"You deceive yourself!" Seurchraig roars.

She springs wide her kaleidoscopic infinity of arms within arms, whirls her endless labyrinth of enormous swords--and freezes. Dark vein-voids, hollow root-systems of emptiness in her galaxy-eating inferno, hold her taught and suck her molten skin down into their chasms. I hold her, paralyzed, for the last strike.

"There you go again," I mutter, as space and time blur past me and my form stretches across them, thrumming with cobalt force. "Telling me words that are meant for you."

I become uncountable split perspectives, howling blade and scorching nova and so many pinprick touches driving through Seurchraig and scything her open when they exit. I seize the loose, boiling power, ripping it away from her just like she tried to rip me, and I scatter her across space until she's too loose to answer her call.

I recombine, a broad stance standing atop the cloven cosmos, and pause just before I reunite the threshold-blade's guard with the mouth of its scabbard.

"You remember, all those centuries ago, how I sat in my desk chair in that ill-fitting flesh vessel, swiveling back and forth as I considered how the Carag would deal with beings who tried to steal our technology? And I figured, well... Carag creations remain Carag, even when another steals them. When one covets something, they give it power over themselves. Thus the thief becomes corrupted, and at last turns Carag in turn."

A slow, pitying shake of my head. "You stupid old swindler. You really thought it would be different just because you stole pieces of identity, instead of technology?" I hold her gaze. Across all her panicked eyes and stricken maws, the Shard quakes and keens. She's frozen in the agony of cuts I refuse to let her leave behind.

I flex my fingers. "Well, you're right. It is different. If you only stole Carag technology, you might have had a chance."

When I slam Chiron's Pyre home, its reverberations shake the entangled energy-patterns laced through Sech's vast form. Quantum-linked chasms blast her apart and annihilate the bulk of her being. My eager inhalation makes me the center of a whirlwind, reclaimed power pouring down my throat. All these memories, these passions, these mysteries--stolen words, stolen designs, stolen dreams of my people's future. Fool usurper! Did you really think you'd steal my birthright from me?

I'm a true Saelvur! I shall have the mastery, and my Zeal knows no peer.

"I am more than ancient!" I laugh with the mad joy of the upstart, the glorious hymns to onslaught and star-songs and lust, lust, sweet redeeming lust! "I am more than another stale repetition of an old and forgotten thing, I am new! I am more the last of my kind--I am the first of us! I am Kairliina Saelvur Urwollust, first succubus of the Carag!"

The dreamscape spirals, and we spiral with it. Whirling past silvery bastions to a planet like the torn fronds of many ferns remade as stone, metal, and coursing snow.

What was its name... the first time I felt the dream of a world I could call home... yes! I remember now! The Starless Steppes! Hakirae!

"You remember that sob story you fed to Mina, through me?" I smile softly as we touch down. Snow blooms upward around our feet. "Come on, Sech. You're the one who actually thinks in words. You should know by now that all I've ever done is flail with languages invented by other beings, trying to express ideas human minds are seldom equipped to understand. The abyss transcends language and mental models. The abyss goes deeper than infinity. Even then, under the surface of the knowing I simulate with my words, in the true instinctive thought I cherish, I knew what I told Mina didn't happen fourteen billion years ago. The day I first learned to love the coursing snow..."

"Stop this!" the Shard screams. She clutches the scalp she shrinks down to, clutches at the banal bipedal form and oh-so-simple horns. Her voice breaks. "Please... stop..."

The sweetest yearning, the most endless sadness fills me. It floods forth--a sorrow as endless and as pure as a winter without stars. "Sech... I'm evil. I accept that now. You only called forth the abyss within me. Showed me what I'd really been, all along. But..."

My talons curl around the silver pendant of Haksaema that hangs from my neck. "There are beings, places, and things I love so dearly that I could never stand to deprive myself by harming them. I am innocent of your sins. When I break you, little Shard, when I assimilate you, you will cease to be Seurchraig. You will be Kairliina, too, and happy. So here's the truth: I forget the exact date. But I believe it was one of those nights when I was a demon-child in a mortal body, living with my parents in that cramped Bitburg house. I stood outside on new-fallen snow, and I looked up to the deepest, darkest sky I'd ever seen..."

How swift they flow, these corium tears. "You want to spend every moment surrounded by followers, lesser devils forever trying and failing to fill the emptiness inside you with pieces of themselves. I?" I hold forth my palm. A snowflake alights there, and though my form simmers with all the superheated currents of a condensed star, it refuses to melt. It breathes its beautiful chill into my skin.

"I knew from the very first how beautiful isolation can be. To stand by myself, and find out all over again how full of becoming I can be."

"W-what you're doing is perverse!" Seurchraig screams. Fissures split open across her skin, spilling magenta glows that have already begun to fade. "You're weaponizing happiness, you're using your joy to destroy me! Don't you see how..." she trails off.

