Six Years Ago

“Hastur!” Sophia called out. “I’m back. Let’s talk.”

She drifted through a secret place in the depths of the World of Glass, watching stars and planets float by as she approached a ring of stone inscribed with Hastur’s symbol. As soon as her feet touched the ground, a swirl of yellow marked the arrival of the King, who bowed to Sophia with great ostentation and presence.

“My favorite mortal,” the King said with benevolent warmth. “It’s so good to see you again, Sophia.” She cocked her head to the side, face invisible beneath the hood of her yellow cloak and a pallid, smiling mask. “Is this about that girl again?”

“Of course it’s about that girl again!” Sophia said, exasperated. Immediately she set to pacing, the tattered tendrils of the King following along behind and around her but never getting in her way. “It’s absolutely maddening being close to her all the time, knowing how she feels about me, and not being able to tell her that I love her back—which I know is exactly what you intended, so don’t you dare act smug about this!”

“Me?” Hastur raised strips of yellow cloth to her center mass, mask contorted into an exaggerated expression of shock and horror. “Why, I would never!” Then she laughed, mask returned to its face of cheer. “Really, my dear, you mustn’t blame the messenger.”

Sophia ignored the King in Yellow, still pacing. “It was bad enough before we spent a night naked in bed together—and god, I wanted to take that further—but now I know exactly how good her skin feels on mine and I cannot imagine wanting anything more. Ugh, she’s just so cute! The way she dreams up deranged scenarios to ramble about, that infectious sense of humor, her damned persistence!” Sophia clutched at her hair and ground her teeth. “I want to kiss her so bad!”

“But you can’t,” Hastur said, suddenly gentle.

Sophia whirled on the King and grabbed a floating length of fabric. With eyes wide, distress written over every inch of her face, she pleaded, “Let me try again. I can get it right this time, I know I can.”

“I must remind you of the dangers,” Hastur said firmly. “Even a mind as well-trained as yours can be broken by this kind of thing.”

“Ten loops,” Sophia insisted. “If I can’t solve it in ten more iterations, pull me out and I’ll go back to the drawing board. Come on, Hastur, we’ve done this song and dance before. I’ve proven I can handle a bit of repetition.”

“And yet,” the King mused, “you always come out of the loop crying. Yes, yes, no need to argue further. I will assist you, of course. You know the routine by now: invoke your power and I shall do the rest.”

“Thank you,” Sophia said with clear relief. She marshaled herself, closed her eyes, and spoke the words: “Athena, show me the path to victory.”

Strix Striga’s superpower was, in a word, information. Every piece of data she collected was fed into an ever-expanding and ever-sharpening model of the universe. Its ultimate, ideal form was the recreation of Laplace’s demon: the prediction of future events through perfect knowledge of matter and forces. In practice, her human senses fell far short of the granularity and accuracy required to achieve such a form, but they were still more than sufficient to grant her a considerable edge against any opponent—with the exception of the Jovians and egregores, who were excluded by design from Athena’s careful eye.

It was noticing this exclusion that had first led Striga down the path of rebellion, and much of her skill with Athena was owed to experimenting around the limitations of that exclusion. She could not directly model the Jovians, but she could model sets of behavior that, coincidentally, aligned with what she understood of the Jovians. She could not pierce the veil with Athena, but by habitually asking if she was under a veiling effect she could then begin to brute force it conventionally.

Developing her dream-sense had given Athena more data to work with, as had befriending the Morrigan and witnessing her own experiments with pocketspace manipulation and words of power. Making an alliance with Minerva had bolstered Striga further—rather fittingly—but even that paled in comparison to what Hastur was capable of granting.

From Sophia’s perspective, at the moment she activated her power, time itself was reset.

Taken back a year to a perfect simulation of the world as it was, Sophia did the one thing she desired most: she went to her closest friend, Rachel, and confessed her love. What followed were four months of domestic bliss, and then Rachel died.

It was the same every time: as soon as she entered a relationship with Rachel, the clock ticked down to her beloved’s inevitable demise, murdered by pawns of the Jovians to hurt their greatest opponent, Strix Striga. She had tried to stop it hundreds of times, and every time she had failed. No matter what she did, intimacy was incompatible with Rachel’s survival.

The only world where Rachel lived was a world where Sophia kept her at arm’s length. And even that line would end in tragedy if Sophia couldn’t stop Jupiter from destroying Earth.

Sophia emerged from the tenth loop of the evening—her 283rd attempt in total—and fell to her knees, sobbing and wretched. “Why?” she cried. “Why can’t I have her? What do I have to do, Hastur?”

The King in Yellow smiled down at the distraught heroine. “It’s quite simple, my dear. It’s exactly what I told you the first time we met: you have to save the world. You’re the only one who can. It’s your destiny. So chin up, and let’s get to work.”

Present Day

Strix Striga sat alone in the dark and thought about how she was going to save the world. The end was nearer, now, just a single short year away. That particular revelation had forced her hand—forced her to induct more names into her circle of trust—and now the allies she had recruited to her cause would have to be measured, lest the whole endeavor collapse from within.

Trust would be verified. Trust would be created. Trust would be enforced.

To her eye, every piece on the board could be sorted into one of two categories: threat or asset. Those categories were not quite in alignment with “allies or enemies,” as the late Delilah had demonstrated quite cleanly; an enemy could prove an asset, if handled adroitly, and an ally mismanaged could easily become a threat.

And the threats arrayed against her were many, though varying significantly in power and reach. In isolation, empowered champions like Delilah were simple to dispatch and offered a chance to strike at the egregores directly—enemies becoming assets—but Venus and Mars had other projects; the Visage Spire had a hidden purpose that would not be easily unveiled, and the Syndicate was planning something bigger than they ever had before.

More immediately, Echidna was on the move, and Striga strongly suspected that she would not be the only Catastrophe to visit Forks in the coming year. Phage’s presence was almost a certainty, given how much that one loved to frolic in the chaos of her destructive peers. Typhon was the wild card, random in her path of carnage, but she could be directed when the Jovians truly needed her presence. Striga’s distant comrades—the other champions of Minerva—had proven that fact at great cost.

There were threats inside every organization on the board, some obvious and some hidden. Thunderclap had been carefully manipulated into a more useful mindset, but there were many other magical girls quick to believe the “Solar” Jovians about the inherent evil of witches. Striga’s enemies had planted moles in all the major factions, and she only knew the identities of a few of them. She had tried to keep her own house in order, but she wasn’t so arrogant to assume she had succeeded completely.

The greater conspiracy, now assembled, would need to be watched carefully. The greatest difficulty of working with people smart enough to understand the true depth of Striga’s ability was that they could usually tell when they were being manipulated, which was why she had made no such attempt at the time of revelation. Better to lay her cards plainly than to control her conspirators’ reactions in the moment and risk them realizing the manipulation away from her sight.

Ferromancer was still an asset—she was too rational and too self-interested to even consider turning on Striga—but her personal feelings toward Striga had been damaged by a necessary deception. This had been accounted for, and would be mitigated in the days to come with careful effort. Ultimately, her knowledge of Ferromancer’s true nature made such effort unnecessary, but the relationship was worth cultivating as sincerely as she could manage.

Howl and Harlequin were also firmly in the asset camp, and were unlikely to need any special treatment. Howl’s annoyance was largely performative, and any actual disgruntlement would go away as soon as she was offered more information and more work. Harlequin wasn’t the type to even care about being deceived if the cause was just.

Agatha’s power had the potential to expose many of Striga’s schemes if she learned how to use it properly, but teaching her how to use it properly would dramatically increase the value of the asset. Her personality profile seemed inclined to favor Striga’s ultimate goals, but there were weaknesses that could be exploited by a capable opponent. Mentorship would be required, and assigning part of that task to Howl would strengthen the loyalties of both.

And then there was Archon.

The Jovians had finally made an aggressive move against Striga, and they’d made a critical mistake. The obsessive romantic they’d chosen carried a secret drive to “save” Striga—and the secrecy of that desire was something that Striga had to trust in, or her entire operation had been compromised from the start—which had made it trivially easy to induct her into the conspiracy and convince her to work with Striga instead of trying to defeat or abduct her. It felt too easy.

Prometheus was an absurdly potent power, yet they’d given it to someone with barely a shred of compatibility. Had Archon been selected purely on the basis of obsession? She had the wherewithal to concoct a moderately intelligent plan for defeating Striga, but acquiring the resources necessary would have, in all likelihood, taken more time than there was left in the game. There had to be another angle that Archon either hadn’t seen or wasn’t divulging.

That was another source of concern: the witch was a capable actor and Striga hadn’t learned her tells yet. Archon seemed extremely comfortable switching between masks when interacting with witches of different factions, and had proven disturbingly perceptive during their one-on-one conversation.

Who was she, really? How had she developed her fixation on Striga?

Archon had the potential to be a critically significant asset—especially with access to that teleporter artifact—but she could just as easily become a game-ending threat. She would need to be kept close and studied. She had seemed reasonable in their discussion, eager to help in any way she could, but it might prove necessary to placate her obsession with a slow campaign of increased proximity and token affection. Her perceptiveness could be an obstacle, but maybe not; assuming her rant was true, Archon probably wouldn’t mind being manipulated like that.

Striga grimaced. She hated thinking that way. Even on someone practically begging for it, even for a worthy cause, she hated using her power to influence people’s behavior. She hated the kinds of moral compromises that her crusade demanded of her. To save the world, she knew that sacrifices would have to be made. Even her principles. Even the people who trusted her.

She held only one exception: Rachel. It was her one hard line, the one thing that kept her grounded. No matter what, she would never use Athena on Rachel. Saving the world was a righteous cause, but Striga—no, Sophia—was only human, and there was a selfish desire at the heart of everything she did: one day, when the Jovians were gone and the world was set right, she would finally have her happy life with Rachel. She refused to compromise that dream by using her power to manipulate the one she loved.

Everyone else was fair game. To win—to save the world—to stop Jupiter, Mars, and Venus… she would use every tool available to her. It was the only way.

She hoped the world would forgive her.

[commentary]

Thank you for reading Book 1 of This Magical Girl is Mine. I hope you will continue reading as we move into Book 2. 

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mhai Wind, Moth Court, October, and PR4v1 Samaratunga.

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 26th of October. It’ll be a double length break for the end of book one. THE STORY RETURNS ON NOVEMBER 9TH.

[/commentary]

I return to the Visage Spire with breathless excitement and an odd sense of familiarity. I’ve been here before as a tourist, but never as a witch, and never to the upper levels… except once, in my Venusian vision, and those false memories still linger in my mind.

Per instructions, I land on a balcony just below the executive side of the tower’s split upper section. A secretary is waiting to usher me into the building with a smile and an offer of coffee or tea. Having just gulped down a Dusk-branded galaxy latte from the Starbucks right outside the Spire, I politely decline.

Radiance makes me wait, which I was expecting. My team—Striga and Agatha, mostly—helped me prepare for this interview, since I’ve never actually gone to one before. Apparently, a lot of interviewers play the waiting game because they have control issues or learned bad habits from business culture, but Radiance has a more practical concern: any witch that can’t control her emotions is a dangerous liability for Visage.

So I left my whole afternoon open for this, and I brought pen and paper to keep myself entertained; I’ve been diligently sketching out new familiar designs since I came back from the World of Glass. I want access to more than just the demon aesthetic, and my encounters in the other world taught me just how lacking my toolkit really is right now.

After fifteen minutes pass, Radiance’s secretary apologizes for the delay and offers a selection of scones. I thank her before greedily devouring the lemon option. Another fifteen minutes later, I’m finally called in.

“Ms. Dajani will see you now.”

Kamilah Dajani has a luxurious corner office, the back and right walls being entirely glass and offering a gorgeous view of the city below. The other walls are pristine white, with the left hosting a myriad of framed certificates and shelved trophies from the various charities that Kamilah has worked with or contributed to. The office is big enough to support a koi pond in the corner opposite the glass walls, with a handful of very handsome fish swimming around between rocks and greenery. Kamilah’s executive desk is comparatively modest, though probably quite expensive, a dark wood affair kept neatly organized and placed atop a robin-patterned rug. A slim laptop is open on the desk next to a folder, a pen cup, and a picture of a little girl in a Disney princess costume—her daughter, presuming from appearance and what I know of Kamilah’s family.

Radiance herself stands by the floor-to-ceiling window that makes up the right wall of her office, hands clasped behind her back as she looks out on the city. She’s as frustratingly beautiful as she was when I met her in Ferromancer’s workshop, though her golden eyes have taken on new meaning after my time in the other world—is it intentional mimicry of the King in Yellow and her children, or mere coincidence? She’s wearing some kind of one-piece suit—jumpsuit, I think it’s called—of the same fabric as her last outfit, pure white but shimmering with rainbow color. She’s traded the flats for heels and the diamond earrings for a diamond necklace, but the overall effect is the same: opulent, regal, and focused.

“Archon,” she says, turning to greet me with a warm smile. “How lovely to see you again. I was quite pleased to hear your name from Sweet Tooth and Kira Kira.”

Once joining Visage became a clear goal, we made sure to get me back in the Ossuary at a time when Sweet Tooth would be around. She’d already been pushing for me to give Visage a try, so telling her I was interested was all it took to set up an interview. “Thanks for taking the time out of your day to see me,” I smile back. “Being up here is like a dream come true.”

“Well, we’re always happy to fulfill a dream.” Radiance’s laugh is so well-practiced that I’d believe it was sincere if I didn’t know better. “Please, take a seat. Let’s discuss your application, darling.”

“Of course,” I say, sliding into a chair and keeping my wings carefully folded behind my back. “I appreciate the quick turnaround on this. I was amazed when it only took a few texts to secure an interview.”

“You’ve been a subject of some scrutiny,” Radiance says with the faintest hint of amusement. “Sweet Tooth is quite the eager recruiter, so I’d already heard of your cautious interest and had set an eye in your direction. What convinced you to go back to her?”

This is the “Why do you want to work here?” question, if my research has taught me anything. “To be honest,” I say with a grin, “I was already fairly convinced, but I like to do my due diligence and measure all my options before I commit to anything. Plus, Kira seemed real unhappy about the prospect of working on a holiday, and it’s usually not a good idea to start a new career by pissing off one of your future coworkers.”

Radiance puts on the slightest smirk. “A wise policy.”

“Really, though,” I continue, “in some sense this was a long time coming. I’m a huge fan of Visage, always have been. I’m right there in stream chat cheering on Glamour and Memento, keeping up with Dusk and Dawn, buying the Pearl Princess merch. I was there for Agatha Cain’s debut. I’m not gonna tell you that fame and fortune aren’t motives for me, because who doesn’t want that? But to be perfectly honest, getting the chance to interact with my idols as something more than a fan—as a peer—is what really drives me.”

Her smile warms. “Your enthusiasm is delightful to hear. Do you have a favorite?”

“It changes every month,” I confess. “Memento and Dusk while they were running hot on their rivalry storyline, Pearl Princess before that, and right now it’s probably Agatha. She’s so adorkable it hurts, especially when she takes off her glasses and tries to act all cool about it.”

“A versatile spread,” she notes with interest. “Knowing our roster so well, I’m sure you’ve noticed that each of my girls has a particular appeal to their less violent activities—a niche, to use the parlance. I’ve watched the footage of your public appearances and heard the assessments from Sweet Tooth, Kira, and Bombshell, so I’m reasonably satisfied that you can perform for an audience—and, of course, we will be happy to help you refine those skills further—but the central question remains: what do you bring to Visage?”

I let a bit of mischievousness seep into my expression. “Like I said: I’m a fan. I know exactly what it’s like to be watching those streams, following those girls, and making ill-advised purchases because you need what they’re selling. Cracking packs for a shot at the chase cards, rolling on gacha for your oshi, ordering the drink you’re almost certain you won’t like just because it has her name on it… I’ve done it all. I know what makes it appealing, and that means I know how to make it sound appealing; in more mercenary terms, I am the perfect pick for all your brand integration needs. You want me to sell a crossover, I guarantee I already have an account in whatever game it’s for. I’ll make deck techs promoting every Magic card with a Visage name on it. I’ll be the ascended fangirl urging all the other fans to join me in consuming, and it won’t feel fake or forced because I was already doing that before I ever became a witch. Hell, get some magical girls on board and I’ll run a weekly segment just to show off all the things I love about them.”

Radiance gives me a more appraising look. “Hmm. Yes, I think I can work with that. Let’s talk branding…”

Being a full-time streamer requires a certain kind of setup that I cannot get away with hiding in the space I share with Sophia. Luckily, I was already making plans to secure an apartment of my own with Ferromancer’s assistance.

