Magic magic magic magicmagicmagicMAGIC!

“Let’s play a game,” says Cheshire.

I frown. “Will this game help me amass incredible magical power?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Then I’m in! Give magic please. I would like one magic with all the magic, please and thank you.”

Cheshire grins. “Excellent. Now, we’re going to be diving in and out of different facets of the magic system going forward, but I’d like to start by hearkening to the kind of activity that I know you’ve done plenty of times: building a list of superpowers. Pretend you’re making an RPG character and you only get to pick four powers, assigning them priority from most important to least important. What would you pick first?”

“Immortality,” I respond instantly.

Cheshire waves away my answer. “Let’s set immortality aside for now, since it isn’t immediately achievable. It’s obvious that you want to be powerful and eternal, but we can redefine that as short-term survival and long-term survival. From there we can game out what kind of magic supports the former while keeping the latter in mind as a goal to strive for. So, aside from immortality, what’s at the very top of your ideal list of superpowers?”

I hesitate. I know the answer–like she said, I’ve made this list at least a dozen times before–but I’m nervous to admit it. Cheshire says she knows me, she says my goals are her goals, but I don’t believe her. I don’t trust her. I’m afraid of what she’ll say.

Cheshire sees my hesitation and gently touches my cheek. “It’s okay, Alice. It’s just the two of us here, and I already know what you’re going to say. You’re safe here; this is your soul, after all,” she adds with a wink.

I brush her hand away from my cheek, but her words sink in. This is my soul. My domain. And saying that… I meet Cheshire’s gaze and insist, “I want reciprocity. If I’m going to tell you all the powers I fantasize about having, I want to hear what powers you dream of having.”

Cheshire leans her chin on the back of her hand. “You assume I have such dreams, and that they differ from your own.”

I look at her with obvious skepticism. “Look, there’s only two real scenarios here: either you’re lying about being created to be my perfect fantasy, or you’re not. If you are lying, then obviously you’re going to have your own wants and traits that differ from mine. If you’re not lying, you’re still going to be substantively different from me in ways that I find challenging and engaging and completing. There is no scenario in which you’re just an empty husk or a blank mirror of me, so play the game. Reciprocate.”

The catgirl chuckles. “Alright, we’ll have a back-and-forth: you name a power, I name a power. Sound fair?”

No, because you still know vastly more about me than I know about you, but it’s a start. “It sounds acceptable.”

“Then take it away, my dear Alice. What power do you want more than any other? What’s your signature spell, your defining ability?”

Okay. All cards on the table. It’s fine. This is fine. She already knows my answer. This is a formality. I have nothing to lose. She’s not going to judge me for it. Still I hesitate. “I want to be liked,” I say to talk around the actual answer. “More than liked, I want to be adored. I want people to be obsessed with me, to think about me constantly. I… I want to trust people. I want to know that the people around me won’t betray me, won’t abandon me, won’t turn on me. And… I don’t think that’s really possible.”

Cheshire smiles at me and asks, “Why not?”

I clench my fists. “Because I am a shitty, garbage, worthless person. I’m unlikable, I’m unlovable, and human beings are too self-interested to put someone’s needs above their own even when that someone is deserving, let alone when it’s someone like me. And for all that I try, I can never really be better than I am. I can never earn their loyalty. So betrayal is inevitable. Abandonment is inevitable. Being alone is inevitable. Unless… I take away the choice.”

“Mind control,” Cheshire says like it’s something casual and normal and not an unforgivable violation of every moral system under the sun.

“Mind control,” I reluctantly agree.

Cheshire tilts her head and asks, “What kind? There are plenty of ways to go about subverting someone’s will, and I’m sure you’ve thought about this.”

I grimace. “I… have. Okay, so, the problem with most mind control–the practical problem, I mean, because the ethical problem is a whole different can of very evil worms that I am just not interested in opening right now–is that it’s too fragile. When a character gets mind controlled in a story it’s basically guaranteed that the mind control will break at exactly the worst time for the villain responsible. If you give a mind-controlling necklace as a gift to the princess, all you’re really doing is setting up the dramatic removal of said necklace at the climax of the third act.”

