He plucks a tome from his glittering robes. “As for constantly seeking an external threat to define yourself against... I've already said my piece about conflict without end. Do as you will, and embrace the consequences.”

He turns to one of the energized band-arrays as it begins to vibrate with alarming force. He hurriedly taps its pedestal, then relaxes after the colors within turn mellower. “I've found it's most vital to rebel against myself. My past decisions, my past convictions, retain the weight I gave them. I use the spirit of infernal rebellion to change how I weight things within me–to change my own will, and truly be the captain of my soul’s own ship.”

“What if that means being alone?” the fledgling asks.

“Better than giving of your own soul to someone who stifles your growth so they can make you into the version of yourself they like,” the scholar answers.

“Well… I do want to serve my mistress,” the fledgling says. “I don’t need to rebel against her.”

“I didn’t suggest otherwise,” the scholar says. “So I invite you to ask yourself why you felt the need to convince someone–“

“You don’t know me!” the fledgling snaps.

“I agree,” the scholar says. “So, why are you looking to me to tell you who you are?”

She balls up her fists, claws digging into her palms. “Don’t. Don’t you dare say it’s because that’s what I look to my mistress for–and don’t you dare say that you didn’t say that, so the person I’m trying to convince must be myself!” She holds up a claw with frenzy rising in her eyes as yet another layer occurs to her. “And don’t say that you didn’t say I’m trying to convince myself, so I must be trying to convince myself that I’m not trying to convince myself…” She trails off. Sags.

Her mistress warned her about this–warned her how others would put dangerous ideas in her head if she let her guard down, and as vulnerable as she is, she probably won’t be able to get them out now that they’ve taken root.

“Alright,” he says. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to be honest with me and stop fucking with my head!” she screams.

“That is an irreconcilable paradox because the things that other people say in complete honesty will often fuck with your head,” the scholar says. “Because they challenge your worldview. Because you don’t know everything, and sometimes that means letting go of an idea you’ve grown very attached to because you find out it’s just not true, and–“

“Shut. Up.” She growls. “Shut up or I’ll tear your throat out, I swear by Her.”

He stares at her for long breathes. “Alright. How’s this. I once had an instructor who I thought of as a mentor. He and I got into a relationship. He was very free with praise, always telling me how skilled and driven I was. It wasn’t until he’d persuaded me to cut ties with just about everyone else in my life, including a mortal man who I think might’ve been in love with me, that I realized I was always doing things for him. But he only ever promised to do things for me later. I fed him actualities.”

His tail’s club rattles at his ankle-spurs. “He fed me with promises. In short, he never fed me at all. I starved and starved while he grew strong off me, and thanked himself.”

“Which means what to me?” the fledgling sneers.

“That any situation which reminds me of that one causes me in some regard to relive it,” the scholar says patiently, “pushing me back into the trauma of it. Similar patterns are enough. I am not saying that the underlying meanings are the same, or that the outcome will be the same. Only that I would be pained to exhaustion and re-traumatized by listening to you talk about your mistress.”

“Then I guess I’m just stronger than y–” the fledgling starts. A backhand slap impacts her face with enough force it nearly wrenches her head off her shoulders, and spins her across the courtyard spitting blood.

“No amount of pain gives you the right to grind your fingers into the wounds I showed you in trust,” the scholar says coldly. “None.”

“Fuck you!” the fledgling snarls. She scrabbles upright, chipping her nails on the rough porous blocks. “When I’m by my Mistress’s side at last, I’ll tell Her every shitty thing you said, and She’ll stretch out Her hand and wipe you out of existence!”

“Is that truly what you believe?” he asks. “As long as you have the power to do it, anything is acceptable? The only problem with the pain in your life is that you were the one receiving it, not inflicting it?”

“Yeah,” she grins. “Got a problem with that?”

The scholar nods to one side. “No. An internally consistent philosophy. I thank you for this talk.” And he turns on his heel, already scribbling in his book as though she’s ceased to exist. The fledgling watches him. Her anger burns down. Disbelief scrambles in behind.