There’s a block of nice apartments around a park spacious enough to have its own duck pond. My new place has a balcony that gives me a perfect view of the ducks, which means I’ll need to get a comfy chair out there at some point. The apartment itself is totally open plan, basically everything visible from the entrance. There’s a kitchen on the left below a loft bedroom, with the pantry tucked under the stairs. The bathroom is actually downstairs, right across from the kitchen, and the rest of the main floor is living space. My new bedroom is still mostly unfurnished, but I have higher priorities: the spacious walk-in closet just next to that bedroom is being converted into a dedicated streaming room, and that’s what I’ve spent most of my time working on.

Tuning details will take active coordination with Visage’s people, but I’m plenty capable of plugging cables into computer ports. Once the rig is stable, I take a break from tech work to open Discord and inform the nerds.

Alexandria: sup fuckers

Alexandria: guess who’s working for Visage now?

Mordacity: the ghost of Andrew Lloyd Webber, resurrected in rank defiance of the laws of magic and mortals to complete his visionary masterpiece Cats 2: This Time it’s Purrsonal

a single femur: Andrew Lloyd Webber isn’t dead

Mordacity: that’s what you think

Mordacity: real cats-heads know that he was replaced by a biosynthetic clone loyal only to the man in the yellow hat (who once shot me in a dream)

a single femur: You rube, clearly he’s working for the Sino-Afghanistani military-industrial complex to further their ideological agenda

Alexandria: what are you people TALKING about

Mike Trout: The military…

Mike Trout: mmfgh,,

Alexandria: I am a streamer now!!!! RESPECT ME

Mordacity: that’s like the complete opposite of how streamers work

Mike Trout: yeah as a retired top 1000 Twitch legend, you don’t get shit for respect

a single femur: This cannot be true, you cannot have this many backstories

Mike Trout: motherfucker I have layers. like an ogre

Mordacity: nothing is more reviled than the ogre…

Alexandria: I come here and I tell you people OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF MY HEART

Mordacity: well that’s definitely not true

Mike Trout: do you have any goodness in your heart?

a single femur: Do you have a heart?

Alexandria: so who wants to be a mod in my stream chat

a single femur: What would be my weekly allowance of unjustified bannings

Mike Trout: Wait can i ban my fellow mods? please please i’ve wanted to ban femur in something for Literal years

Alexandria: yes and yes. let chaos reign

Mike Trout: this is a fantastic approach to moderation and I am sure it will only go well

Mordacity: that’s more tempting than crack heroin but sadly i cannot as i have Other Business in the coming months. very important official Mordacity work that will leave me zero time for bullying my friends in front of a live audience of thousands

Mordacity: HOWEVER

a single femur: Here we go

Mike Trout: Goodbye forever! It was nice knowing you!

Mordacity: i’m coming to visit in January

Alexandria: oh shit

Alexandria: why????

Mordacity: what the fuck that’s so rude

Mordacity: anyway. reasons. smile

Mike Trout: hey wait that’s my bit

a single femur: We got a fuckin bit thief here

Alexandria: mods, twist her balls

Mordacity: jokes on you there is nothing on earth i cannot pretend to get off to

Alexandria: hey isnt jan ur birthday

Mordacity: shut the hell your mouth, i was never born

Mike Trout: Real as fuck

Alexandria: anyway this is a real offer

Alexandria: paid position, even

Alexandria: just have to comply with manager-chan’s standards

a single femur: You did not just say “manager-chan”

Alexandria: i think you’ll find that i did

Alexandria: it’s on her business card and everything

Alexandria: more importantly, and in all sincerity, it would be nice to have you guys around for this

Mordacity: gay

a single femur: You are allergic to sincerity

a single femur: I cannot promise I will be any good at it but I will do my best

Mike Trout: Yeah I’ll join, sounds fun

Alexandria: yessssss excellent

Alexandria: okay back to work, I need to finish setting up my stream rig

Of course, what I actually mean is that I have a bunch of video games to start installing on the new computer. The rest will have to wait.

Once there’s nothing more to do with the computer, I step back out to the bedroom and lean over the loft railing, looking down on my new apartment. Erica donated a nice tv and a few pieces of furniture, but I’ll have to get more. I’ve also got a few boxes of stuff I was storing in Ferromancer’s workshop that I need to unpack, and I’ll have to do a grocery run at some point to stock the kitchen. I’m not in the habit of cooking and that’s not going to change any time soon, but what streamer is complete without a mountain of snack food and energy drinks?

Still. It’s a nice apartment, and it’s mine. My place. My home. My little sanctuary.

And one day, I’m going to bring Sophia here.

[commentary]

One more chapter to go.

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mhai Wind, Moth Court, October, and PR4v1 Samaratunga.

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 26th of October. It’ll be a double length break for the end of book one.

[/commentary]

My first day back from the World of Glass is spent pigging out on sushi and chatting up my friends about Visage and the other mage factions. I carefully avoid mentioning anything about Hastur or the World of Glass, and I pop two edibles to help me crash at a reasonable time so I can reset my sleep schedule.

The next day, I purge any lingering drugs in my system and start planning my confrontation with Ferromancer.

That might be a needlessly hostile way to frame it, actually, but my trust in my mentor has dropped a lot since she left me to the mercy of the deimovore and has been hiding a personal relationship with one of the Syndicate. With the benefit of hindsight, I can’t disagree with her decision to let the deimovore encounter play out, but I also really don’t like the possibility that Ferromancer now knows the exact nature of my relationship to Striga—and Striga’s civilian identity, if she hadn’t already been told it.

I never pressed Ferromancer on her history because it wasn’t my business and I didn’t have any leverage to push with, but now things are different. I need to know her secrets, and she should know spilling those secrets is the only way to keep me on her side.

I hover outside the workshop—metaphorically, I’m not transformed—with a bag of sandwiches tucked under one arm, staring at the buzzer and chewing on my words. The sky is overcast and getting darker, but it’s not quite raining yet. Before I can hit the button, the garage door opens on its own.

“What, were you waiting for an invitation?” Erica asks wryly, standing just inside the entrance to her private pocket dimension. She’s back in business casual, power armor tucked away somewhere, and she has a lit cigarette burning down in one hand. It’s a surprising relief to see her face again, especially those keen eyes, ruddy orange and bright with intelligence.

“I wouldn’t have minded one, all things considered,” I grin. “A girl likes to feel wanted.”

She chuckles and waves me inside. We make our way to the kitchen, where I set my haul down and start separating out sandwiches: a Reuben for Ferromancer, a meatball sub for me, and an Italian for Bombshell, wherever she is. Erica whistles at the spread. “Well, well, you didn’t even skimp. That’s a pretty good-lookin’ bribe, doll. What’s the occasion?”

“Figured there was a conversation to have after everything that went down the other night. I also figured that was a conversation best had on a full stomach, so, here I am. Is Bombshell around or should I shove this in the fridge?”

Erica unwraps her Reuben and takes a seat. “Oh, she’s out roughing up someone who tried to stiff me. Did you know there’s a weed shop in this city that has a deal going with a magical girl?”

I give her an incredulous look as I tuck away the Italian and sit down across from her. “Yeah, I’ve been. Green Thumb’s place, right? What the hell did she want with you?”

“Stupidest shit I’ve ever dealt with.” Erica digs into her sandwich and makes a pleased noise before continuing, “The spell she’s got to fancy up her crop comes with a corresponding increase in certain biological demands. The nutrients and water are easy to get ahold of, but this is Forks; there’s no sun most of the time. At least, not enough for what she needs.”

“So, what, you built her a sunlight machine?” I raise an eyebrow and take a bite of my own sandwich.

“So I built her a sunlight machine!” she agrees cheerfully. “Of course, then she tried to cheat me. She insisted on certain payment channels that made it easy for her to pull her money out as soon as my back was turned, which I allowed because it’s a dumb as hell move to do a financial crime while you’re running a pot shop. I’m being nice by only sending Bombshell after her ass.”

“How restrained,” I grin. “But, seriously, she really thought she’d get away with that?”

Erica swallows another bite of her food, then shrugs. “She didn’t seem the smartest. She kept boasting about knowing Herbalist as if that meant something to me.”

“Huh. I guess they would have something to talk about, but if she thought that would protect her then she really doesn’t get how the game works.”

We make more small talk as we eat. Erica invites me to play Magic with a couple of her friends who live in the area, which is how I learn that she’s spent about as much time in Washington as in California. Playing more card games would be nice, and would help me come up with more ideas for monster designs—Ferromancer insists that she still has a great deal to teach me about creating and refining familiars, which I don’t disbelieve—but I give an evasive answer, not willing to commit to anything yet.

Erica finishes her meal first. She throws the wrapper away, grabs a beer from the fridge, and leans back in her chair, eyeing me. “Alright, I guess there’s no more putting this off. Ask.”

“How do you know Delilah?” I ask immediately. “You made it clear you have some kind of personal history with her, and it didn’t seem positive.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Ferromancer sighs. “I dislike dwelling on my past, but I guess you’ve earned some real answers. Buckle in, ‘cause I’m gonna start at the beginning.”

“I have time.”

She takes a long drink, sets it down, and launches in. “My parents split when I was young. My father stayed in California while my mother moved back to Washington, and they shipped me back and forth between them every couple years. School wasn’t bad, but moving so much was a pretty big incentive to focus on education over making friends. I never felt like I belonged anywhere until the day I met Delilah.”

My interest sharpens, but I don’t let it seep into my expression or posture. That makes her sound a lot more important than I thought she’d be. Who the hell was Delilah? Outwardly, I just nod and say, “Go on.”

“She was a splash of the real world that I sorely needed after my sheltered upbringing. She was a liar and a thief, but I liked that; being around her made me feel like I’d been living my whole life with my eyes closed. I changed my college plans to stay close to her. And then, as I worked hard on my degree and we made plans to move in together once it was done, the Jovians made us an offer.”

There’s a wistful melancholy to how Erica describes her relationship with Delilah that has me convinced they were an item even before she mentions moving in. I mean, Sophie and I live together and we’re not dating, but that is a maddening state of affairs that I have plans to correct. I do not for a second believe that Erica and Delilah have not swapped spit.

“We didn’t share a power,” she continues, “but we were selected at the same time, and the cats pretty clearly expected us to operate as a unit, which we did. We had fun, but we were more careful than a lot of our peers, and that got us noticed in a different way; within a few months of stepping onto the scene, we received an invitation to do some work for the Syndicate. We said yes, and in short order we found ourselves full members.”

This time, I don’t manage to stifle my reaction in time, and I visibly stiffen. “When was this?” I ask carefully.

Erica takes another drink. “Yeah, that’s a fair reaction. It was early days in their organization, before the fascists took over and made that the party line, but I won’t lie and tell you they were absent back then; we just didn’t care. Politics was the furthest thing from our minds. To us, the Syndicate was a form of liberation. We did as we pleased, running mercenary work in the shadows and moving on crime rings to make them ours. She was the knife hand and I was the clear eye. Together, we felt unstoppable.”

It’s strange to think of Ferromancer in her youth, even if I knew intellectually that she wasn’t always the experienced veteran she presents herself as. I definitely wasn’t expecting her origins to be with the Syndicate, though. She’s clearly not the same person she was back then, but how much can a person really change? “Then what happened?”

“Then I stabbed her in the back,” Erica laughs. It’s a bleak, bitter sound. “The Syndicate is awful, Rachel, and not just politically. Being in there isolates you, twists you, turns you into someone who can only see victory and death. I started to think I was better than the ‘baseline’ humans, and better than all the magical girls, and from there it was a short jump to thinking I was better than my fellow witches. I saw an opportunity for advancement, and all it cost was betraying the only person I had ever felt at home with. It ruined us both.

“Delilah didn’t take my betrayal lying down. I thought I was too clever to need her, and I thought she needed me too much to accomplish anything on her own. Foolish. She killed me in my home, I killed her in hers, and then she got me with a poison that should have finished me off and closed our three—that she thought had, for years. In the dust after, Delilah fell deep into the Syndicate’s clutches and became something of a believer. I stopped believing in anything.”

I whistle. “Pretty nasty. I’m surprised she was willing to come to your demo in the workshop after all that, or into the World of Glass with you.” So Erica has a history of betraying her partners. More reason to be on my guard.

Ferromancer shrugs. “Like I said, she became a believer. When power is the only thing that matters, there’s not a lot you won’t do to get your hands on it. The demo was a test; I invited her there as a show of good faith, a sign that the old troubles were behind us. If either of us tried to settle the score, well, the results wouldn’t have been pretty. Striga reached out to her pretty shortly after through the channels I’d opened.”

And there’s the reason I haven’t cut ties already. “How do you know Striga?” I demand. “How long have you been part of her conspiracy?”

“Since the night after Delilah nearly killed me,” she answers with a grin. My eyes widen in surprise and she continues, “She’d been tracking my movements and Delilah’s for some time, monitoring the Syndicate’s rising stars and waiting to see where we fell on her gameboard. She broke into my sanctum and interrogated me about the situation, wanting to hear my assessment of Delilah and how my own feelings about the Syndicate had changed. Drilled me on the Jovians, too. Thoroughest interview I’ve ever been in. At the end of it, she could have easily executed me—her ability to secure three quick kills was already known and feared by then—but she didn’t. Instead, she inducted me into the conspiracy and helped me keep my survival a secret from the Syndicate. I moved to California, finished my degree, and did my damnedest to convince the Jovians I was useful to them.”

I lean back in my chair, considering everything she’s said. “Striga has a lot on you,” I muse. “In your position, I’d be very interested in securing the loyalty of the girl chosen to be the anti-Striga, even if Striga’s goals align with your own. I suppose that explains why you haven’t told her who I am.”

“Or… it’s not my secret to share,” Erica says dryly. “Always considering the angles, aren’t you? I bet your darling roommate thinks the same way.” Well, it wasn’t really in doubt, but that’s confirmation she overheard everything in the deimovore fight. “She didn’t tell me anything about her real plan the other night, you know. She told me we were grooming Delilah to be our spy in the Syndicate, that her presence on the expedition was a test. Howl and I have been working with Striga for years, and we haven’t heard a peep about Mars or Hastur in all that time. I’m not exactly in a hurry to give her information she hasn’t directly tasked me with getting.”

I’m delighted that Ferromancer considers me similar to Sophia in any way. I am also very, very concerned about her knowing Sophia’s identity, but that might be paranoia; the Jovians know who she is, so they could leak that information at any time to any of Striga’s enemies—if they were willing to escalate the cold war, that is.

Erica doesn’t have any real reason to backstab Striga, does she? Striga may have kept secrets from her, but she also chose to trust Ferromancer and bring her into the conspiracy after witnessing her conflict with Delilah. Plus, I’m assuming Erica took the same oath as I did.

Arguably, I’m betraying Sophia by not telling her that Ferromancer knows, though I wasn’t certain how much she knew until just now. But telling Sophia would mean revealing who I am, which I can’t do until Thanksgiving unless I want to piss off the King in Yellow.

“Thank you,” I say, “whatever your reasons are. I’ll tell Striga when I’m ready.”

“Mm.” Ferromancer eyes me with an unreadable expression. “To be honest, I don’t think you should. It’ll cause a massive headache at a time when everyone needs to be focused on the endgame. Of course, I don’t think you should be chasing after her at all, but I know you won’t listen.”

“It’s none of your business,” I say sharply.

“It is my business,” she insists, leaning in. “I don’t teach corpses, and I quite like having you around. I’m serious, you do not want to go down the same path as Striga. The closer you get to her, the more she’ll demand of you. I respect the hell out of that woman, but no one should live like that.”

“This is not a discussion I am open to having.” I’m going to save her.

Erica sighs and rolls her eyes. “Yeah, alright. I know I can’t convince you in an afternoon. Just… keep it in mind. That woman is married to her work and there are easier fish in the sea. Might be good for you to explore your other options, even if she’s still your endgame.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Gonna tell me what those options are?”

“Well, I’m obviously one of them,” she says with a wink. “You are my type.”

Despite myself, and despite everything I’ve learned in the past few days, I still blush at flirtation that blatant. Concerns aside, Ferromancer is hot and I am gay. Sophia is my one true love, but lust is far less discriminate.

If it was nothing serious, just a bit of sex, then—no! Shut it! No cheating on Sophia, and especially not with the dangerous ex-Syndicate bad girl—ah, hmm, I begin to understand why I find her so tempting.

“You don’t tempt me,” I lie with a smug look. “But, please, do keep working for my attention. I like it.”

