Is there anything more beautiful than a fully-stocked food court?

Yes. Obviously. That’s not even a hard bar to clear.

However, most things more beautiful than a banquet of food are not more delicious than a banquet of food, so I must reluctantly cede the point to food on this one. By which I mean, I am hungry and I want to eat everything in this mall.

We navigate to the nearest food court and I marvel at all the options on display: burgers, sandwiches, pretzels, smoothies, ice cream, pastries, more burgers, more sandwiches, falafel, curry, pizza, sushi, fish, and about a dozen other themes. I see triple-stacked monstrosities of meat next to vegan varieties, and everything from the allegedly healthy to food that will absolutely induce a heart attack. Savory aromas waft from all across the court, and I am tempted by so many different treats.

I summon Cheshire, the act becoming easier with each repetition, and she immediately darts for a particularly greasy-looking burger place. I waffle between a buffalo chicken ranch sandwich, a mountain of chili fries, and a medley of different sushi rolls, but in the end I settle on a vegetarian mini pizza.

I grab a table and wait for my freshly-baked pizza to cool, and Cheshire’s on me in a flash. The catgirl slides into the seat across from me and sets down a paper bag already starting to fray at the edges from what I presume to be burger juices. She grins at my own choice of food.

“You’re bringing new meaning to ‘vegetarian vampire,’ Allie. Don’t you want something with blood?” There’s a teasing lilt to her words as she reveals a three-patty lotsa-cheese burger and starts chowing down. A bit of grease or meat juice dribbles down her chin and she makes a very satisfied noise.

I smirk and lean against my hand. “I could say the inverse about you.” I’m struck by a bit of nostalgia for an old show and muse, “In a weird way this reminds me of a scene from Teen Titans: whenever Cyborg would get on Beast Boy’s case about being vegetarian, BB would justify it by saying that he’s been those animals and it feels wrong to eat them. And here you are, shapeshifter, playing the carnivore with gusto.”

Cheshire swallows another big bite and quips, “I’ve been those animals, and they’re delicious.”

I chuckle and take a bite of my veggie pizza. It is, for the record, perfectly scrumptious. I always hate whenever media takes cheap shots at vegetarian food. A whole bunch of people are so obsessed with meat that they’ll pretend a plain burger with no sauce or toppings tastes better than a veggie burger stacked with goodies. I like meat burgers, I do, but I’ve had black bean burgers that knocked most meat burgers out of the park.

I chew on a bit of mushroom and spinach, swallow, and ask, “So, here’s an interesting question: did your taste in food actually change when you started changing forms, or no?”

The catgirl wiggles her free hand while the other clutches her burger tight. “A bit. I’ve probably spent more time as carnivores than herbivores, but human food just tastes better than what you can get the old-fashioned way, basically categorically. It’s all chemical: the fat and sugar that was rare and precious in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle gets concentrated into every single meal, made abundant. You have to work at it harder to get the same caloric intake, out in the wild.”

“I vaguely recall learning something like that, once upon a time. So, what, a few nights of hunting prey made you long for microwave dinners?” I take minor amusement in imagining wolf!Cheshire wolfing down a plate of macaroni and cheese.

She polishes off the last bite of her burger and sighs contentedly. “You could say that. I can remember more than once spending hours hunting mice for the thrill of it, then leaving my prey for the beasts while I filched the good stuff from humans.”

“Mm.” I take another bite of pizza and chew slowly. What a fascinating creature you are. If any of this is true, I mean. Gods, it’s exhausting being this paranoid all the time. With most people I can just assume that whatever they’re lying about doesn’t matter enough to care, but Cheshire might actually be plotting to murder me. How the fuck am I meant to function with that kind of paranoia?

Cheshire opens a box of fries and starts dipping them in what looks like barbeque sauce. “I tried to combine the two, actually,” she tells me while munching on fried potato. “I threw a few slices of pizza to some rats, then hunted them down in fox form and dined on the prize. It was alright. The hunt was fun and the pizza was good, but the pizza would have been better if it hadn’t been dragged through literal filth and garbage.”

I snort-laugh at that image. “So my new girlfriend eats trash. Good to know.”

“Don’t worry, I keep my mouth clean.” She winks at me, and I staunchly refuse to unpack whatever she’s implying with that wink.

