>>5844277“Please,” you said, approaching and kneeling beside Costella, with outstretched hand. “Trust me.”
“Trust you?!” she asked, incredulous. “You turned me into this!”
“You’d have been dead, otherwise,” you reminded her.
“Better dead than… Than THIS!” she snarled—no, HISSED, for the subtle lip which her split tongue and lizard-like lips now gave her.
You winced at that, knowing from your master’s assistants—de facto jailers for the half-baked test subjects awaiting your final treatment—that Costella had attempted twice to take her life while you were seeking a permanent solution to her unappealing transfiguration.
“I know,” you said. “I’m sorry. But that’s… That’s why I’ve not stopped looking for a way to fix this… To make you more like you were before.”
“’More’ like I was before?” she spat, the words coming out like an accusation—and like a sob. “I just want… I just want my face back! I just want my LIFE back!”
“I’m trying,” you apologized. “I think I’ve found a way to do it. But… I need you to trust me, to come with me.”
Costella still hesitated, and for a moment you thought you’d have to surrender to her stubbornness, and to move onto the next candidate… But it was Izzy who came to YORU rescue,t his time.
“What have you got to lose?” she’d asked quietly, with the blunt but knowing tone of one who shared the sentiment. “Either it works… Or you can kill yourself later, if it comes to it, right?”
You didn’t turn around to look at her. You were afraid to see the expression on Izirina Henzler’s face when she said those words, her tone so matter-of-fact, so neutral. You were afraid you’d see a resolution there—the comfortable resolution of someone who had made that same resolution.
(She… She wouldn’t, would she?)
At any rate, Costella agreed, acquiescing toa company the two of you. The ritual—he first stage of a lengthy treatment, anyway—was to take place at the week’s end, beneath the new moon… But for it to work, you’d need to be close to nature, away from the civilizing, nature-obliviating effects of human expansion. The Bonum Chaoticum were not Gods Above, or Gods of Order—they were WILD Gods, Gods of Freedom and of untamed places. Old Maple Hill itself was the obvious choice, but to travel so far with Costella in particular would be a challenge—she looked rather monstrous, made over in the image of those who had infected her, and your ‘cure’ had only made her more reptiloid. But there were other green places, not manicured like the nobility’s gardens but overgrown enough to qualify as 'true' nature...
Just outside of Hawksong.