Sometimes, running away wasn’t cowardice. Sometimes, running away meant removing yourself from a perilous situation, reducing the risk of getting hurt. It was a lesson her Mother had taught her, and now, she was using it against her Mother. Or maybe for her Mother, and against herself, it all depended on one’s perspective. In this case, she had decided to remove herself from the situation before she could say or do something she’d regret.

  The instinct to lash out against her Mother had been substantial; she wanted to hurt the person responsible for the agony she felt. And yet, she was fully aware that intent mattered, and her Mother had never intended for her to get hurt. Granted, mostly because she apparently had never intended for Carnelia to become a person at all, let alone get adopted as her daughter, so that was… Something. What it was, Carnelia had yet to decide, other than a mess, and until she could gather her thoughts, put them into a semblance of order, it might be best to stay away from her Mother.

  That desire was sadly on a timer, courtesy of her own hunger. Sure, she could drain power from other people, but, as she had learned earlier, she needed to take in power from her Mother; the bindings on her made that a necessity. A snarl curled her lips into a vicious grimace, her canines lightly biting into her lower lip as her jaw flexed, as if she was readying herself to tear into her prey.

  If only she had some prey to fight, something to destroy. Something she could take out the swirling mess of emotions, hopefully, that would allow her to think clearly. For a moment, she felt grimly amused that the instinct of the weapon her Mother had wanted to forge was to destroy, but she could faintly remember that such drives had been fairly common among humans before the change. So, maybe it was simply part of being a human, or maybe even of being a sapient creature, as she could feel that very drive within her. And she certainly didn’t qualify as human any longer, her diet, her eyes and a number of other factors made that quite clear.

  Maybe some aggressive therapy would be just what the doctor ordered. Not that she thought any actual doctor would prescribe what she had in mind, but that was mostly because there hadn’t been any acceptable targets before the Change happened. Still, people had generally shied away from outward displays of physical violence. It had been considered a throwback to less civilised times, something humanity had shed with the age of enlightenment, or something like that. The drive channelled into competitions and sports, but with the Change, that enlightenment had gone out of the window.

  It didn’t take long to get into the combined ruins of Colorado Springs and Denver. Once she was there, she rapidly moved to one of the cemeteries, where the dead were continuously rising from their graves. Their numbers didn’t make sense, and never had. It was something her Mother had griped about occasionally, trying to calculate the number of actual skeletons in the ground and compare it to the number of Undead rising from their graves. It was a fool’s errand, Mother even acknowledged that it was a fool’s errand, as she didn’t know enough about skeletal decomposition to calculate how long it would take for the skeletons to be decomposed in the local environment, but she was still trying.

  And coming up with numbers that didn’t make sense, not even in the context of multiple cemeteries getting merged together by the Change, unless the ground was more bone than earth by volume. Still, given that Lia wanted to mindlessly destroy something, an endless number of skeletons was the perfect target.

  The moment she entered the cemetery, the first skeletons noticed her and began to attack. Not a surprise, given that she hadn’t even tried to be stealthy, and it only gave her an immediate target.

  Just as there had been no attempt at stealth, there was no attempt to be subtle either. She simply leapt towards the first undead she could see, not even bothering with the blade she usually used and started swinging. Breaking bones was a lot easier without the meat in the way. She only had to hit the bones in just the right way, and they were snapping.

  Plus, without meat and sinews to hold the limbs together after a bone was broken, the rest of the limb just fell off, making it obvious that the strange force that served as sinews in the skeletons was only present at the joints, not everywhere.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  That realisation made her curious, a trait she had undoubtedly picked up from her Mother, and she started to experiment. How much force was needed to tear through the force holding a bone in place? Did it matter how the force was applied, or was there a simple number that needed to be overcome? Could the skeletons continue to control the limbs after they were removed, and did that change depending on the method used to remove the limb?

  One skeleton after the other was dispatched with extreme prejudice and brutal violence, bones cracking and shattering, torque tearing off arms, legs and even the occasional head, just to see what was happening.

  And, in all the violence, Lia noticed that her anger was slowly changing. Maybe it was the focused, brutal violence she subjected the skeletons to, perhaps it was a simple case of needing an outlet, but as bones shattered around her and glowing eyes turned empty, she found herself thinking more and more.

  Going through the conversation with her Mother, thinking about the words she had said and, more importantly, how she had said them. Comparing those words with the countless hours Lia had spent with her Mother, and with Luna, whom she continued to consider a sister.

  That brought up the question: did Jade’s original intention truly matter? Or were her actions, the things she had done day after day, hour after hour, more important?

  A part of her wanted to simply accept the new reality, return to her Mother’s side and stay there, but was that truly her? Or was that part of the binding making her think that she needed to return, to forgive her Mother? How much of her mind was truly her own, and how much of it had been changed by Jade?

  She was fully aware that Jade could alter minds, but she wasn’t sure about the full extent of that ability. Jade herself was probably unaware of it, and she was constantly trying to expand her ability, learning more and more as she went. However, Carnelia doubted that even Jade herself would be able to tell just how capable she had been at some particular stage of her journey, so how would Carnelia be able to tell if Jade had set up some form of mechanism within her mind, subtly enforcing loyalty so the weapon she had created would never be able to leave her hand?

  Her inability to trust her own mind was maddening, and it was made even worse by the fact that nobody could help her. Disregarding the question of ability, which was the first hurdle, she would need to trust the person she approached to cut those bindings, not simply repurpose them to bind her to them. It would be a tempting prospect, Carnelia was well aware that she was pretty powerful, her physical body and attributes were high, and she was a capable fighter.

  Minutes passed, and more and more skeletons broke under her unrelenting fury, until the noise started to attract other Undead. Zombies, or whatever one wanted to call skeletons covered in decaying flesh, had to be fought differently from the skeletons, and the enforced change in fighting style also opened her mind to a different question.

  Namely, why was she so distrustful of her Mother? If Jade hadn’t told her about the bindings entangling her, Carnelia wouldn’t have been able to find them. Even now, knowing about them, she wasn’t able to detect anything, and she might remain completely unable to, simply because the bindings enforced that. After all, they were laced throughout her mind, the very tool she would use to detect those bindings.

  With that in mind, if her Mother wanted to keep Carnelia bound, why tell her about the bindings in the first place? Every data point she could see pointed to her Mother trying to do the right thing, even if it might be easier to act differently.

  Carnelia’s mind quickly flickered back through several interactions she had observed, her Mother talking with others on their journey, and interacting with people. Her Mother was many things, but, looking back, Carnelia had to admit that a skilled manipulator wasn’t one of them.

  Cracking yet another skull, watching as the light faded from another pair of empty eye-sockets, she came to a conclusion. Without Jade’s actions back then, and the continued support her Mother had given her over the course of almost two years, Carnelia wouldn’t exist in her current form. That much was an undeniable fact.

  Jade had continuously supported her, helped her become the person she was now, never trying to keep her bound and limited in some way, never tried to forge a sheath for the weapon she had originally been intended to be. So, Jade had forged a weapon and then observed, and ultimately helped the weapon to become a person. And even now, she was undoubtedly trying to find a way to make the weapon into a real girl.

  Could she truly expect more from her Mother?