“Ignoring that, I’ve got a topic of curiosity: what are your favorite foods, then? I imagine you already know all mine, but I doubt they’re the same. And, if they are, that’s pretty creepy, and I’d like to know what they used to be regardless.”

Cheshire grins. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that the Demiurge left me that much of myself. I like a lot of food, though. Food is food, at the end of the day. I suppose I’ve got a few favorites, if you divide them up into categories.” She points a fry at the last of my mini pizza and says, “As far as pizza goes, I like the meaty kind. Pepperoni, sausage, ham, bacon, throw it all on there.”

“Opinions on pineapple?” I ask, steepling my fingers and leaning in imperiously. “You will be graded on your answer.”

The geist rolls her eyes at me. “It’s mid at best. And before you act all offended, I know that you only defend pineapple because you like being a contrarian little shit. It’s an alright topping. I’ll eat it if it’s in front of me, but it’s never my first choice.”

My contentious overreaction is pre-emptively vanquished, so instead I shrug and admit, “Yeah, okay, it’s not really my favorite. I’m a spinach-and-feta girl when it comes to pizza.”

“Under the broad heading of sandwiches, I’m a fan of burgers that are as meaty and cheesy as possible, with sauce. Can’t go wrong with a good bacon burger.” She gestures to the remnant stains of her recently-devoured bacon burger.

“Bah,” I declare. “Bacon is overhyped, and this one isn’t me being a contrarian little shit. Bacon is only good when it’s the side dish to real breakfast like eggs or french toast. I think it’s actively worsened the burgers and omelets I’ve had it in.”

“I definitely don’t believe you on that; you’ve had at least one good bacon burger,” she accuses.

“Ehhhh maybe. Still not great. Anyways, the best kind of burger is a black bean burger with blue cheese crumble. Next!”

Cheshire giggles and finishes her last fry. “Alright, let’s talk sushi. I like ‘em the crazier the better: the kind that’s got three kinds of fish and gets caked in sauce and breading. You?”

Mmm sushi. Damn it I should have gotten sushi. “That’s pretty good, though I’m also partial to the humble avocado roll. Mostly because avocado, which is a divine treasure.”

“Pfft. Californian.”

I glare at the offending creature. “You don’t even–you’re not from anywhere on Earth! That sentiment is nonsense! You’re only saying that because you’ve got a bunch of me-adjacent memory-knowledge-stuff! Hiss! Hiss I say!”

“Am I wrong?” She smirks at me, smugly.

I mutter some unkind words and choose to abruptly and valiantly change the subject. I make a sweeping gesture at all the people around us in the mall, and ask, “So hey, what’s up with phones? Bashe said phones are like, strictly magic here? And don’t exist here here, in the Labyrinth? Is this something to do with how everyone is ‘trapped’ here?”

Cheshire nods and leans back in her chair. “Basically, yeah. And a quick note: phones aren’t everywhere. Bashe’s world has ‘em, but they’re far from common among the Spheres, and they’re different on each Sphere that has ‘em. Bashe’s phones tap into the throne world of a god of information, and they only function at all when they can maintain an active connection to that throne world. But nothing can interact across the Labyrinth’s barrier, so in this throne world they’re just scraps of metal and plastic.”

“Hmm. Noted. So… what’s the deal with this barrier?” I lean in, because I’m pretty sure this is some plot-critical shit. “No interaction in or out, but people keep getting pulled in, including a girl from the Zero Sphere. And you, if I recall, blame Katoptris for that last one: the Lady of Shards, the Nightmare Queen, who plucked me from my world… for which I should really be thanking her, but you seem to want me to kill her.”

“It seems like the logical endpoint of your quest, does it not?” She spreads her hands questioningly. “Transported to another world as the would-be Dark Lord, to accomplish any of your goals you’ll eventually have to depose the local dimensional overlord. Further, it will be necessary if you ever wish to leave the Labyrinth; right now, you, along with everyone else in this throne world, are sealed from the rest of Pandaemonium by a barrier, and that barrier is sustained by the Lady Katoptris. Kill the throne lord, break the barrier, and ascend.”

I frown, pensive. That’s certainly the exact logic I used in front of Bashe, but I still have questions. “What exactly is the Lady of Shards? Bashe called her an ancient monster, you call her a throne lord, but how does she fit into the system? Is she Royalty? Is she a witch? Is she a Leviathan?”