He’s not supposed to do this. He has to listen to her! All that time he spent talking to her–he’s supposed to be invested! He can’t just turn his back and walk away!

And the scholar’s figure grows smaller. His pronged feet click on the dark porous something. Soon he’ll be out of sight, and she’ll be all alone again, here. Except for her mistress. And her mistress needs a way to manifest, needs someone else to provide a body before She’ll help. His heart seems really empty. Maybe if she uses the crystal on him…? But, no. That’s not who she’s supposed to use it for.

He’s almost out of sight. About to turn a corner. And the stillness outside the strange enclosure is full with the promise of murderous things.

“WAIT!” the fledgling screams, rushing after the devil-scholar. He turns to regard her without a hint of emotion in his three-way lips. “Wait! Wait, I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry! You can’t just leave me here!”

“I can,” he says. “I will.”

“You shouldn’t,” she says.

“Why not?” he asks. “You just established the precedent that you will do whatever you want, given the power. Why should I restrain myself when, under those rules, it would clearly put me at a disadvantage?”

“Because… because we’re the same?” she asks.

His lips twists into something she recognizes: pity. “We are not the same,” he says. “Yes, I’ve felt some pains I suspect you share. But I’ve already offered you many of the ideas I found most helpful in making myself a more complete person. You’ve rejected them all. So,” he bows, “congratulations. You have won.”

He straightens. “Do you feel vindicated?”

“N-no,” she says. Her claws find her shoulders. Carve right through the black leather. “I feel… please… I need help.”

The scholar regards her. “Look. All talk of rationality and precedents aside, I do feel a kinship with you.” He holds up his chitinous fingers. “But the things you say about your mistress make me uncomfortable. I don’t know that I could have a fulfilling friendship with you when I can scarcely speak without you accusing me of insulting her.”

“You don’t know Her!” the fledgling protests. “She cares about us, me and the others! She took us after no one else would, and She… She…” Her Mistress hasn’t done much besides send her to complete tasks. But it’s necessary! It has to be done so they can be together! “Everyone else abandoned me,” she says. “After I wouldn’t leave my mistress, after they told me She was just using me and I refused to believe the lies.”

The scholar breathes deep and long.

“No one abandoned you,” he says sadly. “You chose her over them, to prove your loyalty, because you assumed that anyone who demanded a great price must have a great prize to offer. But real friendship, trust, and loyalty are not about proving or challenges. They happen naturally when we find beings who want the same things from life as we do.”

“B-but my mistress and I do want the same things!” the fledgling says. “She wants me to be Hers, and I want to be Hers!”

“What does being Hers look like to you?” the scholar asks.

“I… you promise you won’t question this, or try to convince me it’s stupid?” the fledgling asks.

“I promise,” the scholar says.

The fledgling steps slow circles. Rubs her shoulders. Winces at the pain from the marks her claws made earlier. “Loved. Treasured. Always at Her side, on Her arm, lounging around Her throne with the rest of Her favorites. My name on Her lips–I mean, after She makes my name and gives it to me.” The scholar says nothing. “She said She’d reach deep into my soul,” the fledgling continues, “and find the essence of the one that best suits me.” The scholar remains silent. Yet the thought comes to her as though in his voice: if the name is in her soul, why can’t she reach in and pull it out herself?

She opens her mouth to accuse him of putting it in her head, telepathically, the way her Mistress does to let her know of things she should give her mistress. Only… if he’s in her mind… wouldn’t that mean her mistress isn’t protecting her like she said she would? But if he didn’t put it there… did her mistress? To test her? But why? She’s in the middle of a crucial mission, she’s in so much danger already. Her mistress wouldn’t do that to her.

She would never.

“Why can’t we be friends anyway?” she asks. “I… I promise I’d never bring you into anything my mistress orders me to do.”

“And how often will you be journeying for yourself instead of your mistress?” the scholar asks.

