(Circa 2120 A.D.)

The weeping one huddles in the midst of the melee. One horn broken, glittering pink blood dripping down to the ragged fork of its black tail. The stroke will come soon. It has to. A vagary of fight-or-flight, training-impulses screaming to kill the other armed ones first.

Those are the only reasons it's still alive.

Yet it huddles. Shivering, rubbing its orange forearms with its black talons and squeezing tears through eyes shut in terror and despair. Does it forget the sovereign law of the battlefield? Does it even remember itself?

A little soul's cold, shivering tendrils pour out through the not-seam where worlds end, the paths of emptiness between, searching and searching and searching--for what?

Someone strong enough to stand? Or someone who'll fight its battles for it?

It reaches. This much, IS.

Battle is an irradiant art--it can be made abyssal if one desires. Most who know the killing ways care only for glory. To deny irradiance is to deny themselves the feeling of their challenge, met. So the seeking soul finds the sensation of sunburning blues, and pulls.

"Cripes, this again?"

A shade-slayer lunges around the weeping one. Six-horned and long-tailed, of black shadow with a cobalt corona streaming past the roving eclipse of her silhouette. The great, curved, wicked blade hisses in her hands, severing other shadows from being.

"What?" the slayer pauses. Gestures to the melee. "You want me to save you, is that it? Kid, I hate to break it to you--" she snorts, "I lie, I love to break it to you--" She sweeps the threshold-blade's shade through a shining knight. It passes, puffs of darkness without bite. “--I'm not even actually here." She shrugs. "Good on you for partly bridging space, I guess..."

The devil-shade distorts. A sunburst of seeking black spokes into a spherical maelstrom into a cone of photo-negative cleaving. Other shades fall: severed legs, split torsos, heads. She reappears, standing over the weeping one.

"Like." a flick of a shadow-talon hand. "I don't know what else to tell you. The dream of power like mine isn't enough to motivate you?"

Her gesture turns to the still-shining knight as he grapples down another demon, dagger flashing."This fucker's going to be the one to kill you. Hope you can see that. He's lost his main weapon. He has the mechanical advantage--" The dagger, carved with binding runes, drives into the muscular demon's throat. His raging scream because a shrieking, agonized gurgle. "--and his senses are now tuned towards things on the ground," the devil-shade concludes. "Get up. Run."

The blue-star pinpoints in her silhouette flash. "Do something, you stupid fucking fool! You have legs, you have breath! Do something to save yourself, by the Void!"

The weeping one wails, thrashes, shakes its head. Its panic draws the eyes of the knight--wide and bloodshot behind the blood-spattered barricade of his helm's visor.

He rises.

"He can't see me," the shade-slayer says. "Only you. Run. Run now, you're fresh, you can get away."

Still, the weeping one does not move. Death descends to Earth to inhabit the body of a mortal man, and--

"Oh, for fuck's sake," the shadowed one snarls. "Alright, you know what? I will intervene. I'll use you, selfishly, to cater to my own rage. There. Salvation's price."

Her corona grows fiercer, boiling, scalding the huddled figure's flesh. Every boiling heat-blister fills her with a foreign will--seizing her limbs, pouring with the scorching blue-black shadows down her throat, making her writhe and whimper and peel.

"Is this what you want?" the other snarls. "Is this how you want it to be?" Every muscle twitches with the unwilling sensation of reflex. Nerves fire wildly with unwanted sharpness. "What? Did you think I was going to shield you?"

The little tear-streaked form isn't strengthened to withstand the awful power the other pours through it--the power that sends a clawed hand whipping out to intercept the frothing-mouthed knight and its dagger wetted by black blood.

Burning, splitting pains spray out inside its bones, fracture-branches at the force of the clash. The devil rips its bare, soft knee open when she drives it up into the groin-gap of the knight's plate. One of its claws rips right off on the visor's underside, taking flesh.

The others puncture the enemy's throat and it's flesh, warm flesh, soft vital flesh like all of the weeping thing's lovers, and it convulses with the self-hate of murder.

The other's dominion forces it to turn and run while it's still puking all over itself. The other makes it run until the battlefield is far away, until there's nothing around but barren rocks and dust under a night sky of cold and uncaring stars.

Only then does she let its battered knees buckle. Releases it. Manifests in full.