Erica laughs. “You’ve got such an ego. You’re lucky I find that cute.”

“Everything about me is cute! If you think otherwise, your taste is unsalvageable.”

We banter back and forth a bit more, Erica repeating her offer to play card games, and eventually I make my excuses and head out. I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about Ferromancer, but… I’ll keep spending time with her. It’ll be useful.

It might even be fun.

[commentary]

ferro lore reveal woo

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mhai Wind, Moth Court, October, and PR4v1 Samaratunga.

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 26th of October. It’ll be a double length break for the end of book one.

[/commentary]

Being alone with Strix Striga is a dream come true. Getting her attention in this role is why I became a witch—or at least the first layer of it. I want more—I want to save her—but I’ll savor this moment with joy in my heart.

Of course, I have a pretty good idea of why I’m getting her attention like this, in a private conversation far away from any eavesdroppers not named Morrigan; right now, Striga is trying to decide whether I am a threat or an asset.

Ferromancer cornered me in her workshop and interrogated me about why the Jovians chose me to be their answer to Striga. I don’t think she passed on every detail of that conversation—it certainly doesn’t seem like she passed along my civilian name, which she would have known from the start thanks to Jovian intel—but it’s basically a given that Striga knows I have feelings for her. If not from Ferromancer, certainly from the Morrigan, or just from watching me watch her during the fight in the theater.

The Jovians pointed a weapon at Striga, but that weapon is in love with her, and now I’m the only member of the conspiracy with reliable access to one of Striga’s strategic goals—Jupiter’s pit, warded against normal methods but not, it would seem, against the teleporter in my furnace. Striga needs me on her side, but can she trust me? What if all this was just a long game, and I’m still a trap meant to destroy her?

She needs more information.

“I’d like to hear about your experiences in the World of Glass,” Striga says once we’re deep in the hedge maze. She moves unerringly through the endless green. “I’ll be getting detailed reports from Howl and Ferromancer later, but you’ve caught my eye.” I don’t bother to suppress my grin at that. “A great many players in the game have taken an interest in you, Archon. What did you think of the King in Yellow and her children?”

“Dangerous,” I answer immediately. “Mars and Venus felt… petty, I want to say. They could present a compelling scenario, but they fell apart trying to adapt to resistance. Hastur, though… she felt in control the entire time. She placed me in front of a deimovore to prime me for my encounter with Mars and Venus, dropped the teleporter in my lap to solve your pathing problem, and led us to every conclusion she wanted us to make about the Jovians and the ‘egregores.’ At least, I assume that’s what happened, but I can’t exactly be certain. She feels like a game master in an RPG, laying out challenges to justify giving rewards.”

“An apt comparison. I think of her as a referee. She has rules that she follows and which she enforces upon others, though I am unsure how many of those rules are her own creation and how many are genuine limitations. Her children are far less principled; ‘petty’ is a good word, but ‘immature’ would be better. They have a great deal more power than they have understanding. What did you think of the team that came with you?”

That’s a more complicated question. I highly doubt Striga’s asking me just to get a better sense of the others; she’s checking my tendencies. Prosocial or antisocial, team player or not. Threat or asset. I can’t get away with lying to Striga, so it’s a good thing I don’t have to. “They’re fun!” I say honestly. “Harlequin does a solid clown routine, Howl acts meaner than she is, and Agatha is adorable. I think they like me. I hope they like me, ‘cause I like them.”

“And Ferromancer?” she asks as we pass a hedge sculpture of the Morrigan.

I chew on my lip. “That one’s a little trickier. I really want to talk with her about Delilah. I think Hastur was testing me and Ferro in particular, straining our teacher-apprentice dynamic to see what would happen. Or to push us in a certain direction. Yeah, I’ll have to talk to her again before I can settle how I feel about everything that happened on the other side.”

Striga nods. “Tell me more about Agatha. I’d also be interested in hearing your thoughts on Visage in general.”

“I’d be happy to infiltrate them for you, if that’s what you’re asking,” I say with another wide grin. “I noticed the pattern in our little group; you’re missing a Visage witch and an independent magical girl—and a Syndicate witch, now, but I guess that’s a lower priority given what we found in the World of Glass.”

Striga’s mouth quirks into a small half-smile. “Perceptive. Yes, that is the nature of the work I have in mind for you. You would be coordinating with Agatha on investigating Visage from within; both the organization as it stands in our world, and the shadow of the Spire in the other.”

“I’d like that! She seems like a really nice girl, and I wanted to spend some time with Visage anyway. I’m a pretty shameless attention whore.” Not that anyone’s attention could ever equal yours, Sophie. It’s almost the kind of line I’d drop as Rachel, but Archon’s character is more blatant, more blunt; Rachel veils everything in layers of irony and contorted narrative. At least, that’s the version of those roles that exists in my head right now.

We round a bend in the maze, flowering vines covering the hedge. “So I’ve heard,” Striga says wryly, voice light and amused. Then she stops in her tracks, turns on me, and holds my gaze with burning intensity. My heart flutters. “I have also heard,” she says in a softer voice, “that you hold very strong feelings for me—that you love me, and want to save me. Well, here I am. If there’s something you’d like to say, you should say it now.”

I’m your Rachel. I’m the girl you saved. I’m the girl who would do anything for you.

I want to say those words. I want to tell Sophia that I love her as Rachel, not as Archon, whatever the consequences may be. I want to confess like I promised I would. It’s the obvious solution to every ounce of suspicion that Striga must be feeling right now, and I can’t do it.

Before today, the worst-case scenario for a confession was, being realistic, a bit of discomfort in the apartment for a few weeks. Sophia would never kick me out. I’d catastrophize and I’d cry and maybe I’d threaten something drastic, but I wouldn’t go through with it. I care about Sophia too much to leave her even if I knew for a fact we’d never be together.

Then the King in Yellow warned me off exactly this conversation. The right time, the right place, the right plan. A holiday. The morning of November 1st isn’t exactly a holiday, even if I’ve been up since Halloween. The specificity of that stands out.

For some reason, Hastur doesn’t want me confessing to Sophia in this moment. Maybe she has a plan that requires me to confess later, or she thinks it isn’t dramatic enough, or maybe she said it just to fuck with me. Part of me wants to ignore her advice and follow my heart… but more of me is nervous about pissing Hastur off. Striga described Hastur as “an existence utterly beyond our ability to punish.” I don’t want to make an enemy of that, and I think Striga would agree with that decision. I think she would forgive me for the deception.

I have to play this safe. I can’t afford to let Striga see me as a threat, but I also can’t afford to antagonize the King in Yellow by revealing myself now. I can only see through the veil on Sophia because I saw her transform, but her analytical ability is so good that she might not need something so obvious if I slip up. So, I have to be careful. I’ll play another role; I’ll tell her how Archon loves Striga, and some day soon I’ll finally tell her how Rachel loves Sophia.

It’s like a practice run. And, since she doesn’t know who I am… I don’t need to be nervous. It doesn’t matter if I get rejected like this. Just this once, I don’t have to hold back.

So I sigh dreamily, I smile at my beloved with pure, honest adoration, and I say, “I love everything about you. I love the way you move in battle, calculated and precise. I love the way you command a room just by being who you are. I love your ruthlessness and your sense of perspective, your willingness to do anything and say anything if it furthers your goals. I love your heroism and how earnest it is despite how much of your life is performance and manipulation. You’ll use anyone, even your own teammates, but it’s all for a good cause because all that you are is the pursuit of that cause. A spear against the Syndicate. A shield against the Catastrophes. A helping hand to anyone in need, no matter how small and inconsequential. You are exactly what the world needs: a perfect, invincible, unrelenting savior.”

I’m making Striga uncomfortable. Her self-control is without equal, so it’s not anything obvious, but I can tell it in her posture and the corners of her mouth and the rigidity of her hands, all just a little bit off from her norms. She says, “I see. You should know that—”

“It’s a lie,” I cut her off, still smiling. Her eyes widen a fraction of a centimeter, only visible because I know her so well, and I take advantage of her momentary surprise to step closer to her, only a breath between us now. “Perfection is a paradox. No one is invincible. No one can fight forever. But to be the hero they all need you to be, you have to pretend it’s all true. Your entire existence is a lie and you’re drowning in it. They’re burying you in work, putting the world on your shoulders, because you told them you could take it. The edge of exhaustion in your voice, the little moments of hesitation when you just want to rest but you can’t allow it, the cracks in the mask of the perfect savior—those small, precious details that no one notices, or that they pretend they didn’t see because the lie is too important. But I see it. I see you, Striga, and it only makes me love you more. I love how hard you fight to be something impossible, you mad, beautiful, doomed hero. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

I can hear the frenzy in my own voice, the manic, desperate need. I’ve never said these words to her out loud, never poured my heart like this, and it tumbles out like a waterfall, the sheer force of it impossible to stop or even slow. I need her to understand. I need her to see. My hands are on her shoulders and I don’t remember putting them there, but she hasn’t moved away, hasn’t done anything to rebuild distance.

There’s a glint in her eyes that looks like pain. A stiffness to her posture that she isn’t trying to hide. A hardness to the line of her mouth. “So that’s what you meant,” she says quietly, “when you promised to save me. How were you going to do it?”

“Oh, the plan was to beat you in a fight so hard I’d be able to force you to stop playing the hero.” I laugh and step back to give Striga space. “Yeah, that was a bad plan. I bet Mars gave Delilah the same vision that I got, and you beat her ass like you could have done it in half the time with both hands tied behind your back. So, new plan: if I can’t stop you from fighting… I’ll just have to help you win!” I give her a vicious, bloodthirsty grin.

If there’s anything I’m grateful to Hastur for, it’s the realization I just vocalized. Beating Striga was… well, I don’t want to say it was an “easy” anything, but I was treating it like it was the easy solution. If I could just defeat the undefeated, I’d break her myth and she’d toss aside her role. In reality, that was never going to happen. Even if by some miracle I overcame Striga’s terrifying skill and power—and all my plans to do so were cooked up before I knew about the blessing of Minerva—it wouldn’t stop her from overworking herself.

Some of the tension eases out of Striga, replaced by a contemplative look. “How were you planning to beat me? I’m still trying to figure out the specific nature of the weapon the Jovians meant to point at me.”

She hasn’t really addressed the rest of what I said, but that’s fine; it’s probably a lot to process, even for her. That, or she’s testing how well I respond to being shut out, in which case continuing to be perfectly cooperative is the smartest approach. “The strength of Prometheus is the weakness of Athena: versatility. The more options I have—weapons stolen from magical girls, devices built by Ferromancer, familiars crafted for different purposes—the more complicated your model of my capabilities has to become in order to accurately predict my moves and counter them. At a certain degree of combinatorial complexity, you lose that advantage entirely—and without your perfect analysis, you’re just a particularly experienced warrior. I’d build connections with other witches to get access to their tools or even borrow their familiars, then overwhelm you with as large and diverse an army as I could maintain, pushing you past the limits of your mind and body. Of course, I’d need very good defensive options to keep you from spoiling the trap by going directly for me, and I’d need some sort of boundary that you couldn’t escape from—which, now that I know you can open portals, seems less feasible.”

Despite the fact that I just listed in detail my scheme to defeat her, Striga seems more comfortable now than when I was confessing my love to her. Ouch! Eminently reasonable, though, and I’m not taking it too personally; she barely knows this version of me, after all.

“Thank you,” she says. “I think I have a better idea of what the Jovians were attempting. As for the rest of what you said…” Striga hesitates, which is something she never does, and then she continues, “You seem to know a lot more about me than I know about you. As we work together in the days and months to come… there will be opportunities to correct that imbalance. I think I might like getting to know you better, Archon.”

Aww, she’s trying to be encouraging without baldly lying that she reciprocates my feelings. Well, who am I to say no to that? “That would be lovely,” I smile. “Thank you for giving me a chance, Striga. I know you have no reason to feel about me like I feel about you, and I don’t expect that as the price of my loyalties; I want to help you, however I can, however you’ll have me.”

That small half-smile returns to Striga’s face. “I appreciate that more than you could know. To be perfectly honest, this conversation went a lot better than I was expecting it to.”

There’s a world where I could have convinced Striga that the best way to secure my loyalty was to feed my delusional obsession with her, but that’s not the world I want to live in; I want to make Sophia happy far, far more than I want her affection, forced or unforced.

Besides, I can be patient. I missed my chance today, but Hastur’s demands aren’t too odious; Thanksgiving is just around the corner. What’s one more month weighed against seven years of waiting?

I will tell Sophia how I feel about her. Until then, I’ll satisfy my desire for her attention through my interactions with Striga. And, hey, if I can make her like me in that persona, I bet I’ll have an even easier time winning her heart as Rachel.

As I walk home from the Ossuary, the sun rising over the horizon, I feel a sense of hope welling up within me. Inside the apartment, I stuff my face with chips and soda, my body sorely thanking me for the calories after the crazy day I’ve had. I don’t stay upright for long before crashing on the couch, pulling the covers over my head, and drifting off to sleep. For just a moment, I let myself feel like everything’s going to be okay.

[commentary]

rachel honey you’ve just jinxed it

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mhai Wind, Moth Court, October, and PR4v1 Samaratunga.

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 26th of October. It’ll be a double length break for the end of book one.

[/commentary]

Every ounce of frustration I felt at our plan’s failure is swept away by Striga’s arrival. My beloved is here, my hero, and she’s come to save us.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

One day, I’m going to save you.

“How the hell did you get here?” Delilah snarls.

“I brought her,” says Howl. She’s back from wherever she vanished, fresh bottle of booze in hand, sitting atop the wreckage of a chair. “Tricky finding the right path, but pathfinding is a specialty of mine.”

Striga tilts her head, attention focused on Delilah. “Interesting. Your body betrays the fear you feel quite clearly, which means you know you can’t beat me. Even with the blessing of Mars, you’re still so astonishingly weak.”

Delilah shifts stance and the red haze around her intensifies. “I’ll make you eat those words, you arrogant bitch!”

The witch explodes into action, lunging forward with supernatural speed and ferocity. I bounce on the balls of my feet, eager to see how my sweet Sophia tears Delilah apart.

Knife against spear is a terrible matchup from the start, especially with the corrosive edge of those knives doing absolutely nothing to Striga’s weapon, but the heroine sacrifices her reach advantage and lets Delilah past her guard just to make it sting even more when she effortlessly deflects or parries every attack the witch makes. She’s toying with Delilah by playing pure defense and ignoring openings. I’m enraptured watching her work, and I’m not the only one; no one makes a move to interfere with this duel.

Striga kicks Delilah away, sending her skidding to a halt amid the ravaged furniture left by Agatha’s spell. “Inadequate,” the heroine says calmly. “Try again.”

The witch abandons her form, becoming a rapidly growing mass of spiders that surges toward Striga—but then she stops, shudders, and pulls back. The other spiders never touched Striga, I suddenly realize. All the little castoffs skittered away from the heroine.

“None of that,” Striga chastises.

Delilah emerges from the swarm with a cry of pain, clutching her head and shivering. “What did you do to me? How did you do that!?”

Striga starts walking toward the witch. The remnants of the swarm flee from her approach, most of them melting back into Delilah. “Quite easily; it was a simple repellant charm I borrowed from a comrade. If that’s all you have, there’s no reason to continue this farce. Lay down and die like a good girl.”

Why won’t you call me that? whispers a part of my brain clearly still recovering from the shock of briefly dying. It would be wildly inappropriate to be jealous of Delilah right now. I’ve definitely never fantasized about a situation exactly like this.

Delilah screams in anger. Her form shifts again, rippling and bubbling. A giant spider leg tears its way out of her back, then another, then a dozen more that all twist and extend strangely. The witch comes at Striga from as many angles as she has sharp, chitinous limbs, trying to overwhelm the heroine with more attacks than she can counter.

Striga counters them all anyway, moving in that perfectly precise way to parry, dodge, or slice each grasping limb. Legs are cut and twitch on the ground while Striga remains untouched. Delilah can’t even scratch her.

“Pathetic,” Striga scorns. Then she finally goes on the offensive.

Her spear finds its mark again and again, each strike carefully calculated to slip past her enemy’s defenses. She drives Delilah back with deliberate force, cutting her off from every direction except the one that leads where Striga wants her. When Delilah’s back hits a wall, Striga disarms both her knives in one fluid motion. The black blades clatter to the floor and are kicked away from their owner.

Delilah’s breathing is ragged, her body dripping spiders from a dozen wounds. Striga, not even winded, lowers her spear and tilts her head again.

