The pain was intense, but brief. It took only seconds, and after scraping through every part of my body, inside and out, it retreated. The feeling of power, though, remained. And, festering beneath all of it--worse than the pain, stronger than the power--there was


    ...hunger.


    Fuck it was so bad. I was jittering, I could barely see properly, and it felt like my gut was being sucked violently inwards. It took my entire focus to resist letting it devour me whole, and I mostly stopped caring about any other part of the situation. Armed kidnappers, Anathema, a new Star Guardian... I knew I needed to deal with all of that, but I felt like I could put it on hold. First, I needed something to eat. Shouldn''t be too hard, and I''ll handle everything else afterwards.


    My vision was still distorted beyond comprehension, my hearing was under assault from a cacophony of infuriating noises, and my mouth--my mouth and nose were overwhelmed by the flavor of metal, of all things. I was not having a good time, and none of it could compare to the ache of hunger. There was a way forward, though. I would make it through this, I would satisfy my hunger, and then--and then I forgot what came next. Doesn''t matter. Focus on what you need to accomplish in the present. I needed to


    ...eat.


    So I did.


    I still didn''t know what was happening, but it didn''t matter anymore. I''d found food at some point, and it was the best thing I''d ever experienced. I couldn''t remember anything else to compare it to, but that didn''t matter either. What mattered is that it was good, it was mine, and there was--there wasn''t any more of it. It must have run out. No! No, it can''t. It can never run out. Never! I wasn''t done. In fact, I''d only just gotten started. Something told me there was more, somewhere, which meant what mattered now was finding it.


    I found it.


    This time, the food didn''t go down so well. I don''t think anything was wrong with it--if anything, this kind tasted better. It was just a little feisty. Like a hamburger that tried to keep slipping out of the bun, it was a bit troublesome to bite without making a mess all over yourself, but that didn''t stop it from being delicious. I soon got the hang of it, and I was--not satisfied. But I was content, at least, and the hunger quieted a bit. Hmm. What''s that one classic slogan? The snack that fights you back? No, that''s not quite right...


    Not right. Not right! Something wasn''t right. Something was--wrong, and I was going to get to the bottom of it. The food also seemed to have gone missing, which was a problem too--wait, that must have been the problem. Someone took the food away. That made me angry, until I realized it was me. Oh. I ate it. Then what was wrong, again? No food, the chronic ache insisted, but I knew that wasn''t the answer. Food is good. I like food, but there''s something else I''m missing. Why am I even thinking so much about food right now?


    Because I''m hungry, I knew, but... why?


    That simple thought shook something loose deep inside me. The hunger was still there, unchanged, but it was no longer so uncompromising. It was only one part of me, yet I''d been acting as if my entire existence was nothing but that most primal impulse. But I was so much more. Something is wrong, and I''m going to find out what. I didn''t rebel against my hunger, but I stopped letting it control me. Bit by bit, my consciousness freed itself from that dark pit. It felt like I was struggling back above the surface of liquid tar. It clung to me, tried to drag me back down, but every inch of myself that I freed made freeing the next one just a little bit easier.


    Before too long, I found myself perched on a tree branch, my head swimming and my chest heaving for air. My vision, while confusing, was back. I could also start making sense of the chaotic soundscape echoing around me. A lot of it was just gunfire. There was also the sound of branches snapping, and that weird buzzing I''d heard earlier, right after that whole thing with the star core. Wait--Star Core?


    A lot of things started rushing back to me in rapid succession. I began to remember the context of where I was and what was happening, both in terms of our ill-fated escape attempt and the bizarre kidnapping as a whole. How the hell was I not dead? I thought I was done for when I saw Sidekick get shot, but then an actual Star Core fell out of the sky and bonded with her, which is still just insane, and then--what? Did she somehow save me again? And where''d she even go?


    I started getting a grip on the situation again by looking around. I didn''t see anyone, even though I could hear that there was stuff going on fairly close by. Looking down, however, revealed that there was a half-eaten corpse directly below me. That looks new. Unlike what the skinners had done, which was just completely flay people, this one clearly had two very different sections. There was the lower half, which was basically the intact, and then there was the upper half. Or rather, there wasn''t. It''s just... missing. There''s not even any blood splatter. It was, if I''m being honest, really fucking weird. It was like someone had eaten half a Snicker''s bar, then left the other half still in the wrapper. The wrapper being, in this case, the lower half of the dude''s outfit.


    Like seriously what the hell.


    It was kind of funny, in a way. What was less funny was the possibility I was about to encounter whatever Anathema did this to him. I was pretty sure it was formerly a man, but that was honestly just vibes. I did know that it wasn''t Rambo or Sidekick, because the pants didn''t match either of theirs. Also concerning was how much the sight of it was making me hungry. Like what was the deal with the Snickers comparison? Stop being so weird, Alex. I teasingly flicked my own cheek. Uh oh.


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    Instead of the barely audible thwack of flesh on flesh I was expecting, I instead encountered the sharp click of metal scraping against metal. Naturally, that was both completely unexpected and super alarming. I immediately yanked my hand away, holding it up in front of my face to see what was going on. "Huh. Well that''s really new." Something less extreme might have made me freak out, but the current reality was so contrary to expectation that it looped around and I didn''t feel any particular emotion about it.