"I want to make something clear," the six-horned devil says. She prowls a slow circle, talons rasping on the sand, and pries the short companion sword from her sash. "You aren't special. Every universe teems with things like you."

She tosses the short sword down in front of it.

"Whimpering, pitiful, carting around these stupid backwards internal mythologies," she continues, coming to a halt. "And you all think you'll get picked because you're useful. But you're already useful without being picked, dumbass. You'll get used until you're dead."

Her hand-talons settle on the cobalt silk of her great blade's grip. Shining star-iron hisses free. "I'll promise you this much." She nods to the short sword on the sand. "That won't hurt. When it goes in, you'll feel nothing but comfort." She walks behind the broken thing. The telltale harmonic murmur of the point lifting free of the scabbard.

Armor's clatter comes from behind, the other's left hand finding its place on the great blade's grip. "No one needs you--empty things begging for another to make them full. Fight for your life, or don't."

It shivers. Quakes. Other demons aren't supposed to be this cruel. Other demons are supposed to pity it, nurture it--

"Coddle you?" A scornful laugh. "Why would I coddle you when I can coddle myself?"

It digs its claws into its arms. "... why?"

A sneer of words. "Why what?"

"Why do you hate me so much?"

Settling. Stillness. Such long, cold silence.

"Because I look at you and I see neutron poison," the other says. "A drain, a void that'll turn whatever I give it to emptiness just to demand more of me, a combat liability, a--"

A sigh.

"I hate you," the other finally says, dead tired, "because I thought I was finally free of this version of myself. But things like you keep pushing my old ways back in my face. I hate you because I have been you, and I'm still weak to the lure of someone I can justify hating."

It can find no words in answer.

There are only cold sands, and colder stars, and the beckoning dark lacquer of the short sword with its twin-ring guard of tarnished brass that nestles at the knees of the broken thing. This sword's grip is cotton. Faded. Worn. Off-black. Its temper-line is frosty. 

Fake, it realizes, as it eases the blade free.

"H-how is it to--" it begins.

The answer flashes through its mind. Tear a strip from what's left of its sleeveless gown. Wrap the blade's base so that hand doesn't slip in its own blood. Other hand goes on the grip. Tip goes against the soft pale flesh of its belly. A hard push. A few dragging slices. As long as it gets that far, the other will handle the rest.

"Thank you," it whispers, feeling insane. How can it be grateful to someone for dragging it out here just to kill itself?

"No problem," the other says. "Killing's easy. I've had lots of practice breaking people."

And there is silence. Cold night. Cold stars. Cold steel point prickling its belly, so keen and close and lovingly sharpened.

"Hey," it asks. "Your instructions... did you...?"

"Questions are for the living," the six-horned devil says, a little sharply. "You're a dead thing, aren't you? Don't ask to know of living things. Embrace your end."

"Right. Yes. Sorry." It shudders. Breathing heavy. Keeps tensing its fingers. Begins to push. Come on. Harder! The point slips in, just a little, and there's no pain. Only warm comfort, the promise of sleep at last.

It screams at itself in its own mind--why? It's never going to be easier than this? Why not now?!

"C-can't..." it whimpers.

"Uh-uh," the other says. "Won't."

She steps around to the front, sheathing the great glittering blade with a sweep of her arm. Her tail plucks away the short sword. "Let me guess," she says. "There's a disconnect. A voice telling you to die, but your limbs aren't following through."

"H-how do you know that?" it asks.

"Like I said," the other shrugs, "I've been you. That reluctance, that impulse against death that lies there under the surface of your words? That's you." She pokes its nose with her tail-tip. "You want to live." She gestures to the short sword. "You can keep that. But you better remember this moment, kid. You made your choice. Making it work is your problem, understand? As long as you expect others to prove they care by fighting for you, you'll always find ways to make it harder on 'em."

The other sags. "Fucksakes, I'm tired. I was supposed to be free, finally. I didn't want to be anyone's mistress or their heroine or their good little soldier, I just wanted some fucking friends." She turns. A lazy wave over her shoulder. "You chose, kid. Fight for it."

It watches her fade, feeling a certain dryness.

"What a bitch," it mutters. It contemplates the short sword in its hands. A bitch who hated it, completely and utterly.

And that hateful bitch saw more value in its life than it did.

Wow. It really IS pathetic.

Its blood-encrusted tail flicks against the sand.

