The demon servants were assembled in a shadow rotunda, organized, thanks to the magic of the room itself, by element and rank. Where they stood, their element reigned: tongues of flame here, sand and stone there, a terrain of ever-flowing mental essence, a regular old log. In the center and its ink-dark pool of shadow, one figure glimmered silver.

“We did well,” said Lord Nyx, their voice flat and perfunctory. “Five hundred and twenty territories captured, tens of thousands of sellable weapons and trinkets, and eighty-three usable servants. You have met expectations.

After a breath, they added, “When Positron goes down, we’re headed to Husk.”

“But Lord Nyx,” a servant and commoner, a dark-blue devil, interrupted. He took a single step forward and ended up far away, right in front of Nyx. “The war isn’t—”

He was cast aside by a slap in the face from Nyx’s gauntlet. He flew into shadow.

Coolly, Nyx said, “Husk is where the war will be, soon enough. Anyone who shuts up might get a bonus.”

The crowd was silent.

“Probably not, though.”

“Heh heh heh,” laughed a few scattered demons, feebly.

Within half a second, and without looking at their targets, Nyx pointed their finger at each of the laughers and shot them one by one with bullets of light. Gasps of pain and a single sharp death-gasp rang out, then faded. No one else spoke.

“You sure don’t learn fast,” said Nyx. “Ah well. You’ll get some more excitement soon enough—more battles.” They allowed themself and their army a sharp-toothed smirk. “Kill ‘em dead.”

The meeting was dismissed, and without even a word or visual signal from Lord Nyx, everything and everyone faded as if a huge candle had gone out. Nyx sighed with satisfaction, set their hands on their hips, and summoned a table and bottle of strange liquor simply by thinking, “I sure would like my table and bottle of strange liquor.” It was awkward to think in words like this, but that’s what you had to do to mentally summon things when you were...what...five years into being a demon? Six, maybe?

They grabbed the bottle, popped the cork with a flick, and aimed the resulting gusher straight into their mouth. It blasted their uvula, filling their throat with blood of chimera. Fucking swill. Nyx could hardly stand it, but they knew that the more they practiced tasting all manner of demon drink, the more bearable it would get. Besides, they could just transform their own taste buds temporarily out of existence. After a few moments, they did just that.

Nyx was casually swigging the blood by the time Agi flew in. He made a few fancy circles high above Nyx before swooping around in a shrinking spiral and landing as a crow on their pointy, pointy shoulder. (Not on the tip, but the side.)

“We got the church,” said Nyx, looking straight ahead.

Agi simply sat there.

“Oh, come on. I’m happy. I’m satisfied. If you’re here to be satisfied with me, why can’t you show it?”

“I’ll sing if you want me to,” said Agi, and he followed that up with a loud, scratchy, sandpapery, “Caw!”

Nyx threw the bottle aside (it warped away mid-flight), reached over, and grabbed Agi off their shoulder. He changed into his demicrow form as Nyx took him by the arms and grabbed tight, glaring in his eyes. His limbs dangled.

“What are you still unsure about, Agi?”

“Well...who is Jamila to you?” he said. “Is this dungeon core knockoff going to be your playmate, your toy? Isn’t this just another tether to—”

“Of course she is. The difference is, I don’t care about her anymore. She doesn’t mean anything to my current self.”

“But then—”

“Because I’m loyal to her. I’m loyal to our past together.”

“You wouldn’t want her if you didn’t care.”

Nyx huffed out a frustrated sigh.

Agi smiled. “I like that you care. It’s the one thing that keeps me hanging around.” Which surprised him the first time he realized it, and hit him like sun rising on a rainy day.

“Then...I don’t know what to tell you. You’ll have to find a new master sometime this century, because there’s no telling how long I’ll keep caring.”

“Nyx, Nyx, Nyx...no matter how many lobotomies you get, that past will always be a part of you.”

“That doesn’t really make sense—”

“Because you remain a poor lateral thinker.” He tapped his temple. “It will remain lodged within the eye of the beholder. In other words, in me. I will know.”

Time was marching on, and Nyx was far from finished growing. The shadow void surrounding Nyx and Agi was just one step of the process. Nyx was maintaining it, and could do so for longer and longer without feeling migraines or generalized agony. Training their shadow skills was a lot like training a muscle, only with more constant mental effort—but someday that would officially be pure background operation, as simple as breathing while asleep.

Recording their experiences was helping so much. There had, of course, been no book on living as a homunculus before Nyx came along. Taking the time to recall what did and didn’t help them before all the mundane memories of every day dissolved was shockingly vital.

And who knew how many uses that book could hold? Nyx often toyed with the idea of crafting a homunculus army, except instead of raising the soldiers in the slipshod and blatantly abusive way that Urrich had, Nyx would try discipline and even care. Nyx was only barely concerned with the morality of this. They satisfied their twinge of guilt by telling themself they’d only pick up those mortals who were in such dire straits that the alternative was dying in a shame they saw as unbearable. Nyx would only recruit proud demons, people eager to be reborn.

But those were future plans.

“So where is she?”

“Not yet,” said Nyx, letting go of Agi. “Leave, for a little.”

With a start and a rustle of wings, Agi disappeared.

Then a smile, genuine and unrestrained, came to life on Nyx's face. They took out the lockbox, so polished and so rarely touched since its re-creation that it almost looked brand new.