“That is an excellent question, and one that few have concrete answers to. She predates the Founding–the establishment of the laws and customs of Firmament–but she is distinctly neither Leviathan nor Titan. ‘Witch’ might be an accurate term, in modern context, or perhaps something more grandiose like ‘witch-god.’ I’m afraid the Demiurge did not permit me to know those precise details when she was sculpting my understanding.” There’s something so light about how she says something so disconcerting.

“Okay. We’ll go off that for now. But… I always have more questions. I’ve made it one of my Truths, haven’t I? A hunger for knowledge. So I will keep pursuing this, and all the questions I have, until I understand everything about this world and whatever mad plot I’m wrapped up in.” I meet Cheshire’s brilliant yellow-and-blue gaze, I blink, and I flicker on my soul sight.

The world turns to paper and ink once more, all the other souls in the food court fading to splashes of dim and distant color. There’s just Cheshire in front of me, star of the sketchpad. She shows me a new view, this time: the cat-eared mask is tied with red ribbon, and the ribbons twirl and twist on each other in endless fractal patterns that stretch off the page.

I peer through the ribbons, within the ribbons, to something behind the mask. I see glittering multi-colored stars, and some indistinct shadow moving through them, visible only when it blocks the light. The absence of starlight moves closer, and it’s surrounding me, embracing me, and I am filled with a sense of warmth and sincerity and love.

I snap my eyes shut, clench my fists, and banish my second sight. When I open my eyes again, Cheshire is smiling at me with that smug fucking grin. “Were you hoping for a show?” she asks.

I growl and rise from my seat, grabbing my trash to throw it in the nearest waste bin. “It is insanely vexing, trying to figure you out. You’re my only source on basically everything in this world, and I have no idea how much I can trust you. So, I don’t really have a choice, and that vexes me.”

Cheshire touches my shoulder and looks at me with (probably false) sympathy. “I understand. I really do. And I wish that you had been able to come to this world under better circumstances; your life would be a lot easier right now if you were in a normal city rather than one of the Labyrinth’s little safe havens.”

I sigh. “Yeah, well, I probably wouldn’t have been brought here at all if that were the case, or at the very least I wouldn’t have been given magic. So… let’s just keep moving. There’s more to do, right?”

Immediately her demeanor shifts, expression brightening and body language adjusting to be more chipper. “Yep! Oh, so much to do! You, my dear, need a wardrobe upgrade. It’ll do your magic good, and also you look terrible, no offense.”

I am still wearing a dead person’s clothes: torn leggings, a loose top, and the thoroughly-bloodied skirt I’ve had since waking up. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

“Of course, we’ll have to change your appearance first,” she points out cheerily. “No point picking an outfit if we don’t know what it’s gonna be framing, right? So let’s crack open that mindscape of yours and get to reshaping your adorable physical form.”

I panic, not ready for that yet, and blurt, “How about books? Books are cool. Why don’t we do books first, actually, and then we do that after? Yeah, that sounds like an awesome idea. To the bookstore!”

I grab Cheshire’s hand and start power-walking for the nearest terminal, and from there we follow its directions to a place apparently specializing in fiction. Cheshire seems amused by my panic but doesn’t fight me on the digression.

We reach the bookshop (again I’m not really sure “shop” applies but I just don’t have a better word) and find it quite quaint: within the high-tech neon-and-chrome mall, this hole in the wall is all done up to look ancient and rustic, wood-paneled. We step inside and I am met with the wonderful scent of books: that delicious musty papery smell I know so well.

With a grin on my face I stride through aisles of wonderment. The first thing that strikes me is the difference in genre: I’m used to seeing fantasy and science fiction given a little corner of shame, but here I see stories of the fantastical mixed in throughout all genres… and then I realize that, of course, the fantastical is normal for these people. On closer inspection, there is a dividing line: about half the store is marked as speculative fiction, while the other half is contemporary.

They just both feature magic, for the most part, because a world without magic is almost inconceivable to the inhabitants of Pandaemonium.

I examine some of the contemporary fiction, fascinated by insights into Pandaemonium: a romance between an elf and a shrine priestess, an action tale about an exalted and their band of heroes besting a wicked lich, the arduous road of a wizard-in-training that dreams of becoming a dragon, and so many more. There’s a part of me that wants to stay in this section forever, learning as much as possible about Pandaemonium, but I get the distinct feeling that learning about a world exclusively through its fiction may leave me with some not-quite-useful assumptions.

