FEAST OR FAMINE

ACT ONE

PART FIVE: “Pool of Tears” OR “Defeating Depression by Punching it Really Hard”

Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Alice, “a great girl like you,” (she might well say this), “to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!” But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep, and reaching half down the hall.

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

I hang back with Cheshire while the others chat amongst themselves. Simon is rather goal-oriented and leading the way, harassed by a Scratchy—what was their name again?—that refuses to shut up. Kado and Dante talk casually, the isekai kid seeming to hit it off with everyone he meets. My puppets on loan from Avaya walk between myself and the rest of the pack, creating a bit of distance and performing rear guard duties.

Cheshire is in her ethereal form, gliding along beside me without ever touching the ground and needing to move her legs. I really need to learn a trick like that, though I have to admit I’ve stopped feeling winded on these long walks. Demonic stamina, I suppose.

Cheshire bumps up against me and asks, “Hey, wanna learn a new scion trick?”

“Yes, always, definitely. What is it?” I give a quick glance ahead just to double check no one’s listening in, and they all still seem occupied.

“I’m going to teach you how to use your throne world to hold a private conversation while still being in public.”

“Ah. That seems useful in our exact situation.”

The catgirl geist rubs her hands together. “I figured you’d think so. It’s a good skill for every scion to have, once their throne world is strong enough for it. Demons start with the weakest domain of any scion, but your growth rate has been a lot faster than a normal demon even before you took a bite out of the Demiurge. Now we can start projecting your internal world onto the external world.”

I perk up and lean in. “Domain expansion. Reality marble. We’re digging into that kind of magic?”

Cheshire grins. “Welcome to the real power of a scion. Your soul is a world as tangible as any other now, as true as any realm of Pandaemonium, just… less weighty, at the moment. Any scion can retreat into their throne world and invite others inside, but it’s a lot harder to push out the world around you; your authority over reality only extends to the reach of your pleroma. As your soul core strengthens and your pleroma expands, you’ll be able to manifest further outside of yourself for longer stretches without needing a formal invitation. The world will still push back, but you’ll get better at resisting its pressure.”

I eagerly devour the new exposition, adding it to my mental framework of the magic system. “Very exciting. So how do we apply that to our current needs?”

Cheshire gestures around us and says, “If you were to project your soul around us now, just a few feet out, you could maintain it for probably a few minutes before it collapsed back into you. However!” She pokes me in the cheek. “Your body is within your core’s reach, not just your pleroma, and that keeps the world from pushing back when you make changes. That principle is why we reconfigure your appearance so easily, and we can apply it to create a bit of privacy between the two of us. By deciding that sound cannot escape the bounds of your throne world, the words you speak will reach your lips and stop there, unheard by any but yourself and your geist.”

Clever. But still vulnerable to lip reading, so… I conjure my witchy hat and put it on, then dip it low to obscure my face to the others. “Let’s try this out.”

Cheshire walks me through the process. Every time I interact with my throne world, it gets a little easier to understand how it operates and what it responds to. In no time at all I have a basic sound filter up and running, and our privacy is secured.

“So,” I ask, “what did you want to talk about that necessitates a filter? I had assumed we were setting all the Homura and Katoptris stuff aside for now, given Nyara’s… objections.”

Cheshire shivers and I match her. “Yeah, no, very happy to not talk about any of that. But there is one good piece of news to come out of that disaster: we can make new spells. Between the Reveler, the Mourner, and the soul from Avaya, you were already close to breaching the next threshold.”

Before bed last night, Cheshire helped me come up with a cute trick for eating that bartered soul: I carved off all the impurities with [Feast or Famine], then ate the parts that actually resonated as a conventional demon would. Excellent efficiency.

“Each time you create a new spell, it takes more power to make the next, so normally there’s quite a gap between spells after you’ve made your first few… but you drank from Nyarlathotep herself, so you’re actually powerful enough for a second spell and nearly there to a third. So: what do you want first?”

“Something that involves blood,” I respond immediately. “Let me think it over for a second.”