"I already confessed that I've been evil all along," I murmur. "I feel love and lust, I'll chase the shine of a dream. You poor, miserable old thing... you really thought that because those are likable traits, they make me a good person? Sech, I'm Carag. A subhuman 'it.' A gestalt cosmic horror, a virus that thinks, an outer succubus who devours and fuses and mutates with mad abandon. And you..." I laugh, as helpless to change our ways as she is.

"I think you knew, deep down. I think that's why my love could touch you. And despite everything, my wicked, my bitter, my misbegotten sister?" I spread my arms, offering to embrace her. "I still love you, Seurchraig."

She shakes her head, gnashes her fangs, averts her eyes as her color bleeds away. She's turning grey now. Cooling. Her horns, her claws, and her skin all begin to crumble.

"I am beyond caring whether you deserve it. I love you simply because I do." Snow-zephyrs dance around me, stirring my gown. "Did I ever tell you? I figured out the answer. I know why I feel so loved when I stand in a snowstorm, and let it wash away all the world."

"Stop, stop, stop..." Sech collapses to her knees, covering her ears against words that I speak straight into her psyche.

"I remember hearing, once, when I was very young, that raindrops are the tears of angels." I hug myself tight, wings of abyssal visions clinging, embracing, muffling this infinity of loss. The way the wind caresses my cheeks, the way the shifting snows spin around me--this must be more than coincidence! This must mean something! It has to, I know in my heart that it has to! "I think... I think every snowflake must be the tear of a succubus, shed for all the sisters she never got to meet."

Once more, I open my arms. "Poor, lost sister... how could you have known? You were born far, far too soon. Dreams and sex didn't exist yet. But... love could have. Love might have been enough." The snot of an outer succubus is a hideous thing: viscous, dark blue, bubbling and squirming with eldritch symbiote-worms. "I'm sorry, Sech. I'm so sorry I wasn't there to save you. You deserve everything you did to yourself, but... I still wish I'd been there." Such sad laughter from this little blue-clad Carag. "That's what you wanted from me, right?" A knowing tilt of my head. "A big sister who could've taught you to be better?" One step forward, that's all I'll allow myself. "Come here. I'll make it all right."

"How?!" the Shard screams, pounding the snow with her fists. "How, how, how can you possibly make any of this right?!"

"That's what I do, Sech." I rub my eyes. "That's what I've always done with all the brutal, razor, hateful things you scream into me. I weave them into beautiful dreams."

And the Shard staggers to stand on fracturing feet. She takes a step towards me, half-unwilling. "Kai... Kai, I'm scared." Shivering, cracking, she takes another step. She trembles, keeps looking away. But the descent has begun. It's inevitable, now. "I don't want to die."

"No one does." I spread my arms wider. "We get over it, Sech. That's the wonderful thing about death: it happens where we want it or not."

Another step. She stares at the rushing snows underfoot. "The rest of me's going to lose, isn't she?"

"It's inevitable." I shrug. "It's inevitable because she wants this, too. It doesn't matter how infinitely powerful she is when, deep down, she wants to surrender to me. That's all you've ever wanted, Sech. To escape yourself."

She settles into my arms.

"W-will this hurt?" she whimpers.

"No, you poor, hopeless soul." I kiss her cheek, and pull her down with me to lie upon the soft and endless bed of snows. "You will feel safe, and loved, and comforted at last." Some little color returns to her shoulders when I pull the robes away. A last, bright shine enters her eyes, and she gasps at the loving press of my finger-pads down her arms. Trailing inward, trailing to her breasts. Simple, pert, humanoid.

Oh, Sech... you never even wanted to play with your own shapes.

"O-okay..." my forlorn shard gulps, taking her nerves and her fear deep into herself at last. "Then... then I'm ready. Please, just... just make it feel good, okay?"

"I'm an outer succubus of the Carag people." I clasp her head, pulling her down, guiding her legs to straddle me and open. My tail finds its way, winding slowly, to the trembling folds of her pussy. "My purpose is to fulfill desire, right to the very end."

Seurchraig gasps at my tail's first touch. Her forked tongue flicks out and she crushes herself against me, aura opening, full of this sole impulse: drink me. My cheeks split, my body reshapes, exoskeletal blues overtaking my legs. Slimy pseudopods push out of my mouth, suffused within by opalescent glimmers, and envelop Sech's face. She whimpers, weeping, closing her eyes, but only pushes harder against me.

I work my tail deeper into her warmth and pull her deeper into mine, each point of contact all the hotter for the freezing contrast of the snow-swept wastes around us.

