[
in the vein of the various ridiculous rationalist/transhumanist attempts at fanfiction, i decided to write something like that, in my own style!
well no not really, i had this planned out far before reading, say, harry potter and the methods of rationality, but i would be lying if i said it hadn't influenced the writing of this, especially in its vaguely pornographic serial format, where each chapter builds up to a gratuitously exposited application of rationalism and/or transhumanist thought.
(anyway thoughts for ~CHAPTER MORALS~ in this: pt one, de rol le's whole forced tf thing should clearly be spun out into a THE ETHICS OF OMEGA thing.
let's say you have a prediction machine that has 100% accuracy, and you ask it if some person would willingly accept this whole body tf serum thing, eventually. it says yes. you are on a sharp time limit, so you don't have the time to offer the choice to the person and wait for them to say yes (since you have also predicted it will take a while for them to deal with it and say yes), so you force it on them. the question is: is this an ethical action? WHY OR WHY NOT?
we do not actually answer this question but since the guy being forced-tf'ed is the viewpoint character we do get to see /his/ response to that.
ANYWAY I FEEL LIKE THERE SHOULD BE SOMETHING ELSE AT WORK IN CHAPTER 1.
and I have no clue what I could do about the other chapters, aside from the final one being all rico/dark falz mind meld union of minds singularity uplifting type thing.
we could have chapter 2 be about how one of Relic's super powers is that he can, "PUA-style", effortlessly manipulate people into doing whatever he wants them to do since he now has a deeply intuitive understanding of human psychology. and most of the chapter would be about his ethical struggle wrt wanting to get into the other hunter's pants, and seeing extremely clearly how he could "manipulate" the other hunter into doing it and even making him think it was his idea, when really it would be an edifice of LIES.
except that might come off as a little heavy-handed. on the other hand, it would fit with the theme of DUBIOUS CONSENT ISSUES we have going here already.
)
]
De Rol Le's death cry was deafeningly loud. It brought stalactites raining down from the sheer force of the noise, each crashing into the underground river with a plume of water. Then the beast itself plunged into the stream, its huge wormy body creating a tidal wave that swept across the drifting raft. The glowing luminescence across its body faded slowly as it sank further down, dying.
The mysterious creature that had infected and warped the life in the caves was dead, but that was only one small part of the puzzle... and it had revealed to him just how much was left hidden.
But at the moment, he, the master hunter Relic, was stranded on a floating platform in the middle of a rushing sewage pipe. It was far below communications depth, and if the Pioneer 1 network was still active their transmitters weren't appearing for him at all. Which was actually unusual-- they had to have been the ones to build this passage, but it was lacking even the mandatory emergency maintenance transmitters.
But none of the layers of weird mystery going on here solved the fundamental problem, which was that he had no way to contact Pioneer 2 or even to get off the platform before it hit the end of the line and careened into whatever abyssal lake they were outflowing to.
There was a wet splashing noise from the far side of the raft, pretty much drowned out by the general rushing of the platform and the pipe, which he didn't even consciously notice until it started repeating rhythmically.
He turned towards it, sword at the ready, but ended up just staring dumbly. A human hand rose out of the dark, green water and clasped onto the bumper. It pulled hard, revealing an arm and shoulder as someone pulled themselves bodily out of the rushing torrent.
He practically ran over across the slippery tilting surface and skidded into a kneel to grab onto the person's wrist before they could fall back into the stream. He pulled hard, whoever-it-was-- and how the hell could anyone be down here in the first place?-- pulling just as hard back against him as they fought against the strong current.
The person emerged from the water, slowly at first until with a final tug he managed to pull them all the way up onto the platform. The person-- human, flat-chested and scrawny, not wearing a scrap of clothing and a great deal paler than even the whitest of the Pioneer 2 residents-- sprawled out on top of him, coughing and throwing up great gouts of green-black water.
One touch and a half-second later and Relic was on the other side of the platform, extremely aware of how the other person had gotten down here, as his tentacles rose up behind him, four of them, each a transparent tube, full of golden serum, tipped with a long, syringe-like needle. His unhealthily-pale skin had some patterned variation to it, like the mottled underflesh of the gigantic worm he'd just killed-- or thought he'd killed. And his hands-- he couldn't see how he'd missed it before, but his fingernails were thick and glossy black, like he was nearing nail polish, and they curved forward into deadly-looking claws.
His tentacles fanned out behind him, connected to his head, behind his ears. They moved like living things, twisting towards him like they were sensing him out. The man-- De Rol Le, somehow -- stood up, legs steady as the platform rocked back and forth; his body swaying slowly to match the movements of the platform.
