You know, we really shouldn’t be surprised to be fighting evil shadow ghost body-snatchers. I mean, that just seems like a logical progression of events.

You have a fascinating definition of “logical.”

The horrible shades pour into figments through eyes and ears and mouths, crawling inside every available seam. The projected fear of the crowd is replaced by wicked smiles and a growing atmosphere of dark and insatiable hunger. Bodies twitch and shake and still, settling into predatory stances.

There’s a part of me that is deeply fascinated by the mechanisms involved in this—possession can be likened to parasitism, a form of mind control that I could put to use—but that has to be secondary priority to catching the bastard making a run for it.

“[Voracious Heart].”

My heart bursts out of me and I’m already running, clothing thrown into the safety of my throne world. I feel pain and hunger, the draining of internal fluids to feed my latest arcana, and it only makes me sharper. Blood flows down my ruptured chest as inky darkness flows up my porcelain legs, the two substances mixing and swirling together as they meet. It clings to my skin, tight and warm, and extends out into spindly claws at my fingers and toes. Jagged teeth bristle along the border where the suit bares my shoulders and the top of my chest.

More blood erupts from my back, flowing out of four openings that Cheshire took the time to install. The crimson liquid forms into four tentacles of my blood that split at the ends to better grasp my targets, and one of them immediately wraps itself around Kado’s waist and drags him with me as the other three push me off the ground over the mass of figments.

At a nanosecond delay I understand the reasoning behind the act: we’ll need his tracking spell if the human cloaks again, so Cheshire’s bringing him with us. It’s strange to feel Cheshire’s presence in this new kind of connection. I can feel something of her, pulsing feedback and her body on mine, but we’re not overlapping like in our true hybrid form. It’s both less intimate and more, somehow.

Kado is taken by a surprise and grabs at the tentacle holding him up, so I snarl at him, “Keep tracking!” and climb onto the rafters after our quarry.

“The others—”

“Will be fine!” I interrupt impatiently. I believe it, too; they have Dante, and there’s no way Nyara will let him die this early in the story. At worst, he’ll burn a wish to save the party, and that’s one fewer wish I’ll have to contend with when he inevitably betrays me for the sake of his morals or whatever. And if the shade-things crawl their way inside any of my allies, I’ll just burn them out with [Feast or Famine]... though now I’m wondering why they didn’t try that first instead of using figments. Hmm.

I don’t bother looking back even as cries of panic and battle fill the room, the distinctive noise of spells breaking through the din. Something in my focused expression—or perhaps just something about my latest war form—gets through to the hunter, because he stops struggling and keeps his eyes trained on the fleeing human.

The human—I must have heard his name during the summit but I was too occupied with other matters to bother remembering it—looks just as he did last time I saw him, but this time I’m actually paying attention. Work uniform, belt of many pouches, very short hair, and dark, dark eyes. Haunted eyes, sleepless, glancing back at us furtively before he turns and picks up speed. The only change is the crossbow bolt sticking out of his shoulder, though he doesn’t seem perturbed by it.

He scrambles across the metal maze overlooking the factory floor, all rickety railings and decrepit walkways, and I follow on limbs of demonic blood. He moves with the speed of desperation—and perhaps, I theorize, the speed of someone being controlled by an entity that doesn’t care about bodily harm. Still, he’s only human.

He had a head start, but I’m already catching up. Where he has to jump railings or take awkward angles to follow the walkways, I gracefully stride over everything in my path and cut a straight line for my target. Kado has fully switched from struggling against my grip to clinging tightly, and I idly wonder if he has a fear of heights like I… had? Have?

A quick glance down produces a wave of vertigo that proves quite conclusively that I’m still acrophobic, but the sensation is muted compared to the hunger pumping through my veins. I have prey to maul, so I refocus on that prey in time to see him toss something through the air at me.

Cheshire, saint among saints, is already on it; one of the blood tentacles not holding Kado lashes out and smacks the projectile out of the air, sending it flying away. The object—metallic, size of a fist, blinking red lights—skitters across a walkway far to the right and explodes like the grenade that it definitely absolutely was. A wave of fire and force takes out that walkway and sends twisted metal crashing to the floor below, and I’m distinctly grateful to Cheshire given how fire is shaping up to be my hard counter.

