Myth//OS - Chapter 86 (Patreon)

I felt a panic ping from my first Sentient Ebonshroud about halfway back to the apartment. Although we were still pretty far from each other, simple emotions could pass through the connection I had with her.

“Faster?” I asked the taxi driver. It was just me—I’d already reabsorbed the Nyx-clone and cat. It was much easier to get a taxi when I wasn’t roving around with an Anarch. “Big tip.”

“How big?” The taxi driver’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, and he met my eyes through the rearview mirror.

”Depends.” The panic ping made even me feel a bit panicked by extension.

“Then buckle up, miss.” The driver smirked and hit a button on his dash. Armored shutters moved up and over the windows, and the paint job on the car started to shift in a feat of technological prowess. Soon, red and blue flashing lights erupted over top.

”This illegal?” 

“Does it matter?” The taxi driver laughed maniacally and swerved out of traffic to blitz down the road. “Out of the way, jackasses!”

I arrived back at my apartment in less than ten minutes. Considering how far of a drive it was from one side of Aegis to the other, that was down right terrifying. More than once I thought we were going to die as my speed-demon of a taxi driver blitzed down the road. I gave him a two thousand nyte tip.

With my box of goodies in hand, I headed into the apartment building and up to my apartment. An Ebonshroud tendril shot out and imitated the key to the apartment, easily opening the door for me. 

“Hello?” I asked as I stepped into the apartment and set my box down. Almost immediately, I spotted the source of the panic ping.

“What the actual hell Aylin?” Kali glared at me with her arms crossed while my slime-girl just kept watching Glitch Scouts on the living room TV. “What did I tell you about kidnapping kids?”

Woah, she made me sound like some kind of monster. It was just one time with Lucia! Not like I did this kind of thing every week! “Not fair.”

”Just because she’s a fan of your favorite TV show doesn’t mean you can just nab her!” Kali’s glare turned even more venomous. “Seriously, do you have any sense in that head of yours?”

[Nighteye goes against her better judgement. No no, Kali might actually have a point here.]

Butt out of this, cat. You’re the one with no judgement. Who the hell goes on the Grid and gets corrupted that quickly? “Not a kid.”

Kali frowned, and looked back toward the slime-girl. “Uh, yuh, she is.”

I just shook my head and moved over to the Sentient Ebonshroud. She’d changed a bit since I last saw her, and now looked like a mix of me and Lana. I picked her up by the back of her neck, and pulled her away from the TV. “Nuh-uh.”

She finally seemed to realize I was there, and threw her arms around my neck while dangling in my grasp. ”Mommy!” 

My heart stuttered in my chest. That was a word I never thought I’d hear in my lifetime. Heh—to think I’d hear it here of all places. I used to be desperate to hear my own kid call me that, but children were never in the cards for me. Miasma contamination and fertility didn’t mix well.

“Mommy?” Kali’s glare turned downright bewildered. Her jaw popped open in surprise, and my usually cool and collected roommate totally seemed to break down. “Since when did you have a kid?!”

”Don’t ever call me that again.” I shot a glare at the shit-stirring Ebonshroud. Did she even know what she was doing—wait, yeah, she did. I could feel the mischief through our link.

”Otay! Master!” She hugged me once more, this time even tighter. It was so very weird to be hugged by my own Ebonshroud.

”No.” I dropped her like a sack of bricks.

“Um?” She flopped onto the ground, and immedietly jumped back up to her feet. ”Mistress?”

Did I look like I wore leather? “No.”

”Big Sis?” The slime tilted her head cutely. In just a bit of time, not only had she nailed speech, but she’d also nailed acting cute. Just what kind of monster did the OS and I create?

”Aylin.” Just keep it short and sweet, please. There was no need for these titles, and definitely no need to call me anything remotely close to ‘Mom’ or ‘Mommy’.

“Mmm… No.” She threw my word back in my face and threw out her fingers into a cute V. It was a surprisingly good imitation of Lana. “Big Sis!”

“What the actual hell is going on?” Kali looked completely lost. Her expression rapidly shifted from anger to confusion, and then back to anger.

”Um…” How did I even explain this to her? Probably best to show her, right? I was much better at visual explanations than verbal. I grabbed the slime’s arm and casually ripped it off. “See?”

”Fuck! Aylin—“ Kali paused mid-lunge to the girl, and stared at the arm as it turned into black ooze. It drooped and melted before slowly moving back to the slime-girl and repairing her arm.

”That wasn’t very nice, Big Sis.” The slime-girl pouted and crossed her freshly repaired arms. “‘In a world where we can be anything, we should be nice!’”

I winced at the quote. Maybe having her watch and learn from Glitch Scouts wasn’t such a great idea? Right, this was a learning experience for me too. The next one I would just let loose on the Grid and hope everything went well. What was the worst that could happen?

“Are you okay? Did that hurt?” Kali ignored me and asked the slime-girl directly. What kind of monster did she think I was? ‘Course it didn’t hurt. 

“I can’t feel pain!” She replied with far too much cheer. Then, as if to prove the point, she ripped her own head off and dangled it around by the hair in a Dullahan display. 