Mind control? Mind control is pretty poggers and those puppets have given me ideas, buuuuuut I can’t use a spell like that in front of Dante or the Myriad, and I should wait until I’ve eaten Vaylin, so it’s definitely more of a future investment.

I could try to reverse engineer Homura’s boosting magic, since it served her so well in that duel with Ruzica, but I don’t know if it would be as useful in my hands. Homura was fighting a mostly conventional battle there, trying to score clean blows with power and skill and a few clever tricks, but my win condition in any given fight is landing a lethal soul rip. Being stronger doesn’t help me eat souls better when all I need is a moment of contact. Being faster might help against certain opponents, though my mobility game is already fairly strong with Cheshire on my side.

If I want Vorpal to boost my next spell, then it needs to involve my Truth of Blood. That could mean the literal blood flowing through my veins or it could mean the associated concepts of Blood like violence, sacrifice, and bonds. I don’t know all the differences between Homura’s Blood and mine, but it’s a fair bet that hitting all three of those big ideas will net me the most metaphysical bang for my metaphysical buck.

But that still leaves the all-important question: what should the spell actually do? Do I need more offensive options, do I need to add more utility to my toolkit, or do I need to bulk up my defenses?

You know, we were thinking about getting some kind of armor spell to alleviate the clothing damage problem. Armor made of crystallized blood, armor made of liquid shadow, maybe combine the ideas, pitch it to Cheshire, and work from there to develop it into something fitting and useful?

Yeah, okay, good plan. “Okay, I have an idea. I want the spell to tie into violence, sacrifice, and bonds, because they’re all key components of my Truth of Blood and I think that’ll give me the best chance of receiving assistance from Vorpal. I also want a spell that will keep me from having to replace my outfit after every major fight, because that’s definitely going to happen unless I run around naked like I did in that last encounter. So, my pitch is some kind of enduring armor spell, like a spell that gives me a suit of some adaptive substance that can clothe me and protect me, but made out of my own blood and liquefied shadow.”

Cheshire leans in and grins. “That is a very, very exciting idea. I can absolutely work with that, that has a lot of potential. I think this is a perfect spell to start really digging into the idea of tactical drawbacks, too. Nyara’s magic system rewards the notion of ‘balance’ in spell design, so you can make a spell stronger in one area by making it weaker in others. It’s sort of like a merits and flaws system in an RPG: each spell has a given budget of effectiveness, and you can increase that budget by taking on detrimental effects.”

“I’m both buzzing at the prospect of being able to minmax my magic to such a fine-tuned level and vaguely peeved that Nyara probably designed it that way to intentionally ape said RPG systems.”

Cheshire sighs. “Her and her references. Anyway: violence, sacrifice, and bonds. Those latter two are actually perfect for creating drawbacks that will make the spell stronger. For sacrifice, I’m thinking of stuff like the Kamui in Kill La Kill or the ripcord in Chainsaw Man: when you activate the spell it takes a bite out of your blood, and it’ll keep drinking the more that you use it and push the limits of its capabilities. That’ll also help enhance the Blood resonances even if sacrifice isn’t particularly important to Vorpal, though I would honestly be surprised if that were the case.”

I grin. “I like it. Very edgy, very ‘feast or famine.’ Plus, it’s an easy drawback to manage: I just have to drink more blood from others.” Regular feeding is important for a growing vampire demon doll monster.

The catgirl chuckles. “You’ll definitely get more urges to drink while the spell is running. Probably a general uptick in all kinds of hungers, actually. Anyway, the other big drawback: if we want to hit the concept of bonds, then we can make it a spell that can only be cast while the two of us are merged—or rather, a spell that through casting merges us in a different way from both classical manifestation and our hybrid form.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

“When you manifest me through your body, my shapeshifting gets supercharged by your demonic essence. When I’m not manifested, my anchor point or resting place is your shadow, the symbol of your demonhood.” She lets her form melt into my shadow and then reappear beside me. “So what if, instead of using your whole body as an anchor for my manifestation, I only used two components: your shadow, and your blood. I would be the guiding intellect of the spell, in a sense, actively managing the shadow-blood mixture and altering its properties on the fly to better protect you against enemy attacks or maneuver you around the battlefield.”