I call the bat-winged staff to my hand and consider that I should really give it a name, but that can wait ‘till I have a soul to stuff inside. Rod of Ruin? Atiesh? Man, I’m really not taking this seriously, am I? It’s hard to worry about small fry when I’m still reeling from a morning spent eating God.

Mm. I’m hungry.

I point the staff and lazily cast, “[Shadowbat Swarm].” As before, bats of living darkness burst forth and swoop after my prey. To my irritation, however, he manages to activate his strange cloaking device before they arrive. The bats flutter about aimlessly and my forward motion slows as the appendage holding my hunter brings him beside me with clear intent.

“Where?” I ask without emotion.

Kado points and calls out a specific walkway, and I dimly wish that I had a proper fireball spell to just explode the whole section. Would that be worth spending a spell slot on instead of mind control? How many spells do I get in total? Many questions I should ask Cheshire after I eat this guy.

“Random pattern search,” I call to the bats. “Follow the hunter’s instruction.” The colony scatters about the area that Kado is still indicating and shifts as he points in a new direction, tracking the invisible man’s movements.

Hmm. When I looked at their souls before, the Machinist’s followers had infection that seemed… unintegrated. If that’s the work of the shades swarming below, perhaps it can be undone even in long-term cases like this human… which unfortunately means I probably shouldn’t eat him. Maybe I can eat him a little. A few nibbles. I can control my hunger, right? Don’t answer that.

“[Feast or Famine],” I prime, and then I edit the spell mentally and tell it to scalpel out whatever shade is inside the human through whatever bat makes contact. The spell waits to be unleashed, a gentle pressure in my mind, as my minions continue their maneuvers.

Inevitably, one hits. A bat’s downward swoop is arrested by an unexpected blockage, and immediately I pull the trigger on my held spell. The bat is consumed by writhing darkness that clings to the invisible form of the possessed human and an instant later that invisibility breaks as I take a bite out of the thing possessing him.

Pain spikes through me, followed by the pleasure of a meal, but both sensations feel so unexciting now. I’m still hungry for more, and as the man screams his anguish I call out to my bats, “After him!”

The shadows flutter toward their target and limbs of animated blood carry me toward my prey. There’s no escaping this time, no trick he can pull out of—he pulls another grenade out of his utility belt and clicks it active.

Goddammit, I swear in my head before everything goes white.

My ears are ringing and my eyes are in agony as I blink away the blindness of the flashbang. My arm is held in front of me protectively, though I don’t remember raising it, and the pseudo-symbiote suit has thinned away in areas that quickly regenerate as my vision clears. The bats are all gone, I can feel that before I see it, and more than that I can feel myself growing hungrier as [Voracious Heart] drinks more of my blood to heal itself. The substance of the suit seems redder now, the damaged shadowstuff replaced by liquid crimson.

My prey is running from me, sprinting away, but he hasn’t recloaked and that flashbang didn’t stun me long enough to stop me from lunging after him, legs moving first and then tentacles waking to life and carrying me forward. Kado is still held tight, shaking off his own disorientation.

The prey abruptly turns in a new direction and dives for one of the large windows lining the factory wall. He crashes through, glass shattering, and I flow over to the sill to see him landing unharmed in a side alley with yet another fucking gadget, what looks like a cushion of force that lowers him to the ground and then pops.

The high vantage point gives a spike of unease, but I trust Cheshire to keep me safe and I trust my body to survive the fall even if my tentacles give out. This fear is irrational, it’s atavistic, it’s chemical impulses in a brain that doesn’t run on chemistry anymore. I won’t be ruled by fear; I’m the ruler of fear. And this paltry panic is nothing against the hunger burning me up inside. I’m going to devour this prey and rip the secrets from his flesh. I’m going to drink as deep as I can without killing him.

And there’s no way I’m letting him escape. I trade my staff for [Swarmheart] and cast, “[Carrion Heart]. [Carrion Heart].” Beetles swarm either end of the alley and melt into two copies of Madame Hornsby ready to stop the human if he tries to escape. Now there’s just the show.

