Tag: anime

Review: Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, ReseñasLeave a comment

A world where every concept is incarnated in a demon, whose power depends on how feared is the concept. The Cucumber Demon. The Blood Demon. The Typhoon Demon. The Future Demon. The Darkness Demon. The Angel Demon. The Death Demon. These fiends fight among themselves to either reign in hell or escape to Earth through possessing hapless people, usually the recently deceased. Demons hold grudges against each other and against humans in general. Humanity exists in a state of constant peril, with societies having to organize militias dedicated to the ever-present threat of a demon showing up somewhere or possessing a loved one. Some of the humans make deals with captured or semi-friendly demons, to gain some of their powers for good or ill. The cold war persists, but with the focus on achieving control of the most dangerous demons.

A winning concept, I’d say. The premise follows an orphaned teenager named Denji. He never went to school, lived with his gambler father, was manipulated by the local Yakuza into doing their dirty work for them, and finally was abandoned to die. However, a demon recently escaped from hell took pity on Denji; this fiend was the Chainsaw Demon, who had possessed a dog (I think that’s how the story goes; I have a hard time imagining Chainsaw escaping hell as a dog).

Denji had been torn into pieces, his body parts thrown into a dumpster, only for the Chainsaw Demon to give himself away as Denji’s heart, which made the teenager a human with feet in both worlds (this is extremely common in Japanese stories).

Then, the teenager gets conscripted into some special forces by a shady young woman with light-red hair.

The least I say about this person, the better.

Anyway, Denji isn’t your average protagonist. He’s half-wild, emotionally stunted, doesn’t care about the world, barely knows how to deal with people, can’t realize when he’s being manipulated (which happens constantly), and he’s solely motivated by hedonism, usually in the form of food or a cute face (or a nice pair of tits, or a nice ass), for which he’ll kill and/or die over and over again if necessary.

I quite like Denji. It has become a meme on the internet to say about Ryan Gosling’s characters that “He’s literally me.” I feel similarly about Chainsaw Man‘s protagonist.

In any case, the anime adaptation of part of the manga was a runaway success, even capturing the attention of some people that usually wouldn’t be into this stuff. But the anime series ended right at the moment when one of the most popular arcs would begin. This one involves a peculiar girl named Reze.

I’ve finished watching the movie about an hour ago. Oh, what joy. Plenty of the artistry on display was mesmerizing, some of the best animation I’ve seen in my life. The cinematography, the subtle character moments, the amazing fight scenes, the way the tension and absurdity ramps up to the point when you ask yourself how the hell did we get here. I wish the movie had been longer, but I didn’t feel like it missed any of the content of this arc. Reze’s character was done justice, which is far more than you can usually say about adaptations.

You know, it gets easy to forget that when you go to the cinema, the contract used to be that you’re giving away your attention and time to be captured by a story told by competent, passionate people. These days you watch movies, if you dare, trying to find a few entertaining moments in the torrent of politics that gets diarrhea-ed down your throat. This movie I’m reviewing is the deranged tale of two young people who were fucked from birth and who have no choice but to do the things they’re told to do, to have in exchange some semblance of normality in their lives. It also involves a myriad explosions, chainsaws growing out of a head and limbs, and a shark mount. If you enjoy Chainsaw Man, you have to watch this one. If you haven’t followed the story up to this point, you’ll have no fucking clue about what’s going on.

Great times. I posted one of the trailers for the movie in the previous post, but I’ll post it again:

Sadly, the movie would have left a perfect taste in my mouth if it wasn’t because I know that the story doesn’t end with the first part of the manga. The author, for whatever reason, created a second part featuring a new main protagonist (they switch around afterwards, but still), and although it started out very promising, it quickly devolved into shittiness. Some great moments, but plenty of lame ones. And much worse: some characters were brought back only to do a disservice to them. Others were killed unjustly. I’m waiting for that part to end so I can read it in its entirety, but right now I’m of the opinion that it shouldn’t have been created at all.

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc

On By Jon UreñaIn ArteLeave a comment

Chainsaw Man, the manga tale of a hapless, half-wild young man who ends up with a chainsaw demon for a heart, finished its fantastic first part perhaps five years ago. Unfortunately, the second part, still ongoing, is mostly shit; the author Tatsuki Fujimoto must have felt pressured to produce a second part even though the first one tied up nicely. The anime was released some time ago to popular acclaim, but it ended right before one of the most popular arcs of the original story started; it involved a mysterious girl, the sole person capable of reaching the protagonist at a human level.

Anyway, they’ve made a whole movie of that arc. I’ve realized that the movie is playing at my local theater, so I have a plan for this afternoon. So far, reviewers I trust have said that the adaptation is exceptional. I may be compelled to post a review later on.

Here’s the trailer. I’m eager to revisit these characters again.

Anime/Manga #1

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Whenever I feel like it, I’ll bring attention to videos or other media about two of my lifelong loves: manga and anime. Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira is one of the main legends of anime, perhaps the number one. What many don’t know is that the original manga is also a must-read, and in many ways improves and deviates from the movie (more accurately, Otomo himself changed many aspects of the plot to fit the movie).

The following video is a great overview on how special the process of getting Akira made was.

Random shit #1

On By Jon UreñaIn Slice of lifeLeave a comment

In the 2000s, some American studio bought the rights to dub an anime, and decided to turn it into outrageous nonsense. An obscure moment in history that will never be repeated. Now, it endures in the internet as a legend. The following video recounts this strange tale.

Life update (10/05/2024)

On By Jon UreñaIn Escritura, Slice of lifeLeave a comment

Despite what yesterday’s heavy post might imply, I’m in a good mood. It’s half past eight in the morning on a Saturday and I’m the sole technician on duty at work, but it just happens that when today’s shift ends, I’m going on an eight days-long break. Once I return from the break, I’ll only have to work for seven days longer until I go on vacation from the 23rd of October to the 28th of November. I’m going on vacation because I’ve been made aware recently that my company (which is the Basque health service) will no longer pay unspent vacations as long as one has worked for longer than six months (three months in some cases). I’ve been working since November of last year, so I’ve accumulated plenty of off days.

However, I’m covering for a shitty guy who for the last five years or so has only worked for a couple of months at the most before he went on another medical leave. Saying that he “worked” is very generous, because he’s utterly useless when he isn’t actively sabotaging the department. His problems, we all suspect, are of the mental variety. Not the fun kind either. Anyway, I’ve covered plenty of his leaves, and every single time, he has returned without informing anyone. I would come to the office only to find the motherfucker sitting at his desk pretending that he hadn’t just fucked over the one who was replacing him: after all, I won’t get paid for the day I come to work if he’s already there. It was even worse one time when he ended his medical leave on a Friday afternoon without bothering to check if he worked that Saturday, which I covered for him as we had no idea he had returned from his leave. My boss had to deal with HR; otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten paid for that Saturday.

Anyway, that shithead has been on a medical leave since October 31st of last year, and some nasty stuff happens if you spend more than a year off (I suspect that he would have to be monitored by social services), so we are all expecting the guy to appear shortly earlier. Likely on the 30th. By then, I’m on vacation, but if it turns out that the guy returns to work, two things may happen: if my boss doesn’t extend my contract, I’m simply paid for the unspent vacation, but my workplace may call me to work the following day for a new contract, so I wouldn’t enjoy any proper vacation in November (just that uneasy time in which I have no clue what’s going to happen). If my boss extends my contract (I’m not sure if there’s a valid reason for him to do so), I will get paid for my unspent vacation time, but because my vacation time is tied to the previous contract, I’ll have to return to work immediately. Best scenario for me is if the shithead remains on a medical leave, because I’ll get to enjoy a month of paid vacation without worrying about my work calling me back in.

I must mention that I hadn’t gone on vacation before. I mean ever. My work experience is full of holes; nobody would hire me for my curriculum vitae at this point, unless they’re looking for an experienced IT guy. I spent about half of my twenties as a sort of hikikomori, having given up on society and life. I had awful experiences at most of the jobs I endured back then as well, which convinced me that I wasn’t cut out for working full-time (or even part-time, in some places). I’m thirty-nine years old, and unless something weird happens this month, I’m about to enjoy my first periods of true relax without expecting the horrible calls one gets from such companies, like getting woken up any random workday, even on Saturdays, and asked if you can be at the office an hour later. If you refuse, they may erase you from the lists that you have taken exams to be featured in, so you have no choice but to agree.

Anyway, enough about work. Recently I’ve watched two impressive first episodes of new animes which I highly recommend. First of them is Uzumaki, based on the manga of the same name by horror legend Junji Ito, which was Ito’s attempt at figuring out how to make spirals as disturbing as possible. The trailer spoils some of the great images from the first episode, so it’s better to go in without knowing much. In fact, the following clip of the first episode is the only one that isn’t particularly spoilery in that regard.