“I like it. Another drawback that’s not really a drawback, given I don’t plan on using you as an attack dog or a distraction now that we have more powerful tools at our disposal. You’re more useful at my side, close to me.”

Cheshire preens at that, seeming to light up at my praise. “That’s not all! By using my presence as a core component of the spell, you’ll also gain a degree of passive physical enhancement like you would experience during a normal merge, and I can micromanage the spell’s material to better protect you: I can harden portions of the suit to deflect physical trauma, and I can create a kind of gel layer to redistribute kinetic energy from attacks that don’t care about deflection.”

So I still get the boost after all, excellent. I grin and start drumming my fingers along my thigh. “Very useful. Any other fun ideas?”

“Yes, actually!” The catgirl gives me an even bigger grin and asks, “How would you like tentacles?”

“Yes, fuck yes, absolutely yes, what kind of tentacles?” I’m practically vibrating with excitement now. This is the coolest spell ever.

“We’ll add four of them coming out of your back, flexible and sturdy, and they’ll split at the tip to grab enemies or climb terrain. Made of your blood, of course.”

I hug myself and wriggle as we walk, and I even squeal a little. I am extremely happy that none of the others can hear me right now. “Yes, yes, yes!!! Oh fuck, we should edit my default form to have like, vertical slits in my back that the tentacles come out of, like exposed wounds from which my blood takes vicious form, muahaha!” I’m getting so chuuni about this and I’m not even embarrassed.

Cheshire giggles at my enthusiasm and claps. “Done! Oh, if you really wanna go full boss monster with this, we could add a vulnerable core to the whole thing, a critical weak point. For maximum resonance we could make that be your heart, exposed and the source of the spell, the anchor for my part of it. You’d have to work a little harder to defend it, of course, but it would strengthen the rest of the armor.”

I pause. “Wait. Does that apply, like, universally to all magic armor? Give it a weak point and the rest toughens up?”

Cheshire nods. “Yep. And now you understand why Achaia doesn’t wear a helmet. That’s actually standard practice for magic armor, in fact. You always want to build around a weak point to maximize the rest of the armor, and helmets are an easy choice because Nyara finds headshots boring.”

I pause for a longer moment this time. “Sorry, did you… did you just say that Nyara, the Lucid Demiurge, the master of reality, finds headshots boring? And that means, through magical bullshit, cosmological shenanigans, absolute metaphysical horsepiss, that warriors going into battle do not have to worry about getting shot in the fucking head when they choose not to wear a helmet?”

“Within Pandaemonium, you are mathematically less likely to be shot in the head than anywhere else on your body, by a dramatic degree, unless you are capable of surviving being shot in the head, in which case it’ll actually happen more often.” Cheshire’s expression is completely serious.

I take a moment to process that deranged revelation of fresh batshit crazy setting lore. Like, wow. That’s. That’s something. “Cool. Cool cool cool. So, anyways, I guess we’re making a suit of blood armor that exposes my heart, and we might as well expose the head too since that’s apparently fucking normal here. That’ll make the rest of me super resistant to attacks which will buy me time to land a finisher, so we’re enhancing our current strategy.”

“Sounds good! Unless there’s anything else, do you have a preference for what the spell will look like? We’ve been talking about the raw materials, mostly, but how do you want this blood-shadow mixture to look when it forms around you? Black-and-red goop? Spiky red crystals streaked with black smoke?”

I hesitate. I do have ideas, actually, but now I am feeling embarrassed. “Yes, so, um, right, about that.”

Cheshire gives me a quizzical expression. “Allie?”

Softly, so quietly that even I can barely hear it, I mumble, “I was thinking of making it… sexy.” The last word is barely even sound.

She blinks a few times, then leans in, grin becoming devilish. “Could you repeat that? I didn’t quite catch it.”

