besides that. Including (unwisely, I think) holding down the fort and hoping that the enemy has already decided that they're too much trouble after those last couple of clashes.

I don't think Raine's optimistic suggestion there was a very smart one, but the sheer venom with which Evelyn shuts it down strongly implies that her opposition is deeper than just the wisdom of it. And, when Raine proposes maybe asking other wizards who she knows of for assistance, well.

“Come on, Evee, if this is for real, you may as well ask for help. How about calling Aaron? He’s alright, isn’t he? Or Fliss, if you can stomach her for five minutes?”

”No.” Evelyn’s mouth twisted. “No other mages. Not here. Not in Sharrowford. This is my territory. Mine.”

It's starting to seem like Evelyn wouldn't even care if the Sharrowford Cult never attacked them at all. She'd attack them as soon as they demonstrated this level of power regardless of their intentions, just on principle.

Maybe that's an overly uncharitable reading of Evelyn here, but I do think that there's a *side* of her that hasn't shaken off its indoctrination of this nature. And that being in a wizard war is bringing that side of her out and potentially undoing progress away from her mother that she's been making.

And, on the topic of people showing more sides of themselves, I'm starting to think more and more that this isn't just power-drunkenness changing Heather. There's something changing in her head.

“What?” she croaked, then rubbed her forehead. “What? I nodded off. What are you staring at? Oh God, sod this, I need coffee or something. I have so much to do.”

”No, no I don’t think you do,” I said, surprised myself.

”What?” Evelyn’s eyes emerged squinting from behind her hand.

”I’ve seen that look on my own face a thousand times. How long have you been awake?”

”Since … I don’t know. I wasn’t keeping track. Maybe four, this morning.”

”On how much sleep?”

Evelyn grumbled under her breath and averted her eyes. She rubbed at her thigh, approximately where the socket of her prosthetic attached.

”How much sleep, Evee?”

”Three hours. Give or take.”

”Three hours? Three hours. Okay. Do you need to shore up a front that’s about to collapse out there?”

” … what? Wha-“

”Are we in imminent danger of being undermined and detonated from below? No? Is this all going to collapse if you leave it alone for a few hours?”

”Well … no, not at all, but-“

”No buts. You need a proper meal and a long sleep. You can’t fight a war exhausted.”

”Zhukov did.”

Raine burst out laughing. “Evee, shut the hell up. Heather’s got you on this one. You’re wiped out. I haven’t seen you this tired in years.”

I turned on Raine, hands on my hips. “And you should have said this to her earlier. She’s your friend too, Raine. You should have noticed.”

Raine blinked at me. “Ah, well, I-“

”What do we have in the fridge?”

”I- sorry?”

”Food. Food! What do we have? Evee, what do you have on hand?”

Evelyn visibly attempted to rouse herself, pinching the bridge of her nose and inhaling deeply. “Not much. Not much at all. I’ve been snacking through it.”

”Right then, Raine,” I snapped back to my now slightly-taken-aback girlfriend. “There’s that corner shop about five minutes away. Go get some curry or something. And a jar of instant hot chocolate”

Raine hesitated a beat, then grinned and saluted me. “Yes ma’am.”

I blushed. “Don’t. I’m just … you two seem incapable right now. We can’t all carry guns and summon monsters. Some of us have to remain normal.” I shooed Raine toward the door. She laughed on the way out, caught my hand and kissed my fingers.”

It's not just that Heather is acting like this. It's that the other two - including Evelyn in her own house, her own dumb little queendom - are actually lowering their heads and going along with it.

Heather has changed. And she seems to have picked up some kind of charisma power while she was at it.

Is it using the Eye's formulas so much, changing her brain to think more like the Eye itself does? Or is it proximity to Lozzie and/or Tenny that's doing it? Actually, considering the timing, this is around the point where I started to suspect that Lozzie and Tenny were connected.

In the end, they decide to re-enact a version of the earlier siege protocols. Raine temporarily moves back in with Evelyn, the revolution will have its greatest soldier back soon enough. Heather moves in as well, for the most part, spending only two of the next dozen-odd nights at the dorm. While Raine bodyguards and Evelyn summons (including a creature that sounded a lot like a gug hired thug and that the author congratulated me for spotting~), Heather practices the ability that Evelyn dubbed "self-implementing hyperdimensional mathematics." IE, her Edward Elric glyphless spellcasting powers. She has her own room to practice in. Near Raine's. Equipped with blankets, buckets, and tissues, where she can indulge in her eldritch knowledge for as long as she's willing to bleed out the nose and vomit up everything in her stomach for.

I really do worry about how many brain cells she's going through. Maybe there's a spell that can make those grow back.

Over the course of a week-and-change timeskip, Heather manages - with the help of some of Evelyn's book collection that gave her PTSD to look at before - to get to the point where she can send small objects to other dimensions with only moderate discomfort, send large ones with significantly more discomfort, and potentially even retrieve them back again by really frying her brain like an egg in a pan. It's baby steps, but it's steps. And she's getting slightly better at not bleeding and vomiting and losing consciousness when she does it.

She continues, through the timeskip, to dream of Lozzie. Unfortunately, her memories of these dreams aren't always easy to recall after she wakes up. Which is a problem, on account of one of the later updates Lozzie provides her with:

“He’s after you now. He doesn’t always get what he wants, but he’s going to try. He didn’t know about you before, I didn’t tell him. Please don’t think it was me.” Lozzie met my eyes, a little sad, a lot worried. “He knows because you did that thing with the bullet, because you escaped. He’s working it out, he’s going to work it out.”