"I thought that was a good idea," he spoke, and Relic raised his sword up, pointing it at him. "You things have bodies like this, yes?" he said, his enunciation extremely precise and yet somehow wrong. He stepped forward, and Relic raised his sword higher, feeling his heartbeat in his fingers, wrapped tight around the hilt.
"You can't mean to fight me again," De Rol Le said, smirking like he-- like it was trying out the expression. "I might look small and fleshy, like you creatures, but I am as strong-- stronger than before."
"We'll see about that!" was all Relic felt he needed to say, angry and disgusted by the monster. It had mutated all of the life in the caves in pursuit of its hidden, perverse agenda, and now he could see it could cast of its own body in an instant, sloughing off its wormy exoskeleton to build itself anew. Rico's messages were definitely right: this thing was far too dangerous to let live.
He lunged forward, sweeping his huge buster sideways in an arc, something that would easily lop De Rol Le's reduced form in two. But it dove down, its tentacles trailing behind it like an octopus, and before he knew it De Rol Le was behind him, his plastic-y, synthetic tentacles trailing across his shoulders, the tips dripping the yellow mutative serum.
"You monkeys are very fast," De Rol Le said, dark voice in his ear, and Relic whirled around, sword chopping a deadly arc. De Rol Le slid around his side, already lethally inside his guard. "But I, you see, am faster."
Relic transferred his blade to one hand, letting it fall down with a crash against the platform. Its photon edge cut a shallow groove into the surface as he elbowed De Rol Le in the face, bringing his sword up again with both hands in an arc De Rol Le just barely dodged, nicking a shallow cut across his stomach that bled black and scabbed over, healed up almost instantly.
"That was clever," De Rol Le said, sounding only mildly put out that his nose was broken, his black blood dripping down across his lips. "You settlers are very clever. And we all saw what happened to those who came before, when they really discovered what they were searching for."
"What did they do?!" Relic yelled, angry at himself for letting the thing goad him into conversation. It had moved around as he spoke, always trying to get behind him. Its tentacles were at the ready, all four of them pointed at him, but he made no move to slam them forward like spears, as he had done before, in his worm-body.
"Oh, you don't know?" De Rol Le said, either actually surprised or convincingly faking it. "You'll find out soon enough, anyway,"
Relic thrust his sword at him in a savage lunge, but De Rol Le slid aside and grabbed ahold of the buster's flat sides and yanked it forward, sending him stumbling. De Rol Le slammed his fists down across Relic's, wrenching the sword from his hands. It fell with a clatter and a smell like burning as it sizzled against the damp surface of the raft. De Rol Le shoved his arms back, pinning them against his back and reaching forward, pulling them flush together, the back of his suit registering the unnatural cold of his body.
"Enough playing," De Rol Le said, voice hissing in his ear. "I have other things to accomplish. But first: I have a gift." he said, and before Relic could even register what had happened there were a series of sharp stabs across his chest.
His suit blared out warnings about compromised integrity instantly, but he knew what he was going to see already, in the fraction of a second it took for him to look down: all four of De Rol Le's tentacles stabbed in across his chest, the needle tips sunk down almost to the base. They were even aligned symmetrically, he thought, dull with shock, two on opposite sides of his chest with the other two lower, just below his rib cage.
He struggled against De Rol Le's cold grip, keeping him pinned back, but when the first surge of the serum came it practically knocked him off his feet. His legs buckled, his entire body feeling heavy, and he staggered, lightheaded. He sagged against De Rol Le, suddenly aware of his pounding heartbeat.
It burned as it surged through his blood, excess bulging out his veins near the injection sites like he had an {embolism}. His vision went fuzzy; he could dimly see the golden serum pump through the tubes, threads of cloudy fluid twisting down the tubes and reflecting the faded tunnel lights, but the passage itself-- everything beyond the glimmering twist of the serum-- was hazy and dim in his peripheral vision.
The burning spread all across his chest, like the dull soreness of bruised muscles turned all the way up into a fiery pain. His muscles jerked against his will and he fell out of De Rol Le's hold, jerking the needletips from his body as he slammed down against the platform, arms twitching spasmodically. He could still feel the ichorus fluid working inside him; the front of his suit was ripped up, parts of the thick rubbery mesh hanging in strips, and where his bare flesh showed through it was red and swollen, like he'd been stung by some gigantic insect.