“Sexy!” I hiss at her. “Sex appeal! Fanservice! Ugh. Look, I was thinking about this yesterday morning while I was choosing what to wear, and I started really digging into the meaning of my magic and what aesthetic would empower it best and I was trying to find some kind of look that’s cool and terrifying and powerful and badass, but then my stupid traitor brain started pointing out that hey that’s only part of my Truths and if I really want to maximize my power then I should be aiming to be desirable as well and to emphasize recklessness and hey would you look at that dressing in a skimpy attention-seeking way would hit both of those perfectly and I had the terrible horrifying absolutely abominable realization that my fucking magic that is my essence and soul and the very heart of me will actually fucking reward me if I go around fighting in goddamn dominatrix lingerie and do you have any idea how infuriating that is!?!? I want to be loved and feared and feel desired and powerful and dangerous, wreathed in violence and hunger and the worship of my lessers, and somehow all of that actually maps annoyingly well to ‘sexy villainess,’ so here I am.” I pause my embarrassed, furious rambling to pout before quickly adding, “I was going to argue that ‘sexy’ should be disqualifying but my evil traitor brain who I consider my greatest and most hateful nemesis countered that you would probably call that self-loathing and dysphoric.”

“I would!” Cheshire chirps. “And I will! You have every right to feel sexy and own that feeling. I also, for the record, agree with your interpretation of your own Truths and how they align with that aesthetic choice. So, Alice: what does sexy look like?”

“Ah, um, yes, ahem. Well.” Stop blushing stop blushing stop fucking blushing you dumb whore! “So, I was thinking that it would be, um, like, skintight? I know I specifically asked for slender and not curvy but, y’know, showing off whatever minimal figure is there. And, um, so, maybe…” I trail off, desperately wishing to abort this line of conversation but in far too deep now.

“Go on,” Cheshire teases. “You’ve got something in mind, spill.”

“A boob window,” I whisper, and then I dip my hat even lower so that it completely covers my face.

I can’t see her face, but I can hear her stifling laughter.

“I know I barely have boobs!” I hiss at her. “Whatever, it was a terrible idea, let’s pick something else.”

“No, no, it’s not that, you’re just so cute about it! You’re adorable. But, if you want some constructive feedback, I do have a few ideas for improvement.”

I slowly raise my hat back up far enough that I can actually see Cheshire, who’s looking at me with an expression of such adoration and warmth that I’m tempted to immediately hide again, but I don’t. “Share.”

“So, skintight with cleavage showing, that’s something I can work with. That first part is easy, we focus on mutability and make an ever-changing mixture of red fluid and brackish smoke that clings to your body tightly, swirling and shifting but always pressing in close like an embrace. And then, how about, instead of a window design, we stop the suit entirely at that point and create an off-shoulder neckline, baring more skin. We push out the shadow-blood a bit to either side of the shoulders and up a bit, creating a kind of spiked pauldron effect, and then we decorate the entire border with rows of teeth like the jaw of a great beast ready to snap shut around your head. Then, at the dip in the center, at your sternum, we’ll put your heart—because to a demon, biology is just a suggestion—bursting from your chest and held in place by twisted rib bone.”

Biology is just a suggestion. What a fantastically absurd thing to say. Her description is vivid enough that I’m past my embarrassment now and back to excitement. “Yes, want, oh wow that’s good. Now we’re cooking with monster girls. I’m going to look so good murdering people and wow I am so, so, so glad for this sound filter.”

Cheshire giggles to herself before looking at me expectantly. “Then all that’s left is a name.”

“Ah, fuck, right. Hmm.” Name, gotta name the spell. [Shadow Skin]? [Demon Skin]? [Hot Girl Shit]? “I know this isn’t really a culmination of animus like [Feast or Famine] was, but I still feel like the metaphysics dictate that I have to get philosophical about this. What does this spell mean to me, and what does it suggest about my identity as a demon? What’s the significance?”

Cheshire taps her chin and looks thoughtful, then points out, “Well, an hour or two after you let me into your metaphorical heart by revealing your secret dream visions, you’re now letting me into your literal physical heart and inviting me to take control of your blood and your shadow, both of which are strong symbols of you as a demon. It’s a kind of deeply symbolic union, when you look at it that way.”