I’m getting animated now, gesturing with my hands as I speak. I add, “And that’s true of basically any kind of ‘enchantment’ mind control. Whatever kind of trance you put them under, it’s just not going to last. Now, brain parasites are a different story. Take the Yeerks from Animorphs: itty-bitty brain slugs that slither into your ear and make themselves cozy wrapped around your gray matter. The Yeerks can’t be beaten with willpower, and it takes absurd amounts of effort to force them out of a host. Brain parasites are effective and reliable, but they do have weaknesses: they’re slow, they need stealth or for the victim to already be at your mercy, and they can still usually be removed under the right conditions, even if those conditions are rare or difficult. So that really just leaves one ideal method: corruption.”

Cheshire’s yellow-and-blue eyes brighten. “Go on. Tell me more.”

I sit back on my throne of pillows and drum my fingers against the arm of the big stuffed bunny. “Okay, so, if you’ve done your research you already know this story, but I’m going to tell it anyways because I’m in love with the sound of my own voice and it’s also exactly what you want. Yeah?”

“Mhm!” she affirms cheerily.

“Right. So back on Earth there was this game I liked called Magic: the Gathering. It was a card game about mages that could travel between worlds, and of all the worlds in their Multiverse there was one that I adored above all others: Phyrexia. New Phyrexia, actually, but that’s just details. Phyrexia was a place, and a people, and an idea, but more than that it was a virus. It spread through glistening oil and it infected flesh and metal alike, creating horrible fusions of mortal and machine that carried in them the means and imperative to infect others with Phyrexia’s glory. And for all that it was monstrous and horrifying it was genuinely glorious. The Phyrexians still had identity, they were still individuals, but they were Phyrexian individuals with Phyrexian identities.”

The speed of my drumming picks up as I’m getting excited telling this story, and I continue, “There was this mage, Tamiyo, who was driven by a desire to share knowledge and protect her family. And when she was made one with Phyrexia, both of those things were still true; but now, she wanted to collect knowledge to bring to Phyrexia, and she considered all of Phyrexia her family to be protected. Tamiyo was the same person at her core, just… recontextualized. Made part of a greater whole.” I pause for dramatic effect before finishing, “That’s the kind of mind control I want to be capable of.”

Cheshire’s smile is predatory. “My beloved Alice, I think that’s a little bit more than ‘I want to be liked.’”

I flinch and look away. “Yeah, well, that’s all you’re getting out of me for now, so it’ll have to be good enough. Your turn, Cheshire.”

The catgirl laughs. “Oh, it’s more than good enough. Alright, let’s set your dreams of viral dominion aside for the moment.”

Cheshire snaps her fingers and the storm of memory peels back from the book pile–not by much, just a little hollow carved out adjacent to the pile. A pedestal rises out of the wasteland, and on that pedestal kneel supplicants in worship, figures of shadow kneeling and praying and bound in red string that all leads back to the statue standing above them: me. The red string wraps around the wrist of the statue, and the representation of me is dressed in lavish robes with a crown upon her head and an ornate staff in the unbound hand.

“I’m going to bend the rules a little,” Cheshire starts, “if that’s alright with you. Rather than answering in terms of most-to-least important, I’d like to frame my choices as a response to your choices. How does that sound?”

“Sure, I’ll allow it.”

“Excellent.” Cheshire rubs her hands together. “You spoke at great length about mind control in terms of ends, but I’d like to shift focus to means: why would someone feel it necessary to use magic to influence others, rather than more conventional manipulation techniques? I think the conclusion is obvious: a would-be controller of minds is someone who feels insecure about their social capabilities.”

I tense up at her verbal thrashing. “Isn’t this supposed to be about you now?” I mutter. I mean, she’s not wrong, but it feels uncouth to say the quiet part out loud.

