Handmaiden nods. “Right. So, for all the reasons I mentioned, I think it was much healthier that you left outright, for a while. Without you sitting in Zul to use as the object of thoughts like, ‘I’ll never be as strong as Kai, I’ll never be as insightful or as pretty or as horny as Kai’, the more, hm, let's call them angsty denizens had to face that they were the ones putting all that pressure on themselves. They still tried to wriggle out, of course.”

We pause again to admire an open area. It plays host to something like a demented skate park, save for tall conical growths of contagious dark-green metal rising from the high points between the pits. At regular intervals the pits expand and contract. New pits open like fans from the lips where the old ones blend into the surrounding terraces, while others suddenly level out–or slam abruptly shut.

“But leaving obviously broke your heart,” handmaiden continues, “and you still did it because you knew you needed to. It's funny. Even in finally, forever ending your leadership, you lead by example. We head to ask ourselves whether we truly loved Machrae Diir, or just having you pamper us, and Machrae Diir was where you did the pampering.”

She gestures to the manifest cityscape of the Lambent Quarter rising all around us. “I guess our answer’s pretty obvious.”

“It is indeed,” I say, beaming with joy. “Oh, and the adventurer problem?”

“Oh, we eat them,” handmaiden says. “Metaphorically. Usually metaphorically. It still stings when they insult us, take our threat too lightly–have to be a little open to what newcomers say in order to learn and bring new people into the fold, right?–but we heal quick. Better to take that little wound at the start than tolerate them while they bleed us again, and again, and again, just to try and pretend we’re above it all.”

"I am so glad," and I am, genuinely slackening with relief, "that you've all learned from my mistakes, as well as my triumphs."

"You built of a community of beings who wanted to grow together. Of course we learned." She points to a pseudopodous mass. It reaches its quivering goo-bulges over the top of a nearby apartment building, a building of burning graphite with all its balconies stretching, twisting, and contorting to become tunnels boring through the structural depths. “Those giant blobs of shadow-stuff, or whatever they are, do tend to roll through a block now and again. Filling up buildings, absorbing anyone they run into. Sometimes the victims get melted, sometimes they just ride along for a while.”

“Do they enjoy it, the ones who get caught?” I ask.

“At any rate, they’re into the idea that things like that…” handmaiden says, then halts.

So huge its further reaches remain shrouded by mist and darkness even as its colossal clawed hand fastens on and crushes a skyscraper’s rune-engraved pinnacle, a bony exoskeletal something hardens into being. Its eyeless, mandibled, many-jawed head leers down over the district. Discolored hazy suns bloom among the clouds behind it, giving appalling glimpses at the many-limbed immensity of the being.

I squirm, delighted in the presence of the eldritch as only an outer demon can be.

After a span of looking and a long, curious stare of its honeycomb facial sockets towards us, a tilt of its head, the being disappears.

“… anyway, yeah, everyone is into things like that happening in Machrae Diir,” handmaiden continues. “Yes, sure, some of us die. We’re demons. We get over it and we’re reborn, if not always in that order. It’s scary the first time, sometimes traumatizing. Then our souls mutate just like you promised we would, and it gets so…” she licks her sharpening teeth. Hyperventilates hungrily. “Thrilling. Still hurts, and the sense of failure to survive still takes it out of you, but even that just lends to the satisfaction of it all–this thing happened to me and it mattered enough that it takes my soul a while to carry the weight.”

It’s her turn to spin to me, grasping my shoulders. “Kai, I’m so grateful, do you know that? One mentor after another kept trying to take the weight of my past away from me, kept implying to me that I would be broken if I ever admitted defeat. From humankind to the fae realms to that two-bit tenderqueer hack of a demon queen. They all kept trying to tell me I was standing tall when I was clearly lying on the ground trying to hold my guts in and screaming for mama. Out of every ruler I’ve ever met, you were the only one who could look at my wounds and say, ‘You’re right, you’re hurt, but we’ll get through this. We’re gonna get you patched up.'”