Finally an anime adaptation does justice to Ito’s style, including the choice of black-and-white.

Then there’s Dandadan. All I knew of this manga is that it follows the adventures of a UFO nerd and a ghosts nerd, and that it was wild as heck. Apart from that, the author had belonged to the creative team led by Tatsuki Fujimoto, author of Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man. Last night I watched the first episode of Dandadan’s anime adaptation; it turned out to be one of the wildest first episodes of any anime I’ve ever seen. You can tell that loads of talented visual artists and animators have worked on it. Here’s the intro:

I have no idea why I haven’t read the manga already; after all, I consume an ungodly amount of isekai series, some that are barely passable, so I could have easily have made space for this one. With such a high-quality anime adaptation, though, I’d rather get through its first season without spoiling myself.

I have checked out very little anime this year. Shame on me. There’s always at least a couple of anime series worth following each season.

Apart from that, I’ve been very invested in developing my Python app neural-narrative, that allows the users to chat with characters controlled by large language models (right now only Hermes 70B and Hermes 405B are programmed in, because they’re uncensored and don’t sound like helpful assistants). I got the idea of doing this throughout my experience with roleplaying in Skyrim with Mantella, a system that also uses large language models so you can talk with the characters. However, Mantella’s system annoyed me with the fact that the bios of all the NPCs are mixed together when you’re talking with several at the same time, which meant that a character’s secrets ended up being known by everyone else. It became a bit ridiculous to hang out with Alva, a vampire from Morthal, only for every new person I spoke to when Alva was involved to immediately realize that she was a bloodsucker.

My system works quite well currently: handles talking with any number of characters at the same time, it generates random worlds, regions, areas, and locations, it suggests interesting situations and dilemmas inspired by your conversations, and lets you travel from place to place. It even generates a travel diary of sorts when you move from area to area, involving whatever followers you have brought along. I wouldn’t have developed this system so fast if I wasn’t relying often on the preview version of OpenAI’s Orion model, which is fucking insane: sometimes I just have to present it with relevant code from other sections of my app, tell the AI what elements I want a new page to include, and it generates a perfect system on the first try. I’ve only had it fail once at a programming task, in a way that wasn’t my mistake for not including enough references. I’m kind of glad that I’m not working as a programmer these days, even though I trained for it and was my original goal, because I can’t imagine what sort of future human programmers are going to have when large language models are bound to surpass them all in the next few years.

I originally intended to program this system in order to post wild stories on my site. It just happens that, one way or another, I always end up going for the kind of wild smut that I don’t want to show to others. The AI is fully uncensored and I love to take advantage of that. I’m trying to figure out a way for the system to suggest less formless stories. The inclusion of interesting situations and dilemmas generated by the AI is one of those ways I’m trying to work on that.

Ongoing manga: Vinland Saga, by Makoto Yukimura

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, ReseñasLeave a comment

Let me tell ya about the odd manga series that is Vinland Saga, with which I’ve had a peculiar relationship. This is mainly the story of one historical dude named Thorfinn Karlsefni, born in Iceland but destined to spend most of his days very much not in Iceland.

For me, since the tale went through its massive inflection point, Vinland Saga became two stories in one. In the first half, we meet Thorfinn as a kid when he was living with his family in their Icelandic village. Thorfinn’s father used to be a badass mass murderer for some famous Nordic group of killers, until he got sick of it and adopted the philosophy that the true warrior doesn’t fight. After Thorfinn witnesses the consequences of such a change in perspective when they meet a group of hardened killers, our protagonist becomes consumed by a thirst for vengeance that put other vengeance addicts to shame; the guy lives to get stronger, killing whoever stands in his way, in order to murder the man responsible for his rage. We follow him, and his group of mercenaries, as they invade, pillage, murder, and murder some more.

This isn’t much of a review, because, to be honest, I’ve forgotten most of what happened in the first part; I must have read it perhaps a couple of years ago. The point is that for me, the notion of Vinland (that, as a historical aside, was what the first Nordic settlers called North America when they reached the place about five hundred years before Columbus) floated as an intangible Shangri-La: a virginal place where Europeans could flee from the horrors of war, slavery, disease and their own general stupidity to build a new nation that would know no war nor slavery. As the main characters traveled further and further east (pretty sure they got to the so-called Byzantine Empire (actually the eastern half of the Roman Empire; RIP, never forget)), I was happy to hold in my heart that mythical Vinland as the childhood dreams of a broken Thorfinn, who had known nothing but war and death for as long as he could remember.

But Thorfinn went through a personal revelation that has become a bit of a meme recently for mysterious reasons.

As a man who had killed hundreds whose spirits kept tormenting him in nightmares, who had lost his freedom and nearly his life, he turned around and dedicated himself to absolute non-violence. He came to believe that there was no such thing as a righteous kill, and would go to any extent to prevent war from breaking out. With that perspective, he returned to Iceland and gathered a crew of settlers to sail westward and found a new nation in which swords wouldn’t be necessary.

I found myself drifting away from the series at this point. For me the story seemed finished. Worse than that, I started considering Thorfinn an idiot. As a leader who had to take care of a few dozen settlers, he prohibited them from having weapons or building defenses, believing that they would be able to coexist with the natives, whom predictably would consider the Nordics as invaders. Most settlers around him saw Thorfinn as a good guy, but a naïve idealist who may get everyone killed. Now that I’m up-to-date with the manga, I suspect that the author is going to pull a brilliant gotcha to show that Thorfinn’s noble idealism could not survive reality. If his story ends up following the conclusion of the historical Thorfinn Karlsefni, I don’t see how it could go any other way. The author has said recently that the story doesn’t have much longer to go, so we’ll see.

Now let me tell you about this crush of mine. Name’s Hild. Even as a teen, living in a small village with her family, she was a Leonardo da Vinci of the Early Middle Ages, destined to die in obscurity if or when some assholes raided the area.

After a personal tragedy, she finds herself scarred and abandoned in the wilds. Turned into a stoic, tenacious loner, she fends for herself hunting with her own custom-made crossbow, until years later she casually comes across the person responsible for the deaths she had vowed to avenge.

Hild should be the protagonist of Vinland Saga, and yet she’s conspicuously underused as a secondary in a large cast. As far as I’m concerned, Hild should be the protagonist of every story.

Anyway, don’t sleep on Vinland Saga, you who have checked out lots of manga recommendations and passed on this one because you don’t care about vikings. I don’t give a shit about vikings, and this story is fantastic. Follow the adventures of Thorfinn and his pals as they travel around in medieval Europe, meet lots of interesting people and kill plenty of them. In the first half, at least.

Two full seasons of the anime adaptation have already been produced. Regrettably I only watched the first four episodes of the first season, but they were very well done. Here’s the trailer of the first season. It seems that they are on Netflix too.

Ongoing manga: Tengoku Daimakyō, by Masakazu Ishiguro

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, ReseñasLeave a comment

I dislike reviewing manga series when they haven’t finished; more often than not, how all the parts end up tied up together influences my view of the entire story. There are quite a few manga series that I follow and love but that haven’t ended yet, like Dungeon Meshi, Kaiju No. 8, Boy’s Abyss, Chi no Wadachi, etc. However, a week ago I came across the most intriguing manga in a good while, Tengoku Daimakyō (the title apparently translates to Heavenly Delusion), which has “only” reached chapter 55 (such series tend to end at about chapter 100), but that I’ve been looking forward to sit down and continue discovering what it has to offer.

This story is an odd mix of the Fallout series of games and The Last of Us (the first game, not the TV series, and certainly not the second game). We follow two storylines. In the first one, a bunch of kids are living in a controlled environment designed to raise them in a certain way while isolating them them from the outside world. The kids are tended to by AI, as well as by shady adults who seem to be guided by a cult-like drive to create a “heaven on earth,” where people won’t be discriminated in any way. You quickly realize that these kids slash test subjects have been manipulated genetically to whatever extent, and some of the most interesting scenes of that storyline involve children being unable to comprehend how utterly nuts their environment is; they are unfazed when they come across babies that look like alien squids, because that’s how human babies look like as far as they know. One of the children mingling with the rest straight up looks like an alien. We are only given a bit more information than the children, because we follow some of the adults that handle the operation. In general, the whole deal works like a Fallout vault.

The main storyline involves a twenty-year-old redheaded bodyguard who wears a cool jacket, and the fifteen-year-old kid for whom she’s working. They live in the post-apocalyptic ruins of Japan after some cataclysm destroyed a world that had achieved artificial general intelligence. Enough time has passed that the newest generations don’t even care how things ended up this bad. Anyway, for unknown reasons, disturbing monsters with superpowers are roaming the place, which has prevented human beings from establishing lasting settlements.