He writhed towards his sword, his arms still uncooperative. He kicked, pushing himself across the water-splattered platform, completely unable to hear anything over the rushing in his ears. He grabbed at the hilt of his sword with clumsy fingers, knocking it back and forth more than picking it up.
De Rol Le's bare foot came down on the flat of the blade, pinning one of his hands beneath the wide hilt. With a single smooth motion he grabbed at the hanging, rubbery shreds of his suit and yanked him up. The suit gave a shrill complaint, sections of its grid going completely offline from the damage as he ripped it across his chest, the pulsing wiring along the inside fading to black. There was a dull thud behind him as his mag went completely out of sync and deactivated, both halves clattering down to the platform.
His tentacles flew forward again, two of them stabbing into his unprotected flesh, into the meat of his right pectoral. His vision dimmed away again, blacking out as he felt its acidic heat rush pump through his veins. He stumbled backwards, colliding with De Rol Le, and fell to his knees. He could feel his heartbeat through his entire body, from his scalp all the way down to his toes. His ragged breath rung in his ears, the rough panting sounding like it was coming from someone else. Blinded, he could still feel the swelling sting across his chest, the strange relief as De Rol Le shredded more of his suit, ripping all the way up to the neck and peeling it back, gaping open to let his red, bloated skin feel the cool, dank air.
He tried to grab the tentacles and pull them out, but his arms-- especially his right, and he could feel the needles move inside his muscles when he tried to move it-- felt strange and heavy, uncoordinated as he uselessly flapped them, shoving and spasming. He staggered to his feet, still tethered to De Rol Le, head pounding. After a moment he realized he could see the overhead lights whipping by, dimly but definitely there as his vision cleared. He looked down, and then wished he hadn't.
De Rol Le was... behind him, or he must be. His tentacles dangled down, reaching at him from behind at least. And then, where they met his chest-- where they were sunk into him-- his skin had gone from a hot, swollen red to a inhumanly smooth purple, thick layers of bloated flesh beneath and spreading further even as he staggered, hardly capable of standing up. Even as he stared dumbly, he felt the sting of his other two tentacles whip into the muscle of his right arm, the suit practically falling off as his skin broke out, red and inflamed.
The burn of the serum he was pumping into him almost knocked him off his feet again and he staggered back, into De Rol Le's waiting arms.
"Do you like that," came his voice, dark and deadly, the tone matched perfectly by surges of serum into him, "the gift I share with all; the perfect form."
He struggled uselessly, De Rol Le easily keeping him pinned. "You struggle now, but soon you will see the beauty of it-- how your flesh reworks itself to give you all you desire."
And one part of what he said was true, at least. As the serum pumped into his arm, muscle bloating and skin turning smooth, practically shining in the dim light, the broad muscles in his back strengthened enough to allow him to wrench himself out of De Rol Le's grasp, punch solidly across his body and send him flying back, his tentacles jerking out of his body with a painful wrench.
He staggered a little, but less than before, eyesight clear enough to see De Rol Le clenching his chest, a dark bruise already visible from where he'd hit.
And he... his right arm was monstrous. His skin was a deep, dark purple, rough and pitted, and thick like leather. But that was positively cosmetic compared to the rest of the alteration. His arm was massive. Even his bones must have grown; his right arm stretched all the way to his knee, and his muscles were absurd and hypertrophic, nothing like anything that ought to be on a human.
He moved his arm experimentally, unable to take his eyes off it. It moved fluidly, like an arm, with a distant heaviness in his shoulder from the sheer weight of it. He closed his hand into a fist and his fingers unexpectedly clacked against each other. His fingernails had thickened and darkened, until he hardly had fingertips anymore, just huge claws with a serrated edge.
And to accommodate this gigantic arm, the muscles in his back and chest had grown to match. He felt lopsided with one massive pectoral and trapezius, his skin flushed and red across his chest and back, reaching up to his neck. And from there, it... darkened, becoming an inhuman purplish-red-grey before fading to the dark purple of his arm. He was bleeding from the syringe wounds in his chest and back, but he couldn't even see where they had embedded into his arm; the flesh already healed up.
His suit was in tatters across his chest; shreds of it hanging from his left arm and abdomen, torn scraps littering the platform near him. Even the connections in his legs were dead, every single nerve terminal gone hard and inactive.
He looked up at De Rol Le, who stood there patiently with a faint smirk on his face as he had looked over his mutated body.
"What did you do to me," Relic said, but his voice came out flat, devoid of emotion. He wondered faintly if this was what shock felt like, or if it was De Rol Le's serum still at work.