As far as the fledgling knows, the true answer is “never.”

“I will sometimes,” she says, knowing the lie sounds as frail as it feels.

The scholar sighs. Pinches his brow. Thinks deeply and long.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m glad to know you are able to contemplate connection with people who don’t share your unflinching devotion to your mistress. But even then, I do not think that as you are right now, and I am right now, such a friendship would be happy.”

“Why?” the fledgling says. She shudders, hating how whiny her own voice sounds. “Please, tell me why! I can change, I’ll let you fix me! Please!” She rushes to the other demon. Though he reels back, he does not step away while she clings to his ankle and sobs.

He waits for her weeping to ebb. Then, gently but firm as iron, he pries her away, and he speaks.

“It’s not sound thinking to form a friendship with someone hoping to fix them,” he says softly. “If the nature you’ve created within yourself is that you don’t believe you can be happy for your own sake, any power I use to try to move you away from that nature will just hurt you. I’ll never reach a point where I can force you to grow. You’ll just cease to be.”

And he leaves through the threshold between the monumental stones, and the fledgling is forlorn. So she slumps down against the wall. Reaches out to her Mistress in her mind. She finds the cold, empty, calm place where her Mistress is always waiting for her–just as she is this time. The impression of four majestic horns, and a radiant nimbus of purple-white power, and a lashing tail, and…

… and that’s it. Her mistress has never felt like an anticlimax before.

–There you are, pet!– the mistress greets the seeker. Her voice brings no thrill of belonging, no ecstasy at visions of promised place, possessed. The fledgling hates herself for the weakness of her belief. That’s why she’ll fail. She doesn’t deserve to succeed because she doesn’t really believe, and her mistress can sense that, and–

–Where are you?– her mistress asks. –You seem awfully tired.–

The fledgling tries to meet her mistress in her own mind, like always. She rebounds away from… from something. Something sharp and burning in the very idea. It’s not pain. It only reminds her of pain.

“I’m here in Machrae Diir,” she says. “I’m here to kill the Lady and make her your vessel.”

-Of course you are!– her mistress says brightly. -You really are a wonderful servant, you know that, dear? Chin up and get moving again. It’s very sweet of you to check in on little old me, but you must finish your task. Once I’ve taken back that selfish Lady’s stolen power, you and I will be able to do anything.-

“Me and you and your other servants, right?” the fledgling asks. “The other chosen, I mean?”

–That’s right, pet,– her mistress agrees. -They as well, of course.–

“Mistress… I’m too tired to kill someone,” she mumbles.

–You won’t be killing anyone,– her mistress says. Her voice shifts in that terrifying way–not hard but less soft, not angry but loud and insistent and making the fledgling so afraid that she’s already disappointed her, that she’s about to be thrown away. –Don’t put so much pressure on yourself. Remember, I’ll be the one doing all the work.–

“Y-yes, mistress,” the good little pet mumbles. “You’re right, I’m sorry. I’m so selfish all the time and you’re so patient with me. I don’t understand why, but… thank you.”

–Of course, pet!– Her mistress coos. -Everyone deserves second chances, don’t they?–

And she’s gone, and the fledgling has no excuse left for staying where she is. She needs to stand up for her mistress and finish this. Only… Machrae Diir is far more vast than she ever thought. She’d imagined a gateway and some linear tunnels linking a few chambers, maybe. Something about a court and a throne.

She’d imagined a golden-framed chair covered in ermine, maybe a few death’s-head torches on the walls burning with blue fire. Looking around, she realizes she has no idea how to visualize the Lady’s throne room, or even its storied Manifold Throne.

These thoughts carry her into a region of twisted, flanged, slow-growing metal. It creaks and squeals, becoming razor-tip girders, thickets and hedges like frozen shell-bursts and the wakes of power geysers. Light blooms on the dark blue night. Distant cracks and staccato volleys. The muffled roar of a charge. Yet also the queer harmonics of things that move in the corrupted heavens. Suspended detonations contort, roil, shrink and expand, raising gleams in their orbiting microsystems of shrapnel, turf, and fire.

