The daemon sat on the mud with crossed legs, tilting her head with eyes open wide as she stared at the shining crystal cocoon.

She fidgeted from side to side, the mud under her sackcloth squishing from the movement. She kept her hand from jittering by squishing it on her knee.

She was ashamed to admit it, but she had dozed off while watching the cocoon, and now, half a day had passed.

It must have been late in the afternoon now.

Perhaps…perhaps if she could still use her roots, she could do something, flow the mana away, break the cocoon…but right now, she was useless.

She slapped her cheek and roused herself. There was something so alluring about the cocoon, though, all those colors reflecting together in a radiance that must have been just like the realm rings standing in the sky.

Another place she had wanted to go.

A place where Thorian promised to take her. In corners of the world, he said, where the biggest warp temples were, you could look up at the sky when it was clear and see the seven rings – one for each of the seven realms.

She shook her head, grabbing fistfuls of mud as her body reacted to the memory.

Her mind always wandered, and when she remembered something bad, it chained with other bad memories, on and on and on until all she could do was sink into a spiral of bad memories that grabbed at her and smothered her and weighed her down.

Her earliest memory. Mother in her glowing robes, the pale, light skin of her hand showing under the dim glow of a lightstone in a dark, deep corridor.

A place she did not recognize. The memory was so far away, many years ago, when she was smaller, and she could not even remember her mother’s face through her hood. Here, all she remembered most was mother letting go of her hand, pushing her towards Thorian.

Thorian was younger then. Still had hair. She remembered how strange and rough Thorian’s hand was, how she wanted to go back.

She did not remember the last words mother said to her. Only the gist of it.

Mother promised to come back for her and that in time, she was destined for greatness.

The daemon blinked hard and shook her head. Her earliest memory, and it was a broken promise.

She remembered growing up with Thorian, learning magic from him, learning how to channel her mana to use her Sapia, at how talented and wonderful and great Thorian said she was. She remembered the village she lived in, at how she begged Thorian to let her go out and play with the other children.

She remembered how she looked when Thorian relented and cast a glamor spell on her, making her look just like the other kids.

Human.

She remembered how they promised her they would always stick together, that they were going to one day all grow strong and tall and go on adventures.

She remembered how they looked at her the day her glamor spell broke. When she could not keep it up because she was so tired pushing the bear away.

So much fear. Like they had never known her.

She remembered how they broke their promise. The shining men came for her. They took Thorian away.

He promised her when they took him away that he would come back for her.

She touched the lines of burned, marred flesh marking the brand on her forehead. Another broken promise.

She started in surprise when she heard rustling from the edges of the pond clearing.

One by one, small circles of light emanating from lightstones emerged, and holding them were small, grubby hands tipped in dull claws.

Feral eyes with pinprick pupils emerged from the undergrowth.

Goblins.

She stood up taking steps back as her wide purple eyes flitted from side to side, counting almost a dozen pairs of these eyes, a dozen potbellied, clawed creatures stepping forwards.

Not just the black skinned ones from Terra. White skinned ones from the icy tundra of Fjall. Red skinned ones from the volcanic mountains of Xin. Green skinned ones from the wild growths of Foraoise.

The goblins scampered forwards, their wide mouths twisting into fanged grins as they spotted her. She stepped back when she saw how they looked at her.

Hunger. The kind that wanted to take and take until there was nothing left.

She knew it all too well, had dealt with it her entire life.

Heavier footsteps thudded from behind the goblins, and her head tilted up as it followed the body of an enormous hobgoblin.

One unlike any she had read about. It was larger, wider, red-eyed and wreathed in tendrils of wriggling black, worm-like masses that emerged from its back.

The red eyes settled upon her, and she shuddered this time. For the hunger in the goblins, she was used to.

This, she was not. The eyes – they were devoid of hunger, but they were cold.

Mechanical.

Similar to the strange creature in the cocoon, but his eyes had more life to them. Intelligence and will.

This was…this was empty.

There was nothing inside that shell of muscle and bone, nothing that made up an individual, at least.

No soul.

“Take the girl. Guard the crystal until the thrall comes,” said the hobgoblin, its voice a droning, neutral tone.

The goblins grunted in understanding and started to close the distance to the daemon. She stepped back in instinctive fear, wrapping her arms around herself as she shuddered.

The goblins toyed with her, taking slow steps to savor her mounting fear as she stepped back.

She could try to fight back, but in the time it took for her to get a hold of one goblin, the others would just tear her apart.

She was broken and useless and worthless – she had been told this over and over and over again, and she knew it to be true.

Even now, she could do nothing, not even for the one being who wanted to keep its promise to her.