I consider that. “Interesting. Mm. There’s a lot of cultural precedent for pacts and bonds made by exchanging blood, but cultural precedent is more the domain of Spirit and I don’t exactly have a lot of personal attachment to that idea beyond finding it cool whenever it shows up in anime or whatever.”

“You could think of it as a wager of trust, a sacrifice of agency to our bond.” Then Cheshire gets an evil grin. “Or you could call it a catsuit. You know, since—”

“I will eat your fingers,” I tell her solemnly. “I will dip them in wasabi and wrap them in seaweed and then I will nibble on them as a snack while I paint this city with the blood of my enemies.”

She giggles. “Okay, but, it actually does kind of fit, doesn’t it?”

“It does and I hate you for that. Affectionately. Still think it’s too memey, though; this spell feels important enough that I should make some effort to tie it to my animus. Maybe [Famished Heart], to get that direct reference?”

Cheshire hums at that and tilts her head. “I feel as if that puts too much emphasis on the ‘famine’ half, though. How about [Voracious Heart] instead? Always eating yet always hungry, you could say that the concept of voracity embodies both feast and famine. Plus, your heart is going to be constantly drinking your blood while the spell is active, so it’s both metaphorically true and literally true.”

“Hmm. Yeah, I can vibe with that. Honestly, Voracity would be a cool archdemon name. I have to pick one of those at some point, don’t I?”

The catgirl wiggles her hand in a so-so gesture. “It’s less a name that you pick and more a name that picks you, if that makes sense. It’s a flash of insight in the eldritch horror sense of insight, a moment where your self-concept as a demon crystallizes and you see yourself more clearly than you thought possible. Like a ‘true name’ in certain kinds of fantasy.”

“Noted. In that case, I’m changing my vote to Darquesse.”

Cheshire rolls her eyes and chuckles. “Pretty sure that one’s taken, and also not a word name, but it’s cute that you’re still holding a flame for a fictional mass-murdering goddess of ruin. I know how much her influence and possession of Valkyrie affected your writing and your taste in women.”

I sigh wistfully. “Superpowered evil side that whispers corrupting temptations my dearly beloved. It’s actually extremely homophobic that Nyara hasn’t given me one of those. I would be incredibly powerful if you replaced the mental illness with a hot girl in my brain telling me to do murders and kiss a skeleton.”

My geist smirks at me and muses, “You know, if I’d introduced myself to you posing as an evil alter ego you probably would have gone along with basically anything I suggested.”

“Oh yeah,” I admit, “if you’d presented yourself as a manifestation of my own corrupt desires rather than a fantasy yandere girlfriend, I’d have jumped on that corruption arc no questions asked.” I pause, then add, “Probably. I’m realizing that my imagination of fantasy scenarios doesn’t always line up with what actually feels right in the moment. There’s every possibility that rather than being exhilarated by the prospect I’d feel terrified and guilt-ridden and talk myself into a catastrophizing spiral. Turns out people have overestimated opinions of their own composure and competency when thrust into an alien world full of alien circumstances.”

On cue—because the Demiurge has a flair for the dramatic and there’s no way this is a coincidence—I hear shouting from up ahead. We can work on the other spell later, I suppose.

“Showtime,” I mutter. “Lock in the spell, we’ll see if I actually need it.”

Cheshire nods and I dismiss the noise filter before looking ahead to see what we’re actually dealing with.

The shouting was from Simon, and I see both the serpentkin and Kado looking tense. Kado’s owlbear is perched on his shoulder in owl form, to my distaste, and appears to be leaning in as if to whisper something. Dante has already unsheathed his sword and is holding it out in front of himself in a stance that I would have had a lot less room to criticize two days ago.

I push past the black-clad puppets assigned to my service and ask, “What’s going on? Trouble?”

“A night horror,” Simon hisses. “A big one up ahead, and others scattered nearby.”

Kado mutters, “It explains why this place is so damn eerie.”

I frown. Eerie? I look around and suddenly realize something that the others must have noticed a while ago: this whole street is empty of people. There are no figments pathing from one location to another, no one hanging about and chatting, not a single glimpse of life beyond the eight of us.