The aforementioned redhead, who is the main protagonist of this tale, was offered work by a sick young woman who promptly died, but not before bequeathing the redhead a ray gun along with the task of accompanying the fifteen-year-old kid to locate a place called Heaven, where someone who shares a face with the kid will need to receive an injection of a mysterious medicine. Our main couple sets off together to explore a ruined Japan. The redheaded girl also intends to locate the two people she remembers from before a monster attack landed her in a hospital bed for about a year.

The anime adaptation has already been produced. Here’s the trailer:

Troublingly enough, though, it has been picked up in the US by Disney Plus. This is a casually hardcore series that involves regular nudity, murder, The Thing-like grossness, a thirteen-year-old prostitute/hotel tycoon, rape, child rape, and such. There’s thematic stuff that Western fiction wouldn’t touch with a teen foot pole; for example, one of the settlements that the main couple comes across is controlled by a group of female supremacists that cut off women’s breasts if they are deemed too big, that kill any older men they come across, but capture attractive young men (and kids) to keep them as “seed pigs”. I have to assume that the anime, which I’ve barely started watching, must have been toned down significantly, which would be a shame.

All in all, fantastic worldbuilding, very detailed landscapes of a post-apocalyptic Japan, natural-sounding dialogue, cool fight scenes, and a narrative that gets sadder and more tragic the longer it runs. The only downside for me, quite minor in comparison, is that a couple of “evil” characters come across a bit over the top. Anyway, check Tengoku Daimakyō out. Or don’t. Do whatever you want.

Random AI-generated images #16

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Inteligencia artificial3 Comments

Two neural networks, one of them trained on anime-like images, work tirelessly to spread their madness to the ends of the earth. This is the latest batch of about a hundred of such AI-generated pictures.

You can check out so far twenty-eight other entries featuring generated images through this link.

Sunglasses mafia
Nietzsche
The cooler Nietzsche
Horrifying anime-like depictions of Nietzsche
Eren Yeager cosplaying as Nietzsche
Erwin danchou
A lion’s heart
Shinzou wo sasageyo

Roleplaying through “Re:Zero” with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 65)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificialLeave a comment

This entry covers part of the eleventh volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry, the Witch of Pride wanted in on the tea party, and we got further proof that the protagonist focuses on trying to fuck almost everything that moves whenever he needs to escape from how much of a nightmare his life has become.

An obsidian black, closed iron maiden has appeared out of nowhere a bit further on the hillock. The mere sight of it conjures images of torture in dungeons, and dungeons are no longer an abstract concept for you. You have been through hell and came out alive. You repeat that to yourself as you stand up from the chair and approach the iron maiden cautiously. Even though you don’t dare touch it, it feels heavy and cold.

As you get so close that it would take lunging twice to touch the dark metal, the iron maiden’s doors open. A cold shiver makes you tremble before you register how the girl inside looks. It’s a teenager, or at least her emaciated, small body suggests it. She has raven-black, frizzy hair that comes down in two ponytails. She’s wearing a white straightjacket that reminds you of black and white photos of sanatoriums, and her body is held in place by chains attached to the back and sides of the iron maiden.

More importantly, though, the girl’s lips are bitten off. They are a bloody, glistening mess of raw flesh, as if this girl had chewed on them. No, had eaten them, her own lips. The impression you get is of an insane girl locked up in a dark room for years, who has no other recourse but to cannibalize herself.

You won’t look at this girl’s eyes. The fear has frozen you in place. You don’t want to remain in this death-dream any longer. Hell, you don’t want to exist in the same universe that contains someone like this.

“Ya wanned ‘o shee me”, the girl mumbles as blood drips out of her mouth. Half of her tongue is gone. “He’e I am.”

You swallow. Your legs are trembling. You want to run away, but that would disappoint Echidna. You have faced far worse than a cursed girl who has experienced nothing but a nightmare for her entire life, you tell yourself.

“I did… I did, Daphne. I wanted to know you personally.”

You are talking to a living, breathing being trapped in a situation that would break most people. Perhaps even yourself.

“You look sho good, Shubawu”, she mumbles with pure hunger in her voice. “I would like ‘o bi’e you sho much.”

Daphne is drooling heavily, and it drips from her chin in a mix of her sticky saliva and blood from her open wounds around her dyed teeth. Your stomach churns. You fear you might vomit at any moment. This is the most twisted, insane thing you have ever seen or heard. You don’t know what to do.

“You want to eat me, I’m guessing… Is that how it feels, Daphne? You even want to eat people?”

“I wanna ea’ evewyone, Shubawu”, she says, her voice the embodiment of a madwoman. “Evewyone. I wanna ea’ evewyone and evewy’hing.”

A surge of warmth reaches your eyes, and a tear runs down your cheek. You don’t know if it’s from pure fear or from the thought that anyone could live like this girl and yet fail to go completely insane. But you can’t help it. You pity her, even if she wants to eat you.

“Why a’e you cwying, Shubawu?” Daphne slurs.

Your throat is closing.

“Because the world is horrible”, you say with a trembling voice.

You expect Daphne to agree with you, but instead she laughs, a horrible mix of a chuckle and a wheeze.

“I’ ish fine ash long ash you go’ enough ‘o ea’, ishn’ i’?” Daphne stops laughing, and you feel her stare burning your face, as if she could see through your skin and bone and into your brain. “Sho you came ‘o me ‘caushe you wanna kill Gwea’ Wabbi’?”

You tighten your lips and swallow something hot that was bubbling up your esophagus.

“… That’s right. Those little guys of yours ate me. Although ‘ate’ doesn’t feel like a strong enough word for what they did…”

“‘hank you sho much for feeding my babiesh. Wash vewy nice of you.”

You want to argue, but it would be pointless. For this creature in front of you, satisfying her hunger means good, remaining hungry means bad. At least you understand both the White Whale and the Great Rabbit now.

“Daphne, could you tell me why you created those monsters of yours, the White Whale, the Great Rabbit…?”

You expect her to laugh again, or say something like ‘who knows?’, but she answers seriously.

“My babiesh we’e my gif’ ‘o da wowld.”

You frown, not understanding. You can’t glean much about her expression: because she ate her own lips, her drooling mouth displays her teeth as if she were grinning or snarling constantly. And just glancing at her features is making you dizzy.

“Was that sarcasm, Witch of Gluttony?”, you ask as firmly as you can when you risk vomiting, “Those babies of yours have done little else, it seems, than cause destruction and erase thousands of people from the world, whether by removing the memories of them or consuming them to the last drop of blood. Are you messing with me?”

She shakes her head.

“Nah ah-ah-ah. I wan’ed people ‘o feed on my babiesh. Whaley ish big and mea’y, and ‘here awe sho many of my bunniesh da’ people could fill ‘hem belliesh foweve’.”

You shiver. You can tell now that this deranged witch isn’t joking. In her twisted mind she had wished to bless the world, but because her all consuming hunger is never fully satisfied, she can’t think in terms of anything else. As a result she let loose two curses on the people of this world that were so unstoppable that the population of different nations had to handle her babies as natural disasters. Maybe you can make Daphne understand, maybe she could stop her monsters even from her spectral imprisonment.

You get closer to the iron maiden, but Daphne flinches. The flow of drool that drips from her chin, washing away the blood from her eaten lips, increases, and her saliva hangs in viscous threads. Suddenly the bottom sides of the iron maiden grows six paired metallic legs, and as soon as the tips touch the ground they lift the iron maiden and crawl away from you. The sight of those impossible legs stops you, and your head hurts for a moment as it struggles to handle its current reality.

“I would s’ay away if I we’e you, Shubawu”, the Witch of Gluttony mumbles, “You look vewy appe’izing.”

You are trembling from head to toe. You want to vomit, you want to lie on the floor and cry. But Echidna is watching, and you don’t want that goddess to take you for a weakling. You force yourself to stare at Daphne’s bloody teeth and the glistening, raw flesh that surrounds them.

“Your monsters haven’t been feeding people, they have been eating them! Do you understand what you have done? Both the White Whale and the Great Rabbit are curses upon this world!”

“Why, would you have my babiesh lie ‘here and le’ ‘hemshelves be ea’en ash if ‘hey we’e a cooked meal? If ‘he people of ‘hish wowld we’e craf’y enough, ‘hey would have been able ‘o hun’ down Whaley and ‘he bunniesh. My babiesh have ‘o fill ‘heir belliesh ‘oo.”

“This is madness! They need to die, and you need to…”

You stop yourself. You are standing so close to the iron maiden that it would take those metallic legs jumping forward for the Witch of Gluttony to reach you, and all you have are words. Are words enough?

“You call madnesh ‘he law of na’ure”, Daphne mumbles, “Evewyone ish in a rush ‘o ea’ shomeone elshe sho ‘hey can live ano’her day. Echidna figured ou’ you a’e fwom ano’her wowld. Ish i’ no’ ea’ o’ be ea’en ‘here ash well?”