    By ''it,'' I of course meant the big, sharp, ultra-chonky, metal claws. I couldn''t quite tell if they were replacing my fingers or just covering them. In a way, it felt like there wasn''t much difference. Even though the top part didn''t make it beyond my wrist and the bottom part stopped at my palm, there was no distinct seam where metal met flesh. They just blended between each other. I didn''t even need to look to confirm my other hand was the same. I could feel it by rubbing my ''fingers'' together, which was a super odd sensation, now. I looked at it anyway.


    "Weird."


    Frankly, that was the only thing I could think of. It felt like a super lame reaction, though. Should I scream and sob and freak out or something? Like what''s a normal person''s reaction to this? I didn''t know. That fact annoyed me, because I took the ability to understand normal people rather seriously. Also, the claws weren''t the only thing. Flicking my cheek felt like metal on metal, not metal on flesh. Something was clearly going on with my face, and whatever it was, it was affecting my voice. Both of the times I spoke aloud, it sounded super weird. Like what I imagine a big church organ would sound like if it suddenly gained the ability to talk.


    It wasn''t even remotely hard to put together what was going on with me. Monstrous, impossible mutations? In the middle of an incursion? Salivating over someone else''s human leftovers? That last one wasn''t an exaggeration. I was hungry, and the sight of Mr. Trousers wasn''t doing me any favors. My saliva felt disturbingly thick and way too heavy. Unhinging my mouth, I tried spitting some of it out. I have to admit it was kind of fascinating to see what looked a lot like elemental mercury dripping down.


    I was getting distracted. The main point was that I was an Anathema. It was not subtle in any way. I''m pretty sure I knew the exact kind of Anathema, too--more evidence that I was a reality-eating monster and not some weird, other thing. Aside from the fact I still had some kind of relatively normal flesh, all of my traits were matched closely by something called a chamelium. Anathema names tended to be rather silly, but that one was possibly one of the worst. It was some kind of super lame pun between ''chameleon'' and the ''-ium'' suffix that was rampant across the periodic table.


    Chameliums weren''t very common, which meant I didn''t remember many details about them. That was unfortunate, and meant I would be reading up on everything I could find about them. At this point, I also realized that I was about to have some interesting new problems. Amusingly, I found it hard to figure out whether it was better to be a human among Anathema or Anathema among humans. There I was, fearing for my life just minutes earlier. And now here I am, once again wondering how the fuck I''m supposed to survive after literally just switching teams. Maybe there was a whole Anathema dimension that would be more welcoming. Can you just go the other way through breaches? Like is that even a thing?


    That thought gave me sudden pause. I knew I was an Anathema--I really had no doubt about that. The big alien thing that gave Sidekick a Star Core literally called me one to my face. In my mind, that was the clearest and most indisputable evidence anyone on the planet could ever hope for, so I didn''t think there was any use in acting otherwise. There was one glaring problem with that, though. I was Alexis Huntingfield. I was the same person I''d always been. I didn''t recall anything about slipping across realities and infecting someone on the other side, but I sure did recall a bunch of boring shit about growing up as a human girl on Earth. What fucking gives?


    Everyone knew that Anathema replaced the people they infected. That was some of the most basic stuff, and what was equally basic was that all Anathema--no matter how powerful--were mindlessly aggressive. The pieces just weren''t clicking together. Something else was going on here. There was something that made me different, and I needed to know why. My first thought, ironically, was to ask Dad. If anyone would know, it would be an experienced Star Guardian, and I seriously doubted by unusual Anthemaness was completely unrelated to being the daughter of a powerful Star Guardian.


    Yeah, I was definitely going to ask him, assuming he didn''t execute me on sight. Which honestly sounds like a problem for future Alex to worry about. For now, I decided to figure out what was going on here, and maybe take a bite out of Mr. Trousers. The thought of doing so didn''t bother me at all, since something else had already killed him. It wasn''t like he was using those legs, and I was now an Anathema. It was perfectly natural.


    And also tasty.


    There was also the matter of us now being in an actual incursion. Before the whole Star Core thing, it was well established that we weren''t inside of one. Now, however, the whole sky had darkened, and jagged purple lines streaked across it like frozen lightning. Classic incursion. Looks like whoever was trying to manually create an incursion succeeded. Well, assuming that was even their original plan.


    My golden, metallic claws made getting down the tree easier than it could have been. I was thankful for that, at least, and now it was time to grab a quick snack. But there was one problem. Mr. Trousers had left.


    I don''t mean that something else ate him. He left. I could still see the quasi-disembodied pants, and they were shuffling off in the direction most of the noise was still coming from. For a few seconds, I just appreciated the sight of it. It was neat, unexpected, and if I were going to live the rest of my life in hiding as an Anathema--well, might as well stop and smell the roses, right? Sometimes, it was about the little things.


    I decided I would follow the pants. I didn''t have any other ideas aside from sitting and doing nothing. Besides, Mr. Trousers were surely going to lead me towards something interesting. My life prospects as a whole might have just gotten dramatically worse, it was true. But, at this moment, I was now in a much better position than before. I also had a sneaking suspicion that the reanimated and ambulating ambulators had something to do with Sidekick bonding with a Star Core. Making corpses walk around wasn''t something low tier Anathema were known for, nor was it in any way a natural occurrence.


    And if he did lead me back to humanity''s newest savior? Then that would be all the better. I couldn''t not consider my overall route forward, and a bold--no, brazen--plan had begun to form. I wasn''t just going to meet up with Sidekick, and chameliums didn''t earn the ''chameleon'' part of our name for nothing. I was going to convince her that we''d both become Star Guardians. And if that failed?


    I''ll just kill her or die trying.