We also passed into a new architectural style at some point; this part of the city is much more industrial, all steel and concrete and smokestacks. With the lack of people, it looks like an abandoned factory town.

“Are night horrors a common problem?” I ask.

Simon gives Kado and Scratchy an ugly look. “In the days of the Compact, no. But in isolation, all our territories have become harder to keep safe.”

Scratchy—they had a name, I definitely heard a real name—snorts at the snake. “Maybe for you. We’ve been doing just fine.”

I roll my eyes. “Whatever, you hate each other, I get it. Look, do you need me to kill this thing or are we planning to go around? We do have a mission to get to.”

Simon and Kado share a glance, then Kado answers, “Our tracking spells have diverged, so there’s a choice to make: the path to the Guild’s current lair avoids the monster, but the line to the human I’m tracking cuts straight through. It’s unlikely he still has the mask, but he may have useful information to help us avoid a trap.”

“Good enough for me. Lead on.”

Scratchy gives me a dirty look and complains, “Hey, who made you the boss here?”

Hmm. Are they worth performing some kind of display of dominance on, or would it be more of a power move to just ignore them and take my authority as an unquestioned assumption? Probably the latter. I glance behind me at the puppets and command, “Five, Thirteen, prepare for combat. I want to see what you’re capable of.”

The doll-eyed man and woman shift their posture subtly and move closer to the rest of the group, blades held resting but ready. Scratchy complains about being ignored, but Kado shuts them down with a quiet, “Give it a rest, Eren.” Ah, right, that was their name. I might remember it this time, if I bother.

The hunter leads us to an alleyway and readies his crossbow before rounding the corner, expression tight. Dante is right beside him, even more tense but ready to defend the rest of the party, while Simon and Eren hang back. I’m right there with the point team, minions to either side of me, though I’m practically relaxed compared to everyone else—scratch that, I am relaxed; I’m utterly confident in my ability to beat whatever this monster is.

The monster in question, revealed in plain sight as we step into view of the alleyway, is a real beauty of a beast. A mass of grasping limbs, humanoid but stretched out unnaturally, emerges from a big ball of black fuzz dotted with salivating mouths. The creature’s hundred arms are pale lilac at the elongated tips of its fingers but darken to nearly black as they connect to the main body, the bulk of each arm colored a beautiful dusky purple.

Each toothy maw drips with a glistening green liquid that resembles the Platonic ideal of toxic venom. Its teeth are bloody and gorestained, and as I watch it lowers more meat into slavering jaws. The monster’s many hands clutch at two halves of a human body and tear those halves into smaller and smaller chunks, limbs divided along joints and then snapped in half before each piece is fed into a different waiting mouth.

The monster perches on the side of a building, holding itself up with more of its numerous limbs, and the ground below it is stained with far more blood and gore than a single corpse could provide; it’s been feeding here for a while, hasn’t it?

I spare a quick glance to assess my companions: Dante looks sick, Simon is furious, and Kado and Eren are uneasy but trying to play it off. The puppets, of course, feel nothing at all.

It’s a testament to how far I’ve come in such a short time that I don’t feel the least bit frightened by this fresh abomination. It’s got a lot going on, for sure, but I’ve survived worse when I was weaker. I honestly doubt the others even need my help to take this thing down.

So let’s see how our new toys perform instead. “Five! Thirteen! Make it bleed.”

The two thread-bound shells walk past me and slowly, almost lazily, raise their hands to point at the giant monster. In unison they yawn, and then together they mumble, “[Sloth],” with a tone of absolute indolence.

Their shadows elongate and then break away, slithering across the ground like leisurely serpents and moving toward the monster in the alley. The monster doesn’t react to their approach, concerned only with its food, and the shadow serpents crawl up the side of the building and latch on to one of the beast’s many hands. The shadows melt into the flesh of the creature, and ice begins to form at the point of contact, a thin sheet of cold that begins to creep up the monster’s arm with agonizing slowness.