So, to recreation: I cross the boundary and step into what Pandaemonium sees as speculative fiction. Unsurprisingly I do catch a couple of novels dreaming up wild tales of what the Zero Sphere might look like (all horribly wrong, obviously), but as I trace my finger over lovely spines I catch sight of one title that strikes my interest: The Machinations of the Ashen Warlock.

It’s a silly bit of fantasy: the story of a young girl from an impoverished background who is given a chance at rising through the ranks of her society’s elite sorcerer caste. The central tension appears to be the Trials that all aspirants must go through to be made a sorcerer’s apprentice, which pit them against each other in increasingly lethal contests. The tension rising in the background concerns the titular Ashen Warlock, a mysterious magus who cured the protagonist’s debilitating health condition for purposes unknown.

It sounds fun, and I idly flip through a few pages, getting a feel for the story. A few pages turn into more, and I’m a quarter of the way through the book when I suddenly stop and laugh. I grab a bookmark–they’re left all over the bookstore, thoughtfully–and turn to Cheshire with a grin.

“You know, the first book I ever tried to write was about a warlock. It was nothing like this story, really, but this story’s definitely much better than mine was. I was… well, I was an idiot kid, and I had more ambition than technique or experience. It was so cringe, but I was like twelve when I wrote it. It was about–well, actually, I guess you’d already know that, right.” I scratch my head sheepishly, embarrassed.

Cheshire smiles at me. “I want to hear it, regardless. I like listening to you talk, especially about something you have passion for. And I know you have passion for this. So c’mon: sit, and spin me a yarn.”

She gestures to a pair of chairs to sit in. I’ve been reading standing up, like a fool, so I stroll over and get comfy. I drum my fingers along the arm of the chair, nervous, and then I get right into it. “Okay, so, it’s this story about a warlock. A grand warlock, who was sealed away for ten thousand years, and at the start of the story finally escapes his prison. His prison was–well, okay, I guess I have to make a quick digression. I say that this is the first book I ever tried to write, and in some sense it is, but it was built on the ashes of an even earlier attempt. I wanted to write a story about an amnesiac, but it turns out that’s actually really hard, so I scrapped it before I’d written more than a few pages and turned the outline into a very unwieldy prologue for this story.”

Cheshire curls up in her chair and asks, “Did you write a lot of unwieldy prologues?”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely. No self-awareness, little Alice. But yeah, so, big unwieldy prologue explaining this war between the good kingdom and the evil empire, and this big bad evil god of darkness–who, get this, was named after a League of Legends character–and then hero-boy kills the dark god and saves the day, but this has consequences: it lets out the grand warlock, who was… gods he was such an edgy character. His name was Tharias Maledictus, and if you think the faux-Latin is bad then wait ‘till you hear where the ‘Tharias’ part came from: a World of Warcraft random name generator, because he got his start as my WoW character.”

Cheshire bursts out laughing and I laugh with her, because it’s just patently absurd. “Amazing. Your video game warlock with a last name of ‘Curse.’”

“Ha, it’s meant to be Tharias Evilcurse, actually, because ‘even more edgy,’ but I know that’s not actually how the Latin works in that conjugation. Anyways, yeah, he was your generic edgy self-insert OC: uber-strong, uber-smart, a twelve-year-old’s sense of humor, the works. And he’s got these big plans, and he goes on these crazy adventures, but the core of it starts with him picking up an apprentice from this half-elf orphan girl he finds in the slums of some city in the good kingdom. Her name is Elizabeth, and she’s arguably the real protagonist of the series. She’s scrappy, vicious, and she falls into a lot of those ‘Strong Female Character’ tropes you see get used when someone wants a feminist character but doesn’t really know how to write one and is kind of overcorrecting. Like, there’s literally a scene where some guy thinks she shouldn’t be on the adventure because she’s a girl, so she kicks his ass. That bargain bin shit.”

Cheshire claps her hands together and makes an, “Awwww” noise, which I ignore.

“So, Tharias and Elizabeth adventure together, and he teaches her how to become a warlock, and they kinda sorta end up as a couple? Which, actually pretty yikes, looking back. Like there’s a lot of power differential going on there, and he withholds a lot of information from her. The whole master/apprentice romance angle is creepy, especially since it’s not like, played for subversion or anything, but again, I was twelve. I genuinely didn’t know any better.”