Nyx only called Ethel when they had Ethel-related news. When they saw lightbulbs changing form in Darshanna, they plucked one from a lantern and passed it through to her, and when they popped through Hanalagula, they gave a brief report. Those things had happened almost one after the other, and at the time, Ethel had been...where again? On the road, hitchhiking or something. It amazed Nyx that Ethel might have the skills and wherewithal to hitchhike...maybe it'd been something else after all, like a subway ride...

Nyx made the call. They stuck their hand into the box, but not all the way through. Instead, they stopped short and waved it around. This made the box jitter like a vibrating phone. By the sound and feel of things, it was also shaking a heap of other clutter. Had Ethel thrown it a—

Someone answered. She brought the box close to her face, and Nyx did the same. A bit of cool air came through. Nyx felt themself blush, their excitement fizzling in a wave of nerves.

"Hey," said Nyx.

"Hey." The voice was groggy and the room was dark.

"Uh...has it really been that long?"

"Yes."

"Damn, I thought you were your own mom!"

"Thanks. She died last month."

"...Oh...I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I'm just glad I reconnected with her before it happened. You wouldn't believe how hard it was."

"How long's it been?"

"Twenty-six years."

Now Nyx felt touched. "You remembered."

"In a world without magic, you have to remember things like this."

Though of all the things she'd carried with her from Darshanna, the one she pondered the most—more than the fantasy species, more than magic, more than her glimpses at infernal realms—was the divergent evolution being taken by the lightbulb.

"I'm surprised you're calling again, Bev," said Ethel with a modest smile. "I thought the second time would be the last time. The news this time, is it big?"

"In a manner of speaking. It's pretty existential, yeah."

"Go on."

"I found Jamila again. You remember her?"

"Yes."

"...Is it...getting fuzzy?"

"I'm forty, not eighty. I might not be able to recreate her exact face, but yes, I remember her very well. I remember so much about those first few days—they could be the most vivid of my life."

"Well," Nyx said with triumph, "she's mine now! I mean, she's not human anymore—something weird happened to her soul—but it's better than the way she'd been living. (If you can call it that.)"

"Bev, that phrase..."

"What?"

"'She's mine now?' I don't mean to be picky or uptight, but...it sounds like you're proud to own her?"

"I'm a demon, aren't I?"

Silence passed.

Ethel almost wanted to say that she’d often looked up the families of the Poppers, those whose names she’d learned. She’d considered going on a road trip to the hometown of Nyx’s own family, the old one, just to know her friend better in a way that felt truly meaningful.

But she guessed that was part of the mundane world.

Nyx, on their end, was wondering why they'd been so excited to call.

"My life's been...pretty good, considering," said Ethel. "The best that I could hope for after disappearing for so long. I bounced from job to job, but finally I've found a core nucleus of friends who seem reliable. And I get involved in..."

Nyx's face was sagging a little, as if giving condolences for a sad life.

"—I have a kid," she said.

Nyx was mystified. "So you married."

"No. I mean—yes. Married and divorced quickly. Messily. It took years to recover. Then I adopted."

And she was the light of Ethel’s life, the biggest reason she woke up in the morning—all these corny things, all things to keep to herself.

"Well," said Nyx, "I guess I got engaged too, kind of... Me and Agi, we've been—I think—well, as demons, we wouldn't call it 'dating' necessarily, but it's—" Nyx coughed out a laugh.

"But Bev, he's your servant."

"Yeah?"

"And that's...a conflict of interest."

"Huh?"

"Not that. I meant it reminds me of that president who practically married his own slave."

"...Well, I pay Agi now."

"My point is, even if you've never kicked Agi or anything like that, you've always been capable of doing it, without recompense. There's a power imbalance that, I won't lie, really disturbs me."

Ethel's whole spiel only made Nyx grin. "Yes, and? We're demons."

Silence passed.

Nyx was never supposed to learn to love the life of a demon. It had been thrust upon them as a side effect of being in thrall to an archlord, a punishment in and of itself. Ethel has known this before in bits and pieces, but now the full realization hit them with a shiver. And Nyx's happy ending was to suppress the tragedy, to grin and bear it, to whip themself until they liked it. To bestow it unto others.

But hey, that was just her perspective from Earth, wasn't it? Wasn't it, now.

"I'm thinking of a song you used to like," said Ethel.

"What song?"

Ah, they did take the bait. "Planet Earth is blue/And there's nothing I can do..."

Nyx's face hadn't changed.

"You forgot it," said Ethel.

Success. The demon smiled wide with satisfaction.

Ethel smiled too, and found somehow that it was genuine.

"You're happy, aren't you?" she asked.

"I'm so close to happy," said Nyx, a confession close to warmth.

"And I'm there," said Ethel. "I know my life is boring, I know you don't trust that it's true—"

"But it doesn't matter, at this point. I'm here and you're there, and I won't cross over," said Nyx, hovering only a finger's length away. "Although maybe I can send over Jamila, or a hunk of gold."

"No, no. That'd be...that's too bizarre. Bizarre's not good anymore."

"...Goodbye, Ethel."

"Take care."

Ethel stared up and off for a few seconds, into the notebooks and mechanical parts cramming her room.

Then she reached through the box, found Nyx's hand, and squeezed it tight. Theirs felt the same. Ethel's was clammy. Contact made her want to yank Nyx out and into her home for one night, for—she didn't know—a party like any young friends would have.

Instead, she closed the box, opened a drawer, and set it inside.

And Nyx, after a few days of reflection, would consign their box to the cruiser's furnace.

The connection was closed, buried and burned, living on in their dreams, and each world became a shadow of the other.