After channeling the corrupting essence of high-tier Source into Ulysses through the mirror, the spider-like abomination shed its many limbs. Though still gaunt, its flesh visibly regenerated, its form shifting from an eldritch horror to something resembling a starving wretch from famine times. While still unsettling to behold, its nightmarish mutations gradually reverted toward human features.

  This transformation came from purging his own corruption through the mirror's power. He possessed an uncanny method to retain sanity despite staggering inner decay—where others had used this relic merely to stave off madness, he weaponized it. Even adversaries far exceeding his power would mutate horrifically from absorbing such concentrated corruption. In fact, it proved deadlier against stronger foes, whose enhanced Source connections already teetered on madness's precipice. The slightest push could break them.

  Yet impossibly, his target stood unaffected before him, showing no signs of the expected descent into frenzy.

  "Where's the detonation trigger?" The demand came again.

  "No... my masterpiece... can't fail... lies... all lies..."

  The transformation had been powering his abilities. Reverting to human form weakened him, apparently severing his psychic network. When he spoke aloud for the first time, his tongue and lips moved clumsily like a drunkard's.

  Ulysses studied him intently. The creature clearly felt fear, but its mind seemed ravaged—unable to process words, only babbling disjointed phrases with grotesque, twitching motions. Its entire being radiated nonsensical disorder, like chronic alcoholics with their permanent tremors and ruined coordination.

  This case was far worse than any he'd witnessed.

  To confirm this wasn't an act, Ulysses administered adrenaline and stimulants before commencing interrogation. He began with finger joints, then wrenched the forearm into a grotesque spiral. The stimulants prevented unconsciousness, leaving only choked whimpers and delirious mutterings.

  "In Frank's skull... curled tight there... Frank sees it... always watching... almost consumed now..." The creature wept like a wounded animal. "Frank's head... wrong... hurts... dying... dying..."

  Auditory aphasia—hearing without comprehension; conductive aphasia—speech without logic; apraxia—intent divorced from action...

  Within minutes, Ulysses cataloged devastating neurological damage. How then had this wreck masterminded the queen's assassination attempt?

  Then came realization—the watching animals when he entered the woods, the three ordinary humans accompanying the creature. Those puppets had perished in the fight, and with its human reversion, the psychic web dissolved. Birdsong returned to the previously silent forest.

  Had sensory failure forced the wretch to experience reality through its thralls? Using their eyes, their hands—their very nervous systems as proxies? That explained the castle conspirators—they'd been puppets all along.

  Unnatural. Deeply unnatural...

  Early mutation typically erodes mind and senses together. The ancient mirror could transfer corruption, but only in initial stages. Someone this far gone shouldn't possess the will to wield it. Yet this one had somehow compartmentalized the decay—corrupting his body while preserving calculation.

  A distant train whistle pierced the air. Birds erupted from the trees in panicked unison.

  Cough "The hour comes... Frank keeps vows... Secret Police... bang..." The creature's ruined face couldn't form expressions, but his eyes glittered with dark triumph.

  His mind remained clear enough to understand the torture—and now he'd ensured his tormentor's comrades would share his doom.

  The satisfaction was palpable.

  The queen stayed Leanna's hand as the train hurtled toward Yvette's discovered excavation site.

  "Bombs lie ahead!" Yvette urged. "Halt the engine immediately!"

  Queen Margaret IV asked no questions of her Special Missions allies.

  "Leanna, go with Mr. Fisher." She removed her traveling hat—a royal token. "Take this."

  The two dashed forward, uncannily steady on the racing train's roof. Guards gasped at the spectacle—the queen's proper maid sprinting with scandalous haste, accompanied by some unknown youth!

  A youth who'd emerged from Her Majesty's private car...

  Impossible! When had he boarded? Had he been concealed there all this time?

  The Frost Queen herself—keeping a secret passenger?!

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Exchanged glances carried unspoken scandal.

  At the engine, the oblivious crew sang as they fed the furnace. Yvette seized a shovel, frantically scattering burning coal.

  "Royal command—emergency stop! Bombs ahead!"

  Leanna's authority brooked no doubt. The crew sprang into action, triggering the station-approach whistle.

  Yet the train's momentum held.

  "Why aren't we slowing?!" Yvette demanded as doom loomed nearer.

  "Sir, boilers don't cool instantly, and this much steel won't stop on command! The brakeman must—"

  Newfangled braking systems couldn't be front-mounted without derailment risk. The rear brake lever, when pulled, would safely tension-stop the train.

  The crew waited. Nothing.

  With an apologetic shrug: "Sometimes the mechanism jams..."

  Leanna gestured subtly. As a Phase Witch, explosions meant nothing—she could simply displace them all into the void. The rest aboard weren't so fortunate.

  Ignoring the out, Yvette snatched the queen's hat and sprinted rearward across the carriage roofs—a reckless display leaving guards dumbstruck.

  At the brake compartment, she found the brakeman straining against a snapped lever.

  "Oh for—!" She shouldered him aside, grasping the broken shaft. Strange power surged through her grip.

  Screeching metal. A cascade of sparks.

  Gradually—agonizingly—the behemoth halted.