I clear my throat. “I do thank you, let’s just be mindful of not defining our growth in terms of opposition to someone we hold a grudge against. Also, still uncomfortable for me for personal reasons.”

“Oh, yes, you’re right,” she says. A firm nod. “Dangerous habit. I’m sorry.”

I relax. “Apology accepted. Minimal harm done, and I heal quickly once I feel safe to admit the need.” A grateful shudder. “I’m glad I could help.”

She lets go of my shoulders. Steps back. Folds her hands. “You were the first person to make me realize: the one who admits she has been knocked to the ground gives herself the choice of standing up again. I love Machrae Diir because sometimes this place challenges me. Me, your handmaiden, even I get to grow and have journeys of my own here! And even if it wasn’t, the stagnancy, the suffocating total safety of our old worlds and our old lives… why would any of us want to trade Machrae Diir for that? The danger makes everything here that much more delicious. We can be our complete selves.”

“And nobody’s been speaking any nonsense about invading other realms just to chase that thrill?” I ask.

“A few did at first,” she says, shrugging. “We sat them down and explained how quickly that would get old. Tfai suggested that we could always enlist ourselves as mercenaries in other universes if we’re looking to throw ourselves into a war or two, and that caught on much faster. Other folks just took up your duelist approach–going where their steps take them, savoring battle when they find it and accepting peace when it comes.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Good. The conqueror’s path sooner or later leads to the death by a thousand cuts. Attrition. And I want Machrae Diir to last forever.”

“Me too,” she says. She nudges me, shoulder to shoulder. “I doubt it would end, though, even if we did all die and most or all of us were annihilated on top of it.”

Two rows of abandoned strip-mall away, concrete blocks and steel rebar jumble themselves skyward to meet the howling descent of a massive angular starship. The ship's hull is cratered, fractured, bent by impacts. Rubber tubes and metal spars accrete along the underside, culminating in a lightning-charged prong that catches and holds the hulk. Shadowed shapes pour out of the depths onto the ad-hoc port tower and scramble down its sides towards the streets.

I clap and bounce, capering with glee. “Oh, those are fantastic! Who arranged that?”

“I don’t think anyone did,” handmaiden says. “Machrae Diir has started doing things of its own accord.”

I smile softly. “Then it worked.” I glance to her. “That was my other reason for leaving. As long as I sat in Zul, pouring my power into the dimension to sustain its nature, there could be no power vacuum to let its own essence bloom.” I expand my senses. Drink the lightning surges suffusing every quark and gluon of our home. No consciousness, and yet, a shifting. A reactivity. “Machrae Diir’s Ul belongs to itself, now.”

“That’s beautiful, my Lady,” handmaiden says. “It truly is.” She looks back behind us. “I’m not sure whether that… er… it doesn’t feel very eldritch to call it a deranged skatepark…”

“I disagree,” I say. “It’s very empty spaces, and empty spaces was very neo-eldritch.”

“That’s fair!” she answers. “So, then, the deranged skatepark… well, actually, it might be one of Machrae Diir’s own emanations, or it might be something someone did and then erased their memory of.”

“Other people are doing that?” I ask, eyes alight. “On their own, without me ever suggesting it or priming them with the idea?”

“Unselfism,” handmaiden agrees. “It’s already become its own art movement. It feels like something an outer demon would’ve started, but we’ll never know for sure since whoever invented it erased their own memory of doing so. They also purged all the memory-auras from the term ‘Unselfism’ and their works. The movement consists of creating things like that park, or otherworldly metal sculptures, moving breakdowns in the laws of reality, anomalies and such… really all kinds of uncanny stuff, and then completely annihilating one’s own artistic role in it. Voluntary self-erasure so the creation can never be traced back to its origins and reduced to an extension of its creator.” She smiles wryly. “And of course, if anyone else happens to witness, they are honorbound to destroy their own memories. So far, no one’s pushed back.”