She did not cry, because by now, after a decade of crying and hurting, she had no more tears to give.

All she could do was feel her body instinctively move back against more pain and hurt. She hated these creatures, wanted them all dead, but that hate clashed with fear that had been seared into her with brands and beatings.

Even if she did fight, she could kill one goblin maybe, tear it from piece to piece, and then the others would swarm her and the hobgoblin would kill her. She could do nothing.

She was a passenger in this body, in this world that wanted her gone. She had no control over anything. All she wanted to do right now was run, to grow wings like the creature and take him and fly somewhere else, anywhere but here.

Her back touched the Collector’s crystal, and arcs of multi-colored energy streaked around her, and her eyes widened, alight with deep purple. His words surfaced from her memory.

‘Your species is not meant to be prey…’

‘Yet you have been conditioned into becoming prey…’

‘They do not choose to fight. They flee…’

She was prey, had been her whole life. Even now, she wanted to run, to flee. But-

‘You are meant to be a predatory species. Far beyond the norm of human. Possessing of a form like mine.’

She remembered how she felt seeing the creature emerge from its cocoon. Just like that, he could change himself and become something more and better and, most importantly, whole. He never stayed broken for long, and she too was supposed to be just like him.

She might have been broken, and never would become whole again, but…but she was not worthless, and…if he was right, and she was like him, even just a tiny bit, she could fight.

Fight like she was meant to. Like a predator.

One of the goblins lunged at her to grab her, and she twisted to the side, her weakened legs buckling and splashing as she knelt in the water.

The goblin that missed her crashed into the crystal, and unlike her, it seized up for a single instant before it broke apart, its skin and muscle tearing into countless chunks that drained into the crystal.

A moment later, its bare skeleton broke down into dust that followed its lost flesh.

She looked down at the gleaming water, panting heavily, wondering why she had not fallen to the same fate. Instead, she saw her reflection with wonder.

The nine-pointed star seared into her forehead was gone, and her ponytail hang down low by the side of her head, the ends of the thick, fibrous hair twisting into a spike – her restored thel.

A blur of movement flashed in front of her. The swiping of goblin claws, and she winced, cringing and closing her eyes.

But the pain did not come.

All of the goblins were frozen in front of her, raised up in the air like still statues, their bodies outlined in glowing purple light. They could not move a single muscle, held together by mental willpower.

She blinked. A thin purple glow began to outline her own body. She could feel warmth spreading through her body. A long forgotten yet familiar warmth – the heat of magic, of her core working once more.

She closed her eyes and spoke to her heart, and it spoke back to her. She bit her lip hard, drawing blood as she focused to bring back her trigger.

Her trigger of Wonder, curiosity at the vast wide world, the curiosity she had before she had seen the world’s colder side.

Before she wanted to see the world break down with her.

It was hard to bring that emotion back, but she managed when she thought of the creature’s cocoon, at how beautiful and wondrous and new it was.

Like easing old muscles back into work, she felt herself in control again. She could not use any sorcery for she was not connected to any gates, but she could use the mana flowing in her, raging in her, to fuel her sapia – the power she was born with as a Daemon.

With a tentative, slow closing of her fist, she willed harm to the goblins suspended in the air.

The skin and flesh of the goblins began to bubble for a split second before they all burst open from the inside out, their organs and blood and bones spilling in little showers on the dirty grass.

She dragged in deep breaths, taking in a few before she raised a hand in front of her to stop the charge of the corrupted hobgoblin.

The hobgoblin was strong, and it resisted her force push.

It grunted and moved as if in slow motion, reaching towards her with hands as large as her head.

She could have easily beaten this creature, but her core and roots had been dormant for eight years, unused to the fight.

Already, she could feel searing heat at her chest as blood trickled from her lips. Bloody cracks began to breach the skin of her hand as she channeled more mana than she could handle.

She furrowed her brows, and clenched her jaw hard, hard enough to crack a tooth, and kept her will focused.

The hobgoblin stopped moving, its outstretched hand a mere foot away from her face, and all she could do was keep it there.

This was her current limit.

Maybe it would not be enough.

But still, she smiled with trembling just a little because she knew she had fought. Fought like she was meant to.

==

In a void between space, time, and consciousness, the Collector felt itself come into being again. It felt the final words of the Hivemind system shard-

[ASSIMILATION SUCCESSFUL.]

[CRITICAL ERROR.]

[ASSIMILATION SUCCESSFUL.]

[CRITICAL ERROR]

[ASSIM-IL-CRIT-ERR-A-]

[…]

[CORRUPTION OVERFLOW. INITIATING…SELF-DEST-RUCT…PRO-]

[…]

[…]

[…]

[SYSTEM REBOOTING…]

==