“Sure, of course,” Cheshire nods. “And that’s definitely not at all indicative of some of your preferences now, mhm.”

The catgirl winks and I hiss at her. “I will boil you alive, cat.”

She snickers, then waves a hand. “Go on, continue your story. You’re cute when you infodump.”

Fucking cat changeling geist thing getting in my head and calling me cute like a weird wrong weirdo. Hiss! I huff and get back to the story. “So, I’m not gonna explain the whole story, because this stupid thing was meant to be nine books long, and who the fuck sits down to write a story that long? It’s absurd. Nine books, Cheshire. A trilogy of trilogies! Absurd! The trilogies went like this: in the first trilogy, we’re introduced to the core cast and the setting, and then in the third book I kill off half the cast as part of a dramatic upheaval of the status quo that leaves our protagonists–Tharias and Elizabeth–as the seeming villains of the story. The second trilogy starts by reinforcing that impression with heroes coming after the duo, but then there are huge plot reveals about the eldritch horrors really pulling the strings, and the central couple are separated by said horrors. The final trilogy focuses on them apart at first, allowing Elizabeth to really come into her own, and then they reunite in time to defeat the eldritch horror big bads, but it turns out that the only way to save all life from their dominion is to burn away the whole universe and reincarnate it as something new free of their influence. So that’s what Tharias and Elizabeth do, and that’s where the series ends, with the whole universe burned away and forged anew.”

I breathe deep, a little winded from rambling on for so long. I look over at Cheshire, still nervous despite knowing she already knows all this. It’s weird; I don’t usually care if someone finds my early writing cringe, because it absolutely is, and that’s fine. I like my old stories, even if they’re horribly amateurish. So I shouldn’t care what she thinks… but I do. Gods, she might be the only person in this world with a chance of understanding me, of knowing me. So I care so very deeply what she thinks of me.

…And also there’s the whole maybe plotting my demise thing? Yeah. Complicated relationship.

Cheshire is still smiling, but it’s more thoughtful now. “So, which character were you?”

I laugh darkly. “That’s… complicated. I mean, it wasn’t, when I wrote it. Obviously Tharias was my self-insert, it’s what I wrote him for. But I plotted that story a long time ago, and even then… I sure did show a lot of attention to Elizabeth. I was drawn to her, to the point that I wrote Tharias out of the story for a while so I could develop her further, and I made her the star of the show, I made her the key to everything. She was the one who went on an actual character journey, and she was the one with the classic protagonist backstory setup. So, in a way… I guess they’re both me. Writers do that, yeah? Put a piece of themselves in every character, or, I guess, a lot of themselves in just two?”

I hesitate. I know the subtext here. I know the reason. And I know she knows. But it’s still so damn hard to say it for the first time to… to whatever she is to me. Whatever this is. It means confronting shit I don’t want to confront. But, I have to say it. I have to.

“I guess what it comes down to is that I wrote that story before I knew I was trans, and I never really went back and rewrote it because I was too busy making new versions, new stories. So it’s kind of… transitional, in a way. Heh.”

Cheshire acts amused at my silly little joke, but then says, “So: transness. Is that a thing you want to talk about? Given the whole ‘avoiding dealing with your appearance’ thing?”

I look away from her. “Not particularly, no. What’s there to talk about? I’m not interested in making my life into another example of trans misery porn. I’m fine with who I am, with myself. I’m cool, I’m smart, and I can be incredibly charming when I choose to. So it doesn’t matter that I’m not pretty or good-looking or even slightly conventionally attractive, or that I’ll never really look like I want to, how I want to.”

“But you can,” Cheshire says gently. “I’m offering that. So what’s stopping you?”

I notice one of my hands shaking, so I clasp it tightly with the other. “I. I just. I don’t like to think about it, okay? It’s not a problem if I just ignore it and let it fester. And actually fixing it means facing it. Facing me. This is how I cope, and I guess I’m just dreading that period of acknowledging it before it’s fixed… and maybe, a little, I’m afraid that nothing you can do will really make a difference.”

“It will,” she says with the strength of true conviction. “I promise. So come on, Alice: let’s make you everything you’ve ever dreamed of being.”

She holds out a hand, and I stare at it for a long moment, the dread building. But finally I reach out, and I take it, and then we enter my soul once more.