“I love this place,” I murmur. “I love these people so much.”

Handmaiden hugs me. “Love you too, Kai.”

A horseshoe crab scuttles by us. “Those just showed up,” she observes. “We don’t question it. This is known.”

“This is known,” I intone.

“So, now that you’re back, will you resume your throne?” she asks.

“No.” I cast my gaze up and aside to trace a flight of unraveling sinewy specters, burning away with mad cackling into a brief blackfire wakes like the crashing of photo-negative fighter jets. “Not the way I did before.” I palm my silver amulet of Haksaema, the Four-Point Star: symbol of Carag euphoria. Symbol of my becoming. “I mean... yes, but only the way I mentioned after the Su incident."

Handmaiden's turn for a wry smile. "You mean the way you chose on impulse, then second-guessed yourself about until you wound up all but ruling Machrae Diir again?"

I give her my very best shit-eating grin. "Yes, that. I had the right idea, and I'm finally prepared to stick by it. The throne in Kdalthach Carogdem is an aesthetic throne. The Lady of Machrae Diir is an aesthetic title. It's for the vibe of the sexy, dominant demon queen. Come to think of it..." I tap my lips. "How about a sillier title? Just two more syllables, but it feels so much more indulgent." Blue nova flares in my joyful eyes. "How about Overlady of Machrae Diir?"

Handmaiden immediately doubles over laughing. "Kai! Kai, that's so ridiculous!"

I sketch an elaborate court bow. "I live to please, my dear." I resume walking. "I think... if I put one of my masc lovers on the throne, I do like Overlord. But it's my throne. I'm the onlye one who gets to be Overlady. Femme lovers will be consorts instead."

"That makes sense," handmaiden says, shrugging helplessly. "The vibes are right."

"When the vibes are right, the vibes are right," I agree, with a sage's tones. "This is known."

"This is known," handmaiden chuckles.

Our steps echo from an archway at the bottom of an entire hive of archways, frames and portals stacking on each other to make a stonework warren stretching out and up for hundreds upon hundreds of meters. Soon our echoes take on a life of their own, drawn out, pitched down, chopped up enough to scatter any flesh-mind’s wits.

I fold my hands. The ladylike pose becomes just a little perverse by the ease it implies with my torn clothing. And just like that, our steps have brought us to a place where the buildings split open to a sheer drop. Undercity sewers, piping, and cables open in the dark blue stone below us. It stretches down, and down, and down to the irradiant seam where the dimension’s cobalt essence pours forth.

Cobalt that matches my favored hues of power simply because this place and I… we belong together. I do belong here, after all.

‘I feel very silly,” I say, looking out across the Rift towards the Galespire’s apex, a distant glittering spike of silver with its lower half lost behind the spiraling walls of the Maelstrom. Further, toward the green-into amber-into-blue aurorae spilling upward from the Azure Diamond Sarcophagus at the Mutagenic Exclusion Zone's core, far in the north.

“Machrae Diir is so much stranger, harsher, and more wonderful than the boundary lines between species, nations, and universes. That queer quintessence that makes us kindred... it helps some of us find each other because share it. Others share because we find each other. That something that lets us kindle the emptiness of our personal voids, transmuting the shadows themselves into light’s ignition and the onetime rays around them into the new radiation’s shadow.”

Handmaiden sighs happily. “It’s good to have you back, oh glorious Overlady. This place isn’t the same without you spouting your silly Caragisms. I’ve missed having them pick through. Measuring connotation against denotation, considering your inspirations against your own creations to figure out how you want the web of meanings to align.”

I smile wryly. “For those with less passion for my indulgences, let’s call this something the ember. It awaits at the apex of the deep font within every unwoken kindred-soul’s shell. And as long as their soul carries that ember deep within, the most normal human imaginable has a place here, too.” I breathe deep. “Even a human as normal as I was, until college, and the revelation of the great Void in my psyche.”