Cheshire laughs at my complaint. “Getting there, love. My point is that mind control is only necessary if one lacks confidence in their ability to make others do what they want through speech alone. I, however, am very confident in my skills as a manipulator, so the power that I would like is something that allows me to learn people’s secrets. If I know everything about someone, that makes it easier to get them to do what I want.”

She winks at me and I choose not to think about the complicated bouquet of weird and contradictory feelings that arise from what she just said and did.

“So instead of mind control, I think I’d like to go unnoticed and learn people’s secrets. I want to be a bird watching from its perch, or a spider on the wall, seeing and hearing everything but never being seen or heard myself.”

Cheshire gestures to the side and a new pedestal rises opposite the first, smaller but still grandiose. The scene is a diorama of different small, almost unnoticeable animals watching two shadowy figures share whispers.

“Hmm.” I take a long drink of pomegranate juice and consider her words carefully. Some of what she said fascinates me and demands further examination.

There’s an unspoken component to her reasoning: maybe it is social insecurity that drives someone to want mind control powers, but I don’t think the default choice should be rejecting those powers. If you want to manipulate people, mind control is still a useful tool, so to set it aside entirely suggests… pride, maybe? Satisfaction in manipulation? The way she talked about manipulating people–about manipulating me–makes it seem like she gets a thrill out of it.

If it was just about ends, then there would be no problem using mind control. And if it was just about ends, she would have approached that scene in the apartment completely different. But she doesn’t just want to manipulate me into taking certain actions, she wants to do it with flair. She wants to prove that she can manipulate me even when I know I’m being manipulated.

Cheshire watches me, and I wonder if even that train of thought was an intended reaction. Did she want me to know that? Does that change the veracity of the claim? It’s impossible to tell.

“Alright, my turn,” I finally say. “I feel like I’m overusing media examples here but I don’t know how to express this one clearly otherwise. Back when I played World of Warcraft, my favorite class was warlock, and one of the things I loved doing as a warlock was treating my health as a resource. Burn hit points for mana, spend mana to rip the life out of enemies. It was this beautifully elegant gameplay loop of turning life force into spells to take life force from my opponent.”

“It’s risk/reward,” Cheshire points out. “That’s essentially what you’ve been doing the whole time you’ve been in the Labyrinth; you burn your life or your soul for fuel with the eventual goal of using that fuel to achieve greater gains than you spent.”

“I think those greater gains are the most important part. I don’t want to break even, I want to get stronger through this process. I want to devour the strength of my enemies and make it mine, feasting on their essence.” Power progression through murder is a staple of RPG leveling systems, and if I can make it a fact of this world I will.

“It’s a form of vampirism,” Cheshire suggests. “It’s blood magic. You sacrifice a piece of yourself in exchange for the power to feed on others.”

I grin. “I like that framing. Vampirism and blood magic it is.” I hesitate, then add, “Though as attractive as the idea of ripping throats out sounds, I’d actually prefer to stay away from my enemies. I want controlled risk; I want to be the only one spilling my blood.”

“I can work with that.” Cheshire waves her hand and once again the storm pulls back from a new hollow. This time my statue-self is baring fangs and holding out a clawed hand that drips with fresh blood. A hapless victim contorts in anguish as all the blood is ripped out of their body and flows through the air in a continuous stream toward my statue-self’s outstretched hand.

I admire the image for a moment before saying, “Okay, your turn.”

The catgirl picks up one of the shards of porcelain from the cup she broke and toys with it, not seeming to mind the way it cuts into her fingers. “You take on risk for the sake of reward, but I believe there is reward in risk itself. There is pleasure in pain, and there is a certain thrill in dancing on the knife’s edge.”

Cheshire flourishes the teacup fragment and it becomes a knife midswing, her grin turned feral. “My second choice is this: blood magic as you would wield, but more visceral. I would rip the life from our foes with bared fangs. I want to taste violence and return the favor.”