“Pray,” she says suddenly. “Pray to your god for the strength to kill me. I take no satisfaction in executing a worm that can’t even fight back. Give me a real fight, Delilah. Or was that sad little display all the power you were given for betraying humanity? How disappointing.”

When Striga laughs, it’s nothing like Sophia’s laugh. Sophia laughs like an angel, musical and radiant and so beautiful in joy. Striga’s laugh is the scrape of a knife against stone, the eerie cry of the banshee that promises nothing but death and ruin.

She’s not just wearing Delilah out as some kind of attrition strategy, she’s playing with her food. She’s toying with a witch that just ran circles around the rest of us. God, that’s hot.

Delilah rasps, “You think you’re so much better than everyone. You think you’re invincible, don’t you? I’ll show you how wrong you are. MARS!” she screams. “Give me what was promised! Give me the strength you showed me! Satisfy our pact!”

The red glow around Delilah, which had dimmed as she was pushed back and took wounds, flares up brighter than it ever has—a surge of blazing crimson, a red so harsh it burns the eyes.

Striga stabs her spear through Delilah’s heart. Silver light wreathes the spear and devours the red aura. The crimson glow is drawn into the spear, pulled by some great, invisible force. The red light is swallowed by silver until only silver remains, sapped from the witch’s flesh. Delilah screams in pain and a second voice screams with her—the voice of Mars.

Delilah sags as the last of the red glow leaves her. There’s something frail about her, like she could break with the lightest shove. Withered. Powerless. It’s what she deserves.

Striga withdraws her spear, grabs hold of the witch, and tosses her in our direction. Delilah crumples against the floor in front of us, gasping for breath and clutching at the wound in her chest—the first one to actually bleed. “She’s served her purpose. Ferromancer: finish it.”

My gaze is still fixed on my beloved, so I don’t see the end of it. There’s a moment’s pause, a quiet “I’m sorry,” and a bang. Striga watches it happen without emotion. My Sophie, playing the role of Striga. Playing everyone’s hero. Ruthless, measured, controlled. Perfect.

“You’re incredible,” I tell her honestly, the words leaving my lips before I can question whether they should. “You planned all of that, right? Used Delilah as bait to get at Mars?”

Before Striga can answer, Harlequin pops back into existence a few rows down with a spray of confetti. My resurrection had to be more dignified than that. The clown looks around, then cartwheels over to the corpse of Delilah and kicks it a few times.

Striga sweeps her gaze across each of us in turn. Her attention lingers on me for only a few seconds before she moves on to the next, but it still feels warm and fuzzy. Then she nods.

“Good,” she says. “None of you made a pact with the egregores.” I bet she has the sight too, like Howl knowing I was a dreamer and seeing something in me that made her call me a monster. She flicks her gaze back to me. “To answer your question, Archon: yes, I did. I’ll explain more once we return to the Ossuary. Howl, your analysis?”

The archer grimaces. “This place is fucked. Feels like pretty active interference, too; I could feel the realm—or its master, I guess—easing up to let me find you, then shutting me out again. I don’t have any confidence in my ability to get back here later.”

I have a lightbulb moment. “I might be able to help with that, actually.” I summon the golden disc again, grin, and press it. In an instant I’m back in the mountains, and then with a second click of the triskelion I return to the theater. “Takes me to somewhere in the Olympic Mountains. Some kind of lookout tower.”

Howl breathes in sharply. “That region is a dead zone for crossing the barrier. Nothing slips between around there.”

“I’ve long suspected it,” Striga says. “Tying her ‘city of the gods’ to the second Mount Olympus is exactly Hastur’s sense of humor.”

“You knew who Hastur was before we went in,” Ferromancer says, tone just shy of accusatory. There’s an edge to her voice that wasn’t there before. “Mars and Venus, too.”

“You’re no stranger to keeping others in the dark for a tactical or strategic purpose,” Striga answers calmly. “Do not take offense when the same logic is applied to you.”

I take a bit of silent satisfaction in that response, given what I went through not long ago. Ferromancer says nothing. Agatha, to my shock, is the one who steps forward with a frown and asks, “Was this all a test? It seems like you already knew everything we’ve just learned—did you know about the conduits? About the Jovians and their origins?”

“You’ve earned answers,” Striga promises. “I will grant them. But we should not tarry here; dawn approaches.”

Agatha blinks. “Dawn? But it’s only been—oh, no.” She pales.

“It was getting lighter when I hopped back to Earth,” I say. “I’m guessing Hastur messed with the flow of time while we were going through the Mars and Venus visions.”

Striga flourishes her spear, sweeps it through the air, and speaks a word of power: “Open.” A hole is torn in the world. The seam of reality is cut, an inkblot becoming an abyss, and then that abyss is trapped between two pillars of marble carved with the faces of owls.

My curiosity is piqued, but I don’t waste time pressing when I’ve already been promised answers. I’m the first through the portal, stepping through with one last dreamy look at Striga.

This time, there’s no flash of golden eyes as I cross the threshold. Strangely, I wasn’t expecting there would be; I don’t really understand the King in Yellow yet, but… it feels like we earned our way out. That feels like something she would respect.

The Morrigan greets me on the other side of the portal, presiding over her garden maze from that flowering throne. “Welcome back, Archon,” she speaks in my mind.

The others follow shortly, Harlequin next and Striga last. She brought the corpse of Delilah with her, which is quickly taken by roaming vines and dragged away into the endless green surrounding the “throne room” of the maze.

I’m giddy, but the mood among the others is mixed. I can’t really tell how Ferromancer is feeling thanks to her mask and armor, but her posture feels tense. Agatha finds her way to my side and gives me a shaky smile, eyes nervous. Harlequin is Harlequin. Howl is scowling.

Striga takes her place beside the Morrigan, leans her spear against the throne, and turns to us with a sigh. For a moment, I see the exhaustion in a dozen little details, but I doubt the others notice; I know Sophie’s face like no one else.

She says, “You’ve earned the truth, so I won’t draw this out or dissemble. Yes, this operation was a trap, and a test, and also exactly what you were told it was: an attempt to learn more about the World of Glass and its most important landmarks. Jupiter’s prison must be studied if we are to prevent his escape, and it is damnably difficult to reach; as Howl suggested, the master of that dimension tightly controls access to the centerpiece of the game. The best way to get Howl and her pathfinding to the pit’s proximity was placing her in a group that Hastur wouldn’t be able to resist meddling with. That proved fruitless, but Hastur seems to have rewarded my ambitions anyway with the artifact that Archon demonstrated. It will have to be tested, of course.”

“How much did you already know?” Ferromancer asks, her voice carefully neutral this time. “All of it? You seem very familiar with the King in Yellow.”

“Yes,” Striga answers immediately, evoking a fresh round of grimaces and shifts in posture from everyone but me. “I’ve spoken with Hastur before, and more than once. From what Howl tells me, you were shown the same performance that I was. I do not like her and I do not trust her, but she is an existence utterly beyond our ability to punish, so I will accept her aid when I can lure it out of her.”

“Ah,” Harlequin muses, “we were bait twice over.”

Striga nods. “I won’t deny it. As a group you were meant to draw the attention of Hastur and her ‘children,’ but there were multiple reasons for that move. Delilah was the guaranteed sacrifice; I had no doubt she would make a contract with Mars and call upon it when pushed and angered. While our mantles turn us into conduits for the pretenders, that connection only runs from us to them. Pacts like Delilah made create a two-way connection that can be exploited to injure the god on the other side.”

Left unspoken is the obvious: if any of us had made similar pacts, Striga would have used us in exactly the same way. She might have felt bad about it, but she wouldn’t have hesitated.

“You called it a test,” Agatha says, frowning with more contemplation than frustration. “I think I can guess at parts of that, but…”

“Until tonight,” Striga says, “I have been very, very careful in who I trust. I have kept secrets not out of habit but because every conspirator inducted into my war is a new risk factor that might spook the enemy into escalation—into making more Texas witches. They have avoided doing so because it damages the World of Glass and harms their ability to feed, but if they perceive the game as lost they will not hesitate to flip the table. So, yes, I was testing you.”

“Why now?” I hurry to ask before anyone else can speak up. “Why bring on so many people at once? You said you’ve been careful ‘until tonight,’ so what changed?”

Her expression darkens. “The enemy is getting closer to their endgame. Within the next year, escalation will become inevitable. One of the gods—likely Mars—will force a change in the battlefield that could prove apocalyptic for humanity. Mars and Venus must be stopped before one of them ascends or Jupiter escapes, and I can’t do that alone.”

“What about Minerva?” Howl asks, eyes narrowed. It can’t be a coincidence, right?

Striga retrieves her spear, sticks it in the ground, and floods it with silver light. “I imagine you were told the Catastrophes are Jupiter’s champions. Delilah was, very briefly, a champion of Mars. Nine years ago, I became Minerva’s. There are only a handful of us, scattered across the world, and we are all devoted to the salvation of humanity and the complete destruction of Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. Minerva’s gift is what allowed me to drain Delilah’s. And to preempt the question, none of you meet the criteria to become another of her champions; think of it like becoming a paladin and you’ll be halfway to how strict her standards are.”

Agatha winces and Howl grumbles. Paladin girlfriend, hums my brain. Paladin x succubus fanfiction. Let me be your temptation, Striga. Let me hit and I’ll let you purge. These are normal thoughts to have while talking about a threat to all life on Earth and how to stop it.

“I understand you may be unhappy about being deceived,” Striga says. “I am asking you to set that aside, because I need your help.” She needs me. Sophia needs me. “You’ve seen the face of the enemy now, and you know the true aim of the Jovians. You resisted what Mars and Venus offered. You endured the World of Glass without breaking. You’ve seen the truth of the world laid bare. Join my cause. Work with me. Please, help me save humanity from the parasites that want to devour us.”

“I’m in,” I answer immediately. “I’ll do it.” Anything for you, my love.

“I as well,” Harlequin says with a wide grin.

“You already had my answer,” Ferromancer says. “We will talk about this, but I haven’t changed my mind.”

Howl sighs. “Same here. I’m annoyed, but I get what’s at stake.”

Agatha swallows, bites her lip, then nods. “Okay. Me too.”

Relief crosses Striga’s face—again, too small and brief for most to notice, a dozen microexpressions gone as quickly as they appeared—and she says, “Good. Thank you. There is much work to be done, and I have a role in mind for each of you, but the hour is late; I’ll be in touch through the Morrigan in the coming days. For now, you should all get some rest and try to return to your normal schedule—except for you, Archon. I’d like a word.”

I very valiantly do not scream in joy when Striga says that. “Of course!” I chirp, still probably coming off a bit starstruck in my enthusiasm. Ferromancer knows exactly how I feel about this, of course, and Howl and Harlequin might be able to see something with their freak vision, but Agatha… could probably figure out with her weird vision if she used it. Fuck. Whatever, not important.

The others file out—Agatha and Harlequin tossing curious looks, Howl rolling her eyes, and Ferromancer saying nothing. I need to talk to my teacher, but it can wait. Anything can wait for my beloved Sophia.

“Walk with me,” she commands, and I’m more than happy to follow.

[commentary]

A private conversation… just the two of them… alone…

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mhai Wind, Moth Court, October, and PR4v1 Samaratunga.

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 26th of October. It’ll be a double length break for the end of book one.

[/commentary]

It’s time to kill Delilah.

I don’t think any of us are really surprised by her betrayal—Harlequin looks eager, Agatha resigned—but Howl’s the first to actually do something about it. Her bow was already out, hackles raised by Jupiter’s prison. Howl releases two arrows in quick succession, both of which tear through Delilah bloodlessly, leaving spiders in their wake.

“You’re first,” the traitor hisses, and then she lunges for Howl.

The rest of us explode into action. Ferromancer throws up another energy barrier and Agatha rushes to her side before doing the same. Two drones fly out from beneath Ferromancer’s cloak—were they hiding as part of her armor?—and shoot lasers at Delilah, who melts into spiders wherever she’s struck. Agatha pelts the enemy witch with fire, ice, and lightning, just like in the forest with the deimovore. Howl is matching Delilah’s black-bladed knives with twin knives of her own, longer than Delilah’s but lacking that corrosive edge. Harlequin leaps into the melee and starts throwing punches and taking hits for Howl.

So what the hell am I supposed to do? I’ve been building my arsenal, but I’m not sure any of my weapons are right for the situation. Getting into melee with Thunderclap’s axe sounds like a recipe for disaster, but shooting into melee sounds equally terrible, be it the high-powered gun or the foam arrows from my bow. Would my familiars do anything but get in the way of my allies? I designed them all under the assumption that I’d be fighting alone, not with a team.

This is the problem with being a generalist instead of a specialist. I have a bunch of tools, but I don’t feel supremely confident in any of them the way that Agatha and Ferromancer must to fire so freely into a pitched battle with two allies. Though, part of that is probably trusting that Howl can dodge and Harlequin doesn’t care about getting hit. Maybe I should just pick the foam arrows, since I can dismiss any that hit an ally.

As I start reaching for the bow’s blueprint in my furnace, another schematic flashes in my mind: the strange item I pulled from the angel’s wreckage. I have no idea what it does, but I’d bet money that Hastur put it there for a reason. Trial by fire, then. Live test.

I summon the golden disc and take a closer look at it. It’s almost exactly the size of my palm. The back of it is smooth and flat, but the front is covered in symbols; small runes or glyphs circle the outer edge, while the center bears a strange triskelion design on a raised surface that looks like it could be pressed down. The three legs of the symbol are all different: one short and nearly straight, one long and curved, and one that’s almost in the shape of a question mark.

Delilah—who is now more spiders than woman—whips her head around to look directly at me. The eight eyes on her mask flash bright red, and then in an instant she reforms her body and leaps over Howl and Harlequin to rush straight for me.

Fuck! I panic and almost freeze, but some part of me—the combat instincts I gained when I became a witch—stays focused. I clutch the disc tightly and click its solitary button.

Delilah vanishes, along with everything else. In the blink of an eye, I’ve gone from Hastur’s theater to standing on a wooden platform in the mountains.

Disorientation hits me like one of Bombshell’s punches. It feels worse than when I went through the portal to reach the World of Glass. What just happened? Where am I now?

It takes a few seconds for my vision to stop swimming. I’m… on a tower of some kind. Mostly wood, lots of crisscrossing beams, stairs down. An observation post? The platform I’m on is high up the structure, a walkway around what almost looks like a cabin. Through tall windows I can see a big room with a bed, a kitchen, a computer, and a ladder leading further up.

And I’m in the mountains. The Olympic Mountains, I realize, because I can see Forks below me. Down past the snowy peaks and the forested slopes, the city is bright and full of activity. It’s still dark out, the sun not yet creeping over the horizon, but in the east I can see the faintest hint of purple against black.

The Visage Spire is untouched. The orb is there, looking as it always does, with no sign of our battle. Does that mean I’m back in the real world? Or am I still in the World of Glass, and Hastur just cleaned up our mess?

I float tentatively off the platform and start rising. Nothing stops me or slows me down, and I clear the height of the lookout tower with no issue. In the air, I pull out my phone and check the connection. Low signal—I am in the mountains—but not none like I was told to expect from the World of Glass.

I open the group chat and see absolute nonsense being posted. Mike is babbling about an eagle and the other two are spamming badger emojis. The messages are recent.

“This is weird,” I mutter aloud, talking about the situation and not my freak friends. “Hastur? Hastur. Hastur!” Nothing happens.

I return to the platform. The golden disc is still in my hand, the symbol-etched circle once again raised. I press it back down and immediately the mountains disappear and I’m standing inside the King in Yellow’s theater again, the battle raging on between Delilah and my allies.

In the few seconds of disorientation before I get my bearings, I’m buried in spiders.

Eight thousand legs skitter across my skin and over my eyes and into my ears and mouth as I flail and try to shake them off. Two thousand fangs nip at my flesh and inject their payload of venom. I can feel them everywhere, inescapable and agonizing, as my outsides are lacerated and my insides dissolve. I call my flame to try and burn them off me, but of course my flame doesn’t burn anything until it’s invested in something physical.

The disc is still in my hand, clutched tight, and for half a second my fevered mind considers using it, but then I’d be alone with Delilah where no one else can reach me. I burn it instead to keep it away from her. The spiders are crawling down my throat. I need to do something. I need to summon something, but it’s so hard to concentrate. I manage a single imp through the pain and detonate it. The swarm is set on fire, but it’s still eating me. There are too many of them. I try to scream, but there are spiders in my lungs. I collapse beneath their weight.

Then I die.