Cheshire lowers me to the ground right in front of my prey and she drops Kado behind him. The meat reaches for another toy to distract me with and I don’t let him, body moving with strength and speed that would have seemed impossible to the Alice of a week ago, to the girl whose name I can’t remember. She was weak, and I’m strength itself.

My claw-tipped hands wrap around each of his wrists and slam them together in a vise grip. He cries out in pain and I squeeze harder, and then my tentacles are wrapping around his arms and legs and trapping him with me. I wrench his hands behind his back and a tentacle tugs on his shirt to expose that delectable, vulnerable neck. I don’t need any more invitation.

Fangs break skin and sink into flesh and his blood pours in like spoiled nectar. What was the taste of blood, before? Lena’s tender ecstasy pulsing in my veins, Gretchen’s primal need burning in my flesh, lesser hungers unfulfilling but still with some iota of good flavor.

Now, the blood is rot in my mouth. No, it’s not the blood itself, not really; the flavor profile would be intriguing under other circumstances, meat and hunger with a curious sourness like a dribbling of lemon juice, but it just isn’t enough. I’m getting hungrier, not fuller, and for all that this blood is better than some of my meals it is ash against the taste of Nyara.

I drink deeper, greedier, craving more, needing more, but it does nothing, less than nothing. More, damn you! Not a drop in the ocean of her essence, no worthy comparison to her glory and grandeur. This worthless morsel is not even a piece of a piece of infinity.

Something changes in my victim’s struggles and Cheshire actually pushes him away from me, separating my fangs from his throat. He’s bleeding, badly, and I remember that I was supposed to leave him alive. He’d taste better if I killed him, though. Maybe then I’d get another taste of Nyara, just another hint of—

Oh. Oh no. I’m broken, I realize with horror. The first hit was free, and now I’m hooked.

Focus! One problem at a time. I still need to kill the thing inside him. I reach out to grab him again but a tentacle moves to stop me, and I finally realize that Cheshire has stopped restraining him and he’s not running away. He’s collapsed in a heap, head in his hands, and he’s… he’s crying. I think he’s crying.

My skin prickles, I shiver, and I feel a message from Cheshire: Turn around. You need to see this. I look away from the man I nearly murdered and see Kado clutching at his head and making anguished noises. Another subvocal message from my geist: It’s inside him, but he’s fighting it.

So the passenger jumped ship when it felt its host dying, and tried Kado, but they’re essentially both incapacitated while that’s happening. Interesting.

“End it,” I instruct my geist, and immediately two tentacles reach out and grab Kado just long enough to deliver a blast of [Feast or Famine]. The pain clears away my residual feelings from whatever the hell just happened with that human, and the soulstuff is nutritious if still utterly lacking.

Kado gasps for air and shakes of whatever he was feeling, which I do plan on interrogating him about at some point after we deal with the remainder of this shitty ambush. He seems frazzled by the experience but not completely out of it, so I quickly come to a decision.

“Grab the guy and bring him back to the front entrance, I’ll have questions for you both. I’m going to make sure the other fight is concluded.”

Cheshire takes my cue and starts climbing back up the side of the building, not giving Kado opportunity to question or object. We make our way back across the factory rafters with haste, curious about the status of those we left behind. I don’t expect them to be dead, but, well… I’ve been wrong before.

As I approach I can taste the scent of massacre, a heady aroma of spilt blood and lingering violence. I’m pretty sure that’s not what a battlefield should smell like, but I’m a demon now and all my senses are a little bit fucked up.

The figments are all dead, or at least they look dead. Bodies scattered about the factory floor, burned and stabbed and shot. My companions did an excellent job cleaning up the unarmed civilians possessed by horrible monsters, and now they’re doing a much shittier job trying to kill each other.

The snake doctor is writhing on the ground and moaning in pain, thoroughly incapacitated, while Five and Thirteen face off against Dante and Eren. Hero boy is fighting defensively and poorly, batting away the odd attack but mostly just tanking each hit with his absurd healing factor. Eren is more hiding than fighting, crouched behind a pillar and only occasionally poking their head out to line up a shot. Both puppets are focused solely on Dante.

I shout, “Five, Thirteen, stand down!” but the only response is a brief stutter in their step. Ah well, worth a try.