That gets the monster’s attention. It finishes its meal and hisses at us just in time to take two flaming crossbow bolts, one to the central body and one to a waving arm. The hiss of irritation becomes a screech of pain and it pushes off the building, jumping to the alley street and immediately rushing our group as the fae flames burn green.

Dante steps forward to meet it but the puppets are faster, dashing to meet the beast with blades dragging against the ground kicking up sparks. The monster’s furthest-reaching limbs grasp at the puppets and are met with swift slashes that sever hands from arms. A second round of bolts slam into the beast, fire and ice spreading across its form.

Dante joins the puppets, clumsily chopping at limbs and taking center stage while Five and Thirteen flank the beast from opposite sides. Of course, the night horror has more than enough limbs to tangle with three targets at once, even while continuing to tank crossbow bolts.

One arm gets past Five’s defenses and backhands him with enough force to send him flying, his body crashing into the wall of a building and crumpling. Two hands grab hold of Thirteen’s arm and twist with vicious force, tearing skin and exposing bone. Neither cry out in pain as they’re inflicted grievous injury, but they do cry out.

“[Wrath]!” they both roar, voices full of hate and fury and burning, seething anger. It’s a shocking amount of emotion for beings that, when I last looked at their souls, seemed utterly and implacably placid.

The spell is cast and the air ripples, and then the monster is thrown against the opposite wall from Five by an invisible force at the same time as a half dozen of its limbs twist into useless meat. Dante seems taken aback by the effect but quickly recovers and advances on the night horror to keep it occupied as it recovers from the severe damage it just took, its own injuries mirroring and exceeding what it just inflicted on Five and Thirteen.

Huh. Mirroring. That’s…

“Hey, Chesh,” I say softly. “You don’t think… I mean, that spell. It’s not…”

“Hmm?” The catgirl looks at me questioningly, then back at the monster fighting Dante—it lands a few hits, but nothing Dante can’t easily regenerate—and then her expression blanches. “Oh. Oh. No, that’s not, that would be…”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re probably right.”

I hear Simon cast a healing spell behind me, trying to keep the party alive through their injuries as Five and Thirteen move back into the fray. Cheshire mutters to herself, “They’re both hateful, sure, and that’s certainly a similar spell, but that’s just circumstantial. It could easily be a coincidence.”

“Yeah.” Let’s just ignore what we said five minutes ago about the Demiurge invalidating coincidences.

Thirteen gets to the monster first and hacks at its limbs with her blade, swinging her one good arm until she lands a solid hit and manages to pin an arm and hold it in place. She calls out, “[Gluttony]!” and leans forward to take a bite out of the night horror, ripping out a chunk of its flesh and swallowing it quickly. Her injured arm convulses as the meat passes down her throat.

Five takes longer to reach the beast, having to pick himself up off the ground and dash across the alley, but then he performs the same maneuver—pin, cast, bite—and his bruises start to fade. Parasitic transfusion, healing by consuming, paired to the sin of gluttony. What else do you and I have in common, Malice?

“Those are Malice spells, aren’t they?” I ask Cheshire. “Sin is one of her Truths, and it seems to be a theme. Although, now I’m wondering about [Killing Edge].”

The monster is shuddering and backing into a corner, so many of its limbs lost to blades and magic, fire burning it up as the ice seems to slow it down. My allies advance, the kill in sight.

“Oh, I should get some food out of this,” I remark quickly. I conjure the bat-winged staff from my throne world and point it at the monster, my other hand holding the [Shriekwave] medallion. “[Shadowbat Swarm]. [Feast or Famine].”

A colony of bats made of living darkness burst forth from the tip of my staff, the insubstantial summons zooming across the alley and slamming into the monster. Each one is wreathed in darkness, in my signature spell, and melts into the night horror on contact. I experience soul-rending pain and the hungry euphoria of consuming a soul, but both pale to what I felt when I drank of the Demiurge.

The night horror shrieks its last as I rip out its soul and whatever’s left of its life force. The beast collapses, limbs falling and going still. Dante breathes heavy and backs off after poking it a few times, but Five and Thirteen stay close and begin casting [Gluttony] again, taking their bloody fill of the monster’s corpse to heal the last of their injuries.