  "Saints preserve us!" The brakeman stared at her slender arms. "You're Hercules in gentleman's clothes!" His awe shifted to grumbling: "What fool orders full-stop without decel—"

  Yvette cut him off. "Buy yourself two drinks tonight, my friend. You'd have needed them more had we reached that bend."

  With a thunderous rumble, the train gradually ground to a halt without any explosions occurring. Ulysses opened his hand, letting the severed limb slip from his grasp to thud heavily onto the leaf-strewn forest clearing.

  Creation and destruction - nature's eternal cycle manifested a strange duality. At times a master artist, sculpting magnificent landscapes with divine skill - freezing molten lava into the Giant's Causeway, uplifting pristine limestone into majestic peaks, painting the night sky with shimmering auroras... Yet in a petulant child's whim, it could just as suddenly erase these masterpieces without reason.

  Ulysses too felt this dichotomy within himself. Mostly the artist - one who genuinely appreciated humanity and its works, though rarely any single individual. Like a poet praising a lavender field's beauty, he appreciated the fragrant blossoms while seeing no contradiction in trampling a few underfoot during his stroll - provided it wasn't excessive.

  Poets don't mourn specific crushed flowers. A fair yet cruel perspective from the blooms' standpoint. But moments ago, seeing the spider-creature's vengeful gleam ignited the child within - methodically tearing it apart not out of necessity, but from sheer capricious desire.

  The artist embodied reason; the child pure whim. As the train stopped, this rare childishness faded. Surveying the mutilated remains, his artistic sensibility returned.

  Even diseased flowers in a field don't inspire hatred in a poet - their removal being a clinical necessity for the garden's health. He shouldn't feel hatred.

  A brief confusion passed before Ulysses turned his attention to the corpse.

  Fortunately the head remained intact... With practiced care, he opened the skull.

  Within lay a grotesquely diseased brain - gray matter distorted into unnatural formations: wriggling worm-like growths, sponge-like perforations, clusters of translucent cysts resembling pomegranate seeds... Yet these malformations localized to specific regions - Broca's area, Wernicke's area, the writing center...

  Remarkably, regions governing personality and cognition appeared normal. It reminded Ulysses of ships' watertight compartments - ingenious design ensuring limited flooding from any breach.

  This suggested someone had applied phrenology's flawed brain-mapping concepts - however inaccurately - to supernatural experimentation.

  Troubling implications... Could this connect to the Mourning Lady's recent reports of senior members emerging in European occult societies?

  Hopefully not.

  ...

  Queen Margaret's royal train had withdrawn some distance along the tracks. Soldiers stood ready - some guarding her carriage, others inspecting ahead for dangers. Two scouts already galloped toward Windsor and the last station to summon reinforcements.

  Inside the carriage, Yvette and Phase Witch Raenna remained alert for further attacks. Moments later, a sample of yellow powder retrieved from a railside device was presented - innocuous-looking dye to the queen's eyes, though Yvette had described its terrifying potential.

  "Let's test Mr. Fisher's theory," said Raenna. Isolating a fingernail portion in her pocket dimension, she introduced a spectral lit match.

  A silent explosion vaporized the match. "Incredible! Equivalent to a grenade's blast from this tiny amount!"

  "Picric acid's power exceeds black powder a hundredfold," Yvette explained.

  "Could we weaponize this?" the queen asked avidly, her strategic mind overriding personal concerns.

  "Unwise," Yvette replied, recalling Britain's disastrous WWI experience with picric acid shells - their sensitivity causing premature detonations that turned British naval superiority at Jutland into a humiliating defeat despite German codes being broken and numerical advantages.

  Though picric acid boasted impressive specs (100x black powder, 10x TNT), combat proved its flaws - shells exploding mid-flight rather than on target like Germany's reliable munitions.

  Yvette thoroughly explained these limitations with diagrams - knowledge that historically cost the Royal Navy dearly in blood and treasure now gifted decades early to Albion's ruler, potentially altering future wars.

  "And how did you uncover this plot?" the queen inquired with her most disarming smile.

  Yvette recounted the trail - from Lord Granville's stolen wine case to the garden's glass-shard poisoned soil, the acid-eaten stopper, the murdered maid and suspicious cups...

  The queen's reactions progressed from shock to dawning comprehension, her usual diplomatic mask slipping to reveal surprising genuineness. Yvette caught herself imagining how striking Her Majesty would look in gothic maid attire - quickly suppressing such lese-majeste.

  "Your counsel exceeds my ministers'. Pity supernatural talents like yours rarely seek political office... Though I must ask - would you accept a parliamentary seat?"

  "Eh?" Yvette blinked at the abrupt offer.

  "Preventing regicide and offering vital state advice merits reward."

  "Impossible," Raenna interjected with Yvette's vigorous nod. "Our covert work requires anonymity - exposing Mr. Fisher's identity would invite deadly attacks."

  The queen conceded modern monarchs couldn't bypass Parliament so easily. "Then perhaps the Order of the Garter?"

  Britain's oldest and most exclusive chivalric order - its membership royals and aristocrats with ridiculously long titles - required no parliamentary approval.

  "A sovereign's prerogative alone," she added with a cunning smile.