“That’s…” Kali stared at the dangling head. “That’s something.”

”That’s perfect is what you mean!” The slime reattached her own head—only to have to twist it around a few times to get it back on right. “When Big Sis finally lets me fight, I can go to my heart’s content!”

”Go watch.” I waved a dismissive hand and shook my head. It seemed some of my battle addiction fed across our connection. Or, since Ebonshroud at the end of the day was for combat, her purpose was still combat? “I’ll talk.”

”Otay, Big Sis! Have fun!” The slime-girl cheerfully bounced back to the couch and hit resume on Glitch Scouts.

Kali pulled me into the kitchen were we’d have a little more privacy. Not that it’d matter all that much given the nature of my hive-mind like connection. ”She ome kind of slime girl? No—a type of construct?”

“Yep.” That was basically what the Sentient Ebonshroud was. Right, all three of them were just like ooze golems.

“Fucking hell, Aylin.” Kali rubbed at her forehead and leaned against the counter. “Why are you always doing something that makes my heart almost explode?”

“Sorry.” I shrugged. It wasn’t intentional, though I probably should’ve thought through leaving her behind by herself a bit more.

Most of Kali’s frustration and fury faded away, though it was replaced with a tired droop to her eyes. “A little warning next time? Nearly gave me a heart attack when I found some strange kid watching TV on the couch.”

“Sorry.” I hesitated for a moment, and then lifted my fingers. “Three of them.”

”’Course there is…” Kali nodded to the slime-girl who was obediently absorbing information from the TV once more. “She have a name?” 

“One?” I titled my head to the side and looked back toward One.

“Aylin…” Kali just sighed heavily, and her shoulders slumped inward. “You can’t just call her that.”

”Ein?” Ein seemed to like her new name as she happily watched TV.

”… doing it in another language doesn’t make it better.” Kali’s voice came with an aura of defeat to it that I’d never seen on my roommate.

“Ivy?” I kinda liked that one. Ivy Io had a nice ring to it. Really, she didn’t need a name, but it might help me keep them from getting confused in my head. 

”Better.” Kali nodded in approval. She wasn’t the one who seemed to approve, though. A moment later, the OS chimed mechanically in my head.

| Code: SC-OP-777-EXT |

| Aux Code: Awakened-1 |

| Ivy Io

Traits: [Ebonshroud], [Construct]

Skills: 0/1 |

Oh… I stared at the OS’s message in surprise. Just giving her a name did all that? And she could earn a Skill? How did that work? Wait, before that, didn’t that mean I could have ten Skills since they were all technically part of me? That totally broke my understanding of the OS. 

This is a good thing, though. This is really, really good. Even the top rank Wardens and Anarchs were stuck at having just seven Skills. This alone gave me way better scaling opportunities to reach their level.

I needed to name the others two. That old ode was proven true once more. Names definitely had power. The second one should be named Rowan. How about—let’s go with Willow? The OS chimed two more times, giving me status sheets for the two of them as well. 

“She need anything?” Kali drew my attention back to the matter at hand. “Like, food or anythign?”

“Shouldn’t.” I just needed to top her up on Ebonshroud every once in a while. Ivy was made from the stuff so she’d disappear after a couple days. Maybe in the future I could try to get some kind of time extending modification to the Trait, but I hadn’t seen anything like that quite yet. 

“Okay… deal with this, yeah?” Kali patted my shoulder and headed for her room. “I need to sleep.” 

Deal with what? I watched Ivy for a moment longer and then picked up my discarded crate of goodies. Ebonshroud flowed out of me, and I brought out Rowan and Willow as well. It’d probably do all three of them good to spend as much time out and exploring their new sentience as possible.

“Glug, glug…” Rowan, the second one, quickly started to adapt and shift shapes without my influence. It moved over alongside Ivy, and plopped down on the couch as the shape became more and more humanoid. A tendril picked up my Glass and started to scroll through the Grid.

I expected another girl, but Rowan went for some kind of teenage boy. Just like Ivy, he was incredibly pale with a dark mop of black hair on his head. Although their shape could change freely, the lack of colors from my Ebonshroud still held them back slightly.

Willow, on the other hand, completely forewent the humanoid shape entirely. It started with six legs, and then seemingly decided four was better. Slowly, the shape of a large, fluffy dog revealed itself. It was almost entirely white, though with a few highlights of black across the back.

Instead of going to hang out with her siblings, Willow just walked right up next to me, and lay down at my feet. “Woof.”

”Don’t want to. Be like. Them?” I asked the dog.

Willow just shook her head, and flopped onto her side with a low whine. Her eyes stared up at me like she was asking permission to stay as she was. “Woof?”

”Fine.” I shrugged and patted her on the side. It didn't really matter to me what shape they wanted to take in daily life. If Willow was happy as a dog, let her be a dog.

I headed to my room to start unpacking my box of goodies. Willow followed right behind me, and jumped up onto my bed while I happily dug through the first-edition merch. Tonight had been more than chaotic, but I was happy where I needed up.