I touch down next to the snoctor and give him a pat on the head plus a targeted pulse of [Feast or Famine]. Pain, food, and one less shade to deal with. Simon stops writhing and starts groaning as he picks himself up, and a quick nudge from Cheshire tells me that it worked and he’s not just pretending.

At my arrival the tone of the ongoing fight changes. Five redoubles his efforts to land a hit on Dante that’ll actually stick, but Thirteen actually backs away and then stabs herself straight through the gut. She coughs up blood, bile, and the shadow creature that was puppeting her. It emerges like a cloud of ink and darts away from its host only to be torn apart by a burning crossbow bolt from the waiting Eren.

My tentacles secure Five and purge him before the thing inside can escape, and then it’s done. Cheshire sweeps the area and tells me we’re clear of shades, and at last I release [Voracious Heart] and reequip my outfit.

There’s something hollow about losing that sense of power and hunger, but I let out a sigh of relief anyway. I think that spell is going to amplify a lot of my already existing negative traits, so I should be careful with it. I probably won’t, though.

“So,” I call to the room. “How’d the fight go?”

Dante looks shellshocked, his sword hanging loose while he just stares out at all the carnage. He’s unharmed, of course, though his shirt’s all torn up, but I remember my first two days of violence and suppress a wince at what he must be going through. He seems like a nice kid, which probably makes this a lot worse for him than it was for me.

The puppets took a few injuries that they’re now attempting to heal away with [Gluttony], though they both look up at me as if asking confirmation that my question was for them. I wave them back to their meal, more interested in hearing from Simon and Scratchy.

The hunter steps out from cover and glares at me. “Woulda been a lot easier with some help, wouldn’t it? First you hang back on the horror, then you leave us to the swarm. What use are you, bitch?” Now that I get a better look at Eren, they seem scratched up in a few places from probably figments.

I raise an eyebrow and keep my face calm, untroubled, dismissive. “You’re all alive, aren’t you? I was securing the actual target. Whatever happens here doesn’t matter if we fail to stop the Machinist.”

Eren gestures around us and demands, “Then where is the target? I saw you run off with Kado after that asshole who dropped the thing, but now I don’t see either of ‘em. Don’t fuck with me, demon.”

I laugh at the idea that this hunter could do anything to stop me. “Cute. But they’re just outside.”

On cue, Kado arrives at the door with the Guildsman in tow. Kado pushes the recently-liberated possession victim toward Simon and says simply, “He needs healing.”

“Wait, what?” asks Eren, baffled at the idea of healing the enemy.

“I killed the thing possessing him, just like I purged Five, Thirteen, and Simon. All I need is a few seconds of contact and the mana to cast the spell. Now we can interrogate him for anything he knows about the Machinist’s plans, and he should be cooperative.” I give the man a glance, but he’s too busy collapsing into Simon’s arms to notice.

Dante looks away from the carnage and greater horror blooms across his face. “They… they were all just innocents. And we could have saved them. None of them needed to die.”

Ah, right, that heroic heart. I realize with great annoyance that I probably have to explain figments now. Before I can say anything, Eren pipes in with, “Don’t be a bleeding heart, they weren’t alive to begin with.”

Shock mixes with horror as Dante whirls on the hunter. “How can you say that?”

I sigh and put a hand on Dante’s shoulder, stepping in before things get even more irritating. “No one’s explained figments to him yet,” I tell Eren. “Fuck off to your handler and stay out of my way for the next half hour. I’m sick of your face.”

Scratchy seems incensed by that, but they’re not stupid enough to actually pick a fight with the demon that killed two unkillable monsters. They stalk off and Dante watches them with a conflicted expression. “Is this… is this another Labyrinth thing?” he asks me.

“It is. Now walk with me and I’ll explain. Oh, and try not to mind the sword, it, ah, drinks blood.” I conjure Vorpal and stick it into the nearest dead figment, letting the blade drink up the blood left in the corpse. Dante looks away from that, clearly unsettled, but he doesn’t try to stop me. “This world has a lot of horrors, not all of them wearing monstrous faces.”

We make a slow circuit of the area, my blade drinking from each corpse before moving on to the next, as I teach Dante about figments. I try to start with the p-zombie thought experiment but he doesn’t actually recognize that, so I explain it in terms with broader appeal.