The pain goes away immediately, which is nice. Every sensation is gone at once, which makes sense; I don’t have a body anymore. I’m dead.

Being dead is strange. I’m a little cold, but it’s a relieving cold, like a cold shower after a hot day. The world around me is gray upon gray upon gray, all blobs of meaningless nothing, some of them moving. I could make out detail if I focused, maybe, but it’s hard to care enough to try. It doesn’t matter. I’m dead.

There are two cords coming out of my back, although I don’t have a back. They’re tethering me to something, but they can’t reach wherever they’re meant to connect, so the ends are cut and frayed. I feel a very distant sense of safety, shelter, and a place to rest, but it’s like noise through water, muffled and distorted. There’s a barrier in the way. I’m being pulled somewhere, but I’m not going anywhere, because there’s nowhere to go. So I just… drift. Formless. Uncaring. Dead.

The King in Yellow laughs. She is color in the gray. “Well, that was quick. I suppose I’m to blame, aren’t I? No matter. You’ll gain enough focus to reincarnate without a safe haven eventually, but the fight will be long over by then. You’ll have missed the climax! That won’t do. Not to worry, my dear, your good pal Hastur will make things right. Ah, but, in return, would you do me one small little favor? When you get back to your world after all this is over, I’d like you to pick the right time to tell your darling Sophia how you feel about her. All important conversations deserve the right location, ambience, and planning—for a love confession, I recommend a holiday. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

I don’t respond. I can hear what she’s saying, but it doesn’t mean anything to a dead girl.

The King laughs again. “Of course, your head’s a little too muddled right now to make any kind of binding agreement. Don’t worry, I won’t take advantage and force it on you; a deal under duress means less than nothing. All I ask is that you remember my advice. Spare a thought for ol’ Hastur. Good luck, Rachel.”

She snaps her fingers and I’m alive again.

Pain, heat, the ground beneath me, the air around me. Life pumping through my veins. The world is sharp color and bright, bright, bright. A metal hand grabs my wrist and pulls me behind an energy shield before Delilah’s swarm can devour me again.

“Archon!” Ferromancer shouts in my ear, snapping me out of my resurrection fugue. “What happened?”

Ferromancer and Agatha have layered their barriers again. The magical girl is flagging, the exhaustion written on her face as she chants spell after spell, while Ferromancer’s suit seems more dimly lit than before. The spiders surround us, but the outermost layer of our shield incinerates any that try to get through it.

There are so, so, so many spiders. This has to be an effect of the gift that Mars gave her; Delilah never exceeded her own body mass when she went swarm mode back in the city, but now the entire theater is blanketed in bugs. Delilah’s main body is still fighting in the heart of the swarm, those corrosive knives cutting through clone after clone of Harlequin. Dozens of clown bodies dissolve into the ceaseless, skittering mass.

I don’t see any of Ferromancer’s drones. I don’t see Howl, either.

“Device took me back to Forks,” I force out. “Olympic Mountains. Then here when I used it again. Dying sucked. The King did something—accelerated my reincarnation. Where’s Howl?”

“Gone. Vanished in the swarm, but I don’t think she was eaten.” There’s a twinge of anger audible through Ferromancer’s mechanically distorted voice. “We’re at a stalemate with Delilah; at current expenditure I can keep her out indefinitely, but nothing we’ve tried has seriously damaged her. She’s outpacing Harlequin in terms of regenerative capability.”

Which is absurd. “There must be a bypass condition,” I muse, “though I would have guessed fire and that certainly hasn’t worked. She’s been boosted to another level, but even Catastrophes can be beaten.”

“By teams that are much bigger and more prepared than ours,” Ferromancer says. “I left my briefcase behind to maintain the machinery in the outpost and establish a communication channel back to the Morrigan. I wasn’t expecting the King in fucking Yellow to show up.”

I glance at Agatha. “Can you use your power to find a weak spot?”

She shakes her head and breaks off an incantation. “Tried. Still too much information; I can’t even start sifting through it without getting sick.”

I grimace and start wracking my brains for a solution. Normally I’d have a bunch of experience wargaming a witch’s abilities, but I didn’t know Delilah existed until that day in the workshop; I’ve never seen a model of her powers to start theorycrafting against. I went looking, of course, but I had almost nothing to go on, so nothing is what I found.

Ferromancer comes up with a plan first: “Archon, let’s repeat the trick that won our fight with the eye. If we apply the full sum of your flame to the right weapon, it might be enough. I have a handful of gadgets left we could try, though none as impressive as the railgun.”

“Actually,” Agatha says softly, “I have an idea.” She holds up her spellbook. “My grimoire is integral to my ultimate spell, so transforming it should amplify the effect. I can’t imagine us finding anything stronger than that, at least on short notice. Although I’d feel bad about hitting Harlequin with it, too, since I can’t discriminate targets very easily.”

“They’ll be fine,” Ferromancer says. The clown witch hasn’t slowed down at all in their brawl with Delilah, building more bodies as fast as they’re destroyed. “One death won’t hurt.”

“The same is true of our opponent,” I point out, eyeing the spider swarm nervously.

“That won’t be a problem.” There’s an icy calm to Ferromancer’s voice. “We just need to weaken Delilah enough that I can land the killing blow and finish our round of three.”

I stare at my teacher in shock. They’ve killed each other before? And you still invited her to your workshop!? And she came!?!? I have never been more curious about the nature of their relationship, but now really isn’t the time to press. I narrow my eyes at her, but say, “Okay. I’ll start pouring flame.”

Agatha carefully holds out her spellbook and flips to the right page. “It’s fine,” she mutters to herself, “it’ll be fine, it’s not real fire, we are not burning a book, this is just more magic. This is fine.” She starts chanting in a low, even rhythm.

I call forth the green flame of transformation and direct it at Agatha’s book, willing Prometheus to empower the item as much as possible. All that I have to give. This has to work.

In the midst of her melee with Harlequin, Delilah suddenly stops. The swarm shifts, more of its mass coalescing around the center to bury Harlequin’s clones, and then the human core drifts over to us and comes to a stop just in front of the layered barrier.

“Do you really think that’ll work?” she taunts us. She looks monstrous now, body constantly sloughing off spiders, her mask fused to her face and tearing as she talks. “Go ahead, give it your best shot. I have power now, real power. You can’t possibly compare. All of you are nothing to me. You’ll all be swept away in the new order—an age of gods and monsters is upon us! My sisters in the Syndicate will see the light when I come bearing gifts from the divine. We shall become the masters of the world. Not even that damned Strix Striga will be able to stop us.”

Ferromancer folds her arms. “You used to be smarter than this, Delilah.” There’s accusation in her tone, but also a keen edge of disappointment. “Mars is using you, can’t you see that?”

Delilah barks a laugh. “Obviously. And I’m using him. That’s how the game works. You taught me that lesson, old friend. I’ve never forgotten it.”

Ferromancer is quiet for a moment. My body grows cold as I empty my furnace into Agatha’s weapon. “I could say I was a different person back then, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? I’m not the one trading freedom for power.”

“Power is freedom,” Delilah hisses. “It’s the only way to be free!”

I push the last of my flame into the book and slump. Agatha finishes chanting. Through the numbing fog, I hear the words of her ultimate spell:

“With clear eyes, I see the path before me. Henceforth, I shall suffer no sacrifice. THREADS OF DESTINY!”

Agatha’s spellbook, which had begun to glow brighter and brighter, shining with my power and hers, explodes into scattered pages that unravel into thread as they fall. Multicolored string fills the theater, twists through the air, and latches on to every single spider in the room. There is a piece of thread for each of them, and plenty more for Delilah’s human form. Everything in the theater that could be described as Delilah is tagged by shimmering string.

Then the string vanishes, replaced by countless swords of white light that appear midair and fling themselves into all the points where Agatha’s thread touched something alive. Delilah is impaled by dozens, her spiders by thousands, and she screams. For a brief moment, there is no space outside our little bubble of safety that is not a glowing sword.

The light melts away as quickly as it came. My power returns to me with another bolt of searing agony, while next to me it’s Agatha’s turn to slump, spent and exhausted. Her contributions to the shield wall dissipate, her magic leaving her as the price of her ultimate spell.

The swarm is gone. Delilah’s spiders have been scoured from the theater. The witch herself is barely standing, her form half-melted and full of holes… but only for a moment.

Delilah glows red, suffused once again by the light of Mars, and her wounds vanish. She regains her shape and a fresh batch of spiders crawls out of her to surround Ferromancer’s barrier. “Fools,” she cackles. “You can’t—”

The witch suddenly jerks to the side, speech cutting off as she twists her body away just in time to avoid being impaled by a silver spear. She raises both daggers in a defensive stance, body rigid, hands shaking. Even though I can’t see her face, I can tell she’s terrified.

The spear, surrounded by a pale glow, levitates back to the hand of the woman who threw it. Strix Striga smiles.

“Hello, Delilah.”

[commentary]

IT’S STRIGA FROM THE TOP ROPE!

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mhai Wind, Moth Court, October, and PR4v1 Samaratunga.

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 26th of October. It’ll be a double length break for the end of book one.

[/commentary]

In the dark between worlds, I laugh at two familiar strangers who call themselves rising gods. The children of Hastur don’t seem impressed by my answer.

“You should watch your tone,” Mars threatens. “You stand before divinity.”

“Watch yours,” I mock. “You stand before a yandere.”

Venus frowns, stepping out of darkness to loom over me. She’s resplendently beautiful, that I can’t deny, but she’s not my type. “You claim this ‘lovesickness,’ yet you deny your chance to save the one you love?”

Her accusation is empty air. “Nah, I’m only denying you. But go on, convince me—if you think you can.” I’ve already made up my mind, but I want to learn more about these would-be gods. Mars and Venus make a clear pattern; Jupiter must be another of their number. We use the Roman names for the planets, and they named them after their gods. Is there a Mercury? What about Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto? Wait, does Pluto still count since it’s not a planet anymore?

“My charm is the key to saving Sophia,” Venus argues. “Your beloved bears the world on her shoulders when that work could be offloaded to others; give her the tools to do more good with less work, bound to your influence, and you will have all the leverage you need to secure time with Sophia. Use my gift to inspire the masses—direct them to Sophia’s cause—and you solve both her civilian workload and Vanguard’s civic pursuits, freeing up an immense portion of your dearly beloved’s time.”

“Wrong,” I say immediately. “Sophia will never settle for any amount of good when she could push herself harder to accomplish more. Give her a clinic, give her the Foundation, give her the goddamn world and she will find a way to do more. There will always be another task, another stack of paperwork, another reason to never rest.”

“There is another way,” Venus insists, smiling now, that velvet voice dripping with venom. “You are close to her. Her defenses are impressive, but you alone could use my charm on Sophia herself to—”

“Unacceptable,” I snap. “I want Sophia, not a puppet that looks like her. You have nothing to offer me.”

“The harlot cannot help you,” Mars agrees, stepping forward as Venus returns to the shadows with a glare at her brother. What’s the phrase people usually use for a build like that? Brick shithouse? “Your damsel will not relent while she has the freedom to destroy herself, and destroying her mind to save her body is unacceptable. This is why you must conquer the heroine; reveal the lie of her invincibility, that she might change her ways. Imprison her if you must, until the lesson has been learned. She will forgive you, in time, once she realizes how you have saved her.”

“Also wrong,” I say more lightly. “It doesn’t matter how thoroughly I thrashed her, Sophia would never, ever give up. She would never stop fighting, never stop resisting, never stop trying to escape whatever prison I put her in. There would be no peace for either of us. Conquering Striga would mean a war without end to keep Sophia confined, bleeding, and miserable. That’s not salvation.”

“Then you have become a witch for nothing,” Mars accuses. “Did you not take the mantle to scar your truth into the woman you desire?”

I flinch. He’s not wrong about that. I wanted to be a witch because Sophia is a magical girl. I wanted to fight her, to beat her, to pin her down and make her mine, keep her mine, keep her eyes on me forever. The vision Mars showed me, it didn’t come from nothing; there’s still a part of me that wants it. I want to steal Sophia away from the world, and it feels like the only way to do that is to break or cage the part of her that needs to be a hero.

For how callously I dismissed it, I’m not immune to Venus’ offer, either. The thought of Sophia staring at me with dazzled, lovestruck eyes is intoxicating. I want to run my fingers through her hair and take all her worries away. What’s a little free will in the face of the greater good? I could make her happy. It would only cost everything.

When the deimovore tried to break me, I realized something—or rather, I finally got through a mental block that’s been in my head for seven years. The future I want with Sophia, the future that I’ve been terrified of jeopardizing by saying the wrong thing… it only happens if I tell her how I feel. Not by conquest, not by control. I must grasp that future with my own hands.

Sophia is my angel, and I love her. I have to believe she can love me back. I have to believe I wasn’t just a wounded animal she saved out of pity.

“Neither of you can help me. I’m going to save Sophia my way, not yours. You don’t get to be involved in that.”

“This will prove a costly mistake,” Venus warns, now standing beside her brother.

“You do not want us to be your enemies,” Mars growls.

“Nah, you can fuck off with that,” I say cheerfully. “I know how this game works. This is a test, and I pass. So… Hastur! Get in here and tell your kids I win. Hastur!”

A yellow cloak envelops the dark. A jester’s voice fills the air. “What a magnificent performance,” the King in Yellow praises. “Let’s hear some applause from the audience!”

I’m blinded by sudden light, my hands instinctively moving to block the glare, and when my vision stabilizes I’m standing on a wooden stage, spotlights beaming down. My ears are assaulted by the sound of a thousand clapping hands, but the chairs in this grandiose theater are all empty. Then, suddenly, the room falls silent.

“Now,” the King purrs from nowhere, “I did promise you a reward. You’ve done such fine work upon the stage; allow me to return the favor with a performance of my own.”

I blink and I’m sitting in the auditorium among all the empty chairs—except, a few of them aren’t empty anymore.

“A play, a play, what a wonderful day!” Harlequin claps happily a few rows down.

“I see everyone is accounted for,” says Ferromancer, immediately rising from her seat in the center of the area to inspect the rest of us. “Good. I trust no one was foolish enough to accept those obviously untrustworthy pacts?”

Agatha whimpers, looking frozen to her chair just a few seats over from me. Howl, down in front, has somehow acquired a bottle of whiskey and is drinking straight out of it, feet kicked up. Delilah grips the arms of her chair tightly, far to the right of the rest of us, saying nothing.

I keep my eye on the spider witch. She made it pretty clear in our meeting back in the Ossuary that she came along for personal empowerment and little else. I haven’t dropped my theory that Striga chose Delilah as a sacrificial lamb, or as bait. But if Delilah did make a deal with one of Hastur’s children, which seems more likely? Charm would suit her “schemer in the shadows” deal better, but the raw power of Mars might appeal more basely.

“Mars and Venus?” I ask the others. “Did we all get two offers?”

Ferromancer, Harlequin, and Agatha nod. Howl throws up two fingers. Again, Delilah doesn’t react.

Howl finishes off her bottle and drops it, letting glass spill across the auditorium floor. “That’s a lot of questions answered in itself, isn’t it?”

“Mars and Venus,” Ferromancer muses. “Two data points is hardly a pattern, but…”

“We can guess that Jupiter is their third,” I finish.

“Indeed!” the King in Yellow calls out, voice echoing from above. “My children, my four, precious, terrible little children: Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Minerva. But, ah, that’s not where our story begins.”

Minerva? That one’s not a planet. Wait—

“Striga,” I whisper at the same time as Ferromancer and Agatha. The name of Striga’s power is Athena, which is the Greek form of the Roman goddess Minerva. Is that just a coincidence, or do the two have a connection?

On the stage, yellow curtains are drawn closed and then opened again to reveal a transformation. The back wall of the stage has been painted over in dazzling displays of stars and planets, the floor of the stage now a solid pane of rainbow-colored glass.

“For countless millenia,” Hastur narrates, “the World of Glass was nothing more than a quiet reflection of your world. Where humanity built wonders, this world grew wondrous. Where humanity unleashed horrors, this world grew horrific. On occasion some piece of here slipped through to the other side, or brought something over—unexplained disappearances, strange lights in the sky, Tunguska—but, for the most part, the two worlds had very little contact.”

Yellow ribbons peel down from the rafters, splitting apart and twining together until they reach the stage and touch the rainbow glass.

“Then I arrived.”

The yellow cloth swirls and becomes the yellow cloak of a shadowed figure, pale mask smiling at us all, golden eyes gleaming in the darkness. She bows to us. Where the hem of the figure’s cloak touches the glass, yellow dominates all other colors, spreading and spreading until the whole glass pane is uniform.