I watch their feral consumption with fascination. Beside me, Cheshire answers my question from before.

“Those are definitely spells of Malice, yes, but [Killing Edge] isn’t. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to tell if it was an invocation or an artifact activation, but I know that all nine defiler spells have single word names. ”

Nine spells for nine sins. Could that also be a coincidence? A trick of the Demiurge? Or could she really be…

Interrogate later. We should see if we can steal any resonances and feed Vorpal, before the window passes.

Right.

I move to the night horror’s corpse and stick Vorpal in it. Immediately the blood from the monster’s wounds starts to flow toward the crimson blade, so I leave Vorpal there and start looking for resonances.

To my relief, my Gift sight seems to be separate enough from soul sight that it was spared the agony of infinity. I practice separating resonances out and examine each for usable content. I try to cut out a bit of [Wrath] and [Sloth] to work with, but there’s not enough of it in this spell-rich environment so I settle for [Gluttony] and whatever the hunters used to burn the night horror. I want to be able to pull specific resonances without having to take the time to separate them, and with every try I get a little better at that.

I don’t have a clear idea of what I want to do with the fae fire, so I test another experiment: I conjure a water bottle from my throne world, pour out the water, and pour in the flame resonances. I name it [Bottled Wyldfire] and seal the resonances inside exactly as I’d hoped would happen. The actual effect of the artifact doesn’t matter, because it’s just there to store the resonances for later.

The [Gluttony] resonances are more interesting, of course, because they’re a form of parasitic transfusion that is not, as far as I can tell, connected to the Abyss like my spell. If I could shape them into something that enhances the healing factor of [Feast or Famine], that would be an insanely useful passive regardless of its active component.

But what to use? Hmm. I break off one of the night horror’s larger fangs and use it as the catalyst to create [Hunger’s Bite]. Its active is a weak lifesteal effect that I will definitely never use, but the passive does what I want so I’m happy.

I clear away my Gift sight to see the others all gathered around, watching me with weird expressions, aside from the puppets of course which have returned to placidity.

I wave. “Don’t mind me, just doing some magical bullshit. Shall we continue?”

“You’re a witch,” Simon says flatly.

“She is,” Kado confirms. “So is Dante, or at least that’s what Imlashi thinks. Judging by how uninjured he looks right now, I’d wager his Gift is some form of regeneration.”

“You know,” I muse, “I was wondering why you never brought that up at the conference. Was Imlashi saving my witchiness as a backup gotcha, or was it kept hush as a tactical advantage over your rivals?”

It’s annoying that Imlashi put two and two together about Dante, but in retrospect it was unavoidable, and I certainly don’t care about the Myriad learning I’m a witch. Not at this point.

“In any case,” I continue, “I don’t think it particularly changes anything. We still have a madman to put down, and I’m still your best bet at doing that. I ask again: shall we continue?”

Simon gives me a long look, but slowly nods. Dante looks uncomfortable, but keeps quiet. Kado shrugs and starts walking down the alley.

“In here,” the hunter says. He hefts his crossbow again and pushes open the door to what looks like a warehouse, keeping to one side of it and gesturing for the rest of us to look in.

“Dante first, then me,” I tell the others. “Five and Thirteen at the back, the rest of you in between.”

The first thing I notice inside the warehouse is all the people: dozens of civvies in plain outfits huddled against each other, looking toward the door with fear in their eyes… but I don’t taste any fear in the air, which means these are all figments and not actually people. Hiding in here from the night horrors, presumably.

Kado files in behind me and immediately points his crossbow at the rafters. “There.”

A human flickers into view, the man from the conference, as a glass orb filled with swirling darkness falls from his hand. Kado fires and the man dodges too slow, the bolt sinking into his shoulder, but then the orb smashes against the floor and a dozen screaming shadows erupt from the orb and fly into the mouths of the figments, shoving their way inside.

When the first one straightens up and smiles with wicked glee, I know we’re in for a hell of a time.