Mahiri’s soul is the most filling meal I’ve ever had, and yet paradoxically I find myself getting hungrier and hungrier as I eat. I keep feasting on her corpse long past the point where I stop tasting her soul, a manic energy stirring me on. When I finally feel satisfied and content to stop eating, there’s barely any of her left beyond the clothes she was wearing and a few pieces of gear.

Her magic sword, regrettably, seems to have vanished. I send the crossbow, belt, and goggles to a storeroom.

I allow myself to bask in the glow of victory for a few moments, but soon enough my throne world begins to fade away. I rise from the tattered remnants of my foe, once more standing amid the familiar lights and walkways of the maze’s last zone.

My body returns to its porcelain vampire doll form, and a moment later black mist flows from my mouth and takes the form of Cheshire. I feel a cold prickling sense of loss as she leaves me, like the crash after a high, but it’s not enough to break through my post-meal delight.

“Congrats on the win, Allie. How’s it feel?” She leans against the walkway railing, seeming happy.

“Exceptional,” I breathe. “Very viscerally satisfying. I want to do it again.”

She smiles. “I’m glad. You deserved a real win, after all you’ve been through in this Labyrinth. Once we’re somewhere safe, I’ll tell you all about the benefits of that soul you ate, though I imagine you remember most of them from our last talk on the subject. Come on, let’s get to the exit.” She waves a hand and starts walking in that direction, but I don’t follow her.

“No. I’m not done here yet.”

Cheshire turns back to me and frowns. “What do you mean?”

I look to the other pathway, the one leading to the Reveler’s lair. “I’m tired of running scared. I just had my first real taste of victory and it was intoxicating. I’m not leaving this maze until I’ve gotten one over on everyone standing in my way, and that means vexing the bastard who threw me in here. Averrich schemed to make this a game where every outcome benefits him more than me, but there’s one outcome he can’t have predicted: I’m going to kill the Reveler.”

Cheshire pales. “That’s… uh, I mean, he certainly wouldn’t expect that, but how do you plan on doing that? The Reveler is still a bit above your power level, even with your latest boost. You do have a plan, right?”

“You said that I get new spells by eating souls, right?”

Cheshire nods slowly. “That’s right. With the soul you just ate and everything else you’ve done since becoming a demon, you have the resources to make a new spell. What did you have in mind?”

I grin. “I’ve been going over a lot of pieces in my head, and now I think I understand how they all click together. Take us back to my throne world; I want to do this with flair, like when we assembled my Truths.”

The world shifts again, and we’re back in my soul, standing at the entrance to my thankfully-reconstructed castle. I take us to one of the unused rooms and conjure a table into the center of it. I drum my fingers on the table, mind buzzing with ideas, and think about how to word this.

“Okay. So, this idea really started forming when we talked about [Prey Upon] and you explained how it ‘digests’ souls. I started thinking: could that property be applied to a spell like [Soulfire]? And then, then I thought about [Abyssal Armament], and how I used it to save myself from the Mourner’s touch. I thought about what would happen if I combined all those traits.” I reach into my throne world and shape a dagger of black stone, setting it on the table.

Cheshire strokes her chin and hums. “Interesting. A weapon purpose-built for killing something like a Reveler that relies on corrupting your soul. If you carved off the corrupted part of your soul with every casting, and gained back more than you lost by consuming part of their soul–avoiding further corruption through digestion–that might actually work. Maybe.”

“There’s more.” I shape a bloody fang next to the black dagger. “[Prey Upon] eats souls, but it can also grant me mana. [Exsanguinate], meanwhile, has been modified to have a lifesteal effect. Both are useful, but both have restrictions that limit their usefulness: the latter requires a wounded foe, while the former requires a dying foe. But what if I had one spell that could feed me soulstuff, feed me mana, and heal my wounds, all while working on any foe–wounded or whole, bloody or bloodless?”

Cheshire frowns. “That would be an absurdly costly effect. Prohibitively so. If a spell like that was easy to cast, I would have offered it in the first place instead of a bunch of lesser options.”

I nod. “I figured that’d be the case. But then, in that dark hollow deep inside my soul, I found the final piece of the puzzle. I saw my own animus: the fear of death and abandonment that sprung from the loss of my mother. And I defied it by taking your hand and choosing to trust you. I took a risk, and it paid off. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since I arrived in this world.

“When I sold my name to the Huntsman, it was a risk that came with sacrifice, but it got me the compass that led to my first ally in this world. When I freed the incubus, it was a risk, but I earned his gratitude and that carried me through two days of pissing him off. When I stabbed my own hand with a soul-devouring dagger, it was risk and sacrifice, but it saved my life. And when I chose to trust you, when I took that risk, it won us the duel. Risk and sacrifice, and through that, power.”