One fingersnap later, a new scene joins the rest: a statue of a giant wolf tearing out an indistinct figure’s throat. The wolf is covered in bleeding wounds, and blood from those wounds flows to the mouth of the beast.

Hmm. I wish she’d spent more time elaborating on that choice, but I guess we have something to work with. Taken on its own that screams “sadomasochist” or “adrenaline junkie” to me, but that’s the second time she’s brought animals into this. An archetype she’s playing up, or a sincere inclination?

…And does that mean my maybe-girlfriend is a furry? Does it count as a furry if you’re already part-animal? Wait, do I count as a furry by maybe-dating her!? Shit. Focus on superpowers! Back to superpowers!

“My third power is minion-making.” Another desire gained through video games, but this power is arguably more useful to me in a real context. “I want the power to make armies bound to my will: necromantic hordes, legions of bound devils, living shadows, packs of wild beasts, towering golems… whatever works, really. I want minions that will do the fighting and the grunt labor for me, servants that will function as my sword and shield.”

“That’s pretty broad,” Cheshire points out. “Think you can narrow it down?”

“Hmm.” I grab a cluster of grapes and idly start popping them in my mouth while I think. “Kind of difficult, actually. I mean, you can ditch the golems, they’re more of an afterthought. The beasts too.”

Cheshire taps her chin thoughtfully. “I’ll talk about this more when it comes to actually making spells, but you’ll get more bang for your buck if all your concepts are at least loosely related. Necromancy clicks with your fear of death and living shadows could be justified for any demon, but I actually think there’s some really interesting space to explore with beasts, and maybe not just beasts.”

I tilt my head curiously. “I’m listening.”

“We talked about vampirism before, and I think that’s actually a great foundation for you, for reasons we’ll get to later. Vampires are often associated with creatures of the night and various ‘sinister’ animals. Sometimes that means wolves and bats, sometimes crows and rats, and sometimes creepy-crawlies like centipedes and spiders. If you want to double down on the vampire theme, that might be a fun way to do it.”

“I wouldn’t mind commanding an army of centipedes and spiders,” I admit. “‘Queen of Worms’ has a nice ring to it.”

“Great!” Cheshire claps her hands and another space is carved out of the raging storm. This time the scene shows insects, arachnids, wolves, rodents, and bats all coming together in a swarm.

“Mm. It would be kind of fun to make horrible chimeric abominations by mixing different animals together. Something to come back to later, perhaps.”

Cheshire grins. “I think you’re starting to enjoy this. Getting a taste for the supervillain lifestyle?”

“Fuck it, I’m a demon now. I can be a little evil, as a treat.”

Cheshire cackles and I match her grin. When the catgirl’s had her fun she rubs her hands together and says, “Alright, here’s my third: physical prowess. You want to hang back and send your minions to do the dirty work, but I want to fight as the beasts do, scrapping in the thick of it. I want to be strong enough and fast enough to be a constant in-your-face threat.”

Doubling down on the violence angle, and tripling down on the animalism themes. Interesting. “So, will you actually be fighting alongside me? Because I had kind of assumed you would play the sinister advisor role but never dirty your own hands, and instead it’s sounding like you would actually really enjoy dirtying your hands.”

Cheshire shapes part of the storm into another statue of her gleefully murdering people as a big fuck-off wolf, and answers, “Well, that’ll be up to you. As your geist I can only act in the ways you allow me to act, but I can be quite useful. Some demons have their geist stay as just advisors, some have their geist handle complicated spellcasting, and some have their geist manifest a physical form to act as bodyguard-slash-assassin.”

I look between the two wolf statues and say, “I’m guessing you’d prefer that last option.”

Cheshire grins. “You already know me so well. Alright, on to the very last power! Give me something juicy.”

I pop a few more grapes and ask, “I don’t suppose you’d let me cheat and argue that two should be considered one?” She basically stretched one power into three.