"You primates have no capacity to just live in the moment, do you?" De Rol Le responded as he paced in a slow circle around him. Relic watched him warily. "Move your body. Feel its new weight. Your body has limits-- how weighty your muscle can become, before they tear from the bone; how dense your tissue can become, before you can no longer sustain it; how long you can exert yourself, before you need rest."
"My gift is to... remove those limits. Your mind comes from your body, after all, and now your body is only limited by your mind."
"I don't want to be a monster," Relic said, his voice low and hoarse, and lunged forward before De Rol Le could resume his monologue.
Although this much was true: he felt awkward and coltish with his body now, but it was fast, and strong. Not just in his arm, either. The burn of the serum rushed through his blood as he dove for his sword, and in a fraction of a second he had the blade in hand-- his right hand-- and slashed out at De Rol Le, who barely managed to dart back in time.
De Rol Le locked eyes with him and smirked, seemingly unconcerned with the dark bruise across his chest, or the black blood already drying and flaking off across his nose and mouth, and then the fight was on again.
He was definitely more well-matched already, he could tell. He was... faster, in some way he couldn't quite place. He saw and reacted with ease, seeing feints he had fallen for just a minute ago, and even though De Rol Le brought his tentacles into play, stabbing and twisting, it was with ease that he dodged them or blocked them with the flat of his blade.
He scored several hits, clean slices across his naked body, all of them oozing dark black for a brief instant before healing over, leaving only a flaking scab. But eventually, De Rol Le made a misstep; a stumble or slip, something unexpected from his new human form. He'd tried to be fancy; Relic had swung his sword in a cleaving slice and De Rol Le had neatly jumped up and landed on the flat of the blade. Even with the added weight, he could still hold the sword level in his right hand, extending his left to balance the middle.
And so he twisted the blade and De Rol Le toppled off, completely defenseless in midair with nothing to push against, moving only as fast as gravity pulled him. Relic rammed against him bodily and slammed him down against the platform. He pinned him by the neck, his huge hand spanning across his narrow chest.
Relic growled, an angry noise he'd never made before. His fingers twitched, digging gouges in the platform as his grasp tightened around De Rol Le's body.
De Rol Le spoke, like he wasn't afraid in the least. "So you see now, the worth of my gift. A human like you were would stand no match against me, but with only the slightest changes to your body... you are almost a match."
Before Relic could respond to that, De Rol Le struck again. His tentacles whipped out, bending around to plunge into his back with a series of sharp pinpricks. They were trailing serum before they even hit him; thick golden fluid splashed across his back in bursts just before they pierced his skin.
He roared at the first heady rush, the burn of the serum coming quicker and less painful this time. What was worse was that he could tell it was the same thing; some new sense opened up in his mind and he could suddenly tell that the compound pumping into him now was the exact same thing as before, just now he was... acclimated to it.
He groaned and collapsed, the surge of the serum still making him go slack. He sprawled out on top of De Rol Le's slim form, and now he positively radiated heat. De Rol Le had been inhumanly chill before, but now his crafted body burned impossibly hot, hot to the touch to match the burn through his body.
"Stop," he said, his voice sounding rough and deep as his body grew and lengthened.
De Rol Le just laughed softly before kicking him off and standing up. "Listen:" he said, as Relic struggled to breathe, lightheaded still. "I was not the one who shaped your body like that. I just gave you the potential. You said stronger, you said faster. You say this body is monstrous, and it is-- but it is your own doing. No matter how loudly you say it disgusts you, a large part of you wants exactly it."
Relic yelled and the sound came out of him as deep roar. He lunged towards De Rol Le, still staggering and dizzy but fast enough now to catch him, his new claws opening deep furrows across De Rol Le's body. They bled black, as always, and closed up seamlessly after the barest moment.
"You love it," De Rol Le said, grinning even as he tore his body open, again and again.
Relic yelled again and attacked him again, but he dodged the blows which would have killed him-- which must have killed him-- and took the rest unflinchingly. Relic's arms were streaked with his black blood, hardly visible except as a glossy shimmer on his right arm, and he didn't even register the wet dripping down his arm until he saw the light.
His skin had separated into blocky plates, and in the gaps between there was something fiercely glowing, green-blue like photon energy. In spots it seeped painlessly out of him, winding down his arm across his hand, dripping in little globes from his clawtips. It stained the platform beneath, sinking heavily below the pooled water like mercury.
"You can't tell me I wanted to be turned into a monster!" he said, feeling a sick lurching in his stomach.