“A stranger from another star, drawn here by stories, I saw such magnificent potential in this untapped realm. I took the name Hastur and fashioned myself an avatar after secondhand interpretations of a delightful anthology—The King in Yellow, now flesh and ribbon.”

Stranger from another star? Does that mean it was aliens after all? Is Hastur—or, the thing that became Hastur—some kind of alien god?

The glass undulates around Hastur, rising and falling in erratic peaks and valleys.

“For a time,” the King continues, “I amused myself by reshaping this world to my liking. I experimented on its natural inhabitants until I understood how to pull them apart and put them back together in new and exciting configurations. I applied that mastery to the creation of four children, my egregores, and gifted them with the terrible flame of ambition. I ruled over them only briefly, feeding them with stories of your world and stories of mine, before stepping off my throne and telling them, ‘May the worthiest of you claim it, for I have grown bored of it.’”

The undulating glass resolves into four sculptures, each crude in form and half the height of Hastur: a man holding a spear and shield, a woman carrying a scepter, a man throwing a lightning bolt, and a woman with a spear in one hand and an owl perched on the other. The sculptures clash, sending shards across the stage that leave great rents in the glass floor.

“Their conflict tore the landscape apart, bleaching the city I had built for them and tearing it from the earth. One stepped closest to my throne, fingers outstretched: Jupiter, the prodigal son, who had learned my arts best and raised an army of malevolent spirits from the paranatural fauna of the World of Glass. You would know them as Jovians.”

Misshapen beasts rise from glass, surrounding the four sculptures of Hastur’s children.

“That’s confirmation,” Ferromancer mutters. I nod.

“They look so different,” Agatha points out, having finally found her voice. “Do you think that’s what they really look like, and the cat form is just a disguise?”

Hastur speaks again. “The other three, fearful of their brother’s ascension, made a secret pact. To keep Jupiter from the throne, they would each sacrifice their own bid and forswear my forfeited crown. They struck down Jupiter and cast him into a pit at the bottom of the world… where he remains to this day, imprisoned by threefold seal.”

The wall behind the stage crumbles, wooden shards swept away in a sudden gale. Behind it, I see the place from my dreams: a city of bleached white stone drifts through the air beneath a bleeding sun, and beneath that city is a deep, dark pit. In the depths of that pit, something stirs and shifts. A god roars, pounding against the walls of his prison.

Harlequin rises from their seat and stares into the pit. Howl reaches for her bow.

“The dark spirits, their master sealed away, threw themselves at the mercy of the triumvirate. They swayed Mars and Venus with honeyed promises to act as proxies and envoys on the other side, spreading their worship to the mortal world. Minerva, the dissenting voice, allowed this on one condition: forevermore, the Jovians would be cursed, their actions restricted to the notion ‘empower and guide.’ It was the most she could do without incurring the wrath of her powerhungry siblings and breaking their delicate peace.”

Back on stage, the misshapen horrors shrink and smooth out until they look like glass felines, strutting around and flicking their tails.

“And so the Jovians came to Earth. As per their bargain, they set about drawing mantles from the World of Glass—passed to them by Mars and Venus—and granting these mantles to chosen warriors, the grand and glorious, the heroines and villainesses: you.”

The glass sculptures all melt back into the floor, returned to stillness. Hastur gives us another bow and holds it, silent.

“‘Spreading their worship to the mortal world,’” Ferromancer quotes. “We’re conduits to them. Love and war, beauty and bloodshed, it’s all… food for gods.”

I grimace. “The Visage idols generate that ‘adoration of the masses’ that Venus prizes, while the feuding factions give Mars plenty of conflict over their beliefs. The whole system is set up to enrich them, and nobody even knows they exist.”

Agatha shivers. “But why? What are they planning to do with all that worship?”

“Nothing good,” Howl mutters. “But I’d wager they still want that damned throne.”

Delilah still isn’t saying anything. I glare at her.

“What of Jupiter?” Harlequin asks, still staring into the pit.

“That’s a good question,” Ferromancer says. “Have the Jovians abandoned their creator? Or… do they have a scheme of their own?”

“Jupiter,” Hastur answers us, rising from her bow, “is the sealed god of disaster, singular in his cruelty. In exchange for their service feeding worship to Mars and Venus, the Jovians were granted an elite handful of particularly potent mantles attuned to Jupiter’s resonance, which they have parceled out very carefully after one initial mistake. The first you know as the Texas witch.”

She pauses, giving us all a moment to soak that in. That eerie, pallid mask seems to smile even wider.

“The rest you know as the Catastrophes.”

Agatha goes pale. Harlequin clenches their fists.

Ferromancer is the first to speak. “We’re not the main score; we’re the side game.”

Dazed and horrified, I murmur, “Vanguard, Syndicate, Visage, Coterie, organizations like them all over the world… it’s all to keep Mars and Venus appeased—and to keep us at each other’s throats while they maneuver their monsters into place. Distractions to keep us from organizing against the Catastrophes on anything more than a regional scale.”

“We’re fodder,” Howl snarls. “Sacrifices on the altar to free their wretched god.”

Our revelations are interrupted by Delilah falling from her chair onto her hands and knees, suddenly screaming in rage and pain. Something is wrong with her silhouette, like she’s losing shape—like she’s melting. Her screams get louder.

Howl whirls on the spider witch. “Her power is betraying her. She broke the oath.”

A red glow suffuses Delilah, bright and bloody, and that screaming turns to laughter.

Mars. Her deal was with Mars.

Delilah rises and turns to face us. “Finally free of that damned thing,” she rasps, voice scraped raw. “I suppose talking my way out was never going to work. Now let’s see what this gift can do.”

[commentary]

Time for the last action sequence of the book. Here we go!

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mhai Wind, Moth Court, October, and PR4v1 Samaratunga.

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 26th of October. It’ll be a double length break for the end of book one.

[/commentary]

The gala is in full swing when I arrive at the Visage Spire. It feels a little silly to make a big entrance when I spent most of my morning inside the building anyway, but the marketing team insisted I needed to be seen coming to the event.

I wave to the adoring fans filling the courtyard just beyond the areas roped off for guests. I do my best to make eye contact with any fans that are wearing Archon merch. I spot one girl wearing a replica of my crown—handmade, I think, not the overpriced one we’re selling—and give her a wink and an air-kiss.

I let the roar of the crowd wash over me. They’re not all here for me, but they are all here because of me; it is, after all, my event. I can feel their attention bolstering me, fueling me, empowering me—and my benefactor.

“Drink it in, Venus,” I murmur, inaudible beneath the clamor; I know she’ll still hear me.

When I’ve had enough, I give one final wave to my audience and take flight, skimming the side of the building as I make my way to the top.

The Spire is divided up like this: the lower floors are all public-facing, a maze of lobbies, tourist attractions, and gift shops designed to dazzle, entertain, and extract dollars from wallets; the middle floors are mostly offices and utilities, with a two-story mall-like cafeteria forming the separating line between public and private floors; the uppermost floors of the Spire are reserved for VIPs, be it contest winners meeting their idols or potential investors being shown the floating orb up close. Of the two fork-like tines that form the height of the tower, one is stuffed with executive offices and used for shareholder meetings while the other was designed explicitly to host private events; it’s a lot more work to lug tables and catering up to the very top of the tower, but it’s worth it for the view.

I set down on one of the many balconies decorating the exterior of the second tine, this one facing the rest of the city. I take a moment to steady my nerves, pick out my target, and step inside the party.

A new wall of noise greets me inside the grand hall where the event is being held. It’s another multi-floor affair, taking maximum advantage of the Spire’s verticality to spread guests, features, and catering across three levels. The cheese spread looks so divine that it actively hurts me to turn away from it, but I’m here on a mission and even cheese can wait.

I take a quick survey of the crowd, looking for all the strings I pulled: Radiance is schmoozing with some of our top-dollar guests, Memento and Pearl Princess are both doing signings, and poor Agatha is looking very out of her element. I don’t see Glamour anywhere, but I’d be shocked if she actually bailed on me; she’s probably around a corner chatting up guests in private. It’s not a full roster, but I called in enough heavy hitters to make up for that.

Still, none of those people are who I’m here to see. I give the gathered millionaires the most efficient courtesies I can get away with, moving fluidly through the mass of bodies to reach the girl I’m after.

“—made such amazing progress over the past few years. There’s a lot of work left to do, but I truly believe that with your help we can make the world a better place!”

Sophia is chatting up some of the mid-listers, animated and earnest as she lays out her vision for the future. Their attention should be on her, but it shifts to me as I approach from behind. Idly, I fantasize about squashing them like bugs, but sadly I can’t get away with that yet.

I tap Sophia on the shoulder to get her attention. When she turns around, her face lights up to see me, and then I interrupt whatever she’s about to say with a kiss. The taste of her lips is like a dream that I wish I could stay in forever.

When I break off the kiss, Sophia is blushing and flustered. “You—I’m working!”

“And working very hard,” I say wryly, “while everyone else is here to enjoy the party.” I glance at the people she was talking to, a couple in formalwear that I don’t recall having met before. “I hope you appreciate Director Lane’s indomitable work ethic. You should be listening closely to everything she has to say.”

And with a touch of my gift on their dull, wine-soaked minds, I know that they will.

The evening is a blur of talking and drinking and spreading my influence. By the time everyone has shown up or been marked off the list, I’ve tagged over half the party guests with a fresh dose of Venusian charm. Dinner goes well—chicken risotto paired with a lovely California red that has some fancy name I do not bother remembering.

Once I’ve had my fill, it’s time for a speech. I’d rather give all the speech-making to Sophia, but it has to be my voice for the spell to work.

“Thank you, all of you,” I say with a forced smile, “for coming to our second major gala. I know nobody wants a long speech at this kind of event, so I’ll keep things brief. Many of you have already contributed to our cause, and it’s thanks to your contributions that the Foundation for a Wiser World has accomplished so much. Together, we’re building a world where no one will ever have to go hungry or unhoused. This is humanity’s brightest hour; never in our history have we had more tools with which to forge the world we deserve to live in. So, I ask of you: please, keep giving. Give all that you can, so that your children will know a brighter future.”

With each word, the gift of Venus seeps into the minds of my audience, infecting every millionaire and billionaire with the undeniable power of my words. I have to be subtle about it, of course; if they all dumped their bank accounts into the Foundation at once, everyone would notice. But I won’t settle for scraps, either. This organization—Sophia’s organization, which I built for her—won’t be another tax writeoff. Slowly, with every passing year, these parasites will find themselves more committed to the cause. And eventually, piece by piece, we’ll take everything they have.

I don’t stick around for the auction. I don’t need to; my hooks are already in.

I give Sophie a kiss before sneaking out to the same balcony I came in through. I’m not leaving, but fresh air will do me good. But, to my surprise, someone’s waiting for me: Erica.

“Should you be here?” I ask, quirking an eyebrow as I lean against the railing.

“I’m not.” She smirks and gestures off to the side where one of her many drones is projecting a hologram. “Just thought I’d take a look. Nice work back there with the crowd. Though, I do wonder: do you think Sophia would look so happy if she knew how you were getting them all to give?”

It’s supposed to be a knife wound, but I laugh it off. “Oh, please. You think she doesn’t know? She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met—and the most ruthless. What’s a little free will in the face of the greater good? Not telling her lets us preserve plausible deniability, but I have no doubt she’s fully aware of my actions.”

“Glad to hear it, honest.” She pauses. “Then, would you say you’re satisfied with this outcome? Is this the kind of world you’d like to make real?”

I blink and Erica is gone. In her place stands Venus—a woman I know as Venus, a woman that feels achingly familiar, but I’ve never seen her before, not really. This isn’t real; it’s a dream, or a vision. The woman before me, with glamorous smile and flowing dress, shouldn’t be familiar. But those golden eyes…

“Hastur,” I say softly, beginning to remember my fateful encounter with the King in Yellow. “You’re… not the King, but… connected?”

“I am Venus,” she declares, her voice like velvet. “Daughter of Hastur. I am the rising goddess of love, beauty, and the adoration of the masses. And you, Rachel Emily, have a choice: to serve love… or to serve war. Choose wisely.”

The world goes dark, and then—

I free my blade from Priscilla’s throat. With the end of our pattern of three, the last of the Syndicate is dead. It is a glorious day.

“Well done,” Lilith congratulates me, the blood of fascists staining her dress. “With this victory, you prove yourself more than worthy of the title of Maven. Any lingering doubts will be silenced, and the Coterie will fall in line as we begin the next stage of the plan.”

I grace my subordinate with a vicious smile. “The road was long and arduous, but I regret none of it. I stand triumphant over my enemies, crowned in war and death. Find Harlequin and help them secure the site; I have business with our ally.”

She bows. “As you command.”

Striga’s Vanguard joined us in the extermination of the Syndicate. Together we cornered those vermin and put their backs against the wall, hunting them down and shattering their strongholds until they came here, to their final redoubt. It was a slaughter.

The heroine is with Herbalist and Thunderclap when I find her, but she sends them away to continue searching for the Syndicate’s buried secrets. “Archon,” she greets me with a nod. “I take it your half of the work is complete?”

“It’s done,” I confirm. “Priscilla and Delilah both died by my hands, the culmination of our pattern. The Syndicate is broken. The Jovians might recruit more of their archetype, but any would-be warlords will step onto the scene knowing what happened to the last batch. It’s over.”

“One front among dozens,” Striga says, sounding more tired than I’ve ever heard her. She hears the exhaustion in her own voice, grimaces, and hides it when she speaks again. “We’ve pointed one knife away from our backs, but there are still others, and much work to be done. We will carve this world into a better shape.”

You don’t know how to stop. Please, Sophie, listen to me. “We will. But you’ve done enough, Striga. You stopped the Catastrophes, you’ve broken the Syndicate, and you’ve inspired an entire generation to follow in your footsteps. You don’t have to keep fighting like you have been. You’ve earned rest, Striga.”

Her mouth becomes a hard line. “No. I won’t rest until everyone has been saved. I can’t.”

I smile, sad and bitter. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

I make the first move, but there’s no world where I catch Striga off-guard. She sees the blow coming and deflects with callous ease, and then she comes for me. There are no more words; we know where we stand, and all that’s left is the purity of violence. A strike parried, a strike dodged, then ruthless retaliation. We battle, sword against spear, and even with all I’ve learned it’s blindingly obvious that I’m outmatched. Striga spares me no opening to summon a new weapon or a servant. Any hesitation is immediately punished by precise movements and a brilliant mind. She truly is perfect.

But she doesn’t know the depths of my power. She doesn’t know the deals I’ve made.

Mars, I pray, grant me the strength to defeat my opponent.

The laughter of the war god fills my ears and my vision turns red.

Strix Striga is not the strongest magical girl, nor the fastest, nor the most durable. The thing that makes her invincible is her mind. Striga’s analytical ability can outthink a supercomputer and outwit any foe—but only when she understands what she’s up against. Her fighting style is about maximizing efficiency; every motion is precisely calculated to use exactly as much energy as she needs and not a drop more.

In her head is a model of my capabilities constructed from every scrap of data she’s ever been able to uncover. She does the same for every witch and magical girl, building models of us all so she can never be surprised. That’s why, each time before now that I’ve invoked my contract with Mars, I’ve never used anything close to the fullness of his gift.

When I strike again and Striga parries, the force of the blow rattles her arm and shocks her. She tries to dodge the next, but I’m faster than she’s expecting and my blade draws blood. Striga retreats, wary of what she’s facing, and I finally have that precious opening to unleash the arsenal of weapons I’ve been collecting for this duel. Every trophy stolen and practiced with for the sole purpose of unleashing them on the invincible heroine.

And it works. It works. Weapon after weapon, device after device, every object I’ve ever put in my furnace is spat back out and put to use. Striga knows she’s on the back foot, but I don’t let her escape; I have too many tools to restrict her movement, too many tricks up my sleeve, and in the end… for the first time in her career, she can’t keep up.

Strix Striga loses. I win.

The red fades from my vision as I channel divine strength from my body into the chains binding Striga. She’s on her knees, defeated, and I find more pleasure in the sight than I ever thought I would. “Finally,” I murmur, “you’re mine.” I stare at her with gleaming eyes, unable to hide my love for her. A smile cuts its way across my face. “My darling. My everything. My sweet, perfect Striga.”

“Why?” she asks like it’s the last word she can muster. She sounds so tired.