The catgirl winks. “Make your case, Alice.”

“Okay, so, I don’t know how much psychoanalysis you’ll actually get out of these, but my last power pick is pyromancy and umbrakinesis: fire and shadow. Fire because I’m a pyromaniac and I love watching things burn, and shadow because… well, because it’s edgy and I like edgy.”

“Got any specifics for me?” she asks.

I shrug. “I mean, the fire part is obvious: burn things ‘till they’re ash. For the shadow part I do actually have some specific spell ideas: shadow-walking, making tentacles of darkness, turning shadows sharp and stabbing people with them, and cloaking myself in darkness to hide.”

“Perfect!” Cheshire smirks. With a wave of her hand another statue emerges from the storm, this one a twisting mass of intertwined shadow and flame. “There’s actually a way to make sure you get both of those and that they’ll be powerful, but you might balk at what it costs.”

“I’m listening.” For magic, for power, I’ll pay any price.

Cheshire pulls a knife out of thin air: the scorched dagger I gained from my encounter with Eirdryd and the spider-dogs. With her other hand she gently grabs my wrist and strokes the tattoo-like design that appeared after my bargain with Bashekehi. “It involves breaking these down into their component parts. While we can make spells from just the substance of your internal world, we’ll get more ‘oomph’ by repurposing existing configurations of magic, like this artifact and this invocation.”

I frown and extricate my wrist. “Hold on, when you say ‘break those things down,’ you mean you’re going to destroy them, don’t you? I like having a magic dagger, Cheshire.”

Patiently, without a hint of condescension, Cheshire asks, “Alice, how do you think you would fare in a knife fight–by which I mean, a fight in which both you and your opponent fought with knives and nothing else?”

“This is a trap,” I point out.

“It is!” Cheshire cheerily replies. “Now answer the question, love.”

I roll my eyes. “Ugh, fine. Barring additional context, I would lose.”

“Now, as a follow-up question to that: how do you think you would fare in a fight against someone who was wielding a sword, a spear, or an axe?”

I sigh. “I would lose.”

“You are not a warrior,” Cheshire gently chides me, “and you don’t really want to be a warrior. Think about the powers you asked for: mind control, draining life, summoning monsters, throwing flame. None of those are a warrior’s powers. You asked for the powers of a ruler, a summoner, and a mage who controls the battlefield from the backline. So what are you going to do with a knife?”

I grit my teeth. “[Ashthorn] saved me from one of the spider-dogs, and it let me kill the sin eater. I get it, I’m not a melee fighter by any stretch, but it doesn’t hurt to have a backup weapon.”

“I agree! But a backup weapon shouldn’t come at the cost of developing a primary weapon. Perhaps more importantly, if all your spells aren’t enough to stop a foe from getting close enough that you can knife them, do you really think a knife will be enough to save you?”

Reluctantly, I force myself to play out that scenario in my mind. I imagine throwing flame and centipedes at someone. I imagine that someone brushing aside all my attacks and coming in close, and I am forced to admit that having a knife–even a flaming knife–probably wouldn’t save me in that situation. “Okay, you’re right. Eat the dagger.”

[Ashthorn] crumbles into its namesake and Cheshire collects the ashes into a simple urn–conjured from nowhere–that she places on a second table which wasn’t there a moment ago. She points to the tattoo around my wrist and asks, “Any objections on that one?”

I shake my head. “If the dagger goes, the dagger-amplifier goes.”

The representation of my [Abyssal Armament] spell goes up in smoke, and those wisps of smoke drift over to be captured in a glass vial that Cheshire quickly corks. The smoke turns into liquid darkness once the vial is corked. “There: a collection of elements born of flame and the Wild Hunt, and a collection of elements born of the Abyss and its all-consuming nature.”

“Elements?” I ask.

Cheshire grins. “Elements indeed. It’s time for the real lesson, Alice. I’m going to teach you what the universe is really made of.”