You can’t argue with that, and can’t say anything at the moment either, because a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea forces you to hunch over and retch. You vomit what remains of Echidna’s tea, along with a good quantity of bile, splashing the grass. You feel covered in cold sweat. While you support yourself on your knees and wheeze, Daphne continues.

“Even plan’sh have ‘o ge’ ‘heir nu’ien’sh from shomewhewe, you know? And ‘hey feel pain when ‘hey ge’ ea’en, even ‘hough you can’ hear ‘hem shcream. You ei’her ea’ or you ge’ ea’en. I’sh ‘he main law of ‘he wowld. If you don’ ‘hink sho, shomeone elshe ish doing ‘he killing for you.”

You wipe the vomit from your mouth, and you manage to raise your head and look at Daphne with wide, teary eyes. You desperately wish for this witch to go away, but if she vanished now, you wouldn’t have learned anything of value. You straighten your back.

“Daphne, I need to kill the Great Rabbit. Not only I risk getting devoured myself, but everyone in Sanctuary is going to die as well. Your friend Echidna agrees that your monster needs to disappear from this world. If you truly created it for the benefit of mankind, in your twisted way, please give me advice on how to destroy it.”

Daphne laughs.

“I’sh ei’her an imbe’ishiwe lil’ crea’uwe ‘hat killsh wheneve’ it deshiwes and ish neve’ sha’ishfied, or ‘he Gwea’ Wabbi’ ish a friendly beash’ie who jush’ wan’ed a hug.”

You aren’t sure you understood everything she said, but you are getting mad anyway.

“I don’t have time for bullshit, Daphne. Just looking at the lower half of your face is going to give me nightmares for years. Please tell me whether you will give me advice on how to defeat the Great Rabbit. If you won’t, we are done here.”

Daphne grins, or at least the way the raw flesh around her teeth widens suggests it.

“I will ‘ell you, Shubawu! I like you vewy much. And no’ only becaushe I wanna fill my belly wi’ you! My bunniesh prefe’ shourcesh of magic, sho ‘hey will shniff ‘he mo’ powewful magiciansh awound and ‘wy ‘o ea’ ‘hem. Mo’ impor’anly, you need ‘o kill ‘he Gwea’ Wabbi’ a’ once, meaning all of i’sh individual bodiesh, or elshe i’ will quickly pwoduce new bunniesh.”

You wipe the sweat from your forehead. You had expected this witch to laugh at you and mumble for you to fuck off, but she helped you. The rabbits are attracted to the biggest sources of magic, and all of them need to be killed as close to immediately as possible. That’s enough information to send Daphne away, you think.

“Awen’ you gonna ea’ you’ vomi’?”, Daphne asks with an anxious voice. “You a’e wash’ing food!”

Before you even realize you are doing it, you step over the puke and stand closer to the iron maiden. The metallic legs twitch, but they don’t retreat.

“No, I won’t eat my vomit, Daphne”, you say with a hollow voice. “Let me tell you, I pity you. You have been cursed with one of the worst conditions I can imagine, but it’s been a long time since you were a child, and in your brain there must be a commanding center freed from your overwhelming impulses that understands that you have led to the death of countless people. So I can’t forgive you. I will use your advice and erase the Great Rabbit from this world.”

“Hwoe hwoe!”

You look into Daphne’s disgusting open mouth, and stare into the blackness of her throat.

“… Was that an attempt at mocking me?”

“Nobody hash managed ‘o kill my babiesh in hundredsh of yearsh, bu’ you believe you will be able ‘o, Shubawu?”

“Yes, I will kill your baby, Daphne”, you say with more force in your voice that you had managed since you first spoke to this disgusting witch. “None of the others who tried could try over and over, learning from their mistakes along the way. I will win.”

You are too dizzy and angry to realize that your gaze has slipped upwards and has met hers. The Witch of Gluttony’s eyes are a bright yellow that instead of feeling painted on the surface of her eyeballs, it deepens into them. You feel you are staring into a yellow horizon that has trapped your gaze, and you will need to struggle to pull it away.

“Bring i’ on ‘hen, Shubawu”, Daphne says with a menacing voice.

The crab-like legs that hold the iron maiden in the air coordinate themselves to carry the Witch of Gluttony further into the hillock, but you only notice her vanishing out of the corner of your eye. You are shaking. Your mouth is filling with saliva. It feels as if a black hole has opened in your stomach, and it’s sucking the walls in. You need to eat now or you will die. The world becomes a monochrome shadow, and nothing in it matters any longer but what you could shove into your mouth.

Your stomach keeps convulsing and the hole in the middle of your body keeps growing. You lick your lips and are overwhelmed by the need to eat, but there is no food around, only vomit. The smell is overpowering and your vision tunnels and you are shaking all over. Then your eyes flicker to what you threw up. The sight of your puke makes you salivate heavily. As you extend your shaky arms towards the liquid dripping down the grass, you stop and look at your hands. Those fingers, the thick flesh at the base of your thumb… You had never seen something so tasty. You sink your teeth into that succulent meat, chewing on it desperately, feeling the thick blood leaking down your chin. You swallow big pieces, then you move to biting chunks of meat off your fingers. The pain is worth it, the deliciousness…

“Subaru, look at me.”

You recognize Echidna’s voice. She is standing in front of her tea table and looking at you calmly. You swallow the tasty meat you were chewing, then focus on the witch. You had never noticed before, but that beautiful face of hers, those glistening black eyes… You need to fill yourself with her. You must grab the sides of Echidna’s head and bite off her nose, eat her cheeks, tear off her lips, suck on her eyeballs until they pop out of their sockets.

You take a step towards the Witch of Greed, but a thought manages to float over the tide of hunger: you don’t want to hurt Echidna. You are very close to falling in love with her. But you won’t be able to contain yourself for long.

“Stay away from me, Echidna!”, you shout with a trembling, pained voice. “That Daphne has given me her hunger! It’s way too much… I can’t think straight!”

Echidna doesn’t flinch. Instead she smiles, her eyes narrowing.

“And now you want to eat me as well.”

You hear the creaking of your bones, the growling of your stomach, the thundering of your pulse.

“Stay… Stay away from me…”

Echidna steps forward, then turns her palms towards you and moves them further apart as if welcoming you.

“Come closer, Subaru. I want to know what you will choose.”

“I… Echidna…”

You picture yourself ripping Echidna’s shoulder off and biting into the meat of her arm. You imagine chewing through her delicious skin, feeling her sweet blood on your tongue. You squeeze your eyes shut and grab your head.

“No!”, you shout through your clenched teeth. “Please, stay away from me! Most of my brain is demanding me to eat you… The parts of me that decide whether something is good or bad only want me to fill my stomach. I can’t barely keep it together. Please, Echidna, save yourself.”

When you open your eyes again and glance at the Witch of Greed, you see that she’s walking slowly towards you.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you really do love me”, Echidna says softly.

You turn your face away from her, but she grabs your chin and forces you to look at her.

“If you want to devour me, go ahead.”

You shake your head frantically, trying to avoid her gaze. Your mouth is filled with warm saliva, and you need to keep it open or else you risk choking on the liquid. Your drool is dripping from your chin. Echidna can’t understand how much you wish to eat her alive. You should sate your hunger with something else, but even your own flesh can’t compete with how appetizing the pale witch looks. You want to lunge at her, grab her with as much strength as you can muster, and sink your teeth into her face. You imagine her screaming in agony, but you don’t let go. You bite through the soft, warm meat and crunch through the bone. You imagine yourself chewing and swallowing the delicious morsel. You wouldn’t stop until only her bones remained, stripped of meat.

“Eat me, my love. I’m all yours”, Echidna says while bending forward and offering her long, elegant neck to you. Her lips are pouted and moist, and her eyes are filled with anticipation and longing.

Your teeth tingle, and you can practically feel your mouth bursting with a near-uncontrollable hunger as the muscles in your jaw contract involuntarily. Your stomach rumbles. You feel dizzy and confused.
You turn your head and grit your teeth, then push Echidna away from you.

“I will not! I don’t want to hurt you, no matter how much my brain orders me to!”

Echidna steps closer and embraces you. You go limp in her hands as if the witch had taken over the control of your body. She leans over you while she narrows her glistening eyes, and wields a loving smile on her rosy lips.

“That’s so sweet”, she whispers. “It’s been so long since someone made me feel this way.”

As the Witch of Greed holds the back of your head, she opens her mouth, extends her tongue and lets a phlegm fall into your open mouth.

“Swallow, Subaru. Do it for me”, she says quietly.

You allow her slimy spit to slide down your throat while she smiles lovingly at you. As soon as you gulp her phlegm down, the hunger disappears. You are left with the memory of how it had overwhelmed your brain like a virus, taking over the specialized centers that handled different aspects of how to exist as a human being, only to manipulate them into convincing you of focusing on nothing else but sating your bottomless hunger.