“They’re basically NPCs in a video game,” I say as I stab another corpse. “They’re not people, they don’t want to be people, they don’t really ‘want’ anything. They’re game constructs that exist for you to interact with, to give you things, to fulfill whatever needs you have that the people around you can’t or won’t. If the Labyrinth is a body, then the figments are just mindless cells following their genetic code. It’s all programming, just very complex and lifelike programming that’s good enough to fool most tests. They’re not people.”

Dante does not seem eager to take that at face value. He still has a sick look on his face and uneasy body language. “But they look like people. They talk like people. When we came in, they all looked terrified.”

“But they weren’t.” Step, stab, drain. “Trust me, this is my expertise. One of my demonic abilities lets me quite literally taste it when somebody around me is afraid, and I tasted nothing when we entered the room. The figments may have looked like they were scared for their lives, but they were just pretending. It’s just their role.”

“Why?” he almost pleads. “Why would something like that exist? That’s horrifying.”

“It is! I agree.” Step, stab, drain. “And the answer is even worse: they exist to make you happy. To make all of us happy. Their purpose is to serve us, to serve the real sapients that get dragged here into the Labyrinth and trapped here. They were created to make us want to stay, so that we’ll stop caring that we can’t go home.” I can’t help but laugh a little at the thought. “Even if you never wanted to go home in the first place.”

Dante looks at me oddly at that, finally risking the sight of my brutal harvest, but then he looks away again and asks, “Is that… does everyone here just accept that? That they’re not people, don’t need to be treated like people?”

“No,” I admit, “it’s actually a point of contention.” I point to where the hunters are arguing with Simon about something, the puppets watching on passively. “Carnival and Voidhearts, they’re certainly happy to use the figments like toys, but not the Myriad. They have all those old-fashioned ideas about treating others with kindness, and they’d say that mistreating something that looks human but isn’t only sets you up to mistreat the real humans… and that’s if they wouldn’t go so far as to care for them like real people even when they admit to lacking an internal world.”

Dante is silent again, processing that. Step, stab, drain. When he speaks again, it’s with a careful tone. “Alice, do you not want to go home? Ever?”

I laugh again, this time full-throated. “Of course not! Why the fuck would I want to go back to Earth? That world had nothing for me. I’m somebody here.”

Dante gestures at the carnage surrounding us. “Even with all the violence in this world? All the horrible situations we’re both being dragged into?”

I almost sneer, but I catch myself. “Do you think violence has left Earth behind? Walk through any city in America and you can find yourself bleeding out because some jackass with a gun he bought at fucking Walmart decided you looked too different. The only difference here is that now I have the power to fight back. I’m powerful here, Dante. I’m worth something. I can finally be in control of my own life.”

He’s silent for a moment, contemplating that. Step, stab, drain. When he speaks again his voice is softer. “Yeah, I guess you’re not wrong. But, still, is there nothing you’ll miss? Not even places to go or entertainment to watch, I mean like, I can’t bear the idea that I’d never see my mom and dad again, or any of my friends and family. Isn’t there anyone in your life you’ll miss?”

Faces flicker past. My aunt who supported me, my father after he tried to reconcile, all the friends come and gone. It’s a lie to say I’ll miss no one at all, but I’m an inveterate liar. “Family wasn’t really a luxury I had. My mom died when I was four years old, to cancer. My father made my childhood miserable. Why would I want to go back to that?”

“I’m sorry, that’s—”

“Don’t be,” I cut him off, and he winces. Step, stab, drain.

He hesitates, but then he pushes, “Didn’t you at least have friends you’ll miss? Were you really that alone?”

“Oh, I had friends. They just never last. Friends run when they see the real me, the ugly, messy me, or they’re too stupid and soft to run, so I have to push them away before they get hurt. It’s better for everyone, easier, if I just don’t let them in to begin with. And here? Here I’m a demon, and that means most everyone knows better.”

This is pointlessly self-loathing, I chide. What are you hoping to accomplish?

Empathy, I justify. He hears that little sob story and interprets it as a sad sack of self-hatred instead of a sincere and accurate assessment of my own behaviors.

But was that your intent when you started, or a rationalization after the fact?