”What?” I sat up and stared at her. “Lozzie, what are you talking about? Who’s after me?”

”My brother.”

”Your-“ I swallowed and took a deep breath, reminded myself where I was. “You’re a dream, Lozzie. You’re kinda cute, but you’re a dream. Stop scaring me.”

”You should kill him if you can,” she whispered. “Kill him.”

So yeah. Confirmation that Lozzie is a prisoner, perhaps even a prisoner in her own body. And also, more distressingly, that Evelyn and her pile of occult treasures are no longer the main target after Heather's display of dimension-warping power at the end of arc 2. Heather herself is the greater prize now.

Like I said. She can barely remember any of this after waking up.

Extrapolating a bit more, it sounds a lot like Lozzie and her brother only recently showed up in the area and took over the Sharrowford Cult. Would explain the sudden increase in their competence, boldness, and resources, if they were previously a bunch of blindly fumbling hedge-magicians and now they're being led by something closer to a proper wizard.

Alternatively, evil brother was always a member, but he just had a major breakthrough in his research (possibly by experimenting on his sister) and bootstrapped himself up into proper wizard territory.

Anyway. Abusive family situation like Evelyn's. Someone who wants to run away and be free like Raine. Inversion of Heather's own relationship with Maisie. Good disc 1 boss, foil to all of the main trio in some way.

On account of not being able to remember this dire warning, though, Heather eventually decides to do a little shopping trip downtown to take some time to herself. It's been a while since she's read any books just for herself, what with the classwork on one hand and the brain-melting tomes on the other, and she thinks that light reading might be almost as good at helping her body cope with these rigours as being energetically de-stressed every night by Raine is. Even so, I think this was pretty reckless of her.

Even more reckless, though, is her not calling Raine *immediately* when things start going wrong. I guess she just really didn't want to constantly need bailing out, but like...that's Evelyn logic there, Heather should know better lol.

While Heather is perusing the bookstore, Tenny the Tentacle Monster starts urgently trying to get her attention. And overcoming her post-threat caution to get in close and offer Heather a tentacle again. This time, Heather decides that she'd best accept it. Once again; Heather, if Tenny could hurt you with a touch, she'd have just snuck up behind you and done it. Ah well, better late than never.

“She flicked the tentacle-tip closer, all caution apparently abandoned. A dripping tarry black pseudopod, covered in suckers. Too shocked for disgust, I reached out a finger, fought with a moment’s hesitation, and touched Tenny.

Contact.

The distant drumming sharpened in time with the slurping of her chest-mouth, first into mere sound, sucking and wet like thick mud – then into words. Non-human words through a non-human mind. I waited a beat, but they made no sense, mud-words, tar-words, wet and liquid.

”I don’t understand,” I whispered.

”-person here master leave.”

I blinked in shock.

”Bad follow person here master leave,” Tenny said through the mouth in her chest.

It wasn’t English, the shapes, the sounds, the motion of the mouth. But that was what I heard, in a slopping mud-voice, unmistakably feminine and – perhaps it was mere projection – in a tone which made me think of an eager hound.

”Bad follow person here-“

”I heard. I heard you,” I whispered, my every nerve on edge. “What- master? Me?”

”Bad follow. Leave. Leave.”

Heather is annoyingly slow on the uptake. And annoyingly slow to send Raine a text. It's really only when Tenny's touch-telepathy informs Heather that Lozzie sent her that Heather starts taking shit seriously (her memories of who Lozzie is are foggy, but she recalls just enough with prompting). So, she tries to sneak out of the bookstore, only to stumble right into her pursuer...Twil.

Well, one of her pursuers. Twil happened to be in town buying textbooks for that degree she's starting, and caught Raine's sent on some of Heather's clothes that were technically Raine's. She followed it to be a needy ex at Raine, and then saw Heather and decided to be a creepy girlfriend's ex at her, and then noticed *someone else* already tailing Heather and decided to warn her. So, I guess that's nice of her at least.

When Twil describes the other pursuer to Heather, it sounds a lot like the cult sniper whose bullet Heather had to force-deflect in their last encounter. Heather's first thought is to flee, but then Twil abruptly makes a counterproposal. And...well, like I said, Heather has a lot going on right now effecting her judgement, but she still had me shaking my head at her with her answer.

“The Skinhead Girl turned and started up the street. At that angle, she’d miss us completely. She’d lost us. Twil turned and stared, wolfish predation in her eyes.

”Wanna fuck her up?” she muttered.

An unnameable, alien emotion burst into my chest in full colour. That woman, she’d tried to kill Raine. She’d very nearly succeeded, if not for my brain-math hell-magic that hurt my soul to use. I didn’t even know who she was, what she believed in, why she’d done it. She’d tried to kill Raine. I was afraid, almost shaking, but I’d lived with fear all my life, in a million different subtle shades and flavours. I lived fear inside out. It couldn’t stop me.

This was new.

Anger, bright and sparking.

” … yes,” I hissed.”

So, off they go to ambush the sniper lady and whatever hidden backup she herself might have waiting in the wings. Tenny tailing miserably after Heather trying to communicate how bad an idea this is as best she can via tentacle-flailing.


Next time, Heather becomes acquainted with the consequences of her own actions and also with Lozzie's brother.