Four green eyes, two they should and more set deep just beneath. All of them stared through a nearly translucent mask of blood red shell. The visage, carved like an Uruk raider's war helm was inked all over with twisting black tattoos that swam and squired deep in the mutated flesh.

  Just below that, three glistening gill slits pulsated with each breath.

  Tentacles, once little tendrils, now all grown up, replaced the limbs, the tattered remains of leather gloves and the ripped sleeves of a fine suit still clinging to their wet, slimy forms. Six to side, their girth shrinkin' and expandin' as they searched and tasted at the air. Each one drifted toward the warmth, the mana contained within the six terrified humans, and the still deeply confused half-Uruk that occupied the same room.

  In short, I had finally gone and done it. My Path had promised monstrous change in return for endless power and potential. Now them slimy, deep-sea lookin', blood red drakes had come home to roost.

  I reached a hand to my face-

  No.

  A tentacle now, dextrous and slick, brushed against my cheek. I could feel every pore, ever lingerin' scar in such detail that it made my head ache, and only seemed to cause the yawing pit in my gut to grow wider still.

  "Mister Roche?" Said, alarm finally crossing his blunt features, "You sick? 'Cause of that poison you drank?" Asked Temjun slowly as he rose to his full height from the floor where he'd slept.

  "No..." Whispered Cara as she looked at me with such fear, such fear, "No elixir would ever do that."

  "Demon," Tequi spat, the tall Outcast Foreman's fist balled, eyes hard, "you made a deal with some foul god or black spirit. You’re just as bad as the rest," he went pale as my eyes fell on him, and the next words were just a whisper, “not again…”

  "Monster..." Muttered one of the two who's names I never bothered to learn.

  At that all the fear in the room began to curdle into the same desperate hatred that had likely kept these survivors whole down there in the dark. I knew it well, tasted it every time I woke from nightmares of the Vault, of the ship I'd come in on, of the madness the Songbird had left in me.

  "Nah," I said with an ugly grin, my new face failin' to take the shape I wanted it to, "no god, not a demon either. Just a man did this, Mister Tequi. One who's chased power for most his life, and finally got a bite," I took a deep breath, and the gills, my gills, opened and closed in a steady rhythm, "if you all mean to turn on me, do it quick." I said a tentacle movin' instinctively to my back where it burrowed under my jacked to gouge out a pair of shells.

  I didn't want to kill them. Gods knew, they didn't deserve it. But if they tried, I'd end them.

  "No," said Margarette, her face the cold mask she needed it to be, "no we do not mean to 'turn on you' if," she hedged rising from her overstuffed chair, a little shake in her skinny legs, "if you are still you."

  "I am," I said, feeling it for the truth it was, "I'm the same son-of-a-bitch that helped you out of them cells. Same one you were all too happy to hide behind. To plead with until I decided the suicide mission I concocted was worse than your little plan."

  I could see Vin and Cara both flinch.

  Good.

  Temjun took it harder, the big man's face twisting into a hurt frown as his small eyes flicked to his mother, "Mama, why is everybody so mad at Mister Roche? Can't you see he's just different outside? He's still a nice person," the giant said, his words slow, but sure, "you're all lookin' at him like people used to look at me."

  The woman's eyes went wide as she glanced over and up at the bald behemoth. If didn't know better I'd have though he just planted a dagger in her heart, the way her lips quivered, the way the flush in her sun-weathered skin died.

  "Temjun, sweet boy," she said, her voice wavering as the tears began to flow, "Son I am so sorry."

  "Mama?" He said, his brow creased, a slow shake building as he addressed Margarette, then the rest of the room "Don't say sorry to me. Mister Roche ain't asked nothin' of us, but hard work and some sense," said the giant with a touch more eloquence than I thought he had the right to, "and now it's monster?"

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  His eyes narrowed and the shine in them, a light that I had never seen in Temjun's gaze, grew brighter, "Monsters did this," he said stabbing a thick finger to the door, "monsters don't break chains they make 'em." The finger rounded on Tequi, "you kept men, kept thier chains even if you're a good 'un," then to Cara, "and so did you."

  Much as I was floored to hear unabashed support from anyone. Ever. What I was feelin' just then was mostly. I'd repeated written Temjun off as a friendly, useful moron. And now look at me eatin' that old crow of notion. Went down a little better than usual, I guess.

