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"You did WHAT?!"

Oh dear. He did not mean to snap. He shuts his eyes and draws a breath for patience.

When he'd asked Melanie if she'd had a nice time in last night's dream he had been making conversation - it was a lovely dream, surely nothing bad had happened, but in fact exactly that had happened. She met Rashad, AND Illyria. And she invited Illyria over.

"I'm sorry," he says in a clipped tone, "it's all right, I'm not angry, I'm just - I'm concerned, is what I am. Illyria is very dangerous. I do not want her knowing about you. And it seems like every time I encounter her she wants to do battle."

Oh lord. Is he going to have ward her out now? She won't like that. He saw how she tried to break through the barrier around the island, which is far more powerful than anything he could create. He sighs heavily and drops his head into his hands.

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Aziraphale frowns sharply at Illyria's pronouncement. He doesn't like it one bit that she can hear the cordyceps - that they 'sing', apparently. He doesn't like that Melanie will have to talk about them. He has to stay out of it, he thinks, to let Melanie handle this as she wishes, but - he levels a glare at the back of Illyria's head, watching her carefully. If she asks anything that makes Melanie uncomfortable he is going to be put a stop to this at once.

The principality's distaste is dismissed as irrelevant, even as Illyra feels it coiling off it in maddening spirals. For now the symbiote is what has the whole of the god's attention.

"I hear all the songs of the green," she answers. "The many trees and branches, all their voices clear and distinct. Even the tinier skittering things - the gray, if that is what you call them." She recalls the child's insistence on that particular terminology, not that it matters in any great capacity to a God-King. "Once I could hear much more, so many of them, all their voices in worldly harmony. The world sang, and I listened. When I sang back it trembled. Rightfully." Her eyes drift to the window, to some distant region beyond the scope of immediate sight, her voice verging on wistful. Illyria will concede to that emotion; she does indeed experience loss, and grief, and mourns the erosion of the glory she once was.

Her shell's eyes snap back to the subject of her primary interest with unsettling focus.

"The things that live in you are less articulate. They have little mind or thought or conception of what they are. They express only hunger."

Melanie is bursting with questions. What sort of things do trees and grass and flowers sing about? Can Illyria still sing back to them, or can she only listen? What would happen if she did sing back? Would the plants - or the cordyceps - listen to her, too?

Could she make the fungus so loud that it bursts out of the box Melanie keeps it in?

Could she make the fungus stop singing?

Melanie folds her hands neatly so she won't fidget with them. She needs to choose her questions carefully. "That's what they called the people who had been taken over by the grey, in my universe: hungries. All most of them did was hunt and eat. There was no room in their minds for anything else." She meets Illyria's gaze, a little puzzled by the intensity of her focus, but not shrinking from it. "The symbiotes were - are - different. We can still think."

Aziraphale watches Melanie closely, trying to spot any sign of discomfort, but she seems only composed and perhaps curious. This is rather novel for her, he supposes.

And he can't deny that he is curious in turn. He's heard Melanie's story in pieces but never the whole of it; he senses there is some she's keeping from him, and he wonders if she'll tell Illyria any of that. Where he has deemed it impolite to ask directly, Illyria has no such filter. He feels a little guilty for thinking he might benefit from that trait, but it's not as if he arranged this. He's only a bystander.

To have one's mind overridden by some collection of squirming, lesser things is a horror Illyria almost does not dare fathom - and she must privately assert to herself that she laid claim to this body, she is the one who owns it by resurrective right. Illyria is no parasite and gods are incomparable to such things.

That she feels the need to remind herself of this at all is obscene.

"You are neither human," says Illyria, tranquil despite her concerning, nonsensical parallel, "nor fully taken by the things you carry." Illyria swallowed Winifred Burkle whole, until only the shell and its scattered memories remained. "How are you not overcome? How can there be balance? My shell was emptied in allowance for a god. Yet you are whole within yours."

"I don't know for certain," Melanie admits, frowning a little. "Dr. Caldwell only had a theory. Some hungries retain a little of their humanity - not a lot, but enough to do things besides hunt. She thinks my parents were infected with the grey before they had me." She shrugs, then sits back down in her chair to finish her steak. "So it wasn't something that I caught, or something that infected me - it's always been part of me."

