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Something was different – something was wrong – and that something had Tanzanite striding briskly down the hall towards the Queen's antechamber.

Even as she walked, she could feel them. The sharp, bone-like protrusions that jutted from her shoulder blades and hid beneath her hair, leaving her looking relatively normal... if you ignored the whole spikes sticking out of her back thing. Her skin had finally pieced itself back into place, the translucent patches now pale and opaque. The missing parts of her face had stitched together, another step in the slow and uncomfortable process which hadn't yet gotten around to fixing her left eye.

That didn't seem to stop that one-eyed face of hers from being quite expressive. Joy and fear and confusion and excitement, all of which coalesced into a wide eye look that roamed the halls in front of her. Left to right, pillar to pillar, the corners and the shadows and even the ceiling.

Always assume someone is trying to kill you. They are.

For all of this faults – his many, many, many faults – Charonite had trained Tanzanite well in that regard. It was unlikely that he expected quite so many people to be trying to kill her, but not even the first General-King could predict everything. In her current state, with the Negaverse as fractured as it seemed to be, Tanzanite did not doubt the possibility, even within their own ranks. If there was no respect for structure, no adherence to the chain of command, there was nothing to stop an ambitious hand from trying to slit her throat. The single-minded and focused weapon they had once been... gone. All of that work. Pain. Ambition. Heartbreak. Loss. Victory. Determination.

...Brotherhood.

All of it was just ******** gone.

Tanzanite might've mourned it more if she still give a damn about any individual soldier, but the participants of Hematite's betrayal had put the last nail in the coffin where Tanzanite stored all of her ******** Negaverse's favorite lab rat strode through any posted guards without question. Being an unsolved organic puzzle apparently had its up sides.

“My queen,” Tanzanite said with a deeply concerned voice as she approached.

Many in the Negaverse no longer knelt, or even bowed, and Tanzanite had been told it was by Laurelite's decree. However, since she had been technically dead at the time, that rule didn't apply and she would continue the long-honored tradition of showing proper respect to the avatar of a vengeful Sun goddess who was responsible for the significantly-sized bone shards jutting out of her back. Her body had been doing so well in rebuilding itself back to human form, so why this? Why now?

It was rather uncomfortable.

From that kneeling position, Tanzanite reach back to snap one of the fragile protrusions off, presenting it for the queen to observe in the palm of her outstretched hand. The nodules that moved beneath her skin and collected where she had just ripped the sharp bone away agitated Tanzanite. Her body refused to let its plans be interrupted, and she seemed to have no control over the unsettling process.

“Please tell me you know what the <********> this is.”

To Tanzanite's knowledge, Laurelite had never asked permission for anything, so it was unsurprising to feel her fingers brushing the thick indigo hair away. As some of the strands became tangled, Tanzanite reached back and roughly ripped the remaining purple threads away from the bony protrusions. She did so with a barely discernible string of words that represented every emotion from annoyance to annoyance and back to annoyance again.

If it weren't abundantly obvious, Tanzanite was very annoyed by the entire process.

Having no control over her own physical form was unsettling enough without suddenly growing things. Regrowing things. Waking up in a crystal half a mile- wait.

Wait.

Regrowing things.

"Presumably, you."

Tanzanite's thoughts came to a halt so suddenly that there should've been an audible screech to accompany it, dragged to a stop by Laurelite's first words. The queen's question remained unanswered, while all of Tanzanite's focus immediately went into attempting to find and feel muscles that had atrophied during her long slumber, trying to remember how to push and pull parts of her body that normal humans did not have. And slowly, but surely, she felt them. Thin threads of black tendons and fragile ligament. She contracted them only with significant effort, her neck muscles straining as though she were trying to lift some kind of massive weight.

The result was a small, almost insignificant twitch of one of the protrusions, but it was enough to make Tanzanite all but fall forward until her forehead pressed against the cold stone. The sudden burst of laughter grew in intensity until she was practically gasping for breath and physically holding her sides. It went on for a significant time before she all but sprung up, hugging the petite Queen around the waist and spinning her around while continuing to laugh like... someone crazy enough to pick up Laurelite and spin her around.

Her wings.

Her wings.

“Laurelite,” she suddenly stopped spinning, setting her sovereign ruler back on her feet and trying not to actually scream with excitement, “they're growing back.”

No matter how she grew or what power she pursued, Tanzanite would always bend to Metallia’s will, as she would when it came to the woman who served as her avatar. Perhaps that was why the loyal servant quieted as the Queen spoke, making no attempt to fix her own indigo mane as she watched the young sovereign tuck her bangs behind her ear.

Or perhaps it was simply because she was Laurelite, and she represented the guiding hand that a borderline feral creature like Tanzanite required. The slight woman had been the better of Beryl’s sovereign servants, after all, holding the position of honor at the right of her throne while Tanzanite only ever occupied the left. As always, the Queen’s touch calmed the fervently joyful woman and brought her in line, like a beacon to which all of her focus was immediately drawn. Her boundless excitement was channeled into a wide grin and a look that fell upon Laurelite with unsettling intensity.

At least, it might’ve been unsettling if the sorceress weren’t capable of burning her alive with a snap of her fingers.

Regardless, Tanzanite’s remaining eye widened as the Queen mentioned her former power, the youma‘s usually guarded nature already undone. Her newfound but still shaky self-awareness allowed her to feel apprehension, an emotion that had previously been lost on the once arrogant and unbridled woman. Apprehension because of the things she had done with that power and the things she still wanted to do with it.

The awful things she still wanted to do with it.

Tanzanite saw that apprehension mirrored in Laurelite’s eyes, however slightly, and steeled herself against doubt. She had a purpose. She must have a purpose, and surely Laurelite would find it. Still, Tanzanite would risk accelerating that process - asking Laurelite to accelerate it, begging her if need be - if it meant a chance of fulfilling that purpose. Little by little. One precarious step at a time. Driven by the same subconscious force that had propelled her forward from the edge of death to continue her endless servitude.

Tanzanite didn’t care about questions or answers. She cared about accomplishing the goals set before her, checking off each body from a to-do list in her head. Her joy was derived from servitude, fulfilling the orders given to her no matter how seemingly impossible.

Without the power to do so, she was lost.

And that was why her clawed hand rested upon the smaller, more delicate one on her arm, as she provided her strongest argument in favor of giving her more power, “If nothing else, it’ll be really fun.”

Testing Tanzanite’s limits was always fun.