  Silence, heavy and pregnant with a bunch of other crow notions, a bunch other guilty looks, some of anger, some of naked disgust.

  "Thank you Mister Temjun," I sad, and slotted the blood shells into my scattergun, "I still save you sons-a-bitches one way or the other. Just be easier if I don't have to worry about a bullet in my back on the way."

  Click.

  "Now I'm movin' out, are you?"

  Margarette nodded, and like the pact of fearful little sheep they all were, so did the rest. I doubted the big man's speech made me any less of a monster in their eyes, but it made something more important clear.

  The power here rode with me. And if you were smart, if you were good and clever, you stayed on the right side of that power. Fell into line and made it another.

  I didn't know how to feel about that.

  And I didn't much care.

  I opened the door and stepped out of the room. It was a long way from first light, still very much night for the next few hours, so I didn't get to enjoy the dramatic exit I really wanted. Instead, I just found the kitchen.

  My new body had come with more than just mucus and too many extra parts. I was also hungry as a razorback boar in a bandit cove, and with my stomach rumblin' and my guts gnawin' at each other I headed for the cupboards.

  I ate the salt pork, the salt fish, the salt crackers, and hell, even a few handful of the salt-salt. Then I started on the grain, pickled vegetables and the tins and jars after that. My tentacles, six to a side, snaked and slithered across the kitchen, swipin' goodies for my gullet with unprecedented convenience.

  Monstrosity had perks, it seemed.

  "Uh, Mister Roche?" Came the voice of the last soul I expected to see anywhere near me again.

  I was tentacle deep in a sack of uncooked rice when Vin gently knocked on the blast scarred door. At his words I turned, a mouthful of the dry grain makin' it a little hard to talk, and nodded at him.

  Vin took that for permission and slipped in, his eyes wide.

  "Those things on your face, the ink, it moves when you talk," he said slowly rounding me in the kitchen like I was a wild animal who'd invaded the same space, "like a devil, kind of. The ones with all the arms, that pulse and stuff..."

  I swallowed with a little effort and my arms ceased their search for things to toss into the pit, "What do you want boy?"

  He looked up at me, his brown eyes steady, his stance relaxed. He wasn't afraid, but he was smart enough not to get too close.

  "Curious. Wanted to see, uh, what was left of you. Of the man who got me out of that cell."

  I blinked, the lids closin' from the side first, then the normal way. "This is what it looks like when you get ambitious with your Path kid. Keep that in mind when your balls drop and it comes time to carve your own. Path's without end lead to place strange and, apparently, slightly sticky," I said, shaking rice from where it clung to the tip of one tentacle.

  He smiled a little at that, a bit of life comin' back into those eyes of his, "Yeah. Is it worth it?" He asked, "the change I mean."

  I didn't even think, never had to before, never would now, "It's worth what you make of it. That's all."

  Vin nodded and took a deep breath, "Mister Tequi and Cara wanted to talk to you. They were too piss scared to come and ask though," he said as he left the kitchen.

  I just sighed and went back to deal with what I was sure would be more trouble than a bucket of rattlers. Halfway to the study my will to play leader and deal with the consequences of my repeated decisions waved. Ten pace out, it had run dry. I veered off down another wall and decided I was going to do something for myself first. They could fuckin' stew in their own anger and fear for a while longer.

  I walked along the hallway to one of the rooms we'd more or less ignored as soon as we found it. I slipped inside and shucked my boots with a carless kick. It was a little more work to climb out of my abused suit, the enchanted fabric seemed to struggle more than a little with my new shape, but I eventually found my way.

  That done, I touched a tentacle to the tap, a tiny exchange of mana lit the rune there are I turned a valve and water began to fill the fancy tub. I before I submerged myself in the steamin' water I went made a mistake.

  I looked down.

  "Is this then, is the true cost of power?" I asked the thing that hung where little Roche once had.

  And it answered, wiggled like a dogs tail, like another man wavin' from afar.

  First my hat. Now my manhood.

  I guess it was a lot bigger now, some girls liked that? Right?

  Oh, who was I kidding.

  The price was high indeed. And I'd paid with nearly everything I was.

  Just hoped then, that the man I would become was enough to keep from losin' what little I had left.

  I had a whole horizon left to walk, and I knew damn well that this was just the beginnin'. I put my despair, my pain, my hope and all that fear, right down into the nothing growin' deep inside my soul.

  Then I had a nice bath, threw on some dead man’s cologne, and I dressed for war.