“So,” handmaiden asks, “I take it your human exposure therapy worked as intended?”

I laugh. “That obvious, huh?”

She pokes my shoulder with her tail. “Kai. When you monologue, I listen. You know why I listen? It’s because you’re smart and insightful and no one else in the whole universe thinks like you do. It’s obvious because you taught me, you paradoxical genius of a bimbo.”

It takes me a few seconds to collect myself and ease the last tears out of my eyes. I sniffle. “Thanks for that. You really are my worst handmaiden, you know? Shattering your Overlady's composure that way.”

She grins beneath her veil. “Oops.”

“Anyway, um,” I rub my eyes, “it was good. It was really, really good. Humans taught me everything I used to get a start, you know? Speaking, writing, liberal arts, martial arts, philosophy… science.” I hug myself, shuddering. “I missed science so much. I-I feel as though I went mad, you know? In childhood I grew up with these wondrous mysteries of chemistry, geology, astronomy, anthropology, and more. I thought of them as gifts from dear friends, and then…” More tears. “Then as I grew older I ran into more and more stories where science drives demons out of the world, extinguishes magic, strangles belief. I encountered more and more scientists who seemed so ghoulishly happy about it, and I learned that all these things I mistook for gifts were meant as poison.”

My tremors ease. “I was thinking, deep down when I started on this journey, that it must be," I grin sheepishly, "a great new mystery, a missing piece. I thought I would become some intentional paradox entity, a human demon, perhaps."

"Mhm." Handmaiden punctuates her dry tone with a snort.

I giggle. "Justified response. But I realized that the truth's so much simpler and more joyous than that. Even if many of them intended to harm beings like me with the experiences I accepted as gifts, the joy I felt... that was joy I created for myself. That joy still belongs to me, that joy is still with me, no matter the intentions of the beings I once associated it with."

Handmaiden tilts her head. “Words you can say about humans and Sech too, huh?"

I drink in the sights, scents, sounds and more of my home. Sweet Machrae Diir... I'm smiling so often and so easily tonight. It's good to be her again at last--this blissful, horny, ditzy demon. "Yes. And many others besides. Existence gave me pain, sorrow, and degradation. I transmuted it into this profound joy. I am right to carry myself with pride--a true daughter of the abyss." I take a seat at the Rift’s edge and dangle my feet over the drop. I was never brave enough to do this in the days before it all went lucid.

What have I now to fear from the fall?

“That's what I had to learn from trying to be human: that it was always me. In everything I've associated with deep mysteries and self-discovery, my own inner essence was always the real source. With just one exception.” I beam at handmaiden. "Demons have taught me so much about myself that I've seldom needed to transmute. It's always been a joy to learn from my kindred. So natural and easy it never felt like a change.

“You had to learn how to become what you already were," handmaiden murmurs. She cocks her head. "Huh. How about that." She flops down beside me.

I pick up a strand of wire and gnaw on it just because I can, sucking the electricity out and transmuting it into essence. It feels good to feed on raw energy again. I peer at the Galespire’s gleam on the night horizon.

Handmaiden watches me, and grins. “Miidyaerita kastejul, Inheritrix. Welcome home.”

I return it. “Miidyaerita kastejul, handmaiden. I have only one duty left for you to execute: I wish you to remain my friend.” She answers by sinking against my shoulder, and leaning her head into mine.

When we tire of the view from that spot, we scramble up, we walk back onto the nearest street, and we talk about other things. The games Machrae Diir’s people have begun inventing–of shapeshifting, of finding hidden things, of testing dangers in the deap reaches of the dimension by immersing themselves and seeing how long they can lie beneath the surface of their own terror before giving into the urge to fight back. I’m on the verge of asking handmaiden if Unselfism has spawned any offshoot movements when we arrive at the iron citadel and the bridge crossing the Rift of Recompense.