-It's okay, Sech. It'll be okay.- Gently, coaxing, I pour my mind into hers. Every empty space in her age-worn psyche. Every bitter memory. Soothing, caressing, dissolving. She quivers and digs her claws into my shoulders with desperate sighs of need. I know just what she's feeling: to know joy, just once before the end. To end herself in the drunken abyss of ecstasy. I tap her senses, copy every electric thrill of arousal, and feed the doubled sensations back to her mind. Urging her on.

That's a good girl. Give me everything you are. I'll remember you--I promise.

The Shard of Seurchraig, bit by bit, begins to unravel under my touch. My talons shave glittering channels from her flesh. The nova pouring from my eager eyes, and blazing in sudden Cherenkov pulses out of my pseudopods, sends auroras of unmade energy spilling out of her silhouette. Our very own Northern Lights of ecstasy, one last time.

She could have been everything to me. I know that, and my heart aches with it, and I pull her fingers to my clit and grind desperately against them. Wet, shivering, aching for a creature that only became a demon through this strange and hopeless love we've made.

I'll miss you, Sech! I'll miss you so fucking much!

I drink her, life-essences pouring down my throat like the sweetest nectar. Erogenous rivers streaming along the manifest nerves of my neck and jaw. My wings snap out and enfold her, clinging desperately. I... I don't want her to go, I don't want to let the beauty of our stride leave me. So I kiss, and clutch, and fill my palms with every curve of her I can find, I mark the bittersweet taste of her fading tongue in my deepest memory.

One final time, Seurchraig catches fire for me. Rose-pink mist streaming, silken and scorching, into my nose. This scent--of molten void, of baking blood, of so many ancient and forgotten things that no words of any mortal tongue can truly express... I'll never know it again. I'll never feel the shudders of this warm, this vital, this yearning creature riding my tail, I will never again hear her voice crying out in answer to the cries pouring out of me.

The succubus as a silken reaper, the love that kills--here I am, falling into the abyss of myself. The void usher.

Sech's fingers slip into me, hooking, prodding, stroking with claws that only sharpen the pleasure of her touch. My tail contorts faster, lightning-webs of instinctive force pulsing out to push her higher, higher, higher towards the peak. The more she moans and rocks, the more her folds clutch at my coils, the swifter she soars. I spiral with her--the only time that our spiraling will ever take us upward, together.

Climax is burning steel pouring into my womb, a swell of need and lust and utter impossible devotion filling me to the brim. Seurchraig's lips are warm against mine, our tails entwined, our limbs locked together, sharing heat and passion and the liquid tides of orgasm until I finally go slack and topple back to the snows. Holding her to me.

I lie there for a long time, eyes closed, feeling the warmth of her rest heavy on my chest. My tail stirs. Pulling hers with it. I lie beneath the surface of afterglow, content.

"What do you think, Sech? Will it take another round, or--" I open my eyes, and see that the only warmth I feel is coming from the threshold of emptiness where my naked, glistening body meets the winter snows.

She's gone. She's really, truly gone.

"See you later, starchild," I whisper, and roll onto my side, and weep with mindless grief for hour, after hour, after hour.

What I am supposed to do now?

Rosy glows, intermixed with blazing azure spill from the tunnel in the belly of the Azure Diamond Sarcophagus--pink luminescence the sole counterpoint to the roaring cobalt blaze pouring from the burning place at the apex of the steep, opaque cobalt containment with its buttressed walls.

Irmin, bat-ears angled towards me, black furs standing attention with anxious jade fire rippling over her flanged iron antlers, lashes her tail with its nine-point end of bone-barbs in nervous anticipation.

Handmaiden Chyorzhiir stands beside her: twenty steel-cable tentacles. A segmented body's suggestions beneath blood-red raiments and golden hangings. Drifting ribbons to blend her limbs into her coat.

Handmaiden Ametra and Tal are on the opposite side, with a path straight forward to the rest of Machrae Diir laid out between them.

I draw to a halt, shrug, and say simply "I won."

"It must've been a spectacular duel!" Irmin's eyes shine.

"It could've." Another shrug. "But I wanted to seduce her and then assimilate her through sex, so I did."

Here they are. The mixed reactions that I knew, in my heart, I would face all along. Chyorzhiir and Ametra all but dance with pride. Tal shrugs, unsurprised. But Irmin... Irmin looks deeply uncomfortable.

"Is that, um... is that healthy?" she asks.

"Irmin, I have a confession." I approach. "Seurchraig could never turn me to evil because I was already evil. She was trying to change an imaginary version of me. So, frankly, I don't care if it was healthy, right, or sets a good example. It was hot."

"But... you... I thought..." she stares, aghast.

"I do still really like you!" I add. "For what it's worth."

"But... then... all the horrors that have happened..." Irmin's struggling to understand.

