When I got back to our room, Eve still wasn't back yet, so I lazed around on the couch thinking about various ways to solve the whole Princess Adeline situation until I fell asleep.

...I was waiting for someone to pick me up as I stood next to a road covered in potholes, red and orange leaves rustling past along the ground as a cold breeze gusted along. It was slowly getting into the evening, and I looked around the desolate street. Was I waiting for a car, a train, a bus...? I wasn't sure. I was here at the time I was supposed to be, and they were not. I heard a whimpering sound, and looking back, I saw trees, far darker shadows as they almost obscured what little sunlight there was left. But someone was in trouble and needed me, so I took a deep breath, and walked into the dark forest, my heart beating fast as I walked closer and closer to the whimpering.

"I'll be good, I'll be good, please Mistress...." Was that Sasha, maybe? The me-Sasha or the other-Sasha? No, the voice was a little off. I swallowed, and continued on into the darkness, trying to move my lips to say something but it was hard to get any speech out, and I was entangled by vines, and I struggled to move, until I forced my eyes open and realized that had all been a dream.

...well. Not the whimpering part. A foxgirl was kneeling on the floor, arms wrapped around herself as she repeated apologies and self-condemnations, "I was wrong, I'll be good, you're the only existence in the world that matters, I love you, please, please, I've changed for you like I'm supposed to...."

I looked down at her and crawled over, sitting on the edge of the bed. "...You doing okay, Wren?"

She looked up at me pitifully, and I slid down off the bed, and started to envelop her in a hug, and she tensed, pushing me away, "No, don't get close to me, Mistress didn't say it was allowed..."

Clearly whatever Zince's program was was not having instantaneous results, but to be fair, Eve had fucked up her mind for days. Possibly longer, in an experiential sense... she could've spent months in solitary, been thoroughly tortured, any number of things... I can't imagine the once-strong Lady Wren was this easy to break. "Can we hold hands?"

She shook her head. "I... I just need to be loyal to our Mistress, so I can't do anything like that unless she says it's okay, sorry, I know you're trying to help, none of this is your fault...."

I pulled the quilt off the bed and wrapped it around her, and she hugged herself underneath it, trembling.

"Thank you..." Even her voice was trembling, weak.

"What exactly did Eve do to you?"

"I... I should have given into her advances, so she didn't remove my family from power... I definitely should've acquiesced and become her concubine when she offered me the chance, but I spit in her face instead... so she took my second family from me too. One of my dearest friends had brought me in... her family was so nice to me... but when I told Mistress that she couldn't kill them, she made me watch as she executed them one by one for their crime of sheltering me. It was my fault, I shouldn't have let them shelter me, I shouldn't have tried to protect them." She started sobbing quietly.

"...what the fuck, Eve."

Wren glared at me, suddenly full of nervous energy again. "No! You can't say something like that, we only exist to serve Mistress!" She shook her head, looking down at the ground. "This reality only exists because Mistress wills it, she's a goddess, all we can do is offer our miserable existences to her... she wouldn't throw me away, right? She said I was made specifically to serve her, that was the entire point of my existence... I've learned my lesson... is it the purpose of my existence to be tortured by the lack of her presence?"

I reached out to pat her shoulder, then withdrew my hand before I touched her. I really didn't know how to solve this, and I had kind of put Wren out of my mind once Princess had said she'd have Zince take care of her, because I really didn't know how to solve it. "Your purpose isn't to be tortured... if she doesn't value you like you deserve, maybe you can find someone else to live with... Zince seems pretty nice?" Past murders and skull-collecting aside. But then again, Zince seemed positively safe and sane and consensual compared to Eve.

"I can't get close to anyone else, she'll show up and end everything... she did that so many times, until I was sure not to get close to everyone, to just worship her and get as close to her as I could. And I've been doing that! I'm a good girl now! I slipped out once Zince was asleep, and I'm waiting here for Mistress!" She stared at me with teary eyes, pleading with me to understand.

"...Mistress said I was allowed to touch you," I lied, and moved forwards, wrapping her in my arms.

She froze and trembled uncertainly for a moment, and then clung to me desperately. "Thank you, Mistress, for allowing Sasha to touch me... I'll be good... please take me back, Mistress..."

I stroked her back gently, unsure what to do to truly comfort this distraught girl. Eve had fucked with her mind something terrible and done generally terrible things to her... and well, the part about semi-accidentally making moves on her was definitely my fault. I ruined her life once, and then Eve did it a second time and twisted her into... this. Well, she had probably changed me too, given that my first reaction to waking up with her hand around my throat was to beg for forgiveness. But I wasn't quite this mentally helpless.

"...you know she has mind magic, right?"