Well... now it's a pathetic, broken thing with a really sharp sword. It stands up. Groans. Stretches. "Okay," the demon-thing mutters. "Well, there's no way I can let her have the last word." So it takes its first step.

The next few days defy its expectations. It's supposed to be a desolate, soul-breaking loneliness. It's definitely lonely, the little wandering demon with its really sharp sword. But nothing about this feels new. It discovers its survival instincts, and they're--good?

It can be quick when there's prey to seize. Its sense and sight and smell and touch are all so keen and rich in feeling. As for the loneliness... after scrounging for roots and grubs and digging water out of the ground, it has little to do but meditate on that.

It doesn't like the conclusions it comes to. They're not pretty. They just are. Like the other's rage, cruelty, and yes, power. The queen used it. The other demons used it. All to play an especially perverse kind of game--a game of telling themselves how kind they were.

It remembers the long-forgotten incident of the day it mentioned, off-handed, that it wanted to wander into the wilderness for a week or so and find itself. No one paid any attention to the shine in its eyes or the long-forgotten happy frisking of its tail. They didn't try to understand its impulses, didn't talk to it to figure out what these things might mean to it that they did not mean to the court.

They all just started, well... arguing at the little demon. It was being selfish, they said. Angsty, the queen accused, depressive. They said it didn't need to "isolate"--it hadn't meant to, would've been perfectly happy meeting new friends on its wanderings--it needed them "now more than ever," needed to let them "help."

Their help consisted of doing the same things as ever with slightly more smiling and more shallow questions about its happiness. That lasted just three days. Then everything returned to the way it was before, except that the little demon felt too afraid their anger to ever suggest another adventure outside the palace.

The demon contemplates these things along with others. Simpler.

A desert dawn tinting sandstone archways and mesas with pinks, reds, oranges as it greets the rising sun by staring right into it.

Its eyes are fine. Apparently it can stare straight at the sun as much as it wants.

The demon tries an experiment, then: it tells itself that it shouldn't be able to stare at the sun. Nothing happens at first. But as it keeps repeating that, searing begins, burning spots. It panics for a while at the ruin it's made of its sight. Finally, it accepts the wound.

And then it occurs to the little demon to wonder... what if, whatever that was, it's also true of its belief that its wounds won't just heal on their own?

At first, nothing happens. But it keeps repeating, keeps repeating this in its head with rising fervor: my wounds will heal because my wounds will heal. My wounds will heal because my wounds will heal. And the world's light returns. More than that, its broken horn has grown back.

The blisters and scarring of the other's power dissipate, aside from a sleeve it keeps on its right hand. It loves the look of the off-color, burned flesh. Gives its form a nice asymmetry, hints of a story to tell.

Then? It basks.

Its power of itself, its knowing of its own desires, is as deep and instinctive as this? This is how fast it can grow when it just has a little freedom, just has challenges that stir its heart in the right ways?

By the time the other shows up again on the sixth day of its wanderings, it's just conjuring food and water out of the air. It's also made some very early attempts at glass-blowing after learning the joy of playing with its own fire. It is absolutely terrible at it, but the glass still shines faintly, a little field of pretty bubble-filled mishaps in the shade of a ravine-turned tunnel.

And she's there, peeking around a corner, six-horned and rigid with shame.

Nope. Not doing this.

"I don't want an apology," the smaller demon says. "I won't accept one. My feelings?" It shrugs. "Yes, you were a bitch about the whole thing. Still got me out."

"But I--" the other begins.

"No," it repeats. "You know what I've realized out here?" It gestures to the glass. "I realized that more than anything, I just needed something about myself to be real. A story I can tell myself about where I come from, and know that there's some truth to it. Good or bad didn't matter. Something that happened. That's it."

It patters around, poking the glass because it feels like doing so. This isn't that deep, not in its mind. Its mind was never the one that needed all the tender-making words.

"I've realized, if I make my healing dependent on perfect treatment from others, I'll never heal." It straightens. "You were a bitch, but sometimes a bitch is right. You told me where you were at and why you did what you did. I could feel, for the very first time, that I was hearing the truth about those things. That gave me something solid to push against."

It rubs its arm, turning sheepish. "Would I choose to go through that again? No. If there's a next time I want kindness. Tenderness. Someone who finds the right way to make it easier. But since this happened to me, since it's part of my story, I have to learn like it. And I have to admit, there's something compelling about this.  Seized by the terrible eldritch power of an older demon, turned malevolent in her rage..." Its tail frisks.