I carefully, tenderly remove her mask so I can see her gorgeous green eyes with a little more clarity. The emotion on her face is vacillating between anger, disbelief, and despair. “I’m going to save you,” I promise her. “Don’t worry. From now on, I’ll take care of everything. I’ll carve this world into exactly the shape you want. I’ll save everyone for you. All you have to do is stay safe. Stay mine. I have a place for you, my love. Will you trust me?”

She closes her eyes and doesn’t answer. I love you. I love you. I love you. She must be hurting, but I’ll fix that. She’ll finally get to rest. And with enough time, I’ll bring that smile back. I’ll show her the better world she wanted. I’ll show her that she doesn’t have to be the hero.

“Well done,” says a voice both familiar and unfamiliar.

I whirl and Mars—a man in armor, a stranger—the golden-eyed warrior, my patron—is standing behind me. I’ve never met him, but I know him.

“I am Mars,” he tells me, voice grinding like an avalanche. “Son of Hastur. I am the rising god of war, bloodshed, and the clash of ideals. Are you ready to make your choice, Archon?”

The Syndicate stronghold is gone, the world plunged into darkness. Two pairs of golden eyes stare at me in the dark, judging me, waiting for my decision.

“Love?” asks Venus.

“Or war?” asks Mars.

I stare back at them, absorbing everything I’ve just seen, and then—

I laugh in their faces. “Are you fucking kidding me? Neither!”

[commentary]

chapter late today because SICKNESS, TERRIBLE SICKNESS

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mhai Wind, Moth Court, October, and PR4v1 Samaratunga.

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 26th of October. It’ll be a double length break for the end of book one.

[/commentary]

We move through the city in loose formation, Howl on point with Harlequin by her side to eat any surprise attacks from the wildlife. I’m in the middle with Agatha, Delilah stalking to our right, and Ferromancer brings up the rear.

Ferromancer’s added a fancy new weapon to her arsenal: a handheld device that uses electromagnetic force to propel non-explosive projectiles at incredible speeds. In other words, a railgun, which Mike has wasted literal hours of my life ranting about at length. Apparently the non-magical versions have a long list of problems prohibiting them from seeing widespread adoption and miniaturization, none of which I expect to see from Ferromancer’s design. The handle of the railgun is connected by cable to Ferromancer’s suit, because apparently it needs to draw power from an external source—which is also why I can’t burn one into the furnace and make my own personal railgun, to my great despair. Mike would have been so jealous.

As we pass into the entertainment district and the ads for magical girls increase in frequency, birds start to follow us. At first just a few, and only notable because there have been no normal animals in the World of Glass, but quickly their numbers become concerning. Dozens of crows, pigeons, eagles, and more, an even mix of birds that should be in the PNW and birds that really, really shouldn’t.

Then Howl shoots one of them. A vulture falls out of the sky to splat against the pavement, and up close we can see bulging, human eyes in both its sockets and embedded at random across the creature’s face.

“I call ‘em seeya birds,” she says. “‘Cause they’re birds that ‘see ya,’ get it?” She looks unduly pleased with herself.

“Is that all they do?” Ferromancer asks, inspecting the corpse and poking at it with the tip of her gun.

Howl shrugs. “As far as I’ve seen. They’ve always been more of an oddity than a threat. The weird part is that they didn’t show up until now; usually they’re everywhere. Probably our meddler again.”

“Then we should kill them all,” Delilah advises, a black-bladed knife in hand. The birds don’t react to her, same as they didn’t react to one of their own getting sniped.

“Do we have time for that?” Agatha asks, staring up at the night sky and the full moon. “We’ve been here, what, two hours now? Five hours seems like a lot, but I don’t think we’ve made much progress.”

“That’s the upper bound,” Howl warns. “I haven’t sensed any timeflow disturbances, but they can happen in this realm. Take potshots if you like, but we should keep moving.”

“There’s time fuckery here!?” I ask with glee at the same time that Agatha asks much the same with polite language and a horrified tone.

We do, at least, follow Howl’s advice and stay mobile as she explains. I join Howl in shooting arrows at birds, and Agatha reluctantly joins in with a few spells. Harlequin doesn’t have a ranged option, so they stick by us. Ferromancer’s gun is way too overkill—plus, that would be time away from analyzing all the data she’s been gathering. Delilah tries to fly at the seeya birds, but can’t get around the ceiling limit.

“Time mostly lines up between this world and our world,” Howl tells us, “but there are pockets—usually very obvious—where that’s disrupted. Fracture zones are the most dangerous because each individual fracture has its own altered relationship with time. Moonspawn can keep you anchored in the midnight hour. It seems to be a rule that if something can fuck with your sense of time, you’ll be able to see it coming.”

More of that artificiality. “You said ‘usually’ very obvious,” I point out. “Is there an exception to the rule?”

“Maybe,” she says, dropping another seeya bird with a clean shot. All her animals are roving about now, with Huginn and Muninn pecking at their rivals while Fenris cleans up some of the dead birds with gusto. “I haven’t confirmed it myself, but the talkers in this place attribute mastery of time and space to royalty. So, if our golden-eyed stranger really is from here…”

“Then the flow of time could alter at any moment,” I finish. That gets a shiver from Agatha and a clap of excitement from Harlequin. Something comes to mind and I chew on it. “You said you could sense it if that happens. Is that related to how you could tell I was a dreamer? Harlequin seemed to know it, too, and a magical girl I met on a job.”

“Those with eyes have but to see,” the clown contributes. They tilt their head, looking at Howl. “This one sees further than most—even me. Curious.”

“It’s a trick you can learn once you’ve been doing this long enough,” Howl answers. “Anyone who has the dream can recognize other dreamers with a bit of practice. It’s… a connection to the World of Glass. I’m just a little better at exploiting that connection than my peers, so I can push the trick a little further.”

“Hey, guide,” Delilah interrupts, wandering over, “why do your arrows go through the ‘ceiling’ when I can’t?”

Huh. That’s actually a good question. I look to Howl, curious about the answer. She shrugs and says, “It’s magic, it reads things differently. My birds also go through. Best guess? It registers our flight as ‘unnatural’ in some way. Try climbing the wall, that usually works for me.”

“I hate this place,” Delilah mutters, and then she turns around and transforms into a pile of spiders that crawl up the nearest building and start devouring seeya birds.

I blink. “That’s. Okay! That’s her power. What the fuck!?”

Agatha looks green around the gills. “Oh dear.”

Spiders-Delilah turns back into a person after her feast and tests Howl’s theory further by jumping from one building to another, which works. I’m morbidly fascinated to the point that a part of me is disappointed when that method is too slow to keep up with the rest of us and she rejoins the group on the ground.

The area in front of the Visage Spire is an open courtyard around a marble fountain, a thousand coins shining below the water. High-class restaurants compete with Starbucks and McDonalds for the sheer marketing power of being photographed next to the Spire—and for the business of being the closest food options on a tour. They all proudly advertise Visage merch and Visage-themed menu items:

Try the McMemento!

Dusk & Dawn paired lattes!

Home to Radiance’s favorite steak!

The Spire itself is a towering edifice of glass and steel, built serpentine and clean. The name of the building is displayed in simple lettering over the equally understated entrance, as if bragging that they don’t need to brag. The golden orb above—held aloft by magic between two tine-like protrusions—sends a different message.

 This close to the tower, a lot more detail is visible. The glow around the tower is multicolored and has a sense of movement to it, like light being drawn into the tower and absorbed—that must be the energy that Ferromancer talked about. The orb’s strange texture, uncertain from a distance, resolves into a feather-like pattern repeating across its surface. Chains of golden light cross the doors of the Spire, a barrier like the one I passed through in the Ossuary. No symbol helpfully glows to tell us who might have put the barrier there.

I glance behind me at Ferromancer. “Chains look familiar.”

She nods. “A cousin to the Morrigan’s work. I’ll investigate.”

There’s not much I can do to help with that, so I take a seat by the fountain and watch the seeya birds while Ferromancer floats over to the Spire entrance and takes readings. Harlequin and Howl join my teacher by the door, Harlequin doing handstands to entertain themself while the other two talk shop. Delilah spider-swarms up the side of the courtyard Starbucks and gets back to hunting.

Agatha joins me by the fountain and fiddles with her glasses. “I keep thinking about using my power again, but I’m afraid that the tower will be even worse than the deimovore,” she admits to me. “I should have used it more on the way here. I’m pretty useless without it.”

“Hey, that’s better than me; I’m only here on nepotism. I haven’t seen a single magic item to copy.” The lack of things to steal annoys me more than I’ll ever admit. “But if you want to try your power again, I’ll hold your hair back while you puke into the fountain,” I joke.

Agatha giggles. “A classic girls’ night. Thanks. But if Ferromancer is correct about the purpose of the Spire, it probably connects to everything in the city. I guess that would be an added bit of confirmation, if we needed it.”

I shrug. “It’s up to you. You saved my bacon back in the forest, so I’m not going to judge if you want to take it easy. There’ll probably be plenty of stuff worth giving an eye once we’re inside the tower.”

Just then, an eerie creaking echoes from above. Immediately, everyone looks up—myself and Agatha at the fountain, Delilah atop a shop, and the other three by the front door to the tower.

The golden orb atop the Visage Spire is drifting out of place. It floats down from its levitating perch, descending toward us, and as it descends it unfurls great wings of golden feathers. The seams along the surface of the orb are the dividing lines of seven angelic wings, glittering and majestic, that spread wide to reveal the hidden interior of the orb: a gigantic bloodshot eye, its iris golden, its pupil a crude triskelion.

The angel screams, a ghastly wail that scrapes against my ears and rattles my bones, and then it tries to kill us.

Golden wings flex back, snap forward, and fling a hundred feathers into the courtyard. Howl reacts the quickest of us, leaping into cover with her wolf while Agatha and I scramble to get out of the way. Each feather impacts with terrifying force, cracking concrete and shattering the marble fountain—though they bounce off the tower, leaving it completely untouched. Harlequin takes one dead on and goes splat, Ferromancer throws up an energy shield just in time to blunt another, and I take a feather-javelin in the goddamn wing—tearing it off for the second time this month, god fucking dammit.

Delilah, standing atop the rubble of McDonalds, stares up at the giant floating eye and shouts at it, “Why do you all get to fly!? Where’s the fucking justice!?”

Our retaliation is swift. Agatha flips open her spellbook and starts launching ice shards into the gelatinous mass of the eye. I conjure a new gun to join her. Howl’s birds get swatted out of the sky by a flap of golden wings, but her arrows find purchase with unerring accuracy. Ferromancer lines up a shot, the air around her filling with the hum and crackle of electromagnetism, and then she fires.

The eye takes the rest of our attacks without complaint, its surface riddled with pinpricks dripping pinkish-red fluid, but when the railgun fires it raises a wing with surprising speed to block the shot. Golden feathers sizzle, melt, and fracture where the projectile impacted.

The not-quite-blood falling from the angel shudders and writhes when it hits the ground. There’s an unsettling viscosity to the substance that becomes much more unsettling when each scattered globule rises and expands into a feminine shape. Misshapen pink ooze gestures at skirted forms, pigtails, and heart-tipped wands, and then a dozen crude facsimiles of magical girls are lurching at us—which finally gives our melee fighters something to do.

Delilah dives into the battle with gusto, fluidly switching between forms. As a swarm of spiders, she surrounds and devours her prey. In human form, her black knives swipe through red goop and cause it to wither and dissolve. Harlequin splorches back together and joins the fray alongside Howl’s wolf, the two smashing through goop girls with callous, energetic ease.

I take a break from shooting to form a screening line of explosive imps, then get back to it. I know every shot is just going to make more enemies for the others to fight, but I don’t have anything better in my arsenal to hurt this eldritch angel freak.

Wait. Maybe I do.

I swoosh across the battlefield, weaving around ooze, to set down next to Ferromancer. My teacher fires off another railgun shot, this one blocked by a different wing to the same effect.

“Let me transform your gun!”

Ferromancer pauses, finger on the trigger to charge another shot, and then she says, “Do it,” and pushes the gun into my hands. I take it gratefully, relieved that she’s trusting me. “Agatha!” she calls. “Help me on defense.”

Agatha flies over to join us and starts casting a barrier spell, with Ferromancer erecting multiple barriers of her own as soon as Agatha is inside the radius. I take a deep breath, reach for my flame, and pull all of it—even the comms devices, which I’ll have to remake if we win this fight—back into myself. Then I pour it into the gun.

Emerald flame surges from my hand and wreathes Ferromancer’s railgun. The technomagical superweapon greedily absorbs every ounce of magic I give it, warping as it takes on my colors—green and purple and gold. I push the magic out until I’m shivering, until I’m freezing, and then even further. I unleash the whole of my internal furnace into this weapon. It needs to work. I have to give it everything.

Up above, the eye turns on us. Its golden iris begins to glow with a sickly light, and some of the energy streaming into the Visage Spire breaks off and is drawn into the eye instead. It’s charging something.

Howl gets out of the potential blast zone and stops shooting at the angel, refocusing her efforts on the castoff facsimiles to keep them away from us. Harlequin bites off one of their own fingers, tosses it aside, and climbs on top of the outermost shield protecting our group of three. Their flesh bubbles, and from each bubble a new Harlequin stretches and grows until there’s a pile of bodies stacked between us and the eye. I keep pouring flame.

The iris flashes.

A wave of blinding golden light surges out of the eye and burns through the mound of Harlequin copies, disintegrating them all in an instant. In the next, it shatters Agatha’s barrier and slams against the first of Ferromancer’s. Another barrier shatters, then another, and then there’s only one left. Ferromancer pulls the railgun from my hands, starts charging it, and aims into the wave of light. I sag against her, watching our doom unfold with glassy, unblinking eyes. Agatha reads from her tome and manages to conjure a final barrier just in time to meet the next surge, then bleeds from the nose and collapses as the wave of light—flickering now, fading—crashes through the last of Ferromancer’s shields. Cracks spiderweb across the final barrier—the light flickers out—and it shatters an instant later.

The railgun fires.

Where there were wings, there are scattered feathers. Where there was an iris, there is a hole. One moment the eye watches us with baleful intent, and the next moment there is no eye, only its detritus.

The corpse of the angel lurches out of the sky and crashes into a building, flattening it. The goop monsters dissolve. Dust rises and settles.

I’m finding it hard to breathe. I’m so cold that I’m warm again, and Ferromancer is saying something to me but I can’t quite make it out. She’s putting my hand on the gun. It’s so warm.

My flame. With a gasp I pull my flame back into me and it comes all at once, my chest igniting in searing pain as all the power I expended is returned to me. The railgun crumbles to pieces, shattering under the weight of sudden change.

“Sorry,” I mumble into my teacher’s shoulder. It takes me a moment to regain my sense of balance and stand upright on my own. I flex my wings—the severed one grew back at some point while I was distracted pouring flame.

“You did good,” Ferromancer chuckles. “Well worth one gun.”

The others are all recovering in their own ways. Harlequin regrows from the finger they tossed aside. Delilah, who had scattered in spider form, returns to humanity. Howl is walking toward the fallen angel, Fenris at her side. Agatha is slowly waking at our feet.

Ferromancer helps Agatha up, then suddenly goes still. “Archon. Get to the eye. Now.”

I don’t hesitate. I race for the corpse at max speed, willing my flight to go faster, and out of the corner of my vision I see Delilah doing the same.

The leviathan is deflating, not quite dissolving like its castoffs but shifting into something loose and layered and flowing. On the edge of it, something glitters.

I reach the glittering object mere moments before Delilah and pull it from the angel’s corpse: a golden disc, ornate and decorated. I see it for barely a second before devouring it with Prometheus and sending it to my furnace.

“You bitch!” she screams at me, hands clawing at my wrist just a little too late.

I shove her off me and pull a gun on her. “Don’t push me, bug. Finders keepers.”

The Syndicate witch hisses at me. “There should have been a discussion! You filthy, thieving parasite!”

“Everyone shut the hell up,” Howl snaps. “We’ve got bigger problems.”

As the mass of the eye continues to deflate, it becomes clear what it’s turning into: yellow fabric, rolls and rolls of it, stretching all across the rubble of whatever building it destroyed in the fall. In the center of that vast heap of cloth, draped in yellow, a figure stands. It wears the corpse of the angel like a hooded cloak, its body a thing of pure shadow, its face hidden behind a pallid, smiling mask. Golden eyes shine through.

“Well done,” she congratulates us. Her voice tells me she’s a woman, but there’s a gap in my mind when I try to process why. Her tone is both measured and mirthful, like a practiced jester holding back a laugh. It sounds at once both totally alien and as familiar as my own.