I add a vial of blood to the table, and next to it a blood-red twenty-sided die.

“I want to make a spell that will be my new animus: the will to rise through sacrifice and risk. A spell with an incredibly powerful payoff, but an incredibly dangerous cost: with every casting, it will sacrifice a portion of my mana, my life essence, and my very soul–not just when it’s been corrupted, but every single time, taking as much as it needs to fuel the spell. Every casting would be a gamble, a wager that I would gain back more than I spent.”

Cheshire whistles appreciatively. “Damn, girl, but you really don’t do half-measures. Hmm.” Cheshire raises her hands and conjures an orb of blood, an orb of darkness, and an orb of black flame, all levitating in front of her. “A spell like that… it’s possible, but only for you. You have the right Truths, and you’ve built the right meaning, and we have power to work with. I can make it, but I’ll have to deconstruct both [Prey Upon] and [Exsanguinate] and use up all the power we just gained from that duel. You’ll be left with just this spell and [Carrion Swarm] until, in all likelihood, your next duel victory.”

“I’m okay with that. This spell is worth the investment.”

Cheshire nods. “There is one restriction that I won’t be able to get around: if you’re just trying to harm a soul, something like [Soulfire] is sufficient, but to feed on a soul and take from it you need some form of contact. Physical contact is conventional, ranging from skin-to-skin to casting at the point of a sword like you did to finish off that corrupted reaver. Since you’re a demon, anything touching your shadow qualifies as touching you for the purposes of a spell like this. And lastly, you’ll be able to cast it through any tethered object; I count as one of those, when manifested, and I can modify [Carrion Swarm]’s phantasms to be tethered as well, though doing so would add a range restriction on how far from you they can move before disapparating.”

I consider that briefly, but it’s not a hard choice. “Make the change. I’m not really a long-range combatant anyways, at this point.”

“Noted. Also, and this should go without saying, but I do want you to be aware that every casting of this spell is going to cause you excruciating pain. Even if it’s carving off a damaged or corrupted piece of your soul–and I intend to set its default to target those areas–you’re still losing a part of your soul, and that’s going to hurt.”

I laugh and grin. “Please, a little pain never stopped me. I’ll gladly bear it.”

“Okay.” Cheshire brings the three orbs together, the trinity melding into a single orb of shifting color. “Then give it a name, and I’ll give you this spell.”

I take a deep breath, and I start speaking. “This spell is my animus. It is the culmination of who I want to be, of the choices that I have made and am going to make going forward. Every risk I’ve taken on the path to this point has given me the strength to keep moving, so I’ll risk it all: my power, my body, and my very soul. Every casting of this spell will be the line between darkness and the divine. The ultimate risk, and the ultimate reward. With this spell in hand, I will overthrow the Demiurge and take her place on the Throne of Creation, or I will fall from grace and be taken by the hungering Abyss. There is no other path that will suffice, no lesser road that still leads to the usurpation of God herself. She who is not willing to give everything will be forever left with nothing. I’ll make that creed my whole life, my whole being, my whole reason to exist: [Feast or Famine].”

The orb vanishes and a new spell matrix appears in my mind’s eye.

This matrix is more complex than those I’ve looked at previously, by a fairly wide margin, but it also seems very rigid for a spoken spell. I see the sigil for the Abyss in multiple places in the configuration, which I think may be the first time I’ve seen an individual glyph appear more than once in a single matrix?

I really want to note down this matrix and compare it to the others, but that’s something I can do later. Right now, I have a monster to kill.

I dismiss the spell without unleashing it and we return to the Reveler’s maze once more. At my lead we follow the path leading to the sign marked “Backstage.”

In short order we pass into a new region of the maze, but there’s something familiar about this place: it’s the wooden stage I saw far below the catwalks. Red curtains are drawn in front of the stage, and spotlights are pointed at it, while behind me stretches an audience of swaying shadow-figures.

Cheshire looks to me as I walk toward the stage. “Do you want to manifest me for this fight?”

I shake my head. “I have a different idea. You told me some geists take care of spellcasting in a fight, and I want to try that out. Prime castings of [Feast or Famine], and unleash whenever I make contact.”

Cheshire nods, then melts into my shadow. I take another few steps forward and stop at the edge of the stage.

I spread my hands and call out, “Well, Beast? Going to let me fight your manic little splinter, or will I have to force it to come out?”

On cue, the curtains are pulled to either side of the stage, and the Reveler is unveiled. The horrifying mass of limbs is curled up like a sleeping cat, but as the curtains draw back it raises its smiling mask and unfurls.

The Reveler laughs–the giggling of a child, the cheers of a crowd, the howling of the mad–and I laugh right back at it, grinning and ready. “Gimme your best shot,” I dare the monster, and I reach out my hand and make a “come at me” gesture.

