Change the body.

A blurring battle in the darkness of the Chapterhouse's basement. Think back. Feel the power of it suffusing you. There, in the depths, she knew. The body could change. That speed that came naturally to the Daeva broke the rules of physics, the laws that chained beings to practical realities. From there, she had learned strength. The raw, dark might that the Blood could bring. Where musculature before was lacking, the Blood proved that the Body could grow beyond anything it could do before.

Change the soul.

Understanding the connection between the Beast and the Man came from long nights of meditation. In her ritual tank, she allowed herself to just be, contemplating the darker nature that chained who she was to the Devil within. It was a limitation, the same as any other; as the Beast rose, it would strip away the Man, leaving less and less behind. But the Beast was desperate, too. It desired the souls of men, drained through the Blood to power itself. It was a parasite, latched into the arteries and veins of the universe. That hunger and desperation could not have been keener as she had restricted herself to the weak, watery blood of street animals.

Experience brought wisdom, and Lina lay on her bed at the Haven she shared with her coteriemate. Together, they had gotten here. But this moment was hers and hers alone.

The stake wasn't long enough to reach her heart - she had made sure - but as she shoved it in just so, the fear and panic of knowing that wood was so, so close to the spiritual center of her vampiric being rattled at the cage. She groaned out her terror, trying to name the objects, trytrytrytrytrytryTRYING to bring it down, bring it back, to cling to the Coil she already knew, to just be sure for fucking once again --

It was her sire's voice that came to her, the monster that she had fled.

"You're a fucking coward. Be who you are."

But the lesson wasn't in the rebuke. The terror passed, as she became malleable, as the woman Lina Moretti plunged into herself.

She didn't need to be who she was. Her Sire was wrong. The Beast was a creature of stagnation, and that monster was nothing but stagnation personified. A magical being, a mighty being, to be sure. But down there, down in the comfort of the womb where her consciousness shook free of her body and soul to stare inward at herself, she learned something fundamental.

Being who she is kept her from being all that she could become, if only she could loosen the shackles that locked away the stagnant, imprisoned Lina of now from who she once was --

The Beast screamed its fury down there within that warm, womb-like world, alerted to her presence. But it was too late. The crack had been made. Its jealous coil around her mind and soul was loosened. The timeline of change was restored ever so slightly, a ticking clock from the girl she had been to the Grand Wyrm she was now to whoever she would become renewed.

As the darkness closed in and the Beast charged, Lina Moretti's mind snapped back into its place, and she gasped. Her eyes snapped open, and she tore the stunted stake out, panting, gasping for unnecessary air --