She takes a bite, then glances up at Illyria. "Your body used to belong to someone else?" She's careful not to sound accusing, but curious. Couldn't a god just make their own body?

At this, Aziraphale can't help but sit up a little straighter, frowning tightly. He doesn't like that Illyria is denying Winifred's existence like this. It isn't empty at all.

"It still does," he says, unable to keep quiet about this. Not if she's trying to befriend Melanie, or whatever this is.

"This shell belongs to me, principality," Illyria growls. "I could not change that, even as I desire to shed this flimsy vessel and seek another."

The symbiote has been forthcoming, and Illyria has no need to conceal what she is.

"This body belonged to a mortal creature once." Her tone is disparaging as ever. Winifred Burkle's final act in surrendering her body for a god's use was the only notable thing about her; certainly not the fragmented emotional output Illyria still senses on occasion. "I was bound to it in the act of my resurrection. My true form would have dwarfed much of this city, but it is lost."

Uh oh. Melanie glances at Aziraphale, brow furrowed, then back to Illyria. If the god-king took over some woman's body just like the cordyceps would…

… Well, what then? Who is Melanie to judge, after what she did? How many pockets of humanity were still holding out when she set the cordyceps alight? When she was finished, only one woman was left. One woman lost doesn't seem that bad in comparison.

She shifts in her seat, uneasy. "I don't understand," she finally says. "Were you bound on purpose?"

Aziraphale huffs loudly but forces himself to keep quiet after this. Melanie still has questions, and she's right to question - and he believes that any attempt to remove Illyria from her stolen body might prove disastrous. It's a problem that does not have a simple solution. Something with which he's far too familiar lately.

He is curious to hear more of Illyria's story, as well. Their attempts to get to know each other have not gone historically well.

The principality continues to be infuriatingly disapproving and Illyria shoots it an equally disapproving look. It has little right to judge. A rebirth to this world, bound to this shell, would never have been this god's choice.

"A disciple raised me," she tells the little thing icily. "Many ages had passed since the time of the Primordials. One by one, many of us fell." The darkest period of her past, in which all she was had crumbled and been compartmentalized into a coffin in a hole in the center of the world. "This body was marked for my resurrection. I had little choice in the matter, and now it is mine."

She raises a hand in this tiny shell and flexes it, studying the complex workings of skin and bone and muscle with cold disinterest.

"I find it to be a fragile substitute. Were it possible, I would seek another." Illyria is loathe to admit weakness in any context, even to something so small and mortal that could do a god no harm. "Compacting such cosmic energy within such an insubstantial shell has left my power - reduced."

Illyria didn't even try to do what she did, then. It's rude of her to scornfully dismiss the body she's taken, but Melanie still isn't in any position to claim the moral high ground. She clears her empty plate, rinsing it off beneath the tap before setting it in the sink. A proper wash can wait.

"How powerful were you in your old form?" she asks. It seems like the sort of thing Illyria would like talking about, and she is curious. "Stronger than the rift?"

"Stronger than anything." There were many reasons, after all, that her enemies and followers alike deemed her 'The Merciless'. "I was unconquerable. It was only when the time of the Old Ones was past that all the Primordials were defeated, and even then they could never destroy me." She lefts her shell's chin, pride blazing from its eyes (a reasonably godlike emotion, therefore acceptable). Illyria reborn, as she should be.

"That's what the cordyceps was like, back home," Melanie says with a thoughtful little nod. "It took over everything." She pauses, considering, then says, "I'm not sure if it's made it to the poles, though. So I guess there might be some humans still alive down there."

It's a strange thought, and she's not sure if she likes the idea. There'd be no harm so long as they stayed put, and she supposes there's nothing wrong with humans surviving where they can. But she doubts they could stay so cold and isolated forever, and they wouldn't last long once they left.

"A truly potent weapon," Illyria notes quietly. Had she not already bound herself to Wesley's wish, that would indeed be an avenue of extermination worth pursuing. Wipe away the traces of the vermin that populate every dark corner and crevice. Cleanse this miserable world of their filth.

The thought is satisfying, and disturbing for reasons Illyria cannot fully describe to herself. She pays no heed to that disagreeable sensation. It is not of her concern.

"There is no means for defeating one such as yourself." This symbiote - it acts like a virus, perhaps, swallowing everything. Or its little creatures are merely too mindless to be anything but viciously potent against all they touch.