Ferromancer, Agatha, and Harlequin join the rest of us by the angel corpse’s edge, staying just beyond the still-settling waves of yellow silk. “Who are you?” Ferromancer asks directly. Everyone with a weapon is pointing it at the stranger in the pallid mask.

“Royalty,” the stranger says glibly. She bows so deep as to mock us, and then she says, “I am one more body upon the stage, in pallid mask and silken garb. Once, before the beginning, I came to this world an outsider and crowned myself its king. I ruled this land of dreams and nightmares, garbed in shades of sunlight, and I told stories of other worlds to my children and their servants. I have known many names, but among friends such as these only one shall suffice:

“Hastur.”

There is a moment of silence, all six of us enthralled by her speech, and then Howl says, “Bullshit. The fuck you are. No fucking way.”

“Don’t say that name!” Agatha shouts, looking panicked and on the verge of hyperventilating. “That’s the King in Yellow, oh my god that’s the King in Yellow, whatever you do please do not say that name three times! We’re all going to die or go insane, oh god, oh god!”

“More fucking books?” Delilah demands, sounding pissed off at the very idea of reading.

“Stay close to me, Archon,” Ferromancer says quietly. Harlequin cackles beside us.

I keep staring at the stranger—at Hastur—at the King in Yellow. I can’t look away. Somehow, beneath that pallid mask, I know she’s smiling.

“A pleasure to meet you all in person,” she says, straightening up from her bow. “I have watched your story from afar, holding sympathy for your lot; the forces that scheme against you have been terribly careful in their keeping of secrets. Allow me to part that curtain and reveal the faces of your foes—ah, but first, and you must forgive this indulgence: one more test for the scions of Jupiter. It is in my nature.”

The King in Yellow snaps invisible fingers and everything goes black.

In the space between one reality and the next, I am watched by golden eyes. “Your story is closest to the heart,” Hastur whispers to me. “A tale of love and of tragedy. One girl’s quest to save her hero. What lines will you cross to steal fire from the gods and set right the stage?”

I try to answer, but my mouth won’t move.“Let us find out together, my dear, what it truly means to save Sophia Lane.”

[commentary]

So… anyone here played Signalis? Arkham Horror? Call of Cthulhu? Anyone read Katalepsis?

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mhai Wind, Moth Court, October, and PR4v1 Samaratunga.

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 21st of September. Hey wait, that’s next week.

[/commentary]

Howl and I are alone on the Owl Bridge, the deimovore seeming to have left us for good this time. Idly, I wonder where Agatha is, but my frustration with our supposed “guide” is eclipsing any worry I feel for the cute magical girl.

The other witch chuckles to herself and laces her hands behind her head, unbothered by my outburst. “You had it handled. But, hey, if you wanna blame someone, you should blame your boss. She gave the word.”

“Ferromancer?” My anger transmutes into bewilderment.

“Apologies,” my teacher says over comms, “but deceiving you was an unfortunate necessity given the situation. Howl and I had a private discussion after your first encounter with the deimovore. She explained its capabilities and that it would likely try to separate you from the group, and that it was ultimately one of the less dangerous entities our opponent could have sent after you. Between its inability to seriously injure you and Howl’s confidence that she could intervene if something went unexpectedly wrong, I deemed gathering data on our unknown assailant a higher priority. I needed to know why it chose the deimovore, and you.”

“You let it do that to me?” I… I don’t know how to feel about that. Betrayed, certainly. Uncomfortable. There’s a pit in my stomach that wasn’t there a second ago.

“I trusted you to handle it,” Ferromancer assures me. “You have a history of performing well in high stress situations.”

Her praise is cold comfort. I can see the logic, but it still stings. I thought Ferromancer would prioritize my feelings higher than that, but why did I think that way? Just because she was nice to me? I barely know anything about her, even after working together for most of a month. I guess, when I put it like that, it hasn’t been much time at all. I grit my teeth. “Fine. Get me up to speed, then. Tell me about our opponent.”

Howl steps away from the railing and motions for me to follow. Reluctantly, I do. “Like I said before,” she explains, “there are worse things in this world than deimovores. Someone interfered with our portal and riled up the local beasties, but they didn’t send any of the real threats; no moonspawn, no hunting horrors, no skybreakers. No one got dropped into a shoggoth pit or trapped inside a fracture zone. Our mystery meddler was pulling their punches.”

How was that a pulled punch!? And why does “shoggoth” sound so familiar?

“They were testing us,” Ferromancer elaborates. “Or at least, that’s our current hypothesis. Harlequin and Delilah were put in a purely physical situation they could overcome with effort, while Agatha was dropped near you and then exposed to a specific enemy she had the reference base to recognize. Your test was personal and psychological. Howl and myself were not tested, which raises a different set of concerns.”

“Unless I was your test,” I point out.

There’s a pause, and then Howl cackles. “Oh, they got you good. That’s great.”

“I hadn’t considered that angle,” Ferromancer says, sounding annoyed, “and now I’m kicking myself for the blind spot. You’re probably right, which means I’ve been underestimating whatever it is we’re up against and played right into their hands. Goddamn it.” She sighs into her microphone. “I’ll have to update analytics. For now… how do you feel, Archon? You’re the one who would know best what you got out of that encounter, if anything, or what direction it was meant to push you.”

 I get a sliver of vindication from Ferromancer admitting she fucked up, but it’s not enough to part the unease in my chest. How do I feel about my talk with the deimovore? How much do I feel comfortable sharing? Unbidden, a bit of paranoia creeps into mind: what if that still isn’t Ferromancer? What if this is another layer of the deimovore’s game, and it’s just baiting me into vulnerability so it can hurt me again?

My stride stutters, hesitation slowing me down and then bringing me to a sudden halt. Howl looks at me and raises an eyebrow. I chew on my words, awkward and nervous. “How do I know,” I ask carefully, “that the deimovore is really gone? How do I know I’m not still hearing what it wants me to hear?”

To my surprise, Howl’s expression turns sympathetic. “The long fear is what’ll eat you alive,” she tells me gently. “The first time one of those things bit me, I couldn’t sleep for days. I was jumping at shadows, convinced that it had followed me home—or worse, that I had never left the World of Glass. I was a wreck.”

There’s this prickling on the back of my neck, cold and terrible. My face keeps twitching, my eyes unable to stay still. Look behind me, check my corners, make sure that nightmare isn’t watching. It feels like a compulsion. “So, what did you do? How did you make it stop?”

Howl shrugs. “I said ‘fuck it,’ got smashed with some drinking buddies in Dusseldorf, and had disappointing sex with an English twink who only thought he liked having his hair pulled. It was an okay night.”

Her response is so left field I burst out laughing, which cuts through some of the fear I was feeling. “And that worked?”

She grins. “Well enough. The next morning I was complaining about his head game over a cheap, flat, watery cup of coffee, and I thought to myself, ‘if this is a nightmare, it’s the saddest I’ve ever had.’ And that was that.”

More of my tension bleeds out, swept away by Howl’s humor. “Yeah, alright. Thank you. And, uh… you didn’t happen to hear any of what the monster and I were talking about, did you?”

Howl waves a hand dismissively. “Wasn’t paying attention, didn’t care. And whatever you talk about with Ferromancer, I also won’t care unless one of you says it’s tactically-relevant information. Your shit is your shit.”

Weirdly, I trust her about that. I trust my teacher less, to my discomfort, but even the worst case for what Ferromancer heard is less of a concern given how much she seems to be part of Striga and the Morrigan’s inner circle. “Okay. Ferro: I’m on edge, and I still feel a little raw, but… I’ve got new resolve. I made a promise to myself while trying to beat the deimovore that I’m still committed to.”

“Interesting,” Ferromancer says. “Thank you for the data, Archon. And… I apologize for my lack of foresight. I will avoid making that mistake again.”

Howl and I fly through the city in amicable silence after that, headed to the downtown skyscraper where Ferromancer has made her base camp. Nothing attacks us this time, so we make it there in good time.

Ferromancer constructed her war room on the twelfth floor of an office tower only a few blocks away from the entertainment district. The floor-to-ceiling windows give a good view of the Visage Spire, the tallest building in the city, and this close I can see more strange seams on the golden orb. The Spire glows beneath the night sky, lit up like a beacon. Looking at it gives me a weird feeling that I can’t describe. It’s like… like it’s tugging on me, pulling at something.

That doesn’t bode well.

This floor used to be an office space full of cubicles, but Ferro’s been busy tearing down separators and ripping open computers for spare parts. The detritus is piled up in a closet, and the new centerpiece of the room is a cluster of machinery I can’t even begin to understand, but which looks familiar from so much time spent in her workshop. A dozen monitor screens coming off the pillar of technology show readouts and camera feeds, the latter of which depict locations from all over Forks and the surrounding area. She’s been busy. Unless this was the product of a previous expedition, she built this remarkably fast.

The briefcase she brought to the Ossuary is open nearby, and at last I get to learn what Ferromancer meant when she called it “something absurd,” because the inside of that briefcase is a wormhole. The Witch of Invention reaches into the wormhole and pulls out another gadget to wire into her technological abomination as she explains that it’s a “dimensional tunneling device” connected to her workshop. She didn’t bring any of her drones with her at the club because she didn’t need to; dozens of robotic servants scurry around the office space assisting their master and spread across alternate reality Forks gathering data.

It’s an impressive setup, and I’m not the only one impressed; Agatha got here ahead of us, having been escorted by Howl before the latter came to fetch me, and she’s currently geeking out over Ferromancer’s tech. I join her, lured by discussion of magic despite my newfound wariness of my teacher.

Harlequin and Delilah are the last to arrive. They come in bickering, which surprises no one. Apparently the two of them were dumped out in the Quillayute Airport to the west, where they had to fight through a small army of painflayers before tangling with a four-armed freak that Howl calls a “sin eater.” Ferro’s pretty sure they both tried to kill each other at least once during the melee.

Ferromancer claps her hands to get everyone’s attention, the clank of metal echoing through the commandeered office room. “We’re all here and we’re burning moonlight, so let’s get straight to the point: our entry into the World of Glass was disrupted by enemy action, but Howl believes that disruption was significantly tamer than it could have been. Howl?”

The huntress witch is sipping something from a canteen when Ferromancer calls her name, having stolen an office chair and put her feet up on an unoccupied desk. “Right,” she starts, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. “Here’s the deal: someone capable of dropping us into danger could have dropped us into much, much worse danger than we got. It was a message, though I haven’t the faintest idea what it means beyond ‘I see you.’ Anyone else get a flash of golden eyes in the transition?”

We all nod, even Delilah. The Syndicate witch crosses her arms, leaning against the window wall, and asks, “Who could have interfered like that with a portal made by the Morrigan? Hey, meat-for-brains,” she addresses Harlequin, “think your Lilith could have done it?”

The Coterie witch smiles thinly from their perch atop the trash pile in the storage closet. “More likely than your peers, but still just shy of zero—and with far less motive than your menagerie of menace.” Not to mention, wrong eye color, though I guess that would be trivial to change with magic.

“Radiance has golden eyes, but no one in Visage has that kind of power,” Agatha adds, seated properly with her hands in her lap. “I don’t think anyone in the region is that powerful, frankly, except maybe Lady Striga—but again, no motive, and that’s purely a guess out of respect.” If she wanted to interfere, she would have simply talked the Morrigan into it.

“I concur,” Ferromancer says. “I suspect our golden-eyed culprit is from this side of the dimensional curtain.”

Howl drums her fingers on the side of her leg. “I can’t disagree, which bothers me; to the beasts of this realm, golden eyes are a sign of royalty. I’ve never been able to get more detail than that, but every creature in this place that talks will tell you that same detail when pressed.”

Agatha raises her hand, which gets a snort out of Delilah and a nod from Ferromancer. “Um, about those creatures, actually, there was something that stood out to me about the jitterhounds we fought: they’re basically the Hounds of Tindalos, aren’t they?”

I’ve been staying quiet and watching everyone else, leaning back in a chair of my own, but at that I frown and ask, “Am I supposed to recognize that name?”

“They’re Lovecraft monsters,” Howl says, and when Agatha opens her mouth to interject she rolls her eyes and clarifies, “Lovecraft-adjacent, whatever. Mythos shit.”

I snap my fingers and sit up. “That’s where I recognized ‘shoggoth’ from! At the Mountains of Madness, it’s the only Lovecraft story M—one of my friends ever got me to read.”

Agatha blanches. “How many Mythos monsters are in this dimension?”

Delilah raises her voice. “Hold on, you’re saying some of the fuckers out there are from books? The hell? How does that even work?”

Harlequin hops off their makeshift throne and skips over to the window, pressing their fingers against the glass and drawing circles. “Do the monsters inspire us,” Harlequin muses, “or do we inspire them?”

Howl takes another sip from her canteen. “Had a few thoughts like that the first time I recognized one. Borrowed some reading material from a friend way more into the stuff—had to fend off his attempts to get me into some roleplaying game for months after that—but it was chatting with Ferromancer that made me realize it goes much further.”

All eyes move to Ferromancer. The Witch of Invention adjusts her cloak, face hidden behind that metal mask, and says, “The name of my power is Daedalus.”

I nearly choke. She’s just saying that out loud??? To everyone??? To Delilah???

“And mine’s Loki,” Howl adds with a smirk. “Though I take bets on how many people I can get to think it’s Odin instead.” Oh my god, they’re just saying it.

But, if they’re being this open about something that’s usually a taboo secret, then they must have a reason. And, when I think about it… “My power is Prometheus,” I reveal. “That’s a pattern, right?”

Harlequin purses their lips, frowns, but then shrugs and says, “Hydra.”

Agatha, following the room, nervously shares, “My power is Ariadne.”

Everyone turns to look at Delilah, who crosses her arms. “You must think I’m stupid. Why the hell would I share that information?”

“Your power is Arachne,” Ferromancer says calmly. “It’d be my first guess from the spider mask alone, given what I know, but I’m speaking with Striga’s confidence.”

Delilah swears and kicks over an unattended wastebin.

I’m chewing on the list of names in my head, and as Delilah keeps complaining I start to vocalize my thoughts. “Arachne and Hydra are monsters, Ariadne is the ally of a hero, and everyone but Loki is Greek.” I’ve been reading a lot of Greek myths since first sitting down to research Prometheus. Speaking of which… “My power is named for someone who defied the gods and was punished for it, like Arachne and arguably Daedalus.”

“Allies and enemies—including victims—of the gods, with a mythological basis varying by region,” Ferromancer summarizes. “Striga herself, as many over the years have guessed, is the bearer of Athena. As far as we can confirm, every magic user empowered from California to Canada is given a Greek source. Most of Europe gets Norse.”

“But that’s so arbitrary!” Agatha blurts. “The mythological history of both continents is so much richer than that. That feels so—so artificial!”

“Exactly,” Howl says with feeling. “It’s not a natural system; someone—or something—built it. That same entity carved up the resonant meaning of a handful of mythologies and parceled it out as superpowers. Just like they picked out a list of horror monsters to incarnate while ignoring the rest; I’ve never seen an Alien or Predator in this world, no slashers, but plenty of Lovecraft. This realm, it’s connected to human stories, but selectively.”

Something clicks. “You think this place is where our powers come from.”

Howl rises. “I have seen great wounds in the landscape from which something was ripped out. I have seen the hole in the world where Texas burned and the World of Glass broke. I have walked battlefields that birthed monsters and found the vandalized gravestones of long-forgotten gods. I don’t know what the Jovians really want, but I know that it’s somewhere here, in this world, and our world is just a means to affect it. They’re using old stories to make new stories, repackaging mythology as superpowers to do something to this reality.”

“And do you have any idea what that something might be?” Delilah drawls, having recovered from her rage episode.

“I have a clue,” Ferromancer answers. She gestures to her pillar of machinery and its endless readouts and camera feeds. “It was all speculative before, but now I have data. Based on Howl’s experience and my own surveillance equipment, we know that thoughts and actions in our world create a great deal of conceptual noise in the World of Glass—a kind of magical energy that represents or embodies ‘meaning,’ and which entities like the deimovore and the painflayers feed on. A city as large as Forks should be flooding this side of the dimensional barrier with that energy, but alternate Forks’ energy levels are barren. It’s all being absorbed.”

“Absorbed by what?” Agatha asks. I already know the answer.

Ferromancer points out the window at the massive, glowing tower. “By the Visage Spire.”

[commentary]

I’ve enjoyed writing Howl. She wasn’t originally planned to show up in this arc, but I’m very happy to have her presence.

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mhai Wind, Moth Court, October, and PR4v1 Samaratunga.

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 21st of September.

[/commentary]