"There's worth in being able to see myself as someone who goes through something like that and then keeps walking, after." It nods to the other. "So, thanks. Lots of people have hurt me. You're the first who called it what it was. You're still shit, but it's a start."

The other, cautious, rounds the corner.

"Wow." She scratches the back of her head. "You really are exactly like me, huh?"

It snorts. "Maybe. That's not something you can decide in one conversation, now is it?"

The other smiles wryly. "Not while being right about it."

"Yeah." It hefts the gifted sword. "Or ten. A hundred, maybe." It clears its throat. "So, this thing's a good option for tight spaces, but I like the desert, sooo..."

The other whips her hand through the air, unfolding a clattering armory of killing implements from nothing, including a lot of odd things that all seem to be based around tubes and triggers, with all manner of bizarre knobs and switches and handles sticking off.

"Take your pick," she says.

"And with that, you've already outdone my queen," the little demon says, padding to the wall of shining. "Hm..." It taps one of the many tube-weapons. "These feel promising, but I haven't seen one on my world. Too attention-grabbing."

It notes a faint hint of approval in the other's eyes. The glimmer of it kindles an immediate yearning for more which the smaller demon promptly shoves down, deep. Not a desire it wants to throw away, but way too dangerous to chase right now.

And the other would hate it.

It wanders along the selection for a while, levitating itself when it needs to reach higher. Hours, it spends, picking and choosing and un-choosing. Sometimes it tries practice swings, annoyed at how self-conscious it is of the other's gaze.

Finally, it picks out a big halberd with a haft of shimmering emerald lacquer. A piece tastefully balanced by silver langets with a traditional one-piece forging for its head. The blade, topspike and hook all shine with an orange crystal fused into the steel.

"This looks gorgeous," it says. "Question, though. Is this structurally sound? I know little about metalworking, but combining metal and non-metal seems risky."

"It is," the other says, bobbing. "Structurally sound, I mean. The crystal's a personal composite mix fused to the steel at the molecular level." She swells with a hint of pride. Her hand raises instinctively to press her chest as she says, "This one believes that, while supernatural force can make any construction viable, a true artist makes sure that its works are strong by mundane physics as well."

Her--its? Both--its tail takes on the familiar frisk of a demon in its joys. "Also features a very clever proprietary spatial lattice to redistribute kinetic energy away from weak points, which this one--" She catches herself. Grins. "I mean, um... which I also designed."

The younger demon raises an eyebrow, but doesn't push the point.

The other finishes, with a firm nod, "It's Carag-craft. Artifice of the deep power. You will break long before it does." She smiles. "When you're done putting yourself back together, it'll be there. Every time."

"Hm." The demon born of the desert runs her hands along its haft. "One last question." She meets the other's gaze. "Are you stable enough teach me how to wield this?"

The other considers, knuckles against her chin, long and somber. And her smile widens. "Yes. I can manage that."

Its newly-chosen teacher suggests a simple start: that they journey together for a few days with no instruction, just to get used to each other's presence. "It'll give us a chance to learn what each other's 'normal' looks like," she says. "How we express what we're feeling."

"May I ask why?" the demon of the desert asks.

"You always have the right to ask and be answered when it comes to what someone's trying to teach you," the other says. "And if their explanation isn't good enough, you have the right to tell them to fuck off."

At this it seizes. Flooding with jitters, with panic, with a cold sweat of pink-tinted beads. It knows the question it has to ask if the answer it just received is to mean anything.

"What if someone has more power than me?" it asks. "What if I don't trust them to fuck off?"

Her teacher keeps walking. Taking calming breaths. Nervous gulps, an odd habit that the demon born of the desert has only previously seen in humans.

"You're just as scared of fucking up and being abandoned as I am," it realizes.

"Yes," its teacher agrees, "but the power balance overwhelmingly favors me." She hugs herself. "My answer is this. If you want me to leave, I will. I hurt you, badly. You're a fellow demon and I... I care for my kindred. I want to atone for ignoring that kinship, and lashing out anyway. But you don't owe me that chance."

"I appreciate that," it murmurs. A beat. "Right. Fuck off."

The other stiffens. She looks at it side on for a single blink of one azure eye. Her parting words emerge calm, poised, and earnest.

"I understand."

She's gone in a side-striping rush of blue smoke and silver lightning.