"She is not a weapon," Aziraphale flares up, standing before he can stop himself. He crosses to them in a few quick steps and plants himself halfway between them, frowning hard at the presumptuous God-King. "And there is no discussion of defeat. You will not speak to her that way. Is that understood?"

A little of his angelic fury seeps through, his voice slightly deeper than usual, more vivid. Without looking away from Illyria, his hand finds Melanie's shoulder, resting firmly on it.

Melanie starts at the interruption and looks up at Aziraphale in astonishment. It's sort of thrilling to be defended this fiercely, but she's also not sure what the fuss is about. Illyria's sworn an oath not to hurt anyone, and it seems to Melanie that referring to things in terms of battle and conquest is just how the god-king speaks. She doesn't mean to use Melanie as a weapon, she just thinks she'd make a good one - like a weird sort of compliment.

She can understand why Aziraphale wouldn't like it, though. She'd been thinking of pointing out that she could be defeated so long as her body was destroyed properly, but Aziraphale wouldn't like that, either. She gives his hand a reassuring pat.

"It's okay. She wouldn't try to use me as a weapon, because she swore an oath." It's not the only promise she made, either, and Melanie gives Illyria a pointed look.

The god skewers the principality with an intensely withering glare. Such hostility without impetus. Illyria was led to believe that this would be a purely diplomatic function, and the principality's predisposition toward aggression seems entirely counter-intuitive.

"It is a statement of fact, principality. Regardless of intent," she replies coldly. "There is little I could do while confined here, and even less while I am under oath." It was Wesley's wish. She will not deviate from that. She could not possibly sully his memory so. Yet she stalks closer to the principality regardless, shell's head canted to one side, a quiet taunt.

"There is little you could prevent me from doing if I so wished." In case it had forgotten their previous encounters, though Illyria does not believe it has. "Be grateful for my acquiescence to your request for peace in this circumstance."

"That's not the point," protests Aziraphale, directing his gaze first to Melanie, then, more irritably, back to Illyria. "Intent is not my objection. You will not refer to her as some sort of thing. You will respect her as a person, insofar as you're capable of respecting anyone." He knows she isn't sitting there debating ways to unleash the cordyceps on the city, but that she comes in here trying to describe Melanie like she's some kind of - of doomsday device, and that Melanie isn't even perturbed by that, that's intolerable, and he won't stand for it.

This is starting to get out of hand. Melanie side-steps around Aziraphale, placing herself between him and the god-king. "No fighting," she insists, frowning up at Illyria. "That means no threats, either." That wasn't a specific part of their agreement, but it might as well have been.

Taking a breath, she adds, "And I'm not a weapon, because I won't let anyone else use me to hurt people. That's why I'm here. Aziraphale offered to bring me here, but I chose." She might not entirely trust herself, and she is acutely aware of the threat she poses, but she's not a pawn.

It is absurd, having this meeting on this tiny creature's terms. Compared to the ancient creatures it addresses - a god and a principality - it is practically an infant. Illyria scowls at it, at them both. She has not consented to ordered about in any capacity, and this meeting is as much on her terms as it is on either of theirs.

"Respect is not freely given, principality," she cautions as she stands away again, ever aloof. "It is earned."

The principality wavers between earning respect and the lack thereof; it is a decent opponent. Its intentions are of sufficient interest. And yet - it completely disrespects Illyria as a rightful ruler and as a god, and under any other circumstance this would not stand. The symbiote, however, is appropriately intriguing. This is no indicator of respect, but Illyria knows well enough that if she does not follow that social dictation, the principality will make any further contact with the symbiote quite difficult.

Thus, she relents.

"You understand your potential, then," she returns to the symbiote, the less currently infuriating of the two. It understands its own power well, this much is clear. It understands it and it - fears it. Perhaps in such a contained field, when the will of the shell contradicts what it carries, such fear is justified. But Illyria would not know, nor does she care to. Gods do not know fear. "And that is why you keep yourself restricted so."

That's better. Distantly he feels quite proud of Melanie for diffusing the situation, though all he's capable of registering right now is a stiff loosening of tension and a frowning acknolwedgment that Illyria has not continued to displease him. He steps away, keeping a suspicious eye on the God-King, removes himself from their conversational field again. That was a warning, and this will continue so long as she continues to do well.

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