#It also occurs to me that Eris is smart/perceptive enough to notice a pattern like that happening and to have opinions about it.

[autumnalwalker]

Sometimes one character's growth milestone is another's trauma...

So, as I find myself wrapping up Chapter 24 of Empty Names and finally coming up on a pair of sequences that I've been planning since the story's initial brainstorming, it occurs to me that Chapters 21 through 31 can be summed up as "Eris has the worst week of her life". It's not great for the others, but her especially as I start to see how pre-planned elements begin to interact with elements that grew as I was writing.

Some additional context regarding Eris:

Eris's worst fear is ceasing to be herself. This is a fairly literal fear given how the magic system works with self-perception sometimes physically manifesting, her being particularly sensitive/susceptible to that phenomenon, and the tendency of monster hunters to transform into monsters themselves after losing themselves more and more to the thrill of the hunt over time.

Eris is pretty big on only ever hurting monsters and not people.

Eris and her ex-girlfriend, Gretchen, broke up because Gretchen kept going on about how romantic it would be if one or both of them turned and the other had to tragically put them down.

Eris has issues with mages. She's been lit on fire by them at least twice. Ashan (a wizard) has proven himself to be a notable exception to her general opinion.

About a month before the Terrible Week, Eris saved Ashan's life by jumping between him and a miniature exploding sun conjured by an enemy wizard. Part of the reason she survived was by (unintentionally and temporarily) turning into some sort of terrifying flaming rage filled monster that then may or may not have killed said enemy wizard.

Eris blacked out at the point of the miniature sun exploding and does not really remember the transformation or how terribly burned she was afterward between then and getting partially healed. But she occasionally gets fragmentary flashbacks of it.

The more complete experimental magic healing from said burns was carried out by Lacuna and had the unanticipated side effect of temporarily erasing some unrelated scars and her memory of getting said scars. This understandably freaked her out a bit once she realized what happened.

Every interaction she's ever had with Sullivan, Sullivan's gone out of his way to antagonize her.

With that preamble out of the way...

The Worst Week of Eris's Life: (Spoilers for upcoming chapters)

Monday (Chapter 21): Eris gets a call from her ex-girlfriend, Gretchen, asking to help her out with a problem. It turns out to be a scheme to get them both trapped in an eldritch horrorterror's psychic non-euclidean mindscape labyrinth until one or both of them gets pushed over the edge of losing herself and changing. Eris very nearly loses herself, relives the whole getting lit on fire and transforming thing, pulls herself back from the brink, watches a bunch of her childhood memories put on display (some fond/bittersweet, some painful), finds Gretchen partially transformed, pulls her back from the brink, and then escapes with the help of Road. By evening she's been awake for over 24 hours and she passes out on the couch with Lacuna while her favorite comfort movie plays (that Lacuna kept on hand for just such an occasion).

Tuesday (Chapter 23): Eris wakes up, has an awkward moment with Lacuna, goes to make breakfast, and finds a note saying that Gretchen snuck out in the middle of the night, bailing on her and any further attempts to help. The note indicates that Sullivan had something to do with this. Eris then gets stuck in a car with Sullivan for 8+ hours, trying to be civil in the first half because there are other people present, and being less so in the second half. Seemingly out of the blue Sullivan's usual trollish behavior changes to something more serious and he starts implying that Road is mentally and metaphysically unwell but refusing to give details and asking her to keep an eye out for them in case she needs to help them the same way she helped Gretchen.

Wednesday (Chapter 24): Ashan shows off a new type of magic he's learned that involves healing people by lighting them on (painless magical) fire. Eris downplays how much the sight of this bothers her. She makes an offhand comment about her observations of Ashan's magic and it gets pointed out that she herself might technically be some form of mage, or at least a potential one. Eris then gets stuck in the car all day with Road, which would normally be fine if not for yesterday's conversation with Sullivan hanging over her head.

Thursday: Just trying to process all this.

Friday (Chapters 25-28): Eris wakes up to an excited text from Lacuna wanting to show her something. It turns out that Lacuna finally got tech-assisted transformation magic working in order to DIY her transition and give herself the body she always wanted overnight. Said body include cat ears, eyes, and tail. Eris tries really hard to be supportive and happy for her while simultaneously hiding how much the cat features are uncomfortably reminding her of what happened with Gretchen a few days ago. Sullivan stabs Lacuna. It's revealed that Lacuna's transformation magic works via overriding a person's internalized self image so thoroughly that their body physically changes to match, and that a key breakthrough in figuring this out came from analyzing the memory-altering side effects of the healing ritual she performed on Eris a month ago. Eris reacts poorly to the fact that her best friend has essentially invented a way to replace a person's sense of self and identity (not what she's using it for, but the ability to do that was a prerequisite to the less extreme, more benign usage she had in mind).

Saturday: Attempting to process the week's events. Lacuna isn't talking to Eris and Eris isn't sure or not if she wants to talk to Lacuna right now.

Sunday (Chapters 29-31): Road takes Lacuna along with them to talk to someone about paratech in a place that's supposed to be safe with nothing dangerous while Eris, Ashan, and Sullivan go handle some monster-of-the-week type stuff elsewhere. A couple hours later, Eris gets a frantic, terrified phone call from Lacuna that things have gone very badly very fast. The call gets cut off. Eris drops everything and rushes to the scene to find a bunch of killer robots and a feral monster wearing Lacuna's hoodie that's attacking anything that moves, including her.