Chapter 304: Bat Bat Broke the House II
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He had slept like a man finally pulled down into rest by a body that had spent too much chaos energy, too much blood, and too much will in too little time. The night had been heavy enough that nothing short of real danger would have dragged him back to wakefulness. His chaos reserves, strained by Lily’s transformation, his own feeding, the movement in and out of the Void Land, and the structured decisions of the night, had forced his body into deeper rest than usual.
That was why he had not woken a single time.
Not when the house settled deeper.
Not when servants moved in distant halls.
Not even when the morning fully came.
But now, at last, his chaos energy had risen close enough toward fullness that sleep began loosening its hold.
The first sensation that reached him was warmth.
Not the warmth of sheets.
Not the lingering warmth of his own body under blankets.
Something else... Weight. It was heavy.
There was weight on him.
His sleeping mind tried to place it first without panic. Bat Bat. It must be Bat Bat. Bat Bat had gone to sleep on his chest last night and refused to move. She had probably rolled into some absurd new position during the night and now weighed more than any creature that size had a right to weigh.
Then his waking body processed more.
The weight was spread differently. It was longer.
Softer in places where Bat Bat had no business being soft.
His hand, moving on instinct before thought fully caught up, touched skin.
Not fur. Not feathers. Not any tiny bat-bodied nonsense. It was skin. It was smooth. It was warm.
A living body pressed half across him. Every trace of sleep vanished at once.
Sekhmet’s eyes snapped open.
For one disorienting second, the ceiling above him looked too calm to belong to the problem his body had just discovered. Then he looked down.
And saw a naked girl sleeping across his chest.
He moved before thought fully formed.
He jerked upright hard enough that the bed shifted and the body on him slid half sideways with a startled sound.
The girl blinked awake.
Sekhmet stared.
The girl stared back.
And then his brain finally caught up enough to put the face in place.
It was Bat Bat. Her face. Bat Bat’s eyes.
Bat Bat’s expression of deeply offended confusion.
But not Bat Bat’s body.
Not the tiny creature who had fallen asleep on his chest last night.
No.
A fully grown human-sized woman sat tangled in his bedding, hair wild from sleep, bare skin catching the morning light in every place morning light had no business catching it, blinking at him in sleepy outrage with Bat Bat’s face now translated into the features of an adult.
Sekhmet stared at her.
Bat Bat stared at him.
Then Bat Bat scowled.
"Why did you throw me?"
Her voice was wrong too.
Not childlike.
Not the small high sound that used to accompany impossible complaints.
This voice was fuller. Richer. Entirely adult. Still very much Bat Bat in tone, still carrying that indignant authority over nonsense that defined her personality, but no longer the voice of a little bat creature who called grammar oppression.
Sekhmet was silent for two full seconds.
Then he managed, "When did you grow."
Bat Bat frowned at him as if he were the one being strange.
"What do you mean when did I grow up?" She sat up more fully and then paused only to add in a distracted tone, "Also I feel the cold air much more. I like it. It is interesting. Annoying, but interesting. Wait."
She stopped.
Her expression changed.
For the first time since waking, she seemed to actually register that something was wrong.
She looked down.
Then around.
Then at him.
Then back down again.
Her eyes widened.
"Master," she said slowly. "Why am I not flying? I am facing your face. But I am not flying."
Sekhmet, still trying to recover his own mind from what it had just been asked to accept before breakfast, said nothing for one heartbeat.
Then he pointed at the large mirror across the room.
Bat Bat followed the gesture. And saw herself.
"Ahhhhhhhh"
The scream nearly broke the room.
It started high and sharp, stopped halfway because Bat Bat had apparently realized screaming in front of a mirror solved nothing, then restarted as a lower, more offended sound of pure existential betrayal.
She climbed backward across the bed, looking from the mirror to her own body and back again as if the reflection might still be negotiable.
It was not. There she was. Human-sized. In Adult form.
Beautiful in a way that would have been dangerous if her current expression had not been so perfectly, unmistakably Bat Bat that it erased any possibility of mistaking her for someone elegant.
Her hair spilled wildly around her shoulders and down her back, dark with a faint sheen that still suggested wing feathers if one knew where to look. Her eyes were large and sharp and absolutely scandalized.
Her body had the proportions of a woman in full maturity, not a half-grown girl, not an awkward intermediate shape.
Twenty years old look, if one had to name an age by appearance. Fully developed body parts. Entirely naked. Entirely unaware until now.
She looked at the mirror. She looked down at herself again. Then, very suddenly, she stopped screaming.
Sekhmet noticed that at once. That was dangerous. Because when Bat Bat stopped reacting, it often meant she had begun thinking.
And Bat Bat thinking was how the world acquired complications.
He was right. Her eyes narrowed.
A strange, deeply suspicious sort of calculation passed across her face. She looked at the mirror once more, then at Sekhmet, then at the bed, then at him again.
Then her whole expression changed into delighted certainty.
Sekhmet had one second to know the expression.
Then Bat Bat launched herself at him.
Now human-sized, that was a very different experience.