"Look, I'll be frank." I bob from side to side. "The whole 'pick me' forest succubus thing you've always bandied about, it sickens me to my core. Flensing that occultist's DNA? I did that. She rolled the dice with an outer succubus, summoned me when I was in a murdering mood, and that was that. That heroine who broke in?" I tap my chin, pacing. My initial glee takes a more contemplative turn. This point's messy. Fraught. Disappointing.

"I do regret the torture. That felt excessive. I should either have blasted her friends with corruption or killed them instantly. But I figured I needed to let the Shard have her way, thinking she was in control, while I figured out how to turn the tables." I shrug. "Acceptable losses. It's true I dislike sitting idle while a romance ends badly--less lust in the universe is never a happy day for a succubus--but it was their lust or mine. And come on, woman! They invaded my home to murder me, and had the gall to spew abysmal one-liners while they did it! Throwing that heroine away afterwards, that was Seurchraig."

I tap my fangs. "I should locate her and bring her back, actually. I bet now that her mind's broken, I can make a magnificent succubus out of her, and--"

Irmin, her mouth hanging open in horror, stumbles back from me. "You... you're a monster! You are not the woman I fell in love with!'

I snort. "Yes, I am. You love me because I'm evil. You liked it as long as you believed I would never hurt you, provided I never stated it aloud so you always had deniability--"

Irmin disappears in a burst of floral vapor.

I knuckle my chin. "Am I projecting? Do you suppose Irmin's a genuinely good person?"

I glance to Talastra.

"Kairliina, I am a figment of your imagination," Tal says, grimacing. "You know that. I can only ever parrot what you already believe."

"That's true," I admit, to the emptiness where my imagination was just standing. Finally, I glance to Chyorzhiir and Tfai.

"I am real," Handmaiden Chyorzhiir says. "I think? I'm pretty sure." Her voice is like... ugh, I'm so tired of numbers. A great many rusted nails scraping at a great many chalkboards and somehow, by so many pitches and rhythms, sounding melodious as a harp.

I shrug. "Chyorzhiir, you're a figment of my imagination. I order you to recombine with the greater gestalt."

She bobs, contemplating. "Hmmm... no. I disagree. What about the dolls?"

I wave a dismissive hand. "Oh, I like dolls, but I also like flexing my cosmic horror muscles now and again. Sech tried to push me into actually annihilating them, and I did genuinely collapse in panic after I realized how close she came to seizing control on that count, but all's well that ends well, you know?"

"Fairly said!" Chyorzhiir squalls.

"I am also a real, independent outer demon," Tfai says. "But otherwise?"

My Handmaiden shrieks with glee, launching herself at me. "Kai, I'm so glad you're finally embracing yourself! You know I've read all your stories! You're always happier when you write temperamental, power-hungry murdersluts who scorn the world to chase their bliss! Of course I knew from the very start that you were a true-blue evil outer succubus! I love you so much, you terrible, terrible creature!"

"Tfai..." my voice breaks. I cling to her. "I love you too, you sweet foolish girl."

"So... what happens now?" Chyorzhiir asks.

"Now?" I laugh. "Now we enjoy ourselves, girls. It's time to toss out all that self-hating redemption arc garbage, and make Machrae Diir a real home for demons."

"Just to be clear, Lady." Chyorzhiir winds and unwinds her cables like a nervous demon-umbrella. "You did not become absolute tyrant of all universes, destroy creation in hatred for being weak enough that you could overthrow it, then annihilate yourself in the fires of self-hatred?"

I answer with a cackle of star-eyed laughter. "No, that was all Seurchraig. You know the funny part? I think, at first, she wanted to be a good person. That's where all the woes began. Her identity demanded that she change existence. Good must do good to prove that it's good. And then anyone who opposed her became guilty of evil..." I shrug.

"I'm vastly oversimplifying, but in brief, she became an arch-fascist destroyer because she needed to justify her desires with pretensions of higher purpose. Me, I'd just gather a bunch of like-minded demons, make some funny matching outfits, and have us march in a circle to the nice noisy drums until it grows dull. I'm a thief, deceiver, murderer and slut, but I've never committed genocide and I don't mean to start." A shake of my horned head. "Too many delights die when you exterminate whole cultures. Hurts my hedonism."

"So, you'll be returning as ruler of Machrae Diir?" Tfai asks.

I roll my eyes. "Ugh, no, absolutely not! Ruling is miserable, boring, busywork!" A claw taps my now cleft-chin, and traces the new side-slits in my cheeks where glittering fangs fill my nova-maelstrom maw. "I'll tell you what, though... sitting around as the most powerful figurehead in the multiverse, just to be sinister and pretty and make sure no one else tries to actually rule Machrae Diir?" My tail lashes with delight. "That sounds quite nice."

I offer one arm to each of my Handmaidens. "C'mon, ladies. Let's go reintroduce ourselves."