The creature lifts a few limbs with fingers delicately outstretched, and it gently moves those limbs to graze it fingers along my hand. For a single instant I am overwhelmed by joy so bright and sharp it hurts to feel, like sex and drugs and feeding all compressed into a chemical overdose in my brain. It’s strength so intense I feel like my muscles will tear themselves apart, and a sense of suicidal invincibility that tells me I could break the world with my bare hands.

Then black mist swirls around my hand, and the intrusive thoughts scatter like petals, replaced with searing pain that stabs my insides and blanks my thoughts–and then that pain is salved by the heavenly taste of fresh soulstuff.

The Reveler recoils as if burned, mist clinging to its fingers and withering them. The creature tilts its masked face at me, blood dripping from its empty eyeholes, looking almost like a confused puppy. It untangles another limb from its mass, and this one extends a single finger to poke my arm.

The wheel of sensations repeats: unbearable euphoria, soul-rending pain, and the satisfaction of a good meal. It’s disorienting, and I have to take a few deep breaths to steady myself, but the Reveler seems to take it worse; the monster hisses, the first time I’ve heard it make a noise other than laughter.

It backs away slowly, so I climb onto the stage and advance, pulling myself up with more ease than I was expecting. Am I stronger now? Like, permanently?

The Reveler rises out of my reach, clinging to the far wall of the stage and watching me with unknowable emotion. I smirk. “Cute. [Carrion Swarm]. Get close.”

White ravens spring forth and fly at the Reveler. A limb twitches to life for each raven and moves with lurching speed to swat them out of the air, but in the instant before each raven disintegrates they are wreathed in black mist that clings to the Reveler’s limbs. More grasping hands wither until they are emaciated husks.

This time there’s no euphoria to contrast with the pain, so I’m shotgun-blasted with a myriad of fresh agonies only partly blunted by the food high that follows. I double over and my vision briefly goes black, but with gritted teeth and fierce will I force myself to regain my composure.

Above me, the Reveler scratches at its own mask, and the limbs I bit with my spell are getting worse. As I watch, two of them fall from the main mass and shatter into black glass against the wooden stage. Another falls, and another, and I see hands that never touched me or my creatures beginning to rot away.

The Reveler laughs again, a cacophonous chorus, but this time tinged with panic. It gathers its fullness and lunges at me, all remaining arms spread wide as if to crush me to death in its embrace.

I lunge right back at it, arm outstretched, and lay my hand on its mask. Cheshire unleashes my magic, and I cast it myself for good measure. “[Feast or Famine]!”

Black mist swallows its mask and courses down its mass of limbs, rotting them to nothing, and the Reveler dies.

When the pain and the mist both fade, I’m left standing surrounded by glass dust and larger shards. Amid all that, two objects stick out: the mask of the Reveler, smiling and bloody; and a weapon that I recognize as a war rapier, with a swept hilt and a broader blade than a standard rapier. The blade of the weapon is also, oddly, a deep crimson hue.

I reach for the mask first, then hesitate. Cheshire appears next to me and gives me a warning look. “Careful, they might be cursed in some way.”

“Mm. But I want them. Let’s try something.” I flick on soul sight and the world goes ink-and-charcoal.

The mask appears almost identical to its physical form. The only real difference I can see is that the white of it seems brighter, but it doesn’t feel like the veins of corruption I saw in Averrich. I peer closer, and I try to reach for whatever part of my soul contains my Gift of creation.

My sight sharpens, and it’s like I can hear vibrations coming from the mask. Resonances. I know that the mask does nothing on its own, but that it is made of resonant materials which I could tap into, harness, and make a very strong artifact out of. I just need the right something to fill it with.

I turn my gaze on the rapier and it blazes to my sight. Where to my physical sight the blade was merely red, to my soul sight it is drenched in blood. The hilt and crossguard, corded leather and metal in realspace, are bleached bone in the realm of meaning. This is a killing instrument, and it is full of power, and it is very, very old.

I hear the name of the weapon, and I know that it yearns for me to wield it.

I flicker off my soul sight and grab the hilt, heedless of Cheshire’s shouted concern. I raise the blade, finding it so natural in my grip. I swing it lightly through the air, watching the red arc. Perfectly-balanced.

I murmur, “Vorpal, the Bloodstained Blade,” and I feel it seethe with power as it wakes to life.

Cheshire stares at the sword, eyes wide. “That… that’s not a Throne-made artifact. That’s not even Gift-made. That’s a Crest. Alice, that sword… it’s older than Firmament.”

“And now it’s mine.”

I take the mask and send it to my throne world, but the rapier I keep in hand, clutched gently. Vorpal. A name so fitting it can’t possibly be a coincidence, built around an affinity that I possess as a Truth. And, if I am to take the ultimate risk and trust in my companion, the blade’s presence here was a surprise. I wonder… was this an act of the Beast? Of Katoptris herself?

