Jill was having a great day. She had them, from time to time, those customers who weren't actually interested in sex, but just wanted someone to lend a compassionate ear. That the ear was attached to an erotically dressed beauty was just an added bonus. Sure, this one was a bit weird, but she'd paid with a diamond. An actual diamond. Given the size, she would be able to sell it for what she normally made in a month. For that much money, Jill decided she could tolerate a lot of weirdness.

"But then it turned out he was lying, and he was actually trying to kill me, so I ate his brain."

Yes, very weird. But Jill wasn't trying to kill this... Lady? Girl? Her age seemed rather indeterminate, but she did have a youthful air about her. Girl was probably appropriate. Whatever; the important point was that, from her story, aside from a few early accidents, she'd only killed people who deserved it, which Jill didn't. So even if the girl wasn't making all this up as she went along and she really was some sort of insanely powerful cannibalistic warrior, Jill was safe. Hopefully. She eyed the diamond again, reminding herself that she was being properly compensated for this. Okay, maybe calling it a great day had been premature. It was potentially a great day. She just needed to survive it first.

"I'm sorry to hear that, and I'm glad to see you survived."

"Well, it's not as if this is my real body in the first place, so it wouldn't matter even if it got completely destroyed. But it's still rude."

Jill nodded along, letting the strange girl unload her pent-up frustrations. It went on for some time, but again, diamond. If she wanted Jill's entire day, she could damn well have it. Once the unloading finished, the girl switched to a different sort of weird.

"So, since I paid you, does that mean we're friends now?"

Jill, relieved that she appeared in no immediate danger of sudden death, answered happily, "that's not quite how this works, but sure, why not? Ah, you haven't told me your name yet. My name is Jill, by the way."

"Oh, my goodness," the Creature gasped. "How could I forget to give my own name? I'm sorry, I've not quite got this social etiquette thing down yet. I only learnt what 'etiquette' was a few hours ago. My name is..."

Now, at this point it should be remembered that the Creature's name has not yet been mentioned in this tale. This is for good reason. The Creatures did, of course, have names, but they were not mere words. They were entire conceptions, that described all that the Creature was, all that it has been and all that it may yet be. Spoken only in the psychic language of the Void, there was no way to translate them into the lesser speech of mortals, although, if we were to try, perhaps a minute section taken from the middle of her name could be rendered as 'she-who-is-very-very-annoying-and-sort-of-clumsy'. And we all remember what happened the last time she used the psychic language of the Void on a squishy human.

"...but you wouldn't be able to pronounce that, so how about you call me Anya instead? Hello? You've gone all quiet? Is there something wrong with 'Anya'? Hello?"

Jill was slumped over on her bed, head tilted at an odd angle, with a thin thread of drool hanging from her mouth and a stream of blood oozing from her nose. It was the blood that gave the self-proclaimed Anya the clue that something had gone wrong. The brains she'd eaten didn't all agree on much, but one thing that was a constant was that when everything was working normally, the blood should be on the inside. Except in the case of human sacrifice, but Anya was fairly certain that particular exception did not apply here.

"Oh no! Did I break you? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. It's okay, I can fix this!"

Anya stuffed some of her body mass into Jill's nasal cavity. Fortunately, Anya was no fool; she was simply inexperienced in the affairs of mortals. She had noted the effect her native speech had on her summoner, and for Jill's sake had toned down the volume this time. It wasn't her fault that the single data point was insufficient, and as a result she hadn't toned it down by enough. She had, however, reduced the volume sufficiently that Jill's head was still structurally intact, and it was no difficult task to find the bits of brain that were a little more mushy than was natural and solidify them. Jill twitched.

"Whurppleglurb"

Anya pondered. She hadn't seen this brain before it partially melted, so there was a bit of guesswork involved in putting it back together, but it should have been fairly close. Nevertheless, that didn't sound quite right. She could use bits of the mage or assassin brains, but they were all male, and what if there was some difference? She needed to inspect a female brain. Just taking one without permission would be rude, sure, but Jill was her friend, and friends took precedence over strangers. She ran out of the room and barged into the one next door. It was occupied by... was that two people, or just one? There were two heads, but they seemed to be connected below the waist. They also weren't wearing clothes, but maybe that's because they wouldn't fit given the strange body shape? Well, one half of the body had the lumps that indicated female, so that brain would do. Even better, if this person had a spare, Anya didn't have to feel too bad about taking it without permission. In too much of a hurry to be neat about it, Anya ripped the female head off and deconstructed it whole. The male head started screaming, but it would just have to make do. Anya ran back out to Jill, who for some reason had picked up the diamond and started licking it, and resumed the operation.