I don’t answer. Step, stab, drain. “They’ll all be better off without me,” I say quietly. “Friends, family, everyone. I was a leech and a pest. So just drop it.” I drain the last corpse and walk with purpose over to the snake doctor, leaving Dante behind.

Simon is tending the human we brought in, and I see that the crossbow bolt has been improved and lots of fluids are being administered to replace the blood I drank. The doctor gives me a frown as I approach. “You were a bit rough,” he tells me, breaking off from whatever he was discussing with the hunters.

I shrug. “Can’t cast spells without mana. Is he fine to talk?”

“He will be in a few minutes, though I must insist that you be delicate.”

I smirk. “I can handle delicate. Well, while we wait, I want to hear about the fight. What happened?”

Simon seems to take a moment to decide if he’s going to answer me, but then says, “As soon as I saw the possession happen I started warding the others. I managed to protect Dante and Eren, but then one of them got inside me and took me out of the fight.”

“You really should have warded yourself first,” I comment.

He shakes his head. “Can’t. The spell can only be used to protect others.” What an irritating but thematically appropriate restriction.

Eren butts in with, “What you should have done was ward the fuckin’ husks. They got taken over the second one of those little shits crawled inside.”

“Interesting,” I murmur. “They are quite hollow. Perhaps they lacked the will to resist. Tell me: from your observations, both of you, why do you think those things went for the weaker figment bodies instead of trying for the real targets first?”

“They’re vulnerable,” Eren answers immediately, being remarkably cooperative despite the side-eye they’re still giving me. “You saw how easy they die outside a host. If they’d rushed us like that, too many would have died.”

“Which would have been even worse if they’d tried it at the temple,” I muse. “Well, that’s a satisfying answer. Let me know when I can talk to our guest.”

Someone does, a few minutes later, and I sit down with the human I freed—David, I learn—to chat about the Machinist.

“So,” I begin. “You’re alright? Not going to die?” At his nod, I continue, “Cool, cool. Let’s talk. Can you tell me what the fuck is going on?”

David shivers, but nods again. “I can try. And, thank you. Thank you so much, ma’am. You have no idea how awful it is to be trapped by one of those monsters. It’s been weeks.”

I see the expressions of those watching sharpen. We have a timetable now. “Give me the full story.”

David takes another drink from the flask he was given. “Right. A number of weeks back, I’m not sure exactly how many, the Machinist… changed. He’d been stuck in a malaise for so long, trying and failing to make anything new, hiding away in his workshop apart from the rest of us, but then it all changed. He came into the building one day with a new attitude, an almost frenzied aura. He had us making parts that didn’t make sense, pieces of something he wouldn’t explain. And then the disappearances started.

“A few people at a time would be invited to his workshop. Some of them would come back hours later, but others would take days, and they all came back different. More focused, less talkative. Then they took me, and I learned why.” He shivers again, complicated expressions of horror passing across his face before he continues bleakly, “Two of my closest friends led me to a room and trapped me there, and they shoved one of those torments—that’s what those awful things are called—down my throat.

“It tortured me with my failures, with a lifetime of misery and despair. It wore me down until my will gave out and I couldn’t hold it back anymore, and then it walked out of that room wearing my body and smiling like nothing was wrong. I helped bring a few more in for possession, and then it was done and the whole Guild was replaced by torments. Only then did we learn what was really going on.

“We had been building the components for machines that only functioned in the hands of a torment, through some strange resonant link. Cloaking devices, weapons, and the device that was used to lure the Mourner to the well. It was a plot to murder the city.”

“Why?” I ask. “And what is he doing now that the first attempt failed? What is the Machinist doing with the Mourner’s mask?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “He tells us very little, even now that the whole Guild is ensnared. The torments listen to the Machinist without question, accepting him as a proxy for their true master.” David hesitates, then adds, “I think, whatever it is, it’s bigger than the city. I think this was always just the first step. I… I think he aims to attack the Lady of Shards herself, somehow.”

Alarm bells are going off in my head, tension rising. True master? Attacking Katoptris? “What else can you tell me. What do you know about the torments. Who is their master? One of the nobles?”

David shakes his head. “No, no I don’t think so. The Machinist made a deal with someone, someone who gave him the torments as a gift to fulfill his end of the bargain, and he never calls that person by name. He only ever uses a title: the Emissary.”