"...no, it's you that has mind magic. Did... did you help correct my misunderstandings of the world?" ...oh. She thought I had helped mindfuck her. "Thank you, Sasha!" She whimpered softly, nuzzling against my shoulder, tail wagging vigorously, and I petted her head with one hand as I held her close with my other arm.

"Shhh... it's okay... we'll figure something out...." Fuck, I needed to help her somehow, and apparently what Eve had done to her was not easily undone. I saw some swelling in her neck, and stroked her there. "You okay?"

"Oh, yeah... Zince used a little of her venom, she said she was trying to calm me down... she was being really nice, like you said, but maybe it was a trick, and even if it wasn't, Eve would've hurt or killed her if I had stayed with her obediently... my body belongs to her, after all. No, everything I am belongs to her. I exist only to serve her... is this because I selfishly asked for her to give me a child? I just wanted to make her happy...." Wren was devolving into sobbing now as she pressed her body close against mine, and all I could do was hold her and stroke her head.

It was a little cute how helpless and devoted she was, but that thought just made me more nauseous about how I had been involved in all of this, inadvertently. Without my foolishness in multiple cases, she could've lived a happy life. Letting Eve have power at all felt like a mistake... but also, if I tried to break away from her and she let me, wouldn't she just condemn some other poor soul to this sort of existence as she desperately sought some form of connection?

"There's got to be a way to fix this..."

I was more talking to myself than Wren, but she perked up at those words, and pressed her nose against mine, staring into my eyes from an uncomfortably close distance. "Yes! How do I fix myself so that Mistress forgives me again?"

"No, I mean...." I trailed off. I couldn't exactly tell her that she was just a poorly made replacement for me, and that our Mistress had no interest in her, would've left her discarded or probably even killed her if I had asked. Would killing her be kinder? No, I refused to think that sort of way-- that was just the easy way for me personally, if she died. She deserved to be happy, although I severely doubted that would be possible at Eve's side for her, or even without Eve.

"I'll do whatever! I'm happy to be her chair or punching bag for the rest of my life if it means she allows me to serve her!"

...fuck, a willing torture subject. I might be jealous if I wasn't so worried for her right now. "Mmm, no... look, for now, let's just get you off the floor and into bed where it's more comfortable... are you thirsty?"

She nodded a little, and I got her a cup of mildly herbed water from the magically self-cooling pot that had come with the room, and she drank it up, crying a little more as I put my arm around her.

I saw Zince slithering up towards the bed out of the corner of my eye... how long had she been here? I tried to signal with my eyes that maybe now wasn't the best time, but she ignored me, and I hugged Wren a bit closer,

She coiled, then lunged suddenly, and I tried to shield Wren with my body, but just got knocked to one side, and Wren started screaming until she sunk her fangs into her neck, and then she stopped in a few moments.

"You didn't kill her, right?" I reached over and took Wren's wrist to feel her pulse, but it still beat, if a bit less quickly than I'd like to feel.

Zince looked over at me, and tried a bit of a smile, although it just highlighted how exhausted she looked. "Not yet, I don't have permission. For now, I'll take her back, though." She picked up Wren, and put her over her shoulder.

I moved closer, grabbing onto Zince's arm. "What do you mean, not yet, you don't have permission?"

"You heard her. She's fixated on Eve to an extent that... I think she's going to be focused on Eve until she dies. I could see that focus switching from servitude and worship to vengeance if I succeeded at disabusing her of the notion of Eve being an all-powerful goddess. She can fight off mind magic, so she's going to keep on returning to what Eve made her into. My professional opinion is she needs to die, but it's the Princess's call."

"I... she was a good person, before Eve and I messed her up like this."

Zince stared at me blankly. "A lot of good people get caught up on the wrong side of things and die. It's how wars go, even wars for succession."

I started to sob, clinging tighter to her arm.

Zince looked away. "I'll make sure to kill her without pain, if it comes to it. I am... very experienced at killing, if nothing else." She pushed my shoulder back, until my fingers slid off her arm-- she was much stronger than me.

"I'll stop you!"

She looked back to me. "...and even if you somehow did, then what?"

I didn't have an answer, and just glared at her, blinking back my oncoming tears as best as I could. "She's my friend!"

"She was your friend." Zince stared at me for a long moment, trying to keep her face a dispassionate mask, although I think I glimpsed more than one emotion underneath her placid expression. "Make your arguments to Princess Asperia, she's in charge of both of us. If you continue to fight me, I'll put you to sleep, and you won't be in shape to make any arguments."

My shoulders slumped, and I nodded slightly. "...okay...."

"And don't expect her to get swayed by that emotional stuff. Come up with an actual reason Wren will be useful to us, or at the very least not a detriment."

"...like what?"

"If I had any answer for that whatsoever, Sasha," said Zince as she slithered towards the doorway without a backwards look, "I wouldn't be arguing for her death."