As has been previously hinted, the city of Glimmerhome was not a safe location. Assassins stalked the rooftops with impunity, mad mages treated collateral damage as an unfortunate necessity of their research, priests who saw it as their divine duty to get as many people into heaven as quickly as possible poisoned the water supply on a regular basis, and, of course, there were the daily explosions. That meant that when the city's nobility started quietly sidling off away to their countryside homes or family in other countries or, in one extreme case of a particular famous wizarding family, relocating their whole mansion to another plane of existence entirely, everyone knew that something was very wrong. Glimmerhome had withstood sieges, plagues, famine, and even that time when the Abode of Aberrant Alchemy had made that horrible smell, the one that had rolled over the whole city in a great purple cloud and had seeped in everywhere. To be fleeing now, what exactly had happened?

There was nothing as crass as an evacuation order. People just decided, completely independently and without prompting, that right now was the perfect time for a seaside holiday, or to visit foreign relatives, or to run down the main street screaming and waving 'the end is nigh' placards.

Anya took a step back and inspected her handiwork. Jill looked fine from the outside, apart from the one eye that had started flashing, but that was fine; it was doing so in the gamma-ray range, which was well outside of what these primitive human eyes could perceive, so no-one would notice. Hopefully the insides were just as good.

"Hello? Jill? Can you hear me? Are you feeling better now?"

Jill jerked, then spun around to stare at Anya. "No no no, this won't do at all! How can I let any friend of mine wear such an unfashionable outfit?"

Anya beamed. Jill had called her her friend! After countless aeons, she had finally made her first one! And all she'd had to do for it was a bit of reconstructive brain surgery. She should have done this ages ago. As for her outfit, coverage was the important point. The memories she'd consumed had informed her of the existence of this so called 'fashion', but the rules seemed to have no self-consistency at all, so she'd decided to ignore them. She was vaguely aware that these robes weren't something a female should wear, but why not? A robe was basically a dress, and dresses were something that men shouldn't wear, so why the difference? But if her new friend was prepared to help her navigate this quagmire that made even less sense than quantum, she wasn't about to say no.

Without waiting for an answer, Jill picked up the diamond in one hand, took Anya's hand in the other, and marched out of the room and down the stairs. Normally the madam would have had something to say about her girls leaving the premises during work hours, but for some reason she wasn't at the reception desk. Jill caught a brief glimpse of her through the open doorway to her office, standing atop a bulging suitcase and trying to tie it shut. Weird.

The streets were rather emptier than was usual for the time of the day, but neither Anya nor Jill were in any state to notice that fact; Anya because she didn't know what was normal to start with, and Jill because she'd just had her brain inexpertly melted and rebuilt. They meandered casually down the street, avoiding the surprising number of people running in the opposite direction and shouting at all who would listen to flee for their lives, until Jill reached her favourite clothing store.

"Huh? That's odd. This store is always doing great business, so why is it having a closing down sale? Well, whatever. Cheaper clothes for us!"

Jill happily bounced inside, wondering whether she should pick up a few new things herself, and if the store would have enough cash on hand to change the diamond. The proprietor was immediately in front of them, having moved from behind the counter apparently without bothering with the intervening space.

"You have cash?"

Jill blinked. "I have this?" She held out the diamond.

The diamond was suddenly no longer in her hand. "It'll do. Thank you for your purchase."

"Wait, I haven't even said what I want yet!"

"Doesn't matter. You can have all of it. I've left the deeds on the counter."

Jill watched the proprietor... umm... ex-proprietor as he danced out of the store and down the street while cackling manically.

"Do you think there's something going on in the city that we don't know about? Everyone is acting very odd."

Anya shrugged, enjoying the discovery of yet another interesting expression she could make with this monkey body. "I don't know what constitutes 'odd' in the first place."

Jill blinked as realisation dawned. "Oi, he took my diamond!"

Anya shrugged again. She had no idea what the fascination with jewels was. Especially diamonds; they were nothing more than boring lumps of carbon. At least some of the others had interesting chemical compositions. She could make more of any of them easily enough. If her new friend wanted diamonds, then diamonds she would have. "Here, have some more."

Jill looked down at her hand, as the diamonds spilled out of it and onto the floor. Right, she decided, this Anya was her new best friend for life. She was never going to let her out of her sight. And speaking of sight, why did everything she looked at start glowing green after a while? Today was just one weird thing after another. And apparently they owned a shop now. She wasn't entirely sure which of them it belonged to, or if they should share, but right now that didn't seem important. She flipped over the 'open' sign on the front door and locked it. "Right, let's get you dressed."