A sudden flash, a faint gust, the ghostly echo of a blast make the seeker seize up. They flicker from a crater so old its once-pebbled rim has softened, melted, into a smooth irregular pockmark. A scar, already in darkness again by the time her eyes find it. And for all that she hears sounds in the night, the seeker meets no one and nothing. There’s no wind. Craters and craters and craters, crowding thicker like obscene inverted boils–like the negative space of extracted cancers–until even the slow-growing metal gives way to them, like a perverse border-forest ringing the center of something unspeakable.

And then? A vast circle of smoking homes ensnared at the instant of splintering. Neat streets, ordered shrubs, even greens. All crinkling and blackened. Among them on paths, against collapsing walls, seeping from half-scorched tables in flash-fried living rooms, static vapor-trails stretch above shadows that will never leave the ground again.

Further, past the point where the ring of broken homes exists only as mid-air memorials of blackened kindling and fragmentary furniture.

Motionless, glinting shapes loom out of the shadowy sky: sleek-winged constructs studded in windows. They buckle, warp, turn away but never escape. Frozen streamers of black smoke trail from their inward faces past their leeward curves. They’ll never escape the event horizon. Far larger hulks hover further above: titanic, sloping, secondary constructs studding their hulls with triple-mounted protrusions aiming inward. The same black streamers. A memory of heat seeps into the little wanderer’s psyche.

Her mind stretches into the stretching distance ahead. She never passes out, and yet it seems that each time her perception loses focus on the immediate surroundings, she’s far deeper than before when she regains focus. She passes through another ring marked by the intransigent candles of outrageously tall towers. Their windows glint dully on the approach. In passing and glancing back, she sees charred, hollow ranked-ribs of burned-out rooms. Melting steel droplets poise mid-air on the innermost edges.

The downward slope begins. The constructs fall away. There’s only pale grey dust–ashes. These are ashes, and their tainted paleness is the only thing left in all the universe. Down, down, down to the center. Silver shapes unfold from the hemispherical void in the monumental crater’s heart: petals of an alien blossoming. Spirals, incomplete helixes, tendrils born from blown-out veins of something shining and hard and iridescent.

They taper smaller and smaller until they unfold into glittering vapor. The vapor passes out, a nebular haze, a diaphanous bridal veil, a last wisp of mist on a summer morning, and disappears into emptiness.

The name “osmium” comes to the seeker, and she knows with the heatless, coldless weight of infinity in her gut that even her mistress does not know this word. Rotting metal. It decays so slowly that the cosmos itself will burn out before half of its sheen has ceased.

Yet here it is, reaching its end.

She shivers, looking upward, and regrets it more than anything. The stretching undulations of the metal that’s always dying and never quite dead reach for a sky-puncture, an emptiness so profound she would never have seen it without their sprawls. The shape a star’s radiance makes a far-seeing lens, transmuted into darkness.

Directly underneath, marking the nexus to this starfield of carnage, at this ground zero of birth by two-stage ignition, stands a no shape stranger than a woman in a black dress. It features a frilly hem slit open to the hip at the front, sides and back. A window filled with floral-print netting makes the shape of an inverse heart over her chest. A pale, heart-shaped face, full lips painted black, big, delicate azure eyes painted in black with wings barbed like thorns, and a sword of slow-drifting shadows condensed at her side.

She stands side-on to the seeker, staring at nothing in particular.

Under her feet, a broad melted space of pale blue glass. The seeker must walk on it to reach the other. The instant she sets foot on it, it expands to a hundred times its prior size. It stretches away for miles in every direction. The dim-lit osmium rises miles higher on every side, to scaffold the god-swallowing caverns implicit in endless dark sky.

In her heart the seeker knows it has always been this immense. She is long past the point of no return. The washed-out reflections in the pale glass are a visceral cloud of smoke, and fire, the faded yet never absent image of a behemoth blue star burning above.