I'd Do Anything for Warmth

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I woke up.

Strictly speaking, the body I am kept inside woke up.

My awareness had been trailing Joanna the whole time. She was doing precisely what the books say a person does upon first receiving power. She grasps that power, and grasps how much she might do with it, and the moment she begins to see what she could become, a little greed creeps in.

It feels like watching someone who has been reborn into another life.

Was I like that, too?

I have power now, don't I? The sort of person who pretends to follow the rules while secretly worshipping strength, with no thought at all for the story being told. A munchkin.

I like munchkins. They do what they want to do.

Whoever is running the board, and whoever is playing alongside them, may well despise it — but is there anything else that spills dopamine quite like a strength you can understand at a glance? And beyond that, taking power from the being that grants it and then surpassing the one who gave it to you is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠entirely too much fun.

I don't mind, though. So long as the warmth keeps coming, I couldn't care less whether the person who received power from me turns out a butcher or a hero. What I want is an automated-factory simulation, not an RPG.

So let me set some goals. First, I need more harvesters. I pushed myself into a faint light, and it gave me back a light that was bright and warm. Isn't that the same as spending resources to harvest warmth?

In a place with no one else around, the first thing I can do is confirm the power. I try to change my clothes. Rebecca Rolfe's mind holds a few outfits she wore when she had somewhere important to be.

A few. Only a very few.

If I press just a little of myself into Rebecca Rolfe, cracks bloom across the skin and a dark-purple mist seeps out. It doesn't truly split — that's only how it presents. Still, I can govern it now, so that it comes more slowly than last time. The mist unmakes the nightclothes wrapped around me, turning them back into dark-purple fog, and once I am bare it settles into an outfit built around a stiff, thick jacket of dark brown.

It is not, by any measure, clothing for the season. When the girl called Rebecca Rolfe had her family murdered and was taken, it was a season of short sleeves. Not much time has passed since then, so it is still summer. If I can help it, I would rather look none too bright — but clothes that ignore the season are a different species of foolishness.

Something more... how should I put it? A white dress? Would that be impossible?

Oh. It worked.

The back is cut deep, but the skirt is reasonably long, and the dress itself is the kind that flatters a figure. Huh. Did she own a dress like this? Hm. I don't think so. But it came out, so I'll count it as good. It's pretty on the whole, and that is enough. It feels less like I am wearing it than like I am dressing a thing I operate, and if the thing is pretty, so much the better.

You choose a female character in games too, don't you?

There is a strange sense of the body being squeezed, but none at all of being in disguise. I was a man once, yet every sensation from that time has had the color bled out of it.

What I feel instead is cold. Still.

The chill drives all the way down my spine. It is so cold, so terribly cold, and the longer it goes on the colder it becomes, without any end in sight. A real body would reach a point where the cold turned hot, or ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a moment when cold gave way to pain. There is nothing like that here. Perhaps it isn't truly growing cold without limit. But that is how I feel it, and that is what matters — that I feel it so.

So I want more warmth.

It doesn't matter that the clothes are a woman's, or that the body is a woman's, or that I can look at Joanna Smith and Rebecca Rolfe at the same time. It is enough that the dark-purple mist spilling from this body can become all sorts of things. At least I won't have to fret over what to wear.

Time, then, to return to increasing the harvesters.

A fair while has passed since I woke, and Hieronymus still hasn't come. Shall I sort out Joanna Smith while I wait?

The first harvester climbed one more rank overnight. By the emblems, she now stands with those I saw on the first day inside the second circle. The room changed. The furnishings changed. Through a clean mirror she took in the whole of her altered self, and then, without sleeping, she knelt, pressed her palms together, and prayed without a word.

A little while ago Hieronymus came in. He gave her the task of tending me, then led her to a room and introduced it as the place where she would look after me. The room was empty. But something strange hung where her eyes fell — disguised as ornament, though the sight of it left Joanna uneasy. She didn't say so. She lowered her gaze and hid the anger and the suspicion. Whether Hieronymus noticed, I couldn't tell. The meeting ended without incident, and afterward he came to me with Joanna beside him.