Or of the monster pulling all our strings?

Our journey to the maze’s end is brief and uneventful, and when I cross the final threshold and emerge back into the city it comes without fanfare. From there, it’s easy to find a figment and get directions back to the district I first woke up in.

We walk together, silence quickly giving way to idle chatter, and eventually we reach the apartment that Bashe acquired for us. We head inside and I lock the door, and then I collapse gratefully onto my bed. I manifest Cheshire so that she can cuddle me in cat form, and then I drift comfortably to sleep with her in my arms.

And then, I dream.

Interlude: Shadow & Glass V

The day we put our plan into motion was a celebrated one, both between ourselves and among the court.

For them, it was a much-welcomed change in familiar routine; it’s not every day, after all, that a mysterious sorcerer with strange affectations arrives from a faraway clan. Rarer still when that sorcerer’s introduction is being rescued by the royal pariah.

For us, it was the culmination of months of effort. We delved into ancient crypts in search of your gift to the clan, and we battled terrible monsters to acquire the bloodstone ore that your Crest was forged from. Every step on our path was paved with great effort… save the last; the final key to making your Crest, the affinity that would have to be sacrificed, came not from either of our souls but from a strange needle of red glass that you attained through means you never spoke of.

“Introducing to the court, Lady Homura Annatar Bloodfallen.”

Courtesies and formalities were observed, and then you stood before my father’s throne and knelt. I knew by then, from all our time together, that you burned with hatred for every aspect of that act, but you kept your face smiling and serene. Grateful, even.

“I thank you for your generosity, Your Majesty,” you spoke without a hint of insincerity. “After the tragedy that has left me bereft of lands, titles, and kinfolk, it restores my spirit to see that there are those who still retain their humanity.”

He gestured for you to rise, and even that you performed with careful grace.

“If you will allow me,” you continued, “I would thank you for taking me in with the only two gifts I have left to give: one material, and one immaterial.” You withdrew from your jacket pocket a dull golden jewel streaked with prismatic color. “First, I offer a Titan’s Eye gem, the only treasure I was able to take with me when I fled the destruction of my clan–aside from my Crest, of course. I regret that it is bereft of stored power, but all our resources were expended in our desperate efforts to stave off our vanquishers.”

My father peered at the gem with a keen eye, then slowly nodded. “A worthy gift, indeed. Though your titles were torn from you, I see you still have a noble nature. And what of this immaterial gift?”

Luka takes the Titan’s Eye from you and sets it by the throne. You smile at him, red eyes warm, and then you return your attention to the king. “Perhaps it is discourteous of me to frame it as such, Your Majesty. Rather, I should say that I wish for a request to be granted: I wish to enter into your service as a retainer, and perhaps with time earn a full position in your court. I know that clan Bloodfallen can never again exist as it once did, but it would bring me joy to raise a new Bloodfallen within the grace of your dominion.”

The king leveled a piercing gaze at you. “You must have become quite attached to our kingdom in the scant time you have been here.”

“Well, your daughter was quite compelling in her praises.”

“Was she, now.” He leaned back and gestured to the old crone. “Zdenka, you are requested.”

Zdenka came forth and took her place next to the throne. “Your Majesty, I possess no record of a Bloodfallen sorcerer line, but if she is truly from distant lands then this is only expected; the Crawling Chaos takes great pains to restrict our knowledge of realms beyond the Glass Tower’s reach. To be truly certain of her identity as a blooded sorcerer, I would request permission to examine her Crest.”

“I would consent to such an examination,” you told the king. You carefully drew your rapier and held it out, presenting it with both hands. “I present the Crest of my family: Vorpal, the Bloodstained Blade.”

Zdenka placed a single finger upon the blade and called upon her affinities, weaving a spell of such complexity that even I felt envious at the level of skill on display. When her spell was complete, she slowly nodded. “It as she says, Your Majesty: this is a true Crest, and it has a deep connection to the woman before you. It is my belief as your Loremaster that Lady Bloodfallen is indeed the rightful wielder of this sorcerer Crest.”

“Thank you, Zdenka.” The king dismissed his advisor, and then he spoke to you: “I believe that your request can be accommodated, Lady Bloodfallen. Welcome to the Kingdom of Sun and Sword.”

The whole court watched you, interest or excitement on every face. Courtiers already plotting how they would make use of you and manipulate you, or wondering how you would change the game. The Master of War was looking at your blade with curiosity, while the Masters of Coin and Letters were conversing in hushed tones. Even Luka was looking at you warmly.

Everyone wanted to meet you and figure you out. Everyone was intrigued by your presence in court. They were all giving you their full attention.

And in my heart, I felt the first twinge of jealousy.

END OF BOOK ONE