You are still stunned when Echidna steps back while pulling you in so you stand on your own feet. You haven’t broken the embrace. Your hand doesn’t hurt either, so she must have healed it immediately as well. You stare into Echidna’s black eyes and those white, vertical pupils with awe, affection and trust like you don’t believe you have ever felt for another person. She has saved you twice from horrifying destinies. The Witch of Greed is as powerful as a god, and yet she helps you this much.

“Thank you”, you say as you recover your breath.

Echidna closes one eye to look at you coyly with her other. The closeness of your bodies is making her blush, a conspicuous redness on her snow white skin.

“Maybe I should have warned you more strongly about how bad of an idea looking into Daphne’s eyes would be, but we ended up learning something interesting, didn’t we? You have a knack for seducing witches…”

Your heart is beating so loud that you can’t hear yourself breathing heavily. You slide your hand under Echidna’s silky, white hair so you can cup the back of her head, and then you lean forward to kiss her mouth. The taste of her tongue reminds you of honey.

Echidna puts her hands on your shoulders to keep some space between you, but doesn’t push you away. She closes her eyes while you hold her as closely as you can. Your heart is beating out of your chest, and you feel faint. After several seconds, Echidna opens her eyes again, looking at you with a mixture of bashfulness and guilt, and her tongue leaves your mouth.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” she whispers.

You tilt her head to kiss along her graceful neck. Echidna shivers in your arms.

“Yeah, we should. I don’t care if your witch friends witness it. We should stay here and make love over and over, forever.”

Echidna lets out a mischievous sigh, and she rubs your back with her hands.

“Ah… You will end up making me want to give up everything as well”, she whispers. “But we can’t. The death-dream won’t stay up eternally. In fact, it won’t last for much longer. And you have to make sure you can get past this loop and continue with your life, for both our sakes.”

“None of that matters now.”

You fondle the witch’s ass with one hand, run your fingers through her hair with the other, and lick her small ear with your eager mouth. Echidna moans softly.

“Make sure you… don’t fall in love with me. Make sure you still hold fondness for the people you miss on the outside. You are trying to escape from your troubles.”

“I’ll keep them in mind when I go back, but right now… you’re the only person that matters.”

Echidna slides her hands under your shirt, and her warm hands caress your naked lower back.

“Then let’s do it… one more time.”

Your lips press against hers, and her tongue enters your mouth. Her hands slide up your back as if she were about to take your shirt off, but then she moves them to your front to fondle your chest with her fingers. Both of your hands now rub her supple ass. Echidna releases you from the kiss and lets out a long breath.

“I’m afraid that will have to be all for now, Subaru. Until you come back again”, Echidna says while she breathes heavily and her eyes glow as if drugged.

Even though a pang pierces your heart, you nod, then follow the Witch of Greed as she leads you by the hand back to the tea table. You sit in your chairs, then lift your gazes at each other over the teacups and the teapot as if you had entered her death-dream seeking her wisdom. You can tell that she’s forcing herself to come down from her arousal, but for the moment she’s not a powerful witch, merely a person who wants to love and be loved. These are feelings you understand well, so you help her down from them.

“That Daphne…”, you begin, then swallow. “She lives in hell.”

“Yes, she does.”

“I don’t know if I experienced her curse to the extent she does every waking moment, but… she deserves some credit for remaining lucid enough after hundreds of years of such a nightmare.”

Echidna nods, and drinks from her teacup as if trying to calm herself. Her nostrils are widened.

“Our burdens aren’t equivalent. She is bound by chains stronger than those that bind the rest of us.”

“Well… The little advice she gave me will have to do. I don’t feel capable of facing her again at the moment.”

“Make no mistake: if the White Whale didn’t content herself with hunting in specific areas every couple of weeks, or the Great Rabbit roamed the land instead of sleeping underground and only emerging when it has snowed significantly, only for them to move somewhere else as soon as they’ve had their fill for the day, the world would end.”

“I had understood that much. Everyone of us hanging out in Sanctuary is going to be eaten alive if I don’t stop those rabbits.”

Echidna’s eyes smile at you fondly over the rim of her teacup.

“Which is a significant part of why you can’t give up and spend the rest of eternity tending to this old maiden’s sexual needs, Subaru, as much as I would enjoy it.”

You sigh.

“It’s hard not to accept defeat when it would taste so good. But can I ask you a serious question about Sanctuary?”

“Go ahead, Subaru.”

“It’s your town, isn’t it? You founded it. So why did you, why here, why the whole thing with the barrier, the half-breeds, all that…?”

“It’s a long story, of course. But the short version is that Sanctuary wasn’t my idea. I needed some solitary land to carry out my research in peace. Back in the old world I approached the Mathers household, and they granted me this backwoods barony, which was as perfect for my purposes as they came. The Mathers lineage would benefit from my research, and I would also take a few of their talented younglings as wards, if I had the patience for it. The Mathers also acted as mediators when I needed people to build houses or dig further into the ground. But back then there wasn’t anything resembling a village, just a few houses for me and the few people that hung around, as well as my laboratories and storage facilities. Through my research I ended up realizing that the blood of half-breeds was vital for figuring out how to find a cure for the worst injustice that ever plagued living beings: that of being born just to die. It was a terrible time for demi-humans back then, because some had gotten particularly rowdy and launched wars of conquest against human nations. They lost, and plenty of the refugees, some of which only intended to live in peace and never agreed with the hostilities, found themselves rejected in human territories. Soon the rumour that a sanctuary awaited them in the backwoods of the Mathers territory reached their ears, and many families found their way over here. They understood that I wanted them for my research, but in exchange they found the safety to live with their families in peace. It became a symbiotic relationship.”

You want Echidna to explain how the barrier came to be, but a wave of dizziness ripples through you. You hunch over and grab your head. Even though for a moment you felt as if you were about to pass out, you end up taking a deep breath and rubbing your shoulders.

“Sorry for interrupting you. Something was wrong with me for a moment…”

Echidna stares at you gravely.

“Some disturbance in the outside is waking you up, Subaru. Our time together has come to an end.”

It must be Emilia. She has woken up from her own nightmare, and must be shaking you awake. You are so disappointed that you want to punch the table, but you take a deep breath. You know that Echidna was telling the truth, that by you wanting to spend the rest of your conscious life with the Witch of Greed as her sexual plaything, you are escaping from your troubles the same way you did back at the capital, during that self-imposed loop that usually ended with you guillotining yourself. You will have to return to that cold, harsh world outside, and wade through your many obstacles over and over until you succeed. How much will the experience change now that you will be able to remember Echidna?

You both stand up and walk until you face each other next to the table. You don’t want to say goodbye, but she speaks first.

“I had such a lovely time, Subaru.” Echidna smiles warmly at you. “But still, every visit to my death-dream requires payment.”

You are pretty sure she made up these rules, but you shrug.

“Sure. Take from me whatever you want.”

“That’s pretty generous of you.”
As you breathe in her scent, you realize that your feelings for her go beyond love. You worship her. You would die permanently to protect her if need be.

“But for now I’ll be content if you offer me that accessory of yours”, Echidna says while pointing at your right wrist.

You are confused about what she means, but you realize you have a handkerchief tied around your wrist. How did a handkerchief end up there? Ah, that precocious trainee tied it as a custom of her village or some shit. You chuckle with disbelief.

“Are you sure you want this? It’s completely worthless.”

Echidna tilts her head and offers you a smile of understanding.

“You aren’t aware, but objects imbued with the earnest wishes of young maidens hold a special magic of their own.”

You grimace as you snap your head back.

“You are fucking with me, aren’t you…”

Echidna can’t keep a straight face. She covers her mouth while her shoulders tremble, but she ends up bursting into laughter. You laugh as well.

“Don’t play around with my lack of knowledge like that!”, you complain.

Echidna wipes one of her eyes.

“Sorry, sorry. But I assure you, after what I intend to do to it, it won’t be useless any longer.”

She takes your arm by the forearm and lets her free hand hang over the handkerchief. She closes her eyes, and even though nothing seems to have happened, when she opens her eyes again she seems content. She lowers your arm gently.

You bow.

“I assume that has done something. Thank you. I assure you, Witch of Greed, I’ll come visit you as soon as I can.”

Echidna looks down. You don’t like one bit the sadness that showed on her pale face.

“Subaru, you truly don’t understand. The requirement for entering a death-dream gets increasingly harder, and the next time you will have to surpass your request for knowledge that you had uttered while you had gone insane.”

You go cold. You stare at her, waiting for the witch to add some comment that would lessen the finality of her words, but none come. She looks worried that this meeting might have been the last time.

“Please, Echidna, don’t tell me I will never see you again”, you mutter with your throat almost squeezed shut.

The Witch of Greed steps forward and places her hand on your chest, over your heart.

“I wish I knew the answer, and you know how much it bothers me not to know something. Let’s hope that you will find your way back to me, and next time we will have something very important to discuss about our future.”

The Witch of Greed kisses you on the cheek, and as she does so, her form vanishes while her death-dream collapses on itself.

Note from January of 2021:

The part where the protagonist meets Daphne took me a lot to finish. I tend to dive deeply into the scenes in my mind, I guess, and I felt dizzy through it. As if that wasn’t enough, I lost my current job midway through. Other times I embrace these pauses between jobs as opportunities to do stuff I actually want to use my time in, but now I feel like shit.

Roleplaying through “Re:Zero” with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 64)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial1 Comment

This entry covers part of the eleventh volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry we learned that Garfiel is boring, that children shouldn’t be Pokemon trainers, that Echidna is a bad mother, that the protagonist is traumatized after being eaten alive, that the Witch of Greed wants to consume the protagonist, and that the protagonist is waiting to meet the presumably horrifying Daphne, the Witch of Gluttony.

You stare at the empty chair across from you while your heart jumps on your chest and cold sweat beads on the back of your neck. Being so close to Echidna had already made you light-headed, and now you can’t think straight. You realize, for starters, that you are staring at a chair, when Echidna had said that the Witch of Gluttony doesn’t sit. As the hair on your arms stands up, you look around the hillock in case another witch is standing out of sight to give you a scare. You first realize that this isn’t the small hillock you had assumed it to be, in which you would just have to take a few steps to roll downhill. The top of this hillock is much wider, as if Echidna wanted to grant you more room to maneuver.

When your gaze falls back on the chair across you, someone is sitting there. It’s a tanned girl not older than ten, with short, feathered, dark green hair and red eyes. She’s wearing a white sunday dress, and the first instinctive impression you get is of a prim and proper girl from a reputable family. When you return your gaze to her face, she smiles with a wide mouth.

The sudden sight doesn’t compute for your brain, but as you hold her red gaze, you recall the most ominous warning that Echidna had given you: not to look into the Witch of Gluttony’s eyes. You flinch and look down at her side of the table. You must be giving the impression that you want to shrink into the chair. Why is Daphne a child? And why is she so sylphlike? Someone born with the curse of gluttony surely should be as obese as they get.

“I’m glad that I got to meet you, Baru!”, the child says with a carefree, innocent voice.

Her voice dismantles you further. She sounded like the kind of girl who would happily spend hours playing with a doll house. You had imagined that you would face someone who would give some justification for creating those two legendary monsters, the White Whale and the Great Rabbit, but if Daphne is a child who was killed then trapped as a ghost for hundreds of years, surely she must have created those monsters on a whim, as playmates. You feel that you can’t hold her responsible for the damage and uncountable deaths that the White Whale and the Great Rabbit have caused by rampaging for centuries. The problem is that a child shouldn’t have the power to create such monsters in the first place. Was this the reason why Echidna didn’t seem troubled by your fear in anticipation of meeting the Witch of Gluttony? She must have known you were going to meet an innocent child that can’t help but manifesting horrors in the world outside.

Your shoulders slump.

“Ah… I’m happy to meet you as well”, you ask with a nervous voice. “How are you doing?”

On the edge of your vision you notice that she smiles at your words.

“I’m doing better now. Ekidonna always keeps the visitors for herself. That’s not fair, is it? And we get so few!”

Her voice was so hopeful that you begin to feel relieved. She must be a very emotional person, and they usually forgive as they get attached to others easily. Still, you get the sense that you won’t glean any information about how to defeat the Great Rabbit from her.

“Not to disparage the great Echidna or anything,” you say with a conciliatory tone, “but I’m glad I can meet at least another one of you witches. It’s not fair that you ended up locked away for centuries, is it? It must get too lonely.”

The child giggles.

“I’m not lonely at all! I’m always with my friends. But I’m happy that I could meet one more. You are so friendly with Ekidonna too, giving her lots of kisses on her legs. And you wanted to kiss her down there too!” She giggles as if laughing at a silly joke. “That’s where we pee from!”

You gasp. Your gaze darts around in a panic, although you are very careful not to allow yourself to look above the lower half of this child’s face.

“Y-You shouldn’t have seen any of it. Sorry, I didn’t know the other witches were watching. It was supposed to be an intimate moment.”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind. It was very funny! But I’m feeling sad that you won’t look at me. It’s bad manners not to look at the person you are speaking to, you know. Daddy told me that many times. Are you shy?”

You must seem mousy, petrified as you are of holding this child’s gaze. Is this a ploy? Is she feigning innocence, and the moment you look into her red eyes she will be able to eat you, or something more unimaginably horrible?

“You were listening to the long conversation I had with your fascinating friend Echidna, didn’t you? So you know that she warned me about looking into your eyes. I’m merely following her recommendations.”

The child laughs, then shakes her head.

“You think I’m Daphy! That’s so funny! I look nothing like Daphy! But that’s alright, you hadn’t met us before.”

A chill runs through your spine, and you slowly lift your gaze towards the child’s red eyes. She stares back with curious amusement. You stand up from your chair and walk a couple of steps away from the tea table so you can look at this girl fully. She tilts her head, then she turns on her chair to face you. There’s nothing weird about the rest of this stranger beyond the fact that now you know that her white dress has a skirt.

“Who are you then?”, you ask cautiously.

“Me? I’m a wee little girl! A very, very, very little girl!”

Both the presence of a random child here as well as her carefree nature, after having been trapped in this tomb for hundreds of years, unnerves you. You want to retreat. It’s the closest you have felt in this world to being in a haunted house. You are staring at a ghost, who feels to you as incomprehensible and unpredictable as the ones in your old world.

“What’s your name…?”

“Name’s Typhon. That’s the name my parents gave me. Do you like it?”

“It’s… a nice name… Where are your parents, Typhon?”

You don’t know why you asked that. It just doesn’t sit right that this child isn’t at home with her family.

“I ate them.”

She answers so casually that you forget to breathe for a second.

“You… You did… What?!”

“I ate them. I was hungry.”

“But why would you do that?!”

“There’s no cake in this room. The desserts here are terrible!”

You stare at her wide-eyed and with your mouth open. The child can’t hold her serious expression for longer than a couple of seconds, and then she closes her eyes and grins, showing most of her teeth.

“I don’t eat that much! That’s Daphy’s problem! You are so silly, you just believed me!”

You don’t know what to say, but you force yourself to come up with something.

“Yeah, you really got me there, Typhon… Anyway, why did you come to see me? Were you just curious about a stranger entering your tomb?”

“Hmmm… I dunno. I just felt like it. And you aren’t a stranger anymore, Baru! A stranger wouldn’t be so friendly with Ekidonna, would he?”

“Well, I guess not…”

“I like you! But I’m curious to know something… Are you a sinner, Baru?”

You have no idea how to answer. Why is this girl suddenly asking about sins? Who the hell is she? The name Typhon doesn’t mean anything to you. Is she truly one of the witches of old, even though she’s a damn kid? You feel that you need to answer seriously. You have no clue what this child is capable of.

“Let’s see… I have killed a few people, I can’t quite remember how many… I stabbed an Archbishop in the heart and he died some time later, my sword got stuck into a cultist’s head that one time Ricardo launched me against the guy, I… I had my ground dragon murder a pretty teenage girl who was possessed. Those are the things that sound like sins of everything I’ve done, I guess. And I cheated on my Rem…”

“You’re not a very good person, are you?”

You swallow.

“No, I suppose not.”

Typhon smiles at you.

“Good! That means I can eat you!”

You jump away from her. Your whole body is tense, and you are having trouble breathing properly.

“Damn it, are you actually the Witch of Gluttony just pretending to be someone else?”

The child doubles over with laughter. When she recovers, she jumps from her chair and walks a couple of steps towards you. You only prevent yourself from moving because you feel she would simply get closer.

“You believe everything!”, Typhon says between giggles. “I don’t know if you are an evildoer yet. Let me hold your hand!”

“What?”

Typhon slowly approaches your hand with hers.

“This will tell me everything about you, Baru. If you truly are a bad person deep down, then I will curse you.”

You feel your pulse in your neck. You swallow to return some saliva to your mouth. Are you a bad person?

You feel like you are. But Echidna has seen all of your memories and still accepted you.

“Ah… Can I refuse to be judged like that?”

Typhon frowns at you.

“No, because I’m the judge.”

You allow the girl to grab your hand. You tense up. You had expected to feel some electricity-like surge of power running through you, but it just feels as if you are holding a small girl’s hand.

Typhon giggles as she looks into your eyes.

“Baru, those are so many icky thoughts about girls!”

“Wha…?”

“You think about naked girls all the time!”

You try to withdraw your hand from her grip, but somehow you can’t move it.

“I do not! Well, I do! Is that bad!?”

You panic as a bead of sweat rolls down your forehead. The smile on Typhon’s face broadens.

“That’s not right, Baru! Those girls would feel bad if they knew, wouldn’t they?”

“Ah… I think that Rem and Emilia would be happy about it, don’t you think…? Do you know who they are…?”

Typhon is still smiling up at you, but with a coldness in her red eyes.

“You feel much worse about yourself than the stuff you have done, but those are so many dirty thoughts about girls! We have to do something about that, don’t we?”

You don’t want to respond, but you feel that you need to say something.

“Typhon, I also think about things other than girls…”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course! I think about eating good food, and talking to people I like, and killing people I don’t like, that kind of stuff.”

“Don’t you think you have a dirty mind, Baru?”

This child is still holding your hand. Your palms are sweating profusely.

“Anyway, I’ll help you with your problem”, Typhon says. “You are not an evildoer, just naughty!”

She moves back while still holding your hand, and you realize that your right arm has followed her even though you haven’t felt a pull in your body. She’s holding on to your rigid arm as if it were a doll’s limb. Your blood runs cold. You look down towards where your right arm ought to be, but it ends slightly below the shoulder as if it had been cut off and the wound cauterized immediately. No, as if you were a detachable action figure. You look back at Typhon, who has lowered her right hand, still holding on to yours, but keeps staring up at you as if she didn’t just pull off one of your limbs.

“You need to be punished, right?”, Typhon says casually. “In the future, whenever naughty thoughts come to you, you will fear that you will lose a part of yourself!”

You’re about to cry.

“There’s nothing wrong with naughty thoughts!”, you say unconvincingly. “Wanting to have sex with a bunch of people is one of the most normal things in the world! Maybe not with that trainee, but… those outfits are too much!”

You’re edging backwards, and at some point you realize that your left arm has fallen to the grass as if it were poorly glued to your body.

Typhon steps towards you while she chews innocently on her thumbnail. She’s still holding on to your detached right arm.

“I don’t want to eat you, though. You’re too skinny! And I’m not allowed to eat people with black hair!”

“I-I already know you aren’t Daphne! Please, don’t steal more of my limbs! I can’t regrow any of them!”

“But you need to be punished”, she says again with a playful smile.

You feel as if you are about to pass out. You don’t feel any pain at all, but trying to move your arms only for just your shoulders to pivot helplessly is screwing with your mind, sending it into a panic. Relax, you repeat to yourself. None of this is actually happening. You are inhabiting an avatar of sorts courtesy of Echidna. Think of that black-eyed loon and her warm insides you never got to taste.

“I don’t. I shouldn’t be punished. I should be able to think about having sex with whomever I want. I don’t hurt anyone with thoughts. You are the one messing with me.”

Typhon frowns as she stops chewing on her thumbnail. She tosses your right arm aside and she shakes her head.

“You’re not very nice, Baru. You’re not even nice to yourself! Maybe I should get Daphy to eat you after all.”

You shudder. You want to motion for the child to stop, but you don’t even have hands. Your legs are getting numb, as if they wish to stop holding your weight.

“You know, Echidna told me she would return to me after I had a chat with your glutton”, you say with a shaky voice. “The Witch of Greed won’t be happy if she finds me dismembered!”

“Nah. Ekidonna will find it interesting!”

She looks at your left arm, which is lying on the grass, and as if Typhon had cut it with a huge, invisible knife, the arm gets bisected silently.

“Y-You seem like such a nice girl, Typhon”, you say with a thin voice. “You wouldn’t fuck with me to such an extent, would you?”

Typhon looks at you with an innocent, cherub face.

“Don’t use bad words! When people can’t help themselves, they only learn through punishment, isn’t that right? All those icky thoughts about girls are making you feel guilty. That’s okay! I will divide your body for every naughty thought you ever had!”

The terror makes you want to vomit. This girl is going to reduce you into atoms!

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”, you yell as tears drip down your face. “Please forgive me! I am dominated by my genetic imperatives!”

“Nah, you must learn your lesson, Baru.”

Your legs give out, and you fall to your knees. No, to the stumps that your knees have become. The lower half of your legs has broken off cleanly. As you fall forward, unable to prevent yourself from faceplanting given that you lack both arms, you head gets detached and rolls off. A blade of grass slides across your eyeball, so you close your eyes. When your head, the only thing you feel you can move to any extent anymore, rests, you open your eyes to see the grass you are lying on rising in your vision like a tiny jungle. The rest of your body keeps bisecting slowly. Typhon is making sure you notice each time she applies her power. The child appears in your field of view, and she looks down at you with an innocent grin, as if she’s merely playing with you. You open your mouth to speak, but suddenly you lose your bifocality. It seems as if the part of your head that contains your left eye has detached and has slid down, so it only shows you the blue sky surrounded by unfocused blades of grass.

To your surprise, you can still speak.

“You called me mean, and yet you just reduced me to this. What does that make you, witch?”

Typhon giggles.

“Me? I’m not the mean one here. You’ve got a very mean look about you, Baru, even though you aren’t that bad of a guy. Besides, I’m saving you, am I not?”

You try to shake your head, but it just slides a little to the side.

“How do you call this being saved when I can’t even tell where my junk is? This is around the fourth time I’ve lost those guys!”

Typhon giggles, and she is about to say something when you both are startled by the distant sound of a woman shouting. It comes from the sky, and it increases in volume as if someone had jumped from a skyscraper and on the way down she berated as loud as she could the people she was about to meet below.

A few seconds later, the shouting becomes intelligible.

“The first time you meet him and you hurt him like this! It’s unforgivable! How could you be so cruel!? He only wished to speak to us! You think you can get away with this!?”

Typhon frowns, and crouches next to you to touch your forehead with the tip of her fingers.

“It looks like Nerva isn’t too happy with me. She can’t stop yelling, that one.”

One of your eyes catches a glimpse of a person falling feet first maybe around twenty meters away, where the hillock curves down. When the person crashes, it jolts the ground sending up a burst of dirt, grass and particles. After the grass and the dirt fall around the crater that has formed, you see a girl maybe in her late tens or early twenties, who is down on one knee. She’s beautiful, blonde and blue-eyed, and her fit body is clothed with the closest thing you’ve seen in this fantasy world to a superhero outfit, white and blue, which provides a generous amount of cleavage. She has gathered her long hair in a ponytail at the side of her head, as if she just wanted her hair out of the way. When she stands up, she flounces angrily towards Typhon and you, and midway through she points with a trembling hand towards the child. This new girl’s eyes are crying as if out of indignation, because she’s glaring at Typhon.

“You! You dare hurt Subaru like that!? I’ll never forgive you!”

Typhon rolls her eyes.

“Oh, he’s alright. Aren’t you fine, Baru?”

You narrow your eyes, even though one of them is only showing you blue sky and blurry grass.

“I’ve been better.”

The blonde girl shakes her head in disappointment, and now she’s looking down at you while tears keep running down her face. This stranger came to defend you, it seems.

“Nice to meet you”, you say. “I guess you must be one of the witches of old, right? You know my name from prying into my conversation with Echidna.”

She crosses her arms while she stares at you with her beautiful light blue eyes, but she’s frowning heavily as if outraged.

“We have no choice but to see and hear! We can’t go anywhere! You didn’t come to hurt any of us, nor to attempt to cast us from this world! In fact, you wanted to make love to the Witch of Greed!”

“Which is public knowledge now, it seems…”, you mumble.

The blonde woman clenches her right hand into a fist and she pumps it energetically.

“People should love each other! That’s the solution for all the troubles in the world! I’m Minerva, the Witch of Wrath! I’m glad to meet you in person, Subaru!”

“I like you already, Minerva. It doesn’t hurt that you have the body of a model, or how I imagine a model would look in person. I’d love to shake your hand, but you’d have to find mine first.”

Typhon lets out a noise of indignation.

“What did I tell you, Baru? No mouth for you.”

Something detaches in your face. It must be your mouth, because everything under your nose and above your chin feels hollow. You have lost the sense of taste, and you don’t feel the saliva in its cavity. You are surprised that you haven’t bled to death, nor had a heart attack because none of the things happening to your body make any sense.

Minerva narrows her eyes at Typhon, while her nostrils widen.

“You dare hurt Subaru further in front of me! You are the worst, Pride!”

“Oh, I’ll have you know that I’m still the best! The best! Wouldn’t you agree, Baru?”

You make a point of narrowing your eye that shows the child in its field of view. The little shit knows damn well you can’t say a thing.

“I won’t let you get away with this, Typhon!”, Minerva shouts while tears keep jumping from her eyes.

“How many times do I need to tell you to be careful with people’s feelings!? You have no right to hurt others!”

“I need to know if people around me are evildoers, and to what degree. You know this, Minerva! I can’t have them getting away with being evil.”

“You’d do well to listen to someone who has more experience than you do, kid!”

“We are both more than four hundred years old, though.”

“I’m still older, and I have accrued more life experiences! I’m telling you, breaking people apart is a bad thing, especially someone you’ve just met!”

Typhon frowns, clenches her fists and stomps on the ground.

“You’ve always been like this. Why am I even friends with you?”

“Because the pair of us can’t exactly be choosers when it comes to allies! We are both outcasts, and we have to help each other out! Now, I suggest you return him to normal or I will keep demanding you do so!”

“No, I don’t wanna. He hasn’t learned his lesson! He had icky thoughts about you the moment he saw you!”

You want to say that you couldn’t help it, nor wanted to, really. But you can’t say anything without a mouth.

“I’m not mad about that, people can have whatever thoughts they want!”, Minerva shouts as she keeps pointing an accusatory finger at Typhon. “Hurting people, that’s a different matter! You better make this right or I’ll be this close to never forgiving you!”

Typhon looks away, then snorts as she crosses her arms.

“You are one to talk. You want nothing more than to punch and headbutt people.”

“I may have done some questionable things in the past, but I have never outright hurt someone like you do! Turn him back, Typhon!”

“No! People need to be punished for their bad actions!”

Minerva groans loudly, then turns toward you and glares murderously at what remains of your face.

“Alright, then! I will do it myself!”

The Witch of Wrath stands in a fighting stance. She pulls her fist back while eyeing you as if she’s targetting your forehead.

You want to scream, you want to ask for mercy. This witch who a moment ago was defending your existence suddenly intends to obliterate you. You don’t understand anything.

She leaps towards you while launching her powerful fist. You close your eyes. The moment her fist connects with your forehead, you feel whole, standing on your legs. The shock almost makes them buckle. You stagger around for a moment while balancing yourself with your arms, which you have regained as well.

Minerva holds her fist in front of her as if she’s checking if she’ll need to punch you again, and although she’s frowning and tears run down her cheeks, she’s as close to satisfied as you have seen this strange person.

Typhon shakes her head.

“Why did you have to get involved, Nerva?”, she complains with a teary voice. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong!”

Now that you have a voice again, you want to take the opportunity to defend yourself.

“Please, girls, let’s forget this regrettable incident.” You focus on Minerva, who looks back at you with her beautiful light blue eyes, like the water in a pristine lake. You walk up to her and offer your hand to shake. “I’m so glad to make your acquaintance, Witch of Wrath. Not only you look so fucking good, but you also prefer to put me together instead of breaking me apart. That makes you a winner in my eyes.”

Minerva wipes the tears from her eyes. She doesn’t stop frowning, or can’t, as she grabs your hand and shakes it while squeezing it strongly.

“I apologize if I seem a little angry! I can’t tolerate people hurting others, it gets on my nerves!”

“Don’t worry, I can tell that being furious is your niche. And man, you are as sexy as they come, aren’t you.”

Typhon stomps on the ground and clenches her teeth.

“Baru! Don’t say such icky things to my friends, I’m telling you!”

“If you don’t like it, then go away”, you say, barely glancing at her. “Sorry, Witch of Pride, if you have a problem with me having naughty thoughts, you might as well never share a room with me, because I’m made out of little else than naughty thoughts. If you took them out I’d become an empty husk.”

It seems that you won the argument, because Typhon pouts, walks away and vanishes as if she exited the death-dream.

Minerva smiles back at you, even though it looks malicious due to her frown. She gives your hand a final squeeze before letting it go.

“Typhon might be a dragon in a dress and I a lion, but you are a cat, Subaru!”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. You are too kind, Witch of Wrath, healing me through a righteous punch. I’m sure that if I ever get to leave this death-dream, I will remember you fondly. And not only because of that appetizing cleavage.”

She pumps her fist.

“Hah! You’d better remember!”

“I was supposed to meet Daphne, the Witch of Gluttony that you must be familiar with. Any tips on how to face such a terrifying prospect?”

She lowers her head while glaring fiercely.

“A-ha! Daphne is a real monster, but you are not! Just face her with the courage of your convictions, and I’m sure she will be just as charmed by you as I am!”

A smile grows on your mouth. You put your hands on your waist.

“Thanks for the advice. You remind me of my senior servant, if she were nice. It’s too bad you are dead, Minerva.”

“You look like you mean that, so I’ll take it as a compliment! I’m sure we would have been friends! Now, I have taken too much of your time! I hope we meet again, and remember to be fair and kind to people!”

“I intend to…”

You wave as Minerva turns around and walks away. When she vanishes, you feel sad.

As you turned to walk to your chair, Echidna is sitting in the shade of the parasol. Staring back at those black eyes with vertical slits fills you with such relief, it’s as if you came home after a long day at work. You sit down slowly while the Witch of Greed regards you with an apologetic expression.

“I failed to predict how eager Typhon was to meet you. She was waiting for the defenses to wane so she could take a good look at you.”

“It’s fine, really. I got to meet two interesting new people.”

You take a sip of your now tepid tea. Echidna rests her cheek on her hand and observes you with curiosity.

“You are something else, Subaru. Typhon’s black-and-white thinking led to that child breaking you apart, and yet your mind has recovered entirely. If anything, you seem more energized now. And I got to witness again how your psyche uses your sexuality as a defense mechanism. The moment you got aroused by our relentless paladin, your mind integrated the uncanny events without issues.”

You open your mouth to answer with the first thing that comes out naturally, but you realize that you are looking at someone whom you attempted to pleasure orally, and she’s pointing out that you just ogled at some other witch’s attributes.

“I apologize if me finding Minerva sexy bothered you, Echidna. I assure you that didn’t lessen how fascinated I am by your witchy self.”

She raises her eyebrows and sighs.

“I can see that you have a preference for the body type, and that’s fine by me. A lot of men seem to have a thing for dominatrixes.”

“I doubt that a dominatrix who healed people whenever she hit them would have a successful career. However, you are wrong about that. I want nothing more than sweet, loving intimacy occasionally accompanied by being murdered. That blonde hottie wouldn’t provide any of that. I was going to say that the prospect of it would make her angry, but I suppose that winning the lottery would make that one angry as well. You people have some burdens to bear with those curses you have been born with.”

Echidna takes a gulp of her tea. When she lowers the teacup, she turns her head slightly to the side and closes one eye as she looks at you.

“However, you did make me feel like a woman again, a flesh and blood female, by stimulating me to such an extent, but later on you salivate for a different woman. That’s a very mean thing to do, Subaru.”

You clear your throat. You can barely hold her gaze.

“You know, Echidna, I might have been cursed myself at birth to incarnate some horniness-related ideal. Have some sympathy for a fellow sufferer.”

She narrows her eyes at you, then puts her head down and chuckles.

“That’s true. It probably means you’re in more pain than even me. I’ll give you that. We are stalling, though. Our intention here was to summon the thorny witch of Gluttony, so you could figure something out about how to defeat at least one of her children. I’ll open the barrier again, and this time I will take extra care in making sure that nobody else interrupts your meeting. I can’t wait to witness how you deal with Daphne’s peculiarities.”

You shift your weight on the chair.

“You know, I feel we have been very lucky that more troublesome witches, one in particular, hasn’t taken the chance to confront me in your death-dream.”

Echidna nods slowly with a knowing, serious look.

“You are right about that. During this session, the Witch of Envy has attempted repeatedly to break into my death-dream.”

Your throat closes, and when a noise of surprise escapes your mouth, it sounds strangled.

“What!?”

“Special defenses, remember. Her insistence worries me, but she won’t succeed when I’m restricting access to the death-dream this much.”

“Somehow that doesn’t soothe my worries in the slightest. I’m guessing plenty of idiots in this fantasy world of yours had issues with you because you are a witch, and a powerful one at that, but I can’t imagine you doing something like what that traitorous Witch of Envy did to me: moving the return point so I couldn’t save the love of my life. That’s fucked.”

Echidna looks down at the grass for a moment.

“You wouldn’t hear pleasant words coming out of my mouth if I were forced to speak in depth about the Witch of Envy. She ruined my life. Ended it, in fact. But let’s forget about anything else that doesn’t relate to you meeting our Daphne for the first time. You will face a witch that won’t trigger your psyche’s main defense mechanism.”

You swallow your sudden anxiety.

“You know, I can appreciate some portly bodies.”

Echidna chuckles, a low sound.

“I’m sure you do, but I’m afraid that doesn’t apply here. Stay strong, Subaru. I’ll see you on the other side.”

You keep holding Echidna’s gaze in the vain hope that it will prevent her from leaving you, but as if she had been an illusion all along, the lovely, black-eyed Witch of Greed disappears leaving behind an empty chair.