Through all of that I sat quietly on the altar and waited.

Hieronymus came down a long corridor and opened the door of the room where I was. At the same moment a large man with a tattoo across his face stepped in from my side of things.

"Hello."

I greeted him first.

"Yes. Good day. I cannot say how you passed the night. A room has been prepared to receive you, and I have come to escort you there."

He had been watching, of course. There was no need to ask. I came down off the altar and walked up to him.

"This body needs to eat. Living bodies ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠are strange."

I was making it plain that I am not human, and at the same time that I must still obey the rules of living things. The moment an unknown being eats, it falls to the level of an animal that requires meals. Perhaps it also offered the impression that I could be killed. Very faintly, killing intent flickered across his face.

Hehe.

The unfortunate are made to see the face of the person who means to kill them. I have more memories than I can count of seizing up at that expression — far too many to number — and so I see it. I have licked a very great deal, for the sake of warmth.

"Then I will have the one who tends you prepare a meal. Come with me, Miss Rebecca Rolfe."

Wasn't that the moment to offer a hand? But he has seen what becomes of people bound to me, and he would rather not touch me.

I followed Hieronymus out of the special chapel. Yes — according to Joanna Smith, this is where those of high rank pray. More than likely, it is where Hieronymus raises his elite. In this cult, it may be the last node of the tree I need to reach. There is every chance he casts me out before then!

He isn't an enemy yet. Not yet.

In a hierarchy like this there can only ever be one seat at the top, so if I mean to multiply harvesters and stand up a factory for drinking in warmth, I will have to win over whoever claimed that seat first, or else remove them. And since they belong to a cult, I won't feel so much as a twinge of conscience no matter how they die. That is genuinely pleasant.

If they were ordinary people, I might have felt a little of it. But this place holds nothing except the wicked. Their pasts are pitiable, every one of them — people who tried and tried and still could not get free, until there was nowhere left for them but here.

Thinking that, I stepped outside with Hieronymus, and Joanna, waiting at the entrance, saw me and bowed her head in a hurry. No one said anything in particular. She simply fell in behind me, as if it were natural, and the three of us went on toward the room he had prepared.

We met only five people along the way, and every one of them was a high officer from inside the first circle. Three men. One woman. One with a dog's head.

A doggy!

Come to think of it, this world has races like the beastfolk. They aren't so much a people of the upper strata or the lower as they are a difference of the kind I knew between white and Black. There is discrimination, of course. There could not fail to be. So long as something is alive, it cannot tell itself from others without that. More simply: can I eat it, or will I be eaten? A basic program for sorting the two.

I do want, later, to push myself in and feel how fluffy they are. They seem as if they would hold a great deal of warmth.

Thinking that, I stepped into the cage they call my room. Seen with my own eyes, the thing fixed to the ceiling breathes out a far more ominous air.

This is why Hieronymus is a potential enemy. Had I relaxed even a little, I wouldn't be watching him this closely. But he is also the sort of man who could swell a cult like this until it was large enough to summon me.

I went in quietly and sat on the handsome sofa. Then I spoke to him.

"Please give me a meal. And I need warmth."

"Warmth? Shall I have clothes brought?"

At my words Joanna started toward a drawer farther in, but she never reached it. Hieronymus stopped her.

"You will prepare the meal. And the warmth this one speaks of will not be warmth of that kind. See the rest for yourself."

Joanna nodded and went out. From the way she headed, she was bound for the kitchen. Before the edema swelled her skin, she had worked in a restaurant as well.

I turned my view back and looked at Hieronymus, standing before me. Well then. Time to speak with him about what comes next.

"Hieronymus. Can you make use of my power?"

He answered like this.

"Yes. If it can be done, might you make a great many?"

Oho.

Here I would like to say all of them, right now! — but I am going to draw this out a little longer. I need time to lick them one by one and learn this world.

"I think I could do five or six a day, the way I did Joanna. But if their luck is bad, they might explode."

Hieronymus thought it through, and when the arithmetic seemed finished he nodded.

"From now on, when I ask, you need only do so."

"Yes. I'll do that, Hieronymus."