"What you want is often different from what you think you want," De Rol Le said, speaking with ease even though his teeth were stained black with his own blood. "I admit I had underestimated the power of your primate self-deception."
"Had I given you this gift, self-contained, wrapped up in a little package, what would you have done?" he said, stepping closer now that Relic was staring, unblinking, at his arm as the glowing liquid slowly flowed down it and dripped to the ground.
"You would have said you hated it, and that you wanted nothing to do with it, but... you would have kept it around. You'd care more about keeping it secret than getting rid of it. And perhaps you wouldn't use it, for a time. But eventually... you would be in a life-or-death situation, or tracking something that had passed beyond your senses, or simply, eventually, because you realized you wanted to."
"You'd justify it to yourself, because it seems that is all you primates do. You'd say 'even from a horrible source, it could be useful.' Or 'I'll use it against those who gave it to me.'"
"But you'd use it and turn it to your own aims. Perhaps you'd feel guilty, or like you were turning yourself into a monster. But you'd be following the path of your desire. First, this. Then... something new."
"I just do not have the patience nor the time for you to happily acknowledge and move beyond all your foolish mental barriers. So I gave it to you. Not some fighting tonic or evil mutation, but the power to do what you will and be what you want. This is simply the beginning."
De Rol Le narrowed his eyes as he roared and dashed towards him. He was suddenly moving fast, much too fast, and before he could even react De Rol Le had whipped around him and kicked him, impossibly, to the ground.
"Listen," he hissed in his ear as his tentacles wound around his arms and sinewy neck, "We have something of a deadline, and you are a part of this, and I am not interested in you yelling and screaming and denying what it is that you really want, when it is perfectly obvious to anyone, now."
De Rol Le's weight on top of him was close to being imperceptibly light, and his tentacles weren't
[...]
"I should have known. Your primate brain reaches for the low-hanging fruit first, after all. Muscles and cock. Strength and virility. Not so important in the long run, but perhaps once you get used to them you'll realize you want something greater.
"Shut... up" Relic panted out, hoarse and angry even as his cock throbbed up huge against his stomach, dusky and red, veins throbbing along the entire massive pillar. He felt hazy again, but not the staggering, drugged stupor of before. It was more like his mind was being pushed aside by a whole new set of desires, ones that overwhelmed any objections with only the sheer strength of the sensations that rushed through his body.
De Rol Le reached out and he actually arched into his touch, as he grasped around his impossibly thick cock. His entire body felt a thousand times more sensitive, from the hairs pricking up in goosebumps along his back to the cool, wet brush of the air across the soles of his feet, and even the wet pulsing throb from his new arm, still dripping out the heavy luminous fluid.
But most of all it was centered on his cock, sticking straight up and impossibly solid and heavy. It had grown past the thickness of one of his arms--his new arms--and that meant it was almost as thick around as De Rol Le's more normally-sized chest. The tip was a deep red, almost as dark as his arm, and it faded slowly, staining most of his cock a deep, dusky color. Just the feeling of the wet wind streaming across the sides of it make him drool out precome slowly, sliding down his shaft, and De Rol Le's slight touches made him erupt, spurting precome in wet streams that splattered heavily across the entire platform.
He opened his mouth, not sure if he was going to curse or yell or roar but what came out instead was a long hissing exhale as De Rol Le stroked one of his hands against the length of his cock, still thickening and stiffening further, completely absurdly oversized already. And, as much as much of him hated the thought, a heady, flushed part of him wanted to see it bigger, thicker, throbbing harder.
As if in response — definitely in response — his cock throbbed again, its surface glistening as it rippled, veins bulging out in a thick netting as the shaft bloated slowly, his skin stretching like elastic. It shuddered bigger and bigger, jutting straight up, through De Rol Le's loose grip, the head spurting precome like a fountain. He stroked up and down the massive shaft, and the touch felt bizarre against his hypersensitive skin. It didn't feel like touch; the slight pressure of the touch was overwhelmed by the sliding friction across his slick skin, like soft sandpaper, their skin scraping together so briefly and lightly. His blood thundered through the shaft and he could feel the flow change, minutely, at De Rol Le's touch, pushing slightly against his bulging veins, the pressure through it increasing, the vein standing out as a solid half-circle from the body of his shaft.
His cock was as thick around as one of his legs, swelling larger, and his hips shifted and stretched, the bone warping like it was made from putty as his hips widened to fit the mammoth cock between his legs.
De Rol Le pressed his entire body against him, his slick, soft skin rubbing against the length of his shaft. His out stretched arms wrapped around the fat, bloated head, rubbing against his pulled back foreskin, fingers rubbing through wrinkled layers of skin, rubbing up against the super-sensitive strip of skin connecting his foreskin to the head, making his every sense white-out as the pleasure coursed through his body, so much like the acidic burn through his blood.
He didn't even remember coming; the pleasure pouring up through his veins left like it pushed away everything else, until he was in a bodiless void, pleasure pouring into the pin-prick consciousness that was him, overloading everything. And when it finally faded, cutting off the flow and bringing him back to where he was panting for breath, spread out on a rocking, jerking platform, dim lights whipping past him as the air grew warmer, he, and everything around him, was coated in something that was probably come, thick and white-golden, coating his shaft and a opaque layer across his entire body, spreading
vvv--- outdated; need to work in de rol le's monolog at the end into an actual conversation (while they fight?)
He groaned and collapsed, directly on top of De Rol Le. He had been so cold before, but now he was radiating heat, practically steaming in the cold, dank air of the tunnel. He groaned, flushed and dizzy as De Rol Le arched up against him, grinding his slim body against his bulky form. He felt two of his needles pull out of his upper back and he swayed towards them, sighing like he missed them inside him. But then they plunged back into him, lower on his back, and he actually moaned as he felt the heat of the serum suffuse him.
He felt... he felt drugged, and dizzy, and lightheaded as the serum suffused his body. When the syringes finally pulled out of him he let out a low moan, pleading for them back.
But De Rol Le just stood there, swaying with the platform, his tentacles wavering back and forth. He looked down at him, grinning, as the haze of the drug slowly faded.
His mouth felt dry; tasted awful. He tried to talk, an unintelligible dry rasp. "What did you do to me," he finally managed to rasp out, hoarsely.
"You humans," De Rol Le said, rolling his eyes. "you have no capacity to just enjoy the moment, do you?"
De Rol Le paced around his prone form, and he suddenly realized just how heavy he felt now.
"I gave you what you wanted," De Rol Le continued, still pacing. Relic followed him with his head, feeling like his body was too heavy to move. "Or something like it, anyway. It's not hard to read your mind, and it's always stronger, more powerful, better equipped to fight off the forces of evil." De Rol Le smirked, showing off his shark teeth. "Clichéd, but I suppose it's what I ought to expect from your kind."
"I didn't--"
"Yes you did," De Rol Le interrupted. "You love being in control and you love fighting and you probably make up diversions about how you only fight the unjust and only dominate those who would wreak havok if left uncontrolled... but it doesn't matter."
He stooped down by Relic's side, trailing his long, mottled fingers across his skin. "Your diversions are of no interest to me... I'm only interested in your body, and your desires."
Seeing Relic's surprised expression, he laughed. "Not like that... or like that, eventually, because that's part of what you're so busy denying in yourself. But my gift is the gift of growth-- after all, you primates have certain limits. You have limits upon the ways you can grow-- based on your body type, or your digestion, or any number of arbitrary constraints."
"What I am interested in is what happens when those constraints are removed," De Rol Le said, his voice almost lost under the rushing water. "When your only limit is what you wish to be."
"You can't mean I wanted this!" Relic yelled, thrashing around until he managed to sit up. His whole body felt denser, even if it looked mostly unchanged. Except... except for his arm. It was like his flesh had hardened and split open in long cracks. Something strange and luminous was slowly seeping out between them, dripping in vivid green and purple down his arm. It didn't hurt at all; he hadn't even noticed it until he saw it. "Wanted to be turned into a monster!"
De Rol Le shifted backwards, out of range of both his arms. "What do you think would happen if I had just given you this gift but not forced its activation?"
"You would have hated it, probably, and you would want nothing to do with it because it had come from something like me. But, eventually... you would use it. Maybe just a little, to aid your training. You'd justify it to yourself, of course-- 'There's no use in wasting it, even if it's from a horrible source', you'd tell yourself. 'I will use it against those who gave it to me, and that will be a just irony', you would say."
"And then you'd go further and further, testing the limits. You'd feel guilt, perhaps, about it, but your own desire would push away your idiotic morality of self-abnegation. Thankfully."
"And eventually you'd end up like this," De Rol Le said, and spread his hands as if putting Relic's body on display. "Not as an ending, of course... but as your start."
"And since I, personally, am impatient-- and since we do not have several years to wait around while you come to terms with your desires-- I decided to speed things up a bit."