Sometimes she remembered. Flashes of faces. Words that no longer had any meaning. Some of those old words had come to her, being told to eat everything on her plate so she could grow up healthy.
Growth.
Men were rarely on the level of beasts, but men could be surprisingly innovative when it came to their survival against beasts. Men could use tools, and numbers, and tactics. A Therian was made so that none of that mattered. Cut, bash, burn, impale, a Therian would never stop. It would rip and tear until there was nothing left, or until even it had acquired so many wounds it could kill no more. She understood, more or less, why such beasts were the primary way of her kind in collecting souls.
But Canught had no interest in collecting souls. All the things that did interest her faded swiftly, like fireflies. And this...
Growth.
Therians had to grow back from their wounds. What most living things could do, but swifter, without the consequences of loss of blood or flesh, or pain growing too great. Canught suspected that was why she was seeing what she was seeing. Most Haruspex followed the old ways, never deviating, but there were always those who were curious, who sought to improve. Unbeknowst to Canught, that was why she was the way she was. Rera's process had been imperfect, not fully able to repair the damage the drowning had inflicted on her brain, but the new connections the attempted...growth had formed had resulted in something wholly new. A knowledge later heroes and societies would access in their own ways. Her All-Consuming Word.
Growth.
Rinekuyd's experiments had been all about that. To take the ability of a Therian to knit wounds and improve on it. While a Haruspex could only consume the souls of people who had damned themselves, experiments held no such prerequisites. So Rinekuyd had come, and this was the mess she'd made.
Growth.
That was what had happened to these people. Rinekuyd had experimented, and they had grown. She'd wanted Therians to be able to call upon more flesh, a process that would require refinement. And so these dozen or so survivors of a town once called Bool now envied the dead beyond most normal human comprehension. Their bodies had been changed, and started growing. They couldn't die...and they couldn't stop. Their forms had twisted into hideous, barely functioning masses; cancer golems was the best description, and even that wasn't wholly right. The mortals not caught up in Rinekuyd's work had long cleared away from this town, screaming of its cursed, doomed nature. Even under current stars, no one had ever returned to Bool. It had eventually fallen into ruin, and returned to the forests.
Strangely, they were in no pain. Their bodies were warped beyond belief...but the changes had altered their nervous systems as well. It was no comfort to these once-men and women. As they shuffled towards Canught, all they could whisper was one thing.
Death. Oh how they wanted to die.
But they could not die.
Growth.
That was their curse. Endless growth. Cut them down, they'd rise again. Cut them apart...such a thing was beyond the crude tools of these lands.
Canught didn't like them. They were ugly.
"Do be quiet." Canught said. "Your pain is meaningless. The world doesn't hear it. It doesn't care. It gives no purpose or sympathy. It simply does."
The cursed of Rinekuyd did not listen. They kept moaning, begging, pleading. Why not? What else could they do?
"Oh, you irritate me." Canught said, raising a hand. "Blind eyes and bleating mouths. I see so much finer. I see every single spark and ever single wire in your flesh, no matter how changed..."
"Plzzzzzssss..."
"So I sever them."
Canught's tools were so much more refined, so much greater. She took the ugly things apart on a molecular level. She did not understand why it seemed so saitisfying.
Not like it mattered. The feeling was as fleeting as all the others. She couldn't even muster anything when Rinekuyd came to her in a rage of her experiments being ruined, turned to dust and freed of their bondage. Canught almost didn't strike back when Rinekuyd struck at her. Almost. She suspected Rinekuyd felt her demise moreso than her experiments.
That was two of her sisterhood she'd killed. One could be seen as an anomaly, but two? An unforgivable sin. They'd come for her.
...and she still didn't care.
...In fact...the only thing she could say she did care